Chapter 1
Chapter One
Twenty-one years later
Michelle’s body trembled as she hunched down, hidden among a row of pine trees, her bare feet buried deep in the snow and her body wedged between the heavy branches.
It wasn’t only the temperature or her lack of clothes causing her to shake—she’d run from the house in only her nightclothes and panties—the trembling came with the growing terror that someone nefarious was out there, the same someone who struck the match and sparked the flames now engulfing the house where she’d been sleeping.
“Michelle. Shelly.”
The deep voice carried by the cold wind confirmed her fear, taunting and stretching her nerves.
Her breath caught, filling her lungs with chilled, smoke-filled air as the person walking around the perimeter of the remains of her father’s house came into view.
While she hadn’t recognized the voice, there was no mistaking the person calling out to her.
In the orange illumination from the flames, she watched the man’s boots stepping in and out of the melting snow, the rifle in his hand, and most importantly the badge on his heavy coat.
Closing her eyes, she wished for invisibility. It was a childish wish for a grown woman, but there was something about losing your last remaining parent that had a way of sending your thoughts into childish dreams.
“Shelly, honey, I know you’re out here. I saw your car in the garage. Come on, honey. Denny wouldn’t want you to freeze.”
A lump of emotion caught in her throat. Denny, or Dennis Holdcraft—her father—would never again be concerned with Michelle or anyone.
That was undeniable. The other fact that solidified in her chest with steely determination was the realization that Sheriff Perkins didn’t want to save Michelle from freezing.
His quest to find her was due to what she’d witnessed.
If Michelle made it to morning alive, she would have a story to tell, one that, no doubt, the sheriff wanted silenced.
When she opened her eyes against the harsh blaze, the silhouette of a second man came into view.
He was standing with and speaking to Sheriff Perkins.
With the crackling fire only yards away and the rustling of the branches above, Michelle couldn’t make out what the two men were saying, nor did she recognize the second man.
It wasn’t that she knew every person in this godforsaken town. Her father moved to Iron Falls in the middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts eight years ago after the passing of Michelle’s mom.
Michelle rarely visited, yet she and her father spoke often via phone or video calls.
Trying to ignore the pins and needles in her freezing extremities, Michelle kept watch on the two men. Every now and then, they would turn a full circle, their heavy boots trampling the slush and mud near the burning structure.
Michelle’s thoughts circled back to fleeing the fire.
Could those men track her footprints in the snow?
She hoped that the heat of the blaze melted away the evidence of her escape.
Escape?
She was trapped between the sheriff she feared and a frozen wilderness.
As the two men spoke, the sheriff maintained his grip of the long gun, the heel butting against his shoulder. It was the second man who seemed more animated, his head shaking and his hands gesturing.
If only she could hear their words.
Michelle fought the urge to fall apart. She couldn’t, not after what she’d seen. She knew why the sheriff wanted to find her. She was the last person to see Dennis Holdcraft, her father…
Michelle would have liked to have finished that thought with the word alive.
That wasn’t her. It didn’t take a great detective to surmise that one of the two men before her was the last person to see him alive.
Less than an hour earlier, the blast of the gunshot awakened Michelle from a sound sleep.
In her tired state, she thought the sound was the blowing of a transformer due to the heavy snow.
The blast shook the house with the bang of a firework.
Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that the sound was a gunshot.
When Michelle descended the stairs, she stopped, transfixed. On the floor of his living room, her father lay, his body contorted, and a dark pool of blood growing around his head.
It was almost too much for her mind to comprehend.
Michelle wasn’t supposed to be in Iron Falls tonight.
Her surprise trip to visit her father was supposed to last one day—come and go.
It was Mother Nature who changed her plans.
Despite the blizzard warning, her dad encouraged her to leave while there was still daylight.
Michelle assumed it was because he didn’t want to spend time with her. Whenever they were together in person, he always remarked at how much Michelle looked like her mother, Tracy, the love of his life and the woman he couldn’t get over.
The snowfall grew dangerous. She had to spend the night. Her plan was to take off Monday morning if the roads were clear.
As the roaring blaze destroyed the evidence of her father’s murder, Michelle reasoned that maybe it wasn’t that her dad didn’t want her close—maybe, instead, he was trying to protect her.
She wanted to believe that.
He’d always been her protector.
And now he was gone.
The sudden movement of the second man grasping the sheriff’s elbow drew Michelle’s attention. The second man led him away from view, moving toward the front of the house.
Realization hit almost simultaneously.
Sheriff Perkins mentioned seeing Michelle’s car. That meant he’d been inside the garage before the blaze. Of course he assumed a car with the Indiana license plate would belong to Denny’s daughter.
She swallowed as she stared out of her hiding place. The roof of her father’s house crashed, sending sparks and flames into the icy night sky.
Her suitcase
Her car.
Her laptop.
Her keys.
All were inside the burning house, the last two probably nothing more than melted blobs of plastic. Her mind scrambled with possibilities. Without a vehicle or shoes, where could she go? Who could help?
The sheriff wasn’t a possibility.
Was there anyone she could trust?
Why would anyone want her father dead?
The questions continued piling up with no answers to follow.
A brief flash of headlights signaled the leaving of a vehicle. Michelle hoped the other man convinced Sheriff Perkins to leave. That reality filled her with both relief and also alarm.
Here she was—all alone—watching her father’s home burn to the ground, knowing his dead body was inside.
Crouching down, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders, remembering the dinner they’d shared only hours ago. The stories they’d told about her mom and about Michelle’s childhood. Dad was a retired policeman who could talk for hours. He had enough stories to fill volumes of tomes.
Michelle couldn’t possibly comprehend why anyone—much less a fellow law enforcement officer—would want him dead.
Lost in the cyclone of her thoughts as second-story beams continued to crash to the ground, the sense of isolation consumed Michelle’s being. No mother. No father. No transportation. No way to retreat to her life.
That loneliness enveloped her, muting the world around her.
She didn’t hear or sense another person, not until a gloved large hand grasped her arm in a vise grip and lifted her to standing.
Her nearly frozen muscles protested as Michelle gasped, stood, and turned, meeting the dark stare of a stranger.
Even with her height of five feet, seven inches, this man towered over her.
His intense gaze brought back the surging circulation the cold had waned.
She wanted to protest his breach of her personal space.
However, as she took him in, from his hair covered by a stocking cap to the heavy coat over his massive body, any words she could think to form were muted.
“You’re coming with me.” His harsh baritone command came in vaper-filled clouds and echoed through her consciousness.
Michelle tried to wrench her arm loose as her words returned. “No. Let go of me. I don’t know you. I’ll scream for help.” As soon as the last sentence left her lips, she knew it was an empty threat. Assuming the sheriff and other man were gone, there was no one who would hear.
The man lowered his mouth to her ear. “You have about twenty minutes before Sheriff Perkins and Deputy Skiles return with the firefighters and more deputies. It won’t take him long to determine you’re the one who set Denny’s house on fire.”
Michelle shook her head. That’s impossible. She’d never do such a thing. “I didn’t.” Emotion and memories bubbled in her throat as she gave up the fight to retrieve her arm from this giant of a man. Instead, she went slack, confessing what she’d seen. “He’s dead. Dad. I saw him. Someone shot him.”
The man leaned even closer, his warm breath scurrying over her exposed flesh. “And you’re next if you don’t come with me.”
Michelle lifted her face, studying the unfamiliar man before her. “Who are you?”
“Right now, I’m your only hope. You’re on your own now, and Daddy’s not around to make these charges go away.”
Michelle’s lips opened in a gasp. How could this man know her history? “He never made—”
The grip of her arm grew tighter and his words more forceful. “Save your story. The priority right now is to get out of here.”
Michelle looked down at her nightgown—actually, one of her father’s old shirts and significantly insufficient for covering her body. “I can’t leave like this.”
Letting go of her arm, the man tugged on the front of his coat, unsnapping button after button and revealing a dark hoodie beneath.
In a fluid motion, he pulled the coat from his arms and shoulders and wrapped it around Michelle’s body.
The sudden burst of warmth and masculine scent was a heavenly escape until her blood’s circulation sped faster, bringing life and pain to temporarily frozen nerve endings.
Pulling her long copper-colored braid out from beneath the coat, she asked again, “Who are you?”