Chapter 1
“Are you married yet?” Billy Hoover asked the minute Lakin walked through the door of Roasters, the local café in Shelby, Alaska.
Billy blocked her way to the queue. His red hair wasn’t quite as messy, and his nose didn’t chronically run anymore, but he was still the bully he’d been in elementary school.
However, Lakin had learned long ago to not let him or anyone else get to her. She’d even learned how to control her reaction to raised voices now. But instead of ignoring him, like she usually did, she pointed out, “I could ask you the same question, Billy.”
Rumor had it that his wife had left him. Again.
His face flushed, and he glared at her before stomping out of the café like he’d stomped off the playground all those years ago.
While she moved to the end of the line of customers who also needed their morning fix of coffee, she was conflicted, feeling both a pang of regret for upsetting him and a surge of triumph that she didn’t need anyone to rescue her anymore.
She’d learned how to defend herself from bullies.
Yet Billy’s question bothered her—the hollowness she’d had before her adoption was back inside her, making her yearn for more. For marriage.
She loved Troy, and she knew he loved her. Although it had taken him a bit longer to realize it. Once he had, though, they’d become inseparable.
But he hadn’t proposed to her yet. She didn’t even have a promise ring to assure her that he planned to. They had talked about their future, about buying and running a business together like her father and her uncle.
Dad and Uncle Ryan had started RTA, Rough Terrain Adventures, when they moved from San Diego to Shelby twenty-eight years ago, after the family tragedy.
They had retired a few years ago, though they were still a huge part of the business.
Parker ran the company now, with Lakin helping out in the office.
Their older cousin Spence was one of the most sought-after RTA tour guides.
While Lakin enjoyed working in the family business, she wanted to build something of her own. No, she thought to herself, she wanted something with Troy. She wanted to work with him every day and watch their business thrive…and hopefully someday a family of their own, too.
But Troy was insistent that to be successful, they needed to save before they made any large investments.
Despite the fact that he made good money working on oil rigs, he didn’t think he’d saved up enough yet.
He was also helping out his younger siblings with college tuition and helping his widowed mother, too.
Because he was gone so much, sometimes Lakin didn’t even feel like she had a boyfriend.
She missed him and felt so lonely when he was away for months at a time.
But Troy was coming home; she’d just received an email from him that he would be back in a week.
That email was the first she had heard from him in much too long.
While he spent months out on oil rigs, he usually managed to talk to her at least once a week via the radio on the rig or with a text or email that managed to get through despite poor internet and cellular reception.
Since she’d gone so long without being able to communicate with him, she wasn’t sure if he was aware of what his older sister Hetty and Lakin’s cousin Spence had recently endured.
Hetty had been shot. The wound hadn’t been serious, but she and Spence could have died.
The man trying to kill them had been a professional assassin hired to murder the guests that should have been on the tour Hetty and Spence were guiding.
While they’d survived the ordeal, they had discovered the body of a woman who hadn’t survived hers.
Lakin’s heart ached with sympathy for the woman and her family while she also shivered a little with fear that there was still another killer out there.
The assassin who’d attacked Hetty and Spence hadn’t been responsible for that murder or for the murders of the other two female victims whose bodies had recently been discovered along Muskee Glacier Pass.
So who was responsible?
The authorities were working on it, some of them being Lakin’s own family members.
Her brother Eli and her cousin Kansas were on the case.
She knew they would find and stop the killer; she just hoped it was soon.
Because ever since those bodies had been found, she had a strange feeling she was being watched.
Like a prickling on the skin between her shoulder blades or this chill that kept passing through her, raising goose bumps along her arms. She had the sensation now even though Billy Hoover had left.
Or had he? He could be outside watching her through the big windows that opened onto Main Street.
As the customer in front of her stepped aside to wait for a to-go cup, Lakin passed her bright blue Roaster’s travel mug to the barista.
She didn’t have to tell her what she wanted; Lakin got the same thing every morning before heading into the RTA office: the Roasters house blend with a dollop of cream and a drop of caramel syrup.
Hopefully the hot coffee would chase away the chill permeating Lakin.
When Fay, the barista, passed back her travel mug, Lakin smiled and dropped her money on the counter, enough to cover the coffee and a tip. She saw Fay so often that the young woman had become a friend. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Lakin, and hey…” Fay stepped closer to the oak counter and lowered her voice. “All anyone is talking about is those bodies showing up. Be careful out there.”
Lakin wasn’t the only one spooked about those murders.
“You, too,” she said. In addition to the three bodies that had been found, another woman was missing now, her picture all over the news.
And then there was the Whaler, a local fishing legend who’d died in an accident that hadn’t actually been an accident.
Shelby had always felt like such a safe place to live until recently. But it was still home. And she didn’t want to live anywhere else.
What about Troy?
Did he really want the same things she did? She’d once thought he did, that they had a future together. But he was gone so much that she wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. Did he still want her?
That hollow ache of loneliness inside her intensified, and she flinched and closed her eyes. She opened them when she bumped into someone. “I’m sorry—”
“It’s my fault,” Eric Seller said with a grin.
The man was in his midthirties with a lean, athletic build.
He was a frequent customer of RTA and flew up often from wherever he worked in Silicon Valley for day trips and weekend excursions.
Clients had to book at least six months ahead to get a tour with RTA.
Lakin worked in the office, not as a guide, but she still saw Eric Seller more often than she saw Troy.
“How are you doing, Lakin?”
He was a customer, a good one, so she didn’t want to burden him with her fears about Shelby’s safety. And, since he was a man, he was probably safe.
So she just smiled and lied, “I’m doing well. And you, Mr. Seller?”
“Eric, call me Eric,” he said with a weary sigh. In every interaction they had, he pleaded with her to use his first name.
While she did with other clients, she felt odd doing it with him, like he wanted that familiarity a little too much. Like it meant more to him, like she meant more to him, than she should. And she didn’t want to give him any encouragement. So instead of complying, she just smiled again.
He chuckled. “I don’t know if you’re shy or if you just don’t like me,” he said.
“I assure you it’s neither,” she said. “And I’m sorry you’ve felt that way.
I guess I have been preoccupied because I’ve been very busy.
” Or at least she pretended to be whenever he came into the office.
But instead of taking the hint and leaving her alone, he usually waited and messed with the personal items she kept on the reception desk.
Like the framed pictures of her and Troy.
He glanced around the café. “Are you here with the boyfriend?”
She shook her head.
“Is he still just a boyfriend?” he asked. “Or has he finally proposed?”
Heat rushed to her face, but she was irritated more than embarrassed. Everyone seemed very interested in her love life today. Or maybe Seller had already been in the café and overheard what Billy said to her. Maybe he was just piling on like the kids used to do on the playground.
The question unsettled her, though. The press had given a name to the person responsible for the gruesome murders of those women: the Fiancée Killer. The bodies had all been staged with a fake engagement ring on a finger.
“Troy and I are both very busy,” she said. Then she moved to step around him, but Seller stepped in front of her again. Blocking her from leaving, like Billy Hoover had blocked her from entering the café moments ago.
“Nobody should be too busy for love,” Seller said, his head cocked to one side, as if he pitied her.
“And nobody is,” Lakin replied with a smile. No matter how busy she and Troy were, she still loved him. She always would. She just wasn’t sure how he felt now, especially when so much time had passed without hearing from him during his last stint on the oil rig.
Seller arched an eyebrow and smirked as if he didn’t believe her. If he wasn’t such a regular customer, she would have shut him down like she had Billy Hoover. Instead she just smiled, sidestepped once again and walked away.
Maybe Seller was the one who’d been watching her earlier. Or perhaps he was watching her now as she left. Either way, she had that creepy sensation again, that chill racing down her spine.
Someone was watching her.