for the start of the race. The yellow flags waved, but as soon as the lead car approached the starting line, it would be go time.
She hadn’t missed it after all.
As a single parent with a full-time job there was a lot she missed in her son’s life. It caused a wedge.
She sighed at the growing distance between her and her son and thanked God that Jaxon was behind the wheel today and not smuggling alcohol with Bret and his gang.
Thank You, Lord, for watching out for him when I can’t. Just as You watched out for me fourteen years ago. You never left me to raise him alone.
Unlike Jaxon’s birth father.
Unlike everyone else in her family.
The starting horn blared. The green flags waved like crazy. The crowds behind her in the towering grandstand cheered. The race was on.
Sylvie watched her son take the lead from the number eight car. His tiny vehicle roared as its motorcycle engine was pushed to the max. She fisted a hand in the air. “Go, Jaxon!”
Her son had been racing cars since he was six, starting with little go-karts. It wasn’t a cheap sport, by any means, but Sylvie worked extra shifts to give him something he could be proud of and work toward, something that kept him off the streets. She hadn’t been too excited about him following in his birth father’s footsteps, but she lived in a racing town and it was hard to steer Jaxon in other directions. Her brother was out in the world following circuit after circuit, racing on tracks in strange and exotic locales now. She’d barely heard from him since Mom had died.
Jaxon lost the lead, and Sylvie snapped out of her reverie, especially when his wheels swerved off to the left.
What was he doing? Sylvie rushed forward a few steps, but knew she couldn’t get any closer to the track to find out. She scanned the area for Roni Spencer Rhodes, her son’s trainer and owner of the racetrack. Would Roni know if something was wrong?
Sylvie spotted her friend in a white down coat and matching hat and scarf, her long red hair whipped a bit in the cold wind. She wore a headset that had to be connected to Jaxon. Sylvie headed Roni’s way, but as she approached, she noticed out of the corner of her eye someone else approaching Roni.
The stranger!
He had no business being behind the fence.
His ice-blue eyes targeting Roni dead-on said otherwise.
The race became immediately forgotten. Sylvie reached for her weapon. “Stop right there!” She raised her voice to be heard over the motors.
The unidentified man came to an abrupt halt.
Sylvie took three determined steps, her hand curled around her gun’s handle. A bang from the track echoed through the valley, bouncing off the surrounding White Mountains and back again.
The man flew forward at her and fell to his knees. Sylvie withdrew her gun and took aim. The crowds in the grandstand inhaled and shouted at the same time. Had they all seen her draw her weapon?
Or was something else going down on the track that claimed their attention?
A quick glance showed a mass of cars piling up and flipping. Number eleven’s wheels were overturned.
Jaxon!
Sylvie wanted to run to him but the stranger now lay facedown on the snow, blood spatter around him, stark in its rich contrast of dark on light, like the man himself.
He was injured.
But how?
Torn between him and her son, Sylvie holstered her weapon and dropped to the stranger’s side. A hole in the arm of his leather coat showed where an object had entered his body. Something flying off the track?
She inspected at a closer range.
No. A bullet.
Sylvie took in the perimeter in short, jerky perusals for a shooter in the area.
No time. She had to first take care of the victim.
She lifted the man under his arms and dragged him behind a snow pile. A groan told her he was conscious.
“Sir, I’m Chief Sylvie Laurent. Can you tell me your name?” she yelled over the ensuing chaos around her.
“Ian Stone,” the man groaned and moved to turn.
“Stay still, Mr. Stone. I’m calling for help.” Sylvie reached for her radio.
“No!” The man raised his good hand. “No help.” He pushed himself to his knees. Blood seeped from his left shoulder, his other hand stretched across his wide chest to staunch the flow.
“Ian, I need to get you to the hospital. And you need to stay down. The shooter is still out there.”
He shook away from her grasp. “Help the drivers. Not me.” He stood up and mumbled, “I should have known they would take me out. I should have known this was too good to be true.” He half ran, half staggered to the fence exit. The alarmed crowd of spectators behind it swallowed him whole.
A war waged in Sylvie. She had to go after him. What if he bled out and died? She couldn’t have a murder in Norcastle. And a murder it would be. She knew a gunshot when she saw one. The crash had muffled the sound, and the mountains...
Sylvie looked to the lofty peaks overlooking the racetrack.
The mountains were hiding a killer. The marksman could be out there somewhere on Mount Randolph. He could go after Ian Stone again.
Sylvie hit her radio to call her team, but all emergency personnel were flooding the track to help the drivers, the kids.
The place she needed to be, too.
Jaxon.
Sylvie zeroed in on her son being lifted from his car, awake but limping, his pale blond hair that matched her own shielded his eyes, but he was talking. Her heart lodged in her throat as she watched him enter one of the ambulances opened and ready to whisk him off to the hospital. The police and paramedics had everything under control, and he was in good hands.
Sylvie stepped in the direction Ian Stone had staggered off in, the direction she was needed most.
Her conflicted steps turned to a full, determined run.
She’d known Ian Stone was trouble the second she’d laid eyes on him.
But apparently, someone else did, too.
* * *
Ian slammed the door of the studio apartment he’d rented the day before. Carrying a pharmacy bag, he put it between his teeth as he tore off his coat and dropped it to the wood floor of the old factory mill, now turned into living quarters. The brick building was one of many along the river in this old New England mill town—a place he supposedly had been born in thirty years ago, but hadn’t known existed until two weeks ago.
The
