left a noticeable trail, and he was having no trouble at all following it. He eased through thick undergrowth, moving along the edge of the creek that cut through his property. There were footprints in the bank. Large boots and smaller sneakers. The woman who was supposed to be his girlfriend?
She’d headed up the embankment. He followed.
The steep rise led to a ledge that looked out over Whisper Lake. Beyond that, she’d have seen the lights of Whisper—the closest town. Just a pinprick on the map. Fifteen hundred residents on a good day, and exactly the kind of place Mason would have lived if he’d wanted to live close to civilization.
He shopped in the little grocery store there.
When friends came to visit, he took them to the tackle shop, the diner, the ice cream place. There wasn’t much in Whisper, but it was plenty to keep the residents happy.
A pretty little place, but it was nearly fifty miles away. No way could anyone reach it on foot from his property, but he doubted his unwanted visitor knew that. If she’d been running from someone, she probably hadn’t even cared.
He could hear sirens in the distance. Other than that, the woods were silent and still, eerie in their quiet. He’d bought the property for its solitude and for its view of the lake. He’d spent plenty of time sitting in the darkness, looking out over the water, praying for answers to questions he wasn’t even sure he could give voice to.
He hadn’t found any, but he still enjoyed the view.
He didn’t enjoy having people interrupt his work.
He had three prosthetic limbs to design and create. His team would be there Monday morning. Just like always. Mason had planned to return Sunday night but John’s funeral had been a sad event with a handful of mourners, no church service, no celebration of life. Just the graveside service and John’s wife, Sally, crying quietly. She’d wanted Mason to stay for a couple of days. She’d offered him a room in the single-wide trailer she and John had shared. She’d actually begged Mason to stay, but their Nyack, New York, home had seemed claustrophobic.
Or, maybe, it had been the memories that had penned him in.
It didn’t matter.
He’d returned two days early and someone was on his property.
Someone who’d been able to disarm the state-of-the-art security system. Someone who’d known there was an office behind the bookshelves.
That narrowed the list to maybe three or four people who worked for him, a close friend who happened to be the town sheriff and John.
He’d betrayed Mason once. It was more than possible that he’d done it again before he’d died.
Mason skirted the ledge that looked out over the lake, eyeing the foliage below, the dark water beyond it.
A small sneaker print was pressed into the path. He used that as his guide, easing himself over the ledge and finding his footing against the rock and damp earth.
He could see evidence of hands grasping branches—snapped twigs, scuff marks in the earth. Toes pressed deep into dirt.
She’d made it about halfway down when she’d fallen. He could see the uprooted sapling, the slide of her body in pine needles. He stopped, listening to the wind rustling in the leaves, the soft lap of water against the shore below him, the sounds of the sirens drawing closer. No branches breaking. No footsteps. He felt alone. Just like he should be.
He took out his light, aiming the beam down the steep slope. He could see the direction her body had taken, the dirt and rocks that had tumbled with her.
Near the bottom, the light fell on pale skin, light brown hair. Jeans. Jacket. A woman for sure. Motionless.
Dead?
He hoped not. She might be a trespasser, but she didn’t deserve to die for that. He tucked the light back in his pocket and the woman jumped up.
“Hey!” he called. “Hold on!”
She’d heard. He was certain of that.
She didn’t listen.
She ran toward the lake, moving quickly enough that he wasn’t all that concerned about her being injured.
He scrambled down the rest of the slope, racing across pebbly earth. She was yards ahead of him, illuminated by moonlight as she waded into the water and dove below its surface.
If he didn’t get her out, she’d die there, the cold stealing her strength and her life before she even knew it was happening.
He moved along the shore, his light dancing across the dark lake. She’d gone down, and she hadn’t come back up, but he could see the small ripples on the surface of the water, subtle signs that she was moving beneath it. He shrugged out of his coat, his handgun zipped into an interior pocket, unbuttoned the dress shirt he’d worn to John’s funeral and dropped that on top of it.
He waited until she surfaced, her head popping up as she gulped for air.
That was it. All the opportunity he needed.
He waded into the frigid water and went after her.
The water was freezing.
That wasn’t something Trinity had been thinking about when she’d decided she could swim to the lights that glimmered on the far shore. Houses. Businesses. People. She was thinking about the water temperature now. She was also thinking about how far the opposite shore really was. Farther than it looked. She was a good swimmer, but the cold was already affecting her muscles, and her movements were sluggish and slow.
She could turn back, but he was there—the man who’d been standing on the slope, shining his light down at her.
She didn’t know who he was.
She didn’t want to know.
She just wanted to escape him, find some place to hunker down and think through her options. She’d have to swim parallel to the shore and find a safe place to exit the lake. Preferably before hypothermia set in. At the rate things were going, that wouldn’t be long. She was already shivering, her teeth chattering.
Make a plan. Stick to the plan.
That was one of Chance’s mottos.
The problem was that he’d never explained what to do if the plan wasn’t working out. Probably because his plans always worked out.
Trinity’s? Not so much.
Look at her relationship with Dale. She’d had it all planned out. The two years of dating. The year-long engagement. The happily-ever-after.
Only, two years had turned into three and there’d been no sign of dating ever becoming anything more. That had made her worry that maybe Dale wasn’t as committed to forever as she was.
Turned out, he wasn’t.
