Prologue
San Francisco
Mid-September
The double-deck luxury yacht rolled over a Pacific wave just outside San Francisco Bay as Emily Peterson wobbled down a nearly vertical staircase on her four-inch stilettos. Her short, tight, sparkly disguise gave her a new respect for the gaggle of party girls she’d hidden among to sneak on board. Somehow those ladies managed to walk on these stilts without falling and to keep their nipples covered in spite of ridiculously low-cut dresses.
Her plan for tonight was to locate James Wynter’s private computer and load the data onto a flash drive. She’d slipped away from the gala birthday party for one of Wynter Corporation’s top executives. The guests had been raucous as they guzzled champagne and admired their view of the Golden Gate Bridge against the night sky. Some had complained about having to surrender their cell phones, and Emily had agreed. It would have been useful to snap photos of high-ranking political types getting cozy with Wynter’s thugs.
Belowdecks, she went to the second door on the right. She’d been told this was James Wynter’s office. The polished brass knob turned easily in her hand. No need to pick the lock.
Pulse racing, she entered. The desk lamp was off, but moonlight through the porthole was enough to let her see the open laptop. In a matter of minutes, she could transfer Wynter’s data to her flash drive, and she’d finally have the evidence she needed for her human trafficking article.
Before she reached the desk, she heard angry voices in the corridor. She backed away from the desk and ducked into a closet with a louvered door. Desperately, she prayed for them to pass by the office and go to a different room.
No such luck.
The office door crashed open. One of the men fell into the office on his hands and knees while others laughed. Another guy turned on the lamp. Light spread across the desktop and spilled onto the floor.
Her pulse thundered in her ears, but Emily stayed utterly silent. She dared not make a sound. If Wynter’s men found her, she was terrified of what they’d do.
Carefully, she stepped out of her red stilettos and went into a crouch. Through the slats in the door, she could see the shoes and legs of four men. The man who had fallen kept apologizing again and again, begging the others to believe him.
She recognized the voice of one of his tormentors: Frankie Wynter, the youngest son of James Wynter. Though she couldn’t exactly tell what was going on, she thought Frankie was pushing the man who was so very sorry while the others laughed.
There was a clunk as the man who was being pushed flopped into the swivel chair behind the desk. From this angle, she saw only the back sides of the three men. One of them rocked back on his heel, cracked his knuckles and then lunged forward. She heard the slap, flesh against flesh.
They hit him again. What could she do? How could she stop them? She hated being silent while someone else suffered. Each blow made her cringe. If her ex-husband had been here, he could have made a difference, would have done the right thing. But she was on her own and utterly without backup. Should she speak up? Did she dare?
The beating stopped.
“Shut up,” Frankie roared at the man in the chair. “Crying like a little girl, you make me sick.”
“Let me talk. Please. I need to see the kids.”
“Don’t beg.”
Emily saw the gleam of silver as Frankie drew his gun. Terror gripped her heart. The other two men flanked him. They murmured something about waiting for his father.
Frankie opened the center drawer on the desk and took out a silencer. “I can do what needs to be done.”
“But your father—”
“He’s always telling me to step up.” He finished attaching the silencer to his handgun. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
He fired point-blank, then fired again.
When Frankie stepped away, she saw the dead man in the chair. His suit jacket was thrown open. The front of his shirt was slick with blood.
Emily pinched her lips closed to keep from crying out. She should have done something. A man was dead, and she hadn’t reached out, hadn’t helped him.
“We’re already out at sea,” Frankie said. “International waters. A good place to dump a body.”
“I’ll get something to carry him in.”
He glanced toward the closet...
Colorado
Six weeks later
He’d been down this road before. Though Sean Timmons was pretty sure that he’d never actually been to Hazelwood Ranch, there was something familiar about the long, snow-packed drive bordered on either side by wood fences. He parked his cherry-red Jeep Wrangler between a snow-covered pickup truck and a snowy white lump that was the size of a four-door sedan. Peering through his windshield, he saw a large two-story house with a wraparound porch. It looked like somebody had tried to shovel his or her way out, but the wind and new snow had all but erased the path leading to the front door.
Weather forecasters had been gleefully predicting the first blizzard of the Colorado ski season, and it looked like they were right for a change. Sean was glad he wouldn’t have to make the drive back to Denver tonight. He hadn’t formally accepted this assignment, but he didn’t see why he wouldn’t.
Hazel Hopkins from Hazelwood Ranch had called his office at TST Security yesterday and said she needed a bodyguard for at least a week, possibly longer. He wouldn’t be protecting Hazel but a “friend” of hers. She was vague about the threat, but he gathered that her “friend” had offended someone with a story she’d written. The situation didn’t seem too dangerous. Panic words, such as narcotics, crime lord and homicidal ax murderer, had been absent from her conversation.
Hazel had refused to give her “friend’s” name, which wasn’t all that unusual. The wealthy folk who lived near Aspen were often cagey about their identities. That was okay with him. The money transfer for Hazel’s retainer had cleared, and that was really all Sean needed to know. Still, he’d been curious enough to look up Hazelwood Ranch on the internet, where he’d learned that the ranch was a small operation with only twenty-five to fifty head of cattle. Hazel, the owner, was a small but healthy-looking woman with short silver hair. No clues about the identity of her “friend.” If he had to guess, he’d say that the person he’d be guarding was an aging movie star who’d written one of those tell-all books and was now regretting her candor.
Soon enough he’d know the truth. He zipped his parka, slapped on a knit cap and put on heavy-duty gloves. It wasn’t far to the front porch, but the snow was already higher than his ankles. Fat, wet flakes swirled around him as he left his Jeep and slogged along the remnants of a pathway to the front door.
On the porch, the Adirondack chairs and a hanging swing were covered with giant scoops of drifted snow. He stomped his boots and punched the bell under the porch lamp. Hazel Hopkins opened the door
