“I could be wrong but I think your cabin just blew up.”

Ethan ran his fingers through his short hair. This was all his fault. He’d known there were people who held grudges. He’d read the anonymous letters.

Had one of them snapped?

She still hadn’t said a word. He couldn’t blame her. If he was right, she’d just lost something that had been in her family for generations. She would hate him when she learned the truth.

She slowly walked toward the door and looked past him. Smoke was continuing to billow up into the sky. Finally Chandler turned to him. Her eyes were dark with pain.

“I think I’m in trouble, Ethan. Real trouble.”

Hunted

Beverly Long

www.millsandboon.co.uk

As a child, BEVERLY LONG used to take a flashlight to bed so that she could hide under the covers and read. Once a teenager, more often than not, the books she chose were romance novels. Now she gets to keep the light on as long as she wants, and there’s always a romance novel on her nightstand. With both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in business and more than twenty years of experience as a human resources director, she now enjoys the opportunity to write her own stories. She considers her books to be a great success if they compel the reader to stay up way past their bedtime.

Beverly loves to hear from readers. Visit www.beverlylong.com, or like her at www.facebook.com/beverlylong.romance.

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For Beth and Wes Devenney,

who loved the mountains and me.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Chandler McCann kept the radio on low since the thoughts in her head were making loud screeching sounds, spurring on a headache that no amount of diet soda could touch. All night, the headlights from oncoming traffic had seemed overly bright, catching sharp corners of the mammoth mountains, making them bulge and buckle in an unfriendly way, forcing her to hold the steering wheel in a viselike grip.

She was grateful to turn off the interstate, knowing that the cabin was now less than thirty minutes away. It had been two years since she’d been there. That time she’d gotten on the plane in Denver and the flight attendant barely had time to hand out beverages before the plane landed at the Eagle County Regional Airport fifty minutes later. The flight had been crowded with skiers headed toward Vail, which sat thirty miles to the east.

Mack had picked her up in his Jeep and they’d headed the opposite direction, winding their way through the mountains. With a carefree abandon that Chandler couldn’t hope to imitate, her brother had navigated the string of razor-sharp switchbacks that, in many places, offered as little as a two-foot shoulder.

That day it had been sunny in the mountains. Tonight, however, it had been dark for hours, and she’d been grateful for the half-moon that hung low in the sky. It would be after ten by the time she got to the cabin. It didn’t matter. Nobody was expecting her.

She was supposed to be working. As always.

Certainly not running.

Ten minutes later, Chandler caught the glare of headlights coming toward her and clicked to low beams. The SUV passed and she caught a glimpse of two people in the front seat.

She took a sip of warm, flat soda and turned up the heat. She hadn’t checked the weather but knew that it would be colder in the mountains than it had been in Denver. She suspected that she might regret not taking the time to pack a heavier jacket.

She slowed to take a curve, glanced in her rearview mirror and saw another set of car lights. She found some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t alone out in the middle of nowhere. On the next curve, however, comfort turned to surprise when she realized the car behind her was gaining fast. The driver had to be flying, which was a dangerous thing on these roads.

Three minutes later, the vehicle was so close that the lights were blindingly bright. Who was crazy enough to tailgate here?

“Idiot,” she muttered, just as the car bumped her.

She was so startled that it took her an extra second to react. She wrestled with the wheel. And was just bringing her car back under control when she was hit again. Her Toyota Camry skidded forward.

What the hell?

Once, an accident? Twice, no way. She pressed on the gas, desperately wanting to put some space between her and the other car.

Then she got hit a third time. Hard.

Her car went airborne and her right front fender struck a glancing blow off the side of the mountain, sending her skidding across the narrow highway, straight toward the edge.

She slammed on the brakes. And started spinning.

She was going over.

And all she could do was hang on and wait to die.

When her car came to a stop, it was jarring. She pitched forward at the same time her air bag inflated.

It slapped her back in the seat, pushing hard against her face and chest. Her shoulder belt jerked tight. She felt a burning sensation arch across her cheekbones and settle on the bridge of her nose.

She stayed conscious, at least she thought she did, aware of the deflating air bag and the strong chemical smell it left behind. She also was aware that her neck hurt when she tried to turn her head.

Knew that she was in a hell of a mess.

But she was alive.

She had to get out. Now. It was the only thought in her head.

She fumbled to unclasp her seat belt. It sprang free and she pitched forward. It took effort to keep her spine pressed back against the seat.

Her car was upright but not level. No, definitely not. The front was way lower than the back.

She couldn’t see much but what she could see wasn’t encouraging. By some miracle, one of her headlights appeared to still be working. That, combined with the moonlight, allowed her to see that her windshield was cracked in multiple places and the front of her vehicle was badly damaged. She could feel the cool night air on the back of her neck. She turned her head, half expecting to see that the back of the car had been sheared off. But it was still intact, although the back window had been blown out.

And there were branches poking in.

Her car had somehow gotten hung up in the trees. She had no idea how far she’d fallen, how many times the car had rolled. She also had no idea of how much farther the car might tumble if it lost its perilous perch.

And that paralyzed her, until she finally forced herself to move. She carefully reached out and patted the seat next to her. Nothing. Her backpack, her purse and the cell phone that was in it had gotten tossed somewhere.

She extended her arm over the seat and waved it around, frantically hoping to hook a strap by some miracle. She could feel the car shift beneath her and heard the soft creak of a tree limb. She stopped, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a patch of light. Bobbing and fading. Someone up on the road had a flashlight.

She wanted to weep with joy or scream for help. But she did neither.

She’d met only one vehicle. Minutes after it had passed, there had been someone following her.

Was it possible that the car had passed, realized it was her, turned around, and hurried to catch up? Then deliberately rammed into her. Three times.

What was the likelihood that they now wanted to help?

Deciding that playing dead was the best course of action for the time being, she forced herself to slump over the steering wheel with her eyes closed.

She listened, knowing that voices carried in the night air.

It was quiet for several minutes. Finally, she heard a man say, “There. Happy? Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

There was a response, but it was too faint for her to distinguish the words. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Oh, she’s dead,” the first man said, his voice booming with confidence. “Nobody could have survived that fall. Let’s go.”

Chandler heard the slam of two car doors. Then the sound of an engine starting. The noise faded as her attackers drove away.

She felt cold and battered and the urge to vomit came on with a vengeance. Someone had tried to kill her. The notion of it was so absolutely terrifying that her mind went blank.

But only for about ten seconds. Then she got furious. And determined.

Moving slowly and carefully, she leaned back in her seat. She took a deep breath, then another. The ability to think, to reason, started to come back as she flooded her brain with oxygen.

Nobody could have survived that fall.

She had. And from what she could tell, all her fingers and toes and all the parts in between were working.

Now she just needed to get out before the car took a final plunge.

* * *

ETHAN MOORE HAD just turned the last page of his book when he heard a noise that didn’t belong to the quiet Colorado countryside. He raised his eyes at the same moment his dog, Molly, raised her head. “What do you make of that, girl?”

Molly started to whine and turn circles on her rug.

“You just went out,” he said. She did another circle.

The temperature had been dropping all day. What had started out as a pretty October morning had become a windy, cold night. Snow was coming. He could feel it. He had no desire to be outside when it happened.

But Molly was dancing by the door.

He placed the hardcover he’d been reading on the ottoman, stood up and stretched. Better to do this now than in the middle of the night. He opened the cabin door. Molly wriggled her lean, strong body past his legs. He lost her in the darkness as her black fur blended into the tree line.

“Molly, damn it,” he said. “We already played this game once today.”

The black mutt, more nothing than Lab, was just shy of a year and still had some puppy in her sixty pounds. By morning, she could be halfway to Grand Junction.

He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and his big heavy flashlight from the shelf, and stepped outside to follow her. The dog had grown on him. Four weeks ago, he’d only been back in the States for three days when he’d gone to the local animal shelter. Forty-five minutes later, Molly was sitting next to him in the truck, her head hanging out the window. An hour later, he and his new sidekick had made his first big-box-store run and had a coffee pot, an electric fry pan and an oscillating fan.

A week later, he’d moved his meager belongings to the Donovan cabin, which sat three hundred yards down a dirt road, high in the Rocky Mountains.

It was as close to off-the-grid as one could get. The nearest town, which was being generous because it was less than five hundred people, was forty minutes away. The nearest city was twice that.

The isolation felt good after spending the past twenty years in the company of mostly men, many of whom had felt the need to talk. About their families, the jobs they’d left behind, their favorite places to eat back home. And he’d listened.

Most hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t reciprocated with his own stories.

He’d always assumed that once he retired after twenty years in Uncle Sam’s army, there’d be a few fellow soldiers he’d want to catch up with. Share some stories about acclimating back to civilian life. Had never dreamed that he’d come home with a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head. Certainly hadn’t been prepared for the hostility that he’d encountered when he’d run across men who not so long ago had called him friend.

It was a damn mess. He didn’t know whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t.

So he’d come to a place where he’d always felt safe. Crow Hollow. Freshman through junior years in high school, he’d spent his summers here, running between the two cabins that graced the wilderness. The McCanns’ and the Donovans’. Mack McCann and Brody Donovan had been his best friends. Rich kids who hadn’t seemed to understand the difference that money made.

Maybe it was only the poor kids who knew that.

It had been the happiest three years of his life. And if he’d been inclined to reminisce about his youth, it would have been those summers that he’d have remembered fondly.

But then his stepfather had gotten some crazy idea that he wanted to live on the coast and they’d packed up and moved to Oregon for his senior year of high school.

He and Mack and Brody had sworn they wouldn’t lose touch. And they hadn’t. Even when oceans and continents separated them over a period of many years.

What the hell would Mack and Brody think about what had gone on this past year? Even in the middle of the worst of it, he hadn’t told them anything. They were active military and if they’d tried to help, it might have tainted them in some way. Ethan figured if he went down, he wasn’t taking his two best friends with him.

But he hadn’t gone down.

He’d survived the investigation with his career intact. But everything had been different.

And that, ultimately, had led him to this place, to chasing a stupid dog through the mountains.

“Molly,” he yelled. “I swear, if you and a coyote mix it up, I’m going to root for the coyote.”

His dog barked in response. He took that as a good sign. And while they’d only been buddies for a few weeks, he understood the message. Hurry. I found something. Last week she’d practically barked herself hoarse because he’d been too slow to acknowledge the dead raccoon that she’d stumbled over.

“I’m coming,” he said. He walked the remaining fifty yards, the frost-covered grass crunching under his feet.

Molly was dancing, her nose in the air. He used his flashlight to search the ground. Nothing. He made another sweep. It was hard to see much; the whole area was thick with underbrush.

He looked higher, thinking she might have something up a tree. He ran his flashlight from side to side.

“What the hell?” he said, holding the light steady. There, barely visible through the thick branches, was a car suspended in the towering trees. The front end was badly busted up and was tilting down at forty-five degrees.

He supposed it could have been there for some time. But he didn’t think so. First of all, there’d been heavy wind and rain just two nights ago, heavy enough to blow the car out of the trees. Secondly, the car still had a headlight burning. Given the noise both he and Molly had heard, he suspected it had just happened. He angled the powerful beam of his flashlight even higher to inspect the road above them. He didn’t see any other cars to suggest that it had been a multivehicle accident.

Had the driver fallen asleep? Or maybe he was simply drunk? Whatever had caused him to plunge over the side of the mountain, one thing was pretty sure—if he wasn’t dead, he was likely banged up pretty badly.

“Hey,” he yelled. “You in the car, can you talk?”

No reply. He considered his options. He hadn’t brought a cell phone with him to Crow Hollow. Reception was always spotty in the mountains and quite frankly, he wasn’t interested in talking to anybody. His only good option was to hike back to the cabin, get his truck and drive into town for help.

He studied the patch of trees. They were mammoth pines, the kind with big trunks and spreading branches, crowded close together. He walked around, looking up, Molly at his heels. He stopped when he found one that had possibilities. He considered the angle of the car.

It was possible, he supposed. He’d done crazier things.

It’d be a hell of a fall if he didn’t make it.

“I’m coming up,” he yelled. He took off his coat, rolled his flashlight inside of it and then belted the sleeves around his waist. He was definitely going to need both hands free.

“Are you sure?” a faint voice asked.

A woman. If the wind hadn’t been blowing the right direction, he probably wouldn’t have heard her.

He jumped and caught the lowest branch, then pulled himself up. Found a toehold, another branch, and scrambled up another five feet. The bark was sticky and it was hell on his bare hands but he kept going. “How many in the car?”

“Just me.”

He climbed faster. “Are you hurt?”

“No. Not really,” she said.

He doubted that was true. A person could have all kinds of internal injuries and not realize it because of the shock of the accident. “Just hang on,” he said.

For the past twenty years he’d trained every day and it was paying off now as he pulled himself up from branch to branch. Still, it was taking almost everything he had. By the time he got near the top, he was breathing hard and sweat ran down his back. He looked down. It was too dark to see the ground but he’d been keeping a rough count in his head as he’d moved from branch to branch. He had to be at least sixty feet in the air.

He untied the sleeves of his coat, unwrapped his flashlight and focused it on the car that was at a thirty-degree angle to his left, still at least fifteen feet above him. The view was impeded by branches that poked up against the car. The driver’s side was toward him but from his vantage, he couldn’t see her.

“Okay, I’m close,” he yelled. He put his jacket back on so that he didn’t have to hang on to it.

“Great,” she said. He could hear her better now. He caught an edge of self-deprecating humor, as if to suggest that it was nice of him to stop by.

She’d been lucky, although he doubted she’d appreciate hearing that assessment right now. The rear axle of her car had been snagged by a thick spray of branches and that had stopped the fall. Unfortunately, the front of her car didn’t have much support. One wrong move and it was going to go end over end, stopping only when it hit the ground.

“How much do you weigh?” he asked.

“One twenty-five.”

Pretty slim. Hopefully pretty agile.

He studied the car and the branches holding it in place. It was hard to see where one tree ended and another started. He edged out farther, tested his weight on a branch that crossed over, found it steady enough and switched over to her tree. He shimmied in three more feet. Now he was pretty much under her car.

Together, they’d weigh more than three hundred pounds. He didn’t know what the tipping point might be but he didn’t want to take a chance on the branches being able to hold that much weight unless he absolutely had to. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to need to do,” he said, purposefully keeping his voice casual. “I want you to crawl over the front seat into the backseat. Then open the door and start to work your way down. All you need to do is get ten feet and I’ll have you.”

There was a long pause. Finally she said, “Well, that sounds easy enough.”

He smiled, appreciating the fact that she wasn’t crying or screaming at him to do something. “Just keep your weight from shifting forward and you’ll do fine,” he said. If she didn’t do it exactly right, there was a high probability that she and the car would come tumbling down, taking him with them.

He aimed his flashlight at the car. She moved and he could see her head and chest in between the headrests of the driver’s and passenger’s sides. He figured she was crouching on the front seat. Sure enough, a leg came over, then the second one.

The car rocked.

And he held his breath.

The tree wasn’t quite ready to let go.

“How ya doing?” he asked.

“Oh, fine.” He heard the tremor in her voice. She’d be crazy not to be scared.

“Open the door. Slide out, plant your feet before you grab for a branch. I’ll shine my light so that you can see.”

The door opened and she stuck a leg out. She had on jeans. That was good, otherwise her legs would be a mess by the time she got to the ground.

She planted her foot. She was wearing loafers, which was better than sandals but not as good as boots.

“Good job,” he urged.

Next leg. She was moving slowly and she very carefully placed the second foot on the branch.

“Okay, without standing up, press down with as much of your weight as you can. See if you think the branch will hold you.”

She did as instructed. The car didn’t move.

“Now I want you to stand up, and try to make it one smooth motion. Don’t push off on the car,” he warned her, knowing that would be her tendency and that it could be disastrous. “Once you’re standing, reach for a branch. Don’t yank it, just lightly use it to steady yourself.”

There was no response, no movement. He waited. And got nervous. “Coming?” he prompted.

“I’m going with Plan B.”

Chapter Two

“Plan B?” he repeated.

“You know, that’s the plan where I make some final bargains. You know, the ‘hey, God, just get me out of this tree and I’ll be a better person’ type.”

He’d made his own share of bargains over the years. As a kid, most of them had something to do with his mother keeping a job, his stepfather keeping his nose out of a bottle and him keeping his back from being blistered with a belt. So, yeah, he could understand where she was coming from.

“The wind’s picking up,” he said, deciding it was better not to tell her that sometimes bargain-making sucked. “I think it’s time to get out of this tree.”

“Okay.” And she did it just perfectly. Stood up, kept her hands off the car, and reached one arm up to steady herself.

It couldn’t have gone better.

Until the branch she was on cracked and she started to fall.

Ethan lunged and managed to grab her and pull her tight to his body. Then he lost his own footing and his flashlight flew. Together their weight crashed through branches and limbs. He kept one arm around the woman and groped for something to hang on to. He thought it might be hopeless until he finally managed to snag a heavy branch and stop their descent. His arm muscle strained with the effort of holding both of them until he located a branch to rest his feet on. Without losing his grip on her, he edged back toward the trunk. When he got there, he leaned back against the sticky, rough bark.

He was breathing heavily and his heart was pounding in his chest. His back had taken the brunt of the fall and he was grateful for his heavy coat. It had kept him from getting too beaten up. He had no idea how far they’d fallen but he bet it was at least thirty feet. The woman had to be scared to death.

She hadn’t said a word yet. Hell, maybe she’d passed out.

He’d gotten a quick look at her when she’d stood outside the car. Slender. Not overly tall. Dark hair piled on top of her head. Now that she was in his arms, he could tell that she was at least eight inches shorter than his six-two and her shoulders and ribs were delicately female. His chin rested on her head. Her hair was silky and he caught the scent of cherries with a hint of vanilla.

As crazy as it seemed, she felt right in his arms.

Hell, maybe he’d hit his own head.

He shifted, carefully turning her in his arms. It was very dark and they were in the bowels of the tree. No moonlight filtered through.

He wanted to touch her face, to see if her features were as delicate as her body.

He kept his arms where they should be. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I think so. Thank you,” she added.

Her voice was low. Sexy. “You’re welcome...” He let his voice trail off, hoping she’d fill in the blank.

“Chandler,” she said.

It was an unusual name and he got a very odd feeling. “Chandler what?” he asked.

“McCann. Chandler McCann.”

Ethan almost dropped her again. But he held on. Mack’s little sister. She’d been a skinny little girl, with wild hair and emerald-green eyes.

Cat-Eyes.

That’s what Mack had called his little sister. Ethan and Brody hadn’t called her anything, never really talked to her at all. She was just their best friend’s little sister. He remembered her as a quiet kid who liked her computer games.

It had been a long time since he’d seen her—not since the time they’d celebrated Mack’s graduation from the Naval Academy, and Brody’s graduation from college and acceptance into medical school. By that time, Ethan had already had four years in Uncle Sam’s army. He’d completed flight school and had spent some time in the skies above Iraq.

He’d been about twenty-two at the time, which would have made her fourteen. She’d still been a skinny kid with braces and wild hair, but he remembered thinking that Mack’s sister was going to be a pretty girl when she grew up. Brody must have thought the same thing because Ethan remembered hearing him tease Mack about having to beat the boyfriends off with a stick. Mack, who even at twenty-two was more James Bond than any of the actors who’d played the iconic hero on-screen, had calmly responded that he’d vaporize them.

While Ethan hadn’t seen Chandler since then, he had heard about her. Knew that she’d been the valedictorian of her high school class, knew that she had gone to college in Chicago on a full scholarship and knew that she’d gotten her heart broken by some jerk a couple years ago. She lived in Denver. Worked for some company that was a military contractor.

“I’m Ethan Moore.” He heard her swift intake of breath and wished there was enough light that he could see her eyes. His mother had cleaned the McCann house, the Donovan house and at least twenty others. That’s how he’d met Mack. That’s how he’d come to spend his summers in Crow Hollow.

“Good old Walnut Street,” she said. “I guess that’s where we both learned to climb trees.”

It was nice of her not to mention that his mom had been hired help. “I think we need to get out of this tree.”

* * *

SHE FELT HIM SHIFT, just enough to look past her. She didn’t know how he could see much, unless his night vision was considerably better than hers.

She wished she could have seen more of his face. Ethan Moore. He’d been one of her brother’s best friends. And Mack still talked about him, spoke as though they kept in contact even though Mack’s work took him everywhere.

She knew he’d be having a birthday soon. He’d turn thirty-eight next week, just two days after she turned thirty. She could still remember the year that her dad had invited Ethan over and they’d gathered around the kitchen table to share a cake. She’d been nine, he’d been seventeen.

And she’d been secretly in love with him.

And he’d pretty much ignored her every time she was in the room with him.

God, that was so long ago. Now she was here in a tree scared for her life, and her teenage crush had come to save her.

Not exactly the way she’d fantasized she’d end up in his arms.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m going to go first. I’ll guide you on where to place your feet. Branch by branch, we’ll work our way down. Okay?”

She nodded. It sounded easy enough. Until she had to grab the first branch. Damn, her shoulder felt as if a ball of fire had landed there. While Ethan’s body had shielded her from the brunt of the fall, her shoulder had connected with something. She gritted her teeth, determined not to complain.

He wrapped his strong hand around her right calf and she could feel his heat through her jeans. He gently tugged, guiding her to the next branch. It was slow going and by the time they reached the ground, she was clammy and terribly afraid that she might vomit after all.

There was a midsize dog with dark fur at the bottom, and it circled her.

“Don’t worry about Molly,” Ethan said. “She found you.”

“Thank you,” she said to the mutt, reaching out her good arm. The dog’s fur was thick and warm and it made her realize how cold she was in her shirt, jeans and lightweight denim jacket.

Molly evidently got excited with the attention and jumped up. Both paws hit Chandler squarely on her bad shoulder with enough force to send pain skyrocketing through her arm. “No,” she cried weakly.

“Molly.” Ethan’s voice cut through the quiet night.

Chandler managed to turn the other direction before she bent at the waist and vomited.

When she was done, she realized that Ethan was standing right next to her, his hand on her back. She straightened and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hurt my shoulder and Molly caught it just right.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. When he did, his voice was calm. “Okay. We need to get you inside as quickly as we can.”

She could hear the sound of a zipper. Then felt something warm around her shoulders.

“I can’t take your coat,” she said. “I have one.”

“You have a jacket,” he said. “It doesn’t even look as if it’s lined. Now put your good arm through,” he instructed. “Keep your other arm tucked at your side.”

She did as he told her and in the dark, with just a little moonlight to guide their actions, he gently bundled her up. She felt warm and safe, and the coat had a comforting smell of musk and man.

“I feel bad about taking your coat,” she said. It was cold and all Ethan had on was a long-sleeved shirt.

“It’s fine,” he said, dismissing her concerns. “Does Mack know you’re here?”

“No. I didn’t want to bother him. I got a text from him a couple weeks ago that he was going out of the country for the next few months. Working.” Saving the world. That’s what Mack did.

“So your dad knows that you’re here?”

She hesitated before deciding to tell the truth. “No, not exactly.”

“You’re not in any trouble, are you?” he asked, perhaps reading into the hesitation.

Chandler knew she was definitely in trouble. Someone had run her off the road. But it was possible that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She certainly couldn’t go around making crazy accusations against her stepmother. Not until she had more proof.

“You mean other than my car being in a tree?” she asked, forcing a light note into her voice.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay, good. I guess what I really want to know,” he said, “is how the hell your car ended up in the tree.”

She wanted to spew out the whole terrible story. But there was no way. If she told him that she’d been purposefully run off the road and that someone had circled back to verify that she was dead, any reasonable person would expect that she’d be clamoring to get the police involved. She wasn’t ready to do that. Certainly wasn’t ready to say “someone tried to kill me.”

She wasn’t ready to face that herself. Much less tell Ethan.

“I must have been going too fast. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven these roads. I lost control, hit the side of the mountain and the next thing I knew, I was headed over the side.”

“Scary,” he said, his voice soft.

He had no idea. She remembered the headlights in her rearview mirror and the impact of the car against her back bumper, and shivered. “Yes. I think I flipped over in the air because my backpack and purse got thrown somewhere else in the car. I landed right side up, fortunately. The air bag inflated. I was just taking stock of my situation when you came along.”

“We’re lucky Molly can be a pain in the butt, otherwise I wouldn’t have found you. If you can’t walk back to the cabin, I can always carry you.”

The idea of being in Ethan Moore’s arms made her warm up suddenly. “It’s my shoulder, not my legs. I can walk.”

“I know that. But injuries have a way of sneaking up on a person.”

“I’ll be fine once I can get to the cabin,” she said.

“Here’s the deal. There’s electricity but no heat or hot water at your cabin,” he said. “I was actually going to stay there until I discovered that. That’s when I moved to the Donovan cabin. Fortunately, Mack, Brody and I always had keys to both. I think it was your brother’s idea. Always have a plan and a backup plan.”

That sounded like Mack. And the situation at the cabin sounded rather grim. But she’d come this far, she wasn’t stopping now. “I’d still like to go there. I...I need to see it.” For days her world had been in turmoil. The cabin had always been there, solid, safe, comfortable. Everything she needed right now.

“As the crow flies, we’re about a mile from there. If you need to stop at any point, just tell me. Don’t hide anything,” he said. “Knowing about someone’s abilities or inabilities is sometimes the difference between life and death. All right?”

“Got it.”

“Okay. Give me a minute to find the flashlight.”

She stood perfectly still, afraid to move. She could barely see her hand in front of her face but somehow he was confidently moving around in the dark.

It took him less than a couple minutes to locate the flashlight. “Here we go,” he said. “It was practically buried in these pine needles.”

Suddenly a swath of light split the dark night and she immediately felt better.

He turned and led the way on the narrow path that required them to go single file. The terrain was rough and without her one arm for balance, she felt awkward and slow. But he never said anything. And he never got more than a couple steps in front of her before slowing down so that she could catch up.

When they reached the cabin, he stopped and turned. “Why don’t you stay here for a minute and let me take a look first. All kinds of things can happen in an unattended space.”

Yikes. She hadn’t considered that. Just her luck, a bear had taken up residence. “If you think it’s necessary,” she said.

He let out a loud sigh. “Mack would kick my butt if I did anything different.”

As she recalled, from all the wrestling matches that had occurred in their basement, Mack and Ethan had been very evenly matched. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a small key ring with two keys. “It’s this one.”

“Shouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds,” he said.

“Okay. Be careful,” she added.

He walked away. “Don’t worry.”

Worrying was all she’d done since she’d realized what had happened and was still happening.

She hadn’t said goodbye to her stepmother, hadn’t been able to face the woman who sat behind the big desk in her five-hundred-dollar suits.

While she couldn’t be 100 percent sure, she was pretty confident the trail led right to that shiny desk with its silver pens placed just so.

If only Claudia Linder was just the CEO of Linder Automation. But six months ago, under a full moon, in the presence of twenty slightly drunk guests, Chandler and Mack being two of them, Claudia Linder had married Baker McCann, becoming Claudia Linder McCann, Chandler and Mack’s stepmother.

Her dad had been over the moon about finding a second love. He’d been alone since his wife had died more than twenty years earlier.

It would destroy him if what Chandler suspected was true.

But how many would pay if Chandler turned her back and said nothing?

It had been thirty seconds since Ethan had entered the cabin and he still hadn’t called for her. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything from inside. Her heart was pumping in her chest. She wished the dog had stayed with her.

Something was wrong.

Chapter Three

The front door of the cabin swung open. A light had been turned on. Ethan stood in the doorway, his arm raised, motioning her in. She ran toward him, not caring that it jarred her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” he said, stepping aside quickly.

She nodded and for the first time in many days, when she stepped over the threshold into the familiar space, thought that he might be right.

She took a deep breath and the sense of family filled her lungs. The main living area of the cabin was one big room, with a kitchen on one side and family room on the other. Off to the left, down a short hallway, were two small bedrooms and a bath. The floors were all narrow slats of pine, and the round-log walls were the best that Colorado had to offer.

It had been in her family for generations. She knew the Donovan cabin was the mirror image. Her great-grandfather had built them both in the 1930s. In the 1960s, Grandpa McCann had inherited the cabins and paid for electricity lines to be strung from the main highway and had dug a well. By the 1990s, they’d been passed down to her dad, who saw no need for two cabins. Baker McCann had sold one to his best friend, Brody Donovan’s dad.

And her family had kept the other one, spending summers here since she was a child. Both Baker and Mr. Donovan had worked from home. Baker as a computer analyst, Mr. Donovan as a novelist. That flexibility allowed them to come in June and stay until Labor Day. The McCanns had stayed home the summer Sally McCann had died. Baker had barely left the basement and had stopped tinkering with the old helicopter that he was rebuilding. He certainly wasn’t up to vacationing with his two children. Mack had been angry that they’d missed a summer in the mountains. Chandler had been too young to care as much. But by the next year, her dad had pulled himself together and things had gotten back to normal. Except the new normal had included Ethan Moore.

He and Mack had shared a bedroom, she’d had the other and her dad had slept on the pullout sofa. Every morning, the boys had met Brody Donovan at the end of the lane and they didn’t come home until dark. They’d fished, hiked and swam in the lake. And at night, when Mack and Ethan had returned to the cabin, they’d played cards. It was how she’d learned to play poker, first watching, then finally, when she got the hang of it, they’d let her sit in on a few games.

“How are you feeling?” Ethan asked, interrupting her memories.

Every muscle ached and the pain in her shoulder hadn’t gotten any better. “I’m okay,” she lied.

He reached toward her, his palm open, and with the pad of his thumb, gently brushed the bridge of her nose, then her cheeks. “You’ve got some marks here from the air bag,” he said. “Do they hurt?”

“Not really.” Her cheeks were too cold to feel much else.

“We should assess for other injuries,” Ethan said.

Speaking of assessing... Wow. Ethan had grown up and into his body. At twenty-two, he’d been tall and lanky. At thirty-eight, he was still lean but his frame was thicker with muscle. His hair was still buzzed short, military-style. His face had the same strong chin, high cheekbones and dark eyes.

He had a long, fresh scratch that started at his ear and ran down the side of his neck. She wondered if there were more scratches and cuts on his back from rescuing her from the tree. “I don’t think I’m the only one hurting,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’m fine. Nothing a little hydrogen peroxide and ibuprofen can’t handle. I’m going to walk over to the other cabin and get my truck. There’s an emergency room about forty miles away where we can get your shoulder looked at.”

She shook her head. “It will be fine,” she said. “I think I just sprained it. I don’t need a doctor.”

“Can I at least take a look at it? I don’t have any formal training but I’ve spent the past twenty years with medics attached to my unit. I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way.”

“Okay.”

He unzipped the coat that practically hung to her knees. Very gently, he helped her pull one arm out and then he lifted the material away.

He gently probed her shoulder area and her collarbone. When he tried to gently rotate her shoulder, it moved but it hurt a lot. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I think you should go to the doctor. But beyond that, I’m pretty confident that you didn’t dislocate the shoulder. It appears more likely that it’s a soft-tissue injury, more of a sprain. We should get some ice on it.” He walked over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. It was empty. “I have ice in my cabin,” he said.

She nodded.

“We need to call the police,” he said. “The accident should be reported.”

“I’ll do it in the morning. I want to get some sleep first.”

“I suppose it’s not going to make a difference.” He studied her. “Are you going to call Mack?”

She might have to. But not yet. If she was wrong and the attack had been totally random, she didn’t want to plant seeds of doubt. He hadn’t been crazy about her father and stepmother’s marriage, either. Had said more than once that there was something about Claudia Linder that he didn’t like. “I don’t think there’s much he can do about a car in the trees.”

“He’d want to help. But if he’s working out of the country, it might take him a few days to get back, regardless of how much he wanted to.”

“I guess.” Tomorrow, in the daylight, somebody was bound to see her car. If she didn’t report it, somebody else would. The car was registered in her name. It would probably only be hours before the police notified her dad and stepmother that she’d been in an accident and was missing.

Her dad would be terrified. Her stepmother was the wild card. Would she be grieving alongside her new husband or would she start to hunt in earnest?

By morning Chandler was going to need a plan. Right now, it simply seemed beyond her. She was tired from the drive, sore from tumbling over the mountain and almost falling out of a tree, and rather discombobulated by suddenly seeing Ethan again after all these years.

Ethan reached down to pat Molly’s head. The dog was crowding up against his leg, probably eagerly anticipating the next adventure.

“Like I said before, I’m not sure this is the best place for you.” Ethan looked around the room.

She followed his gaze. The furniture was covered with dusty sheets. There were cobwebs in the corners and hanging over the stone fireplace. Nobody had been at the cabin for more than six months and it showed. She knew the beds would be stripped of their linens and the refrigerator would be bare.

It was cold. She desperately wanted a hot shower, but that wasn’t going to happen. Still, she could probably make do. They always kept clean sheets and blankets in a tote in the closet and she wouldn’t starve to death overnight. The lights were a plus. “It’s not great,” she agreed, “but I don’t have a lot of choices right now.”

“You can stay with me. There are two bedrooms, just like here,” he added quickly.

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t think it was an invitation to...” She stopped, embarrassed. Of course it wasn’t that. For all she knew, Ethan was married with two kids. She sneaked a quick look at his fingers.

No ring.

He noticed. “To hook up?” he said, finishing her sentence. “You’re Mack’s little sister. I value all my appendages.”

She smiled, appreciating the fact that he was trying to make light of the situation. Ethan Moore asked me to stay over. If she was fourteen, she’d have written it in bold in her diary, with little hearts around it.

But she didn’t want to drag Ethan into her mess. “I’ll be fine here,” she said, hoping she was right.

“You don’t have any food.”

“I did. I had a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter in my backpack.”

“I’ll fix you a bacon, egg and cheese on toast.”

She tilted her head. “That’s my favorite sandwich.”

He winked at her. “It’s the only thing I remember you eating in the mornings. You had one every day for the entire summer, with a glass of chocolate milk.”

She’d always assumed she was invisible to her brother’s friends. “Do you have milk?” she asked.

He nodded. “White milk and chocolate syrup.”

She smiled. “That’s how I always make it.”

“And I’ve got ice for your shoulder,” he reminded her.

Even though she knew staying with Ethan may be a bad idea, she really didn’t want to be alone. “You’ve got a deal. Thank you,” she added. “I’ll try not to be any trouble.”

* * *

ETHAN LED THE way to the Donovan cabin, with Chandler following close. They didn’t talk. He figured she was hurting and he was trying to process the past half hour.

Chandler McCann had certainly grown into a beautiful woman. When she’d entered the cabin and he’d seen her in full light, he’d been practically speechless. Her skin was lovely and it had made him crazy that she’d been marred by the chemical burns of the air bag. Those marks would heal but it was hard to see perfection harmed. Her dark hair had been piled up on her head but the strands that had escaped fell past her shoulders and were silky and shiny.

And then there were her eyes. A vivid emerald-green, with a slight tilt up at the corners. Thick, dark lashes.

She was stunning. And absolutely off-limits. They both might be adults and in any other circumstance he’d consider it, but she was Chandler McCann. Neither Baker nor Mack had ever delivered one of those “stay away from Chandler, you big lug” kind of conversations. Probably hadn’t figured they needed to.

Both of those men―men he admired greatly―doted on this woman. Nobody would be good enough for her. Certainly not Ethan Moore.

The McCanns were old money in Denver. The kind that had a beautiful house in the wealthy district and cabins in the mountains. The kind where wealth was passed down generation to generation. No money had passed down when his mother had died. In fact, there hadn’t been enough in his mother’s bank account to bury her. Ethan had made sure the funeral was nice, though, using some of his savings. He hadn’t expected anything different. He’d been sending money to her every month, knowing that her health limited the number of houses she could clean, knowing that her idiot of a husband did a poor job of providing for them. About the only thing he did well was run his mouth and swing his fist.

Ethan had survived the verbal and physical abuse his stepfather had dished out because he knew that Mack McCann and Brody Donovan were going to grow into men that others would be proud of.

And Ethan wasn’t going to get left behind.

A week after graduation, he’d enlisted in the army.

He’d always known he was going to have to find a different path than his best friends because there weren’t any prestigious military academies or fancy colleges in his future. But he had been determined to be a man others would respect.

Which led him to the second reason why there was no way, no how, that there would be any “hooking up” between him and Chandler. Nobody would respect a man who got involved with somebody when his personal and professional lives had fallen apart. Under investigation.

Ugly words that had come on the heels of ugly accusations. And even though the wildebeest was finally off his back, there were still many who didn’t believe in his innocence.

And that had hurt him more than he expected it would. When he’d made the decision to retire, his supporters had urged him to reconsider. This will blow over, they’d said. But it hadn’t. And all the long months while he waited for his paperwork to be processed, he’d dreamed about a few weeks at the cabin, knowing that if there was anywhere that he could get his head back on straight, it was here.

The timing was fortunate in that he’d been here to offer Chandler a helping hand. The McCanns had been family when he’d needed it the most. Now was his chance to pay back some of that kindness.

And one didn’t pay back kindness by jumping into bed with the only daughter.

He needed to focus on offering assistance and getting her back on her merry way. But something didn’t seem quite right. It was almost as if the explanation of her accident had been too easy. She hadn’t seemed embarrassed about her carelessness or even angry. She’d reported the facts calmly with relatively little emotion.

Which made him question whether she was telling the truth.

He rounded the last curve in the path and raised the beam of his flashlight to show the Donovan cabin. Then he turned to look at her. “Still doing okay?”

“Yes. As we were walking, I kept thinking of all the times you, Mack and Brody used to sneak out at night and meet one another. This path was well traveled. You could probably still walk it with your eyes closed.”

“Almost,” he admitted.

“Remember the time I tried to follow you? I got about halfway down the path and it was so dark that I tripped on something. That’s when you heard me.”

It had been toward the end of his last summer here and he and the others had taken a liking to fishing in the lake in the middle of the night.

“Mack tried to send me back. You said I could come but only if I wore a life jacket in the boat.”

He smiled at her. “If Baker found out, I sure as hell didn’t want to have to tell him that we’d taken you out on a lake, in the middle of the night, without a life jacket.”

“The three of you didn’t wear them. As I recall, when Mack and Brody got done fishing, they jumped over the side and swam for a while. You stayed in the boat with me.”

“We were too stupid to wear life jackets,” he said. “You were the smart one.”

“I always appreciated that you stuck up for me. And it was such a cool night, almost magical. I could understand why the three of you were willing to give up sleep to do it.”

Magical. That was a good description of most of his experiences at the cabin.

He stepped up onto the front porch, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He flipped on a light and pointed her toward a chair. “Have a seat,” he said as he turned up the heat on the thermostat. He pulled a plastic bag out of one of the drawers and stuffed it with ice from the freezer. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ve got some pain relievers, too.” He walked toward the bathroom and came back with a small bottle of ibuprofen in his hand. He poured a glass of water and shook out two tablets. “Here.”

“You should take some, too,” she said. “Your back has to hurt from crashing through those tree limbs.”

It did, but there weren’t that many tablets left in the bottle. He’d save them for Chandler. “I’m fine.”

She sat down in the big rocking chair that he always used, holding the ice on her sore shoulder. She nodded at the book on the footstool. “You read Mr. Donovan, too?”

He nodded. Larry Donovan, Brody’s dad, had been a quiet man who stood a foot shorter than his son. He’d never heard the man raise his voice. Yet he wrote the most hair-raising, nail-biting suspense that Ethan had ever read. “Every book. He scares the hell out of me sometimes.”

“Me, too. I was afraid to even look at a chain saw after I read his last one.”

Molly crowded up next to her, just the way she always did to him. The dog whined and Chandler took the ice off so that she could reach out and pet her. She looked around the small cabin and smiled. “It looks just like I remember.”

He nodded. “Your great-grandfather knew something about building. Both cabins have really stood the test of time. They’ll be here a hundred years from now and probably look the same.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m grateful that you were here, that you were able to help me. Are you home on leave?”

He could tell her the truth, that he was on permanent leave because he wasn’t sure anyone trusted him anymore. Was sure that he’d lost his ability to trust. But he didn’t want to have that conversation. “I retired. Had my twenty years in.”

That made it seem simple. Reasonable.

She widened her pretty green eyes. “Really? So what’s next for you?”

“I’m not sure. My plans were to hang out here for a few weeks and then make some decisions.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll go back to school?”

“Maybe.” There was no need to tell her that he’d acquired both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree online while in the service. With honors.

“Or look for work?” she continued on. “With your experience, you should be fine. I’m sure there’s a good job out there for you.”

Was that a note of wistfulness that he detected? Was her own job in danger? But that couldn’t be right. He thought he recalled Mack telling him that Baker had married Chandler’s boss. “How’s your work going?”

“Oh, fine,” she said quickly. “You know,” she added, waving her delicate hand, “if it was supposed to be fun, they’d call it play.”

He smiled. “I guess. You’ve been there quite a while, haven’t you?”

“Six years.”

“The company is a government contractor?”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he always listened closely when Mack talked about Chandler. Maybe it was because he’d never had a little sister of his own. “I think Mack might have mentioned it.”

“We’re a vendor for the Department of Defense.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a computer analyst.”

“You followed in your dad’s footsteps,” he said, smiling.

“I guess. Computers have always just been easy for me.”

“I bet you’re good at it.”

She shrugged and then winced when it evidently hurt her shoulder.

“You want some more ice?” He hated that she was hurting.

“No.” She stood up. “But I am really tired. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go to bed.”

His mind conjured up all kinds of images it had no business doing. “I promised you a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich,” he said, grasping for the mundane. “And chocolate milk.”

* * *

CHANDLER SHOOK HER HEAD. It sounded wonderful, but she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she was tired. She hadn’t slept more than a couple hours over the past several days. “I’ll have it in the morning.” She walked over to the kitchen sink and dumped out her ice bag. “How do you think they’ll get my car out of the trees?” she asked, hoping her inquiry sounded casual.

“I imagine they’ll have to bring in a crane. It will take somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Would it attract a crowd? Would the people who’d run her off the road have stuck around to make sure that she was really dead? What would they do once it was discovered that the car was empty?

Would they start looking around the area? How long would it take them to find her cabin? Ethan’s cabin?

She had to be gone by then. She couldn’t put Ethan in any danger.

“You don’t happen to have an internet connection, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “What do you need?”

One more look. Just one more chance to try to figure out if her imagination had been working overtime, like when she read Larry Donovan’s books. She didn’t think so. That’s what had sent her out of the office in a hurry just a few short hours ago.

She wanted to try to remote into her desktop. Not that she expected to be able to. If what she suspected was true, her computer privileges had already been revoked, all permissions associated with her username shut down.

Not having access would be a little more proof.

But then what would she do with it?

Confront her stepmother?

Tell her father?

Call the police?

She realized that Ethan was waiting for an answer. “Nothing important,” she said. “Well, good night.”

“We’ll have to put sheets on the bed in the spare bedroom.”

“Just a blanket is fine.”

He ignored her and proceeded to pull a shallow plastic container out of the closet. He took the lid off and then gathered up a bottom sheet, top sheet and a pillowcase. Then he pulled out a blanket.

She helped him put the bedding on the mattress—at least as much as her injured shoulder would allow—and she was struck by the easy familiarity between the two of them. It was as if they’d been making beds together for years.

“Thank you,” she said. She locked eyes with him and was pulled in by the intensity of his gaze. “I know how lucky I am that you were here tonight. I appreciate it, I really do.”

He stared at her and she felt her skin grow warm. The bedroom was small, dimly lit by just a bedside lamp.

“Ethan?” she said. Did he feel it, too?

He hesitated. “Just make sure you let Mack know that I was helpful,” he said, his tone light. He turned away. “Good night, Chandler.”

* * *

ETHAN NORMALLY ENJOYED a beer around five o’clock, especially if it had been a particularly warm afternoon. And maybe with dinner, in the right surroundings, he’d have a glass of wine. He rarely drank late at night, though. But, he rationalized as he stood in the small kitchen, popping the top of a pale ale, the prospect of sleeping ten feet away from Chandler McCann would be enough to make a teetotaler reach for the whiskey bottle.

Why the hell couldn’t Mack’s little sister have grown up ugly? Or at least plain.

No. She was gorgeous and had a nice personality to boot.

She’d demonstrated tremendous composure when she’d been eighty feet in the air. Most men he’d known wouldn’t have been as brave. And her shoulder had to be hurting, but she wasn’t complaining.

She could have easily died tonight. That made the beer in his stomach roll and he set the bottle down.

He lay down on the couch and waited for Molly to jump up, to stretch out, to take up way more space than she should have. But she didn’t move away from her spot outside the door of Chandler’s bedroom. She rested her head on her paws.

He closed his own eyes, strangely content that both he and Molly were watching over Chandler.

He didn’t wake up until a blast, loud and sharp, had him literally jumping off the couch. For a second, he thought he was back in the military, flying at night, and that his bird had been hit.

He got his head back in the present moment, went to the door, opened it and looked outside. The snow that had threatened all day had started to fall. There were already several inches on the ground. But when he looked up, he could still see the smoke. He judged the distance and whirled when he heard a noise behind him.

Chandler stood in the hallway. Her dark hair floated around her shoulders and the T-shirt that he’d given her hit her mid-thigh. Molly stood next to her, her nose in the air, her body on full alert.

“What was that?” Chandler asked, her voice rusty with sleep.

He stared at her. There wasn’t any easy way to say it. “I could be wrong, but I think your cabin just blew up,” he said. He ran his fingers through his short hair. This was all his fault. He’d known there were people who held grudges. He’d read the anonymous letters.

Had one of them snapped?

He was supposed to be staying at the McCann cabin. His mail was still getting delivered there. A reasonable person would have assumed he was there.

She still hadn’t said a word. He couldn’t blame her. If he was right, she’d just lost something that had been in her family for generations. She would hate him when she learned the truth.

She slowly walked toward the door and looked past him. Smoke was continuing to billow up into the sky. Molly crowded in next to them but the dog, finally showing some sense, stayed inside the cabin.

Finally Chandler turned to him. Her eyes were dark with pain. “I think I’m in trouble. Real trouble.”

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