Detour

by Kurtz, Sylvie

  When the security patrol passed, and I finally had my panicked breathing under control, I ran over to where Wyatt was waiting.

  “That was a rush!” I said. I’d missed this adrenaline kick, the way it spiked the blood.

  But Wyatt grabbed me by both arms. “That was the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen.” The look in his eyes bore the stark remnant of fear. “You could have been killed.”

  Then he leaned toward me and captured my mouth fiercely. At the hot insistence of his kiss, a shudder ran through me.

  No. Attraction wasn’t supposed to happen. Not between us.

  How easy it would be to allow this to go further, to keep the adrenaline rushing. Too easy. I pushed myself away. “Sofia…” I breathed.

  That magic word—the name of the woman whose heart had given me a second chance at life—had him withdrawing. He needed someone, but it wasn’t me.

  Dear Reader,

  As I was writing this book, New Hampshire was phasing out the Old Man of the Mountain toll tokens and phasing in the E-Z Pass system. So when my mechanic source suggested I use a penny to clog up a seat belt, I thought of letting the Old Man live just a little bit longer through the pages of this book. Sometimes a story comes whole and stays that way. Others don’t behave and love to stray. This one took me into many foreign situations, so I’d like to thank everyone who helped me with the technical stuff. Any mistakes are certain to be misunderstandings on my part.

  Sincerely,

  Sylvie Kurtz

  Sylvie Kurtz

  Detour

  Books by Sylvie Kurtz

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Personal Enemy #29

  Ms. Longshot #70

  Detour #104

  Harlequin Intrigue

  One Texas Night #527

  Blackmailed Bride #575

  Alyssa Again #600

  *Remembering Red Thunder #653

  *Red Thunder Reckoning #657

  Under Lock and Key #712

  **Heart of a Hunter #767

  **Mask of a Hunter #773

  A Rose at Midnight #822

  **Eye of a Hunter #866

  **Pride of a Hunter #872

  SYLVIE KURTZ

  Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.

  Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard, where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt-making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.

  You can write to Sylvie at P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055. And visit her Web site at www.sylviekurtz.com.

  A writer’s gifts come from those who came before her

  I thank

  My grandmothers—

  for the gift of adventure and the gift of laughter

  My grandfathers—

  for the gift of poetry and the gift of silence

  My parents—

  for the gift of independence and

  the gift of freedom to follow dreams

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, January 13

  Thirteen had always been a lucky number for me. And today it didn’t let me down. I spotted my elusive target the second I walked into the old warehouse housing the Black Bridge Gym in Nashua’s downtown hospital district. There, Finnegan Murdock, aka The Hammer, taught a Wrestling Federation–style class at night.

  Finn stood in the middle of the ring, grunting as he simulated pounding his opponent’s face to a bloody pulp. The slap of his foot against the mat made a wet thwack mimicking the sound of fist-on-flesh that echoed in the cavernous room. I aimed the hidden camera in my parka lapel square at him.

  “Push off,” Finn instructed the apprentice wrestler at his side, then hefted the man’s body over his head. He spun the apprentice around and launched into a series of instructions on the art of mock anger and crowd rousing at the eleven brawny male wrestler-wannabes peering up at him from the ring’s edge.

  The place stank of testosterone-soaked sweat. Red punching bags hung from black ceiling beams on black chains. Chrome weight machines lined two walls. And a mirrored wall reflected the black-roped boxing ring built on a red platform.

  Finn, all 285 pounds of him, stood as erect as a Colossus in his skimpy black Spandex leggings and silver tear-away muscle shirt, sweat gleaming off his bulging pecs and delts under the stark fluorescent lights. The sharp angles of his bald head, beady steel-gray eyes and hooked nose probably accounted for his stage name. So did the hammerhead-shark tattoo on his steroid-enhanced chest.

  As he twirled his student over his head, he caught sight of me in the shadows of the ring. Uh-oh. Not good.

  “Who the hell are you?” His gravelly voice rocked through the air.

  Tapping my chest innocently with a hand, I stood up. I took in thirteen pairs of slitted eyes staring at me and realized I was way outnumbered. Mind spinning through options, I said, “Me? I’m Jennifer Jones.”

  “Who let you in here? How’d you get past the guard?” He glowered as he dropped the man he was holding to the mat and stepped to the ropes. He shook a finger at me. “Wait a minute, I know you. You’re the broad who wanted help changing a flat tire yesterday afternoon.”

  I gulped, then pasted on my best bubblehead smile and batted my eyelashes at him. “What can I say? I’m a fan. Can I have your autograph?”

  Suspicion dawned in his beady eyes. “Someone get her!”

  I didn’t hang around to argue. I booked out of the joint, knowing he’d come after me and, this time, the bloody pulp face wouldn’t be faked. He couldn’t afford to let me show the images I’d caught on tape to his insurance company.

  Sierra Martindale, private investigator, was once again on the run and loving it.

  Finnegan Murdock was a part-time wrestling instructor and a full-time mechanic for an oil-change company in Hudson on the other side of the Merrimack River. Nothing wrong with multitasking. I was rather good at it myself. The problem was that Finn was supposed to be in so much pain from his on-the-job shoulder injury that he couldn’t possibly heft the poundage required by his work.

  My job was to get him on tape to prove insurance fraud. A bone my brother, Van, a lawyer, had thrown my way, knowing things were a little tight for me at the moment what with my boyfriend, Leonardo’s, betrayal last Thanksgiving. That made Finn’s and my goals mutually exclusive. Someone was going to lose, and it wasn’t going to be me.

  So here I was, lean and fast, hauling ass through the back black door of the corrugated metal building into the slap of frigid January night air, where my hot breath steamed like exhaust. The offices of Martindale & Martindale were about six blocks away on Pearl Street and, on these cold days, I couldn’t trust my van, Betsy, to start, so I’d walked. With the spur of adrenaline giving me wings, I was getting a lead on the muscle-bound thug pounding the pavement after me, not to mention the posse of would-be wrestlers charging
after him.

  Unfortunately, they shot out the front door, forcing me away from my family’s law office. I ran down Harbor Avenue, hoping to get back on course on East Hollis Street. I hadn’t counted on my pursuers splitting into two packs and cutting me off. I ended up racing down Hudson Street, boots slipping on snow, down the ramp near the train tracks and onto Temple Street where I had two choices: take the bridge across the Nashua River to Canal Street—which would put me way off course—or take the walking path, with the river on one side and a steep embankment on the other, that would get me to the library and Pearson Avenue and back to Main Street, almost home.

  I chose the path, tripping over discarded beer bottles and nearly colliding with a bum on the narrow snow-bound path. The cold air burned my lungs and I tasted blood in my throat. Sweat drenched my shirt and I unzipped my parka. But I kept running.

  Then I just couldn’t.

  And that wasn’t normal, because I was in top shape. I mean, way better than average. I did every sport I could from the minute I could. My mother had called me Fidget from day one. My brother accused me of living life with pedal jammed to the metal and not paying attention to any of the roadside signs. A gross overexaggeration, by the way. On top of that, I also ran to get rid of the toxic buildup of frustrations.

  I know. Hard to believe that someone like me would need that coping mechanism. After all, I came from a reasonably well-to-do family. I got a top-notch education at local private schools. I could have stepped right into the family business if I’d wanted. And once I turned twenty-five next year, I’d come into a sizable inheritance.

  But trust me, I was a snarl of frustrations. Guy troubles. Job troubles. Family troubles. They all wove together like a tightly knit scarf. And the mismatch of life patterns, expectations and needs tended to knot tension and choke. So I ran. And running had never failed me.

  Until now.

  Like cement that had suddenly turned to concrete, my legs refused to move, my lungs refused to fill, and my heart refused to settle. It pounded like a mad drummer out of step with the rest of the band. I’d probably pushed myself too far too fast after the bug that had flattened me for most of last week. All I needed was to catch my breath and I’d be okay.

  Using the last of my strength, I hiked down an alley thick with shadows and scrambled over a wooden privacy fence to a small office building. Then gravity took over, pulling me down on the other side, just as the posse of wrestlers tromped by with all the finesse of stampeding cattle. Lucky for me a pile of garbage bags cushioned my fall.

  With thick fingers, I managed to extract my cell phone from my parka pocket and press Speed Dial One.

  “This better be important, Sierra,” my brother, Van, barked at me.

  “I’m in trouble,” I managed to puff out, hand splayed over my hammering heart to keep it from flying out of my chest.

  Immediately Van’s voice deepened with concern. I had to give him credit. Even with all the grief I’d caused him over the years, he never gave up on me and was always there for me when it counted. “Where are you?”

  “I, uh, I’m not sure.” I forced myself to look around. Like teeth on an old skeleton, the fence seemed to fall away, spinning and blackening the world around me. My heart beat all out of synch. And my breath was as thin as smoke. “Near the library. Office building. Parking lot.”

  “Sierra?”

  “Van. I don’t. Feel so good.”

  He swore, and Van rarely swore. “Hang on, Sierra. I’m coming.”

  I tried to answer, but my suddenly thick mouth wouldn’t cooperate.

  They told me I died that night. But I don’t remember any bright light calling me home or my life flashing in front of me. Just everything kind of fading away and the scary out-of-whack rhythm of my fibrillating heart pulsing in my head.

  I didn’t know it then, but I’d just hit the mother of all speed bumps.

  Chapter 2

  Tuesday, April 11 Fifteen Months Later

  I huddled on the old burgundy leather couch that had once been my father’s, flannel-clad knees up like a barrier, remote control in both hands aimed at the fifteen-inch television set across the room. The TV was loud enough to keep me awake, but not loud enough to disturb Mrs. Cartier downstairs. My rent was late. Again. My own fault for not closing cases. But I didn’t want to give my landlady another incentive to kick me out.

  The overhead light and the two table lamps were on, too, and I half wondered when PSNH was going to cut off my electricity now that the utility company’s winter protection plan was over. A grown woman shouldn’t be afraid of the dark—especially if she’d never been afraid of it as a kid. But then, I hadn’t been myself for a long time—388 days to be exact.

  For fifty-five long days after my heart stopped as I ran from Finn Murdock, I danced a daily reel with death, strapped to a hospital bed with machines feeding me oxygen and a steady stream of drugs that all but kept me alive. The doctors told me I’d need a heart transplant to live. The cold I’d ignored had turned into a fast-moving viral infection that had settled in my heart and led to complete heart failure, shooting me near the top of the transplant waiting list.

  For fifty-five days, I prayed someone would die so I could live.

  Then my prayers were answered.

  Four days after the surgery, I started physiotherapy. Two weeks after the transplant, I was jogging a few miles a day on a treadmill. Three months later, after my breastbone had healed, I started weight training and, within a few months, I’d regained all the muscle tone I’d lost. Six months after dying, I was back at work. I could do almost everything I’d done before.

  I was lucky to be alive. Everyone said so. And it wasn’t as if I wasn’t thankful. I woke up grateful for every new day I got. Honestly, I did.

  But there was a dark side to this gift of life that no one seemed to want to acknowledge. No one talked about the identity crisis that came after. About how it sometimes felt as if there was someone else in my body with me. Even my once-a-month transplant support group in Boston didn’t stray too long in woo-woo territory.

  “Just act normal,” they all said—the doctors, the shrink, my brother. But what was normal now? Craving flan when I’d never liked the creamy confection before? Acting like a mouse when I’d roared like a lion before? Crying like a geyser at every little thing when I’d never shed an emotional tear before?

  I tried to act “normal,” to pretend the changes weren’t happening, to concentrate on healing body and spirit and finding the rhythm of the job I’d once loved.

  I probably could have internalized all of the changes eventually. But the ghost was what put me over the top.

  She started showing up five months ago, a face suspended just below the ceiling of my bedroom like some sort of death-heralding hologram. Each time she appeared, my heart pistoned like an overrevved hotrod, and cold fear needled up my spine and over my scalp until my teeth clacked and my muscles quaked. I didn’t want to die.

  At first I thought I was going crazy. I’d always been a live-for-the-moment kind of girl. The past was gone and there was nothing I could do to change it. The future wasn’t there yet so there was no point worrying about it. Even my job was about capturing facts. My mother was the one into ESP, tarot and fortune telling.

  I told myself the ghost was just a bad dream—the kind that feels as if you’re awake when you’re really asleep. But the more I tried to ignore her, the bigger she got, adding to herself every night. The head grew a filmy white body. And now…I shivered at the thought and pulled the lambswool afghan closer around my shoulders. I hadn’t slept in my bedroom in over a month.

  When she kept coming back, the thought that she could be her—you know, my donor—occurred to me. Maybe she wasn’t happy about how the organ lottery had turned out. Maybe she wanted to make sure I’d take care of her heart. Or maybe she just wanted it back because she was pissed she’d died and I’d lived.

  None of these thoughts were especially comforting.<
br />
  I’d even tried facing the mushrooming fear head-on, because that’s how I’d dealt with problems before. I’d contacted the transplant coordinator, but she’d begged me not to pursue my curiosity further and regurgitated the ironclad rule of confidentiality, that the donor’s identity could never be revealed to the patient or the patient’s to the donor’s family.

  I’d done my best to do as everyone wanted me to do and simply ignored the dreams and the ghostly visitations and tried to get back to that elusive “normal.”

  But that was like asking someone not to think about a pink elephant. The ghost became all I could see. And really, how did one fight a ghost? I’d yelled at her, cursed her, tore at the cold threads of her spectral body with my fists. Still she came, every night, begging and crying. Frankly she gave me the creeps.

  I flicked through the channels. To cut expenses I’d canceled my cable, so I had to make do with whatever network television I could pull in with the antenna. I sat through a lineup of comedies. I’d read somewhere that laughter was good for healing. At least it managed to keep me awake. But as the news came on, sleep tugged me into its dark fold.

  No, please, no. I don’t want to sleep.

  I tried jerking myself awake, but it was too late, exhaustion won. I floated into the comforting blanket of blackness. I flew high and low, twisting and turning on some invisible current. I sailed in a series of maneuvers, steep turns and jumps. Lightness soared through my body, charging it with the almost-forgotten jolt of adrenaline-induced electricity. It’d been such a long time since I’d skysurfed.