Dead Again: A Romantic Thriller

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  About Dead Again

  They would do anything to get him.

  He would do whatever it took to bring them down.

  It was the wrong time to fall in love.

  Ten years ago, Sophie and Jack survived a small plane crash. They fell in love in the five days they were stranded on a mountainside, but Jack’s injuries were ultimately fatal. Jack’s love and death left indelible fingerprints on Sophie’s soul and completely changed her life.

  Sophie is now a stressed single mom in a small Montana Rockies town, running a café and warding off the attention of the town’s corrupt Chief of Police when a drifter called Martin arrives in Serenity Falls.

  Martin holds the key to Sophie’s heart, along with a secret that will rip apart the town. He plunges her into after-shocks caused by the five days she spent with Jack in the mountains, stirring up state governors, district attorneys and one of the deadliest crime lords in the land. Martin’s secret puts Sophie directly in their cross-hairs.

  For Sophie, life is about to change all over again…

  ___

  Dead Again is part of the Romantic Thrillers collection.

  - Dead Again

  - Dead Double

  - Fatal Wild Child

  - Terror Stash

  Praise for Dead Again

  #2 Amazon Bestseller

  #1 Amazon Romantic Suspense Bestseller

  Suspense fans will find it difficult to put down. This is one of the best books I’ve read in quite a while. I literally could not put it down. I highly recommend Dead Again. Edie Dykeman – Vine Voice Reviewer for Amazon

  I loved Dead Again! Thrills, chills, and suspense! Tracy Cooper-Posey creates a masterful suspense that will haunt you and linger in your thoughts. This is an author on the rise! —Siren Book Reviews

  THIS WAS FABULOUS…yes, in shouty caps. I couldn’t read it fast enough. What a RIDE! I highly recommend this one for a great afternoon’s reading pleasure. Kathie – Goodreads

  When you run the gamut of emotions while reading a book (including tears at one point), you know it’s good. Loved this story. Paula – Goodreads

  Dead Again is a fantastically written romantic suspense that will draw you in completely. Complex, hard-hitting, with gutsy characters so real you’ll want to meet them in person. Brava, Ms. Cooper-Posey! Christine – Amazon Reader

  Dead Again is a high adrenaline action-packed read that doesn’t quit. —Love Romance Passion

  A story that makes you hold your breath as it unfolds. Captures one’s mind and imagination and holds on to the very last word. —Long and Short Reviews

  The ending was great. A wonderful read for a rainy day. —Night Owl Reviews

  You can expect a lot of action and romance in Dead Again. It is a very enjoyable read, a story that will appeal to the most discriminating reader. —Romance Reviews Today

  Thrilling ride of mystery, danger and love! Read this story, you won’t be sorry you did. —ParaNormal Romance

  Chapter One

  My fault…

  Jack looked numbly at the remains of the small, commercial turboprop, which was scattered in three big mangled pieces. The two pilots had done their heroic bests to pull the plane out of trouble. Just the fact that the turboprop had more or less landed and hadn't simply fallen out of the sky was a testament to their grit and skill.

  The lack of an explosion after it hit, the pilots’ efforts and the quite extraordinary run of luck that had preserved his miserable skin all impressed themselves on Jack as he studied the new scar on the mountainside.

  My goddamn fault.

  A long furrow filled with fragments and slivers of metal trailed the wreckage. And there was more debris. Things he didn’t look too closely at—busted open luggage and personal possessions.

  At first light, he’d spent an hour looking for survivors. Instead, he found bodies. Four of the seven passengers and one of the pilots. He’d dragged them all under the shelter of a thicket of pines with low-lying branches, the best he could do for them.

  Afterward, he went looking for a way off the mountain and found an impassable ravine just down the slope from the wreckage. It cut across the lee side of the mountain like a giant’s sword slash. The sharp sides dropped straight down to the valley floor, impossibly far below.

  Now he sat on the edge of the terrifying drop, wondering if he was going to make it out of this after all, or if the Silent Knight would reign supreme.

  My goddamn fault.

  It was very quiet now that he’d stopped moving. The stillness focused his senses. He could smell astringent pine, sharp in the cold morning air. He could feel the chill of the rocks beneath him reaching through to his bones. The silence was a scream of accusation. There should be the sound of others around him, rallying together, sorting things out. But there were no other survivors.

  The thought came clear and sharp then. He should push off from where he sat. Let himself fall. It was a perfect penance for last night’s work.

  As he sat there, exploring the size and weight of his guilt, only one thing held him on the ledge—the knowledge that he had to make it back to Chicago. Isobel couldn’t pull it off without him.

  “Help…please…”

  The voice floated up from beyond the ledge.

  Jack froze for a moment and his heart actually seemed to stutter in shock. Had he imagined that weak sound?

  He leaned over the edge, moving carefully because something stabbed his chest with each movement. He’d probably cracked his ribs when he’d been thrown against the arm of his chair. That had been toward the end of the nightmarish five minutes the plane bucked and tortured metal screamed. Five very long minutes while everyone in the little cabin braced themselves for the death they knew was coming.

  Except by some twisted, evil freak of fate, he hadn’t died. Instead he sat leaning over this cold rock, hoping against hope he hadn’t imagined the cry for help, while he knew with utter certainty that it had been a product of his own desperate mind.

  “Help me!”

  Again, the quiet plea came up from below, soft and feminine.

  Jack gripped the edge of the shelf and shards bit into his palms. He barely noticed them. Someone else lived! The thought fizzed through him, a potent cocktail that brought his whole body alert and his mind awake. In the space between two heartbeats his whole perspective altered. If someone else lived, then there were things he must do, actions to take.

  “Where are you?” he demanded. His voice emerged hoarse.

  About twenty-five feet below the ledge was a stony shelf, mostly hidden from view by a bulge in the rocky side of the ravine. It seemed impossible that she could be somewhere beneath him.

  She was silent for a moment, then her voice floated up to him, sounding weak and tired. “You sound like you’re above me.”

  “I can’t see you. Can you move closer to the edge?” With each exchange, Jack could feel everyday concerns coming online, making themselves felt. They added to a growing sense of urgency. There was someone other than himself to consider now.

  “I can’t move at all. My leg is broken.”

  Leaning, Jack looked over the sharp edge of the cliff. That bump in the wall…how had she landed on the ledge and not bounced out into the ravine, to fall to the bottom, thousands of feet below? “I’m going to come down and get you but I need to know how you got down there.”

  “I slipped in the dark last night. I must have stepped off the edge. I slid down here. That’s how I broke my leg.”

  Slid? No one would slide down that sharp gray wall. They’d roll a bit, then free fall for much, much longer.

  But if she’d slid, there must be another way down.

&
nbsp; “Wait a minute. I’m going to have to look around a bit.” Carefully, he got to his feet and walked along the cracked, jagged edge and every couple of steps he leaned over to check beneath. After a dozen steps, the shelf of rock disappeared from sight. The bulge in the wall receded too, leaving nothing but sheer rock face all the way to the floor of the valley below, where boulders had rolled and collected for millennia. From this height, they looked like pebbles.

  Going in the opposite direction, toward the bulk of the mountain they were on, he found a place where snow melt and rain had eaten a two-foot wide, shallow channel into the soil, biting into the edge of the ravine. There, he could see a sharp new scuff in the soil. There was a white, fresh scrape in the stone just beneath, where she must have gone over.

  Looking down, it reminded Jack of a bumpy, dirty amusement park water slide. Only there was no deep pool at the bottom to break a fall.

  She was lucky her weight hadn’t pushed her over the edge of the channel as she’d slid around the curve—she’d have gone straight down to the bottom of the ravine. Instead, she’d been dumped on the shelf, hard enough to break a leg.

  He had to go down the same way but he needed to get down without breaking bones and then get back up again. “I’ll be gone a bit. I’ve got to do some things. Then I’ll come down. Okay?”

  “Please don’t be long.”

  No demands to know what he was doing, why he wasn’t instantly climbing down to get her. A pragmatic lady, despite what must have been a hell of a night on that ledge.

  Reluctantly, Jack walked up the slope and faced the wreckage again.

  A litany began to whisper. All your fault. All your goddamn fault. If you hadn’t got on the damn plane they’d be fine, they’d be home hugging their wives and kids…

  Forcing himself to it, he searched the wreckage. He knew exactly what he needed to get down to the ledge and help her. The smoldering, curved pieces of fuselage set the guilt litany in his mind to cycle over again but he drowned it out by concentrating on what he was doing.

  Helping her. That’s what I’m doing. One saved out of this wreckage. That counts for something, right?

  In ninety minutes, he had stripped the plane of hundreds of yards of electrical wiring, which sat in a stiff spaghetti nest to one side. The sun was up high now, bathing him with unrelenting light. At this altitude there was little bite in it. The day was barely warm but he was sweating anyway and his heart was pounding as it worked to compensate for the altitude. He went back to the gouge in the ravine and called down, “You okay?”

  “Thirsty.”

  “Not long now,” he assured her.

  On his way back to the wreck, he checked out the distance of the nearest tree to the edge, estimating he’d need thirteen extra feet.

  For the next two hours, he wound strands of wire around each other, braiding himself a rope half the thickness of his forearm and the twenty-five feet long he needed to get to the ledge, plus thirteen extra feet. By the time the wire rope was long enough, he’d run out of collected wire and gone looking for extra, digging through smaller pieces of fuselage and ripping up a seat or two for the wiring inside.

  Finally, he was ready. He picked up his rope and dragged it to the cliff edge. Damn but that sucker was heavy.

  Fifteen minutes later, he finally reached the ledge and saw her for the first time. Absurdly, happiness touched him as she lifted her head to look at him.

  She lay on the damp ground, half-in and half-out of the sun. Even if she hadn’t told him, he would have guessed her leg was broken by the odd way she tried to sit up, as if her leg was glued to the ground.

  Jack crouched down beside her. For a moment he stared at her, too pleased to be face to face with someone else to be able to speak words of concern or comfort. Then, he saw blood matting her red-gold hair and shivers racking her frame.

  “Here.” He offered her a sealed bottle of Evian he’d salvaged.

  “You remembered.” Her voice was croak.

  After cracking the seal, he gave it to her. “Drink up. We can get more. Water isn’t going to be one of our problems.”

  She drank, very nearly draining the bottle with two or three deep swallows. Jack studied her while she sipped the last inch in the bottle, wetting her lips and clearing her throat. She coughed and water dripped onto the white silky shirt. Sensible trekking gear, it was not.

  He’d seen her come aboard the little aircraft at Vegas. She was all legs and pedigree and the smart business suit she wore told him more plainly than words she was as far removed from his world as a woman could get. The impossible-to-bridge gap allowed him to watch her with detached interest as she pushed a heavy briefcase and day-old L.A. newspaper beneath the seat in front of her and buckled her seat belt.

  She hadn’t given him so much as a glance. Instead, she sank into her seat and turned her head to stare out the window into the night. One row ahead, he could see a sliver of her profile between the seats. Her chin was sharp, with that little outward thrust that most people took for stubborn assertiveness.

  He was well acquainted with aggressive females. Isobel had it in spades. The constant need to be on guard made him uncomfortable. He’d given a mental shrug, dismissing the redhead. The endless legs weren’t worth the price.

  But her calm acceptance of his long delay getting down to her didn’t seem to fit his first assessment of her. He’d thought it had been the one other woman on the plane—a middle-aged woman, who had settled down to read a two-inch thick paperback as soon as she was seated and hadn’t looked up once throughout the taxiing, take-off and steep ascent to cruising height.

  This woman before him put the empty bottle on the ground beside her. “Aahhh, that was good.” She smiled. “I think my leg’s busted in a couple of places and it hurts like hell. So does my head. But for the last couple of hours, all I could think about was water. Crazy, huh?”

  He considered this. “It’s just your survival instinct at work. Priorities first. Water is the critical one.”

  “You know something about this stuff, then. Thank god.” She grimaced. “Wilderness survival doesn’t seem like all that big a deal when you live in the middle of L.A. but I’ve been lying here most of the night wishing like crazy that I’d read at least one book about it.”

  Jack moved, so he could study the angle of her leg. “Well, I’ve read zero law books in my life, so we’re even.” It was a tiny lie, a drop in the bucket, comparatively.

  “How did you know?”

  “That you’re in the legal profession?” He shrugged. “Lucky guess. The suit and the big heavy briefcase you lugged on board helped.”

  “And the expensive, useless look?” she asked, with another small smile. “I’ve heard all the jokes about lawyers at least twice over.”

  He felt a twinge. Even though she was being cynical about her profession, it was a paraphrasing of the conclusions he’d drawn about her personality when they’d been taking off.

  “What’s the S.K. stand for?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  “Of course, my briefcase. Sophie Kingston.”

  He nodded. “I’ll have to straighten out your leg, Sophie.”

  She grimaced. “I would have done it myself but every time I tried to move it, it hurt so much I quit.”

  “I’m just going to feel for the bone, first,” he warned her as he reached for it.

  Her lips compressed as he probed gently, feeling the angle of the leg through the soft fabric of her trousers.

  “I think you’re right. Two places at least,” he said. “Ready?”

  Gently, he straightened her leg. Her steadiness was another surprise. All she did was chew her lip and, once, suck in her breath, whistling it through her teeth, although he knew damn well the pain was enough to make her want to scream. She turned chalk white and for a moment he thought she was going to pass out but she only blinked for a few seconds.

  “Thanks.” Her voice was husky. She tilted her head back, exposing a long
column of throat, looking back up the cliff.

  “Not a hope,” Jack said quietly.

  She didn’t pretend to not understand. “I won’t last long on this shelf. Just getting through the last few hours of the night since the crash was bad enough.” She bit her lip. “The plane didn’t catch fire, did it? There might be food, warm clothing…”

  He looked back up the cliff, then back at her. There was no entreaty in her eyes or irresolute hope. Just steady determination.

  He realized then that he’d been wrong. Sophie wasn’t aggressive. She wasn’t out there claiming victories for womanhood, racking up a tally of smaller souls destroyed in her wake. She was serenely getting on with her life, going her own way. There was a quietness about her that he’d overlooked until now. A sense of wisdom. Maybe, old hurts buried deep. All good roots for a strength of character that had nothing to do with aggressiveness and everything to do with purpose and resolve.

  For the first time since the plane had lurched without warning to one side and begun its long sideways slip down through the night sky, Jack felt his guilt lighten a little. This woman was a born survivor. A fighter. He’d promised himself he’d get her out of this but now he knew she would be doing her best to make sure it happened too. Abruptly, he felt their fledging relationship shift from rescuer and victim into something warm and comfortable. Partners.

  “We’ll just have to bring it down to you, won’t we?” he said.

  The climb back up nearly finished killing him. He slipped three or four times, only to lunge for the wire just in time to hold himself up. Each little fall jerked on his ribs in a way that sent hot pokers of agony through him and made his vision swim. But after his sight cleared, he doggedly carried on, aware of the woman sitting below him, watching and listening to every move he made.

  By the time he climbed back onto on the edge of the cliff, his whole body trembled and his muscles and sinews shrieked white agony.