by Debra Webb
“What do we have?” he asked.
Martin shrugged. “Not sure yet. The guy in the insurance office two doors down called it in. Said he came back for some paperwork and spotted smoke.”
“The building looks old,” Jacob said. “Could be faulty electrical wiring.”
Wood crackled and popped. Flames were eating the downstairs and climbing through the second floor. Thick gray smoke billowed above, pouring out the windows and obliterating the puffy white clouds. Firefighters aimed the hoses and worked to extinguish the blaze.
A crash sounded, glass exploded. The roof...collapsed.
His pulse hammered and he ran toward the front door. The raging heat hit him in the face. “Come on, Griff,” he muttered. “Get the hell out.”
* * *
A CHILL RIPPLED through Cora as she passed Whistler’s graveyard on the way to Kurt’s office. Many of the people who’d died in the town fire had been buried in that cemetery. She jerked her eyes away, determined not to allow her mind to travel to the dark place it had so many times before.
Kurt’s text made that impossible.
Had he found evidence indicating her daughter was...dead?
No...she wouldn’t let herself believe that. A mother would know. She would know if that was true.
Night was falling, storm clouds shrouding the remaining sunlight. With Whistler so close to the Appalachian Trail, the area drew tourists during the summer months. People flocked to the cooler mountains to escape the heat, to indulge in hiking, camping, fishing and white water rafting.
When Alice was first taken, Cora had been shocked at how people laughed and went on about life when she could barely breathe for the anguish.
Tonight the breeze blowing off the water sounded shrill and eerie, a reminder that danger also existed in the endless miles of thick forests and the class four rapids. It also brought the scent of smoke.
She glanced to the right in the direction of Kurt’s office, and her pulse jumped. Thick plumes of gray smoke were rolling upward.
She pressed the accelerator and swerved around an SUV, then wove past a caravan of church groups in white vans with the sign Jesus Saves emblazoned on the sides. She swung to the right onto a side street and bounced over a rut in the country road. A mile from the main highway, she reached the strip shopping center. Lights from fire trucks and emergency vehicles swirled against the darkness.
She veered into the shopping center, her gaze tracking the chaos. Flames had engulfed one building and lit the sky.
Dear God. It was Kurt’s building.
She threw the car into Park on the hill near the tattoo parlor. Fear clawed at her.
Seconds ticked by. Other rubberneckers had gathered to watch the commotion.
Police worked to secure the area and keep onlookers away. A minute later, a firefighter raced out, carrying a man over his shoulder.
She craned her neck to see but couldn’t tell if it was Kurt. Then she spotted a pair of boots. Gray and black. Snakeskin. Silver spurs.
Kurt’s boots.
Boots she recognized because she’d given them to him.
Copyright © 2020 by Rita B. Herron
Keep reading for an excerpt from Heartbreaker by B.J. Daniels.
Heartbreaker
by B.J. Daniels
CHAPTER ONE
Her eyes flew open, her fight or flight response already wide awake. She jerked up in the bed, blinking wildly, terrified and yet unable to believe what she was seeing. Three hulking dark forms appeared out of the shadows of the huge master bedroom. One of the men tripped over her duffel bag on the floor where she’d dropped it. He swore as he kicked it out of the way.
She tried hopelessly to banish the men back into whatever nightmare they’d climbed out of, realizing the stumble must have been what had awakened her.
All she could think rationally was that this couldn’t be happening, because these men being here tonight was so wrong.
But before she could open her mouth to speak—let alone scream—the largest of the three intruders reached her side of the king-size bed. Roughly he pushed her down and clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. This was real.
She finally screamed, but the gloved hand over her mouth muffled the sound. Not that it would have done any good if she had hollered to bloody hell. There was no one else in the house to come to her rescue—let alone anyone nearby. The house was high on the mountainside overlooking Flathead Lake, surrounded by acres of forest and as isolated as money could buy.
Frantically she shook her head as she met the man’s eyes, the only feature not hidden by his black ski mask, and tried to communicate with him that she wasn’t the woman he wanted.
“Don’t fight me,” the man said in a hoarse whisper as he renewed his efforts to hold her down. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
But she did fight because they were making a terrible mistake and they didn’t know it. That realization sent panic rocketing through her system. Her heart banged against her rib cage, her thundering pulse deafening in her ears. She fought to pull the clamp from her mouth.
If she could only explain the error they were making. Failing in her attempts to pull away his gloved hand, she struck out with her fists as her legs kicked wildly to free themselves from the covers. All she’d managed to do was to make things worse. He leaned over her, pressing his body weight against her chest with his forearm, taking away her breath.
“Did you find it?” the man holding her down demanded of the other two. They had produced flashlights, she saw, and were now searching the room. She could hear one of them at the dressing table knocking over bottles of expensive perfume and rejuvenating skin creams.
Moments later, she saw the smaller of the men motion that he’d found something as she tried to breathe. “Got it.” He pocketed what appeared to be a cell phone before the men turned to her.
Hope soared. They’d found whatever they’d come for. Now maybe they would leave the way they’d come in, like phantoms in the night. It wasn’t as if she’d seen their faces.
Her slender thread of hope died as she heard the man holding her down say, “Help me with her.” The words sent a fresh stab of alarm coursing through her. She fought even harder. Kicking free of the covers, she got a leg out and struck the smallest of the men in his masked face as he tried to grab her legs. She felt his nose give under her heel and make a loud pop. He let out a wounded cry as he backed off.
“Damn it,” the first man said. “I need help here.”
The other man intruder, the one who’d been searching the room earlier, climbed on the bed, crawling across the king-size mattress toward her. She caught him in the jaw with her fist before he pinned her arms down as he climbed on top of her.
She struggled to breathe from the weight of him, gagging. What had he eaten tonight? Pizza with anchovies? She tried to turn her head away as she bucked in an attempt to throw him off her, but he was too heavy. All she could do was heave and squirm under him, horrified at what these men now planned to do with her. To her.
“Come here,” ordered the man who still had her mouth covered. The one she’d kicked in the face approached, still holding one of his gloved hands over his bleeding nose. “Cover her mouth.”
She caught the angry glint in the man’s pale eyes before the men made the switch. She tried to tell them about the mistake they were making, but before she could get out more than a word and a breath, the broken-nose man covered her mouth roughly with his bloody glove. She gagged at the smell and feel of the warm, sticky liquid on her lips. But it was the look in his eyes that sent her heart rate off the charts.
He would kill her if he got the chance.
Panic had her inhaling sharply through her nose as she watched in growing terror as the first man pulled a syringe from his coat pocket. She fought with all the strength she had left in her. But even as s
he did, she knew it was useless. She stood no chance against three men. She felt him jab the needle into her neck as she continued to fight until her body went limp.
As she lay like a ragdoll, helpless on the bed, she heard a sound that turned her blood to ice. Someone was tearing duct tape into strips.
Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Heinlein
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ISBN: 9781488067211
Before He Vanished
Copyright © 2020 by Debra Webb
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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