LITMIR.BIZ

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       Chapter Three

      The wind was sharp as hell and Griffin’s core temp wasn’t all the way back to normal, but he kept moving down the driveway, his booted feet sliding in the rapidly deepening snow. The visibility wasn’t great, but he was certain he could make it down to the crash site and back up to the mansion before the conditions became impossible. Besides, the longer he waited, the less likely he was to find anything useful.

      If, of course, there was anything to find.

      Maybe it was just a flat-out coincidence that he and Sophie had been in the SUV that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Maybe it was simply that their vehicle had finally overloaded the time-stressed cement bridge and brought it crashing down.

      Thing was, he wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. That lesson had been hard learned in the service, and his years in the business world had only reinforced his conviction that everything happened for a reason, and that anything could be prevented from happening twice if he was smart enough, disciplined enough. Controlled enough.

      At the thought of control, he flashed back to what had just happened in front of the fireplace, when he’d almost lost the self-discipline he prided himself on. He’d very nearly given in to temptation and kissed Sophie. What was more, she would’ve welcomed his kiss; he’d seen it in her eyes, felt it in the tension-laden air.

      The attraction was there, had been there from the first moment she’d walked into his office. He’d managed to tamp it down to an awareness, and she’d hidden the fact, as well. Most of the time, anyway. But that moment in front of the fireplace had shattered their pretense of disinterest. And damned if that wasn’t going to complicate things, big time, not just over the next couple of days if they wound up snowed in together, but over the longer term, as well. He couldn’t afford to get tangled up with another woman who wanted to trade affection for a step up in life.

      It wasn’t that he thought Sophie was playing him, either. His instincts said she was exactly what she seemed: a young, relatively inexperienced woman who was getting a late start in the workforce for whatever reason, and was earnest in her efforts to do a good job. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t set her sights higher if he gave her reason to think it was a possibility.

      That wasn’t ego talking, either. It was just the way he’d learned the world worked. And if that felt faintly disloyal to the memory of his own childhood, it couldn’t be helped. His parents had met and fallen in love in a very different time, and they’d been lucky to find a perfect match in each other. He’d tried to find the same sort of match and failed. Worse, the last failure had hurt his son, as well. There was no way he was putting Luke—or himself—through another such ordeal.

      They were fine on their own. There was nothing wrong with it being just the guys. In fact, the only thing wrong with the arrangement was the extensive traveling Griffin had to do for work, while Luke stayed behind in San Fran with Darryn. Then again, it was a huge relief knowing Luke was safe at home, especially given that Griffin didn’t yet know exactly what sort of a situation he was dealing with.

      His musings had occupied him on the half-mile trek down to the bridge. Now, as he got within sight of the wrecked span, he once again replayed those last few moments before it had given way. He remembered a banging noise, like a backfire. Or maybe an explosion. But seriously, what were the chances someone had rigged the bridge? And why?

      Unfortunately, he could make an all too plausible case for the “why.” When Sophie called to set up the meeting with Perry, she’d mentioned that she and Griffin were planning to tour the estate that afternoon, before the storm hit. What if the contractor was more than just shoddy or a little crooked? What if the delays were only the surface of the problem, and Perry was actually up to something even more devious, something that he couldn’t afford to let an outsider see? The theory might seem pretty farfetched, but the contractor had given Griffin some seriously negative vibes the last few times they’d spoken. At the time, Griffin had assumed Perry was spooked by his run of bad luck on the project, and rightfully fearing for his job.

      Now, as Griffin worked his way out to the place where the bridge had collapsed, testing each step as he went, he wondered whether Perry had perhaps been afraid of something else entirely, like his employer finding out about dire doings up at Lonesome Lake. And if so, whether the contractor had decided to slow him down, or worse.

      When Griffin reached the edge and looked down, he cursed, giving up any hope he might’ve had of recovering his and Sophie’s suitcases or computer bags. There was no sign of the SUV, save for a rough patch where it had broken through the ice, and even that was rapidly smoothing over to snowy sameness.

      “Son of a bitch,” he grated, liking the situation even less than he had before. For the duration of the storm, it looked like he and Sophie were going to be down to borrowed clothes and a doused PDA.

      And each other.

      

      AS TIME PASSED and Griffin still didn’t return, Sophie kept herself moving because she figured it was better than working herself into a state of panic.

      Deciding she’d give her boss another half hour before she went out looking for him, she turned to the tasks he’d given her: pulling together some food and rebooting her PDA. She started by making a survey of the supplies in Gemma’s pantry, and quickly realized they were in pretty good shape in the nonperishable food department. The shelves were crammed with canned goods, along with glass jars of pasta sauce and homemade preserves. There was plenty of dried pasta, along with pancake mix and coffee, and even powdered eggs and milk.

      “Looks like you’re prepared to be snowed in for the entire winter,” Sophie said to the absent housekeeper. The thought wasn’t particularly cheering.

      Deciding to keep it simple, in case the meal had to wait while she went out looking for Griffin, Sophie added tap water to a can of condensed tomato soup, and broke out a box of mac and cheese, knowing firsthand that it tasted fine made with powdered milk and no butter. Once she had the pasta cooking, she headed out into the main room, where a welcome sight greeted her, namely the telltale wink of an LED light from her PDA.

      “Aha. A sign of life.” Relieved by the thought that they might not be completely cut off from the outside world, she crossed to the unit and pressed a few buttons, shutting down the handheld computer and then powering it back up to see if it would come fully online.

      When it did, it showed her a half charge on the battery and a weak but tenable network signal. Crossing her fingers that the call would go through, she phoned Sheriff Martinez.

      He answered on the second ring. “Ms. LaRue? Are you back in the city? That was quick.”

      “Hi, Sheriff. And no, we’re not even close to being down off the mountain.” Sophie sketched out the situation, trying to give the facts as calmly as she could, even though it wasn’t easy to keep a tremor out of her voice as she described their plunge into Lonesome Lake and the harrowing trek up to the house.

      There was a long pause after she finished, and then Martinez said, “Okay, here’s the problem we’re going to be facing. That snow out there? It’s the real deal. The blizzard got here faster than predicted and is likely to be here for a good long time. Two days, maybe three. More importantly, the road up to Lonesome Lake goes through a pass that’s impossible to keep clear during a storm. Which means you’re going to be stuck there until the blizzard blows itself out.”

      She heard something else in his voice, and asked the same question Griffin had earlier. “What aren’t you telling me?”

      There was another, longer pause. “Maybe Vaughn should call me when he gets back in.”

      “We’ll have to conserve the battery on this phone,” she said, too aware that unless Griffin managed to rescue their chargers from the SUV, they were going to have to make her half-charged battery last. “So why don’t you just tell me whatever it is that you’d rather tell him?”

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