LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      After midnight, most people in Grand Springs were safely tucked in bed. The hospital still hummed with life, of course. Lately, the police department, as well. But most people in the quiet community were in bed by eleven, and most of the ranchers were in bed well before that.

      That’s why Josie liked midnight so well. No more phones jangling with questions from the local businesspeople who’d watched their dreams swept away in just thirty-six hours of rain, mud slides and lightning—one of the worst rainstorms ever to hit Colorado. No more farmers, standing before her desk in their mud-splattered boots and well-broken-in jeans, slowly twisting the brims of their hats as they asked her how they were supposed to get their cows through the winter when their fields were so buried in silt and mud it would take twelve months of expensive rehabilitation before they’d be fit to grow hay again. No more Hal Stuart demanding yet another cut of Grand Springs’s budget because he was acting mayor, dammit, and when he said jump, you’d better say “How high?”

      Late at night, Josie could shut the door of her treasurer’s office, take the phone off the hook and finally get work done. She figured and refigured the cost of the flooding and power outage. She looked at pictures of the holes that had appeared in the mountain passes, whole chunks of road swept away by mud slides. She pondered the impact on families, not all of whom were insured, and especially on the farmers who’d never thought to buy flood insurance—then watched half of their cows drown in water that just wouldn’t stop.

      Josie didn’t have easy answers. She couldn’t get the county commissioners to focus on the complex ones. So she worked until three or four in the morning most nights, trying to bring order to the chaos. And she pretended that when she finally went home to sleep, she didn’t still see Olivia, her best friend and Grand Springs’s indomitable mayor, dying in her arms while the world raged and howled around them.

      Her eyes grew blurry as 2:00 a.m. came and went. She pored over information on federal aid programs. She read about the adopt-a-farm programs other states had used to weather such disasters. She jotted down notes on the strip mining information Hal wanted. She wrote herself a reminder on the upcoming Band, Bingo, Bake Sale fund-raiser next week.

      She tried valiantly to keep her eyes open.

      The pen slipped from between her fingers. Her head nodded against her chest. Her red, exhausted eyes gave in and closed.

      She slid down into her chair, and the sleep hit her all at once and with a fury.

      * * *

      Dark clouds teeming rain. The sky booming and cracking with a vengeful electrical storm. The thunder so close it echoed through the exposed-beam hallway of the Squaw Creek Lodge.

      Josie ran down the hall. Searching, searching, searching. Hal’s wedding was about to begin. Where was Olivia? Olivia would never be late for her own son’s wedding.

      She had to find Olivia. The foreboding rolled in her stomach like an echo of the storm, dark and horrible.

      A blurry shape in white brushed her shoulder. The bride. Randi, Hal Stuart’s bride, running down the hall. Why was the bride running away from the wedding?

      Thunder cracked. The lodge shuddered. Another boom and the lodge plunged into blackness.

      A cry. “The bride has disappeared!”

      Chaos.

      The glow of a candle abruptly appeared, illuminating the end of the hallway. Josie ran toward it. She saw Hal, pale and harried. She heard more voices. “My God, I think she’s unconscious!” In the distance, someone’s phone rang.

      Where was Olivia?

      Suddenly the lodge was gone. She was out in the night, the wind buffeting her practical economy car, the rain slapping her windshield. Her long blond hair had been ripped free from its knot and was now plastered against her cheeks. Her favorite black cocktail suit, drenched and ruined, clung to her skin.

      She drove, the road lights out, the streets flooded, the storm fierce and merciless.

      Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. She had to find Olivia.

      She reached Olivia’s street. She turned into the darkened drive. The wind howled.

      No lights appeared on in the house. Not even the reassuring flicker of a candle. Black, black house. Dark, dark night.

      For a moment, Josie was frozen by her own fear.

      I know what’s in that house. I know what I’m going to find.

      Her dream lurched, twisted, then turned on itself like a cannibal.

      The

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