LITMIR.BIZ

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when he opened the back door, his mom was at the sink, rinsing her coffee mug. “Where’s your book bag? And what about your lunch?”

      “Don’t need ’em.”

      She started toward him. “Adam Thorne, where—?”

      “Got stuff to do,” he muttered.

      “Stuff? What stuff?”

      Truthfully? Adam didn’t know what, exactly. But he knew this: A man had died last night because he hadn’t had the guts to put a stop to a moronic stunt—and now, he had to do something.

      Shrugging, he stepped off the porch. “Love ya, Mom,” he said over his shoulder. “Have a good day at work.”

      Today, Adam intended to work, too…at finding a way to make right something that had gone so very wrong.

      Chapter One

      Fifteen years later—Halloween Eve

      Kasey Delaney squinted through the windshield.

      Should she turn right or left? Exhaling a sigh of frustration, she threw the car into park and grabbed the directions, written by her so-called assistant in purple ink on lavender notepaper.

      Yes, she thought, she’d followed each instruction to the letter. Which meant there should be a sign at this crossroads that read Kaplan’s Herb Farm. Kasey looked up. There was a sign, all right. A big white one in the shape of an arrow. But it said Thorne’s Getaway in bold, black letters.

      She glanced around, at thick underbrush spilling onto the gravel, at autumn leaves, at deep murky puddles that had collected beside the road following last night’s downpour.

      She hated to admit it, but she was lost. And if there was anything she hated more than being lost, she couldn’t name it at the moment. But she had no one to blame but herself.

      Not two hours ago, she’d barely sidestepped a run-in with Aleesha.

      “I wrote the directions down ’zactly as the lady told them to me.”

      “But Aleesha…”

      The girl’s lower lip had jutted out and her dark eyes misted with tears. She tucked a black cornrow braid behind one ear. “You ain’t never gonna trust me.”

      The last thing Kasey had wanted was to hurt the kid’s feelings.

      She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, remembering how they’d met three years ago through an inner-city mentoring program. Fact was, Kasey couldn’t love Aleesha more if she were a flesh-and-blood relative, which was why, despite the protests of half a dozen well-meaning friends and relatives, she’d legally adopted the girl. Hoping the action would prove her trust, Kasey had tucked the directions into her pocket.

      “Should’ve known better,” she muttered now.

      Immediately, she felt guilty for the harsh thought. Aleesha had come a long way in the year they’d been a bona fide family. And she’d go even farther, “with a little more patience and a whole lot more love,” Kasey said to herself.

      She reached for her purse. She’d call Information, get the herb farm’s phone number, and call for directions herself…if only her dinosaur of a cell phone would work way out here in the middle of—

      The phone wasn’t in her purse. Grimacing, Kasey realized that Aleesha had borrowed it earlier that afternoon, and returned it with a dead battery.

      “You shouldn’t leave here without it,” her mother had warned, when Kasey plugged it into the charger. “Marty Bass said we’re in for severe thunderstorms tonight.” Then she said, “What’s wrong with the charger in your car?”

      Kasey’s silent nod toward Aleesha had been hint enough: misplaced. “I’ll only be gone an hour or so,” she said with a reassuring smile. “What could possibly happen in an hour?”

      “A million things,” her mother said.

      One of which, Kasey admitted now, was getting lost.

      Well, no point dwelling on it. “When life gives you lemons, you quote tired old clichés.”

      Grabbing her pruning shears and a wicker basket for cuttings, Kasey decided to take advantage of the acres of wildflowers on either side of the road. She climbed out of the sports car, immediately wrinkling her nose at the sucking sound her hiking boot made when she lifted it from the mud.

      What could happen in an hour? “You could get lost and mired in mud.”

      Squaring her shoulders, Kasey plunged into the hip-high grass. The whole area was lush with seed pods and willow branches. Better to concentrate on work than the occasional cricket. “Now I remember what I hate more than being lost,” she grumbled, lurching at every insect’s hip-hop. “Bugs.”

      Shouldn’t a person who traipsed through fields on a regular basis be used to things that crawled and flew and stung? She’d been the proud owner of Fleur Élégance for more than five years, after all. The floral creations she designed for hotels, restaurants, department stores and art galleries had won numerous awards—and secured Kasey impressive contracts. Her trademark, right from the get-go, had been the gnarled branches, wild mushrooms and dried leaves she’d artistically interspersed among realistic-looking silk flowers.

      Fortunately for her, very few insects lurked in late October. But there were enough. Too many for her liking! Dusk was settling over the field as a yellowjacket buzzed near her head. “Isn’t it time for you to go to bed, or hibernate,” she said, waving her free arm, “or something?”

      Soon, she’d gathered a basketful of cuttings for her next project. Smiling, Kasey could almost picture the arrangement she’d create with them on a marble pedestal in the center of the Columbia Bank’s main branch.

      A glance at her watch told her that more than an hour had passed while she’d snipped and trimmed. She could almost hear her mom, her neighbors, even Aleesha teasingly referring to her as a scatterbrain for letting time slip so easily away from her. Kasey had never let the jokes get to her. Instead, she told herself that becoming immersed in projects, losing all track of time, was a trait that almost always guaranteed—

      That’s weird, she thought, approaching her car. I never realized that it sat so low to the ground—

      And then she understood why it looked that way. Kasey hadn’t noticed when she’d stopped alongside the narrow, rutted road, but she’d parked in a huge mudhole. In the hour that had passed as she collected flowers, her tiny convertible had sunk to its floorboard. “Oh, fine. That’s just great,” she complained. “Stuck in the middle of nowhere, no phone, no food…”

      She smiled and shrugged. “When life gives you mud,” she mused, “pucker up!”

      She decided to think of this as an adventure, a compelling tale to tell when she got back to civilization. Worstcase scenario, she’d have to spend the night here in the car, and walk to the main road in the morning to flag down a tow truck.

      Right?

      As if in answer, thunder rumbled overhead. Couldn’t be a good sign, Kasey thought, especially not this late in the year. Seconds later, a sizzling flash of lightning sliced the darkening sky. Suddenly, her predicament didn’t seem quite so funny. In fact, it didn’t seem funny at all.

      Because, for one thing, she hadn’t seen another vehicle as she’d driven out here. Not a farmer’s truck. Not a horseman’s van. Not even a kid on a bicycle. And, though she’d been in that field for over an hour, she didn’t remember hearing anything drive past, either.

      Kasey had never admitted it, not even to her mother, but thunderstorms scared the willies out of her. Waiting one out in a minuscule convertible didn’t seem the least bit appealing. And, though she’d given up her night-light more than a decade ago, she wasn’t overly fond of the dark, either. Especially when, thanks to an impending storm, it fell as fast as a stage curtain.

      But

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