LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Sixteen months later

      The shrill of the phone literally caught Luke Calder with his pants down. After putting in a ten-hour night shift on the streets in a patrol car, all he wanted was some shut-eye. With a tired sigh, he kicked his jeans toward the laundry pile on the closet floor and reached for the phone beside his bed. “Calder here.”

      “Constable Calder, this is Alex Hudson from the credit bureau. You asked us to flag your wife Mary’s file and notify you of any activity.”

      Luke’s fingers stiffened on the telephone receiver, as his body tensed against the sudden eruption of emotion in the pit of his stomach. The barren sand-colored walls of his bedroom shifted around him as if on motorized tracks. More than a year had passed since Mary’s murder, and Ottawa-Carleton’s finest detectives and forensic experts—fellow officers Luke had faith in, would trust with his life—hadn’t been able to come up with a lead in her murder. The investigation was in limbo—just like Luke’s life—delegated to a stack of cold files on a major-crime detective’s desk. He closed his eyes to block out the spinning walls and dredged deep inside himself for the professional control that had been drilled into him at the police academy. A lead. Oh, God, please let this be a lead, he prayed. “Has there been some activity?” he bit out.

      “Yes,” Hudson acknowledged, his husky voice tinged with compassion. “A business-loan application to a bank in British Columbia. A branch in Blossom Valley. It probably would have gone unnoticed if you hadn’t flagged your wife’s file.”

      Luke sucked in his breath as his brain computed the significance of the information through an insulating layer of shock. When he’d made the request of the credit bureau after Mary’s purse was stolen during the assault and attempted carjacking, he’d been more worried about the perpetrator running up Mary’s credit cards to her limit, not fraudulent bank loans. But still, there could be a connection, however remote. “Did the applicant give a current address?”

      “Only a box-office address in Blossom Valley. Have you got a pen?”

      “Just a sec.” Luke reached for his black duty bag, which he’d tossed on the bed a few minutes ago. After a moment’s fumbling with the zipper, he produced a pen from a side pocket, then grabbed for a notepad, a woodworking magazine resting on the oak bedside table he’d made Mary as a first-anniversary gift. “What have you got?”

      Hudson read off the address.

      Luke jotted it down, forcing his hand to form each letter. His fingers had turned to rubber. “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.” His knees gave out as he hung up the phone. Luke sank onto the bed, his heartbeat spiking and his thighs shuddering as if he’d just chased down a perp. Nausea swirled in his stomach as he pressed his forehead to his bent knees, but there was no way to avoid the anguished images that twisted him inside out—images of Mary dying in fear…in pain…without a cop in sight to save her. Much less her own husband.

      He’d been on duty that night. Mary had died before she’d reached the hospital. He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her that he loved her one last time. Why hadn’t she just let her assailant have the damn car?

      A sob caught in his chest, building until the pain of it vibrated through his body and throbbed in his brain. His fingers clutched the magazine like a lifeline to sanity. Would this address lead him to Mary’s killer?

      THERE WAS SAFETY living in a small town. Shannon Mulligan could look out the window of Glorie’s Gifts Galore—one of the many shops in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley where her handmade crafts were sold—and easily scan the six-block length of Blossom Valley. She knew the proprietor of every store in the Western-style business district by name and every face that belonged here. Strangers stuck out like palm trees in a desert and made her hackles rise until she assured herself that the stranger couldn’t possibly be her ex-husband.

      Surely the fact that Rob hadn’t found her in sixteen months meant he likely never would. She and Samantha were safe.

      As if knowing she was the object of her mother’s thoughts, nine-month-old Samantha gurgled and cooed with delight as her plump sweet fingers latched on to a bright red apple appliquéd to the green gingham skirt covering a nearby display table. A basket filled with vegetable-and fruit-shaped napkin rings nearly slid off the table as Samantha tugged on the tablecloth. Shannon expertly grabbed the basket to prevent it from crashing to the floor, then worked the gingham cloth from her daughter’s grasp.

      “Oh, you silly girl!” she admonished gently. “The apple is so pretty and colorful, isn’t it?”

      Samantha beamed up at Shannon from her stroller, her cap of silky dark hair mussed and her dark eyes glinting with smoky-gray and mottled-brown flecks of mischief. Eyes so like Rob’s, Shannon’s ex-husband, that they irrefutably confirmed the truth of Samantha’s sordid conception. Shannon prayed daily that her baby hadn’t also inherited her father’s tendency to fly into rages at the slightest provocation.

      So far, Samantha’s temperament had been as meek as a lamb’s. Despite the terror and uncertainty that had hounded Shannon during the days and nights of her pregnancy, she loved her daughter more than life itself. Because of Samantha, Shannon had found a courage inside herself she hadn’t known she possessed. She’d taken risks, impossible risks, but they’d all been worth it. Rob would never be able to lay a hand on her again.

      Her eyes stung with tears as she bent to kiss her daughter’s brow. Samantha deserved a safe and happy childhood. That was all that mattered.

      “Not to worry, Mary,” Glorie assured Shannon, bustling up beside them and breaking Shannon’s train of thought. “I should have offered to get the door for you, but I just couldn’t take my eyes off that batch of birdhouses you just brought in. I promised to put one aside for a customer.”

      Shannon could see by the genuine softening of Glorie’s careworn face that the gift-shop proprietor truly didn’t mind Samantha’s inquisitive fingers. Glorie’s heart was as generously proportioned as the body that housed it, and sometimes Shannon felt certain the residents of Blossom Valley would forgive her for assuming another woman’s identity. It wasn’t as if Shannon was doing Mary Calder any harm. She was just borrowing her name and her likeness.

      Shannon eased Samantha’s stroller out of the aisle as Glorie pulled the door open. “Now don’t forget, Mary, you promised you’d drop off a dozen welcome signs and at least three letter boxes before the long weekend. I can’t keep them in stock. Your Garden Patch collection is just taking off.”

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