LITMIR.BIZ

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Then he looked down with apprehension at the videotape in his hand.

      What the hell was on this? Something that Nathaniel Pierce was confident would change Mac’s mind about the job offer.

      That alone was enough to make Mac nervous as hell. But to find Pierce sitting in the dark on the houseboat drinking beer, waiting…

      Mac walked over to the VCR, turned on the TV, popped in the tape and hit Play. The images were blurred, everything a grainy black and white. The tape appeared to be a security surveillance video.

      In the soundless recording were three people. Two wore ski masks, one of whom carried a sledgehammer. A third stood just out of the camera’s view, but part of that person’s shadow could be seen against the side wall.

      Mac watched as the one with the sledgehammer worked to break through some expensive-looking wood. The other man in the ski mask had his back to the camera. The third appeared to be just watching, but the other two would glance back at him from time to time and say something Mac couldn’t make out.

      After a few minutes the hammer had made a large hole in what appeared to be a hidden compartment in the wall. The other masked man pushed the one with the sledgehammer out of the way and took a metal box from inside the compartment. The box looked to be about eight inches square and three or four inches deep. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the hole in the wall because the men turned and left, disappearing from the camera’s lens.

      The videotape flickered, and the setting changed to outdoors. An old Ford van, dark in color, sat with the engine running, and the driver’s face was captured on film. He was watching out the windshield, looking very young and very nervous. He was the only one not wearing a mask.

      An instant later the two men in ski masks emerged from the house and ran toward the van. As they ran, they ripped off their masks. Mac’s heart stopped.

      One of the men was Mac’s nineteen-year-old nephew Shane Ramsey, who was supposed to be in Whitefish with Mac’s sister.

      The other man running toward the getaway van was Trevor Forester.

      Chapter Three

      Mac couldn’t sleep. He lay sprawled on his back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, afraid to close his eyes. When he’d closed them, his thoughts closed in on him, an unsettling mix of pleasure and pain.

      Even the pleasure was painful. He’d promised himself in his youth that he wasn’t going to be one of those men who had regrets. Not like his father. Or his father before him. That was why he lived the life he did. On his own terms.

      What a joke. He knew regret as keenly as he knew sorrow. And tonight would be a night he knew he would live to regret.

      He gave up on sleep, got up, pulled on his jeans and, taking a cold beer from the fridge, wandered out on the deck to sit in the cool darkness.

      The marina was dead quiet. The lake was calm under a limitless sky of dark blue velvet and glittering stars. He closed his eyes and tilted the mouth of the bottle to his lips. The glass was cool and wet, the beer icy cold as it ran down his throat.

      He opened his eyes. It was the darkness, he realized. The blackness behind his eyelids that stole any chance of sleep. The same kind of blind darkness that would always remind him of the intimate inkiness inside the cottage—and her.

      He smiled to himself wryly, remembering. He’d been lost the moment his lips touched hers. She’d stolen his breath, taken his pounding pulse hostage and carried him away to a place he’d sworn to never go again. Never find again even if he’d been tempted to look.

      And what surprised him was that she’d seemed as blown away by the experience as he’d been. Something had happened tonight in the cottage, something that scared the hell out of him, because it made him feel as if he’d boarded a runaway freight train that couldn’t be stopped. And now all he could do was wait for the inevitable train wreck.

      He’d known that in one split second, one moment of weakness, life could irrevocably change. Mac had seen his father go from wealthy to piss poor in one of those seconds. The man’s reputation ruined. His life destroyed. How many times had his father wanted to take back that instant in time?

      Mac had always sworn he wouldn’t end up like his father. He’d live his life, take on little baggage and never care too much about anything. He’d screwed up once and it had cost him more than he could bear. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

      He’d slipped up tonight in the cottage. He just hoped to hell he could weather the storm he feared was coming because of it. Every action had a consequence. The moment he’d kissed her. The moment he saw his nephew and Trevor Forester on that videotape. Both life-altering in ways he didn’t even want to think about.

      And now he was working for Pierce. He swore. Mac had few ways he could be coerced. His sister and nephew were the only family he had.

      Mac swore as he looked out over the dark lake and thought about his nephew, a spoiled kid who’d hated his grandfather for losing the family fortune. Thanks to previous Cooper generations, though, both Mac and his sister had substantial trust funds. Just enough, it seemed, to make Shane crave real wealth. Apparently the kind Nathaniel Pierce had.

      Mac took another long drink of his beer, dreading what Pierce would tell him in the morning. There was a reason Pierce hadn’t called the sheriff when he’d been robbed. Mac knew Pierce hadn’t done it out of some loyalty to either Mac or his nephew. Not Pierce. No, Pierce didn’t want the cops knowing about the metal box. Now why was that?

      Not that it mattered. There was no way Mac couldn’t take the job. Not if he hoped to save his nephew—although it might already be too late for that. Someone had murdered Trevor Forester tonight. What were the chances it wasn’t connected to the robbery?

      Mac also suspected that Pierce wanted him in on this for reasons of his own that had nothing to do with Shane. Shane was just a means to an end. And that made Mac worry he was already in over his head.

      Leaning back, he stared up at the stars and knew this restlessness he felt had little to do with Pierce or Shane. As a breeze washed over the bare skin of his chest, he found himself drowning in memories of the woman from the cottage. He breathed in the night, the cool, damp scent of the lake. Closing his eyes, he was engulfed by the darkness and the feel of her. Jill Lawson.

      Seeing her was out of the question. But he could no more forget her than he could the image of his nephew and Trevor Forester in ski masks on a grainy black-and-white videotape.

      Pleasure and pain. He opened his eyes. A moment of weakness, he thought with a curse as he went inside the houseboat for his shirt, shoes and weapon. There was no turning back now.

      AFTER THE DEPUTIES left, Jill locked up the front door and walked through the bakery to the rear of the building and the inside stairs that led up to the apartment.

      With her father’s encouragement and some money her grandmother had left her, she’d bought the two-story brick building right out of college and started her bakery, The Best Buns in Town. Gram Lawson was the one who got Jill hooked on baking in the first place. Grandpa had always said Gram made the best cinnamon buns in town.

      From the time Jill was a child, she remembered Gram’s house smelling of flour and yeast. She loved that smell. Especially tonight as she walked past the now-silent equipment, the sparkling kitchen. The mere sight grounded her and gave her strength.

      As she started up the narrow back stairs, she felt a draft and looked up. Her breath caught. The door to her apartment was standing open. She always kept that door closed and locked when she was gone.

      She froze, heart pounding, and strained to listen. She heard nothing but silence overhead. Maybe she’d left the door open earlier. She’d been so upset about Trevor not picking her up on time…

      Slowly, she climbed the stairs, all the horror of the night making her jumpy. Her head still ached from where she’d been hit and she felt sick to her stomach when she thought about Trevor.

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