Her Sister's Murder, page 1
“Here’s what I know about threats.” Morgan took a couple of steps closer to him.
“They’re made by people who are afraid of losing control of a situation. If you give in to them, you feed that sense of control, which emboldens them, and they become more dangerous.”
“Fine, I’ll take that chance. Face the danger. But not with you.”
“Then, okay, I’m fired. And we’ll work the case separately.” She walked back to her satchel.
No. “Wait.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been working to solve my sister’s murder for seventeen years, Blade. If you think you have the power to stop me, you’re just...”
What? He was what? He wanted to know. And didn’t need to.
She was right. He hadn’t brought her into the situation. Or even called her to town. “Someone’s playing with me,” he said, feeling a smidgen of his usual calm settling over him. “Baiting me.”
“Someone who knows that we once hung out together,” she added, her brows creased, as though she was studying a difficult puzzle. “They had to know that making a threat to my life would hit you where it hurts.”
Dear Reader,
This is a book of my heart in several ways. It’s set in a state in which I only lived full-time for two years as a little kid, but that has been a second home to me my entire life. But more, it tells the story of young love that wasn’t trusted, got lost and then found again. My true-life story in those few words. It’s also the story of fortitude. Of refusing to give up even when life seems to be prepared to deny you forever. A lot of us have been there at one time or another.
It’s a suspenseful, twisting and turning mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat, some days literally, as I was writing. I didn’t know how it was going to end until it did. The best kind of book to read or write!
But most of all, it’s the story of love. True love. In its various forms. This book depicts everything I believe in. The love that is real and strong enough to endure. To win out over evil. To bring us a happiness that far surpasses any other joy we could possibly feel. Love isn’t just in the moment, or temporary. It endures. Even if we lose it. If we let it, it will find us again.
I hope love finds you over and over.
Tara Taylor Quinn
HER SISTER’S MURDER
TARA TAYLOR QUINN
A USA TODAY bestselling author of over one hundred novels in twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn has sold more than seven million copies. Known for her intense emotional fiction, Ms. Quinn’s novels have received critical acclaim in the UK and most recently from Harvard. She is the recipient of the Readers’ Choice Award and has appeared often on local and national TV, including CBS Sunday Morning. For TTQ offers, news and contests, visit tarataylorquinn.com!
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Sierra’s Web
Tracking His Secret Child
Cold Case Sheriff
The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Search
On the Run with His Bodyguard
Not Without Her Child
A Firefighter’s Hidden Truth
Last Chance Investigation
Danger on the River
Deadly Mountain Rescue
A High-Stakes Reunion
Baby in Jeopardy
Her Sister’s Murder
The Coltons of Owl Creek
Colton Threat Unleashed
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
For J—the twin of my heart. Our days in the hills, and all the years after, sustain me, still. Love doesn’t die.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Excerpt from Cameron Mountain Refuge by Beth Cornelison
Chapter 1
Gravel crunched above him in the darkness. Freezing in place, all senses on alert, Blade Carmichael went into defend-and-protect mode. Listening. His eyes were the only things moving as he took in the rim of the eight-foot-deep half-acre hole in which he stood.
Being trapped in a pit, inspecting footers, wasn’t something he’d choose to do without daylight, or without others around. But with darkness falling, and his company expanding so quickly, he hadn’t been able to get to every site with the sun still shining down on him and with his crew still present.
The sound came again, weight on gravel. It wasn’t the rolling sound of a vehicle. Didn’t have the normal rhythm of footsteps, either. Was something being pushed by someone on foot? Or dragged?
Whatever was up there, it didn’t belong. He’d locked the temporary gate behind him, as he always did when he drove on-site. The plowed and flattened land was clearly marked with keep-out and no-trespassing signs.
There had been a series of weird things happening lately. He’d been pretty sure someone was following him but had no proof—just a blue sedan. Sometimes it was parked down the street from his house with no one inside that he could see. And then he’d seen it outside a restaurant where he’d been eating. Across from his office, twice. And once when he’d been driving, a few lanes over and a couple of vehicles back.
But then, he tended to err on the paranoid side of watching his back. Spending seventeen years wrongly accused did that to a guy.
He hadn’t noticed the car as he’d driven to the site, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there somewhere.
His truck was up top in full view.
Someone knew he was down in the pit.
No one was authorized to be on any of his sites after dark. No one. Ever. A rule that, if broken, cost an employee their job. Or garnered a call to police and a trespassing charge.
Turning off the light strapped to his head, he backed up slowly to the footers he’d come down to inspect, careful to keep his own boot crunch at a minimum. Once there, he leaned back, pressing himself into the dirt wall of the pit. Jeans and his button-down shirt and tie didn’t offer much protection. All alone and thinking he was just going to be doing a few quick measurements, he’d left his hard hat on the front seat of the truck.
He hadn’t felt real fear for his life in a long time, not since he’d mastered both target shooting and martial arts. His heart pounded, and he didn’t welcome the sensation of snakes slithering in his gut. He reached slowly for the Glock 9 mm holstered to his belt, legally allowed in Michigan if it was visible, and by his concealed-carry permit if it wasn’t. He’d never used the pistol, other than to shoot targets.
He’d never killed anything.
But the world thought he had. Even though he’d never been formally charged, and had a completely clean record.
More gravel turning. Crunching. Getting closer. Was someone coming to get revenge? The paranoia that he’d been fighting fairly successfully in recent years suddenly surfaced with a vengeance. There was nothing on the lot to steal.
Nothing there at all but dirt, some rebar cemented into footer framing and him.
The sound was definitely scraping. Or dragging.
Dirt?
Was someone moving a large mass of dirt?
To bury him in his own pit?
Horror clawed at him. After so many years full of dread, were the death threats he’d received finally becoming reality?
No, he had to get a hold of himself. He was a grown man running a successful business in a town where his past wasn’t an issue.
The investigation had been thorough seventeen years before and as soon as he’d been released from custody, he’d immediately, and legally, dropped the McFadden from his name. Leaving Blade Carmichael McFadden behind, he’d hoped.
The only evidence against him had been circumstantial—strengthened by the fact that there were no other viable suspects. But even though the DA had decided not to press charges, public opinion had been swayed against him.
But not in Rocky Springs. Not in the small Michigan town where he’d made a good name for himself.
Was someone from the past on his lot? Had they come to make him pay? Knowing he had nowhere to run? To hide?
Struggling against the unhealthy thoughts, he tried to focus on the sounds above him.
The scraping sounds were coming closer. He was a standing duck.
What if someone local had heard about his past?
The only way out, the stepladder he’d brought down with him, was all the way on the other side of the pit.
And climbing up would do nothing except make him an easy target.
No matter what was going on, someone was on his lot, illegally, in the dark.
Gun in his hand, safety off, he listened and watched the rim, waiting for the first sign of whoever was up there to show itself. His only chance was to stay alert and get a shot off first.
A feat
Maybe getting to the ladder was the best bet. He could climb slowly. Crouch down. Get a look at his would-be assailant before they got to him.
Blade was already acting before he’d finished the thought. Moving softly, sliding quickly along the dirt floor, he kept himself crouched and balanced as he leaned into the wall of dirt his crew had dug.
The sound was closer. Almost directly above his head. He wasn’t going to get to the ladder in time. He stopped moving and pressed himself into the dirt with all of his strength. Gun in both hands, barrel pointing upward, he slid his head backward an inch, then two, attempting to see without being seen.
Throat dry, tight, he couldn’t swallow. But mixed in with the fear, surprising him, was a bit of relief. No more dreading that this day would come...
But it still might not have come. He had to stay calm. Focused. Deal with the moment, not the past.
He hadn’t killed that sixteen-year-old girl. But he hadn’t hung around to make sure she made it back to camp safely, either. Not that he’d invited her to the party, or even that she’d have left with him if he’d asked. She’d been having too much fun hanging out with the others. But he’d been a senior camp counselor. She’d only been a junior...he shouldn’t have left while there was still a junior there...
He shouldn’t have been there at all. None of them should have been.
The dirt against his back reverberated slightly. From weight on the ground directly above him. Had to be right at the rim of the pit. He couldn’t see a thing but dirt and sky. No moon. No stars. And no assailant visible to him.
But someone who knew he was in that pit was right above him. Illegally there.
Bracing for a load of dirt or a bullet that would bring searing pain, he kept his eye trained above, arms and hands set to use his pistol at the first sign of movement.
Tense, ready, he waited.
The one thing he had going for him, a man thought to have murdered a sixteen-year-old girl when he’d been just seventeen himself, was that he’d never, ever physically hurt anyone.
Before he had time for another thought, rocks and clods of fresh dirt started to tumble around him, hitting his head, his shoulders. Some were big enough to bruise him and obstruct his vision. He couldn’t see anyone up above. But he couldn’t just stand there and die. He’d learned long ago he had to bear his own load. Cocking back his pistol, he pointed the barrel to the sky, and pulled the trigger, not to kill, but to warn, to scare and then, if necessary, to defend.
Before the bullet had even reverberated through the air, a body landed on the dirt at his feet.
* * *
Former FBI agent turned private detective Morgan Davis had dread in her gut as she entered Rocky Springs just after sunrise. She’d gotten the call in the very wee morning hours and had been instantly up, showered, dressed in black pants, a white cropped blouse and black flats, and was out the door, making the two-hour drive from Detroit in record time.
Maddie, I’ve got him...
The internal words started before she realized their intent. No. She wasn’t going back there. Not to the time. Or the false hope.
She wasn’t a sixteen-year-old youth camp counselor anymore. She’d lost her youth the night she’d lost her identical twin sister. Murdered by someone she’d thought was one of her closest friends, the only guy she’d ever had a serious crush on. The only one who’d ever shown any interest in someone as straitlaced and serious as she was. The only guy who’d asked her to be exclusive with him.
Maddie had been the vivacious one. The honey that drew everyone to them. And kept their attention when they arrived. Morgan had the same perfectly aligned features, striking blue eyes, blond hair and slim, long-legged build, but she’d rarely been noticed. And, introvert that she was, she’d been perfectly content to sit in her sister’s shadow, watching out for the both of them, planning their futures.
Until that last summer at camp. Maddie hadn’t wanted to be there. They’d heard the school counselor talk about a need for counselors at the summer youth camp, alighting Morgan with interest. Interest she’d known her twin wouldn’t share, just as Maddie hadn’t been paying attention during assembly that morning. During the rest of the mandatory meeting, while her sister kept exchanging looks with a boy across the aisle, Morgan worked it all out. They’d spend their first summer apart. Maddie going to cheer camp and Morgan being a counselor at the youth camp they’d attended for years. It would be good for them...they could text every morning and every night...and have so much to tell each other at summer’s end.
As it had turned out, their overly strict, older parents had jumped on the guidance counselor’s call for help. The twins had started counselor training that very afternoon...
And that had been the end of life as they knew it.
Following the prompt from her dark blue SUV’s navigation system, Morgan turned and then turned again. She’d never been to Rocky Springs. The beach town hadn’t had any crimes calling for FBI presence when she’d been with the Bureau.
And Sierra’s Web, the nationally renowned firm of experts she’d joined the year before, hadn’t sent her there, either.
She wasn’t there on official business. Yet.
She was there because a non-FBI law enforcement acquaintance had fulfilled a promise.
Blade Carmichael’s name had shown up in a crime scene report that made it over the unofficial BOLO wire across the state. Word of mouth traveled fast when a guy showed up dead in a ditch at the feet of a suspected killer. Morgan’s acquaintance knew she’d want the information.
According to the report that had been read to her so early that morning, Carmichael had been in a new-build basement dig. The body had landed at his feet from up above. He’d heard footsteps. One set. And then nothing. The form had been unmoving, lying with a leg bent underneath it and both arms splayed out. He’d immediately dialed 911, then ran to a ladder and climbed to the rim of the pit. He saw no blood, no sign of anything, except for a strip of dirt that looked like some kind of heavy box or blanket had been dragged across it, cutting a path on the newly cleared land.
He’d made a quick perusal of the site and headed back down to the body.
Male, based on the dark pants, he’d told the operator on the line, and light-colored dress shirt. Short hair, mostly dark. Gray tinges, perhaps from the moon’s reflection? The guy was face down. Carmichael couldn’t get a feel for age.
He had checked for a pulse and said something about flesh not yet cold to the touch of his fingers.
The lack of pulse was evident, though. He’d been touching a dead man. No bleeding profusely from a killer’s bullet. Not bleeding visibly at all, and not pooling from beneath him, either.
The suspect—she couldn’t not think of Blade that way—hadn’t been arrested when law enforcement arrived. There hadn’t been sufficient evidence against him to warrant doing so. But Morgan knew better. Blade Carmichael was someone whose alias—Blade Carmichael McFadden—might not show up in official police records. But it was definitely at the top of the suspect list in her personal memory.
He’d grown up in another beach town—South Haven. Another town she’d never visited. One he’d vacated abruptly when it had become known that he was a murderer and his father’s business had tanked. The family, just him and his parents, had moved to Grand Rapids, and then, upon his high school graduation, to Florida. He’d returned to his home state to attend the University of Michigan, graduated with a degree in business management and settled in the burgeoning, if still small, beach town of Rocky Springs.
Why he’d gone to all the trouble to change his name and then return to his home state, she didn’t know. Except that, even as a teenager, he’d loved the state. The Great Lakes. The vast outdoors. The seasons. Those were the kinds of conversations he’d had with Morgan years ago.
While Maddie had talked constantly about getting out and seeing the world, wanting to move to California or New York, Morgan had loved Michigan, too. The natural beauty of forests and streams, bound by the Great Lakes and a lot of wide-open country.
It felt right to think about something good as she prepared to enter hell.
