Hannah looked straight at Rex. “Tell me why you walked out on me that night.”

“I had to,” he said.

She sighed, then looked away. “What about children?”

God, she was covering six years of ground here, while he was thinking of one step at a time. He thought of his own miserable childhood, how he had vowed he would never visit that kind of pain on himself. “Kids were never part of my plan.”

Something shuttered in her eyes. She was closing him out as he watched. He reached out. She gently pushed his hands away and closed her eyes as tears slid out from under her lids.

He didn’t know what to say.

Dear Reader,

This is a month full of greats: great authors, great miniseries…great books. Start off with award-winning Marie Ferrarella’s Racing Against Time, the first in a new miniseries called CAVANAUGH JUSTICE. This family fights for what’s right—and their reward is lasting love.

The miniseries excitement continues with the second of Carla Cassidy’s CHEROKEE CORNERS trilogy. Dead Certain brings the hero and heroine together to solve a terrible crime, but it keeps them together with love. Candace Irvin’s latest features A Dangerous Engagement, and it’s also the first SISTERS IN ARMS title, introducing a group of military women bonded through friendship and destined to find men worthy of their hearts.

Of course, you won’t want to miss our stand-alone books, either. Marilyn Tracy’s A Warrior’s Vow is built around a suspenseful search for a missing child, and it’s there, in the rugged Southwest, that her hero and heroine find each other. Cindy Dees has an irresistible Special Forces officer for a hero in Line of Fire—and he takes aim right at the heroine’s heart. Finally, welcome new author Loreth Anne White, who came to us via our eHarlequin.com Web site. Melting the Ice is her first book—and we’re all eagerly awaiting her next.

Enjoy—and come back next month for more exciting romantic reading, only from Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Melting the Ice
Loreth Anne White

LORETH ANNE WHITE

As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe marine biologist, archaeologist or lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But those childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up. She could be them all— the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.

She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski resort in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.

To Pavlo for believing in me, JoJo for her support and Susan Litman for making it all happen.

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 1

“They found a body.”

Hannah looked up from her computer. Al’s face was ashen.

“They think it’s Amy. Up in Grizzly Bowl.” The forty-five-year-old publisher of the White River Gazette dug his hands into his hair, held his head, as if trying to keep reality from seeping in.

Hannah pushed her chair back. She said nothing but moved quickly across the newsroom toward Al. He was shaking, the dial tone still buzzing from the telephone receiver that lay on his desk. She took it, gently replaced it in the cradle and sat next to him.

“Was that the police?” she asked softly.

He nodded. “They’re waiting for the coroner to come in from Vancouver by chopper.”

“God, I’m so sorry, Al.”

He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. “Hell, Hannah, I guess I always knew the news would come sometime, but—” he looked away from her, out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the wild sun-kissed peaks that rose in an amphitheater around British Columbia’s White River Valley “—it still comes as a gut slammer.”

It was last October, almost a year ago, that Amy had vanished, seemingly into thin air. A winter had come and gone. Upwards of two million skiers had carved tracks into Grizzly Bowl on Powder Mountain, where a woman’s cries had been heard by hikers last fall. And once the snows had begun to melt, thousands of sightseers had been ferried via gondola to hike the Grizzly Traverse and look back out over Grizzly Bowl, the glacier and the spectacular Coast Mountain scene below.

How could they have missed her?

Hannah reached forward and took Al’s rough, sun-browned hand in her own. “How’d they find her?”

He cleared his throat. “Wildlife activity. It alerted mountain staff this morning.”

Hannah knew search-and-rescue personnel had told Powder Mountain employees to keep a watch out for any abnormal wildlife activity as snows receded. It was standard procedure in these parts. But nothing had turned up in the spring. Nothing throughout the summer.

And, as long as there’d been no body, no proof that Amy had died, there’d always been hope. Al had hung on to that. All the while he had hoped. And he’d kept paying the rent on Amy’s apartment. “Just in case,” he’d said.

He turned to her, eyes, the same azure as Amy’s, shimmering with emotion. “Sven was the one who found her.”

Hannah’s chest felt tight. Sven Jansen was the mountain guide Amy used to go out with. Things cut so close in a small community like this. As a foreign correspondent Hannah had covered wars and natural disasters, yet there was nothing to compare; this touched her in ways those stories seldom had. When tragedy hit a town as small as White River, it touched everyone. It became personal.

Al dragged both his weather-beaten hands through his thatch of white hair. “God, Hannah, I was supposed to be watching over her.”

“This is beyond your control, Al, we all know that.”

Several phones were ringing. The news of the discovery was out, and media hounds would be baying for information. Amy’s parents were well connected in Canada’s political circles, and the White River Gazette, as Amy’s workplace, was part of this story no matter what.

Hannah placed a hand on Al’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go home. I’ll handle this for now. We can regroup when you’re ready.”

He looked up, angst deepening the age lines that mapped his craggy face, his effort to compose himself visible. “Thanks. I think I will. I need to call my sister.” He reached out and took Hannah’s hand. It was an unusual gesture for Al, a man as independent and robust as the Coast Mountain terrain. She had a sense it was more than her hand he was reaching for. He was reaching for answers.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without your help this past year, Hannah.”

“It’s okay, Al. I owe you. You’ve always been there for me.”

The phones shrilled, relentless. Al stared at the flashing red message lights. Reality calling. It wasn’t going to go away. “This is one of the biggest news stories to hit this valley. I guess the Gazette should have someone up there on Grizzly.”

“I know. I’ll see to it.” She patted his hand. “Go home, Al.”

He stood, paused.

She knew what he was thinking. That Amy’s death wasn’t an accident. She couldn’t believe it, either. Especially after the suspicious break-in at Amy’s apartment at the same time Amy went missing. “I’ll be there. Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

He nodded.

Hannah watched as Amy’s uncle left the office, his usually powerful posture crumpled.

The gondola doors swung slowly shut. Hannah was cocooned in the little cabin as it swung from its moorings and lifted into the air, swaying slightly from side to side.

It was a twenty-five-minute ride to the top and then a short hike up to the traverse.

She always found the gondola soothing, with its quiet mechanical hum. It was meditative, lifting her above the world, separating her. It helped her think. And she needed to think. She needed to compose herself for what she might find on Grizzly Glacier. She wondered what clues Amy’s body might yield after sleeping for so long under the ice.

The late-August sun was balmy, and bits of light white fluff, the seeds of the fireweed, waltzed on warm currents of air around the gondola. Summer snow—that’s what Danny called it. Hannah smiled, thinking of her boy. She was glad she had relented and let him go and stay with her mom for the last two weeks of his summer holidays.

She had never let him go to his gran’s smallholding on Vancouver Island for so long but Daniel had conspired with his granny to twist Hannah’s arm. Hannah had hoped to join them there for the Labor Day weekend, but with this latest development, she didn’t think she would be able to make it. She was pretty much working full-time at the Gazette now, balancing her schedule around Danny’s needs.

She had slipped into this routine after Amy disappeared last year. She had wanted to help Al out. It wasn’t a bad job, and with Danny going into first grade next month, she would have even more time.

The gondola lurched as it passed another lift tower. Hannah could see a black bear and its cub down on the ski run. White River Valley was a sparkling jewel far below, a community built around a string of glacier-fed lakes. From up high the lakes were shimmering beads, with hues from chalky green to crystal-clear sapphire. The town got its name from the river that cascaded down through the gorge separating Powder Mountain from neighboring Moonstone Mountain. The river was milky with glacial silt and the waters gushed frothing and creamy white into frigid Alabaster Lake below.

So beautiful, thought Hannah, yet so harsh. They always made her think of Danny’s father. Beautiful but hard. Cold. Secretive. Rex Logan was like these peaks around her, carved from stone and scarred by time. There was an underlying sense of wildness and danger about him. She should have recognized from the start that he would hurt her.

She hated herself for having fallen for him, for naively believing that he was the one she would spend the rest of her life with.

Never again would she let passion overrule her common sense. Never again would she be so deceived, so lacking in guile.

Never.

She would always stay in control.

Hannah left the gondola station and made her way along the rocky trail that led up to the traverse above Grizzly Bowl, which cradled the glacier and looked like a giant’s scoop out of the mountain. A marmot ducked and scuttled for cover as she approached.

She could see police tape up on the trail above the glacier. It screamed crime scene, except Amy’s death was supposed to have been an accident. The bright-yellow ribbon fluttered in the Alpine breeze against a backdrop of painfully bright blue sky and glacial snow. Behind it a crowd of curious tourists and media gathered on the hiking trail. They were all looking down, watching a group of search-and-rescue personnel and police officers on the glacier below.

Hannah could hear the dull thuck-thuck-thuck of a helicopter somewhere, closing in. From her vantage point below, she aimed her camera lens up at the crowd, focused, clicked.

She was used to having her own Canadian News Agency cameraman on a job, but this was not Africa and her CNA days were over. Balancing a career that could see her in Angola one month and Sierra Leone the next was no life for a child. She had experienced what that kind of lifestyle had done to her father, to her family.

As Hannah clicked, the yellow tape was sucked from its moorings into a brutal whirling frenzy. The chopper was coming in for a landing just off the trail, churning up everything in its path. A red hat went flying. People held their hair, ducked their heads. Gray glacial silt boiled up in a cloud around them.

Hannah kept shooting.

She jogged up the steep trail as the blur of the two lethal rotor blades slowed and came into focus. She recognized the coroner and members of a television crew as they alighted from the mechanical beast. A man in a suit followed. He stood out amongst the windbreakers and fleece. This story was pulling them all in, even the suits. Hannah guessed he was with one of the big U.S. outfits.

She joined the crowd, out of breath. There were other newspaper photographers capturing the scene. She tried to peer down into the glacial bowl but couldn’t really make out what was happening below. The TV crew started filming.

“Hannah, over here.” The Swiss-German accent and granular rasp was unmistakable.

“Hey, Gunter.” She moved over to join the plastic surgeon. He was deeply tanned with a head of thick salt-and-pepper hair and clear hazel eyes. Hannah couldn’t help thinking he carried his years exceptionally well. But then, Dr. Gunter Schmidt was devoted to the pursuit of youth. It was that same promise of eternal youth that attracted the rich and famous to his White River Spa.

“I was on a walk up here on the mountain.” Gunter could not pronounce words with a w. He said them as if they started with a v. But despite his pronunciation oddities and Germanic syntax, his English was good.

“And then I see all this commotion. They say it is Amy.” He was also out of breath. “That is right? They have found her?”

“It looks that way, Gunter.”

“Ach, poor Al. He must be taking it hard, ja?”

“He is. He’s struggling.” Hannah looked away from the scene below, her eyes following the trail she knew so well. From here, it climbed a little farther then leveled out along the ridge toward the ski area boundary. Then it rounded the ridge and led to a series of small, rustic cabins designed for overnight use. A hiker could spend a week doing the full loop. Back-country skiers used the cabins in winter. “I just can’t figure what Amy was doing up here.”

“She was perhaps hiking,” the doctor offered, following her gaze.

“No, Gunter. I don’t buy it. Her clothes were wrong. The weather, the timing, the break-in. Nothing fits.”

The doctor frowned.

Hannah lifted her camera and peered through her lens at the scene below on the glacier. She could make out the form of Sven Jansen. She clicked the shutter as the team started to slowly make their way with a body bag back up the glacier toward the chopper.

Rex Logan’s heart missed a beat.

Anyone watching him in his air-conditioned Toronto office would not have noticed a thing. He never showed his emotion. That came from his British Special Air Services training. That, combined with his medical specialty, was one of the reasons the Bellona Channel found him so valuable.

But the picture on page three of the Toronto Star had upped his pulse rate.

He leaned forward to press the button on his phone. “Hold all my calls, Margaret.”

He loosened his tie and flattened the page out onto his desk. It was Hannah McGuire.

In grainy black-and-white.

He scanned the headlines. A body had been found on Powder Mountain in White River. Hannah had been captured by a news photographer among a crowd on the mountain. She was holding a camera in one hand, looking toward a body bag. Her long hair was blowing across her face. She was trying to hold it back with her other hand.

Rex ran his forefinger slowly over her grainy image. He knew the feel of that hair. Her knew her smell. He knew the sensation of her golden skin. Her image haunted his dreams at night.

He absently fingered the small Ethiopian silver ring on his finger as the hot memories welled up and assaulted him in his cool office. He could almost smell the crushed frangipani blooms, hear the sound of night insects, taste the salt on her skin, see her eyes. Those eyes, leonine, with the color and fire of fine whiskey.

Rex closed his eyes and slowly sucked in air. The memories of Marumba often came like that. They would wash over him before he could send the unbidden images scuttling back into the recesses of his tired brain.

He knew Hannah was in White River. He knew that much from the Canadian News Agency office. Once, just once, when he had a whiskey too many, he’d called the CNA headquarters. It was a lapse of reason. She was the only one who did that to him, skewed his judgment. He’d wanted to know where he could find her. They’d put him through to a photographer who used to work with Hannah on her Africa assignments. He told Rex that Hannah had quit and moved to White River.

Why the hell she had dropped her career as one of the best damn foreign correspondents this country had known was beyond him. She was at the peak of her profession. And now, here she was, in a photo on his desk that had caught her looking out over a body on a mountain in White River.

White River, where the International Toxicology Conference was due to start in one week.

His contacts in Cairo had indicated that several rogue nations were planning to send agents to that conference. The list of participants was already starting to read like a who’s who in the world of biological warfare. Red flags were going up all over the place. Something was going down. And the Bellona Channel board members wanted him there. Only trouble was, Rex didn’t want to go.

He didn’t want to run into Hannah McGuire.

Rex pulled open his desk drawer and fished out a magnifying glass. He hungered to see her more clearly.

Useless. It just made things bigger, blurrier, grainier. He put the magnifying glass back into his drawer and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets before reading the story.

There was no reference to Hannah. The article noted that the body was presumed to be that of Amy Barnes, a young reporter who’d gone missing last fall.

He looked at the photograph again. Then something new caught his eye and, for a second time, his heart beat faster.

It couldn’t be.

In his preoccupation with Hannah he hadn’t noticed the man standing near her. It had been six years since he’d last seen him. If it wasn’t him, the likeness was incredible.

Rex needed to know more.

This was more than coincidence. Two people on Powder Mountain, both linked to a tumultuous period in his life six years ago. Hannah and this man. The last time he had laid eyes on either of them was in Marumba.

He leaned forward and pushed the phone intercom button to ring his secretary. “Margaret, did you tape the news last night?” She usually recorded the CNA news. It aired at six o’clock, before she returned from work. She liked to watch it when she got home.

“I always tape the CNA, Rex.” Margaret’s voice came back through the intercom. “It comes on again later at night, but way past my bedtime. Even an old-timer like me needs beauty rest.”

“You’re beautiful to me, Margaret. I need that tape.” There would be something on the CNA news, he was sure. The missing girl’s parents were high profile, and the search for Amy Barnes had been one of the biggest search-and-rescue missions mounted in recent years.

Rex took his pizza slice out of the microwave and cracked open an ice-cold cola. He had to do something about his eating habits. Always on the run. He settled in front of his television set, inserted Margaret’s tape, took a bite of pizza and pushed the play button.

It had been a long time since he’d watched Hannah on TV. The last he’d seen of her work was her acclaimed CNA documentary on conflict diamonds in Africa. That was what she’d been working on when she had first caught his eye and held his libido hostage in Penaka, the capital of Marumba.

Rex leaned forward as the camera cut to a TV reporter on Powder Mountain. The reporter was saying there would be an autopsy. Then, as the camera moved to pan the faces in the crowd, it caught the gold of her hair and lingered on the profile of a woman made for television. Hannah McGuire’s lambent image sprang to life, invading his living room.

She stole his attention from the rest of the news report.

Rex slowly swallowed his mouthful of food, fixated with her image. She was in khaki hiking shorts and a green jacket. She was lightly bronzed from a summer of sun, the way she had been in Marumba, her limbs long and strong.

And then she was gone.

Rex quickly rewound the clip, took a swig of his cold drink and focused on the other faces in the crowd.

There was no doubt. It was him in the suit, standing near her on that mountain. Mitchell. The CIA agent Rex blamed for botching the Marumba laboratory raid.

If it hadn’t been for Mitchell’s preemptive strike on the secret biological weapons research lab in Marumba six years ago, they would have in custody the man the world had dubbed the Plague Doctor.

Mitchell had called in the Marumba government troops too early. And he had made too much noise about it. Dr. Ivan Rostov, the Plague Doctor, had been forewarned. He had slithered back into the murk of the underworld, taking his lethal secrets with him.

The question now, thought Rex as he remembered the pizza cooling on his plate, is why U.S. Central Intelligence was interested in the death of this young Canadian reporter. And why Agent Mitchell in particular? His specialty was biological warfare intelligence. Perhaps he was in White River early for the toxicology conference. The CIA always kept tabs on get-togethers like these. Yet, the conference wasn’t due to be held for at least another week.

There was no way Rex could avoid going to White River now. And if he knew the Bellona Channel board of directors, they would want him on a plane yesterday.

He reached for his secure phone and punched in the number of the Bellona Channel board chair, Dr. William J. Killian.

“Killian, it’s Rex Logan.”

“Rex, how the hell are you? I heard you were back in Toronto.”

Rex did not waste time on platitudes. “We have a situation developing, Killian. We need to get the board members together for direction. I have some interesting data from my Cairo trip, and there are some developments in White River. Could be related. Looks like a hot spot.”

“Give me one or two hours Rex. I should have everyone assembled for a secure telecon within that time.”

“Standing by.”

Killian, a reclusive eighty-year-old billionaire and founder of Bio Can Pharmaceutical, knew firsthand the blight of biological weapons. In his youth he had worked for a United Nations special commission to disarm rogue states of their offensive bioweapons programs.

The billionaire was widely regarded as a visionary. He believed biology in the wrong hands could ultimately spell the end of the human race. Killian felt governments around the world had not fully grasped the implications of the biological threat. In his mind not enough time and resources were being thrown at the problem.

He set out to do something about it.

He formed the Bellona Channel. It was a civilian organization and civilian funded, but the Bellona Channel operatives assembled by Killian were all gleaned from the elite ranks of some of the world’s crack government organizations including the Navy SEALS, the CIA, Britain’s Special Air Services and MI-6, Israel’s Mossad and the FBI.

Killian had hand picked Rex from the SAS in Britain and brought him to Canada to head up the indigenous-medicine arm of Bio Can Pharmaceutical. The position served as a cover for his covert work with Bellona.

Rex grabbed the phone at the first ring.

“Rex, we have the full board present, go ahead.”

“Evening, gentlemen.”

The greetings were hearty and intimate, coming in from around the world. For some it was an ungodly early hour. Rex was proud to work for this team. The Bellona board was comprised of some of the brightest minds of this age. They shared Killian’s vision and were bound by loyalty and a common code of ethics.

Once the social niceties were over, Rex outlined the scenario. It was his mention of CIA agent Ken Mitchell’s presence in White River that really piqued the board’s interest.

“The way things unfolded with that lab raid in Marumba, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Ken Mitchell was double dipping,” noted Killian.

“A double agent?” The question came from the Australian director.

“It’s feasible. The question now is, what is he doing in White River? We need to find out and we need you on the job, Rex. You’re the one with the background on this case.” There were murmurs of agreement at Killian’s assessment.

Rex felt a sick little slide in his stomach. There went his hope of sending a replacement to White River. Hannah’s lambent image swam back into his brain. He squeezed it out and channeled his attention back to the teleconference.

“Right. I’ll make arrangements. Any word on the Plague Doc?” Since the botched lab raid, the hunt for Dr. Ivan Rostov, one of the biggest international manhunts in history, had turned up nothing. Not even a lead. The Bellona Channel was just one of the many intelligence agencies after him.

“Nothing so far, Rex. It’s been six years now. For all we know, he could be dead.” Killian cleared his throat. “But he did escape that lab fire with his latest work, the work on ethnic bullets. And that’s what has us worried. Even if Rostov was taken out, his work could still be completed by another rogue scientist and sold to the highest bidder.”

Rex grunted in acknowledgment. Ethnic bullets was the term the Bellona Channel had given to the Plague Doctor’s efforts to genetically modify a range of lethal viruses including smallpox, Marburg, Ebola and bubonic plague. The Plague Doctor had started designing these bugs in his Marumba lab so that they would target only people with a specific genetic makeup, creating scourges that could potentially kill only people with blue eyes, for example, or only people of a particular race. The Human Genome Project had made this possible.

The potential was horrendous.

“We need you in White River immediately, Logan.”

The waters of Howe Sound sparkled in his rearview mirror as the road twisted and climbed up into the thin air of the Coast Mountains.

Margaret had seen to it that Rex had a rental vehicle waiting at the Vancouver airport. He’d asked her to make sure he got something with off-road capability. He was heading into rough country.

The narrow, treacherous road snaked up through forest and raw canyon. The view of the tortured Tantalus range in the distance was breathtaking. Rex felt his spirit wanting to soar as he gained elevation, but as he neared White River, he saw dark clouds up ahead.

They were massing over the distant snow-capped peaks, threatening to unleash their heavy burden.

The road sign ahead indicated the White River turnoff. Rex took the next exit and began the steep climb up through the valley toward White River and Powder Mountain. There were road-block booms at intervals along the road. They were raised up now, but Rex knew that when the winter weather turned foul and the roads deadly, the black and yellow booms would be lowered.

He felt a slight chill on his skin as he gained elevation. The bruised-ochre sky added to his sense of unease as he closed in on the ski town. Thunder rumbled faintly in the hills.

Well, he would just have to do his job and try to stay out of Hannah McGuire’s way for the next week or so.

With a stroke of luck, he might not see her at all.

“Take a seat, Hannah.” Fred LeFevre, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sergeant, motioned to a gray plastic chair. “Mind if I eat my lunch?”

“No. Go ahead. Thanks for seeing me.” She despised the way the RCMP staff sergeant allowed his eyes to range over her unabashedly. He was doing it now.

She sat. “Did you manage to get one of the guys to look into Amy’s case again?”

He unwrapped his cheeseburger as he spoke. “I did, as a favor to you. But there’s nothing there. You should let it rest.”

Hannah leaned forward. “But, Fred, you have to agree, the timing of the break-in was curious. Al and I went through all her things. The place was ransacked, but nothing is missing. Her CDs are there, her mountain bike, her video equipment, her climbing gear—”

“Hannah, Hannah.” Fred held up his stubby-fingered hands. “The robbery was one in a series last year. There’s no point in rehashing this now that we’ve found her.”

Anger prickled. “I’m not rehashing. It’s just that this whole business feels wrong. Especially now that we have found her. Amy wasn’t dressed for the weather. She had no gear. She left no note. It just raises more questions.”

She didn’t think Fred had even heard her. “We think the reason nothing was taken from her apartment was because the perpetrators were interrupted.” He lifted his cheeseburger with both hands and bit into it. Sauce slopped out the sides and splotched onto the waxed wrapper on his desk. The thick smell of fried onions permeated the air in the small office.

Hannah shook her head. “I just can’t believe it was unrelated to her disappearance. Neither can Al. It was like someone was looking for something.”

“Look, it’s out of my hands now. The coroner has ruled her death accidental.” He spurted ketchup onto his fries. “It’s hard. I know. But you have to let it go. We may never find out exactly what happened. Unless there is evidence of a crime, I’m obliged to close the book at my end.” He chewed as he spoke, squeezing his words around the fast-food mash in his mouth.

“Al still has the lease to her apartment. Maybe you could take one more look?”

Fred took another chomp out of his cheeseburger and followed it with a fistful of fries. He chewed a little before opening his mouth to talk again. “Like I said, there’s no evidence that the B and E is connected to her accident. I just don’t have the resources to—”

“So you’re not going to try and find the people who did this?”

“There were no prints. Nothing to go on.”

She rubbed her hands over her face, scrubbing at the frustration. This was a dead end. He was no help.

Fred stopped chewing. “Hannah…I’m sorry.”

She stood. “It’s okay. Thanks for your time.”

“Look, if you come up with something concrete, anything that will justify opening up the case again, I will.”

“Thanks, Fred. Enjoy your lunch.” She turned and walked out, feeling his eyes on her behind.

There had to be something. She just needed to find it. She’d promised Al she would help get to the bottom of this. Perhaps she might still find some clue in Amy’s apartment. Maybe she and Al had missed something a year ago.

Outside the RCMP detachment, the sky was darkening with the threat of a storm. The light in the village was a dim and unearthly amber under the bruised clouds, and there was a distant grumble of thunder up in the peaks. Branches nodded in grim deference to the mounting wind.

Hannah stood on the stairs and zipped up her jacket, irked at how the weather always affected her moods. The brooding clouds seemed to hold ominous portent. The sudden chill seeped up and into her spine. She felt as if things were closing in on her as she stepped out into the wind.

Chapter 2

The concierge at Rex’s hotel was right, the Black Diamond Grill had one of the best patios in White River. It was located near the gondola station at the base of Powder Mountain, and the view of the grassy ski slopes was unobstructed.

The patio was buzzing with the Friday-afternoon lunch crowd. People were lapping up the sunshine after last night’s fierce storm.

Rex was shown to a small table under a red umbrella at the rear of the patio. He counted himself lucky to find a spot. Luckier than he had been in his hunt for CIA Agent Mitchell this morning.

There was no Ken Mitchell registered at any of the hotels in White River. But that was not surprising. Mitchell would hardly use his real name. Still, Rex wanted to rule out the obvious.

A waitress with auburn braids approached his table.

“I’ll have the special. And I’ll try the White River ale.”

She took his menu, and Rex settled back to survey the ski town scene. The village was packed with tourists. He could hear British and Australian and American accents. The couple at the table next to him were conversing in Spanish, and next to them was a boisterous party of Japanese teens. Their animation was infectious.

His beer arrived. He spilled the cool amber liquid into his mouth, letting it pool around his tongue before swallowing. The local brew was good.

He stretched his legs out under the table.

And then he saw her.

How could anyone miss her?

Sunlight glinted gold off her hair. The waitress was showing her and two older men to a table at the far end of the patio.

Rex didn’t move despite the quickening of his pulse. He maintained his posture of relaxation. He did not want to draw attention to himself.

One of the men pulled out a chair for her. She sat with fluid grace, her back partially to him. He could just catch her aristocratic profile, her high cheekbones, the shape of her lush mouth. Rex closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, calming the edgy rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He felt as if he’d been winded. A punch to the solar plexus. Nothing could have prepared him for this. So many times he’d dreamed of her, conjured her up from the caverns of his mind. But this hit him straight in the gut. The sight of her in living, breathing, pulsing flesh was a physical assault on his system.

Time slowed. The patio buzz faded.

“You all right, sir?” His waitress was putting his club sandwich in front of him.

He opened his eyes. “Thanks. Just drinking in the summer weather while it lasts.” He was back in control. Cool. Composed. At least, outwardly. He had an ideal vantage point from the back of the patio under the umbrella. He donned his dark shades. She wasn’t likely to see him here.

He took another swig of beer, his eyes fixed on the woman who was once his lover. The woman he still ached for. Her hair was longer than he remembered. More feminine. The thick waves skimmed below her shoulders. It fell softly across her profile as she leaned forward to touch the arm of one of the men. It was a gentle, consoling gesture. He felt his stomach slip. That was Hannah McGuire. A mix of intelligence and compassion, guts and lithe grace. He was a voyeur, studying her jealously from the shadows. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Not for a minute. She was wearing white linen pants, a white tank top, her arms bare and sun browned. Fresh off the pages of a fashion magazine. He drank the sight in.

Every pore in his body screamed to go to her. Touch her. Hold her. Tell her he was sorry. He should’ve known it would be close to impossible to avoid her here. White River was a small town. Perhaps deep down, at some primal subconscious level, he’d even wanted to run into her. Perhaps that’s why he’d accepted this mission instead of trying to insist on Scott as a replacement. His body had brought him where his mind refused to go. Hannah McGuire was like a drug to his system. And the sight of her now, after all these years, made him feel like an alcoholic must feel after taking that first forbidden sip.

Forbidden. Hannah was off-limits. He forced his attention to the company she was with.

The man was talking to her, shaking his head, as if in disbelief. Rex didn’t recognize him.

But the other, there was something about the other man that butted sharply up against the deep recesses of his memory. He was familiar. Very. But Rex couldn’t place him.

The man sat ramrod straight, broad shoulders pulled back. Tanned, fit, strong. His dark hair was flecked with silver, but from this distance it was difficult to pinpoint his age. Rex mentally filed the facts, trying to come up with a match.

All three of them looked up as a fourth man approached their table.

Again his pulse quickened. Agent Ken Mitchell.

Rex bit into his sandwich and slowly chewed as he watched. Now, this was getting really interesting.

Gunter, Al and Hannah all looked up as the tall man approached their table.

“Hello again, Hannah.” It was the Washington reporter she’d met on the mountain, the one in the suit.

“Mark, hi. Please join us, take a seat,” Hannah motioned to an empty chair.

“Thank you.” He was wearing dark glasses, a crisp white shirt. Formal for this resort town. He’d brought his big-city sensibilities with him.

Hannah made the introductions. “Mark Bamfield, this is Al Brashear, publisher of the Gazette, and this is Dr. Gunter Schmidt from the White River Spa.” She turned to Al. “Mark works as a freelance writer. He came to the Gazette office this morning to talk about Amy.”

Mark Bamfield shook hands. “Actually, I’m here for the upcoming forensic toxicology conference. I’m generally a medical and science writer, based out of the States.” He pulled up the chair, sat down and lifted his sunglasses. “But since I’m here, I’ve been asked to pick up the Amy Barnes story.” He turned to Al. “This must be difficult. I’m sorry.”

Al nodded. “I understand the news value. I’m still a media man.”

“I was hoping I’d get a chance to meet you, Al. I want to do an in-depth color piece on your niece. With your consent, of course. Something that captures the spirit of who she was. I was wondering if I could take a look at some of the articles she’d been working on, get a sense of her life, her work.”

Al looked weary. “Of course. Feel free to call me at the office. We can set something up.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you.”

Gunter stepped in, changing the topic, breaking the subtle tension that had settled around his friend. “Tell me, Mark, the toxicology conference, is there anything in particular, any specific speakers you are interested in?”

Mark turned to Gunter. “I plan to attend most of the sessions, see what grabs me. Will you be there?”

“Ja, but of course. It’s not every day one of these things comes to your doorstep. You are covering this for a newspaper?”

“Magazine. Spectra.”

Hannah knew of it. High profile. “Nice gig.”

“Not bad. Now that you mention it, you had a pretty good one yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realized, after I met you yesterday, you’re Mac McGuire’s daughter.”

Hannah tensed. She felt instantly cornered, always did when anything about her past sneaked into the present she’d so carefully carved out for herself and Danny.

“Yes. Mac was my dad.” She forked a piece of lettuce from her Caesar salad but couldn’t find the impetus to bring it to her mouth.

“You were following in his footsteps for a while there, McGuire. One of the best. They were even calling you Mac, Jr.”

“You been checking up on me?”

Mark laughed. “Mac’s a legend in media circles. So why’d you quit? What brought you here?” To this media backwater. The words hung unsaid.

She forced a smile. “I needed a change. And I like the skiing.”

Mark raised his brows, studying her. She had an uneasy feeling about him. Like he could see into her, like he knew something. She forced the lettuce into her mouth.

Al was watching her, too. She’d never spoken to him about Mac. But she figured he knew she was the daughter of the famous Canadian international correspondent. She loved Al for the fact that he never pried, that he sensed her need to put the past away. That he just let her be while the scabs of her wound grew strong.

She saw Gunter Schmidt studying her, too, as if the fact she was Mac’s daughter suddenly meant she had to be judged by new standards. But the plastic surgeon made no comment. He pushed his empty plate to one side. “Well, that was good.” Gunter dabbed the corners of his mouth neatly with his napkin. “But my patients, they are waiting.” He called for the check.

Rex watched as the man with gray-flecked hair called for the bill.

So, Hannah knew Ken Mitchell. No matter how he looked at it, he was not going to be able to avoid her. She was working her way into his investigation. He’d need to ask her about Mitchell. And the other man, the one tugging at his memory.

He watched them stand, say their goodbyes. Hannah shook Mitchell’s hand. She looked unhappy. It tore at him.

Do you remember me, Hannah McGuire? Do you hate me? What is making you sad, my lovely? God he wanted to ask her those questions. He’d have to shelve those for another life. Right now he needed to ask her about Mitchell. But how to approach her after all these years? For the first time in his adult life, Rex Logan felt lost. Helpless. He hadn’t planned for this. The cold, calculating, fearless agent was not only lost, he was afraid. But with the anxiety that sloshed in his belly was a sharp little zing. A spike of adrenaline. Unwanted, but there. It hummed through him at the thought of coming face-to-face with Hannah McGuire, hearing the smokiness of her voice, seeing those tiny forest-green flecks in her gold leonine eyes.

But not now. Not yet. He wasn’t ready. Right now he’d tail Mitchell. He watched them make for the exit, giving them time.

Mark Bamfield held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Al, Gunter. Thanks for inviting me to join you.”

He turned to Hannah and took her hand in his. “Nice to see you again, Hannah. Maybe dinner sometime?”

She just nodded and watched him go. He’d left her unsettled, off-kilter.

“You okay, Hannah?”

“Yeah, Gunter. Just tired. Thanks for lunch.”

“Anytime. You look after Al now, ja?”

“Ja, Ja.” Al jokingly waved his friend off, mimicking his raspy German accent. “You go back to your filthy-rich patients. I can take care of myself.”

Hannah affectionately took Al by the arm as they made their way down the pedestrian walkway back to the office. Sometimes she felt he was the father she never really had. “So you can look after yourself, huh?”

“Damn right. Just need a little time.” To find out what really happened to Amy. The words went unsaid. Hannah knew Al wouldn’t heal until he had the answer.

The sun was warm on their backs as they strolled through the summer crowds. Much warmer than an hour ago when Hannah had needed the extra comfort of her sweater. She realized suddenly it was missing.

“Oh, Al, my sweater. I must have left it at the restaurant. You go on ahead. I’ll see you back at the office.”

“No, no. I’ll come with you. Too nice out. Any excuse to extend my break is welcome.” He fell in step with her as she headed quickly back to the Black Diamond.

Al waited at the restaurant entrance as Hannah stepped up onto the patio and made her way back to the table. They had been gone only minutes. Her sweater was still draped over the back of the chair.

She gathered it up, turned to head out.

Then froze.

He stood in shadow at the far end of the patio.

He was looking directly at her.

The world around her faded away. Hannah reached absently for the back of a chair as her vision narrowed. She needed to steady herself. Her chest was like a vise. She couldn’t breathe.

He didn’t move.

She told herself it couldn’t be. It was someone who looked like him. But she knew. In her gut. She knew the lines of him, the stance, like she knew her own son. Her mind reeled. Irrational panic licked through her blood and gripped at her throat. For so long he had lurked in the shadows of her mind. Now he stood, in flesh and blood, in the shade of the patio.

Here, in White River.

The shock of it was too much. She wasn’t ready to deal with seeing him.

She turned, walked woodenly toward Al, clutching her sweater.

“Hannah, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He grabbed her elbow in support.

“I…I think I am coming down with something. I just need to get out of here. I…I’ll see you back at the office.” She pulled away from Al and started to weave quickly through the groups of tourists thronging the walkways.

She headed for the park with its network of trails that ran along the White River.

She broke into a run when she reached the gravel path, ignoring the sharp little stones that slipped into her sandals. Usually running eased her pain. Now the air rasped in her lungs.

She stopped only when she reached the little waterfall.

She sat down on her rock, close to the water’s edge. Daniel called it Mommy’s Rock. The little one beside it was Danny’s Rock. They would often come to the park and picnic here beside the river. They would watch the whitewater churn over the boulders and throw a fine mist into the air. Danny liked the way the droplets would catch the sun and spin the light into a myriad of rainbows.

Hannah turned her face toward the raging water. She let the sound wash over her and the fine mist kiss her cheeks.

The knot in her gut slowly loosened, unraveled and bubbled up through her chest, threatening to spill out in a warm release of tears. She tilted her head back, scrunching her eyes, angry with herself.

Fool.

Fight or flight. She’d had the classic response to a threat. And she’d flown. She’d run like hunted prey. The way she’d been running emotionally for the last six years. She knew she would have to face him one day. She just didn’t think it would be now. Like this. Here, in her mountain sanctuary.

And she was scared. She’d built something here for Danny and herself. A home. She couldn’t let his presence in White River rock those foundations. She couldn’t let him hurt Danny. Thank God her boy was away. She needed to figure out how to deal with this.

Hannah took a deep breath, drinking in the damp, cool air, filling her lungs to the bottom in a bid to steady herself, calm the heart jackhammering in her chest, marshal her thoughts.

But her heart leaped straight back into her mouth at the sudden firm pressure of a large hand on her shoulder.

She spun round and stared up, straight into eyes, pale blue as the sky behind him.

Danny’s eyes.

She opened her mouth but no words came. He seemed bigger, his face harder. There was no laughter in those ice eyes. Yet there was still that sensual mouth, that powerful masculine aura. He took her breath away.

“Hannah, we need to talk.”

He still had a trace of British accent, refined in sound even as it was rough and seductive in tone. It melted her core in an instant.

“Rex—” His name came from her lips in a breathy whisper. “Please…please don’t touch me.” She couldn’t bear it. His hand on her. The sensation. The heaviness. The warmth, the crashing kaleidoscope of bottled memories that came spinning, splashing out through her brain.

He let go of her shoulder and she caught the glint of a silver ring. Her breath choked in her throat.

He was still wearing her ring. The little Ethiopian silver ring she had bought for him at a market in Marumba. It had been a lark. They’d been deliriously happy. She’d been in love, or so she had thought. She had joked that as long as Rex wore that ring, he belonged to her.

And he was still wearing it. On the little finger of his left hand.

Hannah was suddenly overwhelmed with six years worth of conflicting emotions. They surged up in waves and crashed over her. Her need for him. Her hate. Her bitterness. Her anger. Her desperate need to understand.

She started to shake inside. All those things she had thought to say to him if she ever ran into him again were obliterated, deleted, at the sight of those darkly fringed eyes of blue ice. And the ring.

She looked up from the ring into those wolf eyes. They bit back into her with Arctic intensity, searching, probing. She felt naked under his scrutiny. He held her captive with his gaze as he slowly came round to sit on Danny’s rock.

“What are you doing here, Rex?”

“I came for the toxicology conference.”

Not for her. His words cut deeper than they should have.

“You…you didn’t know I was here?”

He leaned forward, as if to touch her, held back. “I knew, Hannah.”

What else did he know? She felt a talon of fear claw at her heart. What had he really come for? “You were hoping you wouldn’t run in to me?”

“I was going to look you up. We need to talk.”

There was so much to say. She had so many questions. Why did you leave me like that? She wanted to scream it at him. Damn her pride. She wanted to hit that hard, muscular chest with her fists. She wanted to shake him. Hurt him. Run her fingers through that gloss of ebony hair. Feel the give of those sculpted lips under the tips of her fingers. God, she just wanted him to hold her.

She tried to stand. The world seemed to have shifted on its axis, leaving her unbalanced. She fought the buckling sensation in her knees. She needed to stand over him. Feel the height. Find some strength. “I don’t think there’s anything to say, Rex. You made that clear in your note.” She needed to buy time. To think.

She took a step back, turned to leave.

“Wait, Hannah!” He was off the rock, gripping her wrist. She could feel her pulse beating against the strength of his fingers.

She looked up into his eyes. “I did, Rex. Six years ago I waited. I’ve waited long enough.”

He stiffened, eyes narrowing like those of a Siberian husky. A small muscle pulsed in his jaw. But he said nothing, just loosened the grip on her wrist, let it fall.

It was the ultimate rejection. He was doing it to her all over again. Hot wetness spilled up into her eyes. She turned so that he wouldn’t see. And she started up the riverbank, half hoping he’d call out to her and explain.

He didn’t.

She held her spine stiff. Ignoring the bite of stones in her sandals, she walked smoothly, proudly, away. But inside she cried. Like the child who had cried for the love of her father. Like the woman who had vowed never to need a man to make her whole.

Rex watched her go. A proud and beautiful woman, her long hair swinging gently across her back. A woman once his. His body screamed to call out to her. To tell her the truth. To explain that he’d had to leave. That he could never be with her. That he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. And nothing…nothing in this world had cost him more than that one act. He’d left her, alone in that tent, sleeping under an African sky. And with her, he’d left his heart.

Chapter 3

“’Night, Danny. Love you.”

“Love you more.”

“You know that’s not possible. Bye, sweetie. Be good.” Hannah put down the phone, picked up her mug of cocoa and walked barefoot out onto the deck.

At least Danny was enjoying himself. She stood at the railing, looking out over Alabaster Lake, cradling her cocoa. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his constant chattering, his incessant questions. His funny little quips. His mess of toys all over the living room floor.

She sipped from her mug. Dusk was settling on the valley but the snow-capped peaks still basked in the sun’s attention. They were bathed with soft peach Alpenglow. So beautiful. So distant. She couldn’t remember when she last felt so alone. She watched as a canoe cut across the glass of the lake, two people paddling in harmony, perfect balance. Their unity lent power to their strokes, purpose to their direction. But she was alone. She’d been left to paddle her own canoe. And she had. Her stroke was not as strong, but she’d found a balance of sorts. She’d been content, if not happy.

Until now. Until today.

Rex had brought a storm into the valley, whipping up waves and rocking her fragile boat. She had to find a way to steady it. She couldn’t see that way right now.

Damn him. He hadn’t even tried to explain. She wouldn’t humiliate herself by asking.

The sun slipped off the peaks and the chill deepened instantly. She set her mug on the railing and reached for her fleece, pulling it tight around her, blocking out the searching fingers of cold.

She had to figure out what to do. This past year Danny had started asking more and more about his father. She was not going to lie to him. She’d told him his dad had left before he was born.

But last month, when Danny asked if his dad even knew that he had been born, she’d been stumped. She’d panicked, changed the subject—and been eaten by guilt since. She hadn’t been ready to deal with it then and she sure as hell wasn’t ready now.

Danny had a right to know the truth. If she didn’t tell him soon that Rex Logan was his father, he would find out himself one day. And at what cost? Yet Hannah was so damn afraid that even if she brought it all out into the open now, Danny would end up feeling the same kind of rejection she had as a child.

She wasn’t ready to shatter her boy’s life.

She had to find a way to sound Rex out. Would he reject Danny outright? Would he be bound by a sense of duty and poke his nose into his son’s life and screw with his head every time his guilt got too big?

Like Mac had?

God knows, Mac had tried to be a father to her, a husband to her mother. But he’d been programmed to roam wild, to chase adventure around the world. Hannah had no doubt Mac had loved her mother once. And he’d tried to do his duty once Hannah was born. But all he did was tear his own soul in two and destroy his family in the process. Sheila McGuire had never really truly been free until Mac lost his life on assignment in the Congo.

God, she was a fool to have fallen into the same trap. She’d fallen for Rex in spite of the fact she’d vowed never to be like her mother. Now she couldn’t see her way free.

And she didn’t have much time. Danny would be home Friday.

The phone rang inside her condo, making her jump. She padded inside, pulling the slider closed against the cold behind her.

She picked up the receiver, half-afraid it was Rex.

“Hannah, it’s Al. Are you okay? You didn’t make it back to the office this afternoon.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks. I was just feeling queasy. Must’ve been something I had for lunch.”

He paused. “There was a man at the Black Diamond. He followed you.”

She was quiet. So Al had seen Rex. Had he seen her boy in the man?

“Hannah?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Look, if you ever want to talk, if you ever—”

“Al, I’m okay. Really. I wasn’t feeling well. That’s all.”

“All right.” He cleared his throat. “I was just worried about you…and I wanted to tell you the coroner’s report came through this afternoon.”

She’d been so wrapped up in her own angst she’d forgotten they’d been expecting it, hoping it would tell them something others may have missed.

“What did it say?”

“Well, Amy had a badly broken left leg.” Hannah could hear the strain in his voice. “It probably happened in the fall. Judging from where she was found, they figure she tried to drag herself along that rock band that forms a lateral moraine halfway down Grizzly Bowl. But from there it’s vertical blue ice, nowhere to go. She died of exposure.”

“But why didn’t they find her? They combed that area?”

“The pathologist figures that her body heat melted her into the glacier. Then the rain that fell the first two nights froze and sealed her under a sheet of ice.”

So that’s why the dogs couldn’t find her, why there was no telltale hump in the snow that came after the rain. Amy had slept in a tomb of frozen glass all winter while a million skiers had played over her.

“It’s final, Hannah. I’ve given up the lease on her apartment. I have to get her stuff packed and out by the end of next week.”

Hannah knew how Al had struggled the last time he had gone into Amy’s home, touched her things. “Would you like me to help?”

“I can’t ask you that.”

“Of course you can. I want to help.”

“I really shouldn’t let you do this—”

“Al, at least let me get started. I’ll get her things into boxes. If you want, you can take it from there.”

“Hannah…I can’t thank you enough.”

“No worries. Really. I can start going through the apartment this weekend. I still have a key.”

Hannah hung up and began to pace in front of her living room windows. They yawned up from floor to ceiling and looked out over the water. On the opposite shores of the lake, lights were beginning to twinkle in White River village. The town was nestled between the feet of Powder and Moonstone Mountains which were themselves cleft apart by the icy river that gushed between them.

Chairlifts reached out from the village and stretched up the flanks of Powder. Moonstone, however, fell outside the ski area boundary and was untouched by lift lines. The only development on Moonstone was on a large swath of land at the base, to the south of the village. It was home to the exclusive White River Spa.

The sky was clear tonight. Calm. A world away from how Hannah felt inside. A moon was rising, the light of it already glinting off mica in the rocks on the peak of Moonstone.

It was up in those mountains that Amy had slept in her ice tomb.

Hannah stopped pacing to stare up at the peaks. An accident. It was all there in the official report. But it still didn’t explain why Amy had gone up there in the first place, why she had left the roped-off trail and fallen to her death, why her apartment was ransacked. There was no way Hannah would be able to sleep tonight. As exhausted as she felt, she was strung tight as a wire.

She may as well go and take a look at the apartment now. She could start sorting Amy’s things. And maybe, just maybe, she’d find some answers.

The moon threw a trail of glimmering gold sovereigns onto black water as Hannah drove the deserted road around the lake and headed toward the lights of the village. She parked her Subaru in the underground and climbed the stairs to the pedestrian-only stroll.

Groups of people clustered around doorways that led down to nightclubs pulsating with primal beats below street level. Some were smoking. Couples strode by, arm in arm, laughing. Restaurants were still busy.

It was quieter down the cobbled path that led to Amy’s apartment on the edge of town. There weren’t as many decorative streetlamps in this less-touristy area.

Hannah felt in her fleece pocket for the key and looked up at the second-story window.

She stopped in her tracks.

She could have sworn she saw light flicker briefly in the window. She waited to see if it would come again. Nothing.

Just jumpy, she told herself. Been a weird day.

She sucked in the cool night air, calming her jittery nerves, and entered the apartment building. She climbed the stairs up to number 204, the place Amy had called home since she’d moved to White River.

The hall light was out.

Damn. Bulb must have blown. Hannah fumbled in the dark trying to get the key into the lock. She swung the door open and stepped blindly into the black apartment, groping for the light switch.

It was instantaneous.

White pain spliced through her shoulder as her arm was wrenched behind her back.

Panic punched her in the stomach. A scream surged through her body and erupted into her throat. It got no further. It was suffocated by leather.

A glove.

She fought to gasp in air. She could see nothing through the blur of blackness.

The door slammed shut behind her, cutting her off from the outside world.

She flailed behind her with her free hand and tore at a handful of hair. An expletive. Male. More pain as he increased the pressure on her arm.

“Shut the hell up or you get hurt.” He spat the words into the dark. Harsh, hoarse. Her lungs screamed for gulps of air. But each time she struggled to move, the pain tore at her shoulder.

Stay calm, Hannah. Stay calm. She forced herself to hold still.

The iron grip eased slightly, as if her attacker was testing. She could feel hot breath at her ear.

He swore and immediately let go of her mouth.

“Hannah?”

A thin beam from a flashlight cut through the dark. Slowly he turned her head and body round to face him, still pinning her arm behind her back. She blinked blindly against the sudden brightness as he looked down into her face.

“Sweet Jesus.” He let the light fall so she could see him. It caught the hard ice of his eyes.

She felt faint.

“Rex?” Her voice came out hoarse, barely audible.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, McGuire? You could have gotten yourself hurt.” He kept his voice a low whisper. His mouth was so close she felt his breath on her lips.

She wrenched free and lunged for the light switch. Light flooded the small apartment.

She whirled round to confront him. “Damn you, Rex Logan! What in hell are you doing in Amy Barnes’s apartment?”

“Lord, woman.” He pushed past her, drew the blinds in a deft movement. “Keep your voice down.”

Uneasiness prickled up the nape of her neck. He looked lethal, dressed in black from head to foot. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His hair was black gloss, and he’d let it grow. It gave him a wild look. The only light thing about him was the glacial ice in his stare. A devil with Arctic eyes. The contrast was startling, unnerving. Almost inhuman.

“You shouldn’t be here, Hannah.” His words were low, threatening.

“You’re the one with no right to be here.” Anger started to boil up, displacing her fear. She could feel the heat of color spilling back into her cheeks. “Give me one good reason not to call the cops and have your sorry ass kicked behind bars, Rex Logan.” She realized she was shaking.

“You do that and you won’t find out what really happened to Amy Barnes.”

She was stunned into silence.

He took a step closer. “Talk to me, Hannah. Tell me why you’re in a dead woman’s apartment at night.” He was unnerving her with his steady blue gaze. She was determined to hold it, not to look away and give him the upper hand.

“What makes you think I believe anything happened to Amy?”

“I know you, Hannah. You don’t let things lie. Never did. That’s why you were good. One of the best. That’s why you’re here, tonight, isn’t it? You’re looking for something.”

She pushed the hair back from her face in an effort to clear her head. Rex stepped even closer. The air crackled between them. She edged backward, toward the phone. Blood drummed in her ears.

“What has any of this got to do with you, Rex?”

“I’m looking for answers. Like you. I don’t believe Amy’s death was an accident.”

Hannah took another step back toward the phone and reached behind her for the receiver.

He was on her in an instant, had her pinned up against the wall, her heart jackhammering against her rib cage. He reached and took the receiver from her hand. Placed it firmly back in the cradle. “No cops.”

She was afraid now. This man was no stranger to attack. He moved like a black jungle cat and had the same power. Hannah swallowed, her throat tight. She tried to speak. “What do you want from me, Rex?”

He held her, up against the wall, a brutally intimate embrace. He leaned in, placing his mouth between her fall of hair and her ear. “More than you’ll ever know, McGuire.” The hot whisper, painfully seductive, snaked through her. A serpent of unwanted desire.

He reached up, slowly took a handful of her hair, gently twisted it through gloved fingers and let it fall back onto her shoulder. It was an achingly intimate gesture. She began to tremble inside. Emotion pricked hot behind her eyes. Damn him. Damn this man from her past. He was pulling the threads of her life apart.

“Come.” He took her wrist, led her to a chair. She was powerless.

“Sit.”

He faced her, seated on the coffee table, his knees almost touching hers. “You gate crashed my party, Hannah. You play by my rules now. That means no police.”

“I…I don’t understand. Who are you, Rex? What’s going on?”

“I found something. Something that makes me think Amy Barnes got herself into trouble. It may have gotten her killed.”

Confusion spiraled through her brain. “You don’t mean murder?”

“I think she was sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted.”

“What…what did you find?”

Again he sidestepped her question. “But if you take this to the cops, you’ll get nowhere. No answers. The police are not going to help you. Trust me on this.”

Trust? She’d trusted Rex Logan once before. She thought she’d known this man. She looked at him now; he was a stranger. A dangerous one. And the cops were his Achilles’ heel. Why?

“And if I do go the cops, what happens to you? You going to try and stop me?”

“You’ll tie me up in bureaucratic red tape, that’s what. Then it’ll be too late.”

“For what?”

He dragged his hands through his hair and blew out a stream of frustration. “Christ, Hannah, why’d you have to walk into this?”

“What, exactly, have I walked in to, Dr. Logan? Who the hell are you?”

He stared at her, assessing.

“Look, either you tell me what the hell is going on or I go to the RCMP detachment right now.”

He stood up, paced, turned to face her. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”

She pushed herself to her feet. “What do you mean you can’t tell me? What do you mean ‘classified’?”

He stepped forward, taking her hands in his. “Hannah, work with me on this. Trust me.”

“Work with you? Trust you? You won’t tell me what the hell is going on. You won’t tell me who you are, why you’re sneaking around like a thief and you expect me to work with you?”

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Screw you, Logan. I had every right to come here.” She pushed past him and stalked from the apartment, slammed the door behind her.

Hannah stepped out onto the pedestrian walkway into the clean night air still shaking with adrenaline. She’d done it again. Fled. Damn him. She looked back up at the second floor. Amy’s apartment was once again in darkness.

Rex lifted the blind slightly with the back of his hand and looked down into the street to watch her go. He saw her stop, turn and look back up at the window. Instinctively he shifted farther back into the dark shadows. Her hair shimmered pale gold in the lamplight, like an angel’s.

Blast.

Hannah was not working her way into his investigation, she had crashed slap-bang into the middle of it. So much for trying to stay out of her way while he was in White River.

And after finding what he had in Amy’s apartment, Hannah could be at risk if she insisted on digging. If his suspicions were correct, Hannah’s curiosity may already have landed her in hot water. Very hot water.

Oh, the bittersweet irony.

He’d walked out of her life six years ago to keep her safe.

Now he could not walk from her. This time he would have to stay close to keep her from harm.

She was sticking her nose into the business of people who played for keeps. She had no idea what she was up against. She would need his help. She would need his protection. And he needed to make sure she didn’t blow his cover by going to the cops.

He watched her turn and stride down the dimly lit street. He watched the sway of her hips.

It was that same purposeful stride that had caught his attention in Marumba. The same sway that had sparked fire in his groin.

Yes, she needed his protection, but who would protect him from her?

He’d made a mistake falling for her once. He wasn’t doing much better the second time around. The woman was a drug. He’d already let himself slip.

This must be his retribution.

Then his pulse quickened.

Rex saw a hooded figure step out from under the cover of the dark portico across the walkway. Whoever it was began following Hannah toward the festive heart of White River village.

Chapter 4

The early-morning air was crisp, the clear sky pale and colorless, yet to be kissed by the sun. Within the hour it would burst over the mountain in a crashing symphony of gold chasing the chill into valley shadows until evening.

Hannah knew it would be a glorious August Saturday. It made the bizarre and sinister events of last night all the more incongruous. Was it really possible Amy had been murdered? What did Rex Logan have to do with it? What did he find in Amy’s apartment that they’d all missed? What was he really doing in White River?

She couldn’t go and talk to Staff Sgt. Fred LeFevre. Not yet. He’d laugh her out of the office. She needed to learn more from Rex.

But right now, this time was hers. She crouched down to tighten the laces of her runners. She would do hills today. She needed a good workout to clear the scuzz from her sleep-deprived brain and ease the kinks from her body.

Hannah broke into a slow run, rhythmically sucking the cool air down into her lungs and blowing it out into crisp clouds of vapor. She followed the trail from her condo down around the lakeshore to the point where White River flowed under the Callaghan Road bridge.

She jogged under the bridge, picking up one of the gravel trails that snaked through the park and up into the Moonstone foothills.

Her breathing was hard, deep and rhythmic now. She felt strong, in control. She found her pace as the sun peeked over the ridge and spilled suddenly into the valley, its warmth immediately noticeable on her back.

She had the trails to herself this morning. She could feel her body working, smooth, like an engine, warmth pulsing with each heartbeat through her limbs. The cold air was rough against the back of her throat. It felt good.

She slowed slightly, her body switching gears as the trail climbed into the trees. Her feet were cushioned as gravel gave way to spongy pine needles and fallen leaves. As she entered the woods, the trees strangled the morning sunshine off into cool dank shadows.

All Hannah could hear now was the sound of her own hard, steady breathing and White River, swollen and raging in the distance.

A crash in the undergrowth stopped her dead.

The noise was just ahead. Brush cracking.

Her brain identified the sound as her body screamed to flee.

But she held her ground. Hannah had been in these mountains long enough to learn not to run from a bear.

She started, one foot behind the other, backing down the trail, very slowly, just as the large ursine beast crashed through the undergrowth ahead.

It lumbered onto the trail. Hannah caught her breath. It was massive, well on its way of achieving its hibernation weight. She was used to seeing bears in White River but the primal awe at the sight of such a beast never left her.

The bear caught wind of Hannah and surged up onto its hind legs, opening and closing its mouth and swaying its head.

It was trying to get a better scent. Hannah kept backing away slowly.

Stay calm, give it space. She ran through a mental bear encounter checklist as she backed off.

She was so tightly wound she almost screamed when two little cubs scampered out of the trees in front of her, across the trail and into the brush on the other side. The big sow dropped to all fours, chomped her mouth and huffed at Hannah in warning before lumbering into the brush after her cubs.

She could feel the blood thudding through the arteries at her neck with each rapid pound of her heart. Filled with exhilaration and the adrenaline of fear, Hannah laughed out loud in release.

She waited until she could no longer hear the undergrowth crushing under the clumsy weight of the bruins before she again broke into a run.

But she was uneasy now. She couldn’t regain her stride. She kept glancing over her shoulder and hearing sounds in the trees, in the shadows.

She thought she could hear the thud of feet in the soft ground behind her. She felt like the hunted must feel, her senses heightened, nerves strung like a bow.

She heard the thud of feet again. And she felt a presence.

She stopped, swiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. Listening. Silence. Nothing.

Then a sharp crack in the brush.

Hannah uncoiled into a sprint, cut onto a trail that led to the suspension bridge, a lifeline over White River that would lead her to the village, people. Fear burned with cold air in her chest as she sprinted through the trees. Sweat dripped into her eyes, blurring her vision. She ran onto the bridge. Slats of wood bounced under her weight throwing her momentarily off balance. Water raged below. She stumbled, grabbed the cable railing, and made her way across to the wooden ramp that led off the bridge. She hit solid land, sprinted over a mound and turned sharply to her right. And ran straight into him.

He reeled back under the force of the collision, grabbing her shoulders in an effort to steady them both.

“Hannah. What is it?”

She pulled away from him and bent over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath, the nausea of exertion rising in her stomach. “Rex…you…startled…me.” Her words came out in rasping gasps.

“Talk to me. What spooked you?”

Still bent over, panting, she looked up at him. He was also in workout gear. His dark hair hung tousled and damp over his brow. Was he chasing her?

“Nothing…bear and her cubs. I lost my head.”

He raised a brow. He didn’t believe her.

“Someone was following you.” He said it so matter-of-factly. As if he already knew. He scanned the trees on the far side of the river. “How long do you think he’s been watching you?”

“What?” She stood upright, hand pressed tight into the pain of the stitch at her waist. “What do you mean ‘how long’? Why would someone be ‘watching’ me?”

“Keep it down.”

She glanced back into the woods, following his gaze. He was making her really uneasy.

He put a hand on each shoulder. “You’re not safe, Hannah, not until I get to the bottom of this.” He looked into her eyes. She felt suddenly self-conscious. She caught the wild strand escaping from her ponytail and brushed it behind her ear.

“Listen to me, you need protection.”

She attempted a laugh. It came out hollow. “And who’s going to protect me? You? The guy who breaks into apartments?”

“Damn right I am.”

She pulled away from him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Hannah, someone followed you when you left Amy’s apartment last night.”

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep, steadying breath. Her brain could no longer cope. It was in total overload.

“Hannah, we have to talk.” He looked around, then into her eyes. “But not here. Come, let me buy you breakfast.”

Coffee, she needed coffee. She needed space. He was crowding her, invading her life.

“Let’s go.” He took her arm and started to lead her down the path. She struggled to match his long gait as he ushered her along the trail toward the village. She was losing control, he was sucking her down into a confusing, gray maelstrom. She had to take a step back.

“Wait, Rex.”

He stopped.

“I…I’m going home to change first.” Besides feeling like something the cat had dragged in, the perspiration on her skin had cooled and set her shivering. “I’m cold.”

Rex skimmed his eyes over her, a twinkle brightening the ice for an instant. He grinned. Quick and wolfish. “Yes. I see. I’ll come with you.”

She wrapped her arms over her chest. “No. I’ll go alone and meet up with you later.”

“Hannah, you’re not getting it. You’re in the same kind of trouble Amy was. You have to trust me on this.”

There it was again. That word. Trust. She glanced back into the forest. She felt as if she was trapped between the devil and the trees. She was sure someone had been following her. What if Rex was right? Had she been tailed last night?

Hannah sat silent in his four-wheel-drive vehicle as he drove her around the lake.

He had the wheel and all the control. She had none. She had no idea what she had gotten herself into. She was being forced to trust him. Look where that had gotten her before.

They were approaching her condo. “Here. This one.”

He pulled into her driveway. “Nice place.”

“It’s mine.” The words escaped her mouth before her head even registered them.

“Still a nice place.”

“Thanks.” She’d made a decent investment in this property. She’d lived frugally during her foreign correspondent years. Her clothes had been utilitarian, her accommodation and food on the company tab. But she’d earned well and invested well. It had secured her this home. Now her freelance work plus the hours she put in at the Gazette supplemented her income. She and Danny were doing fine.

She climbed out of the car. He followed. He was going to come in. Into her home. Thoughts of Danny streamed through her brain. His room. His little bicycle. His toys. The photographs of him all over her condo. She turned to him. “Rex.” Her voice was firm. “I don’t want you in my house. Can you wait?”

He angled his head, curious. “Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“I’ll just come in and take a quick look around. Make sure things are safe. Then I’ll leave you in peace while you change.”

Panic licked at her stomach. “No. Please.”

Rex frowned, studying her face. Then he turned away and scanned the surroundings. He looked back at her. “And if there’s someone inside?”

“I’ll yell.”

He shook his head, looked up at the sky, blew out a stream of air in frustration. But he wasn’t pushing her. She had to hand him that.

“Wait.” He strode back to the SUV and fished a cell phone out of the glove compartment. He punched in some numbers and handed it to her. “Here. Press one and I’ll be there in a flash. Don’t lock your door. I’ll keep watch out here.”

Hannah stepped into her home and closed the door quietly behind her. She took her time. Not so much to spite him as to absorb and process the events of the past twenty-four hours.

Rex Logan had walked back into her life and turned it upside down, spilling it all directions like a box of kids’ toys. She turned on the shower and let hot water sluice over her limbs, beat at the dull ache in her shoulder. She was going to have to play along with him for a while. She had no other option. Fred LeFevre would laugh her out of his office if she came to him with a conspiracy theory and zero proof to back it up. And what if Rex was telling the truth? What if she did tie him up in bureaucratic red tape? Would that mean they’d never find out if someone had taken Amy’s life? And why?

Hannah steeled her resolve. She’d march to the beat of his drum for now. God help her. Because once they’d solved the mystery of Amy Barnes, she was going to have to deal with the fact that this stranger in her life was Danny’s father.

And she was going to have to try and resolve it all before Friday. Before Danny came home.

She toweled off and rubbed a mild gardenia-scented lotion over her body.

Hannah changed three times before she settled on a lemon-yellow sleeveless dress hemmed about two inches above her knees. It offset her tan and showed her limbs to best advantage. She couldn’t remember when she’d last worn a dress. Not this summer, anyway.

She appraised the result in the mirror, then muttered a curse. Why did she even care?

“Well, I’ll tell you why you care.” She leaned forward and addressed her reflection, wagging her finger at her alter ego. “You want to look cool and groomed and unfazed by his little charade. That’s why.” Her very feminine core, deep down, also wanted Rex to see what he’d lost. A part of her wanted him to eat dust.

Satisfied, she grabbed her sunglasses, sweater and purse and headed back to his car.

“You took your sweet time.” But the gruffness of his words belied the glint of obvious approval in his eyes.

And it sparked a small glow of warm triumph in her belly.

Rex said nothing as he drove.

She looked like a golden goddess, this woman sitting next to him. The soft floral scent of her freshly showered body stirred painful memories of crushed frangipani blooms.

He lowered the window, letting in the fresh air. He wanted to blow the scent of her from his nostrils.

He’d had altogether too little sleep in his SUV. After he’d seen that hulking figure step out from under the portico and walk in her footsteps, he’d followed Hannah home, parked across the street, just out of sight until he could be sure she hadn’t been tailed all the way.

When she set off for her run earlier this morning, he’d followed her in his vehicle but lost her when she cut into the forest. He’d dug his gym bag out of the car, changed into his sweats and tried to catch up to her, but she was packing a mean pace and he’d lost her, until she crashed into him near the suspension bridge. He would have to keep closer tabs on her.

Seeing her in the forest this morning, vulnerable, tousled, flushed, breathless, the damp T-shirt molding the soft roundness of her breasts, had near driven him wild.

He not only wanted to protect her, he needed to. It was a primal urge. He wanted to gather his woman in his arms and keep her safe from the evil of the world.

Only she wasn’t his woman.

And she could never be.

He gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas, negotiating the bend in the road.

The silence hung thick and charged between them.

Rex led her to an intimate booth in the back corner of Ben’s Bistro. A private cocoon in the midst of the lively clatter of plates and cutlery and steady buzz of voices. The sun spilled warm through small windowpanes, throwing square patterns onto the red-and-white checked tablecloth.

“We can talk here.”

She took a seat opposite him.

“Try the eggs.”

Hannah perused the menu. “I’m not that hungry. I’ll have the fruit cup. And a coffee.”

“The eggs are good. I had them yesterday. You look like you could do with some protein.”

“I’ll have the fruit.”

She watched him as he placed their order. He was still in his T-shirt and sweatpants, but that did nothing to diminish his dark aura of authority. He cut a powerful figure. She watched the muscles twist under the tanned skin of his forearm as he handed the menus to the server and checked his watch. Her eyes were drawn by the motion, the silver of the watch, the dark hair on his arm, the solid breadth of his wrist. She’d forgotten the beauty of his fingers. Long. Strong. Those hands. They could be so rough yet so achingly gentle. He had run them over her hot skin once. Moved from her ankles up, slowly, along the inside of her thighs—

No. She yanked her mind back into the present. He was watching her. Intently. His eyes deep, unreadable pools. His lids with their thick fringe of lashes low. God, he’d been reading her mind.

Shaken, she lifted her water glass, gulped and silently thanked the waitress for her timing as she arrived with a pot of coffee.

Hannah’s hand was unsteady as she poured cream into her coffee, remembering that he took his black. Funny how little details could stick in your mind over the years.

Rex spooned sugar into his cup, still silent.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

He leaned forward, forearms on the table. His words were low, for her ears only. “Keep your voice down. Don’t whisper. Mumbling is better. The sound doesn’t carry as well. Got it?”

She nodded.

He looked deep into her eyes, searching. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I don’t want to involve you.”

“Rex, I’m in this whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t. And what I’m going to tell you has to remain between us. Hannah, I have to trust you. Lives could depend on it.”

“You’re a fine one to be talking about trust, Logan.”

She saw the slight narrowing of his eyes, the shadow that flitted through them. But he let her jibe pass. He wasn’t going to be drawn there. “You’re a reporter.”

“I can keep a secret, Rex. Believe me. I haven’t gone to the cops.” Yet.

He took a sip of his coffee, watching her over the rim.

“Well, what did you find in Amy’s apartment?”

“Two library books and a document.”

“Oh, that definitely means she met with foul play.”

He wasn’t amused. “It’s the subject matter. Amy Barnes was reading up-to-date information on biological warfare.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t just biological weapons she was interested in. She was reading up on genetically engineered BW technology.”

“Okay. I’m having real trouble joining the dots here. Help me out.”

“We have reason to believe that Amy came across something here in White River that landed her in trouble. Something to do with biological weapons.”

“We?”

“Bio Can.”

“What’s a pharmaceutical company got to do with this?”

“Let’s just say Bio Can has a highly specialized division focused on developing antidotes and vaccines for bugs with a potential to be weaponized.”

Her head was spinning. “But I thought your field was more indigenous medicine.” At least that’s what you told me in Africa.

“It is. I work in both divisions.” He stopped talking as the server arrived with their food. Rex tucked into his egg and bacon platter, savoring a mouthful before continuing.

Hannah stared at her fruit. Biological weapons? What in the hell had Amy been up to? “Maybe she was just researching something, Rex, for a story.”

He chewed, nodded. “Maybe. But there was a piece of paper in one of the books. On it is the name and number of a CIA agent, one who specializes in biowarfare intelligence.”

“Oh my God.”

He sipped his coffee. “How’s the fruit?”

The question seemed suddenly so inane. Hannah looked at the plate in front of her, picked up a fork and jabbed at a strawberry. “Fine.” She felt ill.

“And I checked Amy’s computer last night. The hard drive has been cleaned out.”

Hannah stiffened. “That’s it. The break-in. That’s what they took. Electronic data. No wonder the cops didn’t find anything.”

“Well, whoever took the data didn’t find the library books.”

“But who?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out. I’m hoping you’ll help.”

“I don’t get it, Rex. Why White River? What’s the connection?”

“We don’t know. But the forensic toxicology conference is a common denominator here. We suspect something may be going down.”

“Like what?”

“A deal. An information exchange, maybe. We haven’t got much time.”

“But what does a conference like that have to do with biological warfare, anyway?”

Rex pushed his plate aside. “There is a component on the conference agenda that covers lethal viruses and new research in the field of forensic detection. It’s that kind of stuff that draws top scientists from around the world. Ideas are exchanged. Connections made. Deals made. Most of it happens offstage. Bio Can likes to keep on top of these kinds of developments. So do a lot of other agencies.”

Hannah looked out through the little window panes at a group of young people gathered in the sun on the patio across the village square. Amy should be with them, laughing, planning her next snowboarding trip, her next surfing expedition. She had been cheated out of her future.

She turned back to face the man in front of her. “So you’re telling me you’re one of the good guys?”

“Good is a subjective term.”

“Is that why you don’t want the cops involved?”

“This is beyond small-town cops, Hannah. This is the big league. The global league.”

She pushed her uneaten fruit bowl aside. She felt as if all the blood had left her head.

He leaned forward as if to take her hand. Hannah braced for the touch but it never came. He seemed to catch himself, lifting the coffeepot instead. He held it up. “Refill?”

She shook her head. “What happens now?”

He poured seconds for himself. “Now, you tell me about Ken Mitchell.”

“Ken Mitchell?”

“This slices both ways, Hannah.”

“Rex, I don’t know any Ken Mitchell.”

“You were lunching with him at the Black Diamond yesterday.”

Hannah felt something slip in her stomach. “You mean Mark Bamfield, the freelance writer?”

“Try CIA.”

“I see.” Her brain was numb.

“So he’s calling himself Bamfield. What’s his cover?”

She cleared her throat. “He said he was a freelance reporter from Washington, that he was here for the toxicology conference and that he was doing a story on Amy Barnes.”

“See the links now?”

She nodded. She didn’t like what she was seeing at all.

This time he placed his hand over hers. “And, Hannah, if you go to the police now, if you tie me up with bureaucracy, you could end up getting yourself killed.”

She looked down at the large hand covering her own. She could feel its warmth, its roughness. It was the hand with the ring, the token of her love, the symbol of her naiveté. She looked back up into his eyes. She couldn’t read them. “That sounds like a threat, Rex.”

“No, Hannah. A warning. I don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve crossed the line. There’s no going back now. Now you play by new rules.”

He was right. She didn’t see how she could turn back. Her world hadn’t only shifted on its axis; she’d been thrust into a whole new one where she didn’t know the players and she didn’t know the rules. And she sure as hell didn’t know the man sitting in front of her.

She pulled her hand out from under his. “What do you want me to do?”

Something flickered through his eyes. Then it was gone. “Can you get me into the Gazette office? I need to take a look at Amy’s work computer, see if she left any trail there.”

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