Deadly Christmas Secrets

They explained nothing. Not to the sheriff and not to Logan. Finding Harper had been easy. She’d taken out a loan for property in Westminster, Maryland. No address was listed, but with only a little digging he’d found a house title with her name on it.

Easy.

So why hadn’t Gabe done it himself?

The guy had money. Plenty of it.

He could have hired anyone to find his sister-in-law. He’d hired HEART.

Had he known there was going to be trouble?

Or had he simply wanted to hedge his bets, make sure that Harper was found because...

Why?

It had been four years since Harper disappeared from Gabe’s life. If he’d wanted to kill her, wouldn’t he have made an attempt before?

Lots of questions.

Not many answers.

The sheriff must have felt the same way. He frowned, took off his uniform hat and ran his hand over his dark hair. “Now, why, I’m wondering, would your brother-in-law want to find you?”

Logan responded, “He said he received information about his daughter.”

“Amelia is dead,” Harper said, her face pale as paper.

“There was a funeral,” Logan corrected her, because he’d studied the case, read every article. That was the way he was. He liked to be prepared, to understand all the details before he began a mission. “Her body was never found.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “What information does he have?”

“A photograph. A piece of cloth that he says might be part of her blanket.”

He didn’t think it was possible, but she paled more, swaying slightly. Her dog nudged her side.

She touched his head and seemed to ground herself.

“I received something similar.”

“A photo?” Sheriff Hunter asked.

“No. A newspaper article and a piece of something that might have been Amelia’s favorite blanket.” The words rasped out, and Logan cupped her elbow, afraid she might pass out. She looked that shaken, that anxious.

“Did you keep it?” the sheriff asked, and she nodded.

“I called the DC police about it, but they haven’t gotten back to me.”

“When was that?” Logan asked, leading her toward the two-story cabin that sat in the middle of a cleared lot. An acre. Maybe a little more. He’d looked at the plans before he’d driven out, gotten a good feel for the land. Not because he’d expected trouble. Just because it was what he did.

It had paid off this time.

He knew the topography. The creeks. The flatland and forests. The twenty acres she owned wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to get lost in when the forests were as deep and untouched as the ones that surrounded Harper’s place.

“Last night. I called Thomas Willard. He’s a homicide detective who led the investigation into my sister’s murder.” She opened the door.

No key.

She obviously hadn’t locked up before she’d left.

That bothered him.

Life was filled with danger. A person couldn’t avoid it, but he could certainly prepare for it.

“You might want to lock that the next time you go out,” he said, and she shrugged, soft brown hair slipping from its clip and falling across her face. She had freckles on her nose and on her cheeks, long black lashes tipped with gold. He’d say that she spent a lot of time outside, and that she knew her land about as well as anyone could know anything. He’d also say that she probably thought she had things under control, that it was within her power to keep trouble from coming down on her head.

That was a dangerous thing to assume.

He wanted to tell her that, but they were strangers, and he was making assumptions based on what he saw—the tidy little two-story cabin, the rifle that looked as if it had never been used hanging above a small fireplace, the wood-burning stove with its neat pile of wood beside it. Unless he missed his guess, there was more piled by the back door, several cords of it in storage on a back porch or in a shed. She probably had a month’s worth of supplies, an emergency generator for lights, everything she thought she’d ever need. That was good. Great, even. But the best-laid plans didn’t always pan out.

“It’s never been a concern before,” she said, tucking the stray hair behind her ear, her fingers speckled with flecks of red mud. “Now that it is, I’ll be sure to lock up. If you gentlemen don’t mind waiting here, the package is upstairs. I’ll get it.”

She ran from the room, heading toward the back of the cabin, her dog following along behind her. Logan figured there was a kitchen there, maybe a small laundry room and the staircase that led up to the second story. He was curious to see the place, get a feel for how difficult it would be to secure.

He stayed where he was, though, because he’d been asked to, and because he had a few things he wanted to talk to the sheriff about.

“Have your men found the sedan?” he asked as footsteps tapped across the floor above his head.

“Not yet, but the guy can’t have gotten far. Not with a blown tire.”

“There are plenty of places to hide around here,” Logan pointed out. “I’d guess he pulled onto some side road, hid the car and took off on foot.”

“I’m guessing you’re right, and since there are only a few crossroads between Harper’s property and town, I’m feeling pretty confident we’ll track the car down quickly.”

“And then?”

“Take some dogs into the woods, see if we can find our guy.”

“In the meantime, Harper will be out here alone.”

“You think the guy is going to come back?” Sheriff Hunter asked.

“I think he didn’t accomplish his goal. Harper is still alive.”

“You’re assuming Harper was the target,” Sheriff Hunter pointed out.

“That seems like a logical assumption.”

“In my opinion, it would be just as logical to assume that someone is after you. In your line of work, that wouldn’t be unlikely.” Logan didn’t ask how he knew what kind of work Logan did. If Sheriff Hunter hadn’t heard about the visitor to his small town the previous night and checked things out, he’d have had people checking Logan’s credentials as soon as he’d gotten the plate number off the Jeep.