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South Fork, Colorado

The fire alarm in the hotel went off and Kara knew there was no fire.

Riley jumped up, panic on her face. “There’s a fire?”

Odd, Kara thought. Whenever she heard a fire alarm she assumed a malfunction or someone pulled it. Her last thought was there was an actual fire.

“I highly doubt it,” Kara said. “We’re going to stay put for a few minutes.”

“But what if there is a fire? We’re on the third floor, we could be trapped!”

“Stay. I’ll call.”

If she could hear anything through the ear-splitting whir-whir-whir of the alarm, she thought as she called the head of security on his cell phone.

On the fifth ring when she was almost certain she was being sent to voice mail, he answered. “Agent Quinn,” he shouted. “I’m helping evacuate the hotel.”

Detective Quinn , but she didn’t say it. “Is there a fire?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Smoke? Flames? Gas?”

“The alarm goes off, we’re required by the fire department to clear the building until they respond and give us the green light. You need to leave. I’ll meet you in the lobby and escort you out.”

“There’s no fire,” Kara said, frustrated.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think there is either, but there are regulations and the hotel will be fined if we don’t comply.”

“Call me if there is an actual fire and I’ll bring Ms. Pierce out, and if the fire chief has an issue with it, he can talk to me.”

She ended the call before he pushed again.

“No fire, we’re going to ride this out.”

Riley still looked terrified.

Kara texted her team about the situation and her decision to stay in the room. She ended it with: If there’s an actual fire, jumping from the window won’t kill us. Ha.

She sent it, grinned. Immediately, Matt texted back:

Agree with your decision. Keep us informed. Trespasser at Morrison’s. Michael and I checking it out. Stay alert.

Kara walked over to the window and looked out to the front. There weren’t a lot of guests here right now, since this hotel catered to the skiing crowd. She craned her neck and saw a half dozen or so. A few more exited as she watched. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a lone male rider in ski gear driving an ATV from the field behind the hotel to the parking lot, then lost sight of him.

She looked at the vehicles in the lot. No dark green Ford truck that she could see, but a couple of the vehicles were covered in snow. Also unlikely to be their suspects.

Someone had pulled the alarm to lure Riley out. Most likely to kill her. Maybe because she was Calliope’s daughter, they’d bring her back to Havenwood. Kara figured sixty-forty, but neither option was good.

Her head pounded from the alarms, but they had to stop sometime.

Riley still looked worried, but she’d sat down and watched Kara pace the room. Kara went to the door and looked out the peephole. It provided a wide-angle view of the hall; no one was there.

She heard sirens and walked over to the window again. “Fire is here,” she said loudly over the alarm. She didn’t know if Riley heard her.

Two minutes later, blissfully, the alarms went silent. The ringing continued in her ears. She called the security chief again. “News?”

“Fire is clearing the building. I told them you were there protecting a witness. They may want to talk to you.”

“Fine by me,” she said and ended the call.

Five minutes later, the security chief called her back. “Agent Quinn?”

Again, she didn’t correct him. “All clear?”

“We need you down here. There’s a female body. She’s dead.”

Matt and Michael walked the perimeter of Morrison’s house and saw no disturbance—and no truck. There were fresh tire marks going up and back, and the sheriff hadn’t been out here this morning since the storm, so Matt was on alert.

He and Michael checked the house—no sign of a break-in and the police seal was intact. Then the barn, which was clear. They walked up the steep path to the small cabin to ensure that the intruder hadn’t returned. It, too, had an unbroken police seal.

They returned to their SUV and drove back to the neighbor’s house to get her statement. If Anton and Ginger had been here, he didn’t see any sign of them now.

Matt parked on the edge of the two-lane highway in front of the neighbor’s home. From here, they couldn’t even see Morrison’s place, but Mrs. Chastain would be able to see any vehicle going up Morrison’s drive.

They walked up to the door and Michael knocked. Matt stayed two feet behind him and looked around the yard. The house was set back from the road and the snowplows had piled hills of the powdery white in front of the fencing. There were no cars, but they were off the main highway and there was no ski access from this area based on the maps he’d studied.

No one came to the door. Matt heard a television inside. Michael said, “She’s a seventy-nine-year-old widow. Maybe she’s hard of hearing.”

Michael pounded on the door. “Mrs. Chastain? It’s the FBI. You called.”

They waited and almost walked away to check out the property when the door opened. The woman was tiny with white hair and a hunched back. “Hello?” she said loudly.

Michael and Matt both showed their IDs. “Ma’am, you called about a trespasser?”

“Trespasser?”

“Yes,” Michael said. “Did you call about seeing a dark green pickup truck?”

“Nooo,” she said slowly. “I didn’t call anyone today. My granddaughter called me this morning, I’m going to be a great-grandma again!”

“So you did not call the sheriff’s station?” Matt said.

“Nooo, I did not. I’ve seen them around the last couple days, talked to a nice deputy, but I didn’t talk to them today, I assure you. Is there a problem?”

“No, ma’am, sorry to bother you,” Matt said quickly and walked away. He pulled out his phone and called Kara. “Something’s going on, be on alert. We were sent on a false alarm to Morrison’s house. We’re coming back to the hotel, ETA twenty minutes.”

“We have a dead body here. Someone dumped her out on the deck either right before or right after they set off the fire alarm.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Yep, everyone but the dead person.”

Kara wasn’t going to leave Riley alone in the room, and she didn’t want her to go outside and see the body. She brought her downstairs as she called Dean, hanging up when she saw him standing in the lobby. “Have you inspected the body? Do you know what’s going on?” she asked him.

“I was waiting for you.”

Kara turned to the security chief. “Who’s with the body?”

“My two men.”

“Stay here with Riley. Don’t let her out of your sight,” Kara said to the security chief. Turning to Riley, who looked shell-shocked, she added, “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Just hang here, stick with Mr. Young, okay? Matt and Michael are on their way back.”

Riley nodded, but Kara didn’t think that she heard her. She was staring out the window.

Kara followed her gaze. She couldn’t see the body from here, but Young’s two security guys were standing on the far edge of the deck.

She said to Young, “No one goes in or out of this lobby until the sheriff gets here, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kara and Dean went out the double doors to the deck. There were two sets of footprints leading from the door to the edge of the deck, as far from the hotel as you could get while still staying on the platform. There, at the top of stairs that went down into the field, was a body. Kara didn’t need to approach the body to know that someone from Havenwood had dumped her here—poppies littered the scene like large drops of blood. They had been scattered not only on the body, but down the stairs, as if marking a trail.

Dean asked the men, “Who found her?”

“I did,” the tall, younger guy said. “I thought it was an animal, and then...” He gulped. “I haven’t left since. I called my partner, he informed Chief Young, then came out here to stand with me.”

Kara stared at the dead woman. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt, well-worn black sneakers. No jacket. Her dark red hair was damp and matted, from snow and blood. Her throat had been slit like the others, but there were bruises both old and new on her face; her wrist appeared to be broken. The blood was dry; she hadn’t been killed here.

Kara knew exactly who she was. She recognized her from Riley’s sketches and the photo in Jesse Morrison’s bedroom.

“It’s Thalia,” she told Dean.

She was about to go back inside to call Matt when Dean said, “There’s a note.”

She looked again at the body. Dean was correct; a white envelope stuck out of the breast pocket, partly covered by Thalia’s long hair.

Kara shouldn’t disturb the crime scene, but when she saw that FBI had been written in bold letters, she said fuck it, took a picture with her phone, pulled on gloves she had in her back pocket, and yanked the paper out. Dean didn’t say a word.

The envelope wasn’t sealed. She opened it.

We will exchange your agent for Riley in 24 hours. Wait for our instructions.

Kara ran into the lodge, pulling her phone out to call Matt. Who had they grabbed? Sloane? Jim?

“Kara,” Dean called out, following her.

Matt didn’t answer. She called Michael.

On the fourth ring, he answered. “Michael, the body at the lodge is Thalia. There’s a note that they have an agent. Is everyone accounted for? Matt’s not answering his phone.”

“He’s here in the car with me talking to Ryder. We’re five minutes from the hotel.”

“I’m calling Jim and Sloane. We’ll be in the lobby waiting for you.” She ended the call and started toward the doors. She called Jim. He answered almost immediately.

“Yep?”

“You safe?”

“Yes, Sloane and I just pulled up in front of the Miller house. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. They’re playing fucking games with us right now. But I have a bad feeling. Be careful. Where’s Agent Stewart, from Denver?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find him, tell him to do a head count of all his agents who were working on the Morrison place.”

“What’s going on Kara?”

“Those bastards dumped Thalia’s body at the hotel and left a note that they have one of our agents. Dean’s with me, Matt’s with Michael and I just talked to them. You and Sloane are safe. So either it’s a false alarm to screw with us, or they took one of Stewart’s people.”

“I’m on it,” Jim said and ended the call.

Matt asked Michael, “What was that?”

“Kara said Thalia’s body was left at the hotel with a note that they have a federal agent. She’s checking with Jim and Sloane.”

Matt relayed the information to Ryder and told him to check on the status of everyone in the field and get back to him.

Michael turned into the hotel parking lot. There were people milling about outside, and two fire trucks were still there.

Suddenly, they were rammed hard from behind, forcing their car into a parked vehicle. The air bags went off and slammed Matt in the face, the powder making him cough and his eyes burn.

But immediately he knew this wasn’t an accident. This was a setup.

His phone had fallen to the floor, and he couldn’t see anything at first. Then he heard gunfire and thought for sure that he and Michael were dead.

Matt reached for his gun at the same time as a hammer came down and smashed his passenger door window. He was grabbed by two sets of rough hands as a van pulled up and he was pushed inside. He heard more gunfire and feared for Michael. He fought back, but his defense was short-lived when they hit him on the back of the head and he fell stunned to the floor of the van. His hands were tied behind him and he felt someone grab his gun from his holster. They were moving fast.

The entire abduction took less than one minute.