Mistaken Identity. Shirlee McCoy

       ONE

      Trinity Miller didn’t scare easily, but she was scared now.

      It wasn’t the darkness of the woods that stretched out to either side of the old dirt road that had her rattled. It wasn’t the full moon hovering over mountain vistas. It wasn’t even the silence in her old Jeep Cherokee that was getting to her.

      It was the weird feeling she had.

      The one that seemed to be telling her to turn around and leave. If she’d told either of her brothers about it, they’d have said she should listen. Of course, she hadn’t told Jackson or Chance what she was doing. They both thought she was on a weekend jaunt to New England to see the fall foliage, eat the crisp, ripe apples. Decide what direction she wanted her life to go.

      All of those things were true.

      There just happened to be a couple of tiny little details that she hadn’t offered. Like the fact that she was going to pay a visit to a man who was notoriously private. Like the fact that he lived in Middle-of-Nowhere, Maine.

      Like the fact that she hadn’t told Mason Gains she was coming or asked permission to drive down the road that had been clearly marked with no-trespassing signs.

      Yeah. She’d skipped a few details when she’d been explaining things to her brothers. They’d been too busy with their work and their families to notice she was hedging around questions and offering minimal details. Twelve hours ago, when she’d left her Annapolis home and headed north, she’d been happy about that.

      Now, with fear sitting like a hard rock in her belly, she wouldn’t have minded having one or the other of her brothers sitting beside her.

      Go home.

      That’s what they’d have wanted her to do. Knowing them, they’d have found a way to send her packing so they could handle the situation themselves.

      Whatever the situation was.

      She frowned. It wasn’t like she was heading into a hostage rescue mission. She was going to talk to a guy who made prosthetic limbs for a living. How dangerous could it be?

      Unless Mason Gains had a gun and decided to shoot first and ask questions later, Trinity should be just fine. She’d done her research, used her computer forensic background to find out everything she could about Mason. She hadn’t found any hint of violence, any indication that he’d been in trouble with the law. He’d served his country, gone to college, gone into business doing something that could enhance the lives of wounded warriors.

      He was a hero.

      Heroes didn’t shoot unarmed women.

      She hoped.

      If they did, there were sure a lot of places to hide a body around here.

      At least Bryn knew where Trinity was. If she didn’t return home, she could count on her best friend to let everyone know where she’d been and what she’d been up to.

      By that time, it would be too late, of course.

      Trinity would be buried somewhere in the forest, her body concealed under layers of dirt, dead leaves and fallen pine needles. She frowned. That was not a good direction for her thoughts to go. Not when she was already scared.

      “You shouldn’t be scared,” she muttered, breaking the eerie silence.

      Sure, she was in the middle of nowhere. Sure, there was nothing but trees and mountains as far as the eye could see, but she’d been hiking in rougher areas. She worked search and rescue, and she’d been out on rainy nights and snowy ones, serving as a flanker for K-9 teams. She’d trekked through mountains and wetland, and she’d done it without even a shiver of alarm, so she had no reason to be sitting in her locked Jeep, her heart pounding with fear as she drove down a pitch-black mountain road.

      She leaned forward to ease the tension from her lower back. She’d been driving for hours, just stopping long enough to gas up and move on. Mason Gains didn’t like being interrupted. He had important work to do, and he couldn’t be bothered with unexpected visitors. He’d made that clear in a couple of interviews he’d done. Both had been taped several years ago. Since then he’d been quiet, living and working—according to his company website—somewhere in New England.

      It had taken just under two weeks for Trinity to figure out exactly where that was. For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, she felt like her expertise in computer forensics was paying off in a way that would really matter to someone she cared about.

      In ten days Bryn’s son Henry would have surgery to remove his left leg. The cancer that was growing in his bone could almost certainly be stopped that way. So could his running dreams. An all-star athlete, he’d been training for Junior Olympics and Bryn had been told that he’d go even farther than that. Henry had his Navy SEAL father’s drive, but he didn’t have his father. Rick had been killed in Iraq when Henry was a toddler. Bryn had been working her butt off ever since, trying to be mother and father to their son.

      This newest blow had shaken her, and Trinity was doing everything she could to buoy her.

      This journey was part of that.

      It was possible Mason would turn her away at the door. It was possible he’d refuse to hear her out. It was even more possible that he’d listen and then tell her what she already knew—he only made prosthetic limbs for veterans. He didn’t work with kids.

      She’d still had to come. She’d had to try.

      She’d just rather not die doing it.

      She eyed the dark trees, the distant mountains and the road that stretched out in front of her. Not a light. Not a house. Not any sign of civilization. Maybe she should turn around; return when the sun came up.

      “Five minutes,” she whispered because the silence was starting to get to her and the only thing she was getting on her radio was static. “If I don’t see something by then, I’m turning around.”

      The wind howled, sweeping through the forest and swirling along the road. Normally, Trinity loved storms, but if one was blowing in, she didn’t want to be on a dirt road in an area with spotty reception. Even Jeeps could get stuck in mud or crushed by falling trees.

      So, that was that.

      She was turning around.

      She’d drive the fifty miles to Whisper Lake and find the little bed-and-breakfast she’d reserved a room in. She’d get a good night’s sleep and she’d come at the problem fresh in the morning. Obviously she’d miscalculated the distance to Mason’s property. For all she knew, she wasn’t even on the right road. Aside from the no-trespassing signs, the road wasn’t marked. She had no idea what the street address for the house was. She didn’t even know if there was one. All she knew was what she’d found by accessing public records—Mason Gains owned two-thousand acres of land somewhere very close to where she was driving.

      She slowed, trying to find a wide enough spot to turn around, and caught something in her periphery. A light glimmered through the trees to her left.

      A window? It looked like it, and if there was a window, there had to be a house.

      Her pulse jumped and she accelerated again, following the curve of the road through the trees and out into the open. The