Undercover Groom. Merline Lovelace

      Two

      Mase spent those weeks in a blur of long days and endless nights. Controlling the fear that knife-bladed through him each time he thought of the deserted stretch of road and Chloe’s crumpled car, he forced himself to work through every possible scenario.

      She could have fallen asleep at the wheel and plowed into that ditch. She could have been run off the road by some sex-crazed psycho. Or by kidnappers wanting a piece of her father’s wealth. Or, as he grimly discussed with Pam, she could have been followed from his office and snatched by the man who’d sworn vengeance for the death of his son. Mase had to face the very real possibility that he’d been compromised, that Dexter Greene had somehow tracked him down and intended to use his fiancée as bait to snare him. The possibility ate like acid through his system.

      He sweated blood for almost three weeks. Finally, after hundreds of false leads and dead ends, his agency’s far-flung network of contacts paid off. A Seattle-based, long-haul trucker reported picking up a hitchhiker matching Chloe’s description during a cross-country run, not far from where her Mercedes was later found. According to the trucker, his passenger had sported a good-size lump on her temple and seemed a little dazed. Concerned, he’d taken her to a clinic in Mitchell, South Dakota.

      Mase was in the air and en route to Mitchell within thirty minutes of receiving the trucker’s report. Once there, he picked up Chloe’s trail almost immediately. She had arrived at the clinic just minutes after a near hysterical junior high choir director brought in fifteen moaning, vomiting glee club members. In the melee of retching students, frantic parents and harried staff, the emergency room physician examined Chloe, ordered an X ray, diagnosed a mild concussion and released her.

      She paid her bill in cash the next day after pawning a sapphire ring. The engraved inscription in the ring, “To Chloe, with love from Kate,” provided the first solid proof that Mase was closing in on his missing fiancée.

      Then, before the relief and elation at having picked up her trail even peaked, she disappeared again.

      It took another twenty hellish hours for Mase to track her from Mitchell to the two-tick town of Crockett, in the southwestern corner of South Dakota. His last report, received just as he was climbing into a helicopter, was that a woman calling herself Chloe Smith had taken up residence with Hannah Crockett, granddaughter of the town’s founder and proprietor of the general store.

      A late-afternoon sun slanted through the mountain peaks when the helicopter touched down at a prearranged landing site some six miles outside of Crockett.

      “I wish you’d let me go in with you,” Pam shouted over the whap of the rotor blades.

      “I’ll signal you if I need backup.”

      “Dammit, Mase, we still don’t know why your fiancée decided to hole up out here, in the middle of nowhere.”

      He skimmed a quick look at the mountains surrounding them on all sides. Not quite the middle of nowhere, but close.

      “Until we do...” Pam yelled.

      “Until we do, this is my operation. I’ll contact you if I need backup.”

      Pam sank back against the seat, her mouth a thin line of disapproval. Mase tipped her a quick farewell and ducked under the whirling blades. A moment later he took the keys of the mud-splashed Chevy Blazer he’d arranged to have delivered to the isolated landing site. The driver shouted quick directions to Crockett before hunching over and dashing to the chopper.

      Mase slid into the Blazer and slammed the door on the ear-rattling noise. A quick shake of his leg settled the cuff of his jeans over his scarred boot and the 9mm Glock subcompact it concealed. Smaller and lighter than a snub-nosed Special, the Glock carried a tactical high-velocity load that had helped him out of more than one tight situation.

      His face grim, Mase transferred the extra clip and boxes of spare bullets to the Blazer’s dash. From the report received just hours ago, it appeared Chloe wasn’t under duress. Despite his insistence on going in alone, Mase wasn’t taking any chances.

      While the helo’s engines revved up to full lift power, he pulled a red ball cap from his back pocket and tugged it low on his forehead. In well-worn jeans, a sturdy plaid shirt and blue sleeveless down vest, he’d fit right in with the other hunters and anglers who drove hundreds of miles to hunt game and fish the jewellike lakes that dotted the Black Hills. He had no idea if the sportsman’s cover was necessary, any more than he knew why Chloe had chosen Crockett to hide out in. But he intended to find out.

      Under the curved brim of the ball cap, Mase’s jaw locked tight. He was past feeling the cumulative effects of too little sleep, too many gallons of black coffee and the six kinds of hell he’d gone through since Chloe’s disappearance. Even now, despite confirmed reports that she was alive and safe, the mental image of her Mercedes nose down and abandoned in that ditch could still put a kink in his intestines.

      He drove the narrow two-lane road, remembering that fear, tasting its bitter residue once again. Now, however, a healthy dose of anger added its own flavor to the fear. At this point, Mase was almost as furious over the torment Chloe had put him and her family through as he was relieved to have found her.

      As the Blazer crested a hill dotted with tall pines and dropped down toward the half dozen weathered wooden buildings that comprised Crockett, he couldn’t decide whether to hustle her back to Minneapolis or haul her to the nearest motel and stake his claim the way he’d wanted to since the day she proposed to him. He was still debating the issue when he pulled up at the Crockett General Store and killed the Blazer’s engine.

      Mase climbed out, disappointment rising sharp in his throat. They’d tagged the wrong woman. Chloe couldn’t have stayed in this place for almost three weeks! Not his Chloe, anyway.

      Eyes narrowed behind his mirrored sunglasses, Mase returned the blank stare of the bleached cow skull mounted above the much-patched screen door. Those weren’t the only bones to grace the store. Entwined elk antlers twisted up and around its four wooden porch supports like prickly white ivy.

      Against the weathered wood, the antlers were a startling white. In contrast, the rusting South Dakota license plates framing the two front windows provided a riot of color, as did the wooden bins and baskets filled with fall produce that fought for porch space alongside a bagged-ice locker and a bait bucket set under a hand-lettered sign advertising worms and crawlers. The whole weathered wooden structure seemed to list a few degrees to the right, giving the distinct impression that a good wind could topple it over completely.

      Warily, Mase mounted the sagging front steps. The boards creaked a protest, but the bell above the door jangled a cheery welcome when he stepped inside. Tangy wood smoke from the cast iron stove in the center of the store caught at his senses along with the equally compelling aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, ripe apples and tobacco.

      Mase stopped just inside the threshold, sweeping the store with a searching glance. Enough light filtered through the dust-streaked windows