Page 29 of Tempting Fate
Gabe grabbed the sack from her, his hands brushing hers, sending a shiver down her spine. She told herself it was the cold.
“Yep,” he said. “I’ll follow you.”
“Hey, King of Covert, how do we do this without getting caught? I want it to be a surprise.”
He opened her driver’s door and shooed her in. “We’ve got an hour.”
“What do you mean an hour?”
“I’ve got Chad diverting them at the Lumber Baron while we get this sucker up.”
“So all this time we were drinking coffee we could’ve been installing the gate?” She scooted into the cab and started her engine to move him along.
“I like living on the edge.” He hung his hands off the roof of her pickup, leaned in, and pecked her on the lips. “Chillax, Ray.”
She slugged him in the arm, reversed out of the driveway, and smiled all the way back to the farm. If she didn’t hate all men, she might’ve actually liked him.
Chapter 8
Drew Matthews stared out his kitchen window. “Did you see that?”
His wife, Kristy, lifted her head from the screen of her laptop. “See what?”
“I could’ve sworn there was someone out there.” He continued to search his wooded backyard.
“Maybe it was maintenance.” She returned to her laptop.
It was Saturday. He’d never seen anyone from the development working on a weekend, unless it was on the golf course. Hell, he rarely saw his neighbors. Other than the family of deer that lived on the property, no one came around much. They’d chosen Sierra Heights to be close to Harper. He got her on the weekends, but the four-hour drive each way to the Bay Area was a bear, so he and Kristy opted to get a second place in Nugget.
The developer, who was friends with Emily and knew Harper’s story, had given them a great deal. The house was palatial compared to what they had in Palo Alto, and Harper was looking forward to the community pool in summer. Having his daughter back after seven years of not knowing whether she was dead or alive…well, it was a miracle. And everyone agreed that her transition would be easier if both sets of parents lived in the same town, even if Drew and Kristy were only part-time. They were both lawyers in Silicon Valley, 276 miles away. So they tried whenever possible to work four days in the office and telecommute the rest of the week from Nugget.
The situation had worked out well with Harper, but it had put a significant strain on his marriage. Not the part of having two residences. Kristy had instantly fallen in love with Sierra Heights and their home, a rustic chalet with an open floor plan, walls of windows, a chef’s kitchen, and an en suite master bedroom as large as half their Palo Alto home. She liked inviting their Bay Area friends up for weekends and using the community’s state-of-the-art amenities, including a fully stocked gym. But living only a few miles from Drew’s ex had proven awkward for Kristy, and the complexities of reintroducing Harper to life after abduction were beyond difficult. And then there was the constant tension of trying to get pregnant. After three rounds of IVF, nothing.
Kristy felt like a failure, and Drew felt helpless in convincing her otherwise.
“Or a trick of the light,” he said, returning to the odd sense that someone was back there. “Nonetheless, I’m going to take a look.”
“Okay,” she said, distracted by the case she was working on.
He grabbed his jacket off a peg in the mudroom and called to the breakfast nook, “What do you think of having lunch at the Ponderosa later?” Harper was going to a wedding with Emily and her family, so he and Kristy had the day to themselves.
“We’ll see.”
He sighed and shut the door behind him to explore the backyard. The house sat on an acre of land, which was defined on one side by his garage and the other by a split-rail fence, shared by him and his closest neighbor. The back was wide open, ending at a greenbelt, which fronted another row of houses. There was a good chance that one of his neighbors had innocently wandered onto his property to chase a ball, a dog, or whatever. But having his daughter snatched from his and Emily’s backyard seven years ago had made him hypersensitive about security, even in a small, relatively crime-free town like Nugget.
Drew walked the perimeter, the cold lashing through his thick jacket. He dug in his pockets for a pair of gloves and pulled them on. They’d only had the house less than a month and hadn’t yet acclimated to the change in weather from the Bay Area. So far, though, he was enjoying building fires and snuggling with Kristy and Harper under a mound of throw blankets.
The sun filtered through the gaps in the trees as he walked to the greenbelt without finding anything amiss. Like he and Kristy, most of the residents were part-timers, who came up on weekends and holidays to golf or take advantage of the ski resorts only thirty minutes away. After Christmas, though, the place had cleared out and felt a little like a ghost town. Drew assumed they’d be back soon for Valentine’s Day.
Feeling silly, he started back when something shiny peeking out from under a tree caught his eye. He walked closer to get a better look. Someone had left a ragged army green backpack with tarnished silver buckles lying on the ground. A closer inspection revealed a canteen less than two feet from the pack, which made Drew think that whoever left it planned to come back.
It could’ve been hikers or campers who’d wandered off the trail. The development was surrounded by state park land. It was nothing, he told himself. But by the time he got inside the house, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it was odd.
Perhaps he was making a mountain out of a mole hill, but he dialed the police anyway.
“What’s going on?” Kristy found him a few minutes later in the mudroom. “I heard you on the phone.”
“It’s probably nothing, but I found a backpack and canteen in the yard. I’m pretty sure it belongs to the person I thought I saw.”
