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  “Possibly even Patrick. But Dante?”

  “Supposedly none of them escaped the wrath.”

  He shook his head. “The problem is, I just can’t see Dante standing for it, job or no job.”

  “And you know what else I can’t see,” Breanne said slowly, “is Dante standing idly by while Edward treated either of those women badly.”

  “Me, either.”

  She tipped her head up to his. “So what does all this mean?”

  It meant that there were too many motives, and too many suspects. It meant there were going to be lots and lots of questions once the authorities got here. It meant unpleasant times ahead for all of them. Exhausted at the thought, he leaned back against the door and sighed. “We need to round everyone up and start digging.”

  “It’s still snowing.”

  “I know, but we should do it now, while we have lots of daylight hours left. I don’t know how long it’ll take to reach town.”

  “You really think someone can get that far on the snowmobile without a problem?”

  “I’m counting on it,” he said grimly.

  “Yeah.” She let her arms fall to her sides and stepped close. Reaching up, she touched his face, her fingers warm now. Her touch was so unexpected and sweet, he closed his eyes to savor it.

  “I’m glad we happened, too,” she whispered, making him open his eyes again in surprise.

  For her, it was equal to a shouted declaration of her feelings, and he felt his chest tighten, more so when she set her head against his shoulder and let him hold her.

  “There’s two snowmobiles,” she said. “Who’s going?”

  “Hopefully, Dante and me. I think he’d be more capable than Patrick if we got stuck out there.”

  She slowly fisted her fingers in his shirt, staring at them as she said, “I dreamed about you.”

  “Yeah?” His hands squeezed her hips. “Tell me.”

  “I was running through the dark hallways here. Something was chasing me.” She frowned. “Or someone.”

  “You should have woken me up.”

  “You had me wrapped up in your arms tight and snug, and I knew I was safe.”

  “You are safe.”

  She’d been watching her fingers move in little circles on his chest, but now she lifted her gaze to his, and he could see her uncertainty, her fear. “Once you leave on that snowmobile, no one left here is safe.”

  “Bree.” He sank his fingers into her hair, leaning in, but just as his mouth touched hers, the doors slid open.

  Lariana stood there with a DVD in hand, staring at them.

  “Whoops,” she said, and handed them the case. “Just found this and wanted to put it back. Uh . . . carry on.” With a smile, she slid the door shut again.

  Breanne winced. She knew the staff was probably used to such indiscretions, but she sure wasn’t. “Well, that was . . . awkward.”

  Cooper just lifted an oh, well shoulder. His shirt was wrinkled, from her. His hair stood up on end. Also from her. And he was wearing one of those after-sex expressions that there was no hiding. He looked thoroughly debauched, and so rough-and-tumble sexy that she wanted him all over again.

  Oh God, she wanted him all over again.

  But that had to stop. Sex was sex, and they’d just had it. The end. But wow, he was potent. And something else . . . with Cooper, it never felt like just sex.

  At her nod, he slid open the door, and together they stepped out.

  “I’m starving,” she admitted. “I need something before digging.”

  He followed her down the maze of hallways to the kitchen. At least she was no longer getting lost. She figured if she didn’t get lost, she couldn’t find another dead body.

  In the kitchen, she beelined directly to the refrigerator.

  Cooper grabbed a glass from a cupboard and moved to the sink for water. Hands wet, he looked around for a towel, then finally opened the door beneath the sink. “You need to drink, too,” he said. “Before you get dehydrated—”

  When he broke off so suddenly, Breanne turned from the drawers to look at him.

  He was hunkered before the open cupboard, mouth tight, body tense. Absolutely still.

  “Cooper?”

  Turning only his head, he looked at her from eyes that were no longer lit with sexual prowess or good humor, but flat with concentration.

  A cop’s eyes.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Beneath the bathroom sink in the foyer there’s a brand new pair of rubber gloves, still in their packaging. I saw them yesterday when Lariana was in there cleaning. Can you go get them for me?”

  She was so startled by the odd request, not to mention his cool, calm but utterly badass expression, she simply nodded and turned on her heels to do just that.

  She encountered no one in the hallway on the way there or back, and when she re-entered the kitchen, Cooper was no longer by the sink.

  “Here,” he said from behind her, startling her into a gasp as she whirled to face him, a hand to her chest as he took the gloves from her. “What—”

  His finger went to her lips. Then he pulled a chair in front of the double doors, so no one could come in on them unannounced.

  She could only stare into his extremely tense face. “What’s going on?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she knew she wasn’t going to like it. “Cooper, you’re scaring me.”

  “Not as much as this is going to.” He put an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the kitchen sink. “Take a deep breath, but don’t scream. Promise me you’re not going to scream.”

  “Okay.” She gulped in a deep breath, then crouched down with him and looked beneath the sink. At the towel shoved behind the pile, covered in something dried a brownish color. They both stared at it for the longest moment of Breanne’s life.

  “Fuck,” Cooper finally said on a sigh.

  Yeah. Her thoughts exactly.

  Twenty-four

  I suppose the word “calm” would lose its meaning if it wasn’t sandwiched between moments of terror.

  —Breanne Mooreland’s journal entry

  “Gee, that’s funny,” Breanne heard herself say. “It almost looks like a bloody towel.”

  Cooper didn’t say a word, just began to put on the rubber gloves.

  “Shelly probably cut herself chopping vegetables,” she said through the roaring in her ears. “You should see how fast she chops. And then she probably shoved the towel down there and forgot about it. Probably.”

  Cooper flicked on his flashlight and stuck his head in the cupboard, carefully not touching the towel but trying to see around it.

  “Or it could be ketchup,” she said inanely, her mouth running away with her thoughts. “Maybe she spilled ketchup. That could have happened, right?”

  Cooper pulled his head back out of the cupboard and looked at her. “Are you breathing? Because you don’t look like you’re breathing.”

  “Oh.” She gulped in a few breaths and tried a smile, which quickly wobbled. “That’s not ketchup, is it?”

  Cooper slowly shook his head.

  “Something really bad happened here.”

  “Something,” he agreed. He turned off the flashlight and shut the cupboard door. Then he removed the rubber gloves and reached for her hand.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  “Shovel. Shovel like hell.”

  They’d found the towel.

  That was bad. They shouldn’t have found the towel.

  What would happen now?

  If only it would stop snowing. If only they could all get out, get away from here.

  If only, if only, if only . . .

  For Breanne, getting outside felt like a culture shock, not to mention an actual physical punch to the chest. Her poor lungs weren’t adapted to the altitude, much less this biting cold.

  At least inside the house, though sometimes equally icy, she’d been in somewhat of a cocoon. There s