Mountain Secrets Elizabeth Goddard (life changing books to read .txt) 📖

“Yes, chief. It was a woman.”

“Keep searching.” He ended the call, but his eyes never left Jewel’s. “I thought you said it was a man who attacked you.”

Her beautiful but tired eyes shimmered. “Whoever attacked me in the attic was a man, yes. He was much bigger and stronger than me, if that’s an adequate measure. I was pressed against his chest while he was choking me, and he was solid. Nothing feminine about him.”

Colin took it all in and then got on the radio again with further instructions for his men. He needed more police in the woods to wrap this up before things escalated. He’d already put a call in to the Alaska State Troopers because of Jed’s death, but it would take them time to get involved and up to speed, and things were moving fast. He didn’t like any of this.

He turned on the ignition and spun the Jeep out of the trailhead. Idling next to the road, he hung on the steering wheel and looked out at the mountain and the deep greens of an old-growth forest that hid a murdering fugitive.

“I’ve mentioned this to you before,” he said. “But I think you should consider getting out of town, just for a while, until we catch this person. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a safe house in Mountain Cove. Is there some place away from Mountain Cove that you could go? Family, friends you could visit?” Colin felt like a real heel saying the words, given what David had told him about her family. Unless Silas had a cousin or someone Colin didn’t know about, the only family she had that she could turn to, lean on when times were hard, was here with her at the B and B. And, of course, her Mountain Cove friends were like family to her. But he couldn’t stand the thought of another person he knew and cared about deeply getting hurt.

Especially Jewel. He didn’t think she could take much more. One more incident could break her.

“If I thought for one minute that leaving Mountain Cove would end this, I would do it.” Her worried gaze searched the dark woods around them.

Colin shifted in the seat and watched the woods, too. A misty fog had begun to creep through the forest, making it look ethereal and turning the woods more dangerous. He was glad he’d found Jewel when he had.

Come on. Come on out and face me, whoever you are. The both of you. At least now they knew there were two involved in the attacks against Jewel. In Jed’s murder.

He needed to be out there tracking these people with his men. He hated to send them into a dangerous situation, to the front lines, when he wasn’t leading the way, wasn’t sharing the danger with them. He’d lost one officer and almost another one to Jewel’s attackers. He feared that one by one he might lose them all.

Someone was outsmarting them. Someone was two steps ahead.

“What are you keeping from me, Jewel?”

“Nothing. I thought I knew something that could help, but I don’t.”

“Why don’t you let me decide if it’s important? That’s part of my job. Help me to do my job better.”

He wanted to press, to argue with her, but when she turned her eyes on him, he knew he wouldn’t get another word out of her. What she was hiding was a mystery that he would have to discover on his own. What could be so important to her? He had to push down his frustration in order to be patient with the woman next to him.

He brushed her soft, ash-blond hair back, and her eyes slipped closed. What was he doing? Not very professional of him, but he couldn’t seem to break away, get free from the undercurrent between them. All these years he’d kept his distance, but now he was being swept away in a river that was all woman with hazel-green eyes and a deep inner beauty he found impossible to resist. The current that was Jewel held on to him, dragging him under. How did he escape without drowning in her?

NINE

Jewel rested in the passenger seat as Colin drove her to the hospital clinic in Mountain Cove to have her injuries checked. Again. For the moment she believed she was safe, but that didn’t halt her thoughts of others who had been hurt, and killed, because of her.

She searched the woods around her. Would another vehicle shoot out from the shadows and ram Colin’s Jeep? Would he be the injured one this time? Or worse? Would he get killed because of her?

Lord, what do I do? Help me to do the right thing!

Head pounding, it was hard to concentrate on his cell phone conversation. But she did her best.

A woman had been shot. A woman had driven Jim Humphrey’s monster Suburban into Jewel’s vehicle. A woman had hunted her down when the crash hadn’t killed her. Nausea roiled. The police were looking for the woman, expecting her to need medical attention, hoping the bullet had been more serious than a graze.

Jewel didn’t know what to make of it. She sank deeper into the seat, letting discouragement engulf her. She’d been suspicious of Buck, but not Meral. A pang shot through her heart. A deep, wrenching ache that overshadowed all other pains.

She struggled to ignore it, to cover it up, so Colin wouldn’t see her anguish. He would see right through her, and he probably already saw that she was hiding something. What was wrong with her that she wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t selfless enough, to tell him about her past? So what if her image, everything she’d worked to build here, would be destroyed with the truth that she was a thief? What did her reputation matter in the light of this new revelation?

Please, God, please don’t let Meral be involved.

She didn’t believe it, and if there was another woman involved and not