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

wasn’t feeling secure. Wasn’t feeling it at all. The thought of facing off with another human being and shooting him wasn’t appealing in the least, even if it meant putting an end to her attacks.

Jewel opened her door wider. “Come in, so we don’t wake the others.”

He hesitated, something raw anchored in those starkly blue eyes, then shook his head. He wasn’t coming into her room. He either didn’t trust himself or he didn’t trust her.

Her heart did a somersault. He was rugged and handsome and a protector all wrapped up in one way-too-appealing package. And he’d assigned himself as her personal bodyguard. Something inside told her he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t much more than police business. If it wasn’t personal to him.

“So what? Are you planning to stand guard outside my room all night, then?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

The disquiet in his eyes tugged at her heart. She reached out and pressed her hand against his cheek, feeling the stubble there. A current surged up her arm. Mistake. It had been a mistake to reach out, but she couldn’t seem to pull her hand back. She was enjoying that slow hum in her belly entirely too much.

“I don’t know how you can watch over me 24/7,” she said. The hitch in her voice told more than she wanted to reveal. “You have to rest, too.”

He stepped back, forcing Jewel to drop her hand. His move had been intentional, and she was grateful. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t think at all when next to him anymore.

“No one camped outside my room at the B and B, and I’m safer here than I was there.”

“That why you brought the gun? You believe you’re safe now?” It was rhetorical. He was making a point. “Good night, Jewel.”

“Good night.” She closed the door and pressed her back against it.

He hadn’t expected Jewel to answer, because he’d seen the truth in her eyes and in her actions. They were both dancing around that truth, because Jewel was unwilling to tell him. But now he had confirmation from her that he’d been right to come. He’d been right to listen to his gut if even Jewel thought she wasn’t safe on this yacht with her sister and brother-in-law.

And he knew to be even more vigilant. He kept his door open. Sat in a chair and watched the hallway, his eyes on Jewel’s door.

Come on, Buck, make a move. Make a move while I’m here so I can catch you and put you away. So I can stop the attack and prevent more. Make a move so we can all get back to our lives. So I can get back to thinking about something besides Jewel Caraway.

But nothing happened during the night. Buck made no move to attack Jewel.

Colin joined the group for breakfast and downed enough coffee to make an elephant jumpy. He thought Buck had wanted to fish for halibut, but the yacht cruised toward a new destination that only Buck knew—a surprise, he’d said.

Doubts suffused Colin’s thoughts. If he was the attacker, the killer, then Buck had successfully stayed two steps ahead of Colin all this time. Jewel was right. Colin couldn’t maintain this pace. All he could do was bide his time for Buck to make a mistake or for something else to come through. Something like his memory finally clicking into gear and telling Colin why the other man seemed so familiar. He knew the man from somewhere, and suddenly he’d showed up here and Jewel was attacked, her life threatened. Colin didn’t believe in coincidence.

Jewel’s attacker had a partner, a woman. As Colin watched Meral chat with Jewel, he couldn’t reconcile that fact with what he saw and knew of Jewel’s sister. Meral couldn’t be the woman who had rammed Jim Humphrey’s monster Suburban into Jewel’s Durango. So who could the accomplice be?

Stella refilled his coffee mug, poured more orange juice for Meral and Jewel. The cool breeze picked up and the tablecloth fluttered. Jewel’s hair whipped across her face. She tugged it back behind her ear, looking as though she hadn’t slept better than Colin, but she kept up a good front for Meral’s sake.

Captain Mike chatted with Buck at the rail, while Gary, the deckhand, manned the helm. Colin had seen Captain Mike come and go from Mountain Cove with his chartered cruises, and the certified Coast Guard Master and his crew were not suspects in Colin’s mind.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. They must have been passing through limited cell-tower service. He tugged it out to see he had three texts. Two from David, who was just checking on them. The other from his friend and forensic artist, letting Colin know that he would start working on the sketch of Buck. The text had been sent last night.

Colin had asked him to take off fifteen or so years and remove the beard and wrinkles and extra weight, since most people thickened even in the face as they aged. He hadn’t met the man while in Alaska, he didn’t think, which meant he had to have run into him while in Texas. Taking those extra years off the sketch might trigger Colin’s memory.

He jammed his cell back in his pocket, felt his gun under his jacket, though he made no attempt to hide it. Then realized the yacht had stopped. The Alabaster Sky anchored in the waters just off where the Bledsoe Glacier terminus met the water.

A loud crack resounded.

Meral jumped up. “Would you look at that?”

They all rushed to the rail.

“That’s called calving,” Gary told them. Apparently he was not only a deckhand but an ecologist, and could serve as their tour guide when possible. “When ice breaks from the terminus, the end of a glacier, and falls into the water. That’s when it’s called an iceberg.”

They watched in silent awe as ice broke away and fell into the channel water.

After a few minutes, Buck put his hands on Meral’s shoulders. “We’ve