Numbers that look an awful lot like coordinates, and when I try the ones from the very last entry, the day before my father was found dead in his car...
Oh my God.
Google Maps comes up.
Those coordinates zero in on the mountain ranges a couple hours’ drive north of town.
Right over the blue outline of a lake.
Glass Lake.
Right there, in the deepest part, at the center.
I feel like I’ve just walked through a draft of arctic air. No—like I’ve been touched by a ghost, when this is practically a message from the Great Beyond.
Apparently, my father put his plane down in the middle of the lake on purpose.
He wanted someone to know about it, too, in case anything ever happened to him.
Why else would he write down the coordinates?
I’d almost think he was intending to commit suicide, but his body wasn’t dredged up from the bottom of the lake. He somehow crashed the plane in the lake, got out safely, and then?
...I don’t know.
Went to get high, and misjudged the dose when he’d supposedly been off the junk for so long? The coroner said he had enough heroin in his veins to drop an elephant.
Something’s not right here.
Dad was supposed to be clean, but before that he’d been an addict. He knew what he was doing every time he’d pump his system full of that crap. Even if I’ve never admitted it out loud, I always wondered if he meant to kill himself by a late-night overdose.
But he had a chance sooner with the downed plane.
It doesn’t make sense that he’d survive crashing it, then off himself by overdose.
I’m missing part of the story. I just know it. Some unknown hell happened between crashing that plane and his body being found in his truck.
I need to know what’s going on here.
Which means I need to find that plane and figure out why he sank it in the middle of the coldest lake in the region.
I sink back in my chair, staring at the screen. At that map whose simple outlines want to tell a story I don’t know how to read.
How do I go looking for a sunken plane?
I wouldn’t even know where to start. I don’t have diving gear, a submersible, and definitely nothing that would let me pull a whole plane up from those kinds of depths.
Damn it.
I don’t like asking people for help, but I’m going to need someone.
Someone with more experience than me with this level of craziness.
But who? I mean, there’s Doc, technically family now that he’s married to my cousin. He’s got all kinds of covert and special ops experience from the secret Galentron stuff.
Leo Regis, too. Nobody’s roughed it in the wilderness like he has when he was a wanted man.
Plus Warren Ford as well as Blake and Holt Silverton are all ex-military, and they could probably work out some pretty ingenious stuff.
But I can’t.
They’ve already been through hell.
Doc’s wife Ember is my cousin, and I still remember the terror on her face when we were tied up with flames leaping around us. I can’t stand to see that look on her face again if Paisley threatens her.
I adore Peace Silverton. Haley Ford.
Clarissa Regis is more than a business partner now. She’s become a great friend, and I don’t dare threaten her or put their son in danger when she almost lost her life, her husband, and her sister to hired killers.
Same goes for Libby Silverton. She’s been my best friend since childhood, one of the only locals who never believed any of the nasty rumors about me. I’ve watched that pint-sized firecracker light up a man three times her size for daring to whisper that I’m the town bicycle, always ready for a ride.
If I go to any of these people for help, I’m not just endangering them.
I’m endangering their spouses. Their children. Their lives. Everything they’ve clawed their way through hell to keep. They finally think they’re safe.
I won’t be the one to change that.
To ruin it.
Another face flashes through my mind.
A handsome, rugged face with kind walnut eyes and cheekbones that could cut Paisley’s vicious little blade to pieces.
Alaska.
But then again...Eli.
Alaska looks at me like he has this eerie sixth sense. Like he knows I’m hurting, scared, and all he wants is to stand between me and the storm of my life.
He’s already protecting someone else full time, though.
His son.
I can’t. I can’t risk that sweet boy or his father.
Sucking in a raw breath, I rub at my throat, my eyes burning. I’m alone in this. Standing on my own, because maybe people are wrong about a lot of what they say about me, but there’s one thing everyone has right.
I’m bad luck. Cursed. And anyone who gets close to me is just begging to have that bad karma rubbed all over them.
So I’ll handle this alone.
But maybe...
Well, maybe I can just ask Alaska for advice.
He works construction. He’s ex-military. He was a freaking SEAL. There’s no one better to tell me what to do with this.
He can point me to the right equipment I’d need to theoretically find a small plane at the bottom of a lake and go exploring. That’s all. I won’t get him involved.
Also, I’d better hope his money plus the new cashflow covers renting scuba gear.
Because I can’t let this rest.
And I can’t keep living my life on Paisley Lockwood’s whims.
Even in death, Dad found a way to call to me.
How can I not answer?
How could I turn down a sliver of a chance to end this forever?
6
Fool’s Gold (Alaska)
No matter how many times we change homes, one thing stays sacrosanct in the Charter household—breakfast.
It’s been a morning ritual ever since Elijah was old enough to eat solid food. I’ve always done most of the cooking, but some days when I was busy with work, it’d be sandwiches or takeout for lunch or dinner.
Not breakfast.
Breakfast is as permanent and sure as the sunrise.
My days don’t feel right if I don’t start ’em standing over the stove with several skillets popping away, filling the kitchen with the glories of frying hash browns, sizzling bacon, eggs sputtering with molten cheese.
Sometimes my son helps—but the kitchen in the rented cabin is a little tight for a man my size and a growing teenager, so he’s perched on a stool at the island, half watching me and half messing around with Instagram filters for his latest photoset.
“Hey, Dad,” he says a little breathlessly. “I just landed my five hundredth follower!”
“Yeah?” I glance over my shoulder, watching him while keeping one eye on the timer. The buttermilk biscuits are due out any second, and I hate burning the edges. “I’m proud of you, dude. You don’t mind if I check these people out, do you?”
He stops, sighs, and gives me an aggrieved look.
He’s still in his pajamas, an oversized t-shirt and shorts, bedhead sticking up everywhere. I hold in a laugh. He looks less like the patient sufferer he wants to be and more like a very exasperated baby chick with his feathers ruffled.
“You don’t have to check all of my followers. I’ve been careful,” he says.