Chapter 1 - The Stranger Who Should Have Drowned“Because if they did, you’re in danger.”
For several seconds, I could only stare at the stranger on my couch.
Rain hammered the roof of my little A-frame cabin. Water dripped from his expensive suit onto the faded beige cushions, and a thin stream of blood traveled from his eyebrow toward his jaw. Despite the cold, despite his injuries, despite the fact that he had just escaped a burning aircraft, his eyes remained unnervingly alert.
Most people who nearly drowned would have been grateful.
This man looked as though he was deciding whether I had become a problem he needed to eliminate.
I pulled my wrist from his grip.
“Listen, mister. I just dragged you out of a sinking airplane. I’m not interested in whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
His gaze shifted toward the window.
“Trouble has a way of finding people who help me.”
“Then perhaps you should stop needing help.”
I reached for the first-aid kit beside the fireplace.
He watched every movement I made.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Leo.”
“Leo what?”
“Just Leo.”
I glanced at his watch. Even broken, it looked more expensive than everything inside my cabin combined. His suit was probably worth more than the bakery my family had spent thirty years building, the same bakery the bank had taken from me three days ago.
“Convenient,” I muttered. “A mysterious man named Leo falls out of the sky into my lake.”
“I didn't fall out of the sky.”
“You were inside a plane that fell out of the sky.”
“That is technically different.”
Against my better judgment, I almost smiled.
Then he winced as I pressed gauze against his eyebrow.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No, you're not.”
“You're right. I'm not.”
For the first time, something resembling amusement crossed his face.
It vanished when I reached toward his injured leg.
“Don't touch that.”
I stopped.
“I'm trying to see whether it's broken.”
“It's not.”
“You can diagnose your own leg now?”
“I can tell when something is broken.”
“Wonderful. What else can you tell me? Whether I should charge you for the couch?”
He leaned back, immediately regretted it, and pressed a hand against his ribs.
I lowered the gauze.
“Your ribs might be fractured. You need a hospital.”
“No hospital.”
“Fine. Bleed to death on my furniture. But if you stain that quilt, you're buying me another one.”
“Call an ambulance,” he said.
I blinked.
“You just said no hospital.”
“Call an ambulance for yourself. Tell them you found an empty cabin.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably.”
He reached inside his jacket, then stopped when pain tightened his face. Whatever he had been looking for was gone. His fingers searched another pocket before closing around a small black object.
A phone.
Its screen was cracked, but when he pressed the side button, it illuminated.
Three missed calls.
One message.
UNKNOWN: THE SECOND PACKAGE IS CONFIRMED. THE GIRL MUST NOT LEAVE THE LAKE.
My stomach contracted.
The message disappeared before I could read it again.
“Who is the girl?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“What girl?”
“The one in your message.”
His expression changed so subtly that I might have missed it if I hadn't spent years working behind a bakery counter, learning to recognize the difference between an honest customer and someone who was about to lie about breaking a pastry.
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
“Give it to me.”
“Tell me what it means.”
He began to sit up.
I raised the heavy anchor I had brought from the boat and set it firmly between us.
“Don't even think about it.”
He stopped moving.
For a moment, we stared at each other, the injured stranger on my couch and the woman who had spent the past seventy-two hours wondering how she was going to afford groceries.
Then he gave a surprisingly quiet laugh.
“You really don't know who I am.”
“Should I?”
“No.”
“Good. Then we agree on something.”
I turned toward the kitchen.
“I have soup. It's canned, and it's probably older than both of us. You can eat it while I figure out how to get you to a doctor without you behaving like a complete lunatic.”
Behind me, he said, “What's your name?”
“Claire Bennett.”
The moment I spoke, his eyes hardened.
It wasn't curiosity.
It was recognition.
He knew my name.
I slowly turned around.
“Have we met?”
He said nothing.
“Leo?”
His phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen, and for the first time since I had pulled him out of the lake, genuine fear appeared in his eyes.
Not fear of dying.
Fear of someone who was still alive.
He answered.
“Speak.”
A distorted voice came through the speaker.
“We have a problem.”
“I noticed.”
“The aircraft's emergency beacon is transmitting, but the recovery team found no bodies.”
“Then they haven't searched properly.”
“They searched the entire crash site.”
Leo's fingers tightened around the phone.
“Did they recover the cargo?”
“No.”
“And the pilot?”
A pause.
“Dead.”
Leo closed his eyes briefly.
“What about the passenger?”
“Also presumed dead.”
“Presumed isn't confirmed.”
“There's another issue.”
“Talk.”
“The lake has one occupied property within two miles of the crash site.”
My blood turned cold.
The voice continued.
“An old cabin. Registered to a woman named Claire Bennett.”
I stopped breathing.
Leo slowly raised his eyes toward mine.
On the phone, the voice became quieter.
“Boss, tell me you weren't found by her.”
Silence filled the cabin.
The stranger on my couch stared at me as though the greatest mistake of his life had just happened.
Then he answered.
“I wasn't.”
A lie.
The voice exhaled.
“Good. Because the order came directly from Salvatore. Anyone who witnessed the crash is to be eliminated.”
The phone went dead.
For a few seconds, neither of us moved.
Then I took a step backward.
“You're a criminal.”
He didn't deny it.
“You're involved in whatever happened to that plane.”
He remained silent.
“And now somebody wants to kill me because I pulled you out of the water?”
He finally spoke.
“Yes.”
The answer was so immediate, so matter-of-fact, that it frightened me more than a thousand lies could have.
I grabbed my keys.
“Get out.”
“Claire.”
“Get out of my house!”
“You don't understand.”
“I understand perfectly. I saved your life, and you've brought someone else's death to my doorstep.”
I opened the cabin door.
Wind tore rain through the entrance. Beyond the porch, the black lake rolled beneath the storm, swallowing the last traces of the aircraft.
“Leave.”
He tried to stand.
His injured leg buckled.
I instinctively reached for him, but he caught the doorframe instead, teeth clenched against the pain.
“Take your boat,” he said. “Go north along the shoreline. There's an abandoned ranger station about four miles away. Hide there until morning.”
I stared at him.
“You expect me to run from men I haven't even seen?”
“I expect you to survive.”
“Then come with me.”
He looked almost surprised.
“What?”
“If you know they're coming, you're coming with me. I'm not staying here wondering whether the next person through that door is going to shoot me.”
For the first time, the stranger seemed unable to find an answer.
Then a sound rose above the storm.
An engine.
Several engines.
I hurried to the window.
Headlights swept across the trees on the far side of the lake.
Not one vehicle.
Three.
They moved slowly down the narrow access road toward my cabin, their beams slicing through the rain.
Leo came to stand beside me, pale beneath the blood on his face.
He recognized the vehicles.
I could tell by the way his entire body went rigid.
“Who are they?” I whispered.
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he reached beneath the ripped lining of his jacket and pulled out a compact black pistol.
I stumbled backward.
“Put that thing away!”
He checked the weapon with practiced efficiency.
“Stay behind me.”
“You have a gun?”
“Several, actually.”
“That is not reassuring!”
The first vehicle stopped outside my gate.
Its headlights illuminated the wooden sign my father had carved years ago.
BENNETT CABIN. PRIVATE PROPERTY.
A door opened.
A tall man stepped into the rain, wearing a black coat and holding a phone against his ear.
Leo's expression became murderous.
“Who's that?” I whispered.
He looked at me.
And spoke three words that made the blood drain from my face.
“My brother, Dante.”
The man outside raised his head.
As though he could sense us watching, he turned directly toward the cabin.
Then he smiled.
Not at Leo.
At me.
May you like
And held up a photograph.
A photograph of my father.
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