Cold Case Secrets Read online

  The Canadian wilderness can be deadly

  A gripping True North Heroes romance

  Solving his sister’s murder is Mountie Jacob Henry’s only priority—until his daring helicopter rescue of Grace Finch leaves them stranded in the Canadian wilderness. Now with a storm raging and escaped convicts in pursuit, Jacob and Grace must rely on each other for survival. But when Jacob discovers Grace’s deadly secret, can he look past it in the fight for their lives?

  “Stop! Police! Let her go!”

  Jacob aimed high and fired. The criminal froze like an animal caught in headlights. But Grace didn’t stop for a second. She spun back with her elbows high and struck Cutter in the face. The criminal bellowed and grabbed his nose. She broke free and pelted down the rock face toward Jacob.

  “Jacob!” she shouted. “He’s got a semiautomatic! He just needs to reload!”

  He ran toward her, reaching the rock face just as she reached the edge. She looked down. “How do I get down from here?”

  “Jump! I’ll catch you!”

  Her eyes scanned the drop, and then her chin rose. “Okay. I’m coming!”

  He shoved his gun back in his holster. She took a deep breath and leaped.

  But even as she jumped, Jacob saw the stocky figure of one of the convicts ahead, a fresh gun clutched in his hand. His heart stopped.

  He had one convict ahead of them, one behind them, a forest to his right, a rock wall to his left...and a woman he had to protect with his life.

  Maggie K. Black is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.

  Books by Maggie K. Black

  Love Inspired Suspense

  True North Heroes

  Undercover Holiday Fiancée

  The Littlest Target

  Rescuing His Secret Child

  Cold Case Secrets

  Amish Witness Protection

  Amish Hideout

  Military K-9 Unit

  Standing Fast

  True North Bodyguards

  Kidnapped at Christmas

  Rescue at Cedar Lake

  Protective Measures

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  Cold Case Secrets

  Maggie K. Black

  For I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

  —Jonah 4:2b

  With thanks to Constable Eran Schwartz for showing me around his helicopter, training with me at the dojo and answering countless questions. You are a shining example of the kind of person all those in law enforcement should be. Thanks to Pastor Josh Darsaut for the Bible verse and your unexpected grace on a rough day. Thanks as always to my agent, Melissa Jeglinski, and editor, Emily Rodmell, for your help and support on this journey. And finally, thanks to all of you who were there for me while I was writing this difficult book. I hope you enjoy it.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  DEAR READER

  EXCERPT FROM AMISH COVERT OPERATION BY MEGHAN CARVER

  ONE

  The thrumming of the helicopter rotors were like a steady drum beat pounding through Jacob Henry’s mind as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detective scanned the monitor for any sign of life in the dense Ontario forest below. Outside the cockpit window, the summer sun was just beginning its descent behind thick and oppressive clouds. Silvery outlines of opal raindrops traced streaks down the windshield. Tense words between the young Search and Rescue pilot sitting beside him and the testy East Coast detective in the back seat filled his headset.

  “I’m just saying that when the wind picks up and the rain hits for real, we’re going to be forced to turn back,” the pilot, Kevin Faust, said. “I don’t want to crash.”

  “And I’m just saying when you’ve flown as many flights as I have, you know what you can get away with,” Detective Warren Scott shot back.

  “As a hobby pilot,” Kevin said. “Not a professional with Search and Rescue.”

  Jacob focused on the black-and-white screen ahead of him, searching for the bright glare of a human heat signature.

  Wherever the escaped convicts are, Lord, and whoever ultimately finds them, please may those killers be recaptured tonight.

  Authorities were scrambling across Ontario to find three convicted killers who’d overpowered their guards and forced the prison van transporting them to crash on the Trans-Canada Highway almost twenty miles north of the maze of trees and towering rocks that made up Algonquin Provincial Park. While local police searched nearby towns and buildings, and provincial police checked the roads, Jacob and Warren had volunteered for the aerial search of the almost three-thousand-square mile provincial park. Home to over two thousand lakes and seven-hundred-and-fifty miles of river, it was a haven for the kind of off-the-grid campers who enjoyed hiking and canoeing for days into the middle of nowhere.

  They might as well have been searching for a quarter in a cornfield.

  “They’re probably not even out here,” Kevin argued, speaking into his headset microphone to be heard over the sound of the rotors. “If I’d just escaped a concrete box, the last place I’d be hiding out is somewhere with no running water or electricity.”

  Maybe not. But moments ago, there’d been a blip, a heat signature, that had lit up the screen for a fleeting moment like a beacon. They just had to find it again.

  Jacob focused on the infrared monitor. “Just give me five.”

  “You can have a whole twenty,” Kevin said, “if the rain doesn’t get worse before then. But in twenty minutes I’m turning around, one way or another, because otherwise we’re running out of fuel.”

  “Heard that.” Jacob’s eyes didn’t flicker from the screen.

  Lord, help me see what I need to see.

  Nothing but his own pale face reflected back at him, reminding him of an entire summer spent indoors, reading evidence on screens. The light brown scruff that brushed his jaw was more from lack of shaving than intention and tinged with a bit more white than he liked admitting.

  “I just don’t want to head back with nothing,” Warren said, then muttered, almost as if to himself, “I gave up a date for this.”

  Jacob cut his eyes in the detective’s direction. He’d vaguely known Warren from their large regional high school, before the other man had moved out east for college, so he knew he was also getting close to forty. Warren had only transferred back to Ontario in the spring and already he was dating? How did people even date now? Where did they even meet? Jacob couldn’t remember the last time he himself had so much as gone out with anyone for coffee. At two years away from the big four-oh himself, Jacob had been i
n the business of stopping killers long enough to know that saving other people’s lives and having a life of your own didn’t mesh. Despite the fact that Jacob’s three younger brothers had recently all decided to prove him wrong.

  “I gave up bowling with my league,” Kevin offered, with a grin that implied the twentysomething was trying to lighten the mood in their hovering box. “Canadian-style. Five pin.”

  Well, guys, I’ve risked missing something way more important than that.

  The words crossed his mind, but he had enough self-control not to say them out loud. He didn’t know either man well enough to confide in them and some things just cut too deep to say without thinking. It had been just over twenty-four years since his little sister, Faith, had been snatched off the side of a rural road at the age of twelve and died fighting off her attacker. Jacob had been fourteen, the eldest child and the one who was supposed to look out for his siblings. And while, over the years, his brothers had each found their own ways to make peace with the memory of their sister, for Jacob, Faith’s face was always there, like a picture he’d taped to the corner of his mind’s eye, reminding him of the one killer he had yet to catch. Then recently a fellow detective under very deep cover, named Liam Bearsmith, had reached out to say he’d found a fresh lead in Faith’s case and was willing to risk both his cover and his life to pass that information onto Jacob. They were supposed to meet at a highway coffee shop at midnight, after Jacob went to his brother Trent’s bachelor party.

  And I’m here with you two scanning trees. But he caught his griping before it could grow and instead channeled it into prayer. Lord, please resolve this soon. May the three convicts be caught, help me get back to base in time to meet up with Liam and help me get the information I need to put my sister’s killer away for good.

  “It takes days to walk or canoe across the park,” Warren said. “I know they shut the park down, but it’s possible there could still be campers out there who have no idea there are convicts on the loose. Let alone a serial predator like Barry Cutter who murdered five women, including two ex-girlfriends. Or Victor Driver who went around starting bar fights that put people into the hospital before beating his ex’s new husband to death and her brother into a coma. Or Hal Turner.”

  Kevin shuttered. Jacob noted Warren didn’t bother to give Hal Turner’s crime résumé. There was no need. The dirty cop turned cop killer was notorious in law enforcement for having killed both his partner and an informant. He’d then tried to burn down a building to destroy the evidence of his thriving drug business and claimed he’d been set up by rogue cops.

  Even though Jacob had been a teenager at the time, he’d known even then that God was calling him to a life in law enforcement. Here Turner had achieved everything professionally that Jacob was both hoping and striving for, only to then turn around and betray his brothers and sisters in blue, damage their reputation and give dozens of criminals grounds for appeal.

  “I get it, we’re hunting bad guys,” Kevin said. “But that doesn’t change the weather or how much fuel we’ve got.”

  A small building passed through the frame. It was a ranger cabin by the looks of it. There were a handful of small and very rustic cabins dotted around the expansive park that had been build back in the 1930s to serve some long-abandoned purpose like storage or lookout. Bare bones, with no electricity or running water, they still wouldn’t make for a half-bad hideout, if a person were able to find one.

  A bright patch blinked onto the screen near the building. Jacob sat up straight, as he felt the sudden jolt of shock, surprise and relief combined. “We have a heat signature!”

  “Please tell me it’s not another bear—” Warren started.

  “No, it’s a person,” Jacob said. He heard Kevin whistle, but his eyes stayed locked on the screen. The figure was definitely human and female by the looks of it, willowy and slender with long hair and just the hint of curves visible through her jeans and survival jacket. “A woman.”

  “Out there alone?” Kevin asked. Jacob glanced at him just long enough to see the flicker of worry cross his face. “In the middle of nowhere? Why didn’t we see her earlier?”

  Jacob watched as she crept along a tall rock face that ran like a jagged uneven wall between thick trees on one side and a raging river on the other.

  “Camera range isn’t that broad,” Jacob said. “She could’ve been in a cave, or there are some pretty big rock outcroppings that could’ve hidden her heat signature.”

  Kevin’s finger jabbed at Jacob’s screen as a second larger figure stepped into the frame. “She’s not alone.”

  Yeah, and judging by the way she was creeping along the rock face, that wasn’t a good thing. The second heat signature was large, heavyset and barging through the trees. The outline of his jacket did little to hide the telltale shape of a baggy prison jumpsuit or the handgun in his grasp.

  “We’ve got to get down there!” Jacob said.

  “There’s nowhere to land!” Kevin’s voice rose.

  “It’s one of them!” Jacob said. “It’s a lifer. He’s going to kill her!”

  “I know! I just can’t land!”

  They watched, helpless, as the man chased after her, tackled her and brought her to the ground. Something lurched in Jacob’s core as if he were somehow viscerally able to hear her terrified screams. She thrashed and fought back hard. And Jacob realized, for the first time in his life, he was about to watch a woman’s murder. He yanked his seat belt off, pushed himself out of his seat and climbed into the back of the helicopter. “Warren, get into the front and take over for me. I’m going to rappel down.”

  “From this height?” Warren asked. “In the rain? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Yes, yes and hopefully not. Jacob slid his arms through a safety harness and didn’t answer. He glanced back at the screen and his heart soared momentarily to see the figures had broken apart. Lord, just help her stay alive until I can get there.

  “I’m going to need you to lower me down,” Jacob said. He double-checked his walkie-talkie, phone and his service gun were all on his belt. “Rappel rope is fine. Though I’m suggesting you use the rescue ladder or basket to pull us back up. For now, just get me as close as you can, stay in my ear and point me in the right direction.”

  “It should be me,” Warren started. “You’re the one on infrared.”

  Maybe, but Jacob was also the one who’d gotten his harness on first.

  “There’s still a storm coming—” Kevin’s face was awash with fear “—and I’m still really low on fuel.”

  Right. That twenty minutes was probably closer to fifteen by now.

  “We’ll figure it out!” Jacob double-checked his clasps and opened the door. Wind and rain lashed at him. A deep breath of confidence filled his lungs. Nobody was ever going to die at a criminal’s hands as long as he had something to say about it. He cast one final glance at the outline of the woman below, now pelting through the trees with her attacker close on her heels.

  Stay strong. Don’t give up. I’m coming for you.

  * * *

  The blow from behind came so hard and suddenly that Grace Finch felt the air knocked from her lungs even before she hit the ground. For a moment, her body’s own natural instinct to freeze threatened to overwhelm her. Then she reared, kicking up hard with both legs and felt herself break free. She rolled and tried to get her feet beneath her before a swift punch to the temple knocked her back against the ground.

  The blunt and scarred face of Barry Cutter glared down at her, and Grace felt his entire rap sheet flash through her mind, just as clearly as if she’d been sitting at her crime reporter desk at Torchlight News, reading his bio in her news files. Bartholomew “Barry” Cutter, age fifty-four, convicted to fifty years in prison for the brutal murders of five women.

  Help me! Someone! Anyone! Please!

  A large hand with th
ick fingers grabbed her by the throat and pushed her down. The semi-automatic SIG he waved between her eyes looked police-issued. And suddenly she felt the journalist inside her wanting to ask him how he’d gotten there, what he was doing out of prison and if it had anything to do with the Search and Rescue helicopter she’d seen flying overhead. There was a major news story here, if she got out of here alive to tell it. She swallowed a breath and reminded herself that if Cutter wanted her dead, he’d have killed her by now. Then slowly she began to slide her right hand toward the stun gun in her jacket pocket.

  “Where’s your car?” Cutter snapped. She felt her mind filtering out the threats and curses that peppered his voice, listening only for facts. “Take me to your car. Now! You’re driving me out of here!”

  Didn’t he know where they were? Night was falling, and she’d spent the better part of the day getting this deep into the woods. Her car was at the entrance to the park, at least six hours of canoeing and portaging away. For that matter, how had he even gotten here?

  As for her, she’d been coerced here, lured here, out into the middle of nowhere by another convicted killer, Hal Turner, on the promise of finding information that would clear him of his crimes, prove he’d been set up by some shadowy cabal of senior cops and free Grace of the specter of blackmail he’d been holding over her life. Ever since she had risen as a star crime reporter, Turner had been blackmailing her and threatening to destroy her life and career by telling the world a truth she’d spent her entire life concealing.

  That Grace Finch was really Hal Turner’s biological daughter.

  That the country’s most prolific and award-winning crime reporter was really the child of the so-called dirty cop turned cop killer.

  In her business, reputation was everything. Her biological father was one of the most hated convicted killers in the country, especially as far as those in law enforcement were concerned. What if sources refused to talk to her because of who her father was? What if someone with a grudge against Turner decided to come after her? After all, he’d not only betrayed his badge and worked with organized crime, he’d then besmirched all of law enforcement with wild stories of a deep-seated conspiracy of criminal cops. No evidence had ever been found to back up his claims. What if she was fired from her job at Torchlight News and blackballed from the industry for keeping the truth about her identity secret? Even if Turner was somehow right—he had been set up by someone, and this evidence he’d sent Grace to find would prove it—how would anyone in her life ever trust her again for keeping her identity secret so long?