Michael’s breath caught at the ring of her voice in the still winter forest, so full of gratitude and a hint of awe.
“You’re welcome.” He swallowed, forcing him to focus on the urgency of the situation, not the way his heartbeat sped up when she met his eyes. “Tell me what’s going on. Everything you remember.”
FIVE
Ellie’s breaths came quickly, one after another, as her brain rattled through memory after memory, fear after fear. Sean’s family was behind all of this. They had sent two men in search of her. How many more were out there? And then there was this: she had just put Michael’s life in danger. Michael, who had trusted her story, no matter how outrageous it sounded. Who had stayed with her instead of letting her go into the storm alone. In return, she had put him in danger. She needed to convince him to go separate ways before that happened again. That meant she needed to get at what was waiting for her at the cabin and then disappear as soon as possible.
But first, Michael wanted answers. He deserved them. Where did she start with the string of memories that bombarded her as she tried to follow one after another?
Without the helmet’s visor, the snow glowed bright white against the gray clouds that enveloped the mountain. Michael had taken off his helmet, too, and that unwavering gaze was focused solely on her. Warmth spread through her. His eyes were so dark and serious, and yet, up close, she could see fine lines that fanned from the corners. Laugh lines, despite the heaviness he carried. How long had it been since he’d laughed? Loss had changed him, just as it had her. The connection brought a closeness as he gazed intensely at her. What she would have given for Sean to look at her like that in those last months. Instead, he had closed himself off. The thought caught her off guard, strong and so...disloyal. Ellie quickly pushed it away and focused on what to tell Michael, where to start.
“I saw the car, and memories came back,” she said. “It’s a lot.”
Michael’s expression softened. “I’d say take it slowly, but we’re not in that position right now.”
Ellie took a long breath. “When my husband, Sean, died, everything went to me, including his third of the family’s real estate development business. At first, I was too shocked to register what part-ownership meant, but as I started to get his affairs in order, I read up on everything. To be a responsible owner. I mean, how could I be an owner if I wasn’t involved?”
Michael nodded. She thought that sounded reasonable, but Aidan and Clint hadn’t.
“The company buys up land and builds houses, upscale houses, on it. They built all the houses we just passed.” She gestured in the direction of the development they’d driven by moments before.
The next part was the hardest to speak aloud and another rush of discomfort flooded her. It felt disloyal to talk about any of this. But her danger was his right now. He needed to know.
“Aidan and Sean had some sort of argument about regulations. I don’t know exactly what happened, but from what I could tell in the emails, they paid a small fine for environmental violations but still made record profits. And then there were other payments to two of the city council members that looked a lot like bribes.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know if the evidence is enough to hold up in court. But my husband was one of those people you were talking about before. One of the people who came in, breaking laws and ignoring the environmental regulations.” She swallowed and added, “I’m sorry.”
Michael looked at her with those serious eyes. “You’re not responsible for the choices he made.”
A gust of wind blew through the forest, sweeping her hair across her face and making her shiver. But Michael didn’t seem to notice the cold or the snow. He was focused solely on her.
Ellie tucked the stray curls behind her ear and continued. “I dug further and found some environmental reports from the development we drove through. I didn’t know what to do.”
She frowned. “Then Aidan and my father-in-law, Clint, called a meeting to get me to sign off the paperwork for a contractor in a new development. But when I brought up the emails I’d found, they both turned angry. Enough that I walked out of the meeting.
“I made the mistake of telling them my thinking.” She took another deep breath as embarrassment flooded through her. “Not a good move, but I guess I just couldn’t quite believe that they were up to something underhanded. Because that meant...” This was the hardest part. She swallowed and pushed herself to say her worst fears aloud. “That meant that Sean was probably involved, too.”
This was the dread that had been sitting in her, lurking, the darkness that had consumed her. “Someone followed me home and, the moment I realized it, I must have swerved into the snowbank...”
The fear, the car crash, the bump on her head she couldn’t even remember—all of that had a role in this feeling that the ground had shaken below her, toppling her life with Sean, which had seemed so solid, so steady. Is this the man I married? It was another layer of dread hiding in those memories of the crash—one she could feel, buried deep inside—and as she spoke, this fear stirred, threatening to awaken. It was fear that her whole life with Sean, the love she’d thought they shared, wasn’t real. Had she loved a man who had pulled off harmful things right under her nose?
Ellie had tried so hard to live a life that her parents could be proud of. Her parents had worked hard on their ranch, but it hadn’t seemed to matter. It was a dying way of life, taken over by big farms and the grab for land to extend the never-ending suburban sprawl. But they had hung on, tooth and nail, scraping by and saving to make sure she could go to college. And she’d studied, never forgetting how much was riding on her success. Still, college would have remained out of reach without the grants and scholarships she had gotten, both from her little town and from the State of California.
So it was both a source of pleasure and a touch of embarrassment when she’d found out how easily money flowed in the Alexander family. She’d never told her parents all the details, though they must have suspected when they’d showed up for the lavish wedding Sean’s mother had insisted on. Still, she’d believed that Sean was a good man, an honest man. How could he have broken her trust like this?
She studied Michael’s expression for censure, but she didn’t find any. “Was he involved?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. That was the hardest part—suspecting but not knowing. “We didn’t get far in the conversation because, as soon as I asked to see the full financial records, the tone of the meeting flipped. They refused, so I wouldn’t sign off on the contract for the next phase of the project.”
She shivered as the scene played in her mind. “Aidan followed me out to my car and told me that if I didn’t let this go, he wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Michael’s expression hardened.
“I needed to know if Sean was involved. So I headed back home, to search Sean’s office for some sort of proof, one way or another.” She shook her head. “I can see what a bad move that was now. I mean, both of them were outright hostile. What did I think would happen? But I just...couldn’t let it go.”
“We don’t always make the best choices when so much is on the line,” Michael said quietly, and she could feel that there were layers to that comment, a depth to it, and for a moment, a haunted look crossed his face. Yet the look disappeared almost immediately. “Who followed you home?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t go straight home, so I’m not sure how they knew exactly where I was. I have this feeling that I do know who followed me, somewhere inside. But after my car crashed into the snowbank... Everything after that is still gone.”
“You need to go to the police,” he said. “I’ll drive you there. Right now.”
She shook her head. “Aidan and Clint have almost certainly already talked to the authorities. You don’t know what those men can be like. They’re both really charming, friends with everyone, including half the police force. And they think they have a right to what they want.” She closed her eyes. “I wish I could trust calling the police right now, but I can’t take the risk. Not now, after I saw how they turned on me.”
She was trying so hard not to panic. She had to focus on the next move, the path to safety.
“Sean left what he called a ‘go bag’ for me,” she added. It was that last piece that was so damning. Why would she need survival supplies unless he had known that something was wrong?
Just in case, Sean had said. Looking back, it had happened a few days after the fight he and Aidan had had on the back porch. But the go bag was supposed to be for the two of them, for a quick departure. How long had he suspected they might need it?
“How could he say he loved me when he kept something this big from me?” she whispered. He must have known the danger he was putting them in.
She closed her eyes as the grief overwhelmed her. Sean had known something was wrong and he’d died without telling her what it was. What she wouldn’t give to talk to him, to argue, to demand an explanation. Or even just to see him again. It was too much, and she fought to keep the tears inside. Now wasn’t the time.
When she opened her eyes, Michael was crouching in front of her in the snow. His brown eyes were filled with so much compassion.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” he said.
Ellie wasn’t so sure she deserved his compassion. “It was my husband’s company that leveled the trees and destabilized the mountain. And now it’s my company, at least a third of it. You should be angry with me.”
Michael shook his head. “I’m not. You didn’t know. And it sounds like you were trying to make sure something like this didn’t happen again.”
