Note to Readers
A line from one of his daughter’s favorite picture books popped into Carter Bristow’s head when he rounded the corner and spotted a car parked on the side of the road.
There’s something here that looks out of place.
Hmm. Tough call. Especially when Carter had to choose between a red Lexus that stood out like a cluster of winterberry against the snow-covered landscape and the woman standing next to it, pointing her cell phone at the sky.
Even with her back to him, Carter doubted she was a local. Her paper-thin leather coat and spiked-heel boots looked about as suitable for a Michigan winter as the vehicle she drove.
He pulled onto the shoulder and parked a few yards behind her. The only traffic this late in the day tended to be the four-footed kind, but Carter followed protocol and flipped on the light bar before exiting the squad car.
“Ma’am? Is everything all right?”
The woman whirled around to face him, and Carter’s heart bumped against his Kevlar vest.
Definitely not a local. If they’d met before, he would have remembered. Her sleek, chin-length cap of espresso-brown hair had been strategically cut to emphasize sculpted cheekbones and a pair of eyes that Carter would have been hard-pressed to describe in a report. Not quite blue, not quite green, but a stunning combination of the two that instantly resurrected memories of the sea surrounding the Greek islands Carter had visited once while on leave.
And the flash of surprise in those eyes told Carter she hadn’t realized she was no longer alone.
“I... Yes.” Wind-kissed cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink. “Everything is fine, Deputy.”
That ruled out engine trouble. But a young woman on a deserted stretch of road at dusk, with the snow beginning to fall as rapidly as the temperature? Not exactly Carter’s definition of fine.
“Having problems with your GPS?” He turned his attention to the cell phone clutched in the woman’s hand. It wouldn’t be the first time Carter had stumbled upon a traveler trying to find their way out of the maze of backroads that wound through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“No. I was...taking a picture.”
“A picture.”
“Of him.” She pointed to an enormous bird perched on one of the upper branches of a towering red pine.
The sight of a bald eagle surveying its kingdom was so commonplace here that Carter wouldn’t have given it a second glance, let alone stop to take a photograph. It wasn’t the explanation that caught him off guard, though. It was the smile that accompanied it.
Two tours in the Navy had taught Carter to look for potential danger in the most innocent of places. His brief but disastrous marriage had made him equally wary of the ones hiding behind a woman’s smile.
Even a smile warm enough, bright enough, to steal some of the chill from the air.
As if aware it had drawn an audience, the