Chapter 4

Chapter Four

A lexandra thought she was going to puke as she approached the security gate. She wondered if JT had installed a camera. They’d never had one in the past—supposedly because of connectivity reasons, but she’d learned the truth in the days before she was to marry JT.

Joseph Talon Sr. regularly met with his mistress at the cabin and didn’t want a camera capturing the other woman coming and going. He’d had both his marriage and his upcoming run for president to consider.

With Joe long gone, had JT installed a camera?

Lord, she hoped not, but she was about to find out.

The same solid metal gate greeted her. No sign of a camera.

If she couldn’t find the key, she’d have to ditch the car and hike in. The problem was, it was only a matter of time before an all-points-bulletin was out on the Jetta, and she wasn’t exactly dressed to hike up a mountain on a cold December night. Her flimsy sneakers would probably soak through before she found the key.

She climbed from the vehicle and approached the gate, which was mounted to a rock wall on either side. The wall extended into the woods a hundred yards in both directions. It gave way to a ravine on one side—JT liked to call it the moat—and a cliff on the other. No car could enter the property from this access point without going through the gate.

She slipped under the high crossbar and walked along the wall to the right of the drive. The ground was uneven as forest abutted rock wall. She searched for the loose rock at the base of the wall.

It had been over ten years since she’d been here. She’d been overconfident in her ability to remember the location and hadn’t taken weathering into consideration.

Desperate, she ran her bare hand over frozen stone after frozen stone, wondering if ice held the one loose rock secure and she’d missed the hiding place.

It was dark. Her cell phone was smashed by the side of the road near a murdered police officer who’d assaulted her, so she had no flashlight. Nor did she have a lighter or candle to thaw ice that might fill the crevices between stones. Maybe she could use the tire iron as a chisel. But she needed to find the right rock first.

Finally, her hand landed on a stone that wiggled. She pried at it with frozen fingers, tears burning her eyes as she tried to stave off panic. The rock came free, and she felt inside the crevice, her fingers feeling the bite of a metal key.

She burst into tears as she pulled it to her chest.

With scraped fingers that verged on numb, she unlocked the dead bolt and pulled the gate open. She then drove the Jetta inside and locked the gate behind her, tucking the key into her pocket as she climbed back behind the wheel. The driveaway was more than a mile long, twisting between trees as she wound her way up the mountain.

Thankfully, it hadn’t started to snow yet. Still, the road was slick, and she had to stop more than once to remove a tree branch. No one had been here in a while.

She gripped the steering wheel when the car slipped on a patch of ice. Her foot remained steady on the gas, and she slowly steered the car up the mountain road, well aware that if it snowed tomorrow, there was a reasonable chance she’d be stuck here.

Her heart ached at the thought of Gemma. All she could do was hope her baby was safe with Erica. Surely child protective services wouldn’t be able to snatch her from a friend who was listed as an emergency caregiver with the daycare?

She had no clue how the law would treat her child if she was a fugitive wanted for murdering a cop. For some reason she’d never thought to plan for such a scenario.

She burst into tears again as the dark cabin came into view. The tears were relief that she had a place to hide as the temperatures dropped, but also triggered by shock and horror that this was necessary.

For the first time in her daughter’s life, she hadn’t been there to give Gemma her bedtime bottle, and tomorrow morning, she wouldn’t be there to lift her from the crib.

Her sweet, darling girlie. She ached with fear and the need to hold her baby.

She’d give anything to be able to call Erica, but that would put Gemma’s safety in danger and get Erica in legal trouble.

Finding the hidden key to the house was much easier than the gate key had been.

She held her breath as she unlocked the door and stepped inside, and let it out again in relief when there was no alarm keypad to be found.

If the house had an alarm, it was silent and managed through an app, but she suspected JT had never bothered to have one installed. The place was so remote, and the gate was an effective deterrent. Hikers could trespass, of course, but nothing of value was kept in the house, and hikers weren’t going to steal a sixty-inch TV by carrying it down a mountain.

She grabbed the key to the side door of the enclosed garage—which was detached from the house—and returned outside to move the car so it would be hidden from drones or satellite images should anyone think to look for her here.

The three-bay structure was cold and dark, but the garage door buttons glowed orange, and she tapped the one for the empty middle bay.

She drove the car inside, then found the large canvas cover JT used to cover his Lotus and draped it over the Jetta. JT had purchased the Lotus immediately after Alexandra broke their engagement. Now she was glad for the purchase—which had in part been meant to hurt her—because the Jetta was completely concealed from a casual search.

She returned to the house and locked herself inside, then leaned back against the door and took a deep breath. She was far from the scene of the murder and, for the moment, safe.

But at what cost? By running, she’d made herself look even more guilty.

No one would believe that the officer had assaulted her. She’d hit him in the head and had been prepared to tase him, but she hadn’t been the one to kill him.

She’d grabbed his gun before she spotted the Taser. When she returned to the road to check on him, his holster had been empty and a gun lay on the pavement, feet from his body.

Her fingerprints were on it and the Taser.

They had her car, purse, and phone. She rubbed her hands over her shoulders as a chill took her. She pushed off the door and went to the hall where the thermostat was mounted. A fire in the woodstove was the most efficient way to heat the main room, but she was too tired for that now.

The furnace must have been upgraded since she’d been here last, as there was a new control panel that divided the house into separate heating and cooling zones. She set the downstairs to sixty-eight degrees, then set off in search of a phone or computer, not expecting to find either but hoping nonetheless.

When her search proved fruitless, she grabbed a blanket from the guest bedroom she would sleep in and went to the living room, hoping the satellite dish was still connected.

She needed to see what was being said about her on the news.