Page 34 of Dangerous Secrets

Charity led him around the enormous house. He checked each door carefully, then they moved on. The French windows inUncle Franklin’s study were slightly open, the wind making the thick burgundy curtains sway gently.

Nick turned to her, face grim. “This is where she’s gone out. Stay with your uncle. Make him drink some whiskey, he’s in a state of mild shock.”

Charity gasped with outrage. “I’m going with you! We have to search for her together. I know these grounds intimately and you don’t. And anyway two people are better than one.”

“No.” Nick shook his head sharply. “In this case, two people are worse than one. You’ll just slow me down. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Your job is to look after your uncle. When I find your aunt, she’ll be suffering from hypothermia. Whether mild or severe depends on how long she’s been exposed. So I need you to make sure you have plenty of warm blankets to hand. Put a big pot of water on to boil. Make sure a cup of hot tea with sugar is ready.”

She opened her mouth to argue and he clasped her shoulders hard in his big hands and shook her. “Blankets. Big pot of boiling water. Tea with sugar. And don’t even think about coming with me. I don’t want to have to end up chasing your pretty tail out there.”

Before she could reply, he’d slipped out the door and was lost in the swirling storm.

Nick had learnedto track from the best of the best. Col. Lucius Merle had grown up in the Ozarks with a shotgun in his arms and five generations of Merle hunters behind him. Tracking was in his DNA. Oddly enough, the Colonel had done most of his professional tracking in filthy urban streets and that was the lorehe’d passed on to Nick, in Baghdad and in Basra, in Kabul and Kandahar, in Caracas and Cartagena.

Still, sign was sign.

Nick scanned the ground right outside the big French windows. They gave out onto a covered terrace, so the snow hadn’t accumulated much. There were clear prints in snow half an inch lower than the surrounding grounds. Nick followed them as they angled sharply off to the left.

He wished he knew the terrain better. Damn! It hadn’t occurred to him to scout out Charity’s elderly relatives’ home while he’d been studying her. He wished he had now. He wanted to find the old lady fast. Out of the house less than a minute, he was already cold and he was young, healthy and conditioned. He didn’t want to think of what was happening to a frail, elderly woman.

His heart had clenched watching Charity’s uncle, shaking and defenseless, almost naked in his fear.

Got to him every time. Old people and kids. Adults can fend for themselves, life sucks, you embrace the suck and go on, but he had a real soft spot for geezers and ankle-biters.

The wind bit at his heavy coat, icy fingers reaching inside. Jesus. It was fuckingfreezing.

For just an instant, Nick flashed back to the heat of being inside Charity. The soft, warm wet feel of her. That warm back heating his entire front. And Jesus, his dick in her. Clamped tight, so hot it was like sticking himself in a little oven. Just the memory sent a flash of heat over him and then it was gone.

Get your head out of your dick, Ireland, he told himself.Now.

The snow was easing up, thank God. Where before it had been almost a complete whiteout, now he could discern big dark shapes all around, punctuated by the feeble glow of lamps. At least the old geezer kept outdoor lights on. Local scumbags would simply assume that rich old folks would have an airtightsecurity system to go with the security lights. Otherwise they would long since have broken in.

Nick didn’t buy for a minute Charity’s nonsense that this was a crime-free zone. There was no such thing as a crime-free zone. Where there were humans, there was robbery and murder and rape. That ancient couple living alone with no security was a burglary just waiting to happen. If not worse.

Nick had only spent a few minutes inside the house, talking to Charity and her uncle, but he could multi-task and he was a good observer.

The Prewitts were loaded. Old money. With lots of expensive stuff, just begging to be carted away by dickwads who’d rather steal than work. Thick antique Persian carpets, real artwork on the walls, loads of antique silver. They were lucky to still be alive.

Nick followed the footsteps down from the terrace to the gardens below and for a second lost the trail. Fuck! She’d been out in this cold for at least an hour, probably more. With each passing minute her chances of surviving went way down.

Nick crouched, taking out the powerful Maglite he always kept in the car. It had a narrow intense beam which he focused on the surface of the snow.

There! A slit in the snow, like a little valley. His jaws clenched. He knew what that long depression meant. It meant that a few steps outside the house, she was already shuffling. Probably already losing sensation in her feet.

This was not good.

Still crouching, holding the light at an oblique angle, he followed the depressions, the ground dipping beneath his feet. A big oak was ten feet to his right, a building that looked like a garage to his left. Another building was visible just beyond it.

For a horrifying moment, Nick lost her track, then noticed a pink puff of material hanging from a laurel shrub and next to it, another long depression. The tracks paralleled the thick shrubsthat ended abruptly next to another large building. This one was made of glass, dimly lit from within. Nick could make out rows and rows of plants in terracotta vases.

A greenhouse. The orangerie, Judge Prewitt’s generation would have called it.

He followed the shallow depressions around the building, hoping they were going to lead into the greenhouse. Greenhouses were often heated. It was the one place an old lady could have a hope of surviving a snowstorm.

Nick opened the side door of the greenhouse, trying to make out shapes in the gloom. The temperature inside was at least 30 degrees warmer than the icy hell outside but it was still cold. He had to check this place out fast. If she wasn’t here, her time would be running out.

Nick walked fast down the aisles, exactly as if clearing a room during combat, checking in a grid. Five minutes later, he was back at the door, teeth clenched. The old lady wasn’t here. It was entirely possible she was already dead. Charity would be devastated.

He stood with his hand on the door, still and silent. He had to move fast but something stopped him. A hunch. He trusted his hunches. They’d saved his life more than once.

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