The Stranger Read online

  The world around us turned into a white maelstrom. The wind wrestled with the truck. The road became invisible under a new layer of snow. Seth geared down and kept his eyes on the road as we negotiated some hairy turns and the road’s deteriorating conditions. In all my twenty-nine years of life, I’d never seen weather like this.

  “We’re not beating the storm, are we?”

  “This is just the beginning.” He tilted his head and surveyed the sky. “It’s going to get bad soon, thirteen hours of very nasty wind, snow, and ice.”

  My timing sucked. “And I thought this was bad.”

  “This is nothing.” He slowed down to maneuver over a bridge. “I don’t suppose you get blizzards in Miami. But don’t worry, we’re almost there.”

  “Goody,” I mumbled.

  I knew my chances of getting to a hotel tonight were nil, but I needed to keep it together, at least until we got to the cabin. With a little luck, it might be a two-room cabin, with a door and a lock between me and the rest of the place. A door chain would be nice, but I could always improvise.

  I eyed the man riding next to me. Maybe under all that hubris, he’d turn out to be a decent human being. After all, he had stopped to help me. I toyed with the idea of giving him a quick rundown of my condition, but my hackles went up. No way. He was a stranger and a guy and maybe even a little off, with all that paranoia. I knew from experience what would happen if I warned him. No need to add premeditation to humiliation.

  All of a sudden, my vision narrowed. My thoughts slowed down to a crawl. My body slacked and my eyelids slammed over my eyes like hurricane shutters. I ran out of time and energy at the same moment. Oh, crap. I knew exactly what was happening to me.

  “Hey, Summer.” Seth’s voice came from far away. “We’re almost there.” He shook me softly. “Wake up. Stick with me, girl.”

  I had no time to explain.

  “Make sure you lock the door,” I mumbled, before I conked out.

  Chapter Two

  Some days, life was a cross-eyed bitch. It screwed with you so bad that you wanted to kick it in the ass and send it to hell. It slammed you like a goddamn RPG and then crushed you beneath metric tons of crap. As I parked in the garage and carried Summer out of the truck, I was sure today was one of those days.

  She wasn’t very heavy, but she was tall and long-limbed, and totally limp in my arms. I was glad for the elevator that took us up from the garage. Considering I’d been in a wheelchair when I first moved into the cabin, the elevator had never been a luxury. It came in handy again tonight.

  I took Summer to my room and laid her down on my bed. My military emergency medical training kicked in. I grabbed the flashlight from my drawer, lifted her eyelids, and shone the light in her eyes. Her pupils contracted into smaller dots. Good. I let out my breath. She hadn’t suffered head trauma or cranial bleeding.

  I checked her vital signs. Her pulse was strong and her breathing regular. She felt a little cold to my touch, but she wasn’t hypothermic. I took off her useless coat. Sure enough, her skirt felt damp to my touch and the insides of her shoes sagged with melted snow. Such was the fate of fashionistas in off-grid Alaska. With the flip of a switch, I turned on the fireplace then got to work stripping the rest of her clothes.

  I was still having trouble believing that she wasn’t one of Alex’s schemes. He’d like nothing better than to find a way to screw me publicly before the upcoming board meeting. Yeah, the motherfucker had tried worse before. That’s why I’d been so sure that the high-heeled, long-legged mirage strutting her stuff down the deserted road had been a setup when I first spotted her. Given the circumstances, what the hell was I supposed to think?

  But thirty seconds after meeting her, my gut told me Summer couldn’t be part of a scam. I trusted my gut. It’d navigated me through war and peace and it usually gave me reliable readings. Summer felt earnest to me, sincere, fiery and opinionated, but not fake.

  No, I didn’t think she was lying. The bruise that blotched her thigh confirmed her story, and so did the bump on her head and the smaller bruises on her legs. Her car hadn’t just skidded off the road. This girl had been in a wreck.

  I found no broken bones, open wounds, or signs of internal injuries. It was all very good news, because the chances of me getting her to a hospital tonight were exactly zero, given the storm raging outside. She had admitted that she hadn’t slept for days. She was probably suffering from exhaustion. Her lights might be out, but she wasn’t going to die on me.

  I felt like a goddamn scumbag. My stomach churned when I remembered my reaction on the road. The shock in her green eyes at my attitude was probably authentic. I’d been such a jackass, accusing her of collusion, neglecting to notice her distress. Part of it had been her fault. She hadn’t told me she was hurt and, slipping and sliding aside, she carried herself with poise, as if nothing was wrong with her. The rest of this clusterfuck rested squarely on my shoulders. The shitty day and the ongoing feud had gotten to me. Way to go, jerk.

  My eyes wandered as I finished undressing her. I couldn’t help but notice her body’s fine curves. I hadn’t taken off a woman’s clothes in a while. These days, I ran high on stress and short on joy. I trailed the long line of her back, appreciating the smooth stretch of tanned olive skin, soft and even beneath my fingertips.

  Dammit. This woman just seemed to call out to the idiot in me. I covered her with the down duvet. She’d be warm for sure. I fetched a glass of water and some ibuprofen, lifted her up on the bed and braced her head against my chest, inhaling a lungful of her scent in the process.

  “Hey, Summer.” I shook her gently. “Wake up, just for a sec. I’ve got something that’ll help you feel better. After that, you can get back to sleep.”

  She stirred in my arms. For a moment, her eyes opened into narrow slits. I put the pills in her mouth and pressed the glass to her lips.

  “Drink up,” I said. “Now swallow. Good. Are you warm enough?”

  “Tired,” she mumbled before her lids fell back into place, shutting out the light.

  I laid her back on the pillows. She was out cold. For a guy who hardly ever slept more than three hours in a row, I envied her capacity to disconnect from the world. She looked peaceful.

  I studied her face, where a set of well-constructed lips presided over her features. A pair of dark, hard-angled eyebrows broadcasted her emotions, live-tweeting her thoughts without censorship when she was awake. Cut straight to just above the shoulder, the blunt lines of her thick black hair added a sense of competence to her features. She had this kind of hard, precise, unconventional beauty, and perhaps because there was so much definition built into her face, the engineer in me found the construction fascinating.

  I ran two fingers over a crescent-shaped mark on her neck. It felt smooth to my fingertips. Parked slightly below her ear, it looked like a moon sliver, a waning moon, to be precise. I wondered if it was a birthmark or a tiny burn, something she’d acquired along the way, a miniature version of my not-so-delicate scars.

  Enough speculation already. I barely knew the woman. The odds were low that she was part of a conspiracy, but I couldn’t afford to take the chance. I looked through her purse and found her wallet. Summer Silva, age twenty-nine, resident of Key Biscayne. According to her business card, she was an associate architect with Carrera and Associates.

  I scrolled through her cell and looked through her contacts, recent calls, emails, and messages. The stepmother texted like a certifiable maniac and emails from work crammed her inbox, but I found nothing that could link her to Alex or anyone in my family. Still, I had to be cautious.

  I changed into my sweats and a T-shirt and, punching the keys on my tablet, checked the cabin’s overall status. The solar panels had retracted properly. The generator had kicked in. I punched a few buttons to secure the doors and engage the storm-protecti
on systems. Purring softly, the translucent shutters lowered in sequence, securing the house against the wind. All systems were go.

  I put Summer’s wet clothes in the dryer on my way to the office. I sat down on my chair and rubbed my back against the leather. The old injuries were acting up tonight. The satellite connection was out of commission, but I activated my backup communication system and made a quick call to Jer to ask for his help tomorrow.

  It was close to ten o’clock when I finished talking to my brother, which meant that it was around six o’clock at corporate headquarters in New York, an hour after regular office hours. No problem. My chief of cyber security was a workaholic who insisted on being on call 24/7. Sure enough, John Spider’s face showed up on my screen at the first ring.

  “Hey,” Spider said, sharp features pixelated but recognizable. “I guess the new backup communication system is working.”

  “So far, so good,” I said.

  Spider was a bit of a singularity, a middle-aged west coast surfer with a killer IQ living on the east coast. He was a legend in cyber security, which meant he was also a legendary hacker. He’d been my professor and mentor at MIT. He was also my friend.

  “I’m tracking that monster storm in your neighborhood,” Spider said. “The satellite pics are cool, man. But I can’t imagine you called me to chitchat about the weather.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I need you to look into something, quick turnaround.”

  “Sure thing,” Spider said. “Whatever you need.”

  I held the driver’s license up to the camera. “Summer Silva.”

  “Oh, a dudette?” Spider flashed his crowded teeth and took a screenshot. “Good going, man, is the old Seth back?”

  No, the old Seth was dead. He wasn’t coming back, but I refrained from stating the obvious because, even though Spider was nosy as hell, he didn’t deserve my rage.

  “Can you do the job or not?”

  “Of course I can.” Spider’s awful grin widened. “She looks hot.”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  “I mean it,” Spider said. “You got your eye on her?”

  “Sudden visitor,” I said. “Satisfied? Can you zip it now?”

  “Got it.” He plaited his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Call you right back.”

  I returned the driver’s license to Summer’s wallet and stuck my head in the bedroom. Rolled up in the duvet, she was out like a marmot in a winter burrow. I went back to my office and caught up with the workload. Today’s emergency had really screwed up my schedule. I answered my emails then turned my attention to the financial reports piling in my inbox. The board meeting was coming up in less than a month and I was on the hunt.

  I studied the financials closely. Alex had to be siphoning money out of the company, but how and from where? I dove into that. The best byproduct of a solid work addiction was that it made time pass faster. Somewhere around midnight, my screen beeped and Spider came back online.

  “Hiya,” he said. “Summer Silva, daughter of Cuban-American architect Miguel Silva, an immigrant who arrived during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. He’s credited with the design of some of Miami’s most innovative buildings, including the iconic Fountain Way, a high-rise residential complex taught in architecture schools all over the world.”

  “What’s his personal history?”

  “Married, then widowed. Dudette’s mother drowned in an accident when she was a kid. Father remarried after that. He took a huge financial hit during the recession, got sick and died five years ago.”

  Images flashed on the screen as Spider spoke, pictures of the Mariel boatlift and a newspaper interview with Miguel Silva himself, describing a harrowing ordeal when his boat capsized in the Florida Straits. Obituaries, marriage, birth, and baptismal certificates paraded before my eyes, as did Summer’s school records all the way to her university transcripts.

  “She’s an architect,” Spider said. “Graduated with high honors. Works for—”

  “Carrera and Associates,” I said. “Get to the main point.”

  “I found no contact between her and Alex Erickson and no connection between her and anyone in your family.”

  Best news so far.

  “Perfect credit report.” Spider punched the keys as he talked. “Makes her student loan payments every month, rent, utilities, blah, blah, blah. Uses her iPhone to pay for her café-con-leche every morning. Loves the beach. Posts architectural pics on Instagram and FB, but that’s it for social media. She’s got a passport, but she hasn’t been out of the country as far I can tell.”

  “Talk to me about money,” I said. “Sudden fluxes?”

  “None traceable.” Spider sent more documents to my screen. “Bank accounts check, phone records check, medical records show a clean bill of health on her last physical. Prescriptions are limited to birth control and sleeping pills.”

  Jesus. “How the hell did you get into her medical records?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Or really bad, depending on whose perspective.”

  Spider’s grin widened to show his longish fangs. Maybe it was because of his last name, but whenever he smirked like that, I thought of a tarantula rearing to attack.

  “Here’s some interesting shit.” Spider’s fingers clicked on his keyboard at top velocity. “An early marriage. She was nineteen. He was older, twenty-five. Sergio De Havilland, trust fund baby, jet-setter and prominent socialite. They met first year in college. The marriage lasted less than a year. That’s as much dirt as I got. Since then, she’s been a disgrace to decadent living. No arrests, not even a parking ticket. Don’t know what to tell you. She’s spic-and-span.”

  “Roger that.” Why the hell did I feel so relieved? “Anything new on the Alex project?”

  “I’ve got the team looking,” Spider said, “but so far, the field is an open crapshoot.”

  “The board meeting is coming up.”

  “On it.” Spider waved. “Later, dude. Stay warm.”

  I worked for another hour or two, listening as the storm buffeted the cabin with furious blows. At some point, I heated some chicken soup on the stove and wolfed some of it down at the kitchen counter. I left the pot on the stove, in case Summer woke up.

  Giving up my bed was a major concession, but I’d been brought up right, so I set myself up on the couch. I lay there for a long while, but I couldn’t sleep. The cushions poked at my sore spots and every time I closed my eyes, I saw Danny, dead in his wheelchair.

  My day had started very early with the call. Death was no stranger to me, but after trying to help Danny recapture his life, his death felt a hell of a lot like defeat. Maybe if I had known how depressed Danny was, things might have turned out differently.

  Danny’s death got me thinking of Shawn, my copilot, and Jonesy, my flight engineer. Maybe they’d be alive today if they’d gotten into some other Pave Hawk with some other pilot. Maybe they’d have survived the attack if they hadn’t been flying with me. Maybe if I’d banked sooner, the RPG would’ve missed us.

  Hell, I hated maybes.

  The men’s faces echoed in my mind. Friends gone. Lives ended. The list was getting longer. My back was killing me. My breaths came out shallow and rattling. Memories of the flames taunted my skin. Too much heat. Too much grief. Too much nothingness. Shut it out, shut it all the hell out.

  I got up from the couch, went back to my office and marched out of the side door. The cold startled my lungs. The snow blew horizontally over the house, but the structure itself shielded the side porch from the wind. On this spot, the snow fell almost gently from the roof, piling into a two-foot crust that blanketed the deck. The snow crunched under my bare feet, but the contact failed to cool me down. I stripped off my clothes, knelt down and, stretching my arms, lay on my back. I fathomed a wave of hissing
steam rose in the air when my body hit the snow.

  The surviving nerves in my back’s mangled skin screamed. My skin burned, not with the flames I remembered, but with purifying cold. The chill flared. I pressed my body harder against the snow and held fast, until my entire back went numb.

  Relief at last.

  I rolled in the snow like a polar bear, rubbing my head against the white fluff, turning back and forth from my belly to my back. I inhaled the scent of frost deep into my lungs, banishing the stench of ashes and burning flesh. I bit down on a mouthful of snow and tasted ice’s purest flavor. It traveled down my gullet to my stomach in a cooling path.

  I lay there until the lethal heat in me was obliterated, until every part of me had chilled and my body began to shiver. Even then, I stayed for another minute or two, relishing a moment’s peace from the heat, listening to the wind’s eerie song, watching the flakes swirling in the wind, numb, inside and out.

  Weird? What the hell. This was why I lived alone. A guy tested by death and tried by fire had to do whatever he could to survive.

  By the time I stumbled back into the house, my skin tingled with fresh blood, flushing my body and pumping vigorously through my system. The heat was gone, replaced by cool, calm, and hopefully lasting numbness.

  I locked the side door, dried off with my T-shirt, and donned my sweats. I heard a noise, so I padded out to the hallway with the wet T-shirt in tow. The bedroom door was open. I’d closed it before. I peeked in. The bed covers were thrown aside and the bed was empty.

  I walked out to the great room and called out, “Summer?”

  She didn’t reply, but a rattle on the other side of the house caught my attention. I set out toward the noise. I scanned the kitchen in passing and saw that the lid was off the pot. The soup was all gone. I turned the corner into the dining room and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Outside, the storm was in full swing. The wind howled and swirls of snow gave the night a spectral glow that seeped through the shuttered glass doors. Inside, a configuration of feminine curves comprised Summer’s dark outline against the storm’s tenuous light.