Freezing Point

Despite the cold filtering from the refrigeration storing the ice, a drop of sweat trickled down Jesse’s temple. Not good. Jesse was grateful the men had been pulled away before they’d noticed that he was nervous.

He exited the loading dock and made his way back to the office, wanting to give Casey Wilkes a few choice words but knowing he couldn’t. Little did she know what she could have walked in on—a person didn’t just walk in on Carlos and Miguel these days.

Jesse marched toward the door, steadying his hands. He gripped the knob, hoping she’d waited like he asked, but if she wanted her bag she’d be there. Stepping inside, he smiled when he saw her sitting in the chair, her feet propped on the empty desk. He wondered what she’d say if he told her the man who used to occupy this office was dead, had been knocked off at this very company.

Upon seeing him, she grinned and shoved her gorgeous blond hair behind her shoulders.

“Well, you going to give me that?” Amusement filled her sea-green eyes.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

Here it comes. Now that she’d had a few minutes to catch her breath, she was going to ask him questions about the dangers of the loading dock. Fortunately, he had at least five things he could list that didn’t include Carlos and Miguel.

She moved around the desk and stood next to him, offering her hand, bright pink polish on her nails. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Dufour. I realize I must have caught you at a bad time today. We got off to a bad start. Sorry for that—” she cleared her throat, a mischievous smile playing on her lips “—inconvenience. In addition to an interview, I’d love to stop by and watch you create your sculptures as you prepare for the big ice-sculpture competition.”

Jesse rubbed his jaw. Why wasn’t she grilling him? She had to be up to something more. Her light floral perfume wrapped around him while he studied her. He took a step away to distance himself and crossed his arms, leaning against the wall and gaining some control over whatever magic she was working.

If she wasn’t going to ask, he was going to offer. He couldn’t have a reporter leave the premises without an explanation, even if it wasn’t the complete truth. He didn’t want to think about what she could do with that.

“Listen, about the loading dock.”

She held up her hand, stopping him. “No need to explain again. Really. The loading dock is dangerous. You might want to post a warning sign to that effect. Then again, I got lost. Maybe a map of the entire facility would work better.”

Incredulous, he almost choked on a laugh. Was she for real? He held up his hands in surrender. “Look, I’m sorry you got lost and that I had to escort you out.”

He hoped she would leave it at that, satisfied that the loading dock was dangerous.

He liked her spirit, and he wanted to believe her story. That she’d gotten lost. That would keep things simple because what he didn’t need right now was a reporter snooping around.

The last person to cross Carlos and Miguel had been silenced—he had either stumbled upon them in the middle of a delivery and was at the wrong place at the wrong time, or he’d been part of the crime ring and had given them reason enough to get rid of him. The empty office where he stood with Casey attested to the fact.

Her eyes narrowed if only a little before she flashed a smile, but he didn’t miss it. “You’re giving me an interview, Mr. Dufour, so we’ll call it even.”

Now it was Jesse’s turn to narrow his eyes. Did she suspect something?

Casey held her smile in place while Jesse opened the door for her. “When can I come back for the interview, then?”

“I’ll be starting on a sculpture for the competition in a couple of days. Come back then and we’ll talk. Just stay outside of the loading dock.” He smiled down at her as she strolled through the doorway, passing him, and she caught a whiff of his cologne. Nice.

“I’ll escort you out this time so you won’t get lost,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Next time, I’ll show you the side entrance to my studio.”

He kept pace with her as they made their way down the long corridor. Several doors along this hallway had windows, and Casey glanced through each one as they passed.

“What exactly does Helms Ice and Trucking do? Well, besides create ice sculptures,” she asked.

Jesse chuckled. “The ice division of the company makes and delivers ice, including dry ice, all over Southern California. The trucking side delivers frozen goods via refrigerated semis.”

“And which division do ice sculptures fall under?”

“I’m on the ice side, or rather, a small catering side. The competition I’ve been asked to enter is part of the company’s efforts to grow that part of the business. It’s good publicity.”

“Is there more than one ice sculptor, then? Surely, you can’t do all this alone.”

“I have an assistant. Someone who works with me. I suppose if the demand for ice sculptures grows, we’d have to hire more, yes.”

Casey found herself relaxing a little. He was easy to talk to. This was starting to feel more like the interview she’d wanted. He opened another door for her, and Casey walked into the reception area.

He followed her then leaned against the tall reception counter. The brunette receptionist who’d been there earlier was now gone.

“Well, I guess this is it, then,” Casey said, feeling a little awkward, though she wasn’t sure why. Too bad she couldn’t interview him right now. Would the promise of an interview be good enough for her editor, Danny?

“For now.” Jesse smiled, but the walls he’d momentarily dropped were up again. “Here’s my card. Call me in a couple of days and I’ll meet you here.”

She wanted to watch him walk away, but it appeared he was intent on seeing her leave the premises. Again, she got the sense he wanted her gone—and fast.

Casey gave a little wave then exited the door.

Once in the parking lot, she hurried to her car and clambered in. She tossed her bag on the passenger seat and all the stuff inside—paper, gum wrappers and even her wallet—spilled onto the floorboard.

Casey couldn’t reach her new TracFone, which had slid to the floor on the other side of the seat, just out of reach.

Of course.

She got out of the car and walked around to the other side, opened the door and shuffled through the junk to get her cell.

After she scraped everything except her phone back into her bag, she shoved the length of her hair behind her shoulder and climbed back into the driver’s side.

She skimmed the contacts listed.

But why? Force of habit, she supposed. Since fleeing Oregon, everything about her life had changed. She’d better get used to it.

Who was she going to call? Not Eddie Morris, her editor in Oregon who’d sent her away on a leave of absence until Will Tannin gave up on destroying her, taking the newspaper with him. What would she tell him? She had stumbled upon a possible exposé but she wasn’t about to tackle it?

Maybe she should call Danny Garcia, the editor who’d promised to hire her if she could get this story about the ice sculptor. No. She’d savor her almost-job contingent on her almost-interview for a while.

Meg. Her best friend expected a weekly update. But Meg could wait.

Casey needed to catch her breath. Gather her thoughts. She rested her head against the seat to take a calming breath. Could it actually have been a week ago that she’d driven all the way from Oregon to a little town on the outskirts of San Diego in order to hide?

Or “fall off the grid,” as Eddie had put it.

Once settled in Aunt Leann’s home, she’d marched right into the office of the Orange Crossings Times to ask for a job. As it turned out, the editor was in the midst of chewing out one of his reporters because he’d not been able to breach the gatekeeper at Helms Ice and Trucking Company. With the ice-sculpture competition approaching next week, he needed a story.

All Casey had to do was tell him she could get the story because her uncle owned the company. Since it was a simple human-interest story there wouldn’t be any conflict of interest.

His response? If she got the story, she had a job.

She opened her eyes and noticed someone watching her from the far corner of the building. Black hair flashed then disappeared. She recognized him. The cell-phone guy. The worker had been watching her.

Her pulse inched up.

Why would he be watching her?

Or had Casey’s stalker experience with Tannin put her reporter instincts on overdrive, and she was simply having knee-jerk reactions to everyone who so much as glanced her way?

Would she ever recover?

Shifting her lime-green Volkswagen bug into Reverse, she backed out of the parking space and exited the lot as fast as her car would go.

Although disappointed she couldn’t get an interview with Jesse today, she knew these things took time, and she’d see him again in a couple days. She allowed a smile to come to her lips when she remembered his rugged face and fierce blue eyes, teasing her. He’d actually had the audacity to flirt with her.

He had charm, that was a fact. The guy was dangerous in more ways than one. She turned on the radio, shoving thoughts of Jesse the ice sculptor aside as she headed to her aunt’s beach house, just up the road from the ice company. She would call Meg when she got there.

Taking a left onto Shoreline Road, the frontage road that led to the beach, she continued to watch her rearview mirror, looking for a tail—a habit she’d gotten into while fleeing Oregon. She didn’t think she’d ever lose it.

In three minutes she could relax behind the safety of the beach-house walls, alarm system on alert.

She pulled into the driveway and then all the way into the garage. While the automatic garage door began its slide to the ground, shutting her off from the neighbors, she glanced at her rearview mirror and noticed a man across the street, replacing a window in a house. He was watching.

Relax. He was probably curious if not suspicious. Completely normal.

Once inside, she kicked off her shoes. Though at first she planned to call Meg, the view of the ocean drew her forward. The wall on the west side of the house was nothing but a huge window, affording an amazing panoramic look at the beach, waves lapping the shore.

Any other time, she’d walk out onto the deck and let the salt-water breeze lick her skin. But not today.

A year ago, Casey had been conducting research on an article in which she hoped to expose the enormous salaries of heads of charities and non-profit organizations. Little did she know that in the process she’d be led down a money trail, following the money behind one Will Tannin, CEO of Inner City Aid in Portland, Oregon, and discover his duplicity. Tannin had an affair with a woman who’d sought aid through the organization. She’d given birth to his son, and though he refused to acknowledge the relationship, he paid the woman to keep quiet.

Casey hadn’t gathered the evidence she needed to prove the money he paid the woman had come from the charitable funding, but she’d been working on that when she’d had to leave Oregon. Since Casey’s exposé, Tannin had lost his job, his wife and family and his home. Though he had not been charged with a crime yet, his life had been destroyed.

Four months ago, Tannin began his attempt to systematically destroy Casey’s life and had progressed to disrupting her career and credibility. His first act began when she discovered the hard drive on her home computer destroyed along with all backup files. Then her email had been hacked, and no matter how many times she changed the service provider or her password, her email address was used as spam to send pornography. So, she could live without email for a while.

The little things began to add up. Though the police could not identify the perpetrator, Casey knew it was Tannin. He’d threatened to destroy her life little by little.

She no longer answered her phone. No matter what the caller ID said, even if it was a friend calling, she would hear only the heavy breathing until she hung up. Tannin had called in a serious favor or paid someone in the world of hackers who knew what they were doing.

But why? Why would anyone go to that much trouble? Maybe Tannin had wondered the same about her unraveling his life.

Fine. She’d keep digging until he was arrested. But during the digging she discovered something else about Tannin—for years he’d been under the care of a psychiatrist for antisocial personality disorder, or rather, he was an abusive psychopath.

She’d done an exposé on the wrong man—Will Tannin had snapped. She would have done less harm by taking a baseball bat to a nest of killer bees.

The small interruptions in her everyday life were a nuisance, but a week ago, Tannin had hacked into the newspaper, changing a story she’d written in order to damage her professionally. Eddie had then told her to get out until everything died down. The newspaper couldn’t afford to fight off a madman, especially when the police could find no proof to arrest him.

That’s when Tannin had gone the next step and explained to Casey how and when he would kill her.

THREE

To be safe. That’s all she really wanted.

She’d made the right decision to come here. Her mother and father had been killed in a car accident years ago, and Aunt Leann was the only real family Casey had left. Her aunt had had the foresight to send Casey the key to their home on the beach while she and Uncle John traveled Europe. Casey had taken the key and grabbed a few necessary items then fled her home, her friends and her job.

Casey tugged out one of the low-calorie frozen dinners she’d stocked the fridge with yesterday and shoved it into the microwave, thinking she needed to find out more about the ice company.

She sighed, knowing she had to quit her insane need to uncover a story, no matter the cost. While she ate her dinner, she began the process of creating a completely new email screen name. One more step away from Tannin.

Relaxing against the chair back, she rolled her shoulders, easing the tension in her neck. The view from the living-room window had grown dark. She hadn’t noticed that night had fallen.

Casey rose calmly from the dinner table where she’d set up a temporary office with her laptop, and moved to the large window that provided the ocean view. She stared out, again, only this time instead of seeing waves lapping the shore, complete darkness stared back along with her reflection. The sun had set, and she’d missed the moment.

She turned the lights down in the house, hoping to gain a better look outside without her reflection. For a few seconds, she searched the blackness, but could see nothing except a few lights in the distance—probably a fishing boat or two. She wondered if Tannin could be out there somewhere, watching her. She couldn’t shake off the sense that someone was, in fact, observing her.

Despite everything she’d been through, the idea still seemed a little paranoid. After all, she’d driven almost twenty hours, putting over a thousand miles distance between her and Tannin. He couldn’t know where in the country she was.

The strangeness of today fresh on her mind, she shoved the hair from her face, wondering if she might have something more than Will Tannin to worry about.

“Get the interview and you’ve got a job,” Danny had said.

Get in and get out, leave the rest of it buried.

She began the chore of tugging the heavy window treatments over the vast expanse of glass until it was completely covered.

A sound from somewhere in the house startled her. Casey froze.

Holding her breath, she listened and heard the noise again. She spotted a large ballerina figurine on the end table. She could use it as a weapon if needed. She lifted it.

It was heavy enough.

It would do. Except … Was it a Lladro?

Casey cringed for half a second and looked around her for something less expensive, but there wasn’t anything except pricey-looking décor and figurines accenting the room. She hadn’t even noticed until now.

Aunt Leann would understand, since Casey’s life could be at stake.

Jesse allowed the waves to wash up against his feet and ankles, soaking his running shoes, as he held the golden retriever’s leash. He stared through his night-vision binoculars at John Helms’s house, not seeing much now that Casey had closed all the curtains. Finally, he jammed them into the pack he wore around his waist and continued his jog, Simon at his side.

She’d looked out into the darkness, a strange expression on her face, before tugging the curtains to the center of the window from one side and then moving to the far side to start the process over again. He’d watched her the entire time. Her trim figure didn’t seem equal to the task, but she managed. There was something in the way she acted when she closed the curtains, like she expected someone was watching her—and little did she know that he was.

Beautiful blond strands hung around her face, her expression one of both defiance and fear—not much change from when he’d come across her on the loading dock and rescued her. Though she probably didn’t think of it like that.

Why was John Helms’s niece staying in his home while he was gone? Not so unusual—but then why had she appeared to slink onto the loading dock in need of an interview with him? At the time he had been inclined to believe her explanation, wanted to believe it, if he were honest. Anything more would be trouble. Then he’d found out about her background.

An investigative reporter.

She was trouble or she was going to get into trouble. Jesse hadn’t figured out which, but he now had the added assignment to thwart in either case.

Beautiful … but dangerous. Those same words had come to mind when he thought about dry ice. The comparison elicited a small grin.

He drew in rhythmic breaths as he jogged up the beach away from the house, considering what tomorrow would bring. Jesse was close to being someone Miguel would finally trust and accept into the inner circle of those operating the cash-smuggling ring.

With Casey Wilkes’s appearance on the scene, Jesse was now in the position of also having to infiltrate her life without her knowing his motives—but to protect her, to protect the covert assignment.

Another person he’d have to lie to. Another person whose trust he would need to win, and who would end up hating him in the end.

Lungs burning, Jesse dropped to his knees, catching his breath. He wanted this to be over and done with. He wanted out. But now things were more complicated.

Simon whined and licked Jesse’s face. Jesse pulled away, wanting to cry out to God. He needed God’s help, but it had been so long since he felt good enough to be on speaking terms with the Almighty.

Jesse squeezed sand in his fists, his instincts on fire. He wasn’t about to let this attractive woman reporter ruin this assignment.

A scream ripped through the night.

Casey fought against the arms that wrapped around her, screaming and kicking.

In the hallway outside the guest bedroom she slammed the figurine at the man’s head, but missed.

He squeezed her wrist, sending pain up her arm. She cried out and the figurine flew through the air then slid across the floor of the bedroom.

Her only weapon gone.

The wall! She tried to reach the wall with her feet. Shove her back into the man and loosen his grip.

If she could just gain traction. There.

Her feet against the wall, she pressed hard, slamming him into the corner of the hallway. He cursed.

She pressed harder, but his grip around her only tightened. She couldn’t breathe. He shifted and dragged her down the hall.

His grip loosened but only slightly. She drew in a breath. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Let me go.”

Now she wished she’d made friends with the neighbor.

Casey screamed again, louder this time, if possible.

Then, to her surprise, he threw her on the floor. She slammed against the tile, hitting her head.

The taste of blood filled her mouth. Unsure why he’d dropped her, but not caring, Casey scrambled to her feet. Before she took off running, she glanced behind her.

The man wore a tailored black suit, she now noticed. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled something out.

Casey gasped.

A gun. He had a gun.

Casey’s knees trembled. “What are you going to do?”

Like a bull intent on goring his target, Jesse slammed into the man from the side. Though he’d held Casey at gunpoint, the guy hadn’t fingered the trigger guard yet. Jesse had to act fast.

The nine-millimeter slid across the floor.

The man grunted from the blow. Jesse landed on top of him as they hit the tile floor. The attacker moaned, but Jesse didn’t care. He threw a punch in his face for good measure.

Blood gushed from the man’s nose, and he pressed his hands to it. “You broke my nose,” he said, his nasal-sounding tone filled with outrage.

Jesse held his fist in the air and paused. “I’m going to break more than that. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Still cupping a hand over his nose, the man dropped to his knees. Something slid from his pocket.

“The name is Harrison Spear. I’m a friend of the Helmses and I came to check on the house. I found her inside, stealing from them. I pointed the gun at her so she would stay there while I called the police. The bigger question is who are you? And who is she?”

Fire in her eyes, Casey stepped forward. “I was doing no such thing.” She fairly spat at the man.

“Come on, you had that figurine. It’s worth a lot of money.”

Jesse relaxed, but only slightly. “Look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

He looked to Casey, knowing he’d eventually need to explain why he’d been here to save the day.

“My name is Casey Wilkes and I’m Leann Helms’s niece.” Casey’s face went pale as she gripped the table. “What were you doing sneaking around in the house? I didn’t hear you come in.”

Jesse rushed to her side and grabbed her arms, supporting her. Holding tightly, he guided her to the sofa.

To the stranger he said, “You can get out of here. I think you’ve done enough damage tonight, don’t you?”

Jesse pulled out his phone, acting as if he was making a call, but took a picture of the man before he left the house. He made a mental note that Spear had grabbed the gun on his way out, but left the item that had fallen from his pocket. He must not have realized he’d lost it. Jesse would remember it, though.

“Thank you.” The soft words drew Jesse’s attention back to the woman at his side.

He squeezed her hand, hoping to reassure her, and felt the strength in her grip. “You’re welcome. I’m just glad—” What exactly could he say to her?

“Glad that you were here? You want to explain that?” Her tone held only a hint of accusation.

Jesse stood, wanting to put distance between himself and the beautiful Casey Wilkes. He held up a finger. “Just a second.”

He went to the back door and unlocked then opened it, whistling. Initially, he’d come through the front door, which was unlocked, presumably by Spear, unless Casey had left it unlocked. A glance back and he witnessed Casey’s raised eyebrows.

Simon came bounding into the house.

Jesse laughed and rubbed his dog behind the ears. “Simon and I jog on this beach every evening. I heard a scream.”

Simon sprang over the sofa and onto Casey. He licked her, causing laughter to erupt. The sound of it warmed Jesse. As he watched her petting Simon, he knew that she’d recovered from having a gun pointed at her. She’d be all right—at least this time.

Soon enough he’d find out if Spear was criminally involved in the smuggling ring, working with Miguel or Carlos, or if he really was checking on the house for the Helms. Still, how had he gotten in unnoticed? Was he already here when Casey arrived home? For his own cover, he’d given Spear no reason to suspect he was anything other than Casey’s friend—he’d done exactly what a friend would do.