Despite the weight of so many events the day before, or maybe because of them, Cassie slept better than she had in ages. If there had been any more suspicious noises throughout the rest of the night, she hadn’t heard them. She stretched, blinking her eyes to try to get some moisture back into them. Then she glanced at the clock.
Past nine o’clock. The library was open by now and they needed to see those books. Cassie fumbled her way out of the covers she’d heaped on top of herself and carried a pile of clean clothes to the bathroom where she took the fastest shower she could and then braided her hair. She never did her hair this way in Florida, but it seemed natural here just to braid it wet and have it out of the way, hanging over her shoulder and down in front on one side just like it had when she was in high school and too busy adventuring to worry too much about her looks.
Of course, Jake had always thought she was beautiful. She’d never doubted that. He’d been good to her, good for her.
And he still loved her. What was she supposed to do with that information? It didn’t change the fact that she’d left and didn’t deserve him. And it certainly didn’t erase all the obstacles.
What Cassie couldn’t decide was if it made it harder or easier.
“Wake up, sweetie.” She shook Will gently until he finally blinked his own eyes open.
“It’s morning already? I barely slept.”
Cassie laughed, thinking of the way they’d carried him into the closet, and then how she’d moved him out after she’d come back upstairs for the last time, sure that danger had passed, at least for the moment, and not wanting Will to wake up in the closet and ask questions. By moving him, she’d effectively kept him from knowing that anything strange had happened last night, and after the trauma he’d endured with the gunshots the day before, she was happy with that.
“It’s morning and you get to go back to the house with the swords.” She kept her voice light, and sure enough, that was all it took to launch Will from bed and send him into a flurry of tooth brushing and clothes changing.
By the time they got downstairs, Jake was dressed too, sitting in a chair, drinking his coffee.
“You guys all ready?” He smiled and Cassie thought she read in his look a hint of teasing at how late she’d slept. Well, let him tease her. She felt amazing and after the last few days she didn’t even feel bad. She’d needed that extra rest.
“Ready.” Cassie nodded to confirm.
“Breakfast?”
She patted the small backpack she’d slung over her shoulder. “I packed granola bars.”
“Those are not breakfast.” He made a face and walked to the kitchen, pulled two plates out of the oven and handed one to each of them. “I made waffles and kept them warm for when you woke up.”
“You made these?” Cassie confirmed as she set her backpack down to take the plate.
He shrugged. “I’ve had to eat all these years, you know. How did you think I did that without learning how to cook?” He laughed, and Cassie and Will sat down at the counter on a couple of stools. Cassie guessed the library would still be there in five minutes, but it had been a long time since anyone had made breakfast for her. She certainly wasn’t going to let that go to waste.
When breakfast was finished, they piled into the car and drove to Officer Thomas’s house to drop Will off. When Cassie moved to get out of the car to update the officer on the other possible attempted attack last night, Jake held out a hand to stop her. “I’ve got it, okay?”
His face was so hopeful, like he wanted to have this chance to be involved in Will’s life, be the one to drop him off, that Cassie couldn’t say no. She nodded. “Okay.”
She hugged and kissed Will, and he made a face about the kiss on his cheek like he always did. Then he and Jake were off and she sat waiting for a few minutes until Jake returned.
“Everything okay?”
“He’s got it under control.” Jake let out a breath. “It’s a huge relief to have him out of danger during the day.”
It was, Cassie had to admit, if only to herself.
They drove to the library and were there within minutes, one of the perks of a small town. Cassie didn’t bring up anything about their conversation the night before. Despite what he’d said, she still felt some kind of hesitation in Jake. There was something keeping them from a second chance, but she didn’t know what it was and wasn’t sure he did either. Besides, they had too much to think about right now, trying to figure out why her aunt had been killed.
And by whom.
They parked in front of the library, a building with a gorgeous mural of Fourteen-Mile River painted on the side of it. That was one thing Cassie had missed in Florida. The municipal building artwork in Alaska was special.
Had she admitted to herself how much she loved it here and how much she missed it? Cassie didn’t think so.
“Don’t tell anyone why we’re looking,” Jake said to her, his voice low as he held the glass door for her at the library’s entrance. She nodded, but wouldn’t have thought of it if Jake hadn’t told her. She’d always felt safe in libraries, maybe because her aunt had taken her so much when she was a kid and encouraged her to read.
Still, danger reached every corner of Raven Pass she’d been in so far. Cassie needed to remember not to let her guard down, and to assume that the threat could find her anywhere.
“Hello.” The librarian, Mrs. Carpenter, had to be at least as old as the building itself. At least that’s how she seemed to Cassie, because she couldn’t remember a time without the woman working there. In reality, she was probably only a few years older than Cassie’s aunt was...had been... But her hair had gone white early, so when Cassie was younger, she’d always assumed she was ancient.
“Hi, Mrs. Carpenter.” Cassie smiled.
Jake frowned at her. Apparently he’d not only meant to keep quiet about what they were looking for, but he would have preferred for them to slip in unnoticed entirely.
Oops.
“Anything I can help you with today, dear?” she asked, then her eyes behind her glasses clouded over. “I’m sorry to hear about your aunt.”
“Thanks.” Cassie darted a glance at Jake. He still wasn’t looking much friendlier. “And no, we don’t need help,” Cassie said and watched Jake’s face relax as she said so.
“All right, just let me know.” Mrs. Carpenter went back to her work on the computer.
Cassie walked with Jake to the back of the library, where the books about the town were. She pulled the slip of paper from her pocket that she’d written the books’ names on last evening to assure herself that she wouldn’t forget them.
They searched the shelves. The library had all three books.
Finally something was going their way.
Jake pulled the books from the shelf and nodded to one of the study tables nearby. It sat under a window, with a view of Fireweed Mountain. Cassie followed him over there and they sat, the books stacked between them on the table. Something in Cassie’s stomach felt heavy. These books, while not the exact copies that had been stolen, somehow felt like one of the links she had left to her aunt.
And maybe the reason for her death? Cassie didn’t know how, but it made sense. Why else would someone have taken them?
But what kind of notes could have been worth killing someone for? And why would the killer have gone after her too?
“I wish you hadn’t said hi to the librarian,” Jake whispered.
“Mrs. Carpenter? Why?” Cassie frowned. “I didn’t tell her why we were here.”
“Yeah, but librarians talk, you know? When was the last time you were in here?”
Cassie couldn’t answer. She didn’t even remember.
“I don’t want her to notice our presence and tell someone about it. We have no idea who it is we’re trying to protect you from, and we can’t afford her talking to the wrong person.”
It made sense to Cassie.
“Sorry. I’ll be sneakier.”
Jake raised his eyebrows. “It would be hard not to be sneakier than that.”
Cassie made a face, then looked at the stack of books again. Reached for one of them.
She opened the first book. It didn’t tell her too much she hadn’t heard. Raven Pass had been founded over one hundred years ago by miners, but they hadn’t lasted long in the Alaskan climate and their settlement had come to ruin. Settlers tried again in the 1930s, when another gold rush farther north inspired people to try in many different places. One of them found gold then, or so the legend went. But no one knew for sure because the gold had disappeared around the time of a grisly double murder.
Cassie had forgotten, somehow, the legend of the Raven Pass gold. Odd, because she could remember people talking about it, especially the elementary school–aged kids, around Halloween. The whole town had been fascinated by it. Eventually talk had died down some, but it was still one of those things everyone in Raven Pass knew about, just by virtue of being from there.
Jake was looking through another one of the books, but he stopped reading and looked at her. “Your aunt didn’t know about the gold, did she?”
“The legend?” Cassie whispered back, conscious to keep her voice at a library-appropriate level, and of the fact that someone could be listening. “Of course she did. All of us do.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. Did she know more about it?”
She’d barely talked to Cassie about it. That didn’t really speak to someone who had extra information about the subject.
Unless it did. Unless she’d been keeping something from Cassie. Was it easier not to talk about the subject at all than to try to be selective about what information she shared?
Which fit with the aunt she’d known. Cassie didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to think.
Chills went down her backbone the more she thought about it, and the idea of sitting in front of the window was awkward.
“Can we leave?” she asked Jake, swallowing hard. “I feel...weird.”
Like someone was watching her.
He nodded. “Let’s make copies of the pages about the treasure and the rumors.”
“Out of the whole book, you’re that sure it’s what it has to do with?”
“What else about Raven Pass could lead to someone being willing to commit murder? The gold and the legend make sense.”
Cassie knew he was right, but it didn’t make sense at all. Not really. Not with everything she remembered about her aunt. She shivered again and moved away from the window.
Somehow it felt like someone was out there. And whether Cassie was being paranoid or not, she couldn’t shake the feeling, couldn’t stop her skin from crawling.
Would she ever feel safe again?
Making copies didn’t take long and Jake was able to do it without asking for help. He was relieved by that. He didn’t want the older woman talking about why they’d been there researching.
As it was, no one would ever know. He finished making copies of the last book, only the sections about the Raven Pass gold and the legend that surrounded it, and then returned the books to the shelf. Cassie followed along behind him, not saying much, but clearly not wanting to be alone.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked her as he pulled the finished copies out of the machine.
She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was even quieter than the library called for. “I feel weird. Like when I’m near a window, someone’s watching me.”
“Which window?” he asked, not willing to take chances.
She nodded her head toward where they’d been sitting earlier. Jake walked over to it, careful to keep Cassie out of the line of vision from anyone outside.
But he didn’t see anything out of place. Just the town itself, and the mountains on one side. This was the back of the building. The car was out front.
“I don’t feel it anymore,” she mumbled, then shrugged. “Maybe I am just being overly anxious.”
Jake wasn’t inclined to think so. Cassie wasn’t the kind of woman who was naturally suspicious and concerned. If she’d felt like someone was watching her, there was a decent chance someone had been. Then why not now?
He wanted to get her back home. They could look at this information there, and while he had no illusions that his house was bulletproof either figuratively or literally, it was his home turf and therefore easier to defend and to keep Cassie safe in.
“Ready to leave?” He tried to keep his voice casual, but it did nothing to ease the tension he could see in her jaw.
“Yes, please.”
They walked to the front of the library together.
“Have a good day,” the librarian called. So much for sneaking out unnoticed. The woman saw everything.
Jake didn’t want Cassie outside for long unprotected, even though he was pretty sure that now he was the one being paranoid, so he unlocked his vehicle from the entryway of the building.
“Don’t waste time getting in the car, okay?”
Cassie nodded. “Okay.”
For a crazy second, Jake thought maybe he felt it too, the sensation of being watched, but it was the tension overwhelming him. He wasn’t the one in danger, Cassie was.
He didn’t hear the concussive blast of the rifle shot until it had already kicked up part of the sidewalk a couple feet from his feet.
“Car, Cassie, now!” he yelled and looked around to try to figure out where the shots had come from. Which left him a still target, but they weren’t after him.
“Jake!”
“I’m trying to find the muzzle flash.”
He saw it, somewhere on the hillside just above town to the south, just before he felt a searing pain in his arm. The force made him flinch sideways and he felt himself falling.
Then he hit the sidewalk hard and his head hurt, hurt, hurt.
Until it was all black.
He was behind her, taking too long to get to shelter, when Cassie heard the second shot and then saw him fall. Cassie didn’t hesitate, but ran in his direction, knowing if he wasn’t unconscious, he’d yell at her for heading toward danger instead of away from it. The fact that he didn’t protest, and his eyes didn’t open, told her how bad it was.
Please don’t let him be dead.
She hurried to his side. She could see the bullet wound, which looked like more of a graze. At least there was that slight bit of reassurance. He wasn’t going to die from that wound, not unless she couldn’t get him out of the line of fire. She tugged at him but he was too heavy. She looked behind her, toward where the shot had come from.
Nothing. No hint of movement. Wasn’t she the one in danger? She could be in their sights right now, kneeling on the hard concrete sidewalk that was digging through the knee of her pants. Cassie could imagine the scene. She was vulnerable, no question.
So why wasn’t anyone shooting?
“Jake, you have to wake up.” She shook him.
Still nothing.
“Jake. Now!” She raised the volume of her voice as she felt frustration building in her. Not toward Jake, he couldn’t help it, but at the entire situation. Doubt clouding her mind, she reached for his wrist and felt for a pulse on the off chance she was wrong, and something had been fatal. The fall, maybe. Her own heart pounded as she waited for her fingers to feel the reassuring thump of his heart rate.
There it was. He was alive and breathing, she now saw when she looked at his chest. All of that was good news. He was just very, very unconscious.
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Cassie’s attention. There, coming from the side of the library, one hundred feet away, maybe, someone was heading slowly in her direction.
She opened her mouth to ask for help, human instinct overriding her caution. Until her brain finally registered that the man coming toward her was dressed entirely in black and had some kind of firearm strapped to his waist.
Not help. Someone she needed to run from.
Cassie glanced back at the car, right there, so close but doing her no good. She wondered if the librarian had heard the shot, but even if she had, here in Alaska she might just figure it was a hunter too close to town. Cassie could leave Jake, which is what she knew he would want, but she wouldn’t. Not now. She’d done it once and paid for it every day since. This time, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes.
“I. Am. Not. Leaving. You!” She punctuated each word, gritted out through her clenched teeth, with a tug on Jake’s shirtsleeve. On the last Jake’s lashes fluttered. Then his eyes went wide.
“Hurry!” she yelled at him and he stood, slowly, but enough that she was able to pull him toward the passenger side of the car. She climbed in the driver’s seat, took the keys he offered and floored it out of the space just as the man who’d been coming closer started running at her. Cassie exhaled deeply, then startled as she realized there had been another man she hadn’t seen. He was dressed the same way, all black, nothing identifying about his features, running for the front of the car.
“Don’t stop,” Jake ordered.
Cassie kept driving but felt herself tensing as the figure moved to the center of the road. “I can’t hit him.”
“He’ll move. Go, Cassie!”
She hit the gas. The man dove out of the way at the sound of the engine revving and relief flooded her. She drove without saying a thing for at least the next sixty seconds and then finally managed to put a thought into word form. “Are you okay?” Not wanting to take her eyes off the road, but needing to see for herself that he was really awake, alive and sitting next to her, Cassie glanced in Jake’s direction quickly.
Her own heart jumped, skittered in her chest. Adrenaline, surely. Not a reaction to Jake.
Everything in her wanted to go straight to Will and pick him up, but even though a glance in the rearview mirror showed no one following them, Cassie wasn’t taking any chances.
The first couple of attacks in broad daylight had been easy to explain away, at least for Cassie. First, she’d been alone during hours that most people weren’t on the streets. Next, they’d been in the woods. No witnesses there except for the other people in the group.
But attacking outside the library? Shooting onto the actual sidewalks of Raven Pass? Cassie couldn’t remember this kind of attempted violence in town ever. Not at any time during her childhood. She supposed at some point years before that a double murder would have had to have taken place in order for the whole Raven Pass treasure legend to be true, but even that was rumored to have happened in the mountains outside of town.
She wasn’t safe here. Cassie pressed her foot down a little harder on the gas.
She shouldn’t have come here. She pressed harder.
“Cassie, you’ve got to slow down.”
His voice was calm. Steady but firm, and she let her foot off the gas immediately. “I’m sorry. I just can’t...” She trailed off. Her voice was wavering, and her hands were tight on the steering wheel. Being in this kind of danger wasn’t something she was used to.
“Drive us back to my house, okay?”
She had been driving with no destination in mind, but she was close to the edge of town. Cassie suspected she was subconsciously heading for Anchorage, though of course leaving town wouldn’t solve any problems and she’d never leave without Will anyway.
For that matter...would she leave again ever? What was waiting for her in Florida?
Emotions still running high, she stole another glance at Jake.
“We should get you to a doctor,” she said. His face looked pale, and she could tell he was hurting.
“I’m fine. Between the two of us, we can clean the wound and patch me up.”
“Jake...”
“You’re a nurse, right? I’m an EMT. Head home.” His voice was strained, and she didn’t want to upset him, so she did as he asked.
Maybe it was okay to admit that she cared about him still. Almost losing him today had made that hard to deny.
He caught her looking this time, and looked back at her. She turned her eyes back to the road immediately.
“So someone knew we were at the library...” Jake trailed off. “Did they know what we looked at? Or just that we were there? No one saw the books we looked at, not even the librarian.”
“Are you thinking she let someone know that we were there? Like on purpose?” Cassie couldn’t picture the old librarian being involved with any of the people who wanted her dead.
“No, but I heard the door open and close a few times while we were in there and saw some other people in the library.”
“Of course, it’s the library and it’s morning. I would imagine that’s one of their busier times.” Cassie pulled into Jake’s driveway, finally, and let out a deep breath when she had put the car in Park.
“My point is that she saw us come in and easily could have made a comment to someone that we were there, and they could have guessed what we were looking at.”
“Like a coincidence thing? You think someone came in at the same time and passed the information along to whoever is after me.” She frowned as she said the words. Were they even after her? It was starting to seem like they were after Jake.
“It could be that. I was thinking more like someone could have been following us and watched us from a distance in the library.”
Cassie shivered, remembering how she felt someone had been watching them.
“Are we going inside to continue this conversation in the house? Personally I’m partial to the house as it has water and I’m extremely thirsty, and there are some bandages in there. I’d prefer not to bleed all over my car.”
Cassie felt exposed on the walk from the car into the house—Jake’s garage was too full of tools and other equipment to park inside it—and right now Cassie wished she could tease him about it instead of dealing with this serious situation.
Once they were inside, she wanted to clean his wound and bandage him, but he insisted on stopping in the kitchen for water first. “Someone watching from inside the library, like you said, someone who maybe followed us there and came in afterward, could explain how I felt like I was being watched.”
Jake seemed to be considering the idea, as he leaned against the counter and took another long sip from his glass. “You thought it was coming from outside though. It could just as easily have been whoever shot at us.”
“True.” Cassie had to concede the point. “But I’m also not used to pinpointing where someone might be watching me from. I just know when I have a general creepy feeling come over me, you know?”
That seemed to make sense to Jake.
“Either way, there’s a small chance today was purely a target of opportunity, but it seems like a strange place for an attack if it was.”
“It’s much more likely we were attacked because we’re getting closer,” Cassie said, lowering her voice some even though they were the only two people in the house.
“I agree.” Jake nodded. “Which means...”
“We need to turn the investigation over to the police and stay out of it?”
Jake shrugged. “I was going to say that it means we need to be extremely careful. Someone is tracking you.”