“I would beat you,” Emerson said, as if he’d known just what she’d been thinking.

  She laughed. “You read minds just like the characters in my psychic story.”

  He chuckled. “If we were here, alone in the dark after the place was closed, I would be willing to race you.”

  “I would love to prove you wrong.”

  They took a walk on the trail through the woods after that. Nobody was out here but them and she really was glad for the company. At least they were dressed for the cold, crunching on the snow, and then he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Okay, so I already know you were wounded, shot probably, and that probably has something to do with the last mission you were on,” she said, unable to let go of the notion that something bad had happened to him and what if it would help him get through it by talking to her about it? Or anyone, really. Maybe he would feel better.

  “You’re right.” He sighed.

  Ohmigod, she could not believe he would really tell her about it. She wanted to prompt him for more information, but she was trying to let him reveal what he felt comfortable in speaking with her about.

  They walked for a long distance in the snowy woods and neither of them said anything. A hairy woodpecker was rat-a-tat-tatting on a tree a few feet away high above and a red cardinal flew off nearby, his red-beaked mate flying off to join him, catching their attention.

  “Most of the team I led were wounded on the last mission. One died. We were really close to losing another team member,” Emerson finally said.

  Instantly, Jessie glanced up at him, saw the sorry in the lines etched in Emerson’s face and felt bad about it. She had thought he’d been wounded, and that maybe felt he’d let his team down. Maybe he had, but she’d never expected him to tell her all of his team members had been wounded and one had died.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was supposed to be a mission to rescue little kids at a school.”

  “Oh no.” She could imagine the worst-case scenario—that the kids hadn’t made it either.

  “There was no rescue mission.”

  “What?” She looked up at him, but he was looking at the woods ahead of them.

  “It was a setup. The man who contracted us to do the job set us up. We were ambushed. There were no kids, there was no rescue mission. It was all a ruse to get us there and eliminate us.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t believe it.

  “Maybe we’d made some enemies on an earlier mission. We really don’t know. Smith, the man who sent us on the mission, no doubt would have been paid off handsomely. He knows he’ll have to finish us off because we’ll want his head.”

  She pulled Emerson to a stop. “Wait. You were on a mission where someone had a contract on your life and you don’t think any of what happened to you at the cabins has anything to do with it?”

  “No.” He pulled her along to walk again with him. “They wouldn’t have left me alive.”

  Okay, that made sense. “This Smith got away with it.”

  “I will find him and deal with him.”

  “What about the other team members that made it out alive?”

  “We had secret identities. Smith isn’t really his name. I didn’t go by Emerson. We had made-up home addresses, we were all orphans, no families, no girlfriends—”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  He smiled down at her and she was glad she could lighten the mood a bit.

  “I mean, for any woman who got interested in you when here you might already have a family, girlfriend, whatever, but it was all a great secret. That means you and your team are going after him? Together?” She thought it would be safer if they did.

  “I did some searching. I haven’t come up with anything yet. But I have every intention of getting him.”

  She squeezed Emerson’s hand. And then she realized the cougars coming to watch their backs could help him find this Smith. “The CSF! They go after, oh, he’s probably human.”

  “No. You’re right. He’s a cougar.”

  “Oh, good. I mean, it’s not good that a cougar would do something like that to you and your team mates, but that’s just the kind of mission the CSF agents do.”

  “I don’t know that they’d ever find him, but it wouldn’t hurt to get them involved.”

  “I bet you couldn’t believe you would come home from a dangerous mission like that and be attacked at the resort.”

  “You can say that again.”

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “Do you have a picture of Smith?” she asked.

  “No. But I can describe him. He has short black hair, blue eyes, a cleft in his chin, and ears that stand out.”

  “That sounds like a guy I’ve dated.”

  “A rogue who was terminated,” Emerson said.

  “No. He was a cougar I see every once in a while.”

  “Oh, the one that got away.” Emerson smiled.

  “That was a different cat. And he only got away if some other she-cat didn’t do him in. You know some cougars can be mighty possessive of their man.”

  “Not you though.”

  She sighed. “He was so not worth it.”

  “Did you meet the one you were still seeing in Loveland?”

  “No. The second time I met him, I was doing a book on the wildlife up here, the wolves of Isle Royale National Park, the bears in the wilderness, moose, deer, and I even had to feature the Bigfoot at one of the restaurants down south. Anyway, I met him there.”

  “You didn’t warn the cougar who was seeing other she-cats what your family and friends do to rogue cougars?”

  She smiled at Emerson. “He wasn’t a keeper or worth it.” But then she grew serious. “I’m so sorry about your team though. Is your arm all right?”

  “Yeah, it’s getting better daily.”

  “I hope it was okay for me to talk to you about this.”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t have told you a thing about it. But I’m glad I had you to talk to about it.”

  When she had first arrived at the resort, she would never had thought he’d come home from such a horrible mission. Between that and returning home after learning his uncle had died, she understood why Emerson had seemed so dark and brooding.

  She took a deep breath of the scent of pines and the fresh snow. It was a good hike, but as much as she ran as a cougar, she was in good shape. He seemed to be also—he must have had to be for the kind of work he was doing. It would be fun to run here as cougars when the place was closed.

  “Thanks for asking me to come with you,” he said again.

  “I had to bring my bodyguard.” She squeezed his gloved hand with hers. “When was the last time you saw your uncle?” She realized of all the years she’d been coming up here before Christmas, not once had she seen Emerson here, and Mr. Merriweather had never mentioned he had a nephew.

  “Last summer.”

  “A year and a half ago?” She couldn’t help sounding incredible. Family meant everything to her, though she guessed Emerson’s work would preclude his taking off at any time he wanted to either to see his uncle, unlike if he’d worked at a normal nine-to-five job. He’d probably been all over the world, even.

  “Yeah. When you do what I do, you have to work. Sometimes between assignments I would just say I had to take off and I would come in to see my uncle. He knew I could show up anytime because I never let anyone know where I was going to be.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They died in a boating mishap on Lake Superior when I was ten—it was an adult boating trip, and I was home with my aunt and uncle. They ended up raising me.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She thought it was awful that he’d lost his parents too. “Do you have any siblings?”

  “No. And my aunt and uncle never had any children. So I didn’t have any cousins growing up either.”

  He had no family at all. No wonder Christmas wasn’t a big priority for him. “Was your uncle’s heart attack a surprise to you?”

  “Yeah, sure. He never mentioned that he had any health problems.”

  “Were you on the mission still when you got word he had died?”

  “I was just coming home from it, but it was already too late. I was going to surprise him with the fact that I’d left my work for good. I never expected him to die of a heart attack. I thought I would be living there with him, helping him with the upkeep and spending a lot more time with him.” He shook his head. “I never expected this.”

  “I’m so sorry, Emerson. He didn’t tell you about any concerns he had before he died?”

  “When I was on a mission, he really couldn’t get a hold of me. Of course now, I really regret it.”

  “He didn’t leave you any cryptic notes before he died?”

  Emerson paused on their walk to watch a black squirrel scamper up a tree and she watched it too. “I never suspected foul play,” Emerson said.

  “What if someone gave him a heart attack? What if it wasn’t just fate?” she asked.

  Emerson began walking again and so did Jessie, but this time he seemed to be pondering the notion.

  “Okay, no. I’m used to freeing hostages, eliminating kidnappers and any other kinds of situations that required my training, but I’m not one to believe in conspiracy theories. No one would be after my uncle. He wasn’t the sort of person who created enemies.”

  “I’ve read mystery stories for years. I’m used to thinking in terms of ‘what if.’”

  “Like Miss Marple.”

  “Exactly. There’s probably nothing to it, but what if some men, the two in particular, were looking for me because they had learned I arrived at the resort at the same time every year and I am friends with your uncle. He’s got something they want. A treasure? Evidence of a crime, something. They try to get it out of him and he had a heart attack. Were guests at the resort at the time?”

  “Yes. Everyone had to leave since there was no proprietor at the resort any longer. I refunded everyone their money for their whole stay here, even if they’d been there for part of their vacation already.”

  “You couldn’t have let them stay?”

  “If I’d been back there, sure. I hadn’t returned yet. The only recourse I had was to refund them their money.”

  “Okay, I understand. So the autopsy revealed he’d had a massive heart attack, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had any of the guests witnessed it? Was he alone when it happened? At night? During the day?”

  “It was at night. I don’t know if anyone had seen him have it. After I learned about his death, I checked with the doctor concerning my uncle’s heart condition. The doctor said my uncle hadn’t had any trouble as far as he had known and then suddenly, he died of a heart attack. It happens.”

  “Right.”

  “Is this going in your book?”

  She suspected Emerson was afraid she would be writing this about his uncle. “No. Not unless he was psychic and it has some resemblance to him. The main characters are psychic, and there’s no uncle in the story. Even then, I’m writing fiction. Did your uncle have any idea you might be quitting your job and moving here for good?”

  “No. I didn’t even know until the last mission and what had happened there and then I was done with it all.”

  They were still walking through the pristine woods. It was so pretty out here, snow covering the sides of trees and sitting on top of shelf mushrooms and the sun glistened on the sparkling snowflakes.

  But Jessie couldn’t shut her mind down as she thought about when she first had arrived at the resort and immediately had noticed that there were no Christmas decorations in sight. It had been a vague thought at the time and the implication hadn’t really fully registered until now. “I was thinking about something else that’s bothering me about this whole situation. Why hadn’t your uncle decorated the resort, the cabins, his house, everything for Christmas already?”

  “Pardon?” Emerson sounded genuinely perplexed by her question.

  “The cabins? The house? He always decorated everything before Thanksgiving even, he told me. He liked making the resort sparkle. Unless you took everything down after you returned home because he had died and nobody but me was going to be there.” That to her was a big mystery. A clue? Something Mr. Merriweather thought his nephew should notice to indicate something wasn’t quite what it seemed.

  Emerson couldn’t believe the way Jessie’s mind worked overtime to solve mysteries. She was really good at it.

  “You’re right,” he conceded after he thought about it. “He would have decorated everything for the holidays, both for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He liked for his guests to feel they were enjoying their holidays just like if they were celebrating them at home. It was all because one year he had taken a Christmas cruise with my aunt when I came home from the army and I managed things for them. He said they hadn’t decorated the ship at all for the holidays and when they got home, Uncle Paul vowed to always have the Christmas lights and trees up early for their guests so they would feel the special celebration at a home away from home.”

  “So don’t you think that doesn’t add up?”

  “Yeah, unless he was feeling poorly.”

  “Did you talk to anyone who said he was?”

  “No. I didn’t think there was any reason to.”

  “Right. No foul play. Where would he have left a cryptic message for you if he had? That only you would think to find?” They were getting close to the walk up to the lighthouse and homes that the lightkeepers had lived in.

  Emerson smiled at her and shook his head.

  “Those men were after something. That you can’t deny. What about money? In the estate you inherited? Do you know if it was all there?” Jessie asked.

  “I didn’t know exactly how much he had, but I thought he had about a million and a half more in stock, bonds, and mutual funds. I just wasn’t sure. He could have lost money on the stock market, invested more into the resort property, I just don’t know. Now, if the majority of the money had been gone, I would figure someone had given him a heart attack and stolen his money.”

  “How much was left? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Fifteen and a half million. Some of the money I’d given to him, knowing my life could be cut short at any time in the work I was doing. I made damn good money for the hairy missions I was on. I thought he could use it if something happened to me. I didn’t realize he’d built up quite a nest egg also. And seeing the funds in there was a reason I didn’t suspect anything was amiss.”

  “Okay, so with that much money left, I doubt he was murdered for it. But here’s another idea, just something that slipped into my head—”

  Emerson guessed what she was going to say right before she said it. “He’s not dead. I’ve considered that too since the heart-attack scenario just came out of the blue, though there weren’t any real red flags that said anything bad had happened.”

  “Did you see his body?”

  “No. The doctor was a friend of his and he identified the body.”

  “Was his doctor friend a cougar, perchance?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t see his body?”

  Which was another reason he was beginning to have some doubts now that Jessie was raising them. “No. The family doctor told me my uncle had wanted a closed-casket funeral.”

  “Hmm. Maybe your uncle witnessed something and he’s in witness protection? Or on his own in hiding?”

  Hell, Emerson sure hoped not. He shook his head. “Here I thought it was a simple matter of a heart attack.”

  “It still might be.”

  “Except for the two men who came to the resort looking for you and something else.” Though he was hoping beyond hope that his uncle was alive and well, and if so, he was taking down whoever was involved in his need to disappear.

  “You’re not going to exhume the coffin, are you?” she asked. “Well, I guess you might not have been able to do a winter burial though, were you?”

  “No, he’s in a family crypt, indoors, private mausoleum. My parents’ coffins are also in the crypt.” And that gave him the idea they had to check his uncle’s coffin out.

  “Ahh, okay, that means we can investigate it without anyone being there or seeing what we’re doing.” She let out her breath. “Are we going to check it out? I mean, if he is alive and he’s trying to hide that fact, if we open up a tomb to find him, someone might learn of it and he could be at more risk.”

  “I have to. I need to know if he’s alive or not. If he’s in Witness Protection, I have to know that.”

  “If he is, you’re back in the Black Ops business.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t plan to ever get back into the business, but if my uncle is alive and someone is threatening his life? They’ll pay.” Emerson would do no less where his uncle was concerned.

  She sighed. “I might have opened a can of worms over this. And so close to Christmas too. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. If I have a second chance at being there for my uncle, I’m taking it.” Emerson was praying Jessie’s hunch was correct.

  “I’m going with you to the cemetery.” She sounded like she was worried he would leave her behind.

  “Yeah, because I don’t want you to be alone at the resort.”

  “So that means you want me to stay with you tonight?”

  He smiled down at her.

  She sighed dramatically.

  “Hey, your sister checked me out, remember? And she didn’t say I was bad news, did she?”

  “I would say you were bad to the bone, at least where the bad guys are concerned.”

  Chapter 8

  After enjoying the visit to the lighthouse and the trail hike, Emerson drove Jessie in the opposite direction from Whispering Pines, to her surprise. She wondered if he had decided to go to the cemetery now instead of going straight back to the resort. “Where are we going?” Jessie was thinking that she really needed to get to work on her word count for her novel if she was to get it done today before they went to the cemetery.