She laughed. “Leyton said you were dangerous to be around. His boss, Chuck Warner, immediately sanctioned the mission. He’s only three hours from here in White Bear Lake, so if we need his help, he’ll be up here pronto.”

  “Oh, good. You mentioned Smith to him. What did he think about that?”

  “They’ll go after him for sure. They’ll be here tomorrow night.”

  “You told them about the bears in your cabin, but you didn’t mention the mausoleum visit tonight.”

  “No, they would probably want us to wait until they arrive. If you want to, we can, but I’m eager to check it out, aren’t you?” She would think about it all night long if they didn’t.

  “Yeah, I want to look into it tonight. I wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing the truth.”

  “Okay, then it’s decided.” She went back to typing on her story, pausing to think of where she was going next with it, and typing more of the scene and starting the next. Before long, the aroma of the pork chops cooking made her mouth water. She stopped typing to help Emerson set the table.

  “I was going to do that so you could keep working on your story,” he said.

  “I can’t when the food smells so good.”

  He smiled and started dishing up the food.

  “Thanks for dinner.”

  “Thanks for joining me and helping me decorate for Christmas.”

  “Well, once I ended up at your place, I needed the Christmas ambience over here, you know.” They sat down to eat. “Are you prepared for what we’ll discover in the mausoleum?” She wasn’t sure that she would be. Find a body? Don’t find a body? And if they didn’t find a body, then what? Had Mr. Merriweather’s body been stolen or had he never been in the coffin? Then she thought of Nina’s dream about an empty coffin—and thought—it hadn’t been a dream after all.

  “Yeah. I’m hoping beyond hope he isn’t in there.”

  She prayed Emerson could be reunited with his uncle, if he was still alive.

  After dinner and cleaning up the dishes, Emerson grabbed a backpack with a flashlight, lantern, and other tools, and he drove Jessie out to the cemetery and parked. They walked through the snow to the granite Greek-style mausoleum where Barnaby and Melissa Merriweather and Family was engraved on the top, while beautiful Corinthian pillars framed the front.

  “My aunt and uncle had decided to commission the mausoleum when my parents died, and so my aunt and uncle and parents are interred here, though they had never found my parents’ bodies in Lake Superior.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She wondered if Emerson ever felt his parents might still be discovered while he was growing up. She thought it was worse not knowing.

  Emerson pulled out a lantern from his backpack, turned it on, and unlocked the door. Then they went inside and shut the door and he set the lantern on a granite bench inside. They pried off the brass rosettes first from the marble plate. Then they carefully removed the marble plate. He brought out a couple of screwdrivers from his backpack and they removed the screws securing the plastic cover.

  “What are you going to do about putting this all back together?” She suspected they wouldn’t be able to put it together again, so that it looked like it was professionally done.

  “I’ve got the calking to use to reseal it if my uncle is in the coffin. If he isn’t, I want to make it appear as though he still is, just in case anyone gets in here to check things out like we’re doing.”

  They pulled at the coffin, though she was thinking that they should have waited for her friends to assist them. She struggled to help Emerson get the coffin out. Since this was a private family mausoleum, she was thinking they could get the guys to help them move the coffin back in place tomorrow, unless Emerson’s uncle was in the coffin and he really felt he had to put him back in his proper place right after they discovered the truth.

  Then they managed to pull the coffin out, set it on the floor, and they both took a deep breath.

  Emerson said, “Unless I’m mistaken, it feels too light to contain my uncle’s body.”

  “You know, I was thinking that too.” Though she hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up too much despite praying Nina’s dream was truly a vision about this. Jessie didn’t want to see Mr. Merriweather’s remains if he was in there. She wanted to remember him as he was before, greeting her cheerfully at the resort whenever she visited.

  “Are you ready?” Emerson asked, appearing as apprehensive about learning the truth as she was.

  “Yeah. But I’m not going to look.”

  “Okay.” He opened the casket. “Hell.”

  “He’s not in there?” She had to look and peeked inside. The casket was pristine.

  “Yeah, it’s an empty casket. And from the smell of it, no body has ever been in it.”

  “Wow.” She sighed. “It’s empty.” She really couldn’t believe it. She’d been hopeful, but she hadn’t believed it could be true or that Nina had predicted this. “And I agree—there’s no scent or odor that indicates any body has ever been in there. So he’s really not dead?”

  “Hopefully not or he would be in here.”

  “Are you relieved?” she asked.

  “Kind of. I am if he’s alive and well, but if he’s in danger, then no. What the hell is going on?”

  “What if he’s being protected? Then if we go searching for him, we could put him at risk.” She hoped they hadn’t done the wrong thing in trying to learn the truth. Not that she or Emerson would tell anyone but family and the CSF agents, but still, if someone was following them to see where they might go, then they might realize what she and Emerson had learned.

  “What if he needs protection and he’s not being protected well enough?” Emerson asked.

  “True.”

  Emerson glanced down at the casket. “Your friends are arriving tomorrow night, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they would mind if we ask them to help us with putting the casket back in place?”

  “Oh, no, they wouldn’t mind at all. I was hoping that they could.” She was relieved. The coffin might be empty, but it was still unwieldy.

  “Sorry. I should have considered that before I had you help me with this.”

  “I was like you. I couldn’t have slept tonight without knowing one way or another either.”

  Then they left the crypt and locked the door and headed through the snow to his car.

  “I should call Leyton, who is in charge of their little team of CSF agents, to tell him what we found,” she said, as she got into Emerson’s car.

  “Sure,” Emerson said as he drove them back to the resort. “Do you want to use my Bluetooth and we can listen in together to see what he has to say?”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” She gave him Leyton’s number and then Emerson called it.

  “Hey, this is Emerson Merriweather.”

  “Leyton. Is everything okay?” He sounded darkly worried.

  Jessie didn’t blame him. She was worried too. “We checked out Emerson’s uncle’s coffin. It’s in a mausoleum, but the coffin was empty and there has never been a body in it. The funeral had a closed casket.”

  “He’s alive?” Leyton asked, sounding incredulous.

  “Hopefully,” Jessie said.

  “We’re going to need to talk to the doctor again about the supposed surprise massive heart attack my uncle had. He had no history of a heart condition, according to the doctor. I thought maybe my uncle had been hiding it from me. But the doctor said he hadn’t known about it either,” Emerson said.

  “Okay, the doctor’s name?” Leyton asked.

  “Dr. Hennessey Jones. He’s human, but he’s been the family doctor for years, since before I was born even.”

  Leyton cleared his throat. “All right. We’ll check it out.”

  Jessie glanced at Emerson. He was frowning. She was certain he wanted to be involved in the research every step of the way. But then he’d want to protect her too, she figured. Or maybe not. Maybe he would be just as content for one of her friends to look out for her while he went sleuthing with the other men. That would be fine with her.

  “If you guys don’t mind too terribly much, Emerson could use your help putting the coffin back in place tomorrow,” she said.

  “We can sure assist with that. See you tomorrow.”

  Then they ended the call, and she relaxed a little against her seat. “Leyton doesn’t mean to exclude you from investigating this. It’s not like you’re just a civilian or anything. If you want to team up with a couple of the guys, they would welcome you. One of them will stay with me to watch over me while I write. Not that I don’t want to help you solve this mystery and locate your uncle if he’s still alive. But I don’t want to be in your way either.”

  “We’ll play it by ear.”

  “Okay, that works for me.” She fully intended to stay at the house and write.

  “If the guys need more room, they can stay at another cabin. There’s plenty of room,” he said.

  “We can let them know when they get here, but I imagine they’ll want to stick together.”

  “Yeah, with three of them, sure. You don’t think they’ll want you to move in with them, do you?” Emerson sounded like he was hoping that wasn’t the case.

  She patted him on the thigh. “Sorry. You have Wi-Fi. You’re stuck with me.”

  He chuckled. “I couldn’t have been stuck with a nicer person.”

  When they reached the house, he pulled into the garage. She was hoping they hadn’t had any further break-ins while they were gone. From the outside, everything looked fine, the Christmas lights all reflecting off the snow, just beautiful.

  Before they went into the house, Emerson pulled out a gun and she realized he’d been armed the whole time. Which she understood, she was just surprised.

  “Just stay here for a moment, okay?” he said.

  “Uh, yeah, sure.” She was going to say she didn’t smell anything, but then again, the bears had been wearing hunter’s concealment. She listened for any commotion inside his house while watching for any sign of movement outside. Other than the shadows of the tree branches dancing on the snow as the wind blew through the woods, she didn’t see anything moving out there.

  Emerson came back to the door. “It’s all clear, no sign of anyone entering the house while we were gone, but you know how it is with them wearing concealment.”

  “That’s just what I figured.” She walked into the house and began taking off her warm-weather gear.

  “Thanks for coming with me to see if my uncle was in the mausoleum.” Emerson locked the door. “I couldn’t have done it without your help. Would you like some hot cocoa?”

  “Double chocolate? You don’t have to ask me twice.” She sat down to work on her laptop and once she had started it, it wasn’t long before Emerson was bringing her a hot cocoa and some chocolate chip cookies. “Hmm, thanks. Okay, I’m going to work on my story now that I’ve had some chocolate fortification.” She started work on the story again and he went back into the office and was rummaging around. She thought he might be searching for clues about his uncle. She sighed. “If you need any help, let me know.”

  “Thanks.” But he didn’t ask her for any assistance and she wasn’t surprised.

  If she hadn’t been writing, she was sure he would have welcomed her aid. Once she finally had her word count, she walked into the office to see if he’d discovered anything. He was sitting at the desk, papers strewn all over it, but what he was concentrating on now was a photo album showing pictures of a man she thought was his uncle in his youth, a boy of about ten, and a woman who was probably Emerson’s aunt and a couple and a young boy. The boy looked like Emerson, and the couple might have been his parents.

  She felt bad for him. He seemed lost in thought and she didn’t think he even realized she had joined him. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she said, “Is that you as a little boy, and your aunt and uncle and your parents?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He looked up at her and his eyes were misty with tears.

  She felt her own eyes grow misty and she leaned down and hugged him. “We’ll find him and we’ll make sure he stays safe.”

  “Yeah, we will.”

  “Did you discover anything?”

  “No. Except the paperwork showing him withdrawing funds before he supposedly died of a heart attack.”

  “And all the rest of the funds are still there, as if he wanted to leave them for you.” She frowned. “You don’t think this was a ploy for him to get you to leave your job, do you?”

  Emerson didn’t say anything for a minute. “Hell.”

  She smiled. “It might be a far-out notion, but your uncle was a character, you have to admit.”

  “He was.”

  “What do you think? Could he have staged this whole thing just to get you to quit your dangerous missions so that you would be safe?” It just kind of hit her all at once that he might do something like that in an effort to protect his only nephew.

  “He was relentless about me quitting the job. Every time I returned home, he would start in on me again about it. Maybe…maybe he thought I would meet you and we might hit it off, mate, settle down, and have a family.”

  Jessie’s jaw dropped. “No. He never once mentioned you to me. I didn’t know you existed.”

  “I didn’t know about you either, but it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have come up with the scheme. He knew you were coming at your usual time every year. He just had to ensure word got to me so that I would return home when you were here.”

  “Hmm, okay, well, that’s something else to consider. I’m going to take a shower and if the offer still stands, I’ll join you in bed to talk about the case a while longer.”

  He smiled. “We would both be safer that way.”

  She laughed. “I’m not so sure about that.” She found that lots of times while she was in the shower or lying down in bed and not distracted by emails and other stuff, she would start to think about issues with her story, or like right now, with the business with Emerson’s uncle. It didn’t mean she was staying in bed with Emerson. Just that they could lie there in the dark and toss some ideas back and forth to see if they could come up with what was really going on.

  She finished her shower and put on her pajamas, then headed for Emerson’s bedroom. When she reached the room, she found him slipping on a pair of pajama bottoms.

  He was so fit, sexy, and his charming smile just won her over. Did his uncle really plan this whole situation?

  Could she really fall for a cougar who wasn’t a rogue? Her family would never believe it!

  Then again, neither would she.

  Chapter 10

  Emerson couldn’t believe his uncle would go to such lengths to bring him home and set him up with a mate at the same time, if that was the case. But what about the bear shifters? What were they here for then?

  He smiled at Jessie as she came into his bedroom and knew the way her mind worked over problem-solving, she wasn’t jumping into bed with him to have sex. Still, he couldn’t help think about kissing her and running his hands over her soft pajamas and feeling her soft body against him.

  “My side?” she asked, moving aside the covers on the right side of the queen size bed, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “Yeah.” He climbed into bed and so did she. “So what do you think? Was my uncle right in thinking you and I might have a chance to be together?”

  She laughed. “Only time would tell. But you would definitely have to come and see my family for Christmas then.”

  “Okay. I will.” His declaration seemed to have shocked her into silence. “But we still need to find my uncle.” Because he wanted his uncle to share Christmas with them too if he could.

  “Absolutely, and give him the devil for upsetting the both of us.”

  “I agree with you there.” If his uncle was truly among the living.

  “Where would he go? Did he ever tell you of a place he would want to live if he wasn’t running the resort?” She rested her head on the pillow next to Emerson’s.

  He liked the idea of her staying here and sleeping with him, even if they didn’t go any further than that. He’d heard that wolf shifters mated for life. Cougars were more like their human counterparts. Some stayed with their mate forever, others weren’t in it for the long run. He had never given a woman the idea he was interested in a lifetime arrangement, not with the kind of work he had done. Now, things could be different, he realized. He’d never even considered settling down before he met Jessie, in truth.

  “Uncle Paul expressed an interest in living in Florida, where mountain lions live naturally, near Big Cypress National Preserve, possibly so he could still run as a cougar and not create a bad situation for shifters. They call them Florida panthers there, but they’re cougars just the same. Real ones, maybe a few shifters too that everyone thinks are just real cougars. He had said he wanted to get away from the snow and cold in Minnesota when he retired. Maybe he was tired of taking care of the resort all these years, especially with my aunt gone. But when I’d pressed him about it, all he would say was he would like to retire sometime in the future.”

  “And there were no other cougars to meet here that were more his age.”

  “Not that he ever mentioned. He had always wanted me to take over the resort at some point in time, though I was too busy with my own—”

  “Very dangerous work and he was afraid you would be killed before you ever returned home.”

  “He was worried about that. He didn’t say it in so many words. I think he didn’t want me to believe he didn’t have faith in my abilities, but the nature of the job was dangerous. Still, what about the two bears?”

  “I have no idea. We need to tell the CSF agents what we suspect might be another version of what’s going on—now that we know your uncle’s body isn’t in the coffin.” Jessie frowned at Emerson. “Did you see anything in the items you were sorting through in the office that would indicate Paul had left for Florida?”

  “A brochure on the Big Cypress National Preserve.”