Christmas Peril: Merry Mayhem / Yule Die. Margaret Daley

gut feeling Annie was in need of a good friend. That the Lord had sent Annie to Sara so she could help the young woman with the adorable child. Caleb wasn’t so sure about that. Since her grandniece had moved away last January, Sara had been lonely, even depressed, which definitely could be coloring Sara’s perception of Annie.

      It was up to him to make sure she wasn’t taken advantage of.

      Annie rolled over and pounded her fist into the pillow. She should have fallen asleep hours ago, but instead she couldn’t shut down her thoughts long enough for sleep to overtake her.

      She kept replaying the evening with Caleb. A look he sent her. The touch of his hand. A wink, as though they shared some secret. And then there was his smile. She must have contemplated that for a good thirty minutes. Remembering it bathed her in warmth. She had no business being interested in a man right now. She didn’t even know if she would stay in town long after Christmas. After all the commotion of the holidays passed, she needed to decide what she should do next. She had a life back in Crystal Creek she wanted to return to and didn’t know if she could.

      Frustrated, Annie flipped back the covers and slowly stood, making sure she didn’t disturb Jayden sleeping on the other side of the queen-size bed. She paced to the window and pushed the curtain back to peer outside. The blackness of night only reinforced her fear of the dark. She shivered and turned away from the window, letting the drapes fall back into place.

      She needed to do something now. Was Bryan alive somehow? How could she find out? Call all the hospitals in that part of Florida? She didn’t know their names, but maybe information could help her.

      Her gaze fell on her cell, which she’d finally started charging when she’d unpacked earlier. The green light indicated she could use it. She turned it on for the first time since before she’d fled Crystal Creek. When she’d gotten up Saturday, it had been dead, but she hadn’t gotten around to charging it before everything changed after Bryan’s phone call to her apartment. She’d been too tired to charge it on the road. Annie stiffened. Two messages were on her cell. Afraid of what she might find because few knew her new cell number—one being Bryan—she couldn’t keep her hand from trembling.

      “Annie, my meeting with my father went badly. He won’t acknowledge me. I’m coming to see—” A pause of several seconds then, “I’ll call you back. I guess I was going too fast. A cop is behind me and wants me to pull over.”

      She punched the next message, hoping it was Bryan to explain further, to help her to make some kind of sense of all that was happening. “Annie, you can’t run forever. I’ll find you, just as I found Bryan.”

      Listening to the second message from a gruff-voiced man, the same one she’d heard as Bryan was being beaten, only strengthened the terror that was a constant companion. There was no going back to Crystal Creek.

      THREE

      The next day at the library computer, Annie stared at the screen, rereading the words of the small article from the Daytona paper: “The body of 28-year-old Bryan Daniels of Daytona was found in a Dumpster behind the McKinney Apartment Complex. The victim was badly beaten and died from a gunshot wound to the stomach. His apartment was later discovered to be ransacked.”

      He’s dead. His place robbed. Tears blurred the words on the screen. Her relationship with Bryan had ended six years ago, but he’d tried to do the right thing concerning Jayden, even if he’d totally messed up his life. How was she going to tell Jayden about Bryan? She had to find a way but make sure her daughter didn’t say anything about Bryan to anyone. Maybe when she moved on after the holidays.

      Beaten and shot. The facts in the article taunted her. Oh, Bryan, what have you done? What have you gotten Jayden and me into?

      A noise behind her prompted her to click off the computer before Sara or Jayden found her looking at it. She watched a lady at the counter cross to a cart and place a stack of books on it. Annie scanned the library’s large room with rows and rows of shelves and found Jayden sitting cross-legged on the carpet flipping through a book with Sara behind her in a chair peering over her daughter’s shoulder.

      Shifting back around, she stared at the blank screen. She’d figured after the message last night that Bryan was dead. Reading the news in black and white hammered home that she couldn’t go back to Crystal Creek, only fifty miles from Daytona, until she knew what was going on. Had Bryan’s visit with his father had anything to do with him being killed? She couldn’t go to the cops with what little she knew—not yet, not until she knew whom she could trust. Her life and Jayden’s might depend on her silence. She couldn’t risk it, especially after Bryan’s last message about being pulled over by a cop. That had only been an hour before he called her at her apartment. What had happened in that hour?

      What was her next step? Find out more about Bryan’s father, Nick Salvador. It had all started with Bryan’s visit with him. Who was he? What kind of power did he wield? Where did his money come from? How wealthy was he? Was he capable of killing his own son?

      Her head pounded with all the unanswered questions that seemed to demand responses immediately. She rubbed her temples, unable to alleviate the tension.

      First, she needed to know if whoever had picked up Bryan’s cell and talked to her had found where she lived in Crystal Creek. She dug into her purse and pulled out her cell to call her apartment manager, Trey Johnson.

      When he came on the phone, she said, “Trey, this is Annie. I—”

      “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you. I don’t have your new cell number.”

      “What?” Annie gripped the cell tighter, again peering around her to make sure no one was nearby. “Why are you looking for me?”

      “Your apartment was broken into a few days ago. It was destroyed.”

      The man found our place in Crystal Creek not long after we’d left!

      Her nerveless fingers released her cell, and it dropped to the tile floor making a loud sound in the quiet of the library. Several patrons, including Sara and Jayden, looked at Annie. A flush heated her cheeks as she retrieved her cell and said, “Sorry, I dropped my phone.” The rapid thumping of her heartbeat made her voice sound breathless.

      “Where are you?”

      Light-headed, Annie tried to drag enough air into her lungs, but the room swirled before her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds.

      “Annie, are you there?”

      “Yes. Do you think anything was taken?” As a friend and manager of the apartment complex, Trey had been in her place several times.

      “That’s hard to tell, since it was trashed so badly. Even the stuffing in the couch was torn out. Most of what is left isn’t salvageable. The police have been here. They aren’t saying much, but I haven’t heard of any other robberies like yours in town lately.”

      And Trey would have known. Little crime happened in Crystal Creek—until now.

      “When are you coming home? Where are you? I thought you might be dead or something when no one could find you, but your boss told the police you left town for a while. They’ve been looking for you.”

      The police, looking for her? The thought escalated her fear and panic even more. “Jayden and I,” she began in a voice that quavered, “are okay.” If you don’t count having someone hunting us. “I can’t tell you anything else. I’ll get back to you later. Thanks, Trey.” She clicked off the cell before she told him something that could give her location away. What if the person who had killed Bryan had gotten to Trey?

      Don’t trust anyone. That included her friends and the police in Crystal Creek.

      She turned off the cell, realizing if she was on it long enough they could trace her through the GPS in it. Half the time she didn’t have it on because she left it off at work and often forgot to switch it back on. Now all she wanted to do was throw it away, as though the assailant had come through the connection