Hannah Alexander - Fair Warning

GRAVE RISK

“The latest in Alexander’s Hideaway series is filled with mystery and intrigue. Readers familiar with the series will appreciate how the author keeps the characters fresh and appealing.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

FAIR WARNING

“The plot is interesting and the resolution filled with action.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

LAST RESORT

“The third novel in Alexander’s Hideaway romantic suspense series (after the Christy Award-winning Hideaway and Safe Haven) is a gripping tale with sympathetic characters that will draw readers into its web. The kidnapped Clarissa’s inner dialogue may remind some of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.”

—Library Journal

SAFE HAVEN

“Safe Haven has an excellent plot. I was hooked from the first page and felt like I was riding a roller coaster until the last. Ms. Alexander’s three protagonists kept my adrenaline-racing. But Fawn stole the show—who could resist a sixteen-year-old running for her life? This writer is a crowd pleaser.”

—Rendezvous

HIDEAWAY

“Genuine humor and an interesting cast of characters keep the story perking along…and there are a few surprises…an enjoyable read.”

—Publishers Weekly

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In loving memory of June James,

born July 16, 1922, passed on to heaven

January 29, 2005. Aunt June was filled with

the life and laughter that inspired

the character of Ginger Carpenter.

Joan Marlow Golan, executive editor of Steeple Hill, runs a tight ship and is a constant encourager. This attitude infects the rest of her staff, and we are the ones who benefit. We appreciate you all!

Also going above and beyond the call of duty yet again is Lorene Cook, mom extraordinaire, who supports, encourages, runs errands and markets like a pro. Thanks, Mom.

Thanks to retired Battalion Chief Fred Baugher, who knows fire and doesn’t mind his niece picking his brain from time to time.

Thanks to Captain Powell of Branson Police Department for great information about the station and protocol.

Thanks to Susan May Warren, fellow novelist and former missionary to Russia, who gave us some great insights.

Thanks to Barbara Warren for your word-slashing ability, and to Jackie Bolton for personal insights.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

W illow Traynor’s eyes opened to the blackness of deep night as the noise and flash of an overbusy dream receded into the mist of her subconscious.

She held her breath as her eyes adjusted to the square edges of the dresser across the room, the dim reflection of light in the mirror, the ghostly drift of gauzy white curtains above the heat register. Something had awakened her.

She knew the dream had not been a nightmare, because in the past two years it seemed as if nightmares had become her constant companions. She would have recognized the aftereffects. She didn’t feel them now—no racing heart, no night sweats, no rush of relief upon waking to discover that she was still alive.

Something else, then. A noise? Perhaps a passing car, or a boat on the lake? The neighbors in the apartment complex? Sometimes the two little Jameson girls got rambunctious late at night, and Mrs. Bartholomew in the unit next door called to complain.

Willow sat up and peered toward the small digital numbers on the nightstand clock. Two-thirty, April 1. Probably wasn’t the children.

It might be something as insignificant as the unfamiliar silence. Even after two weeks she hadn’t yet adjusted to the move—or rather, the escape—from bustling Kansas City to her brother’s rural log cabin six miles south of Branson in the Missouri Ozarks. Major change.

She had never lived this far out in the country. Although the eight-unit apartment lodge her brother managed meant they weren’t exactly isolated from civilization, it was nothing like city life. Living in the cabin, situated on the shore of Table Rock Lake, was more like being on permanent vacation. Willow still struggled to come to grips with the comparative solitude.

As she stared into darkness, the square of sliding glass door at the far end of her room seemed to emit a pulsing glow. She blinked to clear her vision, but the glow increased. Headlights from a boat on the lake, perhaps? Except she heard no sound of a boat motor.

She turned her back to the light and plumped her pillow. “None of my business anyway,” she whispered into the darkness.

Her brother, Preston, certainly didn’t want her help keeping track of the renters. As he’d told her several times in the past two weeks, she needed to take a break and heal.

After a little more than twenty-three months, she’d almost given up hope of that. True, she no longer relived the night she’d received the visit from the police chief to tell her that her husband had been killed in the line of duty. At least, she didn’t relive it every single night. Maybe more like once a week now.

And she no longer had the nightly awakenings to cries of her forever unborn child. Only a couple of times a week did she cringe when someone invaded her personal space.

People did that all the time now, because her personal space had extended, in the past twenty-three months, to include whatever room she was in. She usually allowed people she knew into her personal space, but there were still those times when she could do nothing but withdraw from the world.

Since two attempts had been made on her own life after Travis was killed, she’d found herself suspecting practically everyone. She had known when she married Travis that he had one of the most dangerous jobs imaginable—not only was he a cop, but he was an undercover narcotics agent.

Here in Missouri, the Bible Belt, the heart of the nation, a war raged against illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamines. She had never dreamed the danger would extend to the cop’s family. But with Travis’s death, it most certainly had.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, exhaled, tempting sleep with as much entreaty as she could muster, willing her body to relax. The art of relaxing had become a lost skill for her.

Since arriving here in the middle of March, she’d assured herself daily that the only things she had to fear in this place were her memories. If she died, it would be a side effect of the grief that had imprisoned her since the day she lost Travis.

There’s nothing out there. It’s your imagination. Again.