Cindi Myers - Avalanche Of Trouble

A CHILD WITNESSES A MURDER

AND BECOMES A KILLER’S TARGET...

Murder doesn’t belong in the peaceful town of Eagle Mountain, Colorado. Yet Deputy Gage Walker has a brutal double murder on his hands and a missing deaf child. Gage’s only hope to find the little girl is her aunt, Maya Renfro. But nothing has prepared Gage for the intense chemistry between them...or just what happens when love gets mixed with murder.

Eagle Mountain Murder Mystery

CINDI MYERSis the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.

Also by Cindi Myers

Saved by the Sheriff

Murder in Black Canyon

Undercover Husband

Manhunt on Mystic Mesa

Soldier’s Promise

Missing in Blue Mesa

Stranded with the Suspect

Colorado Crime Scene

Lawman on the Hunt

Christmas Kidnapping

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Avalanche of Trouble

Cindi Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07916-7

AVALANCHE OF TROUBLE

© 2018 Cynthia Myers

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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For my nieces, Morgan and Kelli

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Gage Walker wouldn’t have said he was a superstitious man, but he didn’t believe in tempting fate. Don’t brag about your bank account being full or a big bill will surely show up in the mail that will tap you out. Don’t plan a fishing trip in April and leave the rain gear at home just because it was sunny when you left the house. Don’t complain about being bored at work or you’ll get a call that will have you working overtime for the next week.

When your work was as a sheriff’s deputy in a small, rural county, boring was good, or so he always reminded the rookies and reserve cops. Boring meant crime was down and people were happy. The adrenaline rush of a real crime might make your day go faster, but it also meant someone was hurt, or had lost something valuable to them, or, worst of all, someone was dead.

The man and the woman in this camp up near Dakota Ridge were definitely dead, each shot in the back of the head, execution-style. They were both in their early thirties and had probably been a nice-looking couple before someone had tied their hands behind their backs and sent a bullet through each of their brains. The driver’s license in the man’s wallet identified him as Greg Hood, from Denver.

Judging by the matching gold wedding bands they wore, Gage guessed the woman was Greg’s wife. The couple hadn’t been killed for money. The man’s wallet still had cash and credit cards in it, and in addition to the wedding rings, they both wore expensive-looking watches. They had been left lying on the forested floor between their tent and the cold remains of a campfire, eight miles from the nearest paved road, about a hundred yards from the late-model SUV registered in their name.

“Creepy.” Gage’s fellow deputy, Dwight Prentice, came to stand next to Gage, staring down at the bodies. Dwight looked around them, at the still forest, lodgepole pine and aspen so thick in places a man could scarcely walk between the trunks, the evergreen-scented air now tainted with the stench of death.

“Yeah, it’s creepy,” Gage said. “If someone had it in for these two, why not kill them in Denver?” To his way of thinking, murder belonged in the city, not in the peaceful mountains where he had been born and raised and made his home.

Though he had been a member of the Rayford County Sheriff’s Department for four years now, Gage hadn’t seen death like this before. People in Eagle Mountain—the county’s only town—died peacefully of old age, of diseases or a heart attack, or maybe after a fall while climbing or hiking in the surrounding mountains. A little over three years ago, a young lawyer in town had been murdered. People still talked about that case; it had been so unusual for the quiet community that primarily made its living from tourists.

This case was going to give everyone something more to talk about. “I’ll drive down in a few minutes and call this in,” Gage said. No company had thought it worthwhile to build cell towers on Dakota Ridge, so this corner of the sheriff’s department jurisdiction had no coverage, and the radio wasn’t much more reliable. Besides, talking about something like this over the radio pretty much guaranteed that half the town would know about it, since so many of them made a hobby out of listening to police scanners. They would be out here to sightsee before the crime scene techs had even finished pulling on their Tyvek suits.