Prologue
Lynn Rivers was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, and he’d loved her since the day he first laid eyes on her. She was maybe five years old then. He was older. Maybe he didn’t even know it at the time, but later, when he thought back, he did know it was love at first sight. She never knew.
Because she left before he could tell her.
So many times he’d tried to tell her, tried to show the depth of his feelings for her, tried to let her know just how perfect they were for each other.
But he always fell short. Always failed.
Until she’d chosen someone else and his world, no, his very soul, shattered. The pieces of that devastation still lay somewhere deep in the darkness of his mind, in ruin, discarded but not forgotten. His soul would never be whole again. Unless he could make her his.
She was misled in choosing another. Led down a path of debauchery and darkness by her best friend. It was a choice made for her. Not by her. He just had to make her see that and all would be well again.
He had to tell himself that to mend the shattered pieces of his heart. Had to believe it. Could believe it, because it was true.
So, he showed her. But she didn’t see. So, he took everyone she loved away from her. And still, she didn’t see.
Then she left him. Disappeared off the face of the earth for almost two decades. Two decades of pain and anguish. Of losing himself in helping others. In yearning to see her face again.
Until one sleepless night he did. There she was, on TV, hailed as a savior of children just like he was too. They might’ve been apart, but their hearts and their souls were together all this time, united in the quest to make the world a better place.
Winter was coming to town. Just like it had back then, in the year he lost her.
But this winter would bring her back to him.
And he would not make the mistake of letting her go again.
Chapter 1
Lynn
Lynn had spent the last three weeks prepping for the return to her hometown. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. But now that she was almost at her destination, she was holding the steering wheel so hard her hands were cramping up painfully and her vision blurred. Unless she focused very hard on the road and her driving. Which now that she was only ten miles out from her hometown of Green Haven in Upstate New York was nearly impossible to do.
Good thing the winding blacktop road, bordered by nearly leafless trees amid tall, lush green pine trees, was empty, else she might cause an accident. Or simply veer off into the trees. That didn’t seem as bad an idea as it should have.
This was the same forest where her best friend Alicia Simpson’s body had been found on a cold, frost-laden dawn morning twenty years ago.
Now FBI Special Agent Lynn Rivers was back to find out who had killed her.
She would solve the case. No matter what. Even if it killed her too.
Those kinds of dramatic thoughts kept intruding as she drove, making her eyesight blurrier, her palms sweatier and her heart race as though she’d just run ten miles with no breather.
She’d left her hometown not long after Alicia’s death and hadn’t been back since. Her best friend’s death wasn’t the only reason for this. But that other reason was even harder to remember. So she turned the radio on full blast, rolled down the window and sang along to the upbeat song even though she only knew about one-fifth of the words.
Anything to keep her mind off her destination.
