Against the Storm1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

area off the living room. She had a laptop set up there. Good to know she was computer literate.
    Maggie returned with the note, carrying it gingerly but not as carefully. “I handled it when I first got it. Fingerprints never occurred to me until today.” She walked to the breakfast counter and laid the note onthe gold-flecked white granite top. Trace moved it a little so he could read the words.
    Precious Maggie,
    Such a delight you are. Soon you will come to me. Soon you will understand we are meant to be together.
    There it was again, that odd, eerie tone. Trace couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it meant, but he didn’t like it. He placed the second note beside the first, compared the hand-printed letters. Bold. Well formed. No misspelled words.
    Maggie looked up at him. “Will you help me?”
    Give the case to Alex, a little voice said.
    A muscle tightened in Trace’s cheek. Alex Justice, with his good looks and dimples… Trace glanced down at Maggie and desire curled through him. Her eyes were on his, green and worried. A surge of protectiveness overrode his good sense.
    So she was a redhead. So what? So what if he already felt a strong attraction to her? It didn’t mean a thing. She could be in serious trouble and she needed his help.
    “You have any idea who might have written these?” he asked.
    Maggie shook her head. “I’ve tried to think. It doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”
    “Educated. Forceful. Older, maybe. This is not some bum off the street.”
    “No, I don’t think so, either.”
    “If I’m going to find this guy, you’re going to have to help me. I’ll need to know things about you. Things about your past, about your work. Some of it fairly personal. If you’re willing to tell me what I need to know, I’ll help you.”
    He watched the uncertainty move across her face. Unlike his ex-wife, talking about herself didn’t seem to be high on Maggie’s agenda.
    “I’ll tell you as much as I can,” she said, which wasn’t the answer he wanted. He guessed for now it would have to do.
    “All right, Maggie O’Connell. If we’re going to get this done, we might as well get to it.”

Three
    “B efore we get started,” Trace said, “I need to go out to my car. I’ll be right back.”
    Maggie walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa in front of the empty brick hearth, waiting while he disappeared outside, then returned carrying a leather briefcase. He sat down in the floral-print chair at the end of the sofa, took off his cowboy hat and rested it on the padded arm. He was dressed in sharply creased jeans, a short-sleeved white Western shirt with pearl snaps, and a pair of freshly polished, plain brown cowboy boots.
    His hair was a dark mink-brown, but in the sunlight streaming through the window, little streaks of gold wound through the ends. The man was broad-shouldered, lean and fit, but she had already discovered that during his run-in with Bobby Jordane in the Texas Café.
    She had noticed the gold in Trace Rawlins’s brown eyes, his straight nose and white teeth. Now she noticed the sexy, sensual curve of his mouth, and found herself staring more than once. He was a good-looking man.But that and the fact he knew how to use his fists were all she really knew about him.
    After the way he had bullied her in the café, she wasn’t even sure she liked him.
    The brass latch on his briefcase clicked open and Trace took out a state-of-the-art recorder, a Montblanc pen and a yellow legal pad.
    “Let’s start with the present and work backward,” he said, turning on the recorder. “You’re a photographer. Is that a hobby or what you do for a living?”
    She smiled. “I’m lucky. I’m not rich, but I make a very good living doing the work I love.”
    Trace glanced at the barren white walls of the town house.
    “My pictures are all still in boxes,” Maggie explained in answer to his silent question. “I’m working on a photo project that’s been keeping me