Finding North
Authors: Claudia Hall Christian
Tags: #romantic suspense, #denver, #strong female character, #military thriller, #alex the fey
Finding
North
Claudia Hall
Christian
Cook Street
Publishing
Denver, CO
By Claudia Hall
Christian
(
StoriesByClaudia.com
)
ALEX THE FEY SERIES
The Fey
Learning to
Stand
Who I Am
Lean on Me
In the Grey
Finding North
THE DENVER CEREAL
The Denver
Cereal
Celia’s Puppies
Cascade
Cimarron
Black Forest
Fairplay
Gold Hill
Silt
THE QUEEN OF COOL
(
theQueenofCool.com
)
The Queen of Cool
SETH AND AVA MYSTERIES
The Tax
Assassin
The Carving
Knife
Copyright © Claudia Hall
Christian
Licensed under the
Creative Commons License:
Attribution –
NonCommercial – Share Alike 3.0
Smashwords
Edition
ISBN-13 : 978-1-938057-20-5
(digital)
Library of Congress
:
2014902941
PUBLISHER’S
NOTE:
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
First edition © February,
2014
Cook Street
Publishing
PO Box 18217
Denver, CO
80218
For my North
Star.
Table of
Contents
“
All men should learn
before they die,
What they are running
from,
and to,
and why.”
James Thurber
“The Shore and the Sea,”
Further Fables
for Our Time
Prologue
Saturday, early
morning
December 25 — 3:05 a.m.
MDT
Cherry Hills,
Colorado
“
You sure we have to do
this?” she whispered.
Her voice conveyed more
begging than she wanted to admit. If he’d heard it, he made no
indication. He gave a curt nod. They had to do this. He reached up
and turned the bulb in the fixture by the door to the house. They
waited a moment for their eyes to adjust to the absolute
dark.
She looked down at the key
in her black-gloved hand and back at her identical twin brother.
They were wearing black, with black balaclavas over their faces.
For all of his confidence, his eyes echoed the pain that lingered
in her heart. He gave her another confident nod. She slipped the
stolen key into the lock.
A “snuffing” sound came
from the other side of the door. The dog could smell them through
the door.
She waited a moment before
turning the key. The lock clicked open. Her brother stepped forward
and knelt down. She opened the door, and an exuberant white German
Shepherd zipped from the house. Her brother grabbed the dog around
her neck before it made a sound. Together, they pushed and prodded
the dog into the house without being noticed by the security
detail.
They slipped in behind the
dog and closed the door. The lock automatically re-engaged with a
solid “click.” She punched in the alarm code before it beeped. She
glanced at her brother.
In the dark entryway, she
could see only the whites of his eyes. By the crinkles around his
eyes, he’d given her a sad smile. She gave him a matching smile.
Turning on their headlamps, their attention turned to their
surroundings.
There was no sound in the
home.
On their left, the living
room was set up for the Christmas holiday. The glint of shiny red
and gold wrapped packages flashed in the beams from their
headlamps. Her brother pointed up the short flight of stairs
through the living area. She shook her head.
It was better to take the
direct route. He nodded.
They slipped silently past
the open door of the sleeping Secret Service agent’s room. The
German Shepherd followed them down the hallway. Her mate, a second
white Shepherd, slept outside the room in which their intel said
their target could be found. As they approached, the dog got up to
greet them.
They stopped short. The
male dog looked at her and then at her brother. He stuck his nose
out to smell them. One minute edged into two minutes as the dog
seemed to be making up his mind. Impatient, the female dog knocked
into the male with her shoulder and cleared their path. The dogs
shuffled farther down the hallway.
Her brother placed his ear
against the door. He shook his head.
They were
asleep.
She sprayed lubricant into
the lock and around the hinges before moving aside for him to pick
the lock. He held up his right hand with three fingers on it.
Three, two, one — she pressed open the door.
They were greeted with the
warm silence brought by sleep and the dead of night.
She squinted at her
brother in a silent, “Do we have to?”
He gave her a firm nod.
She leaned forward, and they pressed their foreheads together. She
had always been the reluctant one. He had always been the confident
one. They were born two sides to one coin.
But when push came to
shove, she was the one who made everything happen.
She slipped into the room,
and he followed her. As they had as children, they lined up along
the bottom board of the bed. They pressed their shoulders back to
stand at attention.
For a moment, they watched
the man and woman sleep. Her brother’s fingers reached for hers.
The tips of her fingers grabbed onto the tips of his. Hidden by the
bed’s bottom board, the tips of their fingers held onto each other
for dear life. Her brother gave her a nod.
“
Sir,” she
said.
“
What the hell?” The man
sat up in bed.
The man couldn’t see them
in the dark room.
“
What is it?” his wife
said.
“
I just heard something,”
the man said. “Did you hear something?”
“
I heard you,” his wife
said. Her voice was mild, with a hint of laughter.
The man nodded.
“
Sir,” she said
again.
The man reached for his
bedside table.
“
This is a friendly chat,
sir,” her brother said. “If you pick up that handgun, things might
not stay that way.”
“
Max?” The wife sat up in
bed. “What the hell are you doing?”
The wife turned on her
bedside lamp. In the light, their fingertips let go of each other.
She and her brother continued to stand at attention. Their father
kept his hand on his handgun. Their mother scowled.
“
What is this?” their
mother asked.
“
You asked us to report to
you ‘the very moment’ we discovered why someone has been trying to
kill us,” she said. “We made that discovery.”
Too surprised to respond,
her father turned away from his handgun to look at her.
“
It is this,” she
said.
She took a short article
out of her pocket and held it to the bottom board of the bed. Her
brother pinned the article to the board with a stiletto
knife.