Deadly Deals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Return to Sender

Mr. and Miss Anonymous

Up Close and Personal

Fool Me Once

Picture Perfect

About Face

The Future Scrolls

Kentucky Sunrise

Kentucky Heat

Kentucky Rich

Plain Jane

Charming Lily

What You Wish For

The Guest List

Listen to Your Heart

Celebration

Yesterday

Finders Keepers

Annie’s Rainbow

Sara’s Song

Vegas Sunrise

Vegas Heat

Vegas Rich

Whitefire

Wish List

Dear Emily

 

The Godmothers Series:

 

The Scoop

The Sisterhood Novels:

Deadly Deals

Vanishing Act

Razor Sharp

Under the Radar

Final Justice

Collateral Damage

Fast Track

Hokus Pokus

Hide and Seek

Free Fall

Sweet Revenge

Lethal Justice

The Jury

Vendetta

Payback

Weekend Warriors

Anthologies:

Snow Angels

Silver Bells

Comfort and Joy

Sugar and Spice

Let It Snow

A Gift of Joy

Five Golden Rings

Deck the Halls

Jingle All the Way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t looked like a cozy building, and it was…in the spring and summer. Ivy covered the brick walls, and flower beds abounded, all tended by the new manager of the Quinn law firm, a twelve-member, all-female firm, as everyone was quick to point out. In whispered tones, of course. Previously owned by Nikki Quinn, one of the infamous vigilantes.

In the fall and winter, the three-story brick building in Georgetown took on another appearance. Usually smoke could be seen wafting up through the chimney from the fireplace in the spacious lobby. A wreath of colorful leaves adorned the stark white door.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, the building took on another transformation. A fragrant evergreen wreath with a red satin bow almost as wide as the door arrived from a grateful client in Oregon. Inside, the fire blazed; the birch logs from another grateful client somewhere in the state of Washington had arrived like clockwork the day before Thanksgiving.

It was a low-key firm; all the lawyers were friends, each of them helping the other. There was no shortage of clients, but that hadn’t always been the case. At one point the firm had struggled to keep its head above water, but that had all changed when the vigilantes were captured, then escaped. The media had had a field day as they splashed the news that the Quinn law firm’s owner was one of the infamous women. Within twenty-four hours, there had been long lines of women, some men, too, queuing outside to be represented by the now prestigious-cum-outrageous, famous law firm.

Nancy Barnes, the firm’s office manager, was fairly new to the firm. She’d replaced her aunt Maddy, who had retired to stop and smell the roses a year after the vigilantes had gone on the run. She knew the firm inside and out, having worked there summers and holidays for as long as she could remember. She herself was a paralegal but had found out that management was more to her liking. She had a wonderful rapport with the lawyers and clients. At Christmastime alone she had to have a friend come by with a pickup truck to take all her presents home, gifts from the lawyers, gifts from all the grateful clients.

Nancy Barnes loved her job.

On the first day of October, Nancy was huffing and puffing as she struggled with an oversize pumpkin that she had somehow managed to get into the lobby after opening the door and turning off the alarm without dropping the enormous squash. She knew by the end of the week there would be about twenty more pumpkins around her scarecrow-and-hay arrangement, brought in by the lawyers themselves, as well as the paralegals and secretaries.

Cozy. A feel-good place to come to when in trouble.

Nancy looked up to see a young woman coming through the door. Her first thought was that she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Fragile. Scared. But there was a spark of something she couldn’t quite define. Yet.

Nancy Barnes was a chunky young woman who wore sensible shoes. She had curly hair,
unruly
curly hair, and a bridge of freckles that danced across her nose and rosy cheeks. She wore granny glasses and always had two or three pencils stuck behind her ears or in her hair. It was her smile that put new clients at ease, or maybe it was her first words of greeting; no one was ever quite sure.

“Good morning. What can I do to help you?â€

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most famous address in the world—

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

 

T
railing behind the Secret Service agent escorting her to President Connor’s private quarters in the East Wing, Lizzie tried her best not to gawk at the magnificent Christmas decorations. She was not, she had to remind herself, a starstruck tourist. She was there for lunch and so much more.

The president herself opened the door and literally dragged Lizzie inside with a whispered, “I’ll take it from here, Agent Goodwin.â€

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t was Thanksgiving eve, and the compound on Big Pine Mountain was quiet. The reason for the silence was the late hour and the fact that snow had been falling for the past nine hours. A giant white blanket covered the mountaintop, making it picture-postcard perfect.

Charles Martin prowled the confines of his command center, his thoughts all over the map as he stared down at the paperwork Maggie Spritzer had brought with her earlier in the day. With the investigation his own people had done, he felt like he had a solid basis to move forward when the guests left on Sunday and the Sisters got down to the mission at hand. He now walked out of the command center, slipped on a heavy mackinaw, and opened the front door. A blast of early-winter air rushed through the room. He smiled at the high drifts of snow on the porch. He stood under the overhang and fired up his pipe. The smoke from the cherry tobacco in his pipe and the heady scent from the evergreens were an intoxicating mixture. He loved it. Loved seeing the steady snowfall, knowing all his chicks inside were safe and sound. For now.

Tomorrow they would all sit down to a huge dinner he would begin preparing in just a few short hours. They would all pray and give thanks for so many things. He hoped his voice didn’t falter when he offered up his own thanks. As he puffed on his pipe he thought about the son he’d never gotten a chance to know. He knew that if he let the tears flow, they’d freeze on his lashes. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. It wasn’t that he was banishing all thoughts of Geoffrey, but that it was unbearable to think about his son, the traitor.

Charles listened to the silence around him. He wondered what it would be like to live in a world as silent as the one he was standing in. Never to hear the sounds of laughter, never to hear the wind rustling in the trees, never to hear the birds chirping early in the morning.
That
was an unbearable thought. He shifted his mental gears to the work at hand. Not that dinner was work. He could prepare a Thanksgiving feast with his eyes closed. What he couldn’t do with his eyes closed was figure out what was going on with Baron Bell. Or with his eyes open, for that matter.

He whirled around when he sensed a presence. “Myra! What are you doing up at this hour?â€

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W
hile their faces were rosy pink with the frigid temperatures, they were also glum. Except for Annie and Isabelle, who for some reason spent the whole holiday weekend smiling.

The snow had finally stopped late Saturday afternoon. Sunday was spent clearing it away with snowblowers. Now they had single-file paths that led to the different buildings. It had taken them hours, but they had managed to clear out a wide path to the cable car. All that remained to be done was to deice the gears, oil the machinery, and hope it didn’t start to snow again before the assembled guests were due to depart.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my whole life,â€

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
t was barely light out when Charles set the last breakfast dish on the sideboard. The girls lined up and filled their plates. Out of the corner of their eyes, they watched Charles don his stout boots and fur-lined parka.