A Reason To Kill (Reason #2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  A Reason To Kill

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Look for other titles by CP Smith

  A Reason To Kill

  CP Smith

  Copyright

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or won it in an author/publisher contest, this book has been pirated. Please delete and support the author by purchasing the e-book.

  Disclaimer: This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events, or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  Copyright © 2014 by C.P. Smith

  First ebook edition: November 2014

  Information address: [email protected]

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-CP-Smith/739842239363610

  Acknowledgements

  With each book, the list grows. I’ve met some truly amazing people on this road to publishing and appreciate everyone who has reached out to say hello or lend a hand. As always, my family is my rock and gives me what I need to follow this dream, and my girls, my dream team, they keep me grounded and love me in spite of my insecurities. Over the course of the past year I’ve developed friendships with readers that I now call my friends and feel blessed to have met them. To Kelly Marshal-White, a woman who amazes me daily with her positive attitude in the face of adversity, thank you. You’ve been a constant source of inspiration and I couldn’t have finished this book without your daily affirmations. To Deb Hawblitzel Schultz who reached out to me in January and hasn’t stopped encouraging me to write since day one, you’re the best! This is why I do what I do. You ladies connected with my characters and made sure that a stay-at-home-mom knew that she should keep writing. Finally, to Kellyann Armstrong. Thank you for Wet Max, Naked Max, and laughter in the middle of the night. I’d cuddle you but you’d hit me, so the next best thing I can do is dedicate this book to you.

  Dedication

  For Kellyann Armstrong . . . Squirrel!

  Prologue

  Love, crystal and pure cannot be thwarted.

  Only stalled until its wings take flight and soar.

  “So, you’re finally gettin' married, Jack.”

  “Yep, Jenn’s the best fuckin’ thing that’s happened to me, Max. You know, if you’d stop fuckin’ around you could have this too.”

  “Right, I’ve got lumber yards waitin’ on fuckin’ trees and a town that depends on my filling those orders. I don’t have time for love, Jack.”

  “There aren’t many women out there can put up with men like us. You find one, whether you got time or not, don’t let her get away, Max. Trust me, I know.”

  “Spoken like a true Gunnison. You saw, you claimed, and you conquered.”

  “Fuck, no. I saw, I told her, and now I’m marryin’ her. The conquering was just the fun part.”

  “Right, take no prisoners and keep them smiling all the way to the altar,” Max chuckled.

  “Now you’re gettin’ it,” Jack laughed.

  “All right, Jack, give my love to Jenn and remember, if you don’t treat her right, I’ll come down from Alaska and steal her from you.”

  “You find the right woman, Max, you’ll know that’s impossible to do.”

  “What? Treat her wrong?”

  “No, Max, cause her a moment of pain.”

  One

  I’m going where?

  Bright blue velvety skies, dotted with billowing clouds of white, were outside my window, but I couldn’t look. I’m sure it was lovely, maybe even the bluest God had created, but I was too busy praying while holding on tightly to the seat rests of this incredibly small plane to look. This flying tin can was taking me and my team to northern Alaska to study Ursus Arctos, or in layman’s terms the grizzly bear. Trails End, Alaska, was our final destination, and I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of spending a few weeks in the wilds of Alaska.

  As a Zoologist, I, of course, studied grizzlies, but not up close and personal. That was Donald’s job. He was head of my department and a man I’d unwisely had a brief relationship with a few months back. Unfortunately, for me, he had an important meeting he said he couldn’t miss, so I had to come in his place. We only had a few weeks before the bears started to migrate further north for the winter, and the Seattle Institute of Zoology or SIOZ whom I worked for and who monitored the bears needed their data.

  See, the problem with being sent in his place is I’m a pencil pusher. I’d never head a research team in my life. Normally I would take their data once they’ve collected it and then graph it, write grant proposals or scientific papers outlining their findings. What I hadn't done was sleep in a tent, gather bear scat to determine diet, or pee in the woods. I was an analyzer, a keynote speaker for the institute not an expert in field study for pity’s sake. I’ve never camped in my life, let alone searched the wilds of Alaska for bears.

  And there was one very important reason I didn’t.

  Some would call me clumsy, but I preferred to think of myself as vertically challenged. Not to mention I hated anything creepy-crawly.

  “You can do this, Mia. You will not be beaten by bear poop or uneven terrain,” I mumbled. Sadly, even I didn’t believe me.

  What I wouldn’t give to be back in my loft that overlooked Puget Sound with its magnificent views and kick-ass fireplace (The sole reason I’d bought the loft). That fireplace, covered in river rock with its huge timber mantel reminded me of a log cabin my family had rented one summer. I wanted that loft the minute I walked in and remembered those two blissful weeks on Baker Lake with my family—and the ultimate golden boy in the cabin next door. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Josh something or other had been a teenage girl’s dream (Even if I never got the nerve to speak to him.) I never saw him again, though I have often wondered if he’d ruined me for all other men. We all know how first lust has a way of clouding a young girl’s memories and making skinny man-boys into never-to-be-forgotten perfect males. It might also explain why at the age of thirty I still hadn’t married.

  However, I was married to my work, which explained why I was currently heading towards the mountains.

  Trails End, Alaska, pretty much said it all in my book. It was the end of the road, the end of civilization, and more than likely the end of my career if I screwed this up. I was a city girl and me in the field leading a team—big disaster in the making. Hell, this was going to be the biggest disaster in the history of disasters if I didn’t get a handle on my fears of bugs and inability to stay vertical.

  I knew I had limits on what I could handle, and camping in the woods, surrounded by bugs, pushed me way beyond those limits. I’m not proud of the fact that bugs give me pause they just do. It’s not as if I was a Prima Donna by any stretch of the imagination. I’m just girlie and pretty much h
ate anything that isn’t cuddly, frilly or smells good.

  This self-awareness of my limitations is why I’d always been an analyzer and not a field researcher. I mean, why torture yourself when you can support the team with your sterling ability to write a powerful grant application or give well-received presentations to the board. Everyone knows it takes all the phases of research, from gathering data to writing grant proposals, to bring awareness to the dwindling grizzly population. Essentially for my part of the research team I’d become the one who kissed ass for money, while the others did the dirty work.

  My love for animals and most importantly bears, I’d inherited from my father. He’d grown up on a farm in Oregon surrounded by animals and made sure I had a variety growing up. We’d had chickens, goats, and a feisty ferret named Oscar, but never anything creepy like a snake. Even then, my father knew it had to be cute and somewhat cuddly. I’d asked for a pony once, like all little girls do, but my parents were well versed in my vertical challenges and had not only said no, but hell no!

  You see I’ve always been lousy at anything that required athletic ability. Even ballet had been a challenge. Unfortunately, all the kids knew this about me and never picked me for games that required walking. Therefore, I learned to play by myself. I’d been content playing with my dolls or reading a book about fairy princesses while the other kids climbed trees. However, for an outgoing child it was rather lonely. Then again, when you had as many animals as I did I guess I was never truly alone. My best friends had just been of the four-legged variety.

  My obsession with bears started about the age of ten when my father took me hiking one day near our home. A feat, now that I think about it, amazed me in its daring. Anyway, that’s when I’d seen my first adorable bear cub, and as far as my ten-year-old mind was concerned, there was nothing cuter, and I’d wanted to take it home instantly. My father explained the cub needed to stay with its mother, but I’d never forgotten that round bundle of black fur and my obsession with all things bears began.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried not to think about who was flying this death trap. When I opened my eyes, I caught Lucy Daniels my intern from the University of Washington who at twenty-four was fresh-faced with cornflower blonde hair, bright green eyes, and ready for anything. And Frank Jessup, a fellow Zoologist who at twenty-nine had dark brown hair, big blue eyes, a medium build but a killer smile, and both were grinning and laughing at me.

  “Do you hate to fly?” Lucy chuckled.

  “I hate to die,” I whined.

  “Don’t sweat it, Curly’s got this. That old man’s been flying for fifty years,” Lucy told me, but I still wasn’t convinced.

  Curly, our pilot, was older than time with glasses as thick as coke bottles. He was a round man with ruddy cheeks and surprisingly, no hair, as his name would lead you to believe. He’d met us in Fairbanks and loaded the whole team and our equipment for the one-hour plane ride to Trails End. And from the amount of time that had passed, slowly I might add, I’d say that hour was up.

  When I chanced a glance out the window, I saw huge mountains as far as the eye could see. Then finally, after an hour of sudden drops in altitude that left my stomach in my throat, Curly announced through the headphones “Hold on, we’re comin’ in for a landin.’”

  For some insane reason, I dared to look as we landed, but all I could see was water—lots of it.

  “Curly,” I shouted in panic, “I don’t see the runway.”

  “Water landin,’ the only way to get into Trails End by plane, didn’t ya know?”

  Are you kidding me?

  “Um, no, no, my travel agent failed to mention that bit of information,” I squeaked as the plane dropped in altitude and the massive body of water grew larger outside my window.

  I gripped the seat rests praying to God that if he got me safely on dry land I wouldn’t complain about another thing while I was in Alaska. He must have heard my prayers because a moment later the plane touched down gently onto the lake.

  A spray of the crystal water hit the window as I opened my eyes and looked out at the wilds of Trails End, Alaska. “Welcome to the final frontier, Mia Roberts,” I whispered. Relieved to be in one piece I couldn’t wait to kiss dry land, but first I needed to thank God for the safe landing. Therefore, I looked heavenward, mouthed, “Thank you,” and then winked. Ready or not, here I come Alaska!

  “Jesus, Buddy, what the fuck?” Max growled as he hoisted bags into the back of his truck looking inside them. The sound of an aircraft landing on Crystal Lake caught his attention so he looked up and watched Curly’s plane land expertly on the lake like he’d done a thousand times before. Buddy, his foreman at Hunter Logging, continued to hand him bags of groceries as he watched Curly taxi to the dock.

  “There was a sale,” Buddy mumbled as he handed more sacks to Max.

  “Nobody needs that much processed cheese,” Max replied as he watched the propeller stop.

  “Figured we could make toasted cheesers with it.”

  Max finished loading their supplies, then jumped out of the back of his truck as he and Buddy both watched the door to the plane fly open. When a woman with raven-colored hair fell out of the plane, and hugged the dock, he felt his lip twitch.

  “Lower forty-eight,” Max mumbled to Buddy, who nodded in agreement as they continued to watch.

  Curly had mentioned to Max he was bringing in the team from SIOZ so he was surprised when he saw a second woman come off the plane. Usually, that asshole Donald Zimmer flew up. He didn’t much care for Zimmer; he was an arrogant sonofabitch who talked down to the folks at Trails End. Though, Max figured anything would be an improvement over that bastard. The longer they watched the newcomers, the more he smiled. From that distance, he couldn’t tell much about the people on board, but one thing was clear, the raven-haired woman was as clumsy as a toddler taking her first step. Shaking his head, Max hoped like hell that she didn’t get lost in the mountains tracking bears. From what he could see, she wouldn’t last a day.

  Handing the last of my gear to Lucy, I crawled carefully into the bed of Curly’s truck so we could look around as we made our way to the local hotel for the night. As we pulled out, heading down a narrow road that ran through town, I took in my surroundings. The town consisted of mostly log cabin style buildings and homes. Some looked like they’d been there for a century or more and some looked newer, built as the town grew. Those on the narrow main road that ran through town were single story with wooden signs out front announcing their business. Others were two-story and painted in surprisingly vivid colors. It was a quaint town to be sure, in that Alaskan frontier kind of way, but I wondered who would want to live in such an out-of-the-way place year round. Although, I had to admit, the view around the town was spectacular. Nestled in between two great mountains with a crystal-clear lake on its borders, it looked like a picture postcard you’d send home to relatives stating, “We were here.” The pine trees stood tall, almost proud around the outskirts of town as they reached towards a sky so blue it burned my eyes with its clarity. And the scent of the air was so uncommonly clean, it almost choked me with its purity. I could definitely see the draw for an outsider to come visit; it really was perfect in that “Explore the vast frontier that is Alaska” kind of way. But year round?

  As we pulled past what appeared to be a grocery store, I noticed two men standing next to a beat up brown truck. One smiled as we passed by so I grinned back. He looked to be in his early thirties with red hair, a boyish kind of charm, but was big in stature, as if he worked out of doors. So, naturally, since he smiled at me, I lifted my hand to wave. That is until I looked at the man standing next to him.

  My breath caught when I saw light colored eyes framed by strong, manly brows that for some reason were scowling at me. The rest of his face, masculine and sexy with a beard that looked a week or two old, seemed to tighten when our eyes met. What on earth?

  He was big, well over six feet and maybe two hundred and thirty pounds of pure
brawn. He had dark brown slightly curly hair that he wore too long, but it suited him. He’d covered his massive body with a dark gray flannel shirt with a black thermal underneath. They were tucked into jeans so worn they were threadbare, yet looked like a million bucks on him. I’d bet any amount of money they were Wranglers or Levis. He was gorgeous, the personification of what every woman thought of when she pictured a rugged man from Alaska, and he didn’t seem the least bit happy to see my team.

  My heart pounded as I looked at that male perfection, wondering why he seemed angry with us. Then it hit me, so I turned around and leaned through the open window in the back of the truck and shouted, “Curly, has Donald insulted the locals in the past?”

  “Zimmer? Ain’t a man within fifty miles of here would lift a finger for that ass-wipe hippie. Pardon my French.”

  Sighing, I made a mental note to do what I could to present the team in a more favorable light. Looking back at the two men who were now climbing into their truck, I wondered what a man like that did for a living that would keep him in a town this far north. I figured he grew up here, probably married his high school sweetheart and then settled down to a life of clean air and views so perfect you’d think you were walking on the streets of heaven.

  It was just my luck that the first man who’d made my heart beat a little faster lived at the end of the world and seemed to hate the sight of me. “Maybe I should look up Josh—something or other,” I mumbled as I watched the beat up old truck pull out into the street.

  Max pulled out of Smith’s Mercantile behind Curly’s truck as Buddy whistled low, mumbling, “Never seen a scientist who looked like that before.”

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he watched her, but he agreed with Buddy, he’d never laid eyes on a scientist who had ‘’pain in the ass’’ more plainly written across her. She was too damn everything to be anything but a pain in the ass. With long black hair and crystal blue eyes that she’d hidden behind ridiculously large glasses—she had the figure of a stripper and the look of trouble.