Deadly Night, Silent Night Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Strong Women, Extraordinary Situations Series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Dear Reader

  More Books in the Series

  Excerpt from DEADLY HUNT

  About the Author

  DEADLY NIGHT, SILENT NIGHT

  Strong Women, Extraordinary Situations Book Eight

  Margaret Daley

  ***

  Deadly Night, Silent Night

  Copyright © 2016 by Margaret Daley

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  All texts contained within this document are a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons (living or dead), is entirely coincidental.

  ***

  Strong Women, Extraordinary Situations Series

  Deadly Hunt, Book 1

  Deadly Intent, Book 2

  Deadly Holiday, Book 3

  Deadly Countdown, Book 4

  Deadly Noel, Book 5

  Deadly Dose, Book 6

  Deadly Legacy, Book 7

  Deadly Night, Silent Night, Book 8

  Deadly Fires, Book 9

  Deadly Secrets, Book 10

  ***

  Chapter One

  As Rebecca Howard’s meeting with the key personnel at Outdoor Sports and Recreation came to an end, she finally relaxed back in her chair at the conference table. “This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the company and our Christmas holiday season. With the addition of the Port Bering’s store last month, we have eight in the state. Now it’s time to expand to the rest of the states. I’ll make the announcement at OSR’s grand celebration the first week in December.”

  She scanned each face of the five members of her executive committee, coming to rest on Clint. When she looked at her twin brother, she saw a younger version of her father and hoped she was fulfilling her dad’s dream for the business he’d started with one small store. She wished both of her parents were here to see how big his vision had become. Their deaths still brought sadness. Too many important people in her life had died.

  “Rebecca?”

  She blinked and focused on Clint. “Sorry. Thinking about that first store.” She’d been eleven when it had opened. Forcing a smile, she turned her attention to the group. “I’ll need your final reports on your part of the celebration on my desk by five o’clock tomorrow. I don’t want anything to go wrong.” She rose as her team left.

  Except for Clint. “When this is over, are you going to take that vacation you keep putting off?”

  “What if I don’t?” She gathered the pad she’d jotted down notes on and skirted her big oak desk to settle in the chair behind it.

  “I’ll sic Tory and Laura on you.”

  She pictured her best friends ganging up on her and laughed. “They haven’t been able to change me yet. Let’s face it. I love my work. This is where I belong.” And she really felt that except when she saw Tory, Clint’s wife, with their nine-month old baby. Family had always been important to Rebecca. She’d wanted children with her husband, but he’d died before she became pregnant. She’d replaced the emptiness she’d felt with work.

  “That’s what our dad would have said.”

  Her brother was right, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud. “Don’t you have to drive to Fairbanks today?”

  Clint made his way to the door. “Dismissing me won’t stop my worrying, Rebecca. I’m going to pester you like you did me when I came back to Alaska. I know what overload and burnout can do to a person.”

  When her twin disappeared, she stared at the door he’d shut, unable to shake the fact she’d almost lost her brother, too, not because he was a captive in a war zone but from a mad man who’d meant to kill Tory. Rebecca had a lot of acquaintances but few people she trusted—Clint and Tory were two of them.

  She shook her head. Why was she thinking about the past so much today?

  If she’d realized the anniversary would cause her to remember the past at odd times, she wouldn’t have come up with the celebration. She shoved the memories into a box and slammed the lid closed.

  Shifting toward her computer, she opened her e-mails and began working her way through them. But ten minutes later, her screen went blank. She restarted it. Nothing. Oh, great. Something was wrong with her desktop. This would be the second time in a week tech support would have to come fix it. This computer was only a year old, but maybe she needed a new one.

  She reached to call Neil Sanders, the head of the tech support, but before she could pick up the receiver, a rap on her door sounded, followed by her landline ringing as well as her cell phone. She started to answer the one on her desk when her administrative assistant barged into the office, her usual unruffled façade gone.

  Rebecca let the calls go to voicemail. “What’s wrong?”

  “The computers are down throughout the building,” Susan Maxwell said, planting herself in front of Rebecca’s desk.

  “In the store, too?”

  Her administrative assistant nodded. “Neil called and asked for you to come downstairs.”

  Used to things going wrong, Rebecca pushed to her feet and started for the elevator. Hopefully, it was something minor that could be repaired quickly. The doors swished open, and she stepped on. Alone, she punched the button for the first floor then leaned back against the wall. She thrived on challenges, but this was the third problem that had come out of left field within the past two weeks. First, someone set off a stink bomb in the main store, and the security camera didn’t catch any useful information. Then late yesterday, OSR in Fairbanks was robbed.

  Passing the second floor, she straightened, preparing to—the elevator stopped and the lights went off. For a few seconds, panic descended. The sense of feeling trapped threatened her composure. She struggled to drag air into her lungs while she fumbled for the cell phone in her jacket pocket.

  Its bright light illuminated the small area of the elevator, and she noticed Clint had called her about the time she’d been talking to Susan. Rebecca tapped the screen to return it. No connection. That was ridiculous. She always had cell reception in the store. Could that go down with the computers and power? It shouldn’t. This place had never been a dead zone. What was going on?

  When the emergency lights flickered on, she breathed a little easier that the backup generator had kicked in. She paced the elevator, trying to find a spot where she could use her cell. After covering the whole area, she decided there wasn’t one.

  First, she tried the elevator buttons, pushing all of them. Nothing. Then she searched for a way out. She couldn’t reach the hatch in the top of the elevator. This was when being five feet three inches was a disadvantage. That left the door.

  Sweat dampened her palms and forehead as her heart thumped against her rib cage. The sensations reminded her of the time she had been trapped in an abandoned refrigerator when playing hide and seek with her brother and friends. The more she yelled and used up her oxygen the harder it had been to breathe.

  Her pulse rate accelerated, and she stuffed her phone in her pocket while she tried to pry the doors apart. She couldn’t.

  She again punched the buttons for the f
our floors, but she didn’t go up or down. She hit the alarm bell. In the elevator next to her, someone screamed and struck the doors. Another person tried to quiet the woman, but she only grew louder.

  Rebecca paced, the screams from the elevator next to hers fueling her own panic.

  Stay calm. There are a lot of people in the building. They know the elevators are stalled because of the power outage. Help will arrive soon.

  * * *

  Detective Alex Kincaid exited his SUV and headed for Outdoor Sports and Recreation’s main store. A childhood friend, Clint Howard, came out of the double glass doors and met him in the parking lot.

  “Glad you could come.” Clint shook Alex’s hand. “I know you usually don’t handle stuff like this, but I don’t have a good feeling. We’ve had a couple of other incidents within the last two weeks involving this store and the one in Fairbanks. I hope this isn’t a pattern forming.”

  “What went wrong?”

  Clint told him about a robbery in Fairbanks and a stink bomb in their main store.

  The stink bomb could be a prank, but an armed robbery in Fairbanks definitely wasn’t. Alex hadn’t heard that at the station yet. “What’s happened today? Anything besides, the computers going down and the power off?”

  “I’ve directed our employees to facilitate taking care of our customers as much as possible and directing them to the exits. I understand something’s caused all the computers and anything they control to shut down, but that occurred several minutes before the power went out.”

  “So the power outage didn’t cause the computer system to go down.”

  “No. Neil thinks it could be a virus, but we won’t know until later.” As customers streamed out of the store, Clint rubbed his nape, watching the flood of people leaving. “I had our security guard check the breakers for the power, and they’re fine. Now they’re searching for what caused the outage. Our backup generator is powering some lights and other essential areas, one being the PA system. Initially, in the few seconds the power was out, confusion occurred. I was at the front and quickly made an announcement, explaining what happened, which seemed to calm the people in the store.”

  “If the breakers aren’t the cause, then something more serious is happening. The transformer?”

  “George Baker, head of security, is checking on it out back.”

  “What about the computers? That happened first. Are they working since the emergency power came on?” Alex held a door open, and Clint entered first.

  “No. We’re focusing on rescuing the people trapped in three of our four elevators. The emergency generator powers the one that’s still working. And if the computer problems had been caused by the power outage, part of that system would be back up as well.”

  “This, after a stink bomb set off recently. Definitely something more is going on here.” His jaw clenched, Alex scanned the dimly lit store. “Is Rebecca here?”

  “Her assistant told me she was on her way downstairs. I’ve tried to call her on my cell phone. It wouldn’t work. I’ve never had problems using it here in the store. Thankfully, our landlines are operational.”

  “So do you think Rebecca’s stuck in the elevator?” Clint had been with Alex when he found her in an old refrigerator during a game of hide and seek. She’d almost suffocated. If they had opened the door five minutes later, she would have been dead. From that day forward, he’d watched over her—from a distance. He’d been working himself up to ask her out when they were sophomores in high school, but before he did, she gave her heart to Cade Tucker who later married her after graduation. It had been for the best. Alex was dedicated to his job.

  “Probably, since she was coming down to see Neil. I have a couple of employees trying to keep the passengers calm until the fire department arrives. They should be here any minute.”

  “And you’re worried.” It wasn’t a question. Alex had known Clint since childhood, and when he was most concerned, he shut down emotionally and went on autopilot. They were similar in their reactions.

  “She wouldn’t ride the elevator for years. It’s only been the last few that she braved it. She figured if I could get over my fear to save Tory then she could overcome hers. You know how competitive she can be.”

  Alex chuckled. “Yes. She can outshoot me.”

  A security guard rushed up, breathing hard. “The transformer is down. Sparks are flying. The firefighters just arrived. They’re seeing to that.”

  The fire department would have been called to rescue whoever was in the elevators. At least they would be on the scene to deal with the transformer. “Make sure people stay away in case it explodes.” Alex turned to Clint. “I’m calling in additional help. We need to empty the building except for essential personnel. Something is going on here. I don’t think all this would happen by accident.”

  “George, we’ll take care of the elevators while the firefighters are busy with the transformer. Send as many of the emergency team that you can spare to find tools to help open the doors.” When the head of security left, Clint continued, “Rebecca formed a group of employees to respond to any kind of emergency, manmade or natural, to protect our customers and employees. George heads it as well as our security.”

  “I’m calling the station.” Alex took out his cell phone then remembered the reception was down.

  “You can use our landline in the manager’s office. That’s the nearest one.”

  As Alex followed Clint to an office at the front of the building, he tried his cell anyway, but no bars appeared. The uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach grew.

  * * *

  Someone shouted through the doors that help was on the way. Chewing on her nails, Rebecca prowled the car, which was growing smaller the longer she stayed trapped in it. She had to control her rising panic. She couldn’t function if she let it take over. Glancing at her watch, she calculated she’d been in the elevator twenty minutes. She checked her cell phone, but it was still useless. The urge to bang on the doors threatened her. All she would end up doing was hurting her hands and scaring the people in the other ones.

  This is not the refrigerator. I’m all right. God is with me.

  She concentrated on the sounds coming from the other side of the doors, but the staccato of her heartbeat thumped against her eardrums, drowning them out. When the elevator doors began to open slowly a few minutes later, she sagged against the wall, clasping her trembling hands and relishing the rush of fresh air into the car. She wouldn’t have suffocated, but she couldn’t shake her childhood memories of being confined in a space she could hardly move in, let alone breathe.

  Stuck between the second and first floor, she knelt by the three-foot gap. The first face she spied was Alex Kincaid. His smile chased away the fear she’d fought for the past twenty-five minutes. When his gray gaze connected with hers, all remnants of anxiety and panic fled.

  She gave him a grin. “It’s about time you came.”

  “Clint said you’d say something like that. He’s working on another elevator.”

  Alex. He’d been the one who opened the refrigerator door and rescued her from near death. Her smile faded.

  “Rebecca?”

  Alex’s deep voice whisked her back to the present, and she stared at his familiar face, comforted by it.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I got out.” She sat on the floor and wiggled forward until her legs dangled. “I hope you’re going to catch me.”

  “When have I let you down?” Alex took hold of her ankles.

  “How about that time I fell into the river and nearly froze to death?”

  “I threw you a rope.”

  Which she’d barely caught before the current dragged her away. “Okay. That was probably the best thing for you to do.” They had only been twelve and had gotten lost from the rest of the hikers, but Alex had kept his cool and gotten her out, soaked but alive. “That was the second time I owed you my life.”

 
She scooched forward, slipping out of the car and into Alex’s arms, reminding her of when he’d pulled her from the water and immediately slung his dry coat around her shoulders. She peered up into his glimmering eyes, the color of the river—like sunlight glinting off pewter—that day.

  They turned dark. The angular lines of his face set in a serious expression. “Are you really all right?”

  Still plastered against his tall, muscular frame, she felt the cage of his arms and realized she needed to step away. She glanced to the side; a few employees were watching. Putting some distance between them, she replied, “Yes. I’m fine. Not much gets me down.” Rebecca lifted her chin a notch, her look challenging him to disagree.

  Her brother helped an older woman out, the ashen cast to her skin and her trembling indicating she had been the person who’d lost control. Clint would know what to do.

  Behind her, Alex leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “It’s okay to admit you aren’t.”

  “I am.”

  He reached around and lifted her left hand. “You always bite your nails when you’re nervous and upset.”

  She tugged her arm away. Her father had thought that was a sign of weakness, and she’d tried to break the habit, but every once and a while it crept back. “Okay. I may have had a little problem, but as you can see, I’m fine now. That’s all that counts.”

  While the area around the elevators was clearing and Clint escorted the frightened lady toward the front of the store, Rebecca swung around, making sure no one was close to overhear her. “What happened? Do you know anything?”

  “Not much. The transformer’s down. That’s why the power went off. Nothing definite about why your computer system shut down. I’ve called in more uniforms and the K-9 unit to search the building. And now that the people are out of the elevators, we need to evacuate the store until my men have checked it. We’re the last to leave.” Alex started for the back door nearby.