Nora, her mother, turned on the bedside light, her eyes wide with fear.

Very few things put that look on her mother’s face.

Grace shook the sleep from her head. Her mom was dressed, but not in her usual state. It looked like she’d tossed on a shirt from her hamper and an old pair of jeans. “What happened?”

“It’s Erin.”

Grace froze, hanging on the next words that came from her mother’s lips.

“Her husband found her.”

Grace scrambled up in bed. Terror clenched her chest. “No. No. No.”

“We have to go,” her mother told her.

Grace flung back the covers and realized she was naked.

Only she didn’t sleep naked.

This was wrong. Something wasn’t right.

“Where are my clothes?”

“You don’t need them. C’mon.”

Not right.

Was she dreaming?

“Mom, I have to put something on.”

Nora was standing now, looking down on her. “Erin’s dead and he’s coming after you.”

Grace shot straight up in bed, her hands clutching the blanket. Short scattered breaths racked her body.

She was in her own bed, and light was peeking through the shades.

She closed her eyes and dropped her head back on the pillow. “Just a dream.” Some of it, anyway.

Grace had been at her parents’ house when they were woken in the middle of the night to hear that Erin was held inside her home by her husband. Grace and her parents had scrambled into clothes and rushed to the Sinclair ranch, where Erin lived in Parker’s guesthouse. By the time they arrived it was all over.

Erin had been loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital while everyone else stood outside huddled together in shock.

It could have been her.

Grace could have been the one in that ambulance or worse . . . dead on the floor with a bullet in her head.

Tossing back her blankets, Grace padded barefoot into her bathroom and turned on the light. A pale version of herself stared back.

“You’re smarter now, Gracie.”

Or was she?

CHAPTER SIX

Grace arrived to work on Monday forty-five minutes early. She had every intention of leaving at five sharp, if not earlier, so she could get over to Colin and Parker’s place now that they were home from Hawaii.

Parker was anxious to open the wedding gifts and wanted her there. Spending time with family was a lot more inviting than being alone in her condo.

She switched on the light in her tiny office, one she’d acquired less than a year before, when one of the senior staff vacated it and she was next up for a private space. It wasn’t big, and certainly not a corner office. But it was hers and she loved having a door she could actually shut.

This early in the morning, however, her door was wide open since she was the only one there.

After removing her sweater and tucking her purse into her desk drawer, Grace pushed aside Dameon’s file and attacked an earlier project that was going to take her out of the office at ten. At one there would be a group meeting she had to attend. Maybe in all of that she’d miss Dameon’s promised phone call.

Slowly, employees arrived, and the office outside her door hummed with activity.

Evan, another engineer in the office, poked his head around the corner with a sharp knock on the wall. “Hey, Grace?”

She looked up. “Yeah?”

“Mind going to the ten thirty without me? Richard piled a new project on my desk, and I need to do a site check.”

“Glad to know I’m not the only one,” she replied.

“Excuse me?” Evan stepped all the way in.

“Nothing. Fine. I’ll make notes and bring them back in, and we can go over everything later.”

Evan smiled. “I owe ya one.”

“I’m keeping track,” she yelled after him as he walked away.

By nine forty-five she was slipping down the hall and out of the office. The sky had turned gray and the temperature had dropped. Since her job often took her out of the office and onto jobsites, she had two pairs of shoes in her trunk: tennis shoes and a pair of rubber boots for sloppy weather. She had the ever-beautiful white hard hat and orange vest that were mandated whenever there was heavy equipment or construction in process.

After filling up her gas tank and stopping for a real cup of coffee instead of the brown liquid they passed off as coffee at the office, Grace made her way across town.

She arrived at the proposed site ten minutes early and parked her car on the shoulder of the busy road.

Runoff on Sierra Highway had washed out several roads and driveways the previous winter. Most of the landowners jumped on repairs as soon as the rain stopped.

Not the owner she was meeting with today.

Mr. Sokolov, the owner of the mobile home park, had packed dirt and gravel over the ingress and egress of the only road into the place. Between the residents’ complaints and the fire department flagging the property, Mr. Sokolov was being forced to pave the road to current city standards.

He wasn’t happy.

At the first meeting, he’d done a fair amount of bitching and moaning about cost.

While Grace understood financial limitations, it wasn’t her job to lower the cost to the landowner. It was hers to come up with an engineering plan to make the road safe for everyone involved.

Knowing she was visiting the site, she’d thought ahead and wore slacks to work. She removed her high heels and tucked her toes into her tennis shoes before exiting her car. As she pulled her arms through her sweater, she scolded herself for not putting a warmer coat in her car.

With a clipboard in one hand and site plans in another, Grace walked over the gravel path in question. No one was there to greet her.

She pulled out the plans she and Evan had worked on together and walked the site to see if they’d missed anything. Ten minutes later, Mr. Sokolov drove onto the property and parked in a red zone. He pushed out of his Mercedes wearing sunglasses and a frown.

From the passenger seat, another man, almost as round as the first, joined him.

Mr. Sokolov looked around before his eyes landed on Grace. By now she was walking toward him.

“You with the city?” he asked.

Grace moved in front of him and extended her hand. “We met last month, Mr. Sokolov. Grace Hudson.”

He looked at her and her hand like she was kidding. “Where’s Evan?”

Grace dropped her hand and tried to let his slight go.

It wasn’t easy.

“Evan couldn’t make today’s meeting.”

Mr. Sokolov finally removed his unneeded sunglasses and stared down at her. “I’ve been dealing with Evan.”

Grace looked to the man at Sokolov’s side briefly. “You’re dealing with the city engineers, of which I am one.”

Somewhere in his early fifties, he was as round as he was tall, which wasn’t more than five nine. Stocky as opposed to just overweight. His friend beside him wasn’t much different from his scowl to his girth.

Mr. Sokolov’s gaze dropped from Grace’s eyes to her chest. He lingered there long enough that Grace knew the gesture was meant to make her uncomfortable. In any other situation she would have called him on it. Instead she kept her eyes on his face and waited for him to look away.

“Do you have an office here where I can spread out the plans and show you what we’ve come up with?”