The Smoky Mountain Mist by Paula Graves

leave any clues behind.
    Maybe he’d heard Seth’s voice earlier, outside the attic when he’d first responded to Rachel’s cries. That might have pushed him to make a hasty exit at the first opportunity, which had come when Seth had taken Rachel to the den to recover from the shock of what she’d seen.
    The intruder had moved fast, rolling up the drop cloth and the evidence it contained, and made a quick escape through the mudroom hatch. But in his haste, he hadn’t realized one corner of the drop cloth had snagged in the trapdoor seam.
    Had he taken the time to fold the drop cloth into a more manageable square before he left the attic? Possibly not. Which meant he’d have been moving at a clip, trying to get out of the house before he was discovered. Maybe he’d left other evidence behind besides the torn piece of plastic sheeting.
    The back door was locked when Seth tried the handle, but anyone with a key could have locked it behind him as he left. Using the hem of his borrowed T-shirt, Seth turned the dead bolt and opened the door to the backyard. Beyond the mudroom door, he found a flagstone patio, not the muddy ground as he’d hoped. Not that it would have mattered, he supposed. With the rain coming down in torrents, any footprints the intruder might have left would have been obliterated in seconds.
    He closed the door against the driving rain and turned, looking at the mudroom from a different angle. The room was essentially bare of furnishings save for a low, built-in bench with storage space beneath. There was nothing in any of the storage bins, suggesting the room was rarely used.
    He looked at the trapdoor in the mudroom ceiling. It was two floors down from the attic. What lay between the attic trap door and the one in the mudroom?
    Only one way to find out.
    He caught the latch and pulled the trapdoor open. A wooden ladder unfolded and dropped to the ground.
    Tightening his grip on the knife, he stepped onto the ladder and started to climb.

Chapter Eight
    Seth had been gone forever, hadn’t he? Rachel checked her watch and saw that only a few minutes had passed.
    Time crawls when you’re scared witless.
    She had settled on the cedar chest at the foot of her father’s bed, trying not to think about his final moments here, as he breathed his last, labored breaths and finally let go.
    Someone had changed the sheets and neatened the room after the coroner’s visit. She and Diane had both been far too shattered to have thought of such a thing, so it must have been Paul. He’d been a rock for them both, a steady hand here at home and at the trucking company, as well.
    He hadn’t always been a big fan of his mother’s second marriage—he’d worried that their relationship would make things awkward between him and her father at work, for one thing—but for the past few months, as her father fought the cancer that had ultimately taken him, Paul had put in a lot of long hours at work, helping take up the slack.
    She wasn’t sure what she’d have done without him. So why hadn’t she called him to help her this morning instead of depending on strangers? Why did she feel certain, even now, that a man as enigmatic and unpredictable as Seth Hammond was the best person to help her?
    A noise coming from the other side of the room froze her midthought. She picked up the gun from where she’d set it on the cedar chest beside her and turned toward the sound.
    There. It came again. It sounded like footsteps coming from just inside her father’s closet.
    Then came the rattle of the doorknob turning.
    Her chest tightening, Rachel lifted the small pistol, trying to remember what she knew about a good shooting stance. She hadn’t done enough shooting to internalize these rules, damn it! Why hadn’t she practiced more? What was the point of learning to shoot if you couldn’t remember the lessons when it counted?
    Fighter’s stance, her sluggish brain shouted. Weak foot forward, strong foot back and slightly out,