Read the book: «Undercover Holiday Fiancée»

ONE

The crash of exploding glass echoed up through the empty halls of the Bobcaygeon Sports Center, shattering the early morning peace and drowning out the melody of Christmas carols. Moments earlier, Ontario Provincial Police Detective Chloe Brant had been running in place as a treadmill cycled endlessly beneath her. Now she heard shouting. She yanked the treadmill’s emergency cord and grabbed the handles for stability as the belt shuddered to a stop beneath her feet. Her steady green eyes looked through the interior window of the sports center’s second-floor exercise room down at the lobby below, just in time to see a skinny figure in a rubber elf mask knock over the Christmas tree with the wild swing of a baseball bat.

What’s happening, Lord? What do I do to help?

The large window that had encased the front desk had been bashed in and was now a cobweb of shards held together by nothing but safety-glass coating. The first elf was joined by a second, who was holding a knife and seemed equally intent on mindless destruction, stomping on tree ornaments as they rolled across the floor.

At five thirty in the morning, the center was so deserted that the front desk and the coffee counter hadn’t even been staffed when she’d headed up to the exercise room. Hopefully that just meant destruction and chaos—not actual casualties.

If gossip around her police division was true, local Trillium Community College—where Chloe herself had spent a year over a decade ago—had a major drug problem the Bobcaygeon police were completely failing to deal with. Accidental overdoses had spiked last spring. A baggie containing thousands of dollars’ worth of a new designer pill, nicknamed “payara,” had turned up in the sports center locker room. Now, vice units across the country were hearing about payara being trafficked, in small amounts, through their own communities’ criminal networks. Seemed whoever was creating it was testing Canada’s appetite for a new illegal way to get high.

Some said local staff sergeant, Frank Butler, was going to find himself facing a major internal investigation if he didn’t figure out where the drugs were coming from, and fast. Butler had been Chloe’s first training officer. He was in his late sixties and, while they’d never been close, she had attended his wife’s funeral two years earlier and now hated the thought of a dedicated officer’s reputation being destroyed so close to the end of his career. Even if he had made a mistake, he deserved an opportunity to get help and fix it. Not to mention that if he was embroiled in a scandal, it could tarnish her own career and sabotage the promotion to detective sergeant she’d been striving for. She had a week off for Christmas and a house less than an hour away. She’d emailed Butler, asking if there was anything she could do to help. He hadn’t answered.

Chloe was the kind of person who took action while praying. So, for the past three days, she’d been scouting the sports center, just exercising, observing and asking God for guidance—never expecting the first hint of trouble she’d spot would come in the form of masked elves brazenly destroying the place.

Gang violence, probably. Especially considering the drug connection. Most ordinary criminals weren’t that brazen.

She glanced back toward the exercise room. There were two other people in there and both seemed to be college students. The blond jock on the treadmill was wearing a jersey from nearby rival college: Haliburton. He’d introduced himself as Johnny when he’d first walked in and made a cocky attempt at impressing her with some tale of being a tech genius and entrepreneur before quickly moving on to flirting with the dark-haired young woman on the rowing machine. Now both of them were staring in her direction.

She yanked her badge out of her sweatshirt and held it up on its lanyard. “Stay there. Don’t move.”

Before they could answer, she slipped off the treadmill and crept along the window for a better view of what was happening below. The faint outline of her reflection mirrored back at her. Six feet tall and lithe, she might’ve been mistaken for some kind of athlete. But with her long, flaming red hair often scraped back into a bun, she knew the overall impression she usually gave was more of a librarian, especially since she’d reached her midthirties.

The scene shifted below her. She saw a third, bulky elf shove the elderly security guard up against a wall as the shape of a young woman cowered behind Nanny’s Coffee counter. There was a gun in the elf’s hand. Chloe turned back to the students.

“I’m Detective Chloe Brant, OPP.” Her voice rang with authority. “There’s a disturbance on the main floor. At least three armed intruders wearing elf masks. I’m going to check it out. You’re both going to stay here and lock the door.” She pointed to the young woman, making the snap judgment she’d be the more responsible of the two. “What’s your name?”

“Poppy.” Her dark eyes were filled with fear but her voice was strong. “Did you say elves?”

“Yes, elves.” If this was somebody’s idea of a sick holiday joke, Chloe wasn’t laughing. “Poppy, please call 9-1-1. Johnny, look for ways to barricade the door.”

But the young woman was staring at her. “I know you, right? You’re dating one of my teachers. I think I saw your picture at the college.”

“Focus, Poppy!” Chloe ignored the ridiculous question. She’d assumed Poppy would be the better choice. It never ceased to amaze her how people’s brains seized up in shock. Relationships might be top of the mind for these young people but they were the last thing on hers. “I need you to call 9-1-1. Hand me the phone when they answer.” She held out her hand and waited while Poppy dialed.

She took the phone, gave Dispatch her name, badge number, cell phone number and a concise description of the situation. Then she handed the phone back to Poppy. “Stay on the line with them and answer their questions. They’ll tell you what to do.”

“But my boyfriend’s on the Trillium hockey team,” Poppy said. “He’s at the rink setting up the Christmas toy mountain with the coach and Third Line.”

Chloe took a deep breath. Okay, so that potentially meant even more people in danger. She’d spotted the dark hair and rather hunky broad shoulders of the bearded college coach pass by with a handful of players yesterday, but he’d left before she’d made her way downstairs or gotten a good look at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they get out okay. What’s Third Line?”

“It’s the group of guys on a hockey team who hit the ice third,” Johnny said. “If they get to play at all, because they’re not as good as first-or second-line players. I play first line for Haliburton.” His tone implied he’d never be caught dead playing anything else. He stepped off the treadmill. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, you won’t,” she said. “Not unless you’re a cop or military. Are you?”

“No, but a friend of mine is.” His chin rose.

Right, and her sister was a journalist and her father was a con man.

“Stay here with Poppy,” she told him. “Lock the door behind me and stay away from the windows.”

She slipped out of the exercise room. The door clicked shut behind her. Her feet moved silently down the hallway, her fingers aching for her service weapon. But this was Canada and so, because she was off duty, her gun was in her car, safely unloaded and locked away.

She paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at the shards of red and gold glass spread across the floor below. She pulled out her phone, turned it on and made sure the ringer was on silent. It buzzed with a Missed Call notification. She glanced at it. Apparently she’d missed a call almost an hour ago. It was from a blocked number, but she was so sure she knew who it was from, his name might as well have filled the screen. Trent.

Detective Trent Henry of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was one of the nation’s finest undercover detectives. Strong and rugged, with the kind of heart-melting blue eyes that hinted at a familiarity with danger, they’d worked together three times so far. They always clicked so well, she’d expected they’d stay in touch. But each time he’d dropped out of her life without even saying goodbye.

Then, suddenly, he’d called her a handful of times in the past two weeks, with the same curt and blunt demand. “Call me. We should get coffee.” No, thanks. She didn’t take orders from men like Trent, no matter how rugged their jawlines or how stellar their reputations. Not that she didn’t wish Trent was with her now. When she’d met him, he’d been undercover with the province’s most notorious gang, the Wolfspiders. Nobody knew more about Canada’s drug and gang operations than Trent Henry.

She reached the bottom of the stairs. The hallway was empty. She crept over to the coffee counter and crouched down. A pair of huge and frightened brown eyes looked up at her. The girl was wearing a black shirt and an apron that advertised Nanny’s Diner and Coffee. Her face was vaguely familiar in a way Chloe couldn’t immediately place. Her name tag read Lucy.

Chloe raised her badge. “I’m Detective Chloe Brant and it’s going to be okay. Where are the elves?”

“The ice rink.” Lucy’s voice barely rose above a whisper. “They asked the security guard where it was. The guard escaped. But I stayed hidden.”

“Probably smart,” Chloe said. “How about the players and the coach?”

“They’re hiding outside the rink, including my brother.” Lucy held up her phone. It showed a string of messages from someone named Brandon. The contact picture was a slender young man with a nervous smile. “But the elves have their coach. They’re going to kill him.”

“Not if I can help it,” Chloe said. If the elves were hunting hockey players, she hoped Johnny had done what he was told and stayed in the exercise room. She could hear footsteps in the distance now. Sounded like one of the elves was on his way back. “I need you to run out of here as fast as you can and don’t look back.”

Lucy hesitated.

“Hey!” A voice filled the air to her right. Chloe turned. It was the hefty elf. A knife flashed in his hand.

“Run!” Chloe sprang to her feet. “Don’t stop until you’re safe!”

The elf charged. Lucy ran. Chloe threw herself between them. She dodged as the knife slashed through the air inches from her stomach. She grabbed his wrist to wrench the knife from his grasp, but his wet boots slipped on the tiled floor. He fell backward. Chloe landed on top of him. The knife flashed in front of her eyes. She leveled a blow to his jaw, snapping his head back against the floor. As she twisted the knife from his hand, she noticed his tattooed wrist read GGB. It was a gang sign for the Gulo Gulo Boys.

The Gulo wrenched himself from her grasp, leaped up and ran after Lucy.

Chloe sprinted after him, ready to tackle him if that’s what it took to help the young woman escape.

She heard a clatter and watched as his cell phone bounced across the floor behind him. Gotcha! She scooped up the phone, spun around and ran for the stairs. A roar of anger left his throat as he realized what she’d done. She almost smiled. A gang member was nothing without his phone. She sprinted up the stairs to the second floor, hearing his footsteps pound after her.

“Give me back my phone!” he bellowed, his voice echoing through the stairwell. “Or I’ll kill you!”

She lead him in the opposite direction of the exercise room, dodged behind a pillar and then turned sharply to head down a side hall toward the hockey rink. Had he seen where she’d gone? She didn’t know if he had another weapon on him and didn’t much want to find out. She ducked behind a Christmas tree and gasped in a breath, just long enough to look over the railing. The round foyer in front of the hockey rink lay beneath her, complete with a wooden platform stage and a giant mountain of stuffed animals towering almost all the way up to the second floor.

Four figures lay flat on their stomachs under the stage, their shadowy outlines barely visible through the slats below. But, even at a distance, she could recognize the Trillium College hockey jerseys. The two Gulos she’d seen earlier stood between them and freedom. One was swinging his bat at anything he could break. The other stood stock-still, his back to her and a gun in his hand.

Then he shifted and her gaze fell to the man kneeling on the ground in front of him.

It was the coach. The sweet-looking, bearded man was kneeling, his head bowed and hands outstretched, as he placed his life between the hidden students and the gang members. Something about his courage made it impossible for Chloe to look away. She could hear the other Gulo coming down the hallway toward her now. She had to run. She had to fight.

The gang member pressed the barrel of his gun between the coach’s eyes, execution style. The coach’s chin rose. Then his gaze turned toward her. Keen, piercing blue eyes met hers. Her heart leaped into her throat, stealing a breath from her parted lips.

It was Detective Trent Henry.

* * *

Trent’s heart sank as his eyes latched onto Chloe’s form crouched at the railing above. The feeling of dread in his gut was matched only by the frustration burning at the back of his throat. What was she doing here? First she ignored his calls and then she stumbled into his investigation? He’d called her to get some advice on his undercover assignment over a quick cup of coffee. Getting threatened by weapon-wielding Gulos had never been part of the plan.

Help me, God. This whole drug investigation has been a mess from the start and now it’s falling apart around my ears. Help me figure out how to get everyone out of here alive.

If Chloe got killed, or even hurt, he’d never forgive himself. The gun currently pointed between his eyes didn’t help matters much. He’d taken out quite a few Gulo operations over the years and the memories were especially vicious. He shuddered to think what it meant that they were staging something so blatant.

Seconds earlier he’d been praying for a diversion. Something simple and straightforward that would enable him to take out two gang members at once in a way that didn’t blow either his cover or risk the lives of his hockey players. Now, here the strongest, toughest and most infuriating cop he’d ever known had somehow materialized on the floor above him, making his job that much harder.

Her eyes were now locked on his face. She’d recognized him. He watched as shouts and footsteps suddenly sounded from above, giving Chloe barely moments to leap to her feet before a third Gulo pelted down the hall toward her. Chloe threw her shoulder into the Christmas tree and tossed it at the gang member like a football tackle. The Gulo grunted and fell under the force of pine needles and branches. Trent nearly whistled.

It was a gutsy move and impressive—not that he didn’t wish she’d run instead. But he could tell she’d also seen his players in their hiding place. Had he been right to tell them to hide instead of fight? Hard to know. The four young men weren’t the best athletes or experienced fighters. Hodge had gotten a text from his girlfriend, Poppy, saying there were heavily armed criminals swarming the building.

When Trent had heard the chaos and destruction moving through the halls toward them, he’d ordered his players to hide and not a single one had argued. Instead they’d all dived for the narrow crawl space below the platform. Later, he could worry about whether that meant anything to his case. He’d gotten used to thinking of the four of them as his suspects. So it was pretty ironic that a Gulo was now pointing a gun at his face and threatening to kill him if he didn’t spill the exact same information he’d spent the last three months completely failing to figure out for himself.

The Gulos wanted to know who was manufacturing the new designer drug and the location of their lab. So did Trent.

After three months of painstaking undercover work as the interim Trillium College hockey coach and sports education teacher, he was absolutely positive that the only people who could’ve possibly hidden that baggie stuffed with payara pills in the garbage can was one of the four third-line players now hiding under the platform behind him.

He had little doubt that the other three players might very well have coordinated their stories to protect whoever it was. Breaking through their wall of silence and finding out who was his core mission and would be the key to finding the manufacturer and unraveling the entire drug operation. He also knew, without a doubt, that none of the players—whatever their crimes—deserved the vicious evil the Gulos would mete out.

And as of right now, the only two things standing in the way of that was him and the magnificent, glorious, red-haired cop now fighting an armed criminal on the floor above. He watched, with his knees pressed into the floor and his hands raised, as Chloe spun toward the masked Gulo. The thug yanked a knife from his boot and lunged. Her leg shot out hard with a flying roundhouse to kick the weapon from his hand. It slid across the floor and wedged in the railing. The Gulo threw himself at her and then it was a battle of limbs as Chloe and the gang member struggled for dominance.

The masked man standing in front of Trent jabbed the barrel of his weapon into Trent’s forehead. “Who’s she?”

Now that was a complicated question and a pretty long story. Chloe was a stunning, difficult and complicated woman. The kind that would drive a man crazy if he let her, until he found himself lying awake at night, staring at the cracks in his hotel room ceiling, counting all the ways he wasn’t good enough for her.

The gun dug even deeper. “Is she with you?”

“She’s not with me,” Trent said. “I honestly don’t know what she’s doing here.”

Yes, he’d called her several times, including earlier that very morning. When he’d first taken this case, he hadn’t expected it to take more than a few weeks. He’d get the young men to confide in him, find out where the payara had come from, determine if it had a link to the local police division and then an official task force would be formed to take over and investigate further.

In fact, he was supposed to launch into prep for another much larger and longer investigation way up in the Arctic after Christmas. The substitute teacher cover story had seemed ideal. After all, he’d gotten violent gang members and criminals to spill their deepest secrets. How hard could gaining the trust of four college students be? But the real Trillium sports professor and hockey coach was supposed to return from paternity leave after Christmas. Trent’s excuse for being in Bobcaygeon and in these players’ lives was rapidly ending, and he was no closer to finding the source of the payara.

He’d needed help. He’d needed advice. School had never been his scene. But Chloe had lived in Bobcaygeon. She’d gone to Trillium College. She was book smart. Plus, she’d trained under the very same local staff sergeant who’d either bungled the case or was corrupt enough to be bribed. Trent wasn’t sure which it was, all he knew was that there was something off about Frank Butler. The staff sergeant had an agitation that rubbed him the wrong way. Not to mention that one of the third-line players was Butler’s grandson, Brandon. Chloe could help, if they all made it out of there alive.

He watched as Chloe tossed the Gulo off and rolled away, out of sight. Her attacker lunged after her. He stared at the empty space above, willing for some kind of sign that Chloe was okay. Sweat formed at his hairline. Lord God, please don’t let her get hurt! Help me get this gun out of my face so I can rescue her and the players!

A flash of brilliant red filled his view as he watched the Gulo grab Chloe and throw her against the railing. Her hair tumbled free from its bun in long loose waves that trailed down her back. Visceral pain pierced his chest as Chloe’s head snapped back. The Gulo lifted her by the throat and tried to force her backward over the railing. Every muscle in Trent’s limbs tensed to fight even as he felt the barrel of a gun holding him in place. If he got shot in the head, he was no use to her. But he couldn’t just kneel there and watch as she got hurt. He’d learned when he was thirteen what could happen if he let somebody down. The death of his only sister had been a very high price to pay.

That was it. He’d risk the bullet. He pushed to his feet.

“Get back down!” the Gulo in front of him ordered.

Trent stared into the bland, lifeless eyes behind the mask.

“You think I won’t kill you? You think you’re gonna save your own skin by not telling me where your players are? You know one of them is dealing payara?”

Well, Trent knew one of them had tossed the pills in the trash. But he wasn’t convinced that meant they were an actual drug dealer. Sure the third-line players each had their problems but none had struck him as gang potential. He’d know. He’d been fourteen and still angrily grieving the murder of his sister when the Wolfspiders had tried to tangle him into their web. And that was a secret about himself he’d keep to his grave.

“We’re here looking for payara!” The Gulo holding Trent hostage raised his voice. “Tell us where the lab is and who’s been making it. Or I’m gonna shoot your coach between the eyes.”

Trent gritted his teeth and prayed. Chloe’s feet kicked futilely in the air as her attacker lifted her higher over the railing. If only he’d solved this case earlier, none of this would’ve ever happened and Chloe wouldn’t be in this position.

God, please, don’t let Chloe die because of my failure.

Then a scream, bordering on a warrior yell, filled the air above him as Chloe flew backward over the railing.