Prologue
Five years ago—Whistler, North Carolina
The hospital was on fire.
Screams of terror and panic filled the air. Firefighters and first responders rushed in to extinguish the blaze and assist the sick and helpless from the burning building to safety. They’d been working for half an hour now, ever since the alarm had sounded.
Nurse Peyton Weiss helped clear the last patient from the ER. “Come on, sweetie,” she said as she helped an elderly woman into a wheelchair. “We have to move.”
The little woman was crying and confused, gnarled hands shaking as she gripped the wheelchair, but Peyton murmured assurances to her as she steered the wheelchair out the emergency exit. The lawn was covered in patients, panicked family members, the hospital staff and now the press, and was virtually a minefield of terrified and injured people.
Heart hammering, she left the woman with a medic and scanned the chaos for her own mother. Margaret Weiss had been admitted with pneumonia a week ago.
The same day Barry Inman’s wife had died in the ER.
Fear squeezed at Peyton’s lungs as she raced across the grassy lawn, searching beds, wheelchairs and stretchers. Though the hospital had tried to evacuate in an orderly fashion by floors and departments, order had deteriorated as the blaze rapidly spread.
Thick plumes of smoke made her eyes water, or maybe it was tears. There were casualties. Two burn victims already.
Some woman was screaming hysterically that she couldn’t find her baby.
She stepped aside as a firefighter carried a man toward the triage area.
What if her mother hadn’t made it out alive? Smoke inhalation was dangerous, especially in a patient with pneumonia.
She passed a group of portable beds where the medics and doctors were assessing and treating patients. Commotion from across the lawn jolted her, and she spotted a doctor starting CPR on a patient. She broke into a run. The patient was her mother. The attending physician, Dr. Butler.
“Mama!” She took her mother’s hand. “Please, hang on.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Dr. Butler murmured as he continued compressions.
A sob welled in her throat. Seconds ticked by. She worked in the ER, dealt with life-and-death situations every day. But this patient was her own flesh and blood. The only family she had left. She couldn’t lose her.
Everything that had happened the past week crashed back. The day Inman’s wife died in the ER. Something had gone wrong. Peyton voiced her concerns to Dr. Butler. But he’d told her to keep quiet or her career would be in jeopardy.
She had medical bills to pay for her mother’s care. Still, it was wrong, and they’d argued. That night when she’d gotten home, she’d received a threatening phone call.
Keep your mouth shut or your mother will end up like Gloria Inman.
She shuddered at the memory. Not the doctor’s voice. But whose? She’d been angry. Scared. And terrified for her mother.
Her mother’s body jerked. She gasped, then a breath.
“It’s okay, Mama. You’re going to make it.” Then we’re moving away from Whistler.
She’d done what the doctor ordered. Told the police she didn’t know what had happened in the ER with Inman’s wife.
But every night the truth haunted her. She was covering a mistake, one she feared had caused a woman’s death.
And every day the lie she’d told hacked away at her conscience.
Chapter One
Five years later
Special Agent Liam Maverick braced his Glock at the ready as he crawled through the bushes toward the abandoned cabin where his prime suspect was holed up.
Five years ago, Barry Inman, husband of Gloria Inman who’d died in the ER at Whistler Hospital, had filed a lawsuit against the doctors claiming his wife died under suspicious circumstances. When the case had been thrown out of court, Inman threatened revenge.
The next day a horrific fire broke out at the hospital, destroyed countless lives and tore the town apart. Liam’s own father, sheriff at the time, lost his life trying to save others.
His father was a hero. But he was gone. As they’d stood over their father’s grave, he and his three brothers, Jacob, Fletch and Griff, vowed to find the culprit who’d started the blaze and make him pay.
The sense that he was finally going to accomplish that spurred his adrenaline, and he flattened his body until he was on his belly. Barbed wire tugged at his leather jacket as Liam inched beneath the fencing, but he used his gloved hand to push it back.
A few feet away, already perched between a cluster of trees on a hill, Fletch, who worked SAR on the Appalachian Trail under FEMA, aimed binoculars toward the house.
Recently, Fletch had found evidence in a cave where the man had been hiding, then began a full-fledged hunt for Inman in the mountains. Two days ago, he’d stumbled on footprints near an AT shelter and he’d tracked him to this isolated cabin. As they’d discussed, Fletch was not to try to take down the man himself. So, he’d called Liam and their brother Jacob, Whistler’s sheriff, and given them the GPS coordinates, and here they were.
Fletch pointed toward the rickety porch, then mouthed confirmation that Inman was in the house. Liam gestured for Fletch to hold back. He and Jacob were armed and would approach.
About seventy feet ahead of him, Jacob had slipped past the fence and gestured to move ahead. Liam lifted himself off the ground, then crouched low as he and Jacob wove between thick trees and bushes. The weathered little house sat on top of a ridge, offering a view of anyone who might approach from the driveway and graveled road.
Not wanting to alert Inman, he and Jacob had parked a mile down the road, then hiked through the woods. Dusk was setting, and a gusty breeze picked up, rattling tree branches and tossing debris across the pine needles and withered grass in the backyard. An old tire swing swayed back and forth as the wind battered it, and a stray cat clawed at a trash bag that had been dumped at the side of the house.
Liam and Jacob crept closer, then divided. Jacob headed around front while Liam checked the back door, then eased around to the side porch. A noise sounded just as he neared the broken window, and he paused and stayed behind the corner of the house.
Seconds ticked by. The wind whistled. The stray screeched and chased a chipmunk into the woods. The door to the side porch squeaked open.
Liam inched around the corner, aimed his gun and waited. A minute passed. Two. Then Inman poked his head out and looked around. The man looked a decade older. His once short hair was now long and shaggy. A foot-long raggedy beard hung down his chest to a point. And his clothes were ratty and dirty, the jacket he wore oversize and baggy on his bony frame.
He peered toward the right, then glanced to where Liam was hiding. His father’s lifeless face as he’d said goodbye to him before the funeral flashed behind Liam’s eyes.