Chapter One

      Sleet rattled against the windshield, a staccato counterpoint to the rhythmic swish-swish of the windshield wipers. Outside, night had fallen in inky finality, as if it planned to stay awhile, the Jeep’s headlights the only illumination as far as the eye could see.

      Nicolette Jamison forced herself out of a weary slouch behind the steering wheel and concentrated on the curving mountain road revealed in her headlights, well aware of the treachery that lay ahead for a careless driver. The switchbacks and drop-offs in the Blue Ridge Mountains could be deadly if you weren’t paying attention. Not to mention the occasional reckless deer or coyote—

      “Son of a—!”

      The man loomed in the Jeep’s headlights as suddenly as if the swirling mist had conjured him up, a tall, lean phantom of a man who turned slowly to face the headlights as she hit the brakes and prayed she wouldn’t go into a skid this dangerously close to a steep drop-off.

      The Jeep’s wheels grabbed the blacktop and hung on, the vehicle shimmying to a stop just a yard away from the apparition gazing back at her through the windshield. For a second, she had a strange sense of recognition, as if she knew him, though she was pretty sure she didn’t.

      Then his eyes fluttered closed and he dropped out of sight.

      Nicki’s heart stuttered like a snare drum against her rib cage as she stared at the misty void where, seconds earlier, she’d seen the staring man.

      Ghost, her inner twelve-year-old intoned, sending her heart rate soaring steeply for a few seconds before her grown-up side took charge. She checked the rearview mirror for coming traffic, saw only the faint red glow of her own taillights, and put the car in Reverse, backing up carefully until she could see what the front of the Jeep had concealed—a man lying in a crumpled heap in the center of the narrow two-lane road.

      She pulled the Jeep to the shoulder on the mountain side of the road and parked, engaging her hazard lights and trying to calm her rattled nerves. The man could be hurt.

      Or it could be a trick. Maybe she should call the sheriff’s department and let them handle things.

      Except...

      Buck up, Nicki. This is the life you chose.

      Her weapons of choice these days were pepper spray and sheer nerve, and so far, she’d survived on their one-two punch. But something about the man lying crumpled on the road in front of her made her nerve waver. There was still something eerily familiar about him, a memory tugging at the back of her mind, trying to make itself known.

      Holding