Free Bonbons and Betrayal: Book 3 in The Chocolate Cafe Series by Valley Sams Page A

warped from years of furious storms that they were practically bent backwards, stripped of their bark like penitent monks.
     
    She slowed the bike down as she hit the gravel driveway and rolled to a stop beside the Toyota. Mac frowned as she pulled her helmet off her head.
     
    The front door of the house was open, yawning wide and dark like a mouth frozen in a scream. Alarm bells immediately went off in Mac’s head and her heart began to beat harder. Stay calm and don’t be silly, her rational voice scolded her. You’re reacting strongly because of the last month’s dramas . He’s a bit absent minded, he probably just left it open by accident.
     
    But he wasn’t absent minded. He was as nervous as she was and there was no way he would leave the door open. He had given her a guard dog for heaven’s sake.
     
    Mac walked to the open door, tightening her grip on the helmet nervously.
     
    “Louis?” she called out into the silent house. There was no radio on, no television, and no podcast blaring out from his stereo as usual. The blonde wood of the floors was smeared with rainwater. Her heartbeat increased. “Louis are you home?”
     
    Silence. Not a thump. Not a cough.
     
    Mac walked into the living room, which was suspended above the beach. The floor to ceiling windows that faced the water flooded the room with a grey light which seemed to be decreasing every second as the menacing black bank of clouds drew closer.
     
    Louis’ jacket hung on the back of a chair, long and limp, the hem pooling on the floor. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere without it, not in this weather.
     
    She walked further into the room toward the windows, scanning for any indication of where he might have gone. And then she stopped.
     
    The coffee table they had spent many a night resting their feet upon was overturned in the center of the room. The glass had smashed on impact and millions of pieces glimmered in the dying light like constellations.
     
    Mac stopped breathing. Her head felt as if it would pop right off her shoulders, as panic forced adrenaline through her system.
     
    “Louis!” she shouted, her voice tight with concern. “Louis where are…”
     
    His gun was there on the floor. She’d barely ever seen it outside of its holster, let alone abandoned in the middle of a sea of shattered glass. This wasn’t good. This was so far away from good it was ridiculous.
     
    Without thinking, she crunched across the glass and picked up the gun. That rational voice in her head was as silent as the house around her. There was most certainly something wrong and she had a feeling Louis’ gun might come in handy.
     
    The gun in her hand, she looked down at the beach from the wall of windows in front of her.
     
    Her heart, which she was certain had stopped, burst into life again. Her blood began thumping in her limbs like a frenetic drum beat.
     
    There was a second driveway on the beach that the former tenants had used to bring boats down to the water in the community’s heyday. What was happening there now, however, was far more sinister.
     
    A man, not much bigger than she, was stuffing what were unmistakably Louis’ stockinged feet into the back seat of a car. His teeth were gritted with the effort, his dirty white t-shirt stained with sweat. She could almost make out his grunts as he practically folded Louis into the subcompact. From the limpness of Louis’ limbs, he was obviously unconscious.
     
    Horrified, Mac slammed her hand against the glass and screamed at the man below to stop.
     
    Not the most sensible move. He looked up at her sharply, hunched like a gremlin against the increasing winds and rain. As soon as turned his face to her, Mac recognized him immediately.
     
    Randall Eisenhower, the troubled genius and so called innocent madman from the newspaper.
     
    For a moment they were frozen, staring like animals about to launch at each other’s throats. Then, as smoothly as if they had orchestrated it