Cold Sweat Read Online Free Page B

outerwear slid from the backrest, heaping on the seat, but he didn’t seem to care. “No commute, no bureaucrat, and no politics. Only fresh air, friendly folks, and two dedicated deputies.”
    “You look great, Richmond.” It appeared the decades had washed away his aristocratic attitude, leaving behind a quiet contentment. “Your promotion agrees with you.”
    “You’re not doing too bad yourself.” The ghost of a smile fleeted across his lips. “Colonel at thirty-eight. I’m impressed.”
    “Thirty-nine to be exact, but I’m not here on Army business.” Goldman’s phone call had interrupted a late night meeting. She hadn’t bothered changing into civilian clothes before jumping in the first plane out of Boston. “My daughter is missing, Richmond. I need your help to find her.”
    “Daughter?” He sat on the corner of an unoccupied desk near the coffee cart. “I’m listening.”
    “Her name is Hope Craig a.k.a. Quest.” Amelia retrieved her daughter’s biography from her purse—to save time she’d printed it from the team’s website—and handed it to him. It contained a close-up picture of Hope taken in August.
    “She’s as pretty as her mother.” For a moment, his gaze seemed to lose its focus. “Where’s her father?”
    “He was a U.S. Air Force pilot. We met in Europe after I graduated. He died that August in a training accident.” Her voice faltered. “He never knew about Hope.”
    “I see...” As he focused his attention on the sheet of paper, an invisible veil dropped over his head, blanking his expression. “Biathlon athlete...Trains at Snowy Tip...Seventeen...Lt. Norm H. Craig...” With a few random words, he’d summarized Hope’s life story. “When did she go missing?”
    “Hope went on a lone training run at dawn yesterday morning.” If only her disappearance had raised suspicion earlier on. “It was the last time she was seen.”
    “Your daughter disappeared more than twenty-four hours ago, and you just notified me?”
    Richmond didn’t move or raise his voice, but he might as well as yelled. The verbal blow struck her the same.
    “I didn’t learn about her disappearance until late last night. I flew...” Tears she refused to shed in front of him stung her eyes. Despite her military training, keeping her emotions at bay was becoming increasingly difficult. “Her coach got a message but it wasn’t from Hope.”
    “Hold on here.” Abandoning his stoic pose on the desk, he closed the distance between them and captured her right hand. “For your daughter’s sake, let’s just start at the beginning, okay? You said she was alone in the mountains?”
    He stroked the bare skin at the edge of her glove. In his touch, Amelia found the strength she’d sought all night.
    “Hope was born deaf. As a child, she was equipped with a Cochlear implant, but it’s not a perfect fit. Sometimes the white noise becomes too much to bear. She needs her daily dose of silence. Early every morning, Coach Goldman allows her to train solo without her transmitter.”
    That special treatment had been the main reason why Amelia had resisted Hope’s decision to train at Snowy Tip, but her daughter was as stubborn as her father. In the end, Amelia had yielded.
    Without releasing her hand, Richmond forced her to sit on a chair. “The transmitter is the external part that connects to the ear allowing her to hear, right?”
    Surprised by his knowledge of her daughter’s condition, Amelia responded with a short nod.
    “Can she hear at all on her own? Or would she have been oblivious to any threatening sounds?”
    “Oblivious, but she’s learned to rely on her other senses to compensate for the lack of hearing.”
    “I understand.” His gaze bore into her soul, unleashing memories too painful to revisit. “Please continue.”
    “Yesterday morning, Coach Goldman received a text message he believed to be from Hope. The message said she was taking the rest of the day off to deal with