Chapter 1

1

Lake Memphremagog, Vermont

Cameron and Michael walked along the shoreline of the property. The entire piece of land and the house were perfect. The pier behind them looked sturdy and in very good shape. The house was a good structure, facing the widest part of Lake Memphremagog and Province Island. The lake cut its way through the area from Newport, Vermont, to Magog, Quebec. The US—Canadian border formed the northern boundary of this piece of property.

Cam turned and looked up at the house again. It was a wooden structure but, like most buildings this far north, was built well to stand the spring rains and winter freeze. It was barely fifty years old.

“Well?” Cam asked softly.

“I like it, but it’s your decision. What do youthink?” Michael said. Her name was really Michelle but she preferred the pronunciation Michael. The only one who ever called her Michelle was her grandmother but with mémé’sold French-Canadian accent it almost sounded like Michael.

Cameron Andrews stood on the front lawn and looked out onto the lake. The beautiful, deep, dark blue water was mesmerizing as the early spring breezes pushed tiny ripples across it. Gentle water always calmed her, which was what she needed when she returned home from work.

This property was so out of the way that not many could simply drop-by and that was what she needed most. Cam had been an undercover agent for the United States government for over ten years. When she returned from one of her dangerous CIA or DEA assignments, she needed peace and tranquility, not a lot of people, noise, and activity.

“Have you made a decision?” Michael asked.

Cam turned around to look up at her five-foot-eleven ash-blond lover. “I think I like it. We should do a walk-through one more time to make sure.”

“I know you want my opinion, but this will be yourhouse. I already have a house in Montreal.” Michael wrapped her arms around her.

Cameron laughed. “You’d think that at forty I could make a decision, but this is the first home I’ve ever had to buy.”

“I thought you owned one in Massachusetts.”

“I do. I have the one my grandmother left me, but my aunt has the right to live there until she can’t anymore. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when that happens.”

“You’re a long way from having to make that decision. What do you want until then?”

“I love this lake and I think I want the house, but I need to see it all one more time to make sure.”

They both turned to look up at the wooden structure. The northern two-thirds of it was two-story with a slightly sloped roof, then the roof sloped further down to make the southern portion a tad more than a single level.

“It looks fine, I think.” There were four acres included with it on this side of the street. There was the house, a two-car garage, a tool or garden shed, and the pier that jutted out into the lake. The house had three bedrooms, two baths, an enormous fireplace, a full kitchen, and plenty of storage space. There was also another twelve acres of unexplored wooded land behind the house on the other side of the street.

“I know I don’t need something this big but it’s a good price and right where I want to be. I know the price seems kind of high, but all the furniture is included and it still looks good. I’ll only have to buy new mattresses.”

“Good. I don’t think you want to sleep on someone else’s bed.”

“No, it’s too much like a hotel or prison.”

Cam had spent ten months in a women’s prison in Maryland on her first case for the DEA. It had been a dangerous assignment. Two DEA agents had already been killed; one died instantly, the other after five years in an intensive-care medical facility.

Cam had taken on the case and decided the safest way to approach it was to actually commit a crime and be arrested for it. That way, there’d be arrest records and court documents to back it up. The cover had worked so well, that when she’d cleared the case, she persuaded her superiors in the DEA and CIA to let her keep the cover. She’d solved several more cases under the guise of being a convicted felon. The case had never been expunged so there were still references to her crime on the internet.

They each scanned the house again. On the two-story side there were dormer windows on the north and another wide gabled window upstairs and four six-over-one windows downstairs facing the lake. There was also a large, roofed screened-in porch that ran along the house on the lake side. Larger six-over-one windows framed the chimney on the south side

“Let’s walk through it again. I think I like it but let’s make sure,” Cam decided.