COVER OF NIGHT - LINDA HOWARD
A Tsome point as a reader, no matter what genre you are into, once in a while you crave a very good suspense or thriller, and that is exactly what I got when I laid my eyes on ‘Cover of Night’. One important takeaway was that we never know what we are capable of until we are tested. Trail Stop, Idaho, is literally the end of the road. A remote community surrounded by majestic mountains and a raging river, the only way in or out of the town is over the bridge and down the twisting, turning, dangerous mountain road. There is no cellphone service and the only television comes from a satellite system. The closest large grocery store is an hour away.
The land is rugged, and the people are tough. It is here that widow Cate Nightingale has settled with her twin four-year-old boys. Nightingale Bed and Breakfast is the only place to stay in Trail Stop. Business isn’t booming, but it’s enough for her to get by. To supplement her income, Cate opens her dining room to offer breakfast to local residents. Her good cooking attracts a crowd for every breakfast, enabling her to keep up with the repairs on her old Victorian home. Calvin Harris is the local handyman, and Cate is very grateful that he’s around. She has certainly needed his services a lot over the past three years since she moved to Trail Stop and started her business. This quiet, lanky man with his shaggy hair and baggy coveralls speaks to her only when he has to, but he’s patient with her children and a wizard at fixing anything. Cate has created a stable life for herself and her boys. It’s not easy being a single mom who runs her own business, but she manages just fine. Her life changes one day when a guest climbs out his bedroom window, drives off in his car and mysteriously disappears. At first she is baffled, then worried that he may have had a car accident of some kind. She calls the authorities, but they can’t find either him or his vehicle. She has his credit card number, so he hasn’t skipped out on his bill. After a few days, the only thing she can do is pack up his few belongings and store them in the attic. Two strangers turn up a few days later, and Cate is suspicious of them.