The Kincaid Family Christmas Reunion is threatened by murder … ALL ROADS HOME On his way home to San Diego, P.I. Patrick Kincaid takes a detour through San Francisco to check on the wellbeing of a family friend who’s mysteriously been unreachable. What he doesn’t expect is to be shot at before he can find out why attorney Elle Santana won’t ask the police for help in finding a missing girl. Soon, he’s on the run from both good guys and bad as he and Elle race to find the witness and take down a sweatshop run by a corrupt businessman with a penchant for violence. LEAD TO DEAD ENDS Newly sworn FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid can’t remember the last time she spent the holidays with her whole family, but getting home by December 25th is proving to be a bit of a problem. A blizzard shut down the airports and she and her boyfriend Sean Rogan are stuck in a Denver hotel … with a dead body. And if that wasn’t all, back in San Diego Colonel Kincaid ends up in the hospital, where an even greater danger awaits … a man with a vendetta who will kill anyone who gets in his way. This Christmas, the Kincaid family needs nothing less than a miracle to survive. And time is running out.   Cold Snap is the seventh Lucy Kincaid Novel from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan. ALLISON BRENNAN is the New York Times  and  USA Today  bestselling author of twenty novels and many short stories. Her Lucy Kincaid books include Silenced , Stalked , and Stolen . A former consultant in the California State Legislature, she lives in Northern California with her husband Dan and their five children. CHAPTER 1       Patrick Kincaid had a problem: he couldn’t say no. Whatever was asked of him, he did it, usually without complaint. He was amicable that way, and his friends and family knew it. He didn’t mind helping out; if he could do something for someone, why not? He had a challenging job he liked, a family he loved, and a few good friends who had stuck around even during his two-year stint in the hospital sleeping off a coma. Life was too short to be stingy with it. But this time, as he circled the arcane San Francisco streets, which seemed to have no methodology, looking for a parking place in a dense fog, he wished he’d said no. He would have, if anyone else in the world had asked him to drive two hours out of his way (which took three because of the inclement weather) to hunt down a family friend he hadn’t seen since he graduated from high school, except at her father’s funeral. He’d have found an excuse or found a replacement. Except it was his mother who had called. And Patrick had never, not once, said no to his mom. His older brother Connor had told him—often—that he was Mom’s favorite because he was her yes-man. His job was to bring Gabrielle Santana home for Christmas. Gabrielle Santana—the girl who’d staged a sit-in sophomore year in high school to protest the expulsion of three students who she thought hadn’t had a fair hearing with the school board. The girl who’d been arrested at seventeen for organizing a rave in an abandoned warehouse in downtown San Diego. The girl who’d been suspended for skinny-dipping in the high school pool. Patrick was three years older than Gabrielle, but she’d done more her freshman year—both good and bad—than he had his entire four years of high school. It didn’t help that Patrick had dated Gabrielle’s older sister Veronica during their senior year and Gabrielle had often tagged along with Veronica to his baseball games and even on a couple of would-be dates. The problem was that Gabrielle had called her mother two days ago and said something had come up at work and she couldn’t come home for Christmas. Now, she wasn’t returning her mother’s phone calls, or those from anyone else in her family. They were worried, and because the Santanas were worried, Rosa Kincaid was worried. And if Rosa Kincaid was worried and called on one of her children for help, the worry fell onto them. In this case, Patrick. “You’re already in Sacramento,” his mother had said. “It’s not that far out of your way to help the Santanas.” She had to have sensed the hesitation in his tone because she gave him the hard sell—and the guilt. Irish Catholic guilt compounded by the fact that he had a Cuban mother. No one said no to Rosa Kincaid. After fifteen minutes of driving around in widening circles because there seemed to be no street parking in the vicinity, he finally squeezed the rental car into a spot four blocks from Gabrielle’s loft in a converted warehouse off Howard Street. At least he was driving in a flat area and not the insanely steep hills that made up so much of the city. Patrick pulled up the collar of his jacket against the cold, damp air as he walked briskly down Howard. Lighted garlands wrapped around light posts were the only visible reminder of the holidays. This was a business district, and the thick fog made visibility next to nothing. Some of the apartments above storefronts were more jovially de