Книга - Cold Ridge

Cold Ridge
Carla Neggers


Carine Winters accepts the job of photographing Sterling Rancourt's historic Boston home knowing she's taking a risk–she could run into Tyler North, the pararescuer who once saved Rancourt's life and the man who all but left Carine at the altar a year ago. Then Carine finds a body in Rancourt's house–and the prime suspect in the murder is Tyler North's best friend. Tyler is returning from a rescue mission on dangerous Cold Ridge in northern New Hampshire when he hears about the murder. Tyler goes to see his friend Manny, expecting him to ask for help.Instead, Manny urges Tyler to protect Carine, to take her back to Cold Ridge, away from the temptation to meddle in a murder investigation. What Manny knows is that Carine's at the center of a deadly game. And the only person she can trust is the person she vowed never to trust again: Tyler North.But they're running out of time–because a killer has followed them to Cold Ridge…a killer who has put a murderous plan in motion, with stakes higher than anyone can imagine.









Praise for the novels of

CARLA NEGGERS


“Neggers’s characteristically brisk pacing and colorful characterizations sweep the reader toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying denouement.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Cabin

“Tension-filled story line that grips the audience from start to finish.”

—Midwest Book Review on The Waterfall

“Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre.”

—Debbie Macomber

“Neggers delivers a colorful, well-spun story that shines with sincere emotion.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House

“A well-defined, well-told story combines with well-written characters to make this an exciting read. Readers will enjoy it from beginning to end.”

—Romantic Times on The Waterfall

“Gathers steam as its tantalizing mysteries explode into a thrilling climax.”

—Publishers Weekly on Kiss the Moon




CARLA NEGGERS

COLD RIDGE










ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


A very special thank-you to Merline Lovelace, a retired air force colonel, a terrific writer and friend, and to Monty Fleck, an air force pararescueman (PJ), for answering my many questions about the air force and pararescue. I’m also grateful to Monty, R. B. Gustavson, Patty Otto and Dr. Carla Patton for sharing their medical expertise with me, and to Lynn Camp for her insight into nature photography. Thanks also to Lieutenant Kevin Burns, Nancy Geary, Robyn and Jim Carr, my brother Jeffrey Neggers—and to my teenage son, Zack Jewell, for his technical know-how.

Finally, I’d like to thank the incredible team at MIRA Books—Amy Moore-Benson, Dianne Moggy, Tania Charzewski and all the rest of the “gang”—as well as my tireless agent, Meg Ruley, and my talented Webmaster, Sally Shoeneweiss, for all your hard work on my behalf.

Enjoy!

Carla Neggers

P.O. Box 826

Quechee, Vermont 05059


To Fran Garfunkel




Contents


Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five




Prologue


Carine Winter loaded her day pack with hiking essentials and her new digital camera and headed into the woods, a rolling tract of land northeast of town that had once been dairy farms. She didn’t go up the ridge. It was a bright, clear November day in the valley with little wind and highs in the fifties, but on Cold Ridge, the temperature had dipped below freezing, wind gusts were up to fifty miles an hour and its exposed, knife-edged granite backbone was already covered in snow and ice.

Her parents had hiked Cold Ridge in November and died up there when she was three. Thirty years ago that week, but Carine still remembered.

Gus, her uncle, had been a member of the search party that found his older brother and sister-in-law. He was just twenty himself, not a year home from Vietnam, but he’d taken on the responsibility of raising Carine and her older brother and sister. Antonia was just five at the time, Nate seven.

Yes, Carine thought as she climbed over a stone wall, she remembered so much of those terrible days, although she had been too young to really understand what had happened. Gus had taken her and her brother and sister up the ridge the spring after the tragedy. Cold Ridge loomed over their northern New Hampshire valley and their small hometown of the same name. Gus said they couldn’t be afraid of it. His brother had been a firefighter, his sister-in-law a biology teacher, both avid hikers. They weren’t reckless or inexperienced. People in the valley still talked about their deaths. Never mind that weather reports were now more accurate, hiking clothes and equipment more high-tech—if Cold Ridge could kill Harry and Jill Winter, it could kill anyone.

Carine waited until she was deep into the woods before she took out her digital camera. She wasn’t yet sure she liked it. But she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on any serious photography today. Her mind kept drifting back to fleeting memories, half-formed images of her parents, anything she could grasp.

Gus, who’d become one of the most respected outfitters and guides in the White Mountains, would object to her hiking alone. It was the one risk she allowed herself to take, the one safety rule she allowed herself to break.

She’d climbed all forty-eight peaks in the White Mountains over four thousand feet. Seven were over five thousand feet: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Lafayette and Lincoln. At 6288 feet, Mt. Washington was the highest, and the most famous, notorious for its extreme conditions, some of the worst in the world. At any time of the year, hikers could find themselves facing hurricane-force winds on its bald granite summit—Carine had herself. Because of the conditions the treeline was lower in the White Mountains than out west, generally at around 4500 feet.

It was said the Abenakis considered the tall peaks sacred and never climbed them. Carine didn’t know if that was true, but she could believe it.

Most of the main Cold Ridge trail was above four thousand feet, exposing hikers to above-treeline conditions for a longer period than if they just went up and down a single peak.

But today, Carine was content with her mixed hardwood forest of former farmland. Gus had warned her to stay away from Bobby Poulet, a survivalist who had a homestead on a few acres on the northeast edge of the woods. He was a legendary crank who’d threatened to shoot anyone who stepped foot on his property.

She took pictures of rocks and burgundy-colored oak leaves, water trickling over rocks in a narrow stream, a hemlock, a fallen, rotting elm and an abandoned hunting shack with a crooked metal chimney. The land was owned by a lumber company that, fortunately, had a laissez-faire attitude toward hikers.

She almost missed the owl.

It was a huge barred owl, as still as a stone sculpture, its neutral coloring blending in with the mostly gray November landscape as it perched on a branch high in a naked beech tree.

Before Carine could raise her camera, the owl swooped off its branch and flapped up over the low ridge above her, out of sight.

She sighed. She’d won awards for her photography of raptors—she’d have loved to have had a good shot of the owl. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure her digital camera was up to the task.

A loud boom shattered the silence of the isolated ravine.

Carine dropped flat to the ground, facedown, before she could absorb what the sound was.

A gunshot.

Her camera had flown out of her hand and landed in the dried leaves two feet above her outstretched arm. Her day pack ground into her back. And her heart was pounding, her throat tight.

Damn, she thought. How close was that?

It had to be hunters. Not responsible hunters. Insane hunters—yahoos who didn’t know what they were doing. Shooting that close to her. What were they thinking? Didn’t they see her? She’d slipped a bright-orange vest over her fleece jacket. She knew it was deer-hunting season, but this was the first time a hunter had fired anywhere near her.

“Hey!” She lifted her head to yell but otherwise remained prone on the damp ground, in the decaying fallen leaves. “Knock it off! There’s someone up here!”

As if in answer, three quick, earsplitting shots cracked over her head, whirring, almost whistling. One hit the oak tree a few yards to her right.

Were these guys total idiots?

She should have hiked in the White Mountain National Forest or one of the state parks where hunting was prohibited.

Just two yards to her left was a six-foot freestanding boulder. If these guys weren’t going to stop shooting, she needed to take cover. Staying low, she picked up her camera then scrambled behind the boulder, ducking down, her back against the jagged granite. The ground was wetter here, and her knees and seat were already damp. Cold, wet conditions killed. More hikers in the White Mountains died of hypothermia than any other cause. It was what had killed her parents thirty years ago. They were caught in unexpected freezing rain and poor visibility. They fell. Injured, unable to move, unable to stay warm—they didn’t stand a chance.

Carine reminded herself she had a change of clothes in her pack. Food. Water. A first-aid kit. A jackknife, flashlight, map, compass, waterproof matches. Her clothes were made of a water-wicking material that would help insulate her even when wet.

Her boulder would protect her from gunshots.

The woods settled into silence. Maybe the shooters had realized their mistake. For all she knew, they—or he, since there might only be one—were on their way up her side of the ravine to apologize and make sure she was all right. More likely, they were clearing out and hoping she hadn’t seen them.

Three more shots in rapid succession ricocheted off her boulder, ripping off chunks and shards of granite. Carine screamed, startled, frustrated, angry. And scared now.

A rock shard from her boulder struck her in the forehead, and her mouth snapped shut.

Good God, were they aiming at her?

Were they trying to kill her?

She curled up in a ball, knees tucked, arms wrapped around her ankles. Blood dripped from her forehead onto her wrist. She felt no pain from her injury, but her heart raced and her ears hurt from the blasts. She couldn’t think.

Once again, silence followed the rapid burst of shots.

Were they reloading? Coming after her? What?

She tried to control her breathing, hoping the shooters wouldn’t hear her. But what was the point? They had to know now, after she’d screamed, that she was behind the boulder.

They’d known it before they’d shot at it.

She couldn’t stay where she was.

The low ridge crested fifteen feet above her. If she could get up the hill, she could slip down the other side and hide among the trees and boulders, make her way back to her car, call the police.

If the shooters tried to follow her, she’d at least see them up on the ridge.

See them and do what?

She pushed back the thought. She’d figure that out later. Should she stand up and run? Crouch? Or should she crawl? Scoot up the hill on her stomach? No scooting. She’d be like a giant fluorescent worm in her orange vest. Take it off? No—no time.

She’d take her day pack. It might stop or impede a bullet.

Or should she stay put? Hope they hadn’t seen her after all?

Every fiber in her body—every survival instinct she had—told her that she’d be killed if she stayed where she was.

She picked out the largest trees, a mix of evergreens and hardwoods, their leaves shed for the season, between her boulder and the ridgeline. The hillside was strewn with glacial boulders. It was New Hampshire. The Granite State.

Inhaling, visualizing her exact route, she crouched down racer-style, and, on an exhale, bolted up the hill. She ducked behind a hemlock straight up from her boulder, then ran diagonally to a maple, zigzagged to another hemlock, then hurled herself over the ridge crest. She scrambled downhill through a patch of switchlike bare saplings as three more quick shots boomed in the ravine on the other side of the ridge.

A whir, a cracking sound over her head.

Jesus!

They were shooting at her.

A crouched figure jumped out from behind a gnarled pine tree to her left, catching her around the middle with a thick arm, covering her mouth with a bare hand, then lunging with her back behind the tree.

“Carine—babe, it’s me. Tyler North. Don’t scream.”

He removed his hand, settling in next to her on the ground, and she jerked herself away, although not entirely out of his grasp. “Was that you shooting at me? You jackass.”

“Shh. It wasn’t me.”

She blinked, as if he might not be real, but she was sprawled against him, his body warm, solid. Tyler…Tyler North. He was at his most intense and focused. Combat ready, she thought, feeling a fresh jolt of fear. He was a PJ, an air force pararescueman. PJs were search-and-rescue specialists, the ones who went after pilots downed behind enemy lines. Carine had known Ty since they were tots. She’d heard he was home in Cold Ridge on leave—maybe the shooters were firing at him.

She tried to push back her fear and confusion. She’d been taking pictures, minding her own business. Then someone started shooting at her. Now she was here, behind a tree with Ty North. “Where—where did you come from?”

“I’m hiking with a couple of buddies. We saw your car and thought we’d join you for lunch. Figured you’d have better food.” He frowned at her, peeling hair off her forehead to reveal her cut, and she remembered his search-and-rescue skills included medical training above the level of a paramedic. “Piece of flying rock hit you?”

“I think so. Ty, I don’t know if they were aiming at you—”

“Let’s not worry about that right now. The cut doesn’t look too bad. Want to get out of here?”

She nodded, thinking she had to look like a maniac. Bloodied, twigs in her hair. Pant legs soaked and muddy. She was cold, but a long way from hypothermia.

Ty eased her day pack off and slung it over his shoulder. “We’re going to zigzag down the hill, just like you came up. That was good work. Hank Callahan and Manny Carrera are out here, so don’t panic if you see them.”

Hank Callahan was a retired air force pilot, and Manny Carrera was another pararescueman, a master sergeant like North. Carine knew them from their previous visits to Cold Ridge. “Okay.”

“All right. You got everything? If you’re woozy, I can carry you—”

“I’ll keep up.”

North grinned at her suddenly. “You’ve got the prettiest eyes. Why haven’t we ever dated?”

“What?”

As much as his question surprised her, he’d managed to penetrate the fear that seemed to saturate her, and when he took her hand, she ran with him without hesitation, using trees and boulders as cover, zigzagging down the hill, up another small, rounded hill. They ducked behind a stone wall above the leaf-covered stream she’d photographed earlier. Carine was breathing hard, her head pounding from fear and pain, the cut on her forehead bothering her now. They were getting closer to the main road. Her car. A place where she could call the police. She had a cell phone in her pack, but there was no service out here.

Leaves crunched nearby, and Hank Callahan joined them, exchanging a quick smile with Carine. He was square-jawed and blue-eyed, distinguished-looking, his dark hair streaked with gray. He had none of the compact, pitbull scrappiness of tawny-haired Tyler North.

“Christ, Ty,” Hank said in a low voice, “she’s hurt—”

“She’s fine.”

“I’m scared shitless! Those bastards were shooting at me!” Carine didn’t raise her voice, but she wasn’t calm. “Yahoos. Hunters—”

Hank shook his head, and Ty said, “Not hunters. A hunter doesn’t take a three-shot burst into a boulder, even if he’s using a semiautomatic rifle. These assholes knew you were there, Carine.”

“Me? But I didn’t do anything—”

“Did you see anyone?” Hank asked. “Any idea how many are out there?”

“No, no idea.” Her teeth were chattering, but she blamed the cold, not what Ty had said. “There’s an old hunting shack not far from where the bullets started flying. It looked abandoned to me. I took pictures of it. Maybe somebody didn’t like that.”

“I thought you took pictures of birds,” North said with a wry smile.

“I’m just most known for birds.” As a child, she’d believed she could see her parents as angels, soaring above Cold Ridge with a lone hawk or eagle. Ty used to tease her for it. “I was just trying out my digital camera.”

But she was breathing rapidly—too rapidly—and Ty put his hand over her mouth briefly. “Stop. Hold your breath a second before you hyperventilate.”

Already feeling a little light-headed, she did as he suggested. She noticed the green color of his eyes. That wasn’t a good sign. She’d never noticed anything about him before. She couldn’t remember when she’d seen him last. Fourth of July fireworks? They were neighbors, but seldom saw each other. His mother had moved to the valley just before Ty was born and bought the 1817 brick house that Abraham Winter, the first of the Cold Ridge Winters, had built as a tavern. She’d called herself Saskia, but no one believed that was her real name. If she had a husband, she’d never said. She was a weaver and a painter, but not the most attentive of mothers. Ty had pretty much grown up on his own. Even as a little boy, he’d wander up on the ridge trail for hours before his mother would even realize he was gone. She died four years ago, leaving him the house and fifty acres of woods and meadow. Everyone expected him to sell it, but he didn’t, although, given the demands of his military career, he wasn’t around much.

Hank Callahan shifted. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to put some serious mileage between me and the guys with guns.”

Carine steadied her breathing. “What about your other friend Manny—”

“Don’t worry about Carrera,” Ty said. “He can take care of himself. What’s the best route out of here?”

“We could follow the stone wall. There’s an old logging road not far from the shack—”

He shook his head. “If the shooters are using the shack, that’s the road they’d take. They’ll have vehicles.”

She thought a moment. “Then we should follow the stream. It’s not as direct, but it’ll take us to where we parked.”

“How exposed will we be?”

“From a shooter’s perspective? I can’t make that judgment. I just know it’s the fastest route out of here.”

“Fast is good,” Callahan said.

Ty nodded, then winked at Carine. “Okay, babe, we’ll go your way.”

She didn’t remember him ever having called her “babe” before today.

Thirty minutes later, as they came to the gravel parking area, they heard an explosion back in the woods, from the direction of the shack and the shooters. Black smoke rose up over the trees.

Hank whistled. “I wonder who the hell these guys are.”

Manny Carrera emerged from behind a half-dead white pine. He couldn’t have been that far behind them, but Carine hadn’t heard a thing. He was another PJ, a dark-haired, dark-eyed bull of a Texan.

“Good,” Ty said. “That wasn’t you blowing up. The shack?”

“That’s my guess.” Manny spoke calmly, explosions and shots fired in the woods apparently not enough to ruffle him—or North and Callahan. “There are two shooters, at least one back at the shack. I couldn’t get close enough to any of them for a good description.”

“I have binoculars you could have borrowed,” Carine said.

He grinned at her. “But they were shooting at you, kiddo.”

“Not necessarily at me—”

“Yes. At you. They just didn’t want you dead. Scared, paralyzed, maybe. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have missed, not that many times. They were using scoped, semiautomatic rifles.” His tone was objective, just stating the facts, but his eyes settled on her, his gaze softening slightly. “Sorry. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t target practice gone awry. They didn’t mistake you for a deer.”

“I get it.” She tried to be as clinical about her near-death experience as the three men were, but she kept seeing herself crouched behind the boulder, hearing the shots, feeling the rock shard hit her head. The bullets had been flying at her, not them. “Maybe they saw me taking pictures, but—” she took a breath “—to me it was just a hunting shack.”

“That’s enough for now,” Ty said. “We can speculate later. You have a cell phone on you?”

Carine nodded. “I doubt there’s any coverage out here.”

She took her day pack from him and dug out her phone, but she was totally spent from dodging bullets, diving behind trees and boulders, charging through the woods with two military types, all after tramping around on her own with her camera. She hit the wrong button and almost threw the phone onto the ground.

North quietly took it and shook his head. “No service. Hank and Manny, you take my truck. I’ll go with Carine.” He turned to her, eyeing her pragmatically. “Can you drive, or do you want me to?”

“I can do it.”

There was no cell coverage—there were no houses—until they came to a small lake on the notch road north of the village of Cold Ridge. Even then, Ty barely got the words out to the dispatcher before service dropped out on him.

He clicked off the phone and looked over at Carine. “I’m serious,” he said. “Why haven’t we ever dated?”

She managed a smile. “Because I’ve always hated you.”

He grinned at her. “No, you haven’t.”

And she was lost. Then and there.



By the time state and local police arrived on scene, the shack was burned to the ground and the shooters were gone. According to various law enforcement officers, Carine had likely stumbled on to a smuggling operation they’d had their eye on but couldn’t pinpoint. They smuggled drugs, weapons and people into and out of Canada and were, without a doubt, very dangerous.

Everyone agreed she was lucky indeed she hadn’t been killed.

Even if the pictures she took of the shack were the reason the shooters came after her, they didn’t tell her anything. She’d printed them out in her tiny log cabin while she and her military trio had waited for the police to get there. They’d been and gone, taking the memory disk with them. She still had the prints. A shack in the woods with a crooked metal chimney. It looked innocent enough to her.

Ty cleaned and treated the cut on her forehead. She kept avoiding his eye, aware of her reaction to him, aware that, somehow, everything had changed between them. She’d known him forever. He’d always been a thorn in her side. He’d pushed her out of trees. He’d cut the rope on her tire swing. Now, he was making her tingle. It had to be adrenaline—a post-traumatic reaction of some sort, she decided.

Hank and Manny built a fire in her woodstove. Hank, she learned, was a newly announced, dark horse candidate to become the junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts. He was a former air force rescue helicopter pilot, a retired major who’d received national attention on his last mission a year ago to recover fishermen whose boat had capsized.

As unflappable as he’d been in the woods, Hank Callahan was rendered virtually speechless when Antonia Winter walked into her sister’s cabin. It made Carine smile. Her sister was a trauma physician in Boston, but she’d been drawn to Cold Ridge for the thirtieth anniversary of the deaths of their parents. She was a couple of inches shorter than Carine, her auburn hair a tone lighter, but Gus said both his nieces had their mother’s blue eyes.

Antonia inspected Ty’s medical handiwork, pronouncing it satisfactory. Ty just rolled his eyes. She was focused, hardworking and brilliant, but if she noticed Hank’s reaction to her, she gave no indication of it.

Gus arrived a few minutes later and shooed out all the air force guys, glowering when North winked at Carine and promised he’d see her later. Gus let Antonia stay.

Their uncle was fifty, his dark hair mostly gray now, but he was as rangy and fit as ever. In addition to outfitting and leading hiking trips into the White Mountains, he conducted workshops in mountaineering, winter camping and mountain rescue. His goal, Carine knew, was to reduce the chances that anyone would ever again die the way his brother and sister-in-law had. But they did. People died in the mountains almost every year.

He brought in more wood for the woodstove and insisted Carine sit in front of the fire and tell him and her sister everything.

She did, except for the part about Ty saying she had pretty eyes.

Gus wanted her to head back to town with him, but Antonia offered to stay with Carine in her small cabin. Their brother, a U.S. marshal in New York, called and agreed with the general assessment that the shooters hadn’t “missed” her. If they’d wanted her dead, she’d be dead. “Lay low for a few days, will you?”

Out of Antonia’s earshot, Carine asked Nate what he’d think if she dated Tyler North.

“Has he asked you out?”

“No.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

The next day, Ty and his friends ended up rescuing a Massachusetts couple who got trapped on Cold Ridge. Sterling and Jodie Rancourt had recently bought a house off the notch road and set out on their first hike on the ridge, for what they’d intended to be a simple afternoon excursion. Instead, they encountered higher winds, colder temperatures and rougher terrain than they’d anticipated. Ty, Hank and Manny, prepared for the conditions, helped transport them below the treeline, where they were met by a local volunteer rescue team.

Jodie Rancourt had sprained her ankle, and both she and her husband were in the early stages of hypothermia, in danger of spending the night on the ridge. Given their lack of experience and the harsh conditions, they could easily have died if the three air force guys hadn’t come along when they had.

An eventful weekend in the White Mountains.

After Manny went back to his air force base and Hank to his senate campaign, Ty and Carine were alone on their quiet road in the shadows of Cold Ridge.

Gus sensed what was happening and stopped by to tell Carine she’d be out of her damn mind to get involved with Tyler North.

She didn’t listen.

Her uncle’s warning was too late. Way too late. She was in love.

She and Ty set their wedding date for Valentine’s Day.

A week before she was to walk down the aisle, he showed up at her cabin and called it off.

He couldn’t go through with it.

Enter Tyler North into her life.

Exit Tyler North.

As quick as that.




One


For the first time in weeks, Carine didn’t spend her lunch hour thinking about photographing wild turkeys in the meadow outside her log cabin in Cold Ridge. She wandered through Boston Public Garden, eating the tuna sandwich she’d made and packed that morning. Every dime was critical to her ability to afford both her cabin in New Hampshire and her apartment in the city. Not that it was much of an apartment. Not that she could ever live in her cabin again.

The last of the leaves, even in Boston, had changed color, and many had fallen to the ground, a temptation on a sunny, mild November afternoon. Carine remembered raking huge piles of leaves as a kid with her brother and sister—and Tyler North—and diving into them, hiding, wrestling.

Ty almost suffocated her once. Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought of it as a premonition. It was just Ty being Ty, pushing the limits.

But the nine months since their canceled wedding had taught her not to dwell on thoughts of her one-time fiancé and what might have been. She dashed across busy Arlington Street to a French café, splurging on a latte that she took back outside with her. Of course, it was true that she could be photographing wild turkeys in Cold Ridge—or red-tailed hawks, mountain sunsets, waterfalls, rock formations, alpine grasses. She was still a nature photographer, never mind that she’d been in Boston for six months and had just accepted a long-term assignment photographing house renovations.

Not just any house renovations, she thought. Sterling and Jodie Rancourt had hired her to photograph the painstaking restoration and renovation of their historic Victorian mansion on Commonwealth Avenue.

Carine sighed, sipping her latte as she peered in the display windows of the upscale shops and salons on trendy Newbury Street. But Ty kept creeping into her thoughts. Even when she’d chased him with a rake at six, spitting bits of leaves out of her mouth, she’d known not to get involved with him, ever. The six-year-old inside her, who knew better than to trust anything he said, must have been screaming bloody murder when she’d fallen in love with him last winter.

The man could jump out of a helicopter to rescue a downed aircrew—it didn’t matter where. Behind enemy lines, on a mountaintop, in a desert or a jungle or an ocean, in snow or heat or rain. In combat or peacetime. He had a job to do. Getting cold feet wasn’t an option.

Not so when it’d come to marrying her.

Carine hadn’t spoken to him since he’d knocked on her cabin door and said he couldn’t go through with their wedding. He’d disappeared into the mountains for a few days of solo winter camping, lived through it, then returned to his base. She’d heard he’d been deployed overseas and participated in dangerous combat search and rescues. CSARs. He’d also performed humanitarian missions, one to treat injured women and children in an isolated area. Carine appreciated the work he did, and gradually, her anger at him had worn off, along with her shock. They were easy emotions to deal with in comparison to the hurt and embarrassment that had followed him walking out on her, the palpable grief of losing a man she’d come to regard in those few short months, maybe over her lifetime, as her soul mate.

Even when he was away, there were reminders of him everywhere in Cold Ridge. And, of course, when he was on leave, when he could get away for a couple of days, he was there.

By early summer, Carine knew she had to pick up the pieces of her life and make some changes, explore new options, expand her horizons—not that it always felt that way. Sometimes, even now, it felt as if she were still licking her wounds, still running from herself and the life she wanted to lead.

But not today—today was a gorgeous late autumn day, perfect for not thinking about Cold Ridge and Tyler North. As far as she was concerned, he was back to being the thorn in her side he’d always been. She’d trust him with her life—who wouldn’t? But she’d never again make the mistake of trusting him with her heart.

That was what Gus had tried to tell her after the shooting incident in the woods last November. “You can trust him with your life, Carine, but—damn it, he’ll break your heart in the end.”

She’d thought her uncle was just worrying about her. People tended to worry about her. She wasn’t a tough U.S. marshal like her brother or a physician who’d seen everything like her sister—people saw her as the sensitive soul of her family, a nature photographer who’d never really left home.

Well, now she had.

She finished her latte and decided to head back to Commonwealth Avenue and the Rancourt house, although she wasn’t under any time constraints. The Rancourts hadn’t just hired her out of the blue. They weren’t part of her horizon-expanding. They’d hired her, Carine knew, because she was from Cold Ridge, friends with the three men who rescued them the year before. Hank Callahan and Antonia had started dating in Boston after that first meeting in Carine’s cabin. He was now her brother-in-law. As of a week ago, the voters of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had made him their junior senator-elect. Since he was friends with Ty and Antonia was a fiercely loyal sister, their relationship had suffered after Carine’s aborted wedding. Then Antonia found herself trapped on an island off Cape Cod with a violent stalker and with a hurricane about to blow on shore; Hank had come after her, ending any doubts either of them had. The media—and voters—lapped up the story. But it was clear to everyone that Hank hadn’t been thinking about their opinion when he’d headed to the Shelter Island.

No, Carine thought, she had no illusions. As much as she liked them, Sterling and Jodie Rancourt had their own reasons for asking her to do the job.

She walked slowly, in no hurry. Her hair was pulled back neatly, and she wore jeans, a black turtleneck, her barn coat and waterproof ankle boots, comfortable clothes that permitted her to go up and down ladders, trek over drop cloths and stacks of building supplies and tools, do whatever she had to do to get the particular picture she wanted. She was used to climbing mountains and edging across rock ledges to get the right light, the right color, the right composition. Negotiating house renovations didn’t seem that daunting to her. It had been a quiet morning—she hadn’t even taken her camera out of its bag and had left it at the Rancourt house while she was at lunch. She was using her digital camera today, at Jodie Rancourt’s request—Jodie wanted to get a better idea of the technical differences between digital and film.

A shiny black sports car pulled alongside her, and Louis Sanborn, also newly employed by the Rancourts, rolled down his window and flashed his killer smile at her. “Hey, Ms. Photographer, need a ride over to the big house?”

Carine laughed. “Thanks for the offer, Mr. Security Man.” Louis was tall and, despite his prematurely gray, scrub-brush hair, younger than he looked, probably just a year or two older than she was. The Rancourts had hired him two weeks ago as the assistant to their chief of security. “I don’t mind walking. We won’t get many more days like today. It’s beautiful out.”

“Only according to you granite-head types.”

“It’s in the fifties!”

“That’s what I’m saying. Having a good lunch hour?”

“An excellent lunch hour.”

“Me, too. See you over on Comm. Ave.”

His car merged back into the Newbury Street traffic. Carine continued on up to Exeter Street, then cut down it to Commonwealth Avenue. With its center mall and stately Victorian buildings, it was the quintessential street of Boston’s Back Bay, all of which was on reclaimed land that used to be under water—hence its name.

Still in no hurry, she sat on a bench on the mall, famous for its early springtime pink magnolias, now long gone. A toddler ran after a flutter of pigeons, and Carine tried not to think about the babies she’d meant to have with Ty, but, nonetheless, felt a momentary pang of regret. The toddler’s mother scooped him up and swung him in the brisk November air, then set him back in his stroller. He was ticked off and started to kick and scream. He wanted to chase more pigeons. Two months ago—a month ago—the scene would have made Carine cry, but now she smiled. Progress, she thought.

She walked across the westbound lane to the historic brick-front mansion the Rancourts had snapped up when it came onto the market eighteen months ago. It was a rare find. Its longtime owner, now dead, had never carved it up into apartments, in fact, had done few renovations—many of the house’s original features were still intact. Hardwood floors, ornate moldings, marble fireplaces, chandeliers, wainscoting, fixtures. It had taken most of the past eighteen months for the team of architects, preservationists, designers and contractors just to come up with the right plans for what to do.

Carine’s job photographing the renovations could easily take her through the winter, while still leaving room for her to pursue other projects. She’d been at it for six weeks. Work would happen in a frenzy for a few days, the place crawling with people. Then everyone would vanish, and nothing would happen for a morning, an afternoon, even a week. That left her with spurts of time she could put to use doing something more productive than drinking lattes and window shopping.

She noticed Louis Sanborn’s car parked out front and smiled, shaking her head. Leave Louis to find a convenient parking space—she never could, and almost always walked or took public transportation in the city.

Since she’d left for lunch, someone had set out a pot of yellow mums on the front stoop; the wrought-iron rail was cool to the touch as she mounted the steps to the massive dark wood door. It was open a crack, and she pushed it with her shoulder and went in, immediately tossing her latte cup into an ugly green plastic trash bin just inside the door. Sweeping, graceful stairs rose up to the second floor of the five-story house. She’d never been in any place like it. Not one inch of it reminded her of her little log cabin with its rustic ladder up to the loft.

“Hello?” she called. “Anyone here?”

Her footsteps echoed on the age-darkened cherry floor of the center hall. To her left was a formal drawing room with a marble fireplace and a crystal chandelier, then a smaller room and the library. There was even an elegant ballroom on the second floor. The Rancourts had promised to invite Carine the first time they used it, teasing her that they wanted to see her in sequins.

She retrieved her camera from a cold, old-fashioned radiator in the hall. There had to be someone around. Nobody would leave the door open with the place empty.

“Louis? Are you here? It’s me, Carine.”

He could be upstairs, she thought, slinging her camera bag over her shoulder. She’d assumed workers would be in this afternoon, but she didn’t keep close track of their comings and goings. As she turned to head back to the front entry, something caught her eye in the library. She wasn’t sure what—something out of place. Wrong.

She took a shallow breath, and it was as if a force stronger than she was compelled her to take a step forward and peer through the double doorway. Restoration work hadn’t started yet in the library. Intense discussions were still under way over whether it was worth the expense to have its yellowed wallpaper, possibly original to the house, copied.

Carine touched the wood molding, telling herself she must have simply seen a shadow or a stray drop cloth. Then she jumped back, inhaling sharply, even as her mind struggled to take in what she was seeing—a man facedown on the wood floor. Louis. She recognized his dark suit, his scrub-brush hair. She lunged forward, but stopped abruptly, almost instinctively.

A pool of something dark, a liquid, oozed toward her. She stood motionless, refusing to absorb what she was seeing.

Blood.

It seeped into the cracks in the narrow-board floor. It covered Louis’s outstretched hand.

Help…

She couldn’t speak. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

His hair…his hand…in the blood…

“Oh, God, oh, God—Louis!” Carine leaped forward, yelling back over her shoulder. “Help! Help, someone’s hurt!”

She avoided stepping in the blood. It wasn’t easy—there was so much of it. Louis…he can’t be dead. I just saw him!

She had only rudimentary first aid skills. She wasn’t an ER doctor like her sister or a highly trained combat paramedic like North and Manny Carrera. But they weren’t here, and she forced herself to kneel beside Louis Sanborn and control her horror and fear as she touched two fingers to his carotid artery. That was it, wasn’t it? Arteries beat with the heart. Veins didn’t. To see if he had a pulse, she had to find an artery.

There was no pulse, not with that much blood.

“Louis. Oh, God.”

She looked around the empty room, her voice echoing as she yelled again for help. Had he fallen and landed on a sharp object—a stray chisel or a saw, or something? The back of his suit was unmarred. No blood, no torn fabric. Whatever injury he had must have been in front. But she didn’t dare turn him over, touch him further.

She rose shakily. No one had come in answer to her yells for help. Louis Sanborn was dead. She was alone. She absorbed the reality of her situation in short bursts of awareness, as if she couldn’t take it all in at once.

Hey, Ms. Photographer, need a ride over to the big house?

What if she’d said yes? Could she have saved his life? Or would she be dead, too?

How had he died?

What if it wasn’t an accident?

It wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t.

She ran into the hall, her camera bag bouncing on her hip. Where was her cell phone? She needed to call the police, an ambulance. She dug in the pocket of her barn coat, finding her phone, but she couldn’t hang on to it and dropped it on the hardwood floor, startling herself. She scooped it up, hardly pausing as she came to the front hall.

The front door stood wide open. She thought she’d shut it when she got back from lunch. Was someone else here?

She could feel the cool November air.

“Help!”

She looked down at her cell phone, realized it wasn’t on. She hit the Power button and ran onto the front stoop, knocking over the pot of mums, hoping someone on the street would hear her. She charged down the steps to the wide sidewalk. She’d call the police, stop a passing car.

Suddenly Manny Carrera was there, as if she’d conjured him up herself. He’d danced with her at Hank and Antonia’s wedding a month ago and cheerfully offered to cut off Ty’s balls the next time he saw him.

“It’s Louis…he…” She couldn’t get out the words. “He’s—oh, God—”

Manny swept her into his embrace. “I know,” he said. “I know.”




Two


Tyler North pulled two beers out of his refrigerator and brought them to the long pine table where his mother used to sit in front of the fire with her paints. Gus Winter was in her spot now, lean, scarred and irritable—and tired, although he’d never admit to it. He took one of the beers and shook his head in disgust. “You always have to allow for the moron factor.”

“People make mistakes.”

Gus drank some of his beer. It had been a brutal day, but one with a happy ending. “Forgetting your sunscreen’s a mistake. These assholes didn’t bother to check the weather conditions. They didn’t take enough food or water. You saw how they were dressed—jeans and sneakers. It’s November. Any goddamn thing can happen on the ridge in November. They’re lucky to be alive.”

No one knew better than Gus Winter that what he said was true. Ty didn’t argue with him. He sat with his beer and stared at the fire in the old center-chimney stone fireplace. Three seventeen-year-old boys from the local prep school decided to skip classes and hike the ridge trail. If they’d stayed on it, they might have been okay, but they didn’t. By early afternoon, they were cold, lost, battered by high winds and terrified of spending the night above the treeline.

“If Fish and Game determines these guys were reckless, they’ll have to cough up the bucks for the rescue,” Ty said.

“They’re complaining because we didn’t send a helicopter! Can you imagine? They figured they’d dial 911 on their cell phones if they got into trouble—”

“That’s what they did.”

Gus snorted. “Yeah. And we came. What’s with this picture? We should have waited, let them get good and scared.” He drank more of his beer. “I’m telling you, North. The moron factor.”

Ty expected the three boys they’d just rescued were the sort of hikers the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game had in mind when they came up with their protocol for charging expenses for search and rescues in cases of out-and-out recklessness. Rescues could be difficult and dangerous—and expensive. Lucky for the boys, they hadn’t encountered moisture. Even a light rain would have soaked their cotton clothing, a poor insulator when wet. As it was, they’d suffered mild hypothermia. And intense, warranted fear for their lives.

“I did dumb-ass things at that age,” Ty said.

“You do dumb-ass things now. But do you expect people to come to your rescue?” Gus shook his head, not waiting for an answer. “Not you, North. You’ve never expected anyone to come to your rescue in your entire life, not with your mother, may she rest in peace. Lovely woman, but in her own world. It’s the arrogance of these jackasses—”

“Let it go, Gus. We did our job. The rest isn’t up to us.”

Reckless or not, the boys today weren’t the first people he or Gus had pulled off Cold Ridge. It was unlikely they’d be the last.

But Gus wasn’t willing to let it go. “Cell phones give people a false sense of security. They should be banned.”

Without a cell phone, the kids undoubtedly wouldn’t have been missed before nightfall. They’d have ended up spending the night on the ridge—a dangerous situation that might not have had a happy ending. On the other hand, without a cell phone, they might have taken fewer risks or even gone to their classes instead of sneaking off on an illicit hike. Other hikers had made the mistake of thinking their cell phones worked anywhere and didn’t discover there were gaps in coverage until they were ass-deep in trouble and had no way to call for help. Even if they did get through, help wasn’t necessarily around the damn corner.

Either way, it was North’s job to rescue people. He did it for a living in the military, and he did it as a volunteer when he was home on leave.

Gus set his beer bottle down hard on the table. “People think because the White Mountains aren’t as high as the Rockies or the Himalayas, they’re not dangerous. The reason the treeline’s lower in the northeast than it is out west is because we’ve got such shitty weather here. Three major storm tracks meet right over us—ah, hell.” He gave a grunt of disgust. “I’m preaching to the converted. You know these mountains as well as I do.”

“I’ve been away a lot.”

That was an understatement. His career as a pararescueman had taken him on search-and-rescue missions all over the world. The pararescue motto—These Things We Do That Others May Live—underscored everything he did as a PJ in both combat and peacetime. A pararescueman’s primary mission was to go after downed aircrews. Anytime, anywhere. In any kind of terrain, under permissive or hostile conditions. If there were injuries, they treated them. If they came under fire, they took up security positions and fired back.

The job required a wide range of skills. When he enlisted and decided to become a pararescueman, Ty had only a limited understanding of what it entailed. For starters, two years of training and instruction—the “pipeline.” It began with ten weeks of PJ indoctrination at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Running, swimming, calisthenics, drownproofing. Serious sleep deprivation, or at least so it seemed at the time. Of the hundred guys who showed up for indoc with him, twenty-four were still there after four weeks. He was one of them.

Then it was on to a series of specialized schools. He went through the Army Special Forces Underwater Operations Course and Navy Underwater Egress Training—navigation swims, ditching and donning of equipment underwater, underwater search patterns, getting out of a sinking aircraft. He made it through the Army Airborne School, where he had to make five static-line jumps before he could move on to freefall school, which took him through jumps at high altitude, with oxygen, at night, during the day, with and without equipment.

Fun stuff, he thought, remembering how he’d steel himself into not quitting, just sticking with it, one day—sometimes one minute—at a time.

At Air Force Survival School he learned basic survival skills, evasion-and-escape techniques, what to do if he was captured by the enemy. Then it was on to the Special Operations Combat Medic Course and, finally, to the Pararescue Recovery Specialist Course, where, over a year or more, all the previous training got put together and more was added—advance EMT-paramedic training, advance parachute skills, tactical maneuvers, weapons handling, mountain climbing and aircrew recovery procedures. They worked through various scenarios that tied in all the different skills they’d learned, seeing their practical application for the job that lay ahead.

Then came graduation, the PJ’s distinctive maroon beret, assignment to a team—then Ty thought, the real training began.

PJs had been called SEALs with stethoscopes, ninja brain surgeons, superman paramedics—if people knew what they did at all, since so many of their missions had to be done quietly. It wasn’t a job for someone looking for money and glory. Ty cringed at all the nicknames. He thought of himself as an average guy who did a job he was trained to do to the best of his ability. He’d become a PJ because he wanted an action-oriented career where he could save lives, a chance to “search and rescue” instead of “search and destroy.”

But he could “destroy” if he had to. PJs were direct combatants, and, as such, pararescue was a career field that remained closed to women.

Ty was currently assigned to the 16th Special Operations Wing out of Hurlburt Field in the Florida panhandle. As the leader of a special tactics team, he had performed a full range of combat search-and-rescue missions in recent years, but it was seeing Carine Winter under fire last fall that had all but done him in.

The “incident” was still under investigation.

The only positive outcome of the whole mess was that Hank Callahan and Antonia Winter had met and fallen in love. Ty had missed their wedding a month ago. Antonia was too damn polite not to invite him. His behavior toward her younger sister had put a crimp in the budding romance between his friend the ER doctor and his friend the helicopter-pilot-turned-senate-candidate—fortunately, they’d worked it out.

Senator Hank Callahan.

Ty shook his head, grinning to himself. He and Hank had damn near become brothers-in-law. They would have, if Ty had gone ahead and married Carine in February. Instead, he’d cut and run.

It was the only time in his life he’d ever cut and run.

“Have you decided whether or not you’re selling the house?” Gus asked him.

Ty pulled himself from his darkening thoughts. “No. I haven’t decided, I mean.”

He’d been on assignment overseas when his mother took a walk in the meadow and died of a massive stroke. Carine had found her and tracked him down to make sure he got the news, to tell him his mother had painted that morning and died in the lupine she’d so loved. But Saskia North had never really fit in with the locals, and few in Cold Ridge knew much about her, beyond her skills as a painter and a weaver—and her failings as a mother.

“You should sell it,” Gus said. “There’s nothing for you here, not anymore. What do you want with this place? You’re never here long enough to fix it up. Basic maintenance isn’t enough. It’ll fall down around your ears before too long.”

Now that Ty had broken Carine’s heart, Gus wanted him to clear out of Cold Ridge altogether. The man made no secret of it. It hadn’t always been that way, but Ty knew that was before and this was now. To Gus, Carine was still the little girl he’d loved and protected since she was three years old—the little girl whose parents he’d helped carry off Cold Ridge.

People make mistakes.

It was the way life was. You make mistakes, you try to correct them.

North frowned at a strange ringing sound, then watched Gus grimace and pull a cell phone out of his back pocket. He pointed the cell phone at North. “Just shut the hell up. I’ve never used it to call for someone to come rescue me.” Then he clicked the receive button and said, “Yeah, Gus here.” His face lost color, and he got to his feet. “Slow down, honey. Slow down. What—” He listened some more, pacing, obviously trying to stay calm. “Do you want me to come down there? Are you okay? Carine—” He all but threw the phone into the fire. “Goddamn it!”

Ty fell back on his training and experience to stay calm. “Service kick out on you?” He kept his voice neutral, careful not to say anything that would further provoke Gus, further upset him. “It does that. The mountains.”

Gus raked a hand through his gray, brittle hair. “That was Carine.”

Ty felt a tightening in his throat. “I thought so.”

“She—” He sucked in a sharp, angry breath. “Damn it, North, I hate it that she’s in Boston. With Antonia and Hank married, she’s alone there now for the most part. And, goddamn it, she doesn’t belong there.”

North didn’t argue. “You’re right, Gus. What happened?”

Tears rose in the older man’s eyes, a reminder of the years he’d invested in his brother’s three children. His own parents couldn’t take them on—they were shattered by the untimely deaths of their older son and daughter-in-law and had chronic health problems. It was Gus who’d made the emotional commitment at age twenty to raise his nieces and nephew. Ty thought of the sacrifices, the physical toll, it all had taken. For thirty years, Gus Winter had put the needs of Nate, Antonia and Carine ahead of his own. He was the only one who didn’t know it.

“Gus?”

“There was a shooting. A murder. She found the body. Christ, after last fall—”

“Where was she?”

“At work. She’s photographing the renovations on that old house the Rancourts bought on Commonwealth Avenue. She went out for a latte—Christ. That’s what she just said. Gus, I went out for a latte. When she got back, she found a man dead on the library floor.” Gus snatched up his beer bottle and dumped the balance out in the sink. “She didn’t want me to hear about it on the news.”

“Did she say who the victim was?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t have a chance. I’ll go home and call her.” He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, and when North started to his feet, Gus, refusing to look at him, added abruptly, “It’s not your problem.”

“All right. Sure, Gus. If you need me for anything—”

“I won’t.”

Ty didn’t follow him out, but he was tempted. He pulled his chair over to the fire and let the hot flames warm his feet. He still had on his hiking socks. It felt good to get out of his boots. One of the prep-school boys needed to be carried off the ridge in a litter. The other two responded to on-site treatment, warm duds and warm liquids, and were able to walk down on their own. Gus didn’t think they were contrite enough. But Gus had been in a bad mood for months. For good reason. Antonia’s wedding had temporarily lifted his spirits, but North’s return to Cold Ridge had plunged him back into a black mood.

The old house seemed huge and empty around him, the late afternoon wind rattling the windows. It got dark early now. November. No more daylight savings. North put a log on the fire. The fireplace supposedly was made from stone that Abraham Winter had pulled off the ridge when he carved the main ridge trail, still almost intact, almost two hundred years ago.

Ty felt the flames hot on his face. His mother had never minded living out here, even after he’d gone into the air force and she lived in the big house all alone. She said she was proud of him, but he doubted she really knew what the hell a PJ did.

“I understand you,” she used to say. “I understand you completely.”

Whether she did or didn’t, Ty had no idea, but he had never come close to understanding her. When she died, she’d left him the house and fifty acres, which he’d expected.

A trust fund. He used to make fun of people with trust funds.

For five years, he hadn’t touched a dime of it except what he needed to hang on to the house.

He lifted his gaze to the oil painting his mother had done in those solitary years here. It depicted the house and the meadow on an early summer day, daises in bloom. She hadn’t put Cold Ridge in it. She’d never said why. As far as he knew, she’d never climbed any of the hundreds of trails in the White Mountains.

He wanted to call Carine. He wanted to be in Boston. Now.

His telephone rang. His hard line. He thought it might be Gus, changing his mind about wanting to shut him out. He got up from the fire and picked up the extension on the wall next to the refrigerator.

“North? It’s Carrera.” Manny Carrera’s normally steady, unflappable voice sounded stressed, tightly controlled. “I’ve got a problem. I need you here.”

“D.C.?”

“Boston.”

North didn’t let himself react. “Why Boston?”

“I flew up here last night to talk to Sterling Rancourt about Louis Sanborn, his new security hire. By the time I got to Sanborn, he was dead.”

“Manny—”

He took a breath. “You’ve heard.”

“Carine just called Gus. I don’t have the details. She found this guy shot to death? What happened? Where the hell were you?”

“There. I don’t want to get into it now. We both gave statements to the police. They want me to stick around in case they have more questions. Which they will. I figure I don’t have long before they slap on the cuffs.”

“Cuffs? Manny, you didn’t kill this guy—”

“It’s not that simple.”

North stared out the kitchen window into the darkness. The fire crackled behind him. Manny Carrera had surprised everyone when he retired from active duty in August, but North didn’t fault him. Manny had done his bit, and he had different priorities nowadays: a son who’d almost died and a wife who was on edge.

But North wasn’t going to coddle him. Manny would hate that. “What’s not simple? You either killed him or you didn’t kill him.”

“I’m not going there with you.”

“Then what about Carine?”

“She doesn’t know the police have their eye on me. When she finds out—”

“She’ll want to spring you.”

Carine had always liked Manny Carrera. Everyone did. He’d show up in Cold Ridge from time to time for a little hiking, fishing and snowshoeing. Even Gus liked Manny. The air force tried to tap him as a PJ instructor, but he was determined to retire and go into business for himself. He was in the process of getting a Washington-based outfit off the ground, which trained individuals and companies in a broad range of emergency skills and procedures—not just self-defense and how to treat the injured, but how to think, how to respond in a crisis, before a crisis. He wanted his clients trained, prepared, able to help themselves and others if something happened. Ty didn’t know how it was going or what kind of businessman Manny would make. Manny Carrera was a hard-ass, but he was fair, scrupulous and, at heart, a natural optimist.

He also had the skills and worldwide connections to disappear before the police got to him—just melt away. If he put his mind to it, he could probably even gnaw his way out of a jail cell.

Except he had a fourteen-year-old son with severe asthma and allergies at the prep school just outside the picturesque village of Cold Ridge.

“What do you want me to do?” Ty asked.

“Make sure Carine doesn’t pursue this thing. She knew Louis Sanborn. She liked him. She found him dead. Plus,” Manny added pointedly, “she had her life pulled out from under her not that long ago. She’s ripe for trouble.”

“She’s a Winter, Manny. She’s always ripe for trouble.” What Manny didn’t say—what he didn’t need to say—was that Ty was the one who’d pulled her life out from under her. “Is she in danger?”

“Five minutes sooner, she’d have walked in on a murder. Anything could have happened. For all I know, it still could. Just keep an eye on her, North. That’s all I’m asking.”

Ty was silent a moment. “You’re not telling me everything.”

Manny almost laughed. “Hell, North, I’m not telling you anything.” But any humor faded, and he asked seriously, “You’ll do it?”

As if there was a question. “If Gus doesn’t let all the air out of my tires before I can get there. If Carine doesn’t kill me when I do. I haven’t seen her since I left her at the altar.” North sighed heavily, feeling the fatigue from his long day. He hadn’t quite left her at the altar. At least he’d come to his senses and called off their wedding a full week in advance. It could have been worse, not that anyone else saw it that way. “Manny, Jesus. Murder—what the hell’s going on?”

“Looks like Carine and I are shit magnets these days. Jesus. Look, Ty. She found a dead man this afternoon. I should have made sure that didn’t happen. I didn’t, so now I’m asking you to do what you can to make it right.” He groaned to himself. “Ah, screw it. You’re on a need-to-know basis. It’s the best I can do. Just get down here.”

“I’ll be there tonight.”

Manny hesitated. “I saw the story about the rescue you did today on the news. My son—”

“Eric wasn’t involved. He’s only a freshman. These guys are seniors.”

“Geniuses, from the sounds of it.”

“Ivy League material. They’ve got their applications in. Watch. They’ll all be running the show when we’re in the home.”

“Scary thought. Ty—”

“Forget it. It’s okay.”

But Manny Carrera said it, anyway. “I know I’m asking a lot. Thanks.”




Three


After throwing up for a third time, Carine staggered into her kitchen. She hoped that was the last of it. Nerves, she thought. Fear, disgust, grief, horror. Poor Louis. Dead. Murdered. Why?

She found the little bag of oyster crackers the Boston Police Department detective had given her when she’d almost passed out on him. He’d said she looked green. At least she hadn’t thrown up then. She’d given her statement, read it, signed it and, when told she could leave, got a cab and came straight back to her apartment. She didn’t know what else to do. The Rancourts were with the police. Manny was with the police. And Louis Sanborn was dead, his body transported to wherever the medical examiners performed autopsies.

Her hands trembled, and she couldn’t get a good hold on the package of crackers to pull it open. Finally, she grabbed a fork from the strainer and stabbed the cellophane, and little round crackers popped out all over her counter and floor.

“Damn it!”

She picked one up off the floor and nibbled on it, making herself fill her kettle with water and set it on the stove for tea. It wasn’t much of a stove—it wasn’t much of an apartment. It was a one-bedroom unit on a narrow, crooked street off Inman Square in Cambridge, an eclectic neighborhood of working-class families, students and professionals. She’d painted the walls and her flea-market furnishings with a mix of mango, lime green, raspberry, various shades of blue and violet, whatever she thought would be cheerful and not remind her of the rich, woodsy colors of her log cabin in Cold Ridge.

The tiny cracker didn’t sit well in her stomach. Her mouth was dry. She was wrung out. She’d cried, she’d screamed, she’d barfed. Yep. What a rock she was. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t embarrassed by her reaction—she didn’t ever want to get used to coming upon a murder.

Manny Carrera had called the police by the time she got out to the street. He wouldn’t tell her a thing—why he was there, what he saw, nothing. Just that he was consulting for the Rancourts, whatever that meant. Then the police arrived, as well as Sterling and Jodie, their security chief, the media, onlookers. Carine and Manny were separated. He was as self-contained as ever. Definitely a rock.

“Think of it,” he’d said in the minutes before the police got there, “if you’d married North, you could be in flea-infested military housing right now.”

“Manny…I knew Louis. He—he was shot, wasn’t he? Murdered?”

“Carine, something you need to keep in mind.”

He hesitated, but she prodded him. “What?”

“Louis Sanborn wasn’t a nice man.”

He didn’t have a chance to elaborate, and she’d repeated his words to the detective when he asked her what she and Manny had talked about.

Louis Sanborn wasn’t a nice man.

Manny could have meant anything. It didn’t have to be ominous.

She switched off her kettle. Even tea wasn’t going to stay down. She wished she hadn’t called Gus. Talking to him was comforting on one level, because he was unconditionally on her side, but, on another level, it added to her tension—because he’d wanted to head to Boston. It’d been a near thing to keep him up north. She’d called him for moral support. She needed time to pull herself together. Gus would hover. He’d scowl at her living accommodations. He’d tell her she didn’t belong in the city.

He’d make her soup. He’d listen to her for as long as she wanted to talk.

Her doorbell rang, the noise sprouting an instant headache. Carine knew she was dehydrated, her reserves exhausted, but her first-floor apartment didn’t have an intercom or buzzer, which meant she had to stagger out to the front hall. Her old tenement building had three floors, with two apartments on each floor and a main door that creaked and stuck half the time, making it easy for people to just walk in.

Her sister gave her an encouraging smile and wave through the smudged glass panel. When Carine pulled open the heavy door, Antonia grimaced and shook her head. “Good God, you look awful.”

“Is that what you say to all your ER patients? I’ve been throwing up.”

Antonia felt her sister’s forehead, then grabbed her wrist. “No fever. Your pulse is a bit fast. Are you keeping anything down?”

“I just ate an oyster cracker.”

“Try a little flat Coke.”

“I don’t have any.”

Carine led her sister back to her apartment, but Antonia’s tight frown only worsened when she looked around at the kitchen and the spilled crackers. “Half the rats in Boston live better than you do.”

“What? It’s a great apartment.”

Antonia sighed. She was dressed elegantly in a black top and pants and a pumpkin-colored coat that brought out the softer tones of her auburn hair. It was shorter than Carine’s, not as dark. “You can only do so much with paint,” she said. “Why don’t you go home? Let Gus fuss over you.”

“I live here now. Don’t you remember your hand-to-mouth years in medical school?”

“That’s the point. I was in medical school. You’re just—I don’t know what you’re doing. Marking time.” She squatted down and scooped up a handful of the crackers, dumping them in the trash. “You weren’t going to eat them off the floor, were you?”

“Antonia—”

Tears welled in her sister’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very sensitive or helpful. Oh, Carine, I’m so sorry about what happened. I’m supposed to take the shuttle down to Washington tonight. There’s some function tomorrow for freshman senators—Hank left this afternoon, before he heard about the murder.”

Carine nodded without comment.

“He’s tried several times to reach Manny. No luck.” Antonia tore open the refrigerator with more force than was required. “Do you have any ginger ale? Carine, what on earth is that? It’s blue!”

“Oh, that’s my Gatorade. I’ve been trying to do more exercise. It’s good for restoring electrolytes, isn’t it?”

“I wonder how they get it that shade of blue. Well, drink it if you can keep it down. It’ll help with any dehydration. Is there someone who can spend the night here with you? I hate the idea of leaving you alone—”

“I’ll be fine.” Carine manufactured a weak smile. “Go on and catch your plane, Antonia. I just want to crawl into bed. It wasn’t a great day for me, but I’m not the one who was killed. Poor Louis.”

“Did you know him well?”

She shook her head. “Just to say hi to.”

“What a nightmare. What is it about you and the month of November? Well, at least last year no one was killed. Look, if you need me to stay—”

“No! Go be the smart doctor wife to your handsome senator-elect husband. Wow Washington. Thanks for stopping by.”

Antonia smiled, but she didn’t look reassured. “You really won’t eat any crackers off the floor, right?”

“Promise.”

“Call my cell phone anytime, day or night. Okay? I can be on the next shuttle back here. Just say the word.”

Five minutes after Antonia left, Nate called from New York. He didn’t want to hear about crackers and blue Gatorade—he wanted to make sure Carine had told the police absolutely everything and wasn’t going to get involved any more than she had to be. She assured him she was being the good soldier.

“Good,” he said. “Keep it that way.”

Her brother, too wanted her to go back to Cold Ridge. He’d left their hometown, and Antonia had left, but they both still considered it home, their refuge. Carine, who’d never left, wasn’t as nostalgic about it, and she didn’t like the idea that she might run into Tyler North.

She promised Nate she’d take care of herself and hung up, pouring herself a glass of Gatorade. She hoped she kept it down, because damned if she wanted to throw up anything blue.



Ty made the three-hour trip to Boston in under two-and-a-half hours, but lost time in Inman Square and the tangle of five million streets that radiated out from it. He went past a fancy bakery, a hardware store, a lesbian bookstore, several churches, a mosque, service stations, a Portuguese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a Moroccan restaurant, a Jewish deli, a Tibetan rug shop and an Irish bar with a shamrock on its sign. He went down the same one-way street twice. Maybe three times. Where the hell was his GPS when he needed it? Never mind satellite navigation—he could have used a damn map.

Finally, he found his way to a crowded street of multifamily homes with pumpkins and mums on their front steps and foldout paper turkeys and Pilgrim hats in their windows. There were a few fake cobwebs strung to fences, left over from Halloween. A couple of strings of orange lights in the shape of little plastic pumpkins. Hank Callahan and Manny Carrera, who’d both been inside Carine’s apartment, reported that it was a solid, working-class neighborhood, but her building needed a little work.

Her building was a dump. The porch roof sagged. The steps had holes in them. The whole place needed paint. Outdoor lighting was nonexistent. Tall, frostbitten hollyhocks bent over the walkway—Carine’s doing, no doubt. She’d always loved hollyhocks. The neighborhood dogs probably loved them, too.

A pack of boys careered down the dark street on scooters and skateboards. One kid, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen, had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It was just shy of ten o’clock on a school night. North mentally picked out which ones he’d liked to see go through PJ indoc. Pass or fail, they’d get in shape, learn a little something about themselves.

“Live free or die,” the boy with the cigarette yelled as he sailed past North’s truck with its New Hampshire plates and their Live Free or Die logo. “Yeah, go for it, woodchuck.”

That one, he thought. That one he’d liked to see tossed in a pool with his hands and feet tied.

On the other hand, maybe the kid would make a good pararescueman. Stick with it, don’t give up, don’t drown—it wasn’t always easy to tell who’d make it and who’d wash out.

Antonia Winter Callahan, wife of senator-elect Hank Callahan, lifted a swooning hollyhock out of her path, stood on the main sidewalk a moment, then frowned and marched up to Ty’s truck. He kept a truck in Florida, too. This was his at-home truck. Rusted, nicely broken in. Recognizable to someone who’d known him most of his life.

He rolled down his window. “Nice night. Warmer down here in the big city.”

“I don’t believe you, Ty. Gus didn’t send you, did he? No, of course he didn’t. What was I thinking?” She groaned, her hands clenched at her sides. “God, Ty, you’re not what Carine needs right now. She’s been sick to her stomach.”

“She’s never come upon a murder before.”

Antonia nodded reluctantly, calmer. “It’s awful. She knew the victim, Louis Sanborn. He worked for the Rancourts. Did you know him?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You heard Manny Carrera was on the scene? He’s had a rough year. He—” She broke off, giving a little hiss between clenched teeth. “Ty, don’t tell me—did Manny send you? Is that why you’re here?”

“Sorry, Dr. Callahan, I’m in the dark as much as you are.” He thought that was a diplomatic way to stonewall her. “You looked like you were in a hurry a minute ago.”

“I am. I have a plane to catch—damn, I hate this. She says she’s fine. You know Carine. She’s resilient, but she’s also proud and stubborn, sensitive about being sensitive. Ty, I swear to you, if you do anything, and I mean anything, to make matters worse for her, I will find you and inject you with something that’ll sting parts that you don’t want stinging. Do I make myself clear?”

He leaned back in his seat. “You bet, Doc.”

She hissed again, disgusted with him. “The jackass fairy must have visited you every night when you were a kid,” she snapped. “Some days I don’t know how you stand yourself.”

“I’m a disciplined military man.”

She straightened, glancing back at her sister’s apartment. No foldout turkeys. No Pilgrim hats. Carine’s life here seemed temporary, something she was trying on for size. An escape. When Antonia turned back to him, Ty thought she looked strained and worried. “Promise me,” she said seriously, in an exhausted near whisper. “You’ll be good?”

“Relax, Antonia.” He smiled at her. “I’ll be very good.”

“You’re not going in there tonight, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’ll give her some time. Besides, I hate barf.”

“Yeah, right, with all you’ve seen in your career?” She started to say something, then just heaved a long sigh. “I’m trusting you.”

It was progress, Ty thought. A Winter hadn’t trusted him in months.

Antonia climbed into a taxi that had been idling farther down the street, and Ty watched it negotiate the crooked street, the oversize cars parked in too-small spaces, the potholes, the kids on skateboards.

He’d never had a thing for Antonia. It was always Carine.

Always and forever.




Four


Val Carrera learned about Louis Sanborn’s murder when she flipped through the Washington Post over her morning coffee, and it pissed her off. A man was dead, and her husband hadn’t bothered to tell her he was involved. He was in Boston. It wasn’t like he was on a secret military mission. He could have called her.

But here she was, once again, on a need-to-know basis, with Manny Carrera deciding what she needed to know and her having to live with it.

Bastard.

The details in the article were sketchy. It said photographer Carine Winter found the body when she got back from her lunch break. It said the Rancourts had hired Manny to analyze their personal security needs and make recommendations, and, most important, to train them and their employees—of which Louis Sanborn was one—in the basics of emergency medicine and survival in various types of environments and conditions. After their scare in the White Mountains last fall, the Rancourts said, they wanted to be more self-reliant.

“What a crock,” Val muttered over her paper. “Damn phonies.”

She hadn’t liked the Rancourts since Manny had pulled them off Cold Ridge on a weekend he was supposed to be resting, having a good time. Sterling—who’d name a kid Sterling?—and Jodie Rancourt had donned expensive parkas and boots and trekked up the ridge, never mind that they didn’t know what in hell they were doing. They got a dose of high winds, cold temperatures and slippery rocks and damn near died up there.

“They should be Popsicles,” Val grumbled.

Instead it was Hank Callahan and the PJs to the rescue, although Val was of the opinion that someone else could have done the job. But that wasn’t the way it was with Manny, North or Callahan, not when they were right there and could do something.

Now the Rancourts were returning the favor, helping Manny establish his credentials in their world. And the big dope fell for it. He didn’t see that they were ingratiating themselves—he didn’t see that he should have stayed in the air force, teaching a new generation of young men how to be pararescuemen.

But Manny hadn’t listened to her in months, and, depending on her mood, Val didn’t blame him.

She sank back in her chair at her small, round table in what passed for an eating area. The kitchen wasn’t much bigger than a closet, and the bedroom was just big enough for a double bed and a bureau. She hadn’t slept that close to Manny in years. Fortunately, she was a petite woman herself—black-haired, brown-eyed and, at thirty-eight, still with a good future ahead of her. If she stopped screwing up her life.

The living room was kind of cute—it had a large paned window shaded by a gorgeous oak tree, its leaves a rich burgundy color now that it was November. A one-bedroom apartment on a noisy street in Arlington was the best she and Manny could find—and afford—on short notice. At least it was clean and bug-free. If he made a go of his business and they decided to stay in the Washington area, they’d start looking for a house.

Their son was doing well, and she was off antidepressants.

Remember your priorities, she told herself.

She folded up the paper and called Manny on his cell phone, getting his voice mail. “Hi, it’s me. I heard about what happened. Sounds hideous. Call me when you can and let me know you’re all right.”

There. That was nice. She hadn’t yelled anything about being his wife and having a goddamned right to know. For all she knew, he could be in jail.

She doubted he’d call back. He’d given her six months to get her shit together. He’d stick it out with her until then. If she stayed on her current track, he was gone. That was five months ago, and she was doing better. Manny was the same. He was a bossy, stubborn SOB and refused to recognize his own stress reaction to the utterly crappy time they’d had of it lately, but Val couldn’t control what he did—she’d finally figured that one out after months in psychotherapy. Twenty years of sleeping with him hadn’t quite done it.

But Manny wasn’t responsible for the allergies and asthma that had come so close—so very close—to taking their son’s life. Neither was she, but that had taken more months of therapy to sort out, because she’d wanted someone to blame. Otherwise—why? What was the point of a thirteen-year-old boy almost dying from eating a damn peanut? Coughing and choking just trying to breathe?

She didn’t want her son having to struggle for the rest of his life with a chronic illness. She wanted her son to have a chance to be a PJ like his dad if that was what he chose.

She wanted the Manny Carrera she’d married back—smart, funny, sexy, self-aware.

And she wanted herself back, the tough Val, the Val who didn’t take shit from anyone.

But Manny was struggling, although he wouldn’t admit it, and she was struggling, and Eric would never be a PJ, his choices limited by asthma and allergies so severe he had to wear a Medic Alert bracelet and carry an inhaler and a dose of epinephrine wherever he went. He was on daily doses of four different medications. Even with the promise of new treatments and desensitization shots, he’d never be accepted into PJ indoc—it just wasn’t going to happen.

None of it was anyone’s fault. It just was.

And Eric was doing fine, with a long, good life ahead of him. He would say to her—“Mom, Dad could never be a ballet dancer or a calculus teacher. That’s okay, right? Then it’s okay that I can’t be a PJ.”

Val debated calling him at his prep school in Cold Ridge, but decided Manny should be the one to talk to their son about whatever had gone on in Boston. Whatever was still going on. It wasn’t easy having Eric away at school, but it was what he wanted—and, after weeks fighting it, she could see it was what he needed at least right now. Between a scholarship and scraping together what they had, she and Manny were managing the tuition. Just managing.

She’d been such a trooper through those early days of diagnosis and treatment. Supermom. She’d done it all. Manny’s work was demanding, his paycheck not optional. When Eric went into anaphylactic shock the first time, last spring, Manny’s paramedic skills had saved his life. But he wasn’t around for all the late-night asthma attacks, the trips to the emergency room, the ups and downs as Eric’s illness got sorted out and brought under control. Val quit her job as a bookstore manager and devoted herself one-hundred percent to restoring her son’s health.

But even when Eric was on his feet, she didn’t back off and return to her job at the bookstore near the base where Manny was stationed. She became a total nutcase, a control freak, suffocating Eric—suffocating herself. And Manny. He was caught in the cross fire.

Not that he’d done anything to help the situation. He was oblivious, content to let her handle all the details, the doctors, Eric’s volatile emotions—do it all, until it started affecting him.

Last fall in Cold Ridge hadn’t helped matters. Manny had put everything on the line to sneak around in the woods after Carine Winter was shot at, then traipsed after a couple of rich people in trouble—Val knew he was just doing what he did, but what about her? Why the hell couldn’t he be there for her?

That was when she’d started on antidepressants. Manny dug in, finally threatening to kick her butt out the door if she didn’t get her act together.

She smiled ruefully to herself and folded up the newspaper. Well, that was her version of events, anyway.

Manny would say he’d been at his wit’s end with her inability to rebound and had enough to cope with himself. He’d say he understood perfectly well that depression was an illness—that wasn’t what bugged him. He’d say he’d done the best he could. She supposed it was true—they’d all done their best. Anger, blame, fear and exhaustion weren’t a good mix. On a good day, sparks tended to fly between the two of them. They liked it that way—it worked for them. But they hadn’t had very many good days since their son had nearly died.

Now the ass had retired and moved her to Washington, D.C., so he could play around with rich guys like Sterling Rancourt, and what did he get for his trouble? A dead guy at his feet, the police on his case.

Val groaned to herself, heading to the bedroom to get dressed. “No wonder Eric wanted to go to school in New Hampshire. Get away from his parents.”

Ten minutes later, she was standing on the sidewalk in front of her building as Hank Callahan pulled up. She jumped into his pricey rented car and grinned at him. “What, no police escort? I expected something a little fancier now that you’re a senator.”

“Senator-elect,” he corrected. He was in a subdued gray suit with a pale blue tie, as handsome as ever. “Thanks for getting up early to join us. Antonia’ll meet us at the restaurant.”

“Are you sure you want to hire me, Major Callahan?”

He smiled. “Just Hank is fine, Val. When did you ever stand on ceremony?”

“Senators scare me even more than majors do. All that pomp and circumstance.”

“You’ve never been intimidated by anyone or anything.”

She tried to smile but couldn’t. “I should have been an astronaut like my mother wanted.” Both her parents had worked for NASA; they were retired now in Houston. “I got to pick what I wanted to be. I’m lucky that way. Hank—I don’t know. I’ve worked in bookstores for the last ten years. For most of the past year, I’ve been a nutcase.”

“I haven’t changed my mind. Neither has Antonia. The job’s still yours, if you want it.”

Joining the staff of a United States senator—Val loved the idea, although maybe not as much as having her own bookstore. “I didn’t vote for you. I’m not a Massachusetts resident. I didn’t even know the Callahans were a hot-shit Massachusetts family until your wedding last month.”

Hank pulled out onto the street, and two stoplights later, Val realized he wasn’t going to mention Manny’s situation. He was too polite. She’d have to do it. “Hank, you know about Carine and Manny, don’t you? What happened yesterday at the Rancourts’ house in Boston? And Antonia? She knows, right?”

He nodded but kept his gaze pinned on the road. “Antonia almost stayed in Boston last night. She stopped by to see Carine. I gather she’s in rough shape.”

Val winced. “I can imagine.”

“Have you talked to Manny?”

“Are you kidding? I had to read about his goings-on in the morning paper. Do you know anything about this Louis Sanborn, the man who was killed?”

“Just what you know from the paper.”

“I don’t understand why the Rancourts hired Manny if they already had this guy Sanborn and the other guy, the one who hired him—”

“Gary Turner,” Hank supplied.

“Right. So, what, are the Rancourts paranoid? Are they afraid of something? I don’t get it. Why do they need Manny to teach them how to tie off a bleeder? Jesus, call 911 like the rest of us.” Val tried to stifle a sudden pang of fear, recognized it as her habitual anxiety reaction to everything these days—fear, foreboding, a palpable sense of gloom. “Hank, do you think something’s going on with the Rancourts that Manny doesn’t know about? What if they’re holding something back?”

Hank shrugged, no sign he was experiencing the same kind of apprehension she was. “I haven’t heard of anything. I think they just like hanging around people who do this kind of work.”

“Manny’s not hired muscle. He—”

“I know, Val. Manny’s one of the best at what he does.”

“He’s demeaning himself, working for those phonies. He should be training new PJs,” she said half under her breath, then sighed. “Just what Manny needed, a couple of wannabe types sucking him in. What the hell’s the matter with him?”

“Val.”

She glanced over at the pilot-turned-senator, the man whose skill and quick thinking as a Pave Hawk pilot had saved more than one life in his air force career. He said he wanted to work toward the common good as a senator. Hank Callahan had steel nerves and a kind heart, but right now, Val could sense his uneasiness. “What is it, Hank?”

“Manny should call you—”

“Manny’s not going to call me. He won’t want me to worry.”

Hank sighed. “Val, the police think he’s their man. You need to prepare yourself if he’s arrested.”

She couldn’t take in his words. “What?”

Hank said nothing.

She absorbed what he’d said, then made herself stop, breathe and think, not let her first physical reaction get out of control, suck her in to the point where she couldn’t function. It was as if all her nerve endings had been rubbed raw by the months of stress over Eric, how close she’d come to losing her son—and now that he was okay, she could let her emotions run wild. She had to work to keep them in bounds.

There was no way Manny had committed murder. He was a lot of things, but not a murderer. If the police thought they had their man, they were wrong.

It was that simple.

She glanced over at Hank. “Are you reading the tea leaves, or do you know?”

“I know.”

He was a senator, and he was a Callahan. He knew everyone, had contacts everywhere. If he said he knew, he knew. “Carine Winter?”

“Innocent bystander.”

“Manny—should he get a lawyer?”

“He has one.”

Val sank back in her seat, her coffee crawling up her throat. Manny Carrera was her husband. He was in Boston facing a possible murder charge. So much had happened, and all she knew, she’d learned from the newspaper and her friend the senator-elect from Massachusetts.

That bastard.

She cleared her throat, summoning her last shreds of dignity. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Val—”

“Manny’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. If he needs me, he’ll be in touch.” She stared out her window and saw that they were on one of the prettier streets of Arlington now, the last of the autumn leaves glowing yellow in the morning sun. “Let’s go see your beautiful bride and have breakfast. I’m starving.”




Five


Carine tried sleeping late, but that didn’t work, and she finally got up and made herself a bowl of instant oatmeal that tasted more like instant slime. She downed a few spoonfuls, then drank a mug of heavily sugared tea while she pulled on her running clothes. When she didn’t pass out doing her warm-up routine, she decided she might be good for her run.

She did a quarter mile of her one-and-a-half-mile route before she collapsed against a lamppost, kicking it with her heel in disgust. A quarter mile? Pathetic. She was determined to do one-and-a-half miles in under ten minutes and thirty seconds. It wasn’t the distance that got to her—she could run ten miles—it was the time, the speed. But running a mile and a half in ten-and-a-half minutes or less was one of the fitness requirements for the PJ Physical Abilities and Stamina Test, which, if passed, led to a shot at indoctrination. She’d pulled the PAST off the Internet.

Of course, she was a woman, and women didn’t get to be pararescuemen. But she didn’t want to be a PJ—she just wanted to pass the initial fitness test. It was the challenge that drove her. The test included the run, plus swimming twenty-five meters underwater on one breath—she’d damn near drowned the first time she tried that one. Then there was swimming one thousand meters in twenty-six minutes…doing eight chin-ups in a minute…fifty sit-ups in two minutes…fifty push-ups in two minutes…fifty flutter kicks in two minutes. Technically, she was supposed to do the exercises one after another, all within three hours, but she had to cut herself some slack. She was thirty-three, not twenty.

Normally, it was the swimming that killed her. And she hated flutter kicks. Who’d invented flutter kicks? They were torture. But this morning, after yesterday’s shock, she suspected everything on the list would do her in.

She decided to be satisfied she’d been able to keep down her oatmeal.

She trudged back to her apartment, pausing to do a few calf stretches on her porch before heading inside to shower and change clothes. She made short work of it—jeans, sweater, barn coat, ankle boots, camera bag. She doubted she’d be taking any pictures today, but she wanted to go back to the Rancourt house. Provided the police no longer had it marked off as a crime scene, she thought it might help her to see the library again, although it wouldn’t, she knew, erase the memory of Louis. After the incident last fall, she’d returned to the boulder on the hillside and touched the places where the bullets had hit. Real bullets. No wonder she’d been scared. Going back had helped her incorporate what had happened into her experience, accept the reality of it and find a place for it in her memories so it didn’t float around, popping up unexpectedly, inappropriately.

But she’d had Ty with her that day.

She’d parked her car, an ancient Subaru Outback sedan, down the street. She’d gone to the trouble of changing her plates from New Hampshire to Massachusetts and getting a new license, just so she could get a Cambridge resident’s sticker—otherwise, parking was a nightmare. But she didn’t like driving into Boston and took public transportation whenever she could, picking up the Red Line in Central Square, which was a fifteen-minute walk from her apartment. It could be her exercise for the day.

She stopped at a bakery for a cranberry scone and more tea. Her mind was racing with questions and images, but she pushed them back and tried to focus on her scone, her tea, the brisk morning and the other people on the streets. Kids, workers, bag ladies, students. She passed a nursery school class of three-and four-year-olds hanging on to a rope to keep them together, their young teacher skipping along in front of them like the Pied Piper. The kids were laughing, making Carine smile.

She got a seat on a subway car and shut her eyes briefly, letting the rhythms of the rapid-transit line soothe her as the train sped over the Charles River, then back underground. She got off at the Charles Street stop and walked, peeking in the shop windows on the pretty street at the base of Beacon Hill, giving a wistful glance at the corn stalks and pumpkins in front of an upscale flower shop. They reminded her of home.

When she turned down Beacon Street and her cell phone rang, she almost didn’t answer it, then decided if it was Gus and she ignored him, she risked having him send in the National Guard. She hit the receive button and made herself smile, hoping that’d take any lingering strain out of her voice when she said hello.

Gus grunted. “Where are you?”

“Just past the corner of Beacon and Charles.”

“Boston?”

“That’s right,” she said. “What’s up, Gus? How’s the weather in Cold Ridge?”

“Gray. Why aren’t you home with your feet up?”

“I’m on my way to the Rancourt house. I want to see—”

“Carine, for chrissake, they can’t possibly need you today. Why don’t you drive up here for the weekend? Or jump on the train and go visit your brother or your sister for a couple days. They’d love to have you.”

“I’m fine, Gus. I’ve been thinking about it, and I just need to go back there.”

“For what, closure? Give me a break.” But he sighed, and Carine could almost see him in his rustic village shop, amid his canoes and kayaks, his snowshoes and cross-country skis, his trail maps and compasses and high-end hiking clothes and equipment. “The police haven’t arrested anyone for this guy’s murder. You know what that means, don’t you? It means whoever did it is still on the streets.”

“I’ll be careful. Besides, the police and reporters are still bound to be there—and if not them, the Rancourts, their security chief—it’ll be okay.”

“You thought it’d be okay yesterday before you walked into the library, didn’t you?”

“Gus—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Nothing I can do. But I don’t have to like it.”

She heard something in his voice and slowed her pace. “Gus? What?”

“Nothing. Take care of yourself. You even think something’s wrong, you call the police, okay?”

“Believe me, I will.”

She clicked off, feeling vaguely uneasy. Gus was holding back on her. It wasn’t like him. Normally he was a straight shooter. He had warned her about getting mixed up with Tyler North, when it was obvious their long tolerance for each other had sparked into something else. Her uncle said his piece, then shut up about it. When Ty dumped her a week before the wedding, Gus’d had the moderate grace not to actually say the words “I told you so.” But he didn’t need to—he had told her so, in no uncertain terms.

What wasn’t he telling her now?

When she reached the stately mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, Carine could feel her scone and tea churning in her stomach. The police cars and yellow crime-scene tape were gone, and she didn’t see any obvious sign of reporters. She mounted the steps and noticed the yellow mums were gone, too.

Sterling Rancourt opened the front door before she knocked. He was a tall, silver-haired man in his early fifties, and even the day after a man was murdered on his property, he radiated wealth and confidence. He was raised on the South Shore, where he and his wife owned their main home, and had gone to Dartmouth and Wharton, taking over his family’s holdings in business and real estate twenty years ago. He was dressed casually and looked only slightly tired, perhaps a little pale—and awkward at seeing her. Carine thought she understood. He’d tried to do her a good deed by hiring her to photograph his house renovations, and she’d ended up discovering a dead body.

She mumbled a good morning, feeling somewhat awkward herself.

“How are you doing, Carine?” he asked. “Yesterday was a nightmare for all of us, but for you, especially.”

“I’m doing okay, thanks.” Suddenly she wondered if she should have come at all. “I guess I didn’t know what to do with myself this morning.”

He acknowledged her words with a small nod. “I expect we all feel that way. We won’t get back to work here until next week at the earliest. Why don’t you take a few days off? Go for walks, visit museums, take pictures of pumpkins—anything to get your mind off what happened yesterday.”

Carine leaned against the wrought-iron rail. He hadn’t invited her in, but she thought it would seem ghoulish and intrusive to ask outright if she could see the library, even if it was the reason she was here. “That’s probably a good idea. I thought—look at me. I brought my digital camera. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s all right. We’re all struggling today. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here myself. You’re a photographer. Having your camera must help you feel like it’s a normal day.”

“Louis—his family—”

“Everything’s being handled, Carine.”

She suddenly felt nosy, as if she’d overstepped her bounds. “Have you talked to Manny Carrera? Do you know where he is?”

“Carine—perhaps it’s best if you go home.” Sterling’s voice was gentle, concerned, but there was no mistaking that he wanted to be rid of her. “The police know how to get in touch with you if they want to speak with you again, don’t they?”

“Of course—”

Gary Turner, Sterling’s security chief, appeared in the doorway next to his boss. He nodded at her. “Good morning, Carine,” he said politely. “It’s nice to see you, as always. The two lead detectives will be back later this morning. I’ll tell them you stopped by.”

Dismissed, Carine thought, but without rancor. Sterling was just as on edge as she was, neither of them accustomed to dealing with this sort of emergency. But Gary Turner radiated calm and competence, a steady efficiency, that she found reassuring. He was a strange guy. The Rancourts hired him in the spring, and she’d met him in Cold Ridge a few times before she went to work for them herself. She didn’t understand exactly what he did, or what Manny Carrera was supposed to be doing, for that matter.

She was aware of Turner studying her, an unsettling experience, not just because he was so focused—he looked as if he’d lived most of his life underwater, or maybe in an attic. He had close-cropped, very thin white hair. He might have been in his eighties instead of, at most, his forties. His skin was an odd-looking pinkish-white, its paleness exaggerated by his habitual all-black attire. He had no eyebrows to speak of, and his eyes were a watery, almost colorless gray. He was missing his middle and ring fingers on his left hand. Carine knew he carried a concealed nine-millimeter pistol and assumed he could fire it, but she’d never asked.

“How are you doing?” Turner asked softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you yesterday.”

“You were busy, and I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking. Look, I’m sure you both have a lot to do. I won’t keep you—”

Turner stepped out onto the stoop with her. “You’ve experienced a trauma. Finding Louis yesterday was a physical and mental shock, a blow on multiple levels to your well-being. Perhaps you’d like for me to arrange for you to talk to someone?”

She shook her head politely. “There’s no need to go to any trouble. I can always ask my sister for a recommendation, if it comes to it.”

“Give yourself some time. It’ll be hard for a while, but if after a few weeks you experience flashbacks, nightmares, sleeplessness, feelings of panic or emotional numbness—then don’t wait, okay? Go see someone.”

“I will. Manny Carrera—I’m worried about him—”

“That’s understandable,” Turner said mildly, then glanced back at Rancourt, who seemed paralyzed in the doorway. “I’ll walk with Carine a minute.”

“Of course. I’ll see you back here later.” Rancourt rallied, taking a breath. “Carine? If there’s anything Jodie and I can do, please don’t hesitate to let us know. I mean that. I’m so very sorry it had to be you yesterday.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m just sorry about Louis.”

“The media—” Sterling paused and leaned forward to glance down the street, as if he expected someone to pop up out of nowhere. “I’d like you not to speak to any reporters. It’s quiet at the moment, but they’ll be back. Be polite, but be firm.”

“Not a problem. The last thing I want to do is talk to a reporter.”

He withdrew without further comment, the heavy door shutting with a loud thud behind him.

Gary Turner walked down to the sidewalk without a word, and Carine followed him, her knees steadier, her stomach still rebelling. “I shouldn’t have come,” she blurted. “I have no business being here. There’s nothing for me to do, and you and the Rancourts must have your plates full.”

“You thought it would help you to revisit the scene,” Turner said.

“I suppose I did.” They crossed Commonwealth to the mall, where a half-dozen pigeons had gathered on dried, fallen leaves. There was no toddler today. Carine felt none of yesterday’s sense of peace with her life in Boston. “I’m not sure I really know what I was thinking.”

“You’re fighting for some sense of normalcy.” Turner spoke with assurance, as if he knew, then fastened his colorless eyes on her. “Did you drive?”

“I took the T to Charles Street and walked.”

“Walking’s good. Keep it up. And eat right. Don’t overdo anything. It’s good to try to follow your normal routines as much as possible, even if you’re not working.” He smiled at her, seeming to want to help her relax. “Fortunately, your work lends itself to an erratic schedule—you’re used to switching from one job to another. It’s not like you’ve been getting up every day for the seven-to-three shift at the factory and suddenly there’s no factory.”

“That’s true. I appreciate the advice, but please don’t worry about me.”

He paused, folding his hands behind his back as he walked smoothly, steadily. “But people do worry about you, Carine,” he said finally. “I expect they can’t help it, and you might benefit from their attention. Don’t try to control what other people are feeling. Right now, just focus on what you need. The rest of us will manage.”

“Mr. Turner—”

“Gary.” He laughed, shaking his head. “You call Sterling Rancourt by his first name, but me—”

She tried to return his laugh. “I think it’s because you carry a gun.”

“Ah. Well, for you, Carine, I’d take it off, if it would make you feel more at ease.”

“That’s not necessary.” She picked up her pace, feeling a fresh surge of awkwardness. She never knew what to say to him. She changed the subject. “I’ve known Manny Carrera for a long time. Do the police suspect him of being involved in Louis’s death? Because it’s not possible—”

“The police don’t tell me what they think. One step at a time, Carine. Keep your focus on the here and now. Don’t think back, don’t think ahead. It’s the best advice I can give you. Mr. Carrera is perfectly capable of taking care of himself.” Turner stood back a moment, then frowned at her in a way she found faintly patronizing. “You aren’t thinking of playing amateur detective, are you?”

“No! It’s just that Manny’s a friend. Do you know where he’s staying?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” There was no hint of condemnation in Turner’s tone. “Take yourself out to lunch, Carine. Treat yourself to dessert. Browse the galleries on Newbury Street. Do you have a friend who can join you?”

“Most of my friends are working, but—”

“Your sister?”

“She’s in Washington. She’d come if I called her.”

He looked at her. “But you won’t. You’re a strong woman, Carine. Stronger, I think, than people often realize at first.”

Hey, Ms. Photographer.

Poor Louis. Dead. She still could see the blood on his fingers.

Louis Sanborn was not a nice man.

Manny, clear-eyed and uncompromising. What did he know about Louis?

Carine swallowed hard, pushing back the memories of yesterday. Turner was right—she needed to stay focused on the present. “To be honest, I don’t worry about whether or not people think I’m strong. Louis stopped me on my way back from lunch and asked if I wanted a ride. If—”

“Don’t. No ifs. They’ll drive you crazy.” Turner squeezed her upper arm. “Take it easy on yourself, okay? Go take some pretty pictures. You didn’t do anything wrong yesterday. Remember that.”

She blinked back sudden tears, feeling light-headed, her stomach not so much nauseated as hurting. “Thanks.” Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat, annoyed with herself. “I just need some time, I guess.”

“Newbury Street. Art galleries.” He started across Commonwealth, pausing halfway into the lane of oncoming traffic and shaking his head at her. “You might want to hold off on the dessert. You’re looking a little green.”

She managed a smile. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to get sick on Newbury Street, would it?”

He chuckled. “You’d be banned for life.”



Sterling Rancourt stared into the library, its wood floor still marred by crime-scene chalk and dried blood. The police forensics team had done its work, and a cleaning crew that specialized in ridding all trace of this sort of mess was due in that afternoon. Gary Turner had arranged for it. He’d been incredibly helpful—steady, knowledgeable, even kind.

Gary was in his office in the Rancourt building in Copley Square at the time of the shooting, while Sterling was enduring an interminable business lunch a few blocks over at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Afterward, he’d planned to meet his wife at a designer showroom on Newbury Street, so she could model an evening gown she wanted to wear to a charity ball over the holidays. She liked having his approval. Ten years ago, she’d bought a dress he didn’t like, and he’d been stupid enough to say so—now she insisted on these modeling sessions for anything that cost more than a thousand dollars.

But he’d received the news about Louis at lunch and excused himself, heading straight over to Commonwealth Avenue, calling first Jodie, who was on Newbury Street, then Turner. They all met at the house, where police and reporters were already swarming. Detectives quickly pulled aside Carine Winter, white-faced but functioning, and Manny Carrera, as stalwart as ever. Sterling was unable to speak to either of them alone.

Jodie had remained at their South Shore home this morning. She said she didn’t want to see or speak to anyone unless she had to—as far as she was concerned, if the police wanted to interview her again, they could drive down to Hingham and find her.

She knew nothing, Sterling thought. None of them did. Louis Sanborn had been in their lives for two weeks. That was it.

Manny Carrera couldn’t have killed him. Manny saved lives. He only took a life when he came under enemy fire and had no other choice. Sterling had read up on PJs and their heroic work, although Manny and Tyler North would be the last to call what they did heroic. It wasn’t false humility—Sterling would have recognized it if it were.

He and Jodie owed Manny Carrera their lives. But if the police wanted to waste their time pursuing him, that was their choice. There was nothing Sterling or anyone else could do.

“Mr. Rancourt?”

Gary Turner walked down the hall, his nearly colorless eyes and extremely pale skin disconcerting, off-putting even before anyone had gotten to the point of noticing the missing fingers. But he was quiet and supremely competent, and Sterling knew better than to underestimate him because of his strange appearance. Jodie said she found him fascinating, even sexy in a weird way. He wasn’t ex-military or ex-law enforcement—Sterling suspected he was ex-CIA. Whatever the case, his credentials in private and corporate security had checked out. He hadn’t said a word when Sterling hired Manny Carrera as a consultant. Either he was too self-disciplined to criticize his employer’s decision, or he approved. Sterling hadn’t asked him his opinion.

“Carine’s on her way?”

Turner nodded. “She doesn’t know what to do with herself.”

“A shock reaction. She’ll rally. It just might take a little more time than she wants it to. I’ve met her brother and sister—and her uncle—and they’re all strong, resilient people.”

But he could tell concern over Carine Winter wasn’t why Turner was here. The man shifted slightly, lowering his voice although there was no one within earshot. “There’s been a new development. Tyler North is in town. I just saw his truck on Comm. Ave.”

“Tyler? Interesting.” Sterling didn’t share Turner’s sense of drama over this news. Of course Tyler would be here if was able to. He’d known Carine since childhood and had almost married her in February, and Manny was a friend. They’d gone on missions together. “He must be on leave—he’ll have heard about Manny’s predicament. Word like that travels like wildfire.”

“I don’t think he’s here because of Mr. Carrera. Not directly.”

Sterling nodded, sighing. “Of course. Carine.” He pictured Tyler North, a compact, rugged man, incredibly loyal despite being something of a loner himself. “Well, she won’t like it, but I suppose having him here will be a distraction for her.”

“What do you want me to do?” Turner asked.

“About Tyler?”

Sterling thought a moment. He hated the situation he was in, how out of control it felt. Boston’s best homicide detectives were on the case, but he wasn’t involved—they didn’t answer to him. A man, an employee, had been found murdered in a house he owned. Everything about him and his life was fair game. Yet the murderer was probably a drifter, a petty thief or a drug addict, who’d wandered in after Louis stupidly left the door open and, for reasons that might never be known, decided to shoot him.

The police had no motive, no murder weapon, no suspect in custody. Until they did, Sterling thought, he and Jodie, Gary Turner, Carine Winter, Manny Carrera—none of them would have much room to maneuver.

“Tyler’s a friend,” he told Turner. “Do nothing.”




Six


Boston Public Garden, which dated back to 1859, was one of Carine’s favorite places in the city. Its curving Victorian paths, lawns, gardens, statues, benches and more than six hundred trees were enclosed within arched, wrought-iron fences, making it feel like a retreat, as if she’d stepped back in time.

If only she could step back to yesterday morning, she thought. She could warn Louis not to go back to the Rancourt house alone—delay him, get in the car with him, talk him into watching the pigeons with her.

She crossed the small bridge over the shallow pond where the famed Swan Boats, a century-plus tradition, would cruise during warmer months. They were put away for the season, and now just fallen leaves floated on the water. But she didn’t linger, instead took a walkway over to Tremont Street and the Four Seasons Hotel. When the Rancourts had people in town on business, they tended to put them up at the Four Seasons. Manny Carrera couldn’t afford it on his own. Neither could she, but if she wasn’t paying the tab, she’d stay there. Maybe Manny would, too.

She entered the elegant lobby and wandered over to a seating area that looked across Tremont to the Public Garden, its soft sofas and high-backed chairs occupied by a handful of well-dressed men and women in business attire. Carine felt out of place in her barn coat but didn’t worry about it—she didn’t plan to stay.

She spotted Manny on a love seat in front of a window as he drank coffee from a delicate china cup. He wore a dark suit with a blue tie and motioned for her to join him, shaking his head as she sat on a chair opposite him. “I saw you beating a path across the park. Got a brainstorm I was here?”





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/raznoe-17258277/cold-ridge/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.