Cold Pursuit

by Carla Neggers

  It wasn’t until last week, on a solitary hike up Cameron Mountain, that he’d flat-out decided he didn’t have the full story behind his father’s death in April.

  Just as he was starting to push for answers, Jo had to get herself into trouble in Washington and turn up on the lake.

  Elijah grabbed more logs. He’d switched on the lights in the lower level of his home, but even so, it was a dark night. He pictured Jo at ten, freckle-faced and full of mischief, scrambling up a tall oak on the lakeshore to cut the rope to his tire swing. He’d sailed out over the water. By the time he swam back to shore, she’d lit out. He never did catch up with her.

  He pictured her skinny-dipping in an isolated cove on a chilly fall night at fifteen. He remembered her mortification when he’d stumbled onto her. Then her anger as she’d pelted him with a rock.

  Those turquoise eyes of hers.

  And he pictured her at eighteen, whispering to him in the moonlight. “I love you, Elijah. I’ll love you forever.”

  She’d long since come to her senses.

  He’d been a sucker for Jo Harper for as long as he could remember.

  He took his load of logs to the lean-to he’d built on the front lower level of his house, under the deck, and lined them up side by side. When he’d bought his five hillside acres three years ago, he hadn’t even considered that it didn’t have any lake frontage. He’d expected the adjoining acreage to stay in the family. He’d worked on his place whenever he could get back to Black Falls, clearing the land, building his post-and-beam house. It was nothing fancy, but he was satisfied with the results.

  As he returned to his woodpile, he heard a rustling in the fallen leaves up on the steep, rocky trail from Black Falls Lodge. In another two seconds, Devin Shay burst from the shadows and trees, panting and out of breath. “Hey, Elijah.”

  So his help hadn’t deserted him entirely after all. “You’re late,” Elijah said. “Grab a log. Where’s your girlfriend?”

  “Right behind me. She’s not—We’re not…” Devin shuffled over to the heap of cordwood. “Nora and I are just friends.”

  “It’s dark. Does she have a flashlight?” Devin didn’t, but Nora Asher hadn’t grown up in Black Falls and couldn’t know every rock and root on the lodge trail.

  “There’s nothing in the dark that’s not there in the light.” Devin grabbed a log in each hand. He was lanky and surly—and trouble. “Isn’t that what you always say, Elijah?”

  The kid wasn’t being funny, Elijah decided. He was being a jerk.

  Seven months ago, Devin had found the frozen body of Elijah’s father on the north side of Cameron Mountain. It was three days after he’d disappeared. Rose had been up on the mountain with her search dog. A.J. and his wife, Lauren, were out there. Sean had flown in from southern California. The Vermont State Police search-and-rescue team had launched an official search. But it was a high-school senior who’d located Drew Cameron. The autopsy indicated he’d died of hypothermia.

  He had, literally, collapsed in the snow and gone to sleep.

  Devin seemed chastened when Elijah didn’t respond. “Nora’s right behind me,” he said.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” she called cheerfully, bounding out from the trail. “Don’t be mad, Elijah. I told Devin not to wait for me. Sorry I’m late.”

  Elijah eyed the two of them, both eighteen, both insecure and unreliable. But any similarities ended there. Nora was short and a little overweight, attractive with her dark, curly hair and big smile. She’d had her pick of colleges after graduating from her expensive Washington, D.C., prep school in May, but she’d dropped out of Dartmouth College over in New Hampshire six weeks ago and moved to Black Falls to get a job and experience “real life” for a year. That she was living rent free in a guesthouse on an expensive Vermont country estate owned by family friends didn’t seem to interfere with her concept of “real life.”

  Nora set to work on the wood. “Come on, Devin,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”

  Devin hung back, watching her as if he couldn’t imagine what was so great about stacking wood. He had been in the back of a cruiser a few times, particularly since graduating—barely—in June. Elijah had gotten into plenty of scrapes at that age. Jo’s father, the local police chief, hadn’t cut him any slack, and not just because of Jo, or because Elijah was a Cameron, or because he deserved it. “I’m trying to save you from yourself, son,” Chief Harper would say as he’d slapped on the handcuffs.

  Wes Harper was retired now. The new chief didn’t have the same connections to the town he served. If Devin stepped too far out of line, he’d be up on charges. His weakness seemed to be standing up to bullies, which Elijah could appreciate—but he was also convinced that Devin hadn’t told everything he knew about what had happened on the mountain that spring.

  “Devin,” Nora said, impatient. “Come on.”

  Finally he sighed, glowered at Elijah and got to work.

  Devin stacked the logs quickly and ably, automatically crisscrossing them to keep them from toppling over, but Nora had to think, pause, figure out just how to arrange the logs in her arms, how many she could manage at a time, how to unload them without dropping one on her foot. She was enthusiastic, Elijah saw, but inexperienced. She’d been like that in an all-day winter hiking class A.J. had talked him into teaching at the lodge a week ago—eager, naive and yet also a little snotty.

  Elijah lost patience after fifteen minutes. “Go on. I’ll finish.”

  They didn’t argue with him. He fetched a flashlight off his deck steps and handed it to Devin for the hike back to the lodge. “I can drive you up there if you want.”

  “We prefer to walk,” Nora said before Devin could answer. She brushed bits of bark and sawdust off the sleeves of her expensive jacket. “I love the Vermont night sky. The stars are so bright.”

  Devin shrugged. “I never noticed.” He nodded toward Jo’s cabin through the bare trees. “Is some new Secret Service agent here?”

  Elijah kept his expression neutral. “Jo Harper.”

  Nora looked startled, and Devin grinned, his first show of humor since arriving. “Did she get fired?”

  “The Secret Service equivalent of being sent to her room.”

  “Beth says Jo’s such a good shot now, she can take the eyes out of a crow.”

  “Good to know.”

  “What about you, Elijah? Are you that good a shot?”

  He didn’t answer. Devin was being a jerk again.

  “A lot of people in town think you’re still special ops.”

  “People can think what they want to think.”

  Nora seemed to go a little pale. “I hate war,” she said. “Sorry. I just do.”

  Elijah picked up several good-size pieces of dried bark that had come off some of the logs and would work well as kindling. “Understood.”

  She blushed. “I didn’t mean—I just…” She dropped whatever she meant to say and turned to Devin. “I’m ready if you are.”

  Elijah paid them in cash, and as they returned to the hillside trail, Devin flipped on the flashlight, directing the beam of light at the ground. “See you, Elijah. We’ll get here on time if you ever have any more work for us.”

  After they left, Elijah walked down to the lake in the dark, the ground familiar to him, the clean, cold air welcome after breathing in wood particles. He heard an owl in the woods off to his left, and to his right, he saw a bat against the starlit sky, beelining for Jo’s cabin. He couldn’t resist a smile. Whether the bat went into the cabin or not, he couldn’t tell.

  So many nights in faraway places, he had imagined himself as he was now, on the edge of the lake on a biting fall night. Sometimes Jo would be there with him. Not always, but when she was, he would see her clearly—the sharp angles of her face, the spray of freckles on her cheeks and nose, the spark of her eyes. He would hear her laugh and be soothed by her smile. He hadn’t considered it a vision or a fantasy. Just Jo being with him out here on the lake
.

  He’d often wondered if she ever thought about him and had hoped she didn’t.

  He turned away from the lake. Jo’s cabin was dark now.

  His father had only bought the lakefront property a few years ago, after finally wearing down old Pete Harper, the original owner, an eccentric ninety-year-old cousin of Jo’s grandfather, who had since died.

  Elijah returned to his woodpile. He’d gone out to his father’s grave in his first days back home. Still recuperating in Germany, he’d missed the funeral. As he’d stared at the simple stone marker, he’d understood, at least in his own mind, that whatever had occurred on Cameron Mountain last April still required a reckoning. Answers. Justice, even.

  He knew himself, and he wouldn’t stop until he had a clear picture of everything that had happened in Black Falls that spring.

  His father would expect no less of him.

  But Jo Harper was back in town, and as Elijah reached for another log, he debated which was the bigger problem—that she was as pretty as ever, or that she was a federal agent with a gun and the power of arrest.

  Not that it mattered. Either way, Jo had never been one to break rules.

  Except, of course, with him.

  Three

  Thomas Asher folded the Washington Post and set it to the side of his table with a chuckle of amusement after reading a rip-roaring, tongue-in-cheek op-ed on the Jo Harper incident. It focused on her and the vice president’s beloved, unruly family—the point being, how could anyone expect the Secret Service to keep track of such incorrigible rascals?

  The furor over Jo’s encounter with Charlie Neal should have abated by now, but it went on because politicians and media hounds wanted it to.

  And because there was that video, of course.

  To Thomas—and to most people, he had no doubt—Jo came across as a competent professional who hadn’t lost control but had simply, finally, done what the vice president or his wife should have done a long time ago: take their one and only son by the ear and read him the riot act.

  Thomas settled back in his upholstered chair. The restaurant was on the first floor of an elegant, historic hotel a few blocks from Lafayette Park and the White House. He’d walked from his office where he worked as a political scientist for a respected think tank. Alex Bruni had called late yesterday afternoon to ask Thomas to breakfast. Of course, Alex was late. It was an annoyance, but not a surprise.

  Thomas thought about Jo again. He suspected she was finished in the Secret Service, if only because it prized anonymity and discretion and both had gotten away from her after Charlie Neal’s prank.

  Unfair, perhaps, but he was secretly glad. She was capable of doing more with her life than working for the Secret Service. An elitist position on his part, he supposed, but an honest one. He’d met Jo in February on a long weekend in Vermont with his daughter. The trip was against his better judgment, but Nora, then a high-school senior, had pleaded with him to go. He was still licking his wounds after his wife—his ex-wife—had married Alex, one of Thomas’s closest friends, and Nora was desperate to find a way for them to make peace with each other. She’d wanted beautiful Black Falls, Vermont, to be their common ground. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but Thomas would do anything for his daughter. They’d gone snowshoeing in an apple orchard one morning, and he’d spotted an attractive woman battling her way up an icy, treacherous incline—Jo Harper, as it turned out. He remembered his surprise at discovering she was not only a Black Falls native but a federal agent with an impeccable reputation.

  When he returned to Washington, he’d debated asking Jo out, but she hadn’t shown an interest in a romantic relationship. In the end, he hadn’t risked more rejection.

  Now he realized his hesitation had worked in his favor. In April, when he’d gone back to Black Falls with his daughter, a lovely woman had asked to share his table at a bustling, popular village café. She’d introduced herself as Melanie Kendall and said she was taking a few days to get away from New York and her work as a self-employed interior decorator.

  Thomas’s life hadn’t been the same since. With Melanie, he finally understood how dull and routine his first marriage had become. He wouldn’t have ended it if Carolyn hadn’t made the first move, but now, in retrospect, he could see how tedious their relationship must have become for her, too.

  His waiter had left him a heavy silver pot of strong coffee and a small, chilled silver pitcher of cream—Thomas knew he should request low-fat milk, but he didn’t. Go with the real stuff. He was, after all, meeting the man who’d stolen Carolyn from him, and passing on cream in his coffee struck him as something that Alex would seize upon as a sign of weakness.

  When he’d called yesterday Alex claimed he wanted to discuss Nora, but Thomas couldn’t imagine that Alex really cared that she’d dropped out of Dartmouth and moved to Black Falls to work in a café. The same café, in fact, where Thomas had met Melanie seven months ago.

  He suspected Alex’s motives for inviting him to breakfast weren’t that simple—nothing with Alex ever was.

  And everything, Thomas thought with a fresh surge of annoyance, was always on Alex’s terms. When to meet. Where. What they’d discuss. But not only would Thomas do anything for his daughter, he also had to admit he was curious about what else was on Alex’s mind—something, certainly. He had called instead of e-mailed and insisted on speaking directly to Thomas, refusing to leave a message with his secretary.

  “We need to talk about Nora and Vermont,” Alex had said. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain when I see you.”

  Alex had obviously assumed Thomas would drop everything and show up, which was exactly what he’d done. He’d also kept their meeting to himself, not out of paranoia, he told himself, but habit and discretion.

  And because it was Alex. He had recently ended a stint as the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Speculation about what he’d do next was rampant. Persistent rumors put him in consideration for a very high-level appointment, possibly even Secretary of State. Washington thrived on gossip and scandal, turning the innocent into the sensational. Alex Bruni was born knowing how to play such games; Thomas had never quite learned.

  He opened up another section of the Post, flipped through it, studied the ads, read the commentaries and drank his coffee.

  Ten minutes ticked by. Where the hell was Alex?

  Thomas glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes late. Any lingering amusement over the op-ed on Jo faded. Although he’d cleared his calendar for the entire morning, he was a busy man—as busy in his own way as Alex. But Thomas knew better than to compare himself to Alex, a lesson learned twenty years ago when he and his ambitious, overachieving friend were law students at Yale—long before Alex had taken up with his best friend’s wife.

  In spite of that blinding act of betrayal, Thomas couldn’t hate Alex, and there was no gain to such negativity and strong emotion, anyway. Alexander Bruni was a respected diplomat on everyone in Washington’s short list of “good people to know.”

  And if his longtime friend had any fresh insights into what to do about Nora and her behavior, Thomas was willing to listen. He was convinced the combination of the early northern New England winter and limited funds would nip her sense of romance and adventure about life in Vermont in the bud. Alex and her mother had decided to help Nora out with cash and a car, a source of friction, but Thomas doubted it was what had prompted Alex to arrange this meeting. At least Carolyn, an expert on emerging markets, was in Hong Kong at a conference and wouldn’t be there.

  Thomas’s newspaper moved, startling him, until he realized he’d put it on top of his cell phone, which was set on vibrate. He picked up the phone, flipped it open and saw that he had a text message.

  Melanie.

  Not Nora, of course. His daughter had stopped most communications with him after he had cut off her funds. He hadn’t been harsh—he’d hardly had a chance to say a word before she’d hung up on him. Nora was, technically, an adult. She’d made her
decision to quit college on her own and only informed him, her mother and Alex after she’d already moved to Black Falls and gotten a job.

  Thomas found his way to the text message and smiled as he saw that, indeed, it was from his fiancée.

  Dinner set…c u tonite. Luv u. Mel.

  After two tries, he managed to type in his reply.

  Great. Love you, too.

  He’d never get used to text-message shorthand, but Melanie was young, hip, beautiful and had no trouble whatsoever. She’d never have a YouTube moment like Jo or stick him with a fait accompli like his daughter.

  A shriek jerked him half out of his chair.

  More screams penetrated the quiet of the elegant dining room, and he leaped to his feet, his napkin falling onto the floor as his fellow diners responded in kind.

  “Oh my God!” A woman’s voice, panicked, came from the adjoining lobby. “That car just ran him over! Call 911.”

  “Get the license plate,” a man yelled. “Run…run, damn it!”

  Thomas heard more urgent comments, orders, questions, exclamations. Once he was assured of his own safety—the hotel wasn’t under attack—he grabbed his cell phone and briefcase and joined a dozen or so people rushing from the restaurant to the lobby, where all the commotion was occurring.

  A car accident? A hit-and-run?

  In the glittering lobby, doormen and bystanders scurried, yelling, motioning wildly as they tried to come to terms with some kind of emergency outside on the sidewalk.

  Thomas felt his step falter. He stood next to a polished round table with a massive vase of fresh flowers as its centerpiece and peered through the revolving doors.

  People had gathered in front of the body of a man sprawled on the edge of the busy street. Thomas made out shiny black loafers and dark gray pants, but the man’s upper body was screened by two men crouched at his side, obviously trying to help.

  I need to see his face….