Cold Pursuit (23 page)

Finally she said, “There's more, something you're not telling me.” She watched him lift a log from his rustic woodbox. “Elijah, has Charlie Neal called again?”

He set the log upright on the brick hearth in front of the stove. “He has names.”

“Names—” Jo stopped herself. “I can't hear this.”

Elijah ignored her. “Charlie combed the Internet for unsolved homicides that appear to be out-of-the-blue hits with no obvious motive. Two names struck him as being of particular interest. An arson investigator in southern California named Jasper Vanderhorn was killed in a fire in June. In August, a Russian diplomat named Andrei Petrov was poisoned in London.”

Jo gritted her teeth.
Charlie, Charlie.

“Charlie says he has other names pending. The victims aren't connected that he's been able to figure out so far—it's the manner of their deaths that got them on his list.”

“That's not enough to suggest there's an assassination network involved.”

“It's enough for Charlie and my friend in Washington.”

“Is your friend a conspiracy nut?”

Elijah didn't hesitate. “No.”

“Military?” Jo asked.

“SEAL.”

“One of the ones from April?”

He didn't answer, but his expression—a mix of regret, resolve and pain—took the wind out of her. But it didn't last. It was there, almost imperceptible, then gone again.

He opened the lid on the stove again, picked up the log from the hearth and dropped it on the fire.

“Elijah, if you ever want to talk about what happened—”

“I don't.” He turned to her, his eyes the color of midnight now. “Marissa Neal.”

Jo didn't react. “She's in good hands. She's fine.”

“You saved her life.”

“Whatever I did or didn't do was my job. Charlie needs to stay out of this, Elijah. He's smart, but he's still a sixteen-year-old kid. The police won't jump to conclusions about Ambassador Bruni's death. They can't. They'll follow the evidence.”

“I'm not the police.”

The log caught fire, the flames hissing. Jo got to her feet. “You and Charlie and your SEAL friend in D.C. need to back off.”

“And you, Jo? What do you need to do?”

She didn't respond, just started for the sliders.

Not that Elijah had given up. He tossed her a flashlight. “Don't forget your toothbrush.”

She didn't mention there was only one bed in the place. Obviously he already knew. She just switched on the flashlight, went out onto the deck and shivered in the sudden cold.

But it wasn't just the cold.

 

The brisk wind helped clear Jo's head while she walked back to her cabin. She was listening to an owl out across the lake when she saw car headlights down the road, and in another minute, a sedan stopped in front of her cabin.

The headlights went off, and Thomas Asher got out on the driver's side. “Jo,” he said, his voice croaking with emotion as she lowered her flashlight. “It's good to see you. I'm sorry it's not under better circumstances.”

Before Jo had a chance to answer, a pretty, black-haired woman climbed out on the passenger side, walked around the hood of the car and stood next to Thomas. “I'm Melanie,” she said, shivering even as she smiled pleasantly. “I've heard so much about you, Special Agent Harper. It's a pleasure to meet you, finally.”

“Same here,” Jo said automatically. “Thomas, good to see you, although I'm sorry about the circumstances. We can go inside, if you'd like.”

Thomas shook his head. He was wearing just a sweater and looked cold, and clearly distraught. “We can't stay. Lowell and Vivian have dinner waiting. We're staying with them. I just wanted to stop by and thank you for your help. But Nora? There's nothing new?”

“She's apparently spending another night on the mountain.” Jo decided to let Kyle Rigby provide a more detailed update. “We're expecting snow tomorrow.”

“I heard.”

Melanie rubbed her arms. “Gosh, I forgot how dark it is up here without the city lights. Nora's got more guts than I ever did at her age. Even now. I have no desire to camp in this cold. If not for poor Alex's death, we'd probably have never known Nora had decided to do this trip. She might have told us after she got back, but she's such a good kid. She wouldn't want us to worry.”

“I'm reluctant to notify local authorities at this point,” Thomas said. “They have enough to do without launching a search when Nora's technically not really unaccounted for. If we go ahead with a search prematurely—” He broke off, looking pained at the thought. “Nora has her entire future ahead of her. Dropping out of Dartmouth for a year is enough of a hurdle to overcome without causing a scene here.”

“That's why we brought in Kyle,” Melanie said.

Jo kept her expression neutral. “Nora's safety is all anyone cares about.”

Thomas stepped back toward his car. “I'm sure she's fine and won't appreciate all our fretting. She'll think we don't respect her abilities.” He looked out at the dark lake. “Alex's death has us all on edge. It's an awful thing. I just hope…well, I hate to think of her up there alone, grieving.”

Jo could see he was grieving himself.

“Jo—you don't mind if I call you Jo, do you?” Melanie gestured toward the cabin and didn't wait for an answer. “May I use your bathroom?”

“Of course.”

“I can't see. You have a flashlight. Do you mind?”

Thomas smiled indulgently at her, then turned to Jo. “I'll wait out here.”

He walked down to the lake by himself, picking his way through the trees in the dark, while Melanie hurried into the cabin across the weedy yard. Jo debated going down to the lake with Thomas, at least giving him her flashlight, but she followed Melanie instead.

Melanie shut the cabin door quickly behind her. “I wanted to talk to you alone,” she said. “Thomas is so upset about Alex it's clouding his thinking. He can't see what's going on clearly. It's obvious Nora just needs some space after what happened yesterday. She'd been planning this camping trip, and Alex's death got her to pull the trigger on it and go. It gives her a sense of control over her own life.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, but I know her pretty well. I know how she thinks. Alex was very hard on Nora. He didn't mean to be, but she wanted to prove herself to him.”

“A cold-weather camping trip would do it?”

“Yes. Exactly. She wanted to show him and her mother—Thomas, too, I'm sure—that she has the skills and the courage to handle these conditions. When she heard about Alex, I can just see her deciding to do this for him, for herself. It'd be awful now if we interfere and hover over her. It's hard for Thomas to balance worry with the need to let go—to let his daughter make her own mistakes.”

“You're the one who suggested Kyle Rigby,” Jo said.

“Not to escalate the situation, to keep things calm. He's solid—he knows what he's doing. He'll be straight with Thomas. If we're wrong and Nora
is
in trouble for whatever reason—lost, hurt—then Kyle will speak up. He'll put her safety first.”

“Fair enough.”

Melanie slipped back outside without using the bathroom, and she waved to Thomas as he walked up from the lake. “We should come out here in better weather. It's beautiful.”

As he approached their rented car, Jo saw that he looked drawn and tired, and worried about his daughter. He kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for everything, Jo,” he said quietly. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

After they left, Jo went back inside. Her propane heater was sputtering. It'd be another cold night.

She grabbed her toothbrush. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered to herself.

She got halfway back to Elijah's house before she came to her senses and climbed up onto the hill and called Mark Francona instead. “Anything else on the potential witness—the messenger?”

“No.”

“Any way you can find out if Drew Cameron went to see Ambassador Bruni in April? Drew was—”

“Andrew James Cameron. He left you your Vermont property. He died of hypothermia two weeks after you took him for a walk among the cherry blossoms.”

“Sometimes you scare me.”

“Good. And yes, I'll let you know.”

“In the meantime,” she said, “watch out for my friend the airsoft buff. He sees things other people miss. He's the youngest of five, he has a high IQ and has grown up in a savvy political family. His brain's on overdrive all the time. He wants to make amends to me. He sent me flowers—”

“Flowers? You?”

“Yeah. Lilies. I love flowers. He doesn't owe me, but after his little prank, he's focused on me.” And after Marissa's brush with death, Jo realized. Charlie must have been more upset than he'd let on.

She told Francona about Charlie's assassins theory and gave him the names of the alleged victims.

When she finished, her boss blew out a long, pained breath. “How's Vermont? Any snow up there yet? I gave up on downhill skiing, but I could do cross-country, I think. You?”

“Real Vermonters don't ski.”

She hung up. She did ski. She'd just let him get on her nerves, but she'd also delivered her message. It wasn't the job of the Secret Service to run Charlie's life or be his nanny—or his parents—but he had no business digging around on the Internet for unsolved murders.

She found some bath salts the wife of one of her Secret Service friends had left and headed back over to Elijah's place.

“Calm down, Sergeant Cameron,” she told him as she entered his warm, cozy front room. “It's your bathtub I'm after.”

He grinned. “Help yourself.”

E
lijah sat on his favorite chair in front of the fire while Jo was in the tub, probably, he decided, not contemplating her options for the night so much as thinking about assassins. He took her choice of the bathroom just off his bedroom as a sign of where she meant to sleep.

She'd warned him not to peek while she was in the tub. Since she'd come with toothbrush, bath salts and her Sig, Elijah was heeding the warning.

He dialed Grit's number. When Grit answered, Elijah gave him what he had on Melanie Kendall, Kyle Rigby and Thomas Asher.

“Bruni could have been hit by some senator late for a hair appointment,” Grit said.

“What about your reporter friend?”

“She has a personal stake in whatever's going on. Something with her and the Russian, this Andrei Petrov your new friend told you about.” Grit spoke as he always did, without a lot of fanfare or emotion. “But I think Myrtle's one of the good guys.”

“Or?”

“Or she's the one running the thing and she's just playing me. Moose is no help. He likes her.”

Elijah made no comment.

“Whatever Myrtle's agenda is,” Grit said, “she's crusty and knows how to find the right rocks to turn over.”

And Grit would turn them over. He was single-minded, and he needed a mission. “We're not law enforcement,” Elijah said. “We don't have to worry about building a case.”

“Jo Harper? She's a federal agent.”

“I'll handle her.”

“Ah.”

“There's no ‘ah,' Grit.” But there was, and Elijah knew Grit was already onto him.

“If the veep's kid doesn't ruin her career, you could.”

“Not my problem.”

He heard the bathroom door open. In two seconds, Jo was there in an oversize red-plaid flannel nightshirt his grandmother had given him for Christmas one year. He'd stuffed it in the linen closet and forgotten about it.

“Cameron?”

“Jo just got out of the tub.”

“Uh-oh.”

“She looks like a female version of Paul Bunyan.”

“Just your type, mountain man,” Grit said and hung up.

Elijah got to his feet and didn't bother with niceties. “Jo, if I don't make love to you soon—”

“That's what I was thinking in the tub.”

He kissed her softly, then scooped her up as he had so long ago and carried her back to his bedroom. It was cooler in there, away from the woodstove.

She draped her arms over his shoulders. “I can't fall in love with you again,” she whispered, not taking her eyes from him. “Except I've never been out of love with you. Elijah…”

“Shh,” he said, and lowered her onto his bed. “Let's love each other right now.”

His mouth found hers again, and he held her and closed his eyes, pretending for a moment that the past fifteen years hadn't happened and he was nineteen again and loving her, making promises that he'd keep. He skimmed his hands over her slim body, remembering all her curves, the places she liked to be touched.

She went still, then held his face in her hands and lifted his mouth from hers. “Open your eyes, Elijah.”

He did so and smiled. “Jo. Damn. It's worth opening my eyes just to look at you.”

But she wasn't buying it. “We're not teenagers anymore, and you've never been one to go backward.”

“I would if I could. Just not to hurt you.” He kissed her nose, her forehead, her cheeks, wanting nothing more than to love her. “Ms. Secret Agent,” he whispered, trailing more feathery kisses along her jaw as her hands slid down to his upper arms and dug into his flesh. “You're something else.”

“Elijah.”

There was a little catch in her voice that he liked. A tightening of her grip on his arms. He kissed her throat, even as he eased his hands up under her nightshirt along the bare, smooth skin of her thighs. She squirmed beneath him in just the right way.

And he said her name again and again as he had in countless dreams.

How had he let her go?

He felt the quickening of his pulse and hers as he curved his palms up along her hips and stomach to her breasts and caught a nipple between his fingertips. He'd been her first love, remembered her cry of pain and ecstasy as he'd plunged into her, trying to be careful, trying to hold back for fear of really hurting her. But she'd urged him on, tears flowing as she'd promised to love him forever.

A long time ago.

His hands skimmed back down along her sides and over her hips, feeling the last of the airsoft welts. She was strong and fit, and she'd been loved by other men—she'd gone on with her life as he had with his.

He'd left her no other choice.

He felt the tremble in her fingers as she eased them down his arms and over the tops of his hands and held on, raising herself up just a little from the bed. “Elijah. I can't…wait.” Her turquoise eyes held his with an intensity, a fire he'd long thought he'd never see again. “I've been hiking up and down these damn hills for two days. I can't—Can you please take your clothes off? And get this nightshirt off me while you're at it?”

He laughed. “With pleasure.”

“Good, because I…” She gave a sexy little shudder. “I need to conserve my energy.”

“I'll get your nightshirt off first,” he said with a wicked smile.

“I thought you might.”

It was only a matter of whisking the nightshirt over her head and casting it onto the floor. But he couldn't jump right into disrobing himself. He gazed at her, his throat tight with want and emotion and a need that reached right to his soul.

“Jo,” he whispered, kissing her, soaking in the taste and the feel of her. “You're beautiful.”

She slid her arms around his neck and drew him onto her, deepening their kiss, writhing erotically under him. But she wouldn't be distracted. “You're still clothed,” she said, her voice ragged, her body hot and soft.

“So I am.”

He dealt with that problem in seconds, flinging his clothes onto the floor, floor lamps—wherever—he didn't care. When he rejoined her, she was breathless, eyes wide open as she took in the sight of him.

“Your scar,” she said. “Are you okay now? A femoral artery injury is dangerous.”

“It didn't affect anything vital.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Just your blood supply.”

“There was that. But I lived,” he said, pushing back a sudden image of that night. He paused, staring at her, and repeated himself. “I lived.”

He settled himself on top of her, figuring the feel of what mattered would distract her from his scars, and she responded with a small cry of surprise, delight—memory.

“I'm glad you lived,” she said. “Elijah, I don't know what I'd have done if I'd lost you. You've always been out there, indestructible…”

“No one's indestructible.”

“I love you.” She parted her legs, settled down into the soft bed. “I always have.”

“I know.”

“The rest—”

“Shh.”

“Love me now, Elijah. No more waiting.” She lifted herself up and clutched his shoulders. “You won't hurt me.”

“Good,” he said, “because…damn, Jo…”

He entered her, slowly at first, trying to savor the feel of being inside her again, but she fell back and wrapped her thighs around him, and pulled him in hard and fast and deep. He responded, driving himself into the depths of her. She cried out and threw her hands behind her head, giving herself up to her own heat and need. He could see the desire in her eyes, and it fueled him. He didn't relent and let the sweet ache he'd known only with her take him to the edge.

All this time—all these years. There'd only been one Jo.

She clasped his hips and held him inside her, caught her breath as their bodies fused even more tightly together, until finally she wriggled her hips and that was it. He peeled her hands off him and pinned them to her sides as he thrust into her over and over, faster and faster, until he felt her release—and then his own.

When he collapsed next to her, she drew the covers up over them. “The heat here's better than in my cabin, but it's not great.” Her voice was ragged, her body still slick and hot from their lovemaking. “I don't want you to get chilled after you cool off.”

He propped his head up on one arm. “Who says I'll have a chance to cool off?”

She smiled. “There's that,” she said, easing in close to him, lifting his arm over her shoulders. “I hear an owl.”

He kissed her hair. “Maybe it's a son or daughter of the one we heard fifteen years ago.”

“Or a grandchild,” she said, and was quiet for a while before turning to him and touching his right thigh where he'd been shot. “Your father feared for your life, and maybe he had a premonition of the danger you were in. But that's not why he died.”

“Jo…”

“If he built his own cabin on that old cellar hole, he had shelter. Good shelter. Better than trash bags. He could have survived the storm.” She eased her fingertips gently along Elijah's scars, as if trying to imagine the pain, the blood, how close he'd come to death. “He didn't go up the mountain with a storm on the way to die. He knew what he was doing.”

Elijah didn't speak.

“Someone killed him, Elijah.”

He slid his arms around her and drew her to him. “I know.”