Carla Neggers - Cold Ridge

Eric Carrera shambled down the blacktop walk from the main campus and waved, grinning as he picked up his pace. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like his parents, and small for his age, but the way he walked reminded Carine of his father, although he didn't possess Manny's economy of movement.

"Hey, Uncle Ty, Miss Winter," Eric said cheerfully, "what's up?"

"Your dad asked me to put eyes on you," Ty said.

"Because of what happened? Mom told me. She called a little while ago. She said she wasn't sure if Dad would have a chance to call. You know, because of the police and everything. She wanted me to know what was going on in case I heard it on the news."

"You okay?"

"Yes, sir."

He wore a hooded Dartmouth zip-up sweatshirt and cargo pants, but he looked cold and too thin. He'd joined Manny and Val Carrera at Antonia and Hank's wedding a month ago. Antonia had told Carine that Eric was doing well, managing his asthma and allergies with medication and experience, knowing what triggered attacks, taking action once he felt one coming on-calming himself, using his inhaler. He wore a Medic Alert bracelet and, in addition to his rescue inhaler, carried an EpiPen-a dose of epinephrine-everywhere he went. He could treat himself in an emergency, save his own life. At least now he knew what his deadly allergy triggers were: bee stings, shellfish, peanuts. His allergies to tree pollen and dust mites, although troublesome, were less likely to produce an anaphylactic reaction that could kill him.

But it had been a long road to this point, and it had taken its toll, not only on Eric, but on his parents. Carine had seen that at Hank and Antonia's wedding.

"How's school?" Ty asked.

"It's okay." Eric shrugged with a fourteen-year-old's nonchalance. "I'm playing soccer. I'm not on the varsity team or anything, I just play for fun."

"That's great. This thing with your dad-it'll get figured out."

The boy nodded. "I know. He called you?"

"No. I was in Boston today and talked to him."

"Oh. Well, I have to go. I have a French test tomorrow."

"Sure." Ty cuffed him gently on the shoulder. "You'll call me if you need anything, right? Anytime. I'm in town for a few days at least."

Eric cheered up, looking more energetic. "Yes, sir. Thanks. I heard about the seniors yesterday. What dopes. They don't think they did anything wrong."

"They did a million things wrong, but they were very, very lucky."

"The school warns us. They have a film. It talks about some of the people who died on the ridge. One of them used to teach biology here-"

"That was my mother," Carine said. "She and my father both died on the ridge when I was three. They weren't lucky."

Eric gave her a solemn look. "I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago, but the ridge is just as dangerous now as it was then. Weather reports are more accurate, and good equipment is readily available, but still."

"You have to be take proper precautions," Eric said. "I'd like to climb the ridge sometime."

Ty seemed to like that idea. "Your dad and I can take you up there."

Eric shook his head. "Dad doesn't think I can do anything."

"You think so? Then you'll have to educate him."

"And Mom-Mom worries about me all the time." He sighed heavily, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, most of it in the form of his parents. "She keeps encouraging me to do things, but I know it scares her when I do."

"Does it scare you?" Ty asked.

The boy shrugged. "A little. Sometimes. I do it, anyway. The seniors, those guys you rescued-one of them picks on me. He says I'm skinny, and he calls me Wheezer Weasel. Not to my face, behind my back. I think that's worse. His friends laugh. They don't think I hear them, but I do."

"I guess there'll always be a certain percentage of seniors who pick on underclassmen. They see it as their job." Ty winked at the high school freshman. "Wait'll they get the bill for their rescue."

Eric's face lit up. "No kidding, they'll be so pissed! I can't wait!"

He coughed in his excitement, but there was a spring to his step when he headed back to his dorm. Ty watched him, his jaw tightening in disgust. "Wheezer Weasel. Assholes. I wish I'd known before I rescued them. I could have hung them off a ledge by their heels."

Except he wouldn't have, Carine knew. "The Carreras haven't had an easy time of it this past year. I hope the police come to their senses soon and realize Manny's not their murderer."

"He should call his kid."

Ty tore open his truck door and climbed in. Carine followed, shivering, the temperature falling with the approach of dusk. Once he got the engine started, she turned on the heat, but her shivering had as much to do with fraught nerves as it did with being cold.

"Manny told me he had a motive to kill Louis," she said. "Or at least what could be considered a motive. Do you know what he meant?"

"He's not giving anyone the whole story."

Which didn't answer her question, but Carine didn't push it. If Manny had told Ty more than he'd told her, there wasn't a thing she could do about it except respect their bond of friendship-because she wasn't getting it out of Master Sergeant North.

"I figure he meant that people could perceive that he had a motive to kill him," she said, "not that he actually had one."

Ty made no comment, his hands clenched tightly on the wheel.

Yep, she thought. Manny had told him. She leaned back against the cracked, comfortable seat. How many times had they driven along this road? Countless, even before she'd fallen in love with him. She'd known him all her life, but their romance had been a total whirlwind, catching them both by surprise. She'd tried to chalk it up to the adrenaline of her experience in the woods with the smugglers, the shooters, but that wasn't it. If he hadn't called off their wedding, she'd have married him.

"Just drop me off at my cabin," she said quietly. "Then you can go back to Boston and figure out what's going on with Manny. You know it's driving you crazy."

"We're going to Gus's, not your cabin. He said he'd have a pot of beef stew waiting." Ty shifted gears and made the turn into the village. It was just a few streets tucked into a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by the White Mountains, its Main Street dominated by a white-clapboard, early-nineteenth-century church and a smattering of storefronts, although it wasn't a big tourist town. "It was the only way I was going to get out of town. I had to promise to bring you by."

"For what, inspection?"

"Pretty much."

Carine groaned, although this development was not unexpected. She and her sister and brother might all be in their thirties, but their uncle, just fifty himself, liked to see them after a crisis, make sure they were intact. They indulged him, not just because they loved him and life was easier if they complied, but because they understood-he'd survived combat in Vietnam only to come home and lose his only brother and sister-in-law on Cold Ridge. If he sometimes was overprotective, he was allowed. But he'd never let his anxiety spill over into irrationally stopping his nieces and nephew from pursuing their interests, taking risks.

"Al lright," Carine said. "I'm not going to argue. Drop me off at Gus's. Then you can head back to Boston."

"Not tonight. I need some sleep. Rescuing three kids off a mountain, driving hither and yon, sleeping in my truck-" He glanced at her. "Making love to you. I'm beat."

"You don't get tired, North, and I wouldn't call what we did making love. We-" She grimaced, remembering. "Well, you know what we did."

"Sure do."

"North, I swear-"

"Relax. Gus'll never be able to tell."

Gus lived in the 1919 village house in which his brother and sister-in-law had planned to raise their three children. It was cream stucco with white trim and had a front porch, a small, screened back porch, dormers, bay windows, leaded glass, hardwood floors and a fireplace. Carine used to think he'd sell it once she and her siblings were off on their own, but he didn't. He hung on to it, redoing the kitchen and bathroom, updating the wiring. At the moment, he was wallpapering the downstairs half bath.