Carla Neggers - Cold Pursuit

“I never hated him,” she said quietly.

“I know. I didn’t, either.”

“He loved you, Elijah. He knew you butted heads with him as much as you did because you were both so much alike. And he didn’t drive us apart. If we’d been meant to be together, we’d have found a way. We were kids. We weren’t ready for what we thought we wanted.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “I still broke your heart, sweet pea.”

He didn’t wait for her response-not that she could have mustered one-and crossed the dark wood floor to the slider. He opened it and walked out onto the deck. “A half-moon tonight,” he said.

Jo joined him in the cold night air. “It’ll still be dark up on the mountain.”

“Maybe one night up there will give Nora her taste of winter camping and get her over the initial shock of her stepfather’s death, and she’ll head back in the morning.” He glanced sideways at her. “Her father asked you to look in on her. That’s it, right?”

“That’s it.”

“You didn’t know Ambassador Bruni well?”

She shook her head.

“And he and Thomas Asher didn’t hate each other?”

“I gather they tried to stay friends or at least get along for Nora’s sake. Thomas was concerned about her even before her stepfather was killed, because she’d dropped out of Dartmouth.”

“If she was afraid, would she go to him?”

Jo leaned against the railing. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because it’s a common-sense, routine question.”

“No.” She paused. “Something’s bothering you.”

“Coincidences,” he said. “Lots of coincidences.”

“You just said-”

“That was about my father thinking he knew I’d be shot. He was in Washington two weeks before he died-two weeks before Thomas Asher and his daughter happen to show up in Black Falls for a visit. Then Nora drops out of college, moves to Black Falls and takes up with a local boy. Now money’s gone missing, and her ambassador stepfather’s dead in a suspicious hit-and-run.” Elijah’s eyes were black in the night air as he faced Jo. “And you turn up.”

“Want to throw the wild turkeys into the mix, too?”

He gave her a sudden, quick smile. “Maybe.” But he gestured toward the deck stairs. “You should leave or I might kiss you again just to get that scowl off your face. You look like you want to arrest someone.”

“Elijah-”

He cut her off. “I need time, Jo,” he said quietly. “The thought of you and my father among the cherry blossoms…” He didn’t finish.

She nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, unless the bogeyman comes in the middle of the night and you need a federal agent.”

“Right, Jo.” The sardonic smile was back. “I’ll scream for help.”

“Because you wouldn’t have any illegal firearms left over from your military career, now, would you?”

“Who says my military career is over?”

“No one around here. You’re the subject of lively rumors.”

“To be expected, I suppose. Make yourself that salad, Jo. I’ll open up a can of green beans to go with my chicken. Dinner another time.”

She got out of there, appreciating the cold air after being around Elijah. Her cabin was freezing. It was barely winterized-the propane heater couldn’t keep up. She sat on the ratty couch and wrapped herself in a fleece throw that a colleague had bought as a thank-you gift, or for self-preservation, in October.

Had someone been through the place?

It wasn’t the sort of call she planned to make to her boss. Gee, Mark, I got suspicious after the turkeys went nuts in the woods…

Truly, she thought, selling the cabins and the land to the Camerons made sense.

But that wasn’t what Drew Cameron necessarily had wanted.

“You’ll do the right thing…I know you will, Jo.”

He’d apologized, with a quiet emotion she’d never seen in him, for driving her and Elijah apart and told her he’d been seeing them out on the lake with the children they would never have.

“Because of me.”

She’d tried to tell him that it wasn’t because of him. Elijah had made his choices, too.

So had she.

The image of her and Elijah and kids on the lake wasn’t one Jo wanted on a cold November night.

She threw off the fleece, jumped up, grabbed her flashlight again and charged back outside, following the footpath and checking the rest of the cabins one by one for an intruder or any sign of one. But she only ran into spiders and heard an owl nearby.

The turkeys had wandered off.

She got a decent cell signal and stood on an exposed pine root and tried her boss again. This time he picked up. “Don’t you have a duty assignment in some back-elbow place I could take?” she asked him.

“You’re in a back-elbow place.”

“What if I told you Ambassador Bruni’s stepdaughter decided to go camping in the mountains after hearing about his death?”

Silence-yet Francona didn’t hang up. Finally, he said, “I thought you were canoeing.”

“Can’t. It’s dark.”

“You and the stepdaughter should go canoeing together. Safer. Let me know if you see any loons.”

And that was enough for Jo. He’d made his point without being direct: If she found out anything useful, that was a good thing.

If she got herself into trouble, she’d swing for it. Alone.

Elijah listened to Grit’s report while the fire crackled in his woodstove and he tried not to think about kissing Jo, because if he thought about it, Grit would figure it out and come up there and shoot him for sheer stupidity. He’d wanted to do things his way and be unencumbered by a federal agent next door, and what had he done? Kissed her. More than once. Grit might know even without being told. He was tuned in to people in a way Elijah had never seen in anyone before. It was almost spooky. It’d gotten worse-sharper, weirder-since the firefight that had taken his leg and Michael Ferrerra, known far and wide as Moose, a legend even among SEALs and Grit’s best friend.

“The police found a car in a public garage a couple of blocks from the scene. It looks to be the one that struck Bruni.” Grit spoke briskly but without emotion. “Police dropped a net around the area once they got the 911 call about the accident-or whatever it was-but the driver slipped through. They’re not saying much. They’ll comb the car for evidence, but I’m guessing they won’t find anything.”

“Witnesses?”

“None yet. You’d think everyone at that hotel shut their eyes just as Bruni got hit.”

Grit had obviously worked on the scenario. “You have friends in the D.C. police department?”

“No.”

“You could make some.”

Grit was silent.

“Grit?”

“I’ve got a reporter I’m talking to. Myrtle Smith. She’s like a hundred and twelve or something, but she knows everything that’s gone on in this town since the Lincoln assassination.”

“Her name’s Myrtle?”

“Yeah. Like crape myrtle. That’s a flowering tree originally from Southeast Asia, but there are dozens of American hybrids. They love the heat.”

“A Southern thing,” Elijah said.

“That’s right. You’re a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee mountain man, Cameron. You wouldn’t know about Southern things.”

Grit was from the Florida Panhandle. He was a mix of Creek Indian and Scots Irish-and eccentric if not crazy. Elijah wasn’t entirely sure if Grit accepted that Moose was dead. Now he had a new friend. But even Grit wouldn’t make up a reporter named Myrtle. “Grit…you’re not serious about the Lincoln assassination, right? Myrtle-she’s one of us?”

“Yeah, yeah.” No irritation. “Myrtle feels guilty because of all the crap she’s written about the military over the past two hundred years. Figuratively. Not literally. Look her up, Elijah.”