Carla Neggers - Cold Pursuit

“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.”

Elijah 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.