Carla Neggers - Cold Pursuit

“Not with someone you met in Black Falls, Vermont.”

She ignored him. “Thomas could have seen me this morning,” she said.

Kyle shook his head. “No, he couldn’t have, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Your disguise was good. Your timing was perfect. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”

“Your plan worked,” Melanie said, hoping flattery would distract him from how annoyed he was about her relationship with Thomas.

“Yes, it did.”

There was no pride, no sense of accomplishment, where there should have been. She never could have pulled off such a hit by herself-she wasn’t the planner Kyle was. Calculating the details of running a prominent ambassador over in broad daylight was where his limited imagination kicked into action and combined with his logical, lethal mind. He’d left nothing to chance. The hit-and-run death of Alex Bruni was pure choreography.

But thanks to her relationship with Thomas, she’d known Bruni would be at the hotel that morning, thus making the final choice of the time and place to kill him that much simpler.

“There was a messenger,” she said in a near whisper. “A young woman on a bicycle-I almost ran her over, too.”

“She didn’t see anything that can identify either of us.”

He was so calm. So certain, so reassuring. Melanie felt a twitch of desire and knew it would become more urgent-it always did after a successful mission. Very soon the twitch would become an ache that would take over her body, her mind, every fiber of her being. She wouldn’t be able to think about anything else until it was satisfied.

“Kyle…”

He was like a rock. “Meet me at my hotel in an hour. Room 257.”

She glanced around the restaurant. “If we’re seen together-”

“I’m one of your decorating clients. Nothing more.”

Melanie hesitated. “Kyle…why did we kill Alex Bruni?”

“He had enemies. One of them wanted him dead enough to pay to make it happen.”

The equation was always so simple and direct for him. “I don’t like it that Bruni vacationed in Black Falls. He knew Drew Cameron. I don’t understand why we killed him, either. Who wanted Bruni dead? Who hired us? It wasn’t his wife-his ex-wife?” Or Thomas. It couldn’t have been Thomas.

“You know as much as I do.”

Melanie doubted that. Kyle dealt with their employers. Their transactions were conducted entirely over the Internet-no names, no faces. Just codes and passwords. He claimed even he didn’t know who paid them to kill people, who served as the middleman between them and the enemies of their targets. She executed her part of Kyle’s plan and asked no questions. She was paid well and accepted that nothing short of perfection was expected of her.

But soon none of that would be of any concern to her. “I haven’t changed my mind,” she said. “I’m still retiring.”

“Sure.”

“I’m willing to give up the thrills for what Thomas can offer me.”

“No, you’re not.”

His sarcasm-his certainty-bothered her. “You don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to marry a man like Thomas.”

“One with a trust fund.”

“You don’t understand. I’m talking about my destiny.”

“Doesn’t matter right now, does it?”

He leaned toward her, and his eyes narrowed into slits, making him look more like the coldhearted killer he was. Part of Melanie expected the handful of well-dressed Washington elites at some of the other tables to notice and quietly exit the restaurant. But no one paid any attention to her or to Kyle.

“We still have work to do,” he said.

Her stomach lurched. She’d hoped he’d just used the threat as leverage to get her to focus on the Bruni hit, but his mind didn’t work that way. From the moment they’d met in the middle of the murder of her client, Melanie had been drawn to his straightforward simplicity.

She nodded, picked up her coffee, her hands steady now. She’d pushed back any irritation-any desire, even, at least for the moment. “Yes. I know.”

Nora Asher.

Melanie’s future stepdaughter was a spoiled, headstrong college dropout who was asking too many questions-questions that cut too close to the truth for Kyle’s comfort. Or hers. Nora hadn’t put together what she’d gathered on Melanie into a coherent whole that posed a danger to her or to Kyle-or their employers-but it could happen. With Bruni’s death, Nora could become emboldened, frightened, perhaps more determined.

And that was a problem.

“Nora’s just jealous of me. Thomas unconsciously looked to her for reassurance after Carolyn left him for Alex. Nora got used to being needed. There’s no reason to think she’s discovered anything that would get us in trouble.”

“She’s a time bomb.”

Melanie said nothing.

“Jo Harper is in Black Falls,” Kyle said.

“She’s from there.”

“Perfect cover. Send the hometown girl back to Vermont in damage-control mode and let her nose around.” He got to his feet. “One hour.” He eyed Melanie without a hint of a smile. “Enjoy your oatmeal.”

The desire returned stronger than that first tingle. Melanie trembled, hot now. Her waiter set a bowl of steaming, steel-cut oatmeal and a smaller bowl of fat, perfect blueberries and raspberries in front of her.

She smiled, thanked him, even as she thought she would melt.

“Your friend’s not staying?” he asked.

“No. Just leave the muffin, anyway.”

He set the plate on the table and retreated.

Melanie smelled the muffin’s sweetness, felt the steam from it.

One hour.

Using her fingers, she lifted a plump blueberry to her lips. She wouldn’t let anyone or anything spoil her life with Thomas. Not his daughter-and not Kyle Rigby.

He walked past the restaurant window without making eye contact with her.

“Don’t get in my way,” Melanie whispered.

It was as if her partner in killing heard her through the window. He paused suddenly, took a half step back and smirked at her.

She pretended not to see him and ate the blueberry.

Jo unzipped her fleece jacket as she entered the breakfast-lunch café that her sister owned with two of her friends. They called it Three Sisters, in honor of their tight friendship. It was located across from the village green on the first floor of a graceful 1835 brick house owned by Sean Cameron, arguably the most charming of the Cameron siblings. Not, Jo thought, that it took that much to be more charming than A.J. or Elijah-or even Rose. And since Sean was a multimillionaire developer in southern California these days, Jo suspected he was as exacting in his own way as his siblings, just with smoother edges.

The café wasn’t crowded. It was late for breakfast and early for lunch. Jo was meeting her sister there after their five-mile run that morning, Beth griping every inch of the way. They’d gone along the lake road past Elijah’s house, then doubled back out to the main road. Jo had enjoyed the run. Her airsoft welts had calmed down and didn’t ache as much, and she and Beth had encountered deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks, crows, chickadees and one woodpecker.

She nodded to Scott Thorne, a state trooper Beth was dating, as he added cream to his coffee-to-go, but he pretended not to see her as he headed for a riverside table on the back wall. So she called to him. “Hey, Scott.”

He sighed. “Jo.”

Her sister rolled her eyes as she slipped on an apron in dark evergreen-the café’s signature color-behind the glass case. She was a paramedic as well as co-owner of the café, two years younger and slightly taller than Jo, and the copper highlights in her dark hair were natural. “Don’t pick on Scott,” she said cheerfully. “What’s your pleasure, Agent Harper?”