Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“God’s country,” his father would say. There wasn’t much of this kind of land left.

As Kimberly navigated, they turned off the interstate for the rolling lanes of U.S. 15, leading to U.S. 33. They swept by vast fields, each dotted by a single redbrick ranch house with a fresh-painted white porch. They passed dairy farms, horse stables, vineyards, and agricultural spreads.

Outside the car, everything took on a green hue, a rolling patchwork of square fields seamed by groves of dark green trees. They passed horses and cows. They came upon tiny towns defined by run-down delis, old gas stations, and pristine Baptist churches. Then, in the blink of an eye, the towns disappeared and they headed deeper into the growing shade cast by a towering mountain range. Slowly but surely, they started to climb.

Kimberly had been quiet since their meeting with the geologist. Her visor was down, casting a shadow across the top half of her face and making it difficult to read her expression.

Mac was worried about her. She’d shown up bright and early this morning with the gaunt cheeks and feverish eyes of a woman who’d had little sleep. She wore linen trousers, topped with a white dress shirt and matching linen jacket. The outfit looked sharp and professional, but he suspected she’d chosen the long pants to hide her knife, and the jacket to cover the discreet bulge of the Glock strapped to her waist. In other words, she was a woman going to war.

He suspected she went to war a lot. He suspected that since the deaths of her mother and sister, life for her had essentially been one long battle. The thought pained him in a way he hadn’t expected.

“It’s beautiful,” he said at last.

She finally shifted in her seat, giving him a brief glance before stretching out her legs. “Yes.”

“You like the mountains? Or are you a city gal?”

She shook her head. “City gal. Technically speaking, I grew up in Alexandria, close to these mountains. But Alexandria functions more as a suburb of D.C. than Richmond. And let’s just say my mother’s interests ran more to the Smithsonian Institution than the Shenandoah Mountains. Then I went off to school in New York. You?”

“I love mountains. Hell, I love rivers, fields, orchards, streams, woods, you name it. I was lucky growing up. My grandparents-my mother’s parents-own a hundred-acre peach orchard. As their kids married, they gifted each one with three acres of land to build a home; that way all the siblings could live close by. Basically, my sister and I grew up in booneyville, surrounded by a dozen cousins, and a ton of open space. Each day my mom would kick us out of the house, tell us not to die, and come home in time for dinner. So we did.”

“You must have liked your cousins.”

“Nah, we annoyed the snot out of each other. But that was half the fun. We made up games, we got into trouble. We basically ran around like heathens. And then at night,” he slanted her a look, “we played board games.”

“Your whole family? Every night?” Her voice was skeptical.

“Yep. We’d rotate around each aunt and uncle’s house and off we’d go. My mom started it. She hates TV, thinks it rots the brain. The Boob Tube, she calls it. When I turned twelve, she threw ours out. I’m not sure my father’s ever recovered from the loss, but after that we had to do something to pass the time.”

“So you played games?”

“All the good ones. Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Boggle, Life, and my personal favorite, Risk.”

Kimberly raised a brow. “And who won?”

“I did, of course.”

“I believe that,” she said seriously. “You attempt this whole laid-back Southern routine, but deep down inside, you’re a natural-born competitor. I can see it every time you talk about this case. You don’t like to lose.”

“The person who said there are no winners or losers obviously lost.”

“I’m not disagreeing.”

His lips curved. “I didn’t think you would.”

“My family didn’t play board games,” she volunteered finally. “We read books.”

“Serious stuff or fun stuff?”

“Serious, of course. At least when my mother was watching. After lights out, however, Mandy used to sneak in copies of Sweet Valley High. We’d read them under the covers using a flashlight. Oh, we giggled ourselves sick.”

“Sweet Valley High? And here I figured you for a Nancy Drew kind of gal.”

“I liked Nancy, but Mandy was better at smuggling contraband, and she preferred Sweet Valley High. And booze for that matter, but that’s another story.”

“You rebel.”

“We all have our moments. So.” She turned toward him. “Big charming Southern man. You ever been in love?”

“Uh oh.”

She stared at him intently, and he finally relented with a sigh. “Yeah. Once. One of my sister’s friends. She set us up, we hit it off, and things went pretty well for a while.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s no kind of answer.”

“Honey, coming from a man, that’s the only kind of answer.”

She resumed staring and he caved again. “I was probably an idiot. Rachel was a nice girl. Funny, athletic, sweet. She taught second grade and was really good with kids. I certainly could’ve done worse.”

“So you ended it, broke your sister’s best friend’s heart?”

He shrugged. “More like I let it trickle out. Rachel was the kind of girl a guy should marry, then settle down and raise two point two kids. I wasn’t there yet. You know how this job is. You get a call, you have to go. And God knows when you’re comin’ home. I had visions of her waiting more and more and smiling less and less. It didn’t seem the thing to do.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t thought of her in years.”

“Why? She sounds perfect.”

Mac shot her an impatient glance. “Nobody’s perfect, Kimberly, and if you must know, we did have a problem. A significant problem, in my mind. We never fought.”

“You never fought?”

“Never. And a man and woman should fight. Frankly, they should have a good head-to-head battle about every six months, then make love until they break the box springs. At least that’s my opinion. Your turn. What was his name?”

“I don’t have a name.”

“Honey, everyone’s got a name. The boy you sat behind in math class. The college quarterback who got away. Your sister’s boyfriend who you secretly wished was your own. Come on. Confession’s good for the soul.”

“And I still don’t have a name. Honest. I’ve never been in love. I don’t think I’m the type.”

He frowned at her. “Everyone falls in love.”

“That’s not true,” she countered immediately. “Love’s not for everyone. There are people who live their whole lives alone and are very happy that way. To fall in love… It involves giving. It involves weakening. I’m not very good at that.”

Mac gave her a slow, lingering look. “Ah, honey, you obviously haven’t met the right man yet.”

Kimberly’s cheeks grew red. She turned away from him and resumed staring out the window. The road was steep now; they’d officially hit the Blue Ridge Mountains and were now making the grinding climb through Swift Run Gap. They zigzagged around sharp corners, getting teasing glimpses of million-dollar views. Then they were up the side, cresting at twenty-four hundred feet and watching the world open up like a deep green blanket. Before them, green valleys plunged, gray granite soared, and blue sky stretched for as far as the eye could see.

“Wow,” Kimberly said simply and Mac couldn’t think of a better response.

He took the entrance into the Shenandoah National Park. He paid the fee and in turn they got a map of all the various lookout points. They headed north, toward Big Meadows, on Skyline Drive.