Carla Neggers - Cold Dawn

“I’m cold.”

“Once you’re sure my place is safe, go inside. Get warm.”

She almost smiled. “Yes, Sergeant Cameron.”

He sighed. “You know what to do. I forget. Be careful. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“What about Jo?”

“I don’t know if Jo will be with me. She’s got her own problems.”

The death of Portia Martinez and the whereabouts of Marissa Neal’s former boyfriend, Rose thought, but Elijah had disconnected.

She saw that Nick had returned to the cabins. He would want to talk to the firefighters about exactly how the fires had started.

Two state detectives intercepted her as she started back to Elijah’s house. They asked her if she wanted to talk to them inside where it was warm, but she answered their questions in the driveway. Once she finished, they headed back to the cabins.

Scott Thorne walked slowly up the icy road to her. “Hey, Rose.” His emotions were under tight control. “I’m glad you’re okay. We checked out here last night and didn’t see anyone.”

“Robert could have been keeping an eye out for you.”

“We didn’t see a trail, a light or footprints, but the snow was steady by then,” he said curtly. “Visibility was lousy. Jo’s cabins are a wreck, but this isn’t how anyone wanted to get rid of them. How many burned?”

“Just the two. Grit’s and the one next to it. The one Dominique was locked inside wasn’t rigged. Robert, or whoever did this, might have planned to get to it next and wanted her to know what was in store for her.”

“Elijah’s house?”

“It’s okay,” Rose said. “Elijah and Jo haven’t been here in several weeks. Neither has Grit. Robert had to know that.”

“Bowie’s been working out here,” Scott said.

“It doesn’t look as if he’s been by yet today.” Rose noticed a few white clouds on the horizon across the lake, even as the sky cleared directly above her. “I used to think Derek and Robert were just a couple of fun-loving ski bums who wouldn’t hurt anyone. I learned about Derek’s darker side a year ago, but Robert…”

“None of us knew them that well.”

“Any idea how he started the fires?”

“Martini says he thinks there was some kind of accelerant used.”

“White gas? There was a canister at the campsite Nick and I found up behind the cabins.”

“The investigation’s only just started, Rose,” Scott said. “Be patient, okay?”

She noticed Nick coming up the road, moving smoothly. The physical demands seemed to have had no effect on him. “How did Robert get caught in a fire of his own making?” she asked Scott. “Did he trip?”

“It’s tempting to speculate,” he said, “but you know better.”

Nick joined them, standing close enough to Rose that his arm brushed hers, but his eyes were on Scott. “Did Feehan have an alibi for the death of Portia Martinez in California?”

Scott shook his head. “Not going there, Nick.”

He didn’t give up. “Do you know for sure he was in Vermont when she was killed? Did he know this missing actor?”

“Feehan worked with a number of private students at various ski areas and didn’t keep good records,” Scott said. “It’ll take some time to sort everything out and work a timeline.”

“What about Marissa Neal?” Nick asked.

Scott clearly didn’t like Nick’s questions. “Not going there, either.” He shifted back to Rose, his expression blank, impassive. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

She watched him bypass an unsanded section of glare ice as he walked back to the cabins.

Nick pulled off a glove and zipped up her jacket. “Don’t let adrenaline fool you,” he said, his hand lingering at her collar. “It’s cold out here. You’ll cool off fast now that you’re still.” He smiled slightly. “Which I realize you know.”

“It’s easy to forget the basics when you’re emotionally involved. I don’t know why Dom’s cabin wasn’t set on fire.” She swallowed, her throat dry, tight. “Maybe because Robert didn’t get to it.”

She called Ranger and they went up the snow-covered stairs to Elijah’s deck. He had someone plow and shovel while he was away, but the three inches of snow that had fallen overnight could wait. She heard Nick on the stairs behind her and slipped inside through the slider. Snow fell off her boots onto the hardwood floor of the comfortable main room, but her brother wouldn’t care.

While Ranger sniffed out the place, Rose pulled off her hat and gloves and looked out the wall of sliding doors at the view of the lake. Nick entered the house through the slider next to her. She could feel his intensity, smelled the fire on him as he took in her brother’s house.

“Elijah loves this place,” she said. “He left home at nineteen. I was fourteen. I wrote to him almost every day that first year. I’d made it my goal. Three hundred sixty-five letters to my soldier brother.”

“Did he write back to you?”

“Some, but I didn’t expect an answer to every letter. Even if he hadn’t been a soldier, that would have been unrealistic. The long silences didn’t come until later, when he became a Green Beret.” The sky had cleared and was a bright winter blue against the white and gray landscape. “He bought this land three years ago and worked on this place whenever he was home.”

“He did a good job.”

“Pop would come down and help. He knew Elijah always wanted to return home to Black Falls. I think Pop left Jo the lakefront property because he believed she and Elijah were meant to be together. He discovered them in one of the cabins. Running off with Elijah was the only time Jo veered off the path she’d set for herself and did something crazy. Elijah says he’d have ended up in jail if he hadn’t gone into the army when he did.”

“But your father felt guilty,” Nick said.

“Not in the beginning. He came to believe he’d interfered with something that was meant to be. I think leaving Jo the cabins was a way for him to make amends. She wouldn’t have been here in November if he hadn’t. Who knows if or when she and Elijah would have gotten back together again.” Rose glanced at Nick, realized his gaze was on her, not the view. “Do you have a place you want to be? A place you think of as home?”

He shrugged as if he had never really considered such a question. “My father was career navy. We bounced around when I was growing up. I’m used to making a home where I am.” Humor played at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t grow up in a small New England town where my family had lived for generations.”

“Not all Camerons stayed. For instance, some took off for Ohio after a brutal winter in the early nineteenth century.” Rose wasn’t letting him off the hook. “If you closed your eyes, clicked your heels together three times and whispered, ‘There’s no place like home,’ where would home be?”

“It’s not a place. It’s an attitude. It’s the people who’d be with me.”

His tone made her breath catch, but she saw more police cars arrive on the narrow lake road. “I should go check on Dominique. Nick, I was so scared. First Dom. Then…I thought it was Bowie in the burning cabin.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He slipped an arm around her. “I know.”

She leaned her head against him, his muscles taut, still tensed from wielding the splitter, carrying out first Dominique and then Robert. “I can’t imagine what Robert was thinking. None of this makes any sense. What about you? Are you okay?”

“No worries.” He drew her closer still and brushed his lips over the top of her head. She hadn’t even realized she’d pulled off her hat. “I’ll snowshoe back up to the lodge. I want to take another look at the campsite. The police are there now.”