Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [55]
“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.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Let me see what I can get out of her. By the way, Moose says hi. He says you need a dog.”
Elijah had learned not to tell Grit that Moose was dead.
“Jo Harper is here with me.”
“The Secret Service agent you cut out on when you were kids? Great, Cameron. Lucky you. Now you can get yourself arrested on top of having gotten shot.”
“My father went to see her in Washington in early