Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [56]
“Maybe,” Grit said and hung up.
Elijah looked at his woodstove hearth. He’d thought about getting a dog upon his return home.
Two minutes later his phone rang again. “Grit—”
“Grit? Oh. The SEAL from your firefight on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April. No, it’s not Grit. It’s Charles Neal.”
Elijah took a moment before responding. The military chain of command didn’t include the vice president or his sixteen-year-old son, but Elijah couldn’t imagine any officer he’d ever served under wanting him on this call. He pictured Charlie’s red face in the video as Jo had grabbed him by the ear. “How’d you get this number, Charlie? And how do you know Grit?”
“I don’t know Grit. I know of him. Getting your number was easy. Seriously, it’s on the Internet. It’s getting Jo’s number that’s hard. Special Agent Harper, I mean. Is she there?”
“No. She likes her flowers. Did you know lilies are her favorite?”
“I found out. Mr. Cameron—is it okay to call you Mister, or should I call you Sergeant?”
The kid was something. “Elijah will be fine, Charlie.”
“Please give Special Agent Harper a message.” He paused, and when Elijah didn’t say anything, proceeded. “Tell her that I have reason to believe that Ambassador Bruni was the target of a team of international assassins who are also responsible for the deaths of at least four prominent Americans in the past six months.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because you have access to people in a way that I don’t. You’re one of them. The people who’d know things, I mean. Not the killers. I’ll report more details as soon—”
“No, you won’t,” Elijah said in his best drill-sergeant voice. “You’ll get your butt to school tomorrow and do what the Secret Service tells you to do. Got that, Mr. Neal?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” The kid was unruffled. “You’ll tell Jo, though, right?”
“Stay out of this thing before you screw up someone else’s career or get yourself into a bigger mess than an airsoft firefight.”
“You’re an American hero, Sergeant Cameron. Thank you for your service.”
The kid was gone.
Elijah considered his options. Odds were, if Charlie knew about assassins and unsolved murders, he’d found the information on the Internet, which everyone else could read, too. Law enforcement could have made the same connections he had—if any connections were to be made.
He called Grit, filled him in. They’d known each other for several years, but Grit was navy, Elijah was army—it wasn’t until the firefight in April that they’d become friends for life. Elijah would give his life for Grit. He knew Grit would do the same for him.
“We’re talking about the irresponsible, genius son of the vice president of the United States,” Grit said. “Right, Elijah?”
“Yeah. I like this kid. He called me an American hero.”
Grit burst out laughing and hung up.
Elijah resisted marching down to Jo’s cabin in the dark. The Secret Service had their eye on Charlie Neal. They probably kept track of what he was up to on the Internet. Then again, the kid was a genius. Probably he could outwit the Secret Service if he put his mind to it.
The wonder, Elijah thought, wasn’t that Jo had gotten him by the ear or said what she’d said to him. The wonder was she hadn’t strangled Charles Preston Neal with her bare hands.
Fourteen
Nora unrolled her sleeping bag in the pitch-dark of her small dome tent. She had a flashlight but didn’t want to use it and risk someone finding her. She felt safer that way. But she hadn’t considered how dark it would be. Even with the half-moon, it was a black night. She’d set up her tent on a level spot off the falls trail—Beth Harper had once described it to her. She and her sister used to camp up here as kids. It was located on the saddle that connected Cameron Mountain to an unnamed peak that had few trails and wasn’t popular with hikers. Devin had told her about a kind of pathway along the saddle, off the main trails, around to the north side of the mountain.
That was her ultimate destination. She could have