Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [78]
“The gas stove blew up. Our Jo dived into the flames, basically, although she wasn’t burned, and saved Marissa from certain maiming or even death. Risked her life.”
“Was Charlie there?”
“No.”
“Is the incident under investigation?”
“You know, I’m brave, honorable and true, but I don’t walk up to Secret Service agents and ask them if an unreported fire I’m not supposed to know about that nearly killed the eldest daughter of the vice president is under investigation.”
“You SEALs are just so damn smart.”
“We’re missing something,” Grit said.
“Yes—”
Grit had already hung up.
Elijah tried the front door of the guesthouse and wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. A small entry with a cold slate floor had a door to the left and a door to the right. He tried both. One was locked, one wasn’t. He’d bet real money that the teenager with the romantic view of Vermont had left her door unlocked and the humorless meat her father had hired to look for her had locked his.
An unlocked door wasn’t a defense against a charge of breaking and entering, but Elijah figured Nora would either never know or never press charges.
Either way, he went in.
The apartment was decorated with cottage-style furnishings in light green, brown, rust. He couldn’t remember if Vivian had said she’d done up the place, but since nothing looked cheap, either she had or Nora had received more financial help from her family than she’d let on. She’d added her own laptop, a flat-screen television and DVDs that included collections of Jane Austen PBS movies, Dr. Who, Steve McQueen and Humphrey Bogart. Elijah remembered Nora telling him that she wanted to major in film, but both parents were opposed, on the grounds that she’d only become another Hollywood failure.
“They said I’d just end up as a waitress who could name obscure facts about obscure movies,” she’d said with a little laugh that had struck Elijah as entirely fake.
He checked the laptop, but it was password protected. He’d only go so far in his search and decided to move on to the bedroom, its windows offering a view of the duck pond and the woods from which he’d just come. A well-worn stuffed penguin looked forlorn and downright lonely on the pillow of the made bed; it was a reminder of just how young Nora was. Emotionally if not legally, she was straddling childhood and adulthood. She had to negotiate her own expectations with those of her successful parents, navigate the dynamics of a complicated family.
Elijah figured his own father had simplified that age for him by kicking him out.
A couple of skirts and tops on hangers in the closet. Expensive-looking shoes. A dressy coat. He checked the dresser drawers—no hiking clothes left behind.
He returned to the living room and headed to the kitchen at the back of the apartment. He took a quick look around. Milk and eggs in the refrigerator. Dishes clean in the dishwasher. Nothing suggested Nora planned to be gone for more than a few days.
Nothing on Melanie Kendall, the fiancée.
He found a flower-covered notebook journal on the kitchen table. He debated, but he wasn’t ready to go so far as to intrude that deeply on Nora’s privacy. He’d check the date of the last entry and go from there. But he immediately saw that the journal contained graceful entries of poems and quotes she’d copied, all positive and uplifting. She’d apparently created her own book of inspiration for dark days.
Elijah shut the journal. He’d never been one for inspirational quotes. Reading that stuff made him focus on why he needed uplifting. Easier just to focus on what he needed to do.
He found Nora’s cell phone next to her toaster. She could have forgotten it, but he didn’t think so. There wasn’t much, if any, service in the backcountry, but there was some. He’d explained to his wilderness-skills class how a cell phone could sometimes help searchers find a lost hiker. Nora could have decided not to rely on anything but her own skills.
On the other hand, she could have wanted to make sure no one found her.
Or she could simply not want to talk to anyone.
Elijah checked the