Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [8]
It was dark now, the pines and naked birches and maples on his hillside black silhouettes against the star-sprinkled night sky.
Jo had gone back inside with her glass of wine or whatever it was she’d stood on her rock drinking.
Through the trees, he saw a light come on in her rat heap of a cabin.
Having the Secret Service next door was a complication he didn’t need when he was on the hunt for answers, but Elijah figured he didn’t have much choice in the matter—and at least Jo was easier to look at than the three agents who’d stayed in the cabins a few weeks ago when he’d just arrived back home.
It wasn’t until last week, on a solitary hike up Cameron Mountain, that he’d flat-out decided he didn’t have the full story behind his father’s death in April.
Just as he was starting to push for answers, Jo had to get herself into trouble in Washington and turn up on the lake.
Elijah grabbed more logs. He’d switched on the lights in the lower level of his home, but even so, it was a dark night. He pictured Jo at ten, freckle-faced and full of mischief, scrambling up a tall oak on the lakeshore to cut the rope to his tire swing. He’d sailed out over the water. By the time he swam back to shore, she’d lit out. He never did catch up with her.
He pictured her skinny-dipping in an isolated cove on a chilly fall night at fifteen. He remembered her mortification when he’d stumbled onto her. Then her anger as she’d pelted him with a rock.
Those turquoise eyes of hers.
And he pictured her at eighteen, whispering to him in the moonlight. “I love you, Elijah. I’ll love you forever.”
She’d long since come to her senses.
He’d been a sucker for Jo Harper for as long as he could remember.
He took his load of logs to the lean-to he’d built on the front lower level of his house, under the deck, and lined them up side by side. When he’d bought his five hillside acres three years ago, he hadn’t even considered that it didn’t have any lake frontage. He’d expected the adjoining acreage to stay in the family. He’d worked on his place whenever he could get back to Black Falls, clearing the land, building his post-and-beam house. It was nothing fancy, but he was satisfied with the results.
As he returned to his woodpile, he heard a rustling in the fallen leaves up on the steep, rocky trail from Black Falls Lodge. In another two seconds, Devin Shay burst from the shadows and trees, panting and out of breath. “Hey, Elijah.”
So his help hadn’t deserted him entirely after all. “You’re late,” Elijah said. “Grab a log. Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Right behind me. She’s not—We’re not…” Devin shuffled over to the heap of cordwood. “Nora and I are just friends.”
“It’s dark. Does she have a flashlight?” Devin didn’t, but Nora Asher hadn’t grown up in Black Falls and couldn’t know every rock and root on the lodge trail.
“There’s nothing in the dark that’s not there in the light.” Devin grabbed a log in each hand. He was lanky and surly—and trouble. “Isn’t that what you always say, Elijah?”
The kid wasn’t being funny, Elijah decided. He was being a jerk.
Seven months ago, Devin had found the frozen body of Elijah’s father on the north side of Cameron Mountain. It was three days after he’d disappeared. Rose had been up on the mountain with her search dog. A.J. and his wife, Lauren, were out there. Sean had flown in from southern California. The Vermont State Police search-and-rescue team had launched an official search. But it was a high-school senior who’d located Drew Cameron. The autopsy indicated he’d died of hypothermia.
He had, literally, collapsed in the snow and gone to sleep.
Devin seemed chastened when Elijah didn’t respond. “Nora’s right behind me,” he said.
“I’m here, I’m here,” she called cheerfully, bounding out from the trail. “Don’t be mad, Elijah. I told Devin not to wait for me. Sorry I’m late.”
Elijah eyed the two of them, both eighteen, both insecure and unreliable. But any similarities ended there. Nora was short and a little overweight, attractive with her dark, curly hair