Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [89]
“Of course.”
“I can’t see. You have a flashlight. Do you mind?”
Thomas smiled indulgently at her, then turned to Jo. “I’ll wait out here.”
He walked down to the lake by himself, picking his way through the trees in the dark, while Melanie hurried into the cabin across the weedy yard. Jo debated going down to the lake with Thomas, at least giving him her flashlight, but she followed Melanie instead.
Melanie shut the cabin door quickly behind her. “I wanted to talk to you alone,” she said. “Thomas is so upset about Alex it’s clouding his thinking. He can’t see what’s going on clearly. It’s obvious Nora just needs some space after what happened yesterday. She’d been planning this camping trip, and Alex’s death got her to pull the trigger on it and go. It gives her a sense of control over her own life.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No, but I know her pretty well. I know how she thinks. Alex was very hard on Nora. He didn’t mean to be, but she wanted to prove herself to him.”
“A cold-weather camping trip would do it?”
“Yes. Exactly. She wanted to show him and her mother—Thomas, too, I’m sure—that she has the skills and the courage to handle these conditions. When she heard about Alex, I can just see her deciding to do this for him, for herself. It’d be awful now if we interfere and hover over her. It’s hard for Thomas to balance worry with the need to let go—to let his daughter make her own mistakes.”
“You’re the one who suggested Kyle Rigby,” Jo said.
“Not to escalate the situation, to keep things calm. He’s solid—he knows what he’s doing. He’ll be straight with Thomas. If we’re wrong and Nora is in trouble for whatever reason—lost, hurt—then Kyle will speak up. He’ll put her safety first.”
“Fair enough.”
Melanie slipped back outside without using the bathroom, and she waved to Thomas as he walked up from the lake. “We should come out here in better weather. It’s beautiful.”
As he approached their rented car, Jo saw that he looked drawn and tired, and worried about his daughter. He kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for everything, Jo,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
After they left, Jo went back inside. Her propane heater was sputtering. It’d be another cold night.
She grabbed her toothbrush. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered to herself.
She got halfway back to Elijah’s house before she came to her senses and climbed up onto the hill and called Mark Francona instead. “Anything else on the potential witness—the messenger?”
“No.”
“Any way you can find out if Drew Cameron went to see Ambassador Bruni in April? Drew was—”
“Andrew James Cameron. He left you your Vermont property. He died of hypothermia two weeks after you took him for a walk among the cherry blossoms.”
“Sometimes you scare me.”
“Good. And yes, I’ll let you know.”
“In the meantime,” she said, “watch out for my friend the airsoft buff. He sees things other people miss. He’s the youngest of five, he has a high IQ and has grown up in a savvy political family. His brain’s on overdrive all the time. He wants to make amends to me. He sent me flowers—”
“Flowers? You?”
“Yeah. Lilies. I love flowers. He doesn’t owe me, but after his little prank, he’s focused on me.” And after Marissa’s brush with death, Jo realized. Charlie must have been more upset than he’d let on.
She told Francona about Charlie’s assassins theory and gave him the names of the alleged victims.
When she finished, her boss blew out a long, pained breath. “How’s Vermont? Any snow up there yet? I gave up on downhill skiing, but I could do cross-country, I think. You?”
“Real Vermonters don’t ski.”
She hung up. She did ski. She’d just let him get on her nerves, but she’d also delivered her message. It wasn’t the job of the Secret Service to run Charlie’s life or be his nanny—or his parents—but he had no business digging around on the Internet for unsolved murders.
She found some bath salts the wife of one of her Secret Service friends had left and headed back over to Elijah