Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [92]
He kissed her hair. “Maybe it’s a son or daughter of the one we heard fifteen years ago.”
“Or a grandchild,” she said, and was quiet for a while before turning to him and touching his right thigh where he’d been shot. “Your father feared for your life, and maybe he had a premonition of the danger you were in. But that’s not why he died.”
“Jo…”
“If he built his own cabin on that old cellar hole, he had shelter. Good shelter. Better than trash bags. He could have survived the storm.” She eased her fingertips gently along Elijah’s scars, as if trying to imagine the pain, the blood, how close he’d come to death. “He didn’t go up the mountain with a storm on the way to die. He knew what he was doing.”
Elijah didn’t speak.
“Someone killed him, Elijah.”
He slid his arms around her and drew her to him. “I know.”
Twenty-Four
Melanie felt exhilarated and nervous at the same time, relished the tension between the two emotions as she pulled the shades in Kyle’s bedroom in the Whittakers’ guesthouse. She was tingly with wanting him. She’d told Thomas she needed air after their flight and the long drive from the airport. He’d worried about the dark, but she’d assured him there was plenty of light from the house—and there was.
But Kyle wasn’t in a good mood.
“It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?” She sat on the edge of his bed. “Although I’m not sure I’d want a second home in Vermont. It’s too cold here most of the time. Thomas loves it, though.”
“The way things are going, you’ll be lucky your new home’s not a prison cell.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic.” She chided him with a smile—no point in annoying him—but he always saw the downside to the situation, and she always saw the upside.
“The police are looking for the messenger you were worried about,” he said.
“You’re the one who said not to worry.”
“Who do you think called in the tip?”
Her stomach twisted. Thomas. “I have no idea, and I don’t care.”
“The people we work for don’t like screwups. I dealt with one before you came on board. It wasn’t pretty.”
“We’re not screwups.”
“I’m not.”
But he was her partner. He’d recruited her. If their employers were unhappy with her because of Nora Asher and her snooping into Melanie’s background, Kyle would be held responsible, too. He looked concerned, which wasn’t like him, but he got nervous when he had to think on his feet. He wasn’t good at it. She was, and when she wanted something, she put her mind to it and got it.
More than once on her trip up from Washington she’d realized she might end up having to kill him. Let him take the fall for Nora, both with the police and with their employers. Melanie wanted Kyle’s plan to work and Nora to die up on the mountain because of the cold, Devin Shay’s obsession with her, her own out-of-control emotions. Drew Cameron’s death seven months ago would actually work to their advantage and provide more substance, even poignancy, to the deaths of the two teenagers.
It was a good plan, but Melanie was prepared to take matters into her own hands. Blaming Kyle. Painting herself as one of his victims—vulnerable, innocent.
Thomas was up at the Whittaker farmhouse in front of a roaring fire in their living room. Melanie liked Lowell and Vivian. Thomas was handling himself with such grace under pressure. Melanie looked forward to tapping into his network of friends once they were married. A shame Alex Bruni wasn’t in the picture anymore, given his prestige as an ambassador, but that hadn’t been Melanie’s call to make. She’d driven the car—but she wasn’t the one who’d decided to kill him.
When she and Thomas had arrived at the Whittakers’ farmhouse from Jo Harper’s wreck of a cabin, Kyle had reported on his actions on Nora’s behalf. Mostly lies, of course, but Thomas was obviously impressed and relieved to have Kyle involved. Melanie had felt good for arranging for Thomas to hire him.
She’d thought about what it would be like to sneak down to the guesthouse in the middle of the night and have Kyle make love to her, with Thomas and the Whittakers none the wiser. But Kyle had