Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [95]
Melanie felt her heartbeat quicken with irritation at the position Nora had put her in. She deserved to die—and to suffer before she gave up her last breath. Kyle never concerned himself with making a target suffer. Get in, get out. Do the job. That was his philosophy. Melanie wasn’t that noble.
Maybe a Valentine’s Day wedding would work. It could be fun. More fun, even, than New Year’s Eve.
She smiled inwardly, already visualizing venues and decorations.
Twenty-Five
Elijah was loading his backpack on the kitchen counter when Jo got up and eased onto a stool at the breakfast bar. It wasn’t quite light out, and it was cold. He wasn’t much on keeping the thermostat up and hadn’t yet lit a fire in his efficient little woodstove.
He had the look of a man with a mission.
She’d slipped his nightshirt back on but was barefoot, her toes already cold. “You could hand me over a pair of your wool socks,” she said.
“Top drawer of my dresser. All the socks you need.”
He hadn’t even looked up from his array of supplies. He was fully dressed—wool pants, fleece pullover atop an army-green undergarment of some kind. Not cotton, Jo thought. Cotton was a poor insulator when wet, dried slowly, and therefore tended to promote hypothermia.
He’d made coffee. She’d smelled it while she lay snug under his soft wool blanket and down comforter, warm and loose from their night of lovemaking. She’d heard him get up, run the shower, dress and head to the kitchen, and she’d debated whether it would be better to get up herself and go find out what he was up to, or if it was better that she didn’t.
He had food, water, a tent, extra clothes, a sleeping bag that would keep him warm on Mount Everest. Snowshoes. Basic rescue equipment. If he had to spend the night in the elements, he’d be fine. If he had to dig a snow cave, he could.
“Only thing missing there is a mule,” she said lightly.
He didn’t answer. His hair was still a little tousled from last night. She remembered coursing her fingers through it as he’d spun her into orgasmic ecstasy.
“Where are you going?” she asked him.
He tucked a couple of protein bars into an outer pocket on his pack and zipped it up. “To find Devin and Nora or meet them coming down off the mountain. Out. Doesn’t matter.”
“Your route?”
“I can handle myself.”
“Elijah.”
He lifted the pack onto one shoulder, grabbed his coat off the back of the bar stool next to hers and finally looked at her, his eyes resigned, as if he’d known he wouldn’t get out of there without having to deal with her. She hadn’t disappeared in a poof with the coming of dawn. “I’ll start on the falls trail and take it from there,” he said. “I’ll probably end up taking the saddle around to the back side of the mountain. Ten to one that’s the route Nora and Devin took.”
“To where your father died.”
“Correct.”
He headed out of the kitchen and down the short hall to the front room. Jo jumped off her stool, grimaced at the feel of the cold wood floor on her bare feet and went after him.
The view down the hill through the trees and out across the lake was, indeed, breathtaking. Mist rose up from the water, and frost clung to the rust and burgundy oak leaves as the sun burned through in places, sparkling.
But Elijah didn’t seem to notice. He shoved open a slider and stepped onto the deck, looking back at her with a harshness she hadn’t experienced last night and knew had nothing to do with her. “Devin should have told us that Pop had cooked up something with him.”
Jo’s heart broke at the way he said “Pop.” Drew had been a commanding force in the lives of his four children—in the lives of the people of Black Falls—and now he was gone. Elijah, in particular, had never had a chance to say goodbye.
But she nodded to the milky sky. “The weather isn’t going to be good today.”
“More reason to get moving.”
She crossed her arms against the draft.