Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [96]
“You’re not dressed, and I’m not waiting.”
“All right. I’ll meet you.”
Some of his intensity eased, and she thought she saw a spark in his very blue eyes. “Bring your own sleeping bag.” But he sighed as he eased the door shut a little ways. “You need to go back to your life. You don’t belong here, Jo. You never did.”
“Nothing like waking up with regrets.”
“I didn’t say I had regrets. Jo—we’re not right for each other. We weren’t right fifteen years ago and we’re not right now. Let’s not break each other’s hearts again.”
“I didn’t break your heart, Elijah.” She moved right up to the slider screen and focused on the man in front of her and the old hurt deep inside her. “I’d have followed you to the army. Leaving me behind made it possible for you to do what you wanted to do.”
“Saved me from your father having me thrown in jail.”
“That, too. Elijah…I’m sorry.” Jo saw it now, what needed to be said. “I should have let you go. I shouldn’t have held on the way I did.”
“Jo, Jo, Jo. Sweet pea. You didn’t do anything that needs forgiving, including falling for me.”
“Did you get my letters?”
She saw the muscles in his jaw tense and knew he hadn’t expected her question.
Then his gaze softened, and he said, “Every one of them.”
He shut the slider and headed down the deck stairs, his mind, she knew, back on his mission of the day. She shivered in the draft, thinking back to herself at eighteen, sitting on a boulder on the lakeshore and pouring out her soul in letter after letter in those first weeks after he’d left Black Falls for the army.
She hadn’t let go easily.
She returned to the kitchen, splashed more coffee in her mug and sat at the breakfast bar as she debated her options, none of which involved leaving Elijah Cameron to his own devices.
Everyone in Black Falls had always known he would end up back there.
Everyone except Elijah—he had never expected to come home alive.
That was what Drew had tried to make her understand on their walk among the cherry blossoms. Elijah didn’t court death. He wasn’t reckless or pessimistic. He was forward looking and had a strong, positive mental attitude.
“But he’s a realist,” Drew had said. “He understands the dangers. He’s looked death in the eye, and he knows if he makes it home, it’s a bonus. It’s not something he counts on.”
Jo let the coffee warm her insides and soothe her soul.
Bad boy Elijah Cameron and good girl Jo Harper…She’d been a little bad last night. And he’d been good.
So good, she thought with a smile.
His phone rang, and she picked up the extension on the counter next to her.
“I’d like to speak to Sergeant Cameron, please,” a male voice said.
She frowned. “Who is this?”
A gasp of shock. “Special Agent Harper?”
Charlie Neal. Jo almost knocked over her coffee. “Charlie, what are you doing?”
“Uh. Just checking on the flowers I sent. Were they pretty?”
“Very. Thank you.” She spoke crisply, noting the time—just after 7:00 a.m.—and figuring Charlie was at, or almost at, school. “I know you’ve been in touch with Elijah. How did you find out his name, rank and home phone number?”
He ignored her question. “The stove fire. With Marissa. Was it the work of these assassins? Are you trying to protect us by not telling us?”
“Listen to me. Don’t—”
“Marissa said it was just an accident.”
Jo heard the fear in his voice. “You need to stop this, Charlie. Just stop.”
“I have to go. I have play practice. Conor and I are on the production crew. In fact, we are the production crew.”
Conor Neal was Charlie’s first cousin, the second of the four children of the vice president’s older brother, and, Jo suspected, a coconspirator in the airsoft prank and the source of the incriminating video.
Charlie disconnected quickly, and Jo immediately dialed her boss. “You all are watching my young friend in D.C. like hawks, aren’t you?”
Francona didn’t answer right away. “Maybe he has a crush on you. If he were fifteen years older, you two could have a Rose Garden wedding.”
“He didn’t call me. He called a friend of mine up here in the cold.”
“It’s seven