Cold River - Carla Neggers [21]
Just keep driving, he told himself as he navigated the rutted, icy, one-lane logging road at the bottom of the trail. Ordinarily it would be closed to vehicles by December, but after the violence five weeks ago, law enforcement saw that it was kept plowed. It led to a back road, almost as narrow, that wound through the hills and the isolated hollow where Hannah Shay and Bowie O’Rourke had grown up.
Sean remembered his father talking about the Shays. “They’ve always lived hand-to-mouth,” he’d said on one of his rare visits to Southern California. “It’s what they know. Hannah and her brothers could be different, but they won’t be if they don’t want to be. I guess it’s easy for me to say. I’ve never had to leave behind what I’ve always known.”
As he drove down close to the river, Sean glanced at Hannah, her cheeks rosy, her eyes a pale gray-blue against the winter landscape. He’d always recognized that she was attractive. There’d never been any doubt about that. She was just impossible. She had a wall up around her as impenetrable as a force field, and never let anyone in.
“I can imagine your father’s excitement when he found that old Cameron cellar hole,” she said.
Sean could, too. “I always thought searching for it gave him an excuse to be up on the mountain, but he was serious about finding it. He took A.J., Rose and me up a few times, but most of the time, it was Elijah. They butted heads all their lives, but they understood each other.”
“I think in his own way, your father understood all four of you, even if he didn’t always approve of your choices.”
“Maybe so.”
Sean felt the familiar rush of grief mixed with guilt, anger and regret when he thought about his father and how he’d died, but he allowed it to wash over him and didn’t, this time, drown in it. He wanted to get his hands on whoever had hired the two killers to leave an old man to die alone in the cold. He wanted it as much as he’d wanted anything in his life, and he wasn’t a man easily deterred once he’d put his mind to getting something.
Hannah stared out her window without speaking for a couple miles.
“How’s law school?” Sean asked when her silence finally got to him.
She shrugged. “I’ve finished.”
“Studying for the bar?”
“Yes.”
“Any job prospects?”
She continued to sit rigid in her seat without glancing at him. “Not yet. I’m looking into a clerkship. With Toby in California for a few months…” She paused. “I’ll have time on my hands.”
What would she do when she found out Devin was heading to California, too? Sean tried not to think about how alone she’d be. She had her friends, the café, her budding law career, and she’d just be irritated if she thought he was feeling a little sorry for her.
“You can manage the café and a clerkship?” he asked.
“I managed law school and the café.”
The late December sun was very low in the sky. An arc of bright, harsh afternoon light hit the windshield. Then it was gone, disappearing behind the hills as he took a tight turn down close to the river, just a few small pools of clear, fast-moving water not yet frozen in the winter cold.
Sean assumed Hannah’s short answers were a clue she didn’t want to talk, but he didn’t care. He wanted to know more about her reasons for going up the mountain so suddenly on her own. “The café seems to be doing well,” he said.
She smoothed a finger over the soft fabric of his scarf. “It is, thanks.”
“Holiday season was busy?”
“Yes.”
“A.J. says reporters and investigators made up for the drop-off in tourists at the lodge after the violence. I imagine it was the same at the café.”
She nodded again. “It was.”
“Hannah…” Sean turned onto Cameron Mountain Road, which would take them up from the river to the long, picturesque ridge where Black Falls Lodge was located and where he and his brothers and sister and the Harpers had all grown up. “You know, I wouldn’t have to ask so many questions if you’d work with