Cold River - Carla Neggers [45]
Jo pushed back her chair slightly, stretching out her legs. She rubbed the engagement ring on her finger. Hannah saw Elijah notice, too.
“Do you know who helped Drew with the cabin?” Jo asked.
“I don’t know that anyone did,” Hannah said.
“Did you know he’d found that old cellar hole?”
“No.”
“Why did you go up there today?”
“I wanted to see for myself where my brother nearly died.”
“You went on impulse. Alone.”
Hannah shrugged. “So I did.”
Elijah settled back in his chair, his gaze on Hannah. “Bowie had just been in the café.”
“So had you, Jo, Sean, Zack Harper, Scott Thorne and who knows who else.”
“We’re not ex-cons who grew up with you,” Jo said. “We don’t blame you for a bar fight that got us thrown in jail and put on probation and disrupted our lives. We don’t blame you for leading Drew Cameron to us so that the chief of police could arrest us.”
“You’re assuming Bowie blames me, and he doesn’t.”
Jo touched the rim of her mug with one finger. “Now who’s assuming, Hannah?”
Her wrist throbbing now, Hannah resisted the urge to jump up and run out of there, get away from Jo Harper and her suspicions and attitude. “Bowie wasn’t an ex-con when we were kids. He was a boy with dreams and a hard row to hoe.” Her voice was under control, even as her heart raced. “Be grateful you didn’t have his childhood.”
Jo started to say something else, but Elijah spoke first. “How’d you do up at the cabin?”
“I was only there for a short time. It was cold and I’d been hiking for several hours. I didn’t want to stop moving. That’d only make me colder.”
“Sean was there,” Elijah said.
Hannah forced herself not to react. “He saved me from a long hike back to my car.”
“What about Bowie?” Jo asked. “Has he ever been up to the cabin?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. Until this morning, I hadn’t seen him since his arrest. If you want to know if he’s been up to the cabin,” she added coolly, “you can ask him yourself.”
“I did. He says he hasn’t been up there.”
Hannah wondered if she’d stepped into another of Jo’s traps. As much as she’d learned in law school, she didn’t have Jo Harper’s experience as a federal agent. Best, she knew, to shut up now. “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?” she asked. “What about a scone? Jo, I know how much you love Dominique’s scones.”
Jo surprised Hannah with a smile. “I keep trying to get Elijah to try them.”
Hannah sighed. “It’s no secret you all are looking for a Black Falls connection to these killers. I understand that, and I understand that Bowie’s convenient—”
“It’s not about convenience,” Jo said, rising. “We didn’t find anything up at the cemetery that definitively suggests you and Bowie were attacked. Sean says you ran straight to the hillside after you got back on your feet. Why?”
Hannah shut her eyes briefly, remembering those first seconds after the rock fell, before Sean arrived. She looked at Jo. “I can’t say for sure. I don’t know if I saw or heard something and was so hyped up on adrenaline I can’t remember—or if I just operated on instinct.”
“You didn’t go down the hill,” Jo said. “Why not?”
Hannah kept her gaze steady. “Sean had arrived by then.”
“Ah.” Jo nodded with understanding. “I see. He stopped you.”
Elijah surprised her with a grin. “Sean didn’t tell us that part, either.” He stood up. “Next time you want to take off onto the mountain by yourself, call me.”
“Take care of that wrist and cheek,” Jo said, rising next to Elijah. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse. Bowie, too.”
“On that,” Hannah said with a small smile, “we agree.”
“I suspect we agree on more than you want to admit,” Jo said quietly.
She headed for the door to the center hall, but Elijah remained behind, his Cameron blue eyes leveled on Hannah with an intensity that made her glad she’d never had to encounter him on a battlefield. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “No one