Cold River - Carla Neggers [46]
“You’ve never had to prove yourself. You don’t know—”
“I do know, Hannah.” He gave her a quick smile. “Try boot camp and then tell me I’ve never had to prove myself.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“We’d all do well not to let our pride keep us from recognizing our friends,” Elijah said. “Stay in touch. Let us know if there’s anything we can do for you.”
She nodded, feeling tears forming in her eyes. He had the grace to pretend not to notice and left without saying anything more.
Twelve
Although she felt steadier on her feet now that she’d finished talking to Jo and Elijah and had devoured another cupcake, Hannah descended the cellar stairs slowly. They were straight, steep and utilitarian, not as graceful as those in the center hall. They needed painting—on the to-do list she had made up for her absentee landlord.
She pulled a string hanging from a lightbulb socket, revealing spiderwebs, dust-covered pipes, stored furnishings and junk cast in dim, yellowish light. The cellar’s cement floor was reasonably new, but the old stone foundation was original. She remembered her father working on it one summer when she was a child.
A summer he hadn’t been in prison.
She edged to the back wall, on the river side of the house. There was no standing water right now, probably because it was coming from outside and the ground was frozen.
That couldn’t be good.
She started to push a dusty, heavy, flat-topped trunk away from the wall. She had no idea what was inside. Treasure, maybe? She smiled to herself at the thought, but jumped, startled, when she heard footsteps behind her on the stairs.
“Hannah,” Sean called to her. “Are you down here?”
“Just me and the spiders.”
He appeared under the seventy-five-watt bulb. He’d changed out of his mountain parka into his long, black cashmere coat. “I ran into Jo and Elijah on the street,” he said.
“Ah.” Hannah scraped the trunk another few inches across the cement. “We just had a nice chat up in the café.”
“They’re meeting A.J. at the lodge and filling him in. I’m heading up there next.”
She regretted her sarcasm. “Poor Jo’s caught between a rock and a hard place, and Elijah—”
“Jo?” Sean’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Are you kidding? She’s mad as hell, and she has a job to do. Kyle Rigby tried to kill her. She saw Melanie Kendall get blown up. Jo wants answers, and she doesn’t care if she has to irritate friends and family to get them.”
“She’s also in a holding pattern with her life,” Hannah said with some sympathy. “She could go back to Washington and decide everything that went on up here was too much of a whirlwind and just forget it all.”
“You mean her and Elijah?” Sean said.
Hannah stood up from the old trunk. “They got back together in a few high-adrenaline days. Once things settle down, who knows?”
“They do. They’re for real. They always have been. It just took them fifteen years to realize it.” Sean ducked under a low pipe and came closer to her. He reached out to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. “What about you, Hannah? Are you okay?”
“I am. Yes. Thanks for asking.” She fought back a wave of self-consciousness at his touch and pushed the trunk with a toe, but it didn’t move. She could hear her name in the wind, the flapping of the tarp, the initial scraping sounds of the rock and dirt falling onto her. “If you came here to argue about what happened at the cemetery, you can go up to the lodge now and leave me to my spiders.”
“I didn’t come here to argue.”
The dim light created shadows on Sean’s face that made him look less the charming Cameron. Hannah ran her fingertips over a mustard-painted hinge on the trunk. Her wrist and cheek ached, and she was suddenly hot, choking on the stirred-up dust in the air. “There’s probably radon down here. All this stone. Perfect breeding ground for radon.”
Sean smiled. “Adding radon testing to my to-do list?