Cold River - Carla Neggers [55]
“Military recruiters have been calling. I think he’s tempted. He’s always looked up to A.J., Elijah and you.” Hannah hunched her shoulders against the cold as they started across the street to the common. “Elijah’s friend Grit is a Navy SEAL. It doesn’t matter that they were both shot to pieces. Devin sees what he could do.”
Sean had just arrived in Black Falls to search for his missing father when the notification came about Elijah’s brush with death. Rose had flown to Germany to visit him in the military hospital at Landstuhl airbase.
“It’s been a tough year for your family,” Hannah said as she stepped onto a walk that cut through the snow-covered common. “Would Jo tell you if there were any new leads in the investigation?”
“Elijah would get it out of Jo, and he’d tell A.J., Rose and me.”
“That’s what I figured.” She paused at a snowman someone had built by the bandstand. “This is dead-of-winter cold. You remember what it’s like?”
“I remember.”
She frowned at the three-foot-tall snowman. “He has a pirate look about him, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t know, I think he looks kind of roguish.”
She grinned at him. “What would I know about rogues?” But her mind obviously wasn’t on snowmen. “Devin and Toby are excited about going out to California. Thank you for taking them. Toby’s biked all over New England and upstate New York. There are some great trails out here, but he’s been itching to get out west.”
“It’s new territory for him.”
“He and Devin have never lived in a city. Neither have I, for that matter.”
Sean bent down and scooped up a fistful of snow into his gloved hand, but it didn’t hold together. The lights on the trees seemed to sparkle in Hannah’s eyes. “Lousy snow for a snowball fight. My siblings and I used to have some no-holds-barred snowball fights when we were kids. Jo, too.”
“Must have been something.”
“You were a little younger and—”
“And I grew up in the hollow. Sean, why did you ask me out here? You might as well get to the point before we freeze.”
He dusted the snow off his gloves. A year ago, her tone would have irritated him, or he wouldn’t have even noticed. Now he was intrigued by the contrasts that were Hannah Shay—her directness and her reserve, her pride and her vulnerability. He remembered watching her in Latin class and thinking he’d never figure her out. But he had a mission, and in the glow of the Christmas lights, he could see the shadows of her bruised cheek.
“Okay. I’ll get to the point. I want to know the rest—whatever you’re holding back about why you went up the mountain today. Jo, Elijah and A.J. want to know, too.” Sean waited a half beat, then added, “We’re not sure about your judgment where Bowie O’Rourke is concerned.”
She’d gone slightly pale. “Well.” She gave a small, fake laugh. “I asked.”
“You saw Judge Robinson tonight,” Sean said. “He clearly doesn’t like what’s going on.”
She adjusted the snowman’s stone eye. “And what’s going on, Sean?”
“You’re getting sucked into Bowie’s world.”
“Well, I guess that’s true, since his world is rock and I just had a pile of rock fall on top of me.” She stood back from the snowman. “I think he looks more like a lawyer now, don’t you?”
“Hannah—”
“Did Jo and your brothers put you up to prying the truth out of me? Do they think I’ll be more likely to talk to you than to one of them? Is that what you think?” She shook her head. “Don’t answer. I understand that you think I’m not leveling with you, but maybe it’s not a question of leveling. Maybe I’m just keeping things to myself that should be kept to myself.”
Sean suppressed his frustration with her. “You’re exhausted, and you’re in pain. We can talk tomorrow.”
“No, we can talk now,” she said. “You all don’t need everyone with a harebrained theory distracting investigators from real clues to these killers. Do you think I’d protect Bowie if I had even the slightest suspicion he was involved with them?”
“I think you’d resist being suspicious of him in the first place. You’re not objective where Bowie’s concerned.”
“And you are?