Cold River - Carla Neggers [71]
What damn fools they’d been.
As she raised her head, a movement far to her left caught her eye, and she noticed a solitary male figure down by the duck pond. She couldn’t see him clearly from this distance, but it had to be Bowie. She stood a moment and watched him.
She heard a sound behind her and turned. Lowell was standing in the bedroom doorway. “Please don’t worry, Vivian,” he said. “All will be well.”
“I just don’t want any more disruptions to our lives. These people will never stop searching, digging. The Camerons, the Harpers.” She tried to stem a sudden sense of panic—and anger, she thought. Everything about the past five weeks infuriated her. “They’ll have their answers, no matter who’s hurt in the process. I don’t know if I could be so relentless. I think if I had the choice I’d just pretend nothing happened.”
Lowell didn’t respond for a moment. “Would you have me killed if you could?” he asked quietly.
Vivian gasped. “What a terrible thing to say! Of course not.”
He shrugged, standing still in the doorway. “You didn’t ask me if I’d have you killed.”
“You have a bizarre sense of humor,” she said irritably. “Let’s not talk about killing.”
He looked past her toward the window. “These killers aren’t about passion, Vivian. They’re just doing a job.”
“On behalf of people who are about passion.”
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose you’re right.”
His shoulders slumped and he turned back into the hall. In another moment, Vivian heard his footsteps as he headed back downstairs.
She wanted to throw a shoe at him. Why couldn’t he ever show some spine?
She peered out the window again, but saw only the wind blowing the fine snow into sunlit drifts.
Lowell sat in his favorite chair in front of the fire, roaring now, not so smoky—more to Vivian’s liking. He could hear the shower running upstairs and appreciated having the fire to himself. The big, comfortable room. His wife had decorated it, of course, but he’d approved her choices, the blend of modern and traditional. Neither of them had wanted moose heads on the wall or log-cabin quilts on the beds.
He slowly opened his fingers, giving a low moan at the pain that coursed through his hand. Fortunately, whatever bruising there was was faint, not obviously discoloring the skin.
He shut his eyes, forcing himself to remain calm. He’d always been cerebral and quiet, not one to let emotions intrude on his work. Lately, however, he felt as if his life were spinning out of control and he were hanging on by his fingernails, just trying to survive.
Vivian would just tell him what a fool and a failure he was.
In a few minutes, when he heard her on the stairs, he got to his feet and slipped out to the back hall. He took his coat and walking stick and eased outside, not making a sound. He didn’t want her to follow him. He didn’t want company right now.
He walked down their long driveway back out to the road that wound along the river. The cold made him feel alive, energized. He continued down to the turnaround, but Bowie’s van wasn’t there. He must have gone for supplies, or to take a lunch break.
Lowell paused, out of breath.
Vivian’s concerns about Bowie weren’t an overreaction. He was concerned. Bowie O’Rourke was the perfect choice for opportunistic killers looking for an ally in Black Falls—for someone to deal with a potential liability.
Melanie Kendall had become a liability. That was why she was dead now. If Elijah Cameron hadn’t killed Kyle Rigby and Kyle had failed in his mission to get rid of Nora Asher and Devin Shay, he, too, would have been a liability, marked for death. Both he and Melanie were professionals who’d understood the score.
The less you know about some things, the better.
Lowell forced himself not to think about matters over which he had no control.
Hannah.
Thinking about her calmed him. She was so brave, so beautiful. Seeing her with Sean Cameron didn’t sit well with him. Last night, again just now. Was she in love with Sean? With Bowie?
Were both men in love with her?
Lowell hardly felt the cold anymore. Vivian