Cold Ridge

by Carla Neggers

  "Negative thinking, negative thinking."

  The monitor had gone into sleep mode. She got it up and running again, but she was having the same problem she'd had since she got back yesterday from breakfast with Hank and Antonia—she couldn't access Manny's files without his password. Why did the bastard need a password? Had he decided she was nuts and couldn't be trusted with access to his files?

  She'd tried every possible password combination she could think of. Eric's middle name, his birthday, the name they'd picked out if he'd been a girl. Her middle name. Her maiden name. Their wedding date. Manny was a sentimentalist at heart, and he wasn't particularly creative or intricate in his thinking. It had to be something obvious.

  Irritated, she typed bullheaded, but that didn't work, either.

  Tyler North? Nope, not in any combination she tried.

  If she called Manny and asked him for his password, he wouldn't tell her. He'd just say "butt out" and hang up. Or not bother to call her back at all.

  Stubborn.

  Irritating.

  Nothing was working. She flopped back against her chair and sipped her Diet Coke. She had to stay busy. If she didn't, she'd think. She'd relive the scary, early days of Eric's illness. She'd relive charging off to the emergency room while Manny was out of the country, facing dangers of his own—he couldn't talk about most of his missions, but she was well aware of what he did.

  She didn't think, not then, that she could lose them both, her husband to combat, her son to illness. Only afterward, only when they were safe. It was sick, but there it was.

  She suddenly realized she was shaking, crying. Her gaze settled on the number of her therapist, which she'd written on an orange Post-it note and stuck to the side of the computer. She grabbed it and reached for the phone, but she didn't dial, instead doing her relaxation and visualization exercises until she felt the incipient panic pass.

  It'd be okay. She was getting better.

  For grins, she typed crazywoman, but nothing happened.

  "Maybe I should just shoot the damn thing."

  If she couldn't get into Manny's files and he didn't want to talk to her, what could she do?

  She dug her date book out of her handbag and looked up Tyler North's number in New Hampshire. If he wasn't on duty, he'd be there. She used to be critical of his weird, crazy mother. Not anymore. For the most part, she'd done the best she could. She made mistakes. But she'd been lucky.

  If Manny had confided in anyone, it'd be his best friend and fellow PJ. Obviously, Val thought, it wasn't his wife.

  Sixteen

  Ty tried to concentrate on the scenery as he drove Carine up the notch road, a pass in the mountains with a small lake, a waterfall, a rock-strewn brook, ledges, cliffs and breathtaking views. But it wasn't easy to focus on anything but the tense and distracted woman beside him. She wanted to see the Rancourts. He told her he didn't think it was a good idea. She said, fine, she'd rent a car. She'd take a bus back to Boston and get her own damn car. She'd hike up the ridge to the connecting trail that led down to the Rancourt house.

  She wouldn't get Gus to take her, that was for damn sure. Gus didn't like the idea of her going up to the Ran-courts, either. She and Ty had dropped off the embarrassing pictures of Jodie Rancourt with the Cold Ridge police and met Gus for lunch at a village café. Gus didn't get it. Why would Carine want to see the Ran-courts? Why would they want to see her?

  But Gus couldn't talk her out of it, and Ty sure as hell couldn't. They tried all through lunch. The café was owned by a couple of ex-hippies who scrawled their daily menu on a chalkboard. Carine had turned over her digital camera and camera bag as well as the memory disk. The police had warned her to expect a visit from the Boston detectives now on their way to New Hampshire to pick up the evidence—they'd want to talk to her, as well as the Rancourts.

  Carine had hardly touched her sweet potato chowder. Gus had a bowl, too, but Ty didn't go near it—he had a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. He didn't like Carine's lack of appetite. "Flutter kicks'll really kill you if you don't keep up your strength," he told her.

  "They kill me, anyway."

  "Why are you doing flutter kicks? Why not just take an exercise class in Cambridge? Pilates. Kickboxing. Something like that."

  She'd given him a smile that he couldn't quite read. "Maybe I'm training for a triathlon."

  "Okay. You've always been fit. You need to do flutter kicks to train for a triathalon?"

  "Can't hurt." She seemed evasive. "I have endurance. I don't have a lot of power and speed. I'm working on it, though. You can swim twenty-five meters under water on one breath, right?"

  He suspected she was trying to distract herself—or distract him. "It's not something I do every day—"

  "How did you do it at all?"

  "Willpower."

  "I have willpower."

  "When it comes to a picture you want. You'll wait around for the wind to blow the right way a lot longer than I ever would. But swimming underwater—nothing's at stake for you if you pop up for another breath. For me, it was a requirement. I had to do it."

  "You're saying if you want to be a PJ bad enough, you'll stay under."

  "It helps."

  "That's a crock. I think it has more to do with lung capacity and efficient strokes."

  He grinned. "There's that, too."

  But she hadn't smiled back, and he knew the illicit pictures bothered her. She'd liked and trusted Jodie Rancourt and Louis Sanborn, but they'd committed adultery in such a way that she'd become involved. She felt used, tainted.

  Gus had shaken his head over his soup. "I thought you'd be out of the fray up here, but now they're all up here with you. The Rancourts, this Gary Turner. Next it'll be Manny Carrera."

  Gus was all for outfitting his niece for a three-day hike in the mountains. He even said Ty could go with her, seeing how he was more like a brother to her these days. That was designed, Ty had no doubt, to draw a response from Carine, and it did, just not the one Gus expected. He'd wanted, clearly, a hint about what was going on with the two of them. Instead, she shoved her bowl across the table at him and stormed out of the café.

  "I guess 'brother' was a bad choice of word," Gus said, not particularly remorseful. "North?"

  "I'm doing the best I can, Gus."

  "No, you're not. You're just as scared as she is."

  "Doesn't matter. I'll do what I have to do."

  "To keep her safe—or to keep Manny Carrera safe? Whose side are you on? His or Carine's?"

  Ty had attempted a joke. "I'm on the side of truth and justice," he'd said, but Gus didn't laugh, instead sticking him with the bill.

  The access road to the Rancourt property snaked up a fifteen-hundred-foot rise of pitted pavement with one bona fide hairpin turn. It wasn't the sort of location people who lived in the region full-time generally chose for their homes, even if they could afford it. Ty glanced at Carine as he negotiated a relatively straight incline, the hill falling away on her side, the bare-limbed trees offering vistas that seemed almost endless. "We still have time to give this up and take Gus's advice and disappear in the mountains for a few days."

  She smiled briefly. "Do you still have a taste for beef jerky? I remember as a kid you'd grab a piece of beef jerky and head up the ridge. You weren't even eight years old. I don't know how you lived."

  "I don't know, either but I've got MREs these days. Good stuff."

  "Purloined 'meals ready to eat.' Well, I understand they're better than they used to be. The prepackaged camping foods certainly are." She looked out her window, the road twisting again now, evergreens hanging over rock outcroppings. "Once I pass the PJ Physical Abilities and Stamina Test, I'm going to take one of the Appalachian Mountain Club winter camping courses. I think that'd be a challenge."

  "Once you pass the what?"

  She glanced over at him, a welcome spark in her blue eyes. "The test aspiring PJs take to be accepted into the program."

  "Ah. I forgot tha
t's what it's called. Ominous. I just remember running my ass off, nearly drowning a few times, and sweating a lot. Indoc was more of the same, just worse. This explains all the running, swimming and flutter kicks?"

  "I'm having fun. I've read up on what you do. All these years with you in and out of my life, and I never really knew much about what a PJ does. Is it true that instructors strap you into a helicopter, blindfold you and throw you in the water to see if you can get out?"

  "It's a simulated helicopter."

  "Real water."

  "I remember," he said.

  "You got out?"

  He smiled. "I'm a PJ, right? I got out."

  She sighed, staring back out her window, the distraction of PJ talk not lasting. "I shouldn't have gotten mad at Gus. He's just trying to help. He doesn't want to see me making the same mistakes all over again with you."

  "Maybe, but he was also trying to make you mad. Get your blood up. Put some color in your cheeks."

  "Well, it worked."

  "You're lucky Gus hasn't locked you in your room by now."

  Her vivid eyes stood out against her pale skin. "You taught me how to go out a window on a bedsheet."

  "As if you needed teaching."

  "It's the age difference. It was more telling when we were six and ten. Now—" She turned back to her window as they passed a steep, eroded embankment. "Never mind."

  Ty could see she was preoccupied, dreading her visit with the Rancourts. "I can turn back."

  She shook her head. "I need to do this."

  He downshifted, taking the last section of hill before the road dead-ended at the Rancourt driveway and the start of the trail that merged with the main Cold Ridge trail. A wild turkey wandered into the road in front of them, and he stopped while it stood sentry for a dozen other turkeys that meandered out from the woods. Carine sat forward with a gasp of excitement, as if she'd never seen a wild turkey before. "Look at them! I wish I had my camera." She bit down on her lower lip, then added, reality intruding, "My Nikon."

  Ty couldn't stand another second of seeing her so shattered by her experience in Boston, finding Louis Sanborn dead, running into Manny and now finding the four pictures that had appeared on her camera disk. "Ah, hell." He gripped the wheel, damn near stalling out. "Carine, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. If I'd just married you—"

  "Don't, Ty." Her voice was surprisingly gentle, more so than he deserved. "It doesn't help. Something worse might have happened if we'd gone through with the wedding. We don't know. We could have been robbed and killed on our honeymoon."

  "We postponed a honeymoon. I only had a few days. I had to get back to Hurlburt—"

  "You know what I mean."

  Actually, he did. It was a rationalization, a way to make herself feel better about what he'd put her through. But he said nothing.

  "Anyway, you didn't marry me," she went on. "And I didn't accept Louis's offer of a ride, and I didn't call the police from inside the Rancourt house and not run into Manny."

  "That's not the same."

  "You're not responsible for what's happened to me this week. Or last week. Or ever. I'm responsible for my own actions. Don't you think I understood the risks when I let myself fall for you? Ty—I've known you all my life."

  He let the truck idle a moment. "When did you first want to sleep with me?"

  She groaned. "You can be such a jackass, you know."

  "Your sister says the jackass fairy must have visited me every night when I was a kid. You two work that one out together?"

  "No, but I like it." This time her smile reached her eyes. "I wonder what a jackass fairy looks like."

  "I'm really a nice guy. Everyone says so."

  She went very still, her hands on her thighs. "You're the best, Ty. I've known that for a long, long time. But you're not—" She sighed, grinning suddenly, unexpectedly. "You're not normal."

  "Normal?"

  She nodded.

  "Right. Like you are, she who can outstare an owl."

  "Did you see my barred owl in the woods last fall? I think he knew I was going to be shot at. He flew away. I sometimes think if he hadn't, I might have been killed."

  Ty shook his head. "Not to burst your bubble, babe, but it wasn't the owl that saved you. Those guys were using a scoped rifle. They missed you on purpose."

  "You're probably right."

  Carine settled back in her seat, and he continued up the road and turned onto the Rancourt driveway. Its blacktop was in better shape than the road, the sprawling house visible farther up on the hill.

  "I think my digital camera's cursed," she said quietly. "When the police return it, I'm getting rid of it."

  Ty stopped the truck at the bottom of the driveway and pulled on the emergency brake. When he reached over and touched her cheek, she didn't tell him to go to hell. "Your camera's not cursed. You're not cursed. And I loved you last winter. I loved you as much as I've ever loved anyone."

  "I know."

  He kissed her cheek, then her mouth, her lips parting. He threaded his fingers into her hair as their kiss deepened, memories flooding over him, regrets, longings—for her, for himself—but nothing that he could put to words.

  She was the one who pulled away, brushing her fingertips across his jaw before she sat back in her seat. "You're a complicated man, Sergeant North."

  "Not that damn complicated. I could pull over somewhere more private—"

  "I think you've made your point."

  Not very well, he thought. He knew Carine, and she'd be thinking he was just interested in sex and that was why he'd kissed her. And he was—he was very interested in sex. Hell, so was she. But his feelings toward her were more involved than that, only he didn't know how to get at them, crystallize them in a few words that made any sense. That was how he'd ended up waiting until the last minute to pull out of their wedding, just trying to think of how to say what he had to say, so that she'd understand and not blame herself. He got the blaming part right—she blamed him instead. But he'd mucked up getting her to understand.

  He continued up the Rancourt driveway, which swept them into a parking area in front of an attached three-car garage. They were at a fairly high elevation, the expansive views of the surrounding mountains impressive, majestic more than intimate. The landscaping was natural and minimalist, designed to blend in with the environment, with a sloping lawn, stone walls and plantings limited to those that occurred in the area—flowers only in pots, no ornamental trees and shrubs. The glass-and-wood house was built into the hillside, two levels in front, one in back, with a screened porch and several decks. A separate dirt track curved up from the parking area to a rustic-looking outbuilding that Ty remembered served as a garden shed in summer and a kind of a warming hut in winter. It had its own potbellied wood-stove and a ground-level porch where the Rancourts and their guests could leave their skates and skis.

  If they wanted to, Ty thought, Sterling and Jodie Rancourt could convert their place into a bed-and-breakfast or a ski club. It was big enough and had all the right amenities.

  "I should go in there alone," Carine said, unbuckling her seat belt.

  "I don't think so."

  She let the seat belt snap back into place and looked over at him as if he hadn't kissed her at all, never mind that she regretted it. "Back off, okay? I'm not in any danger from the Rancourts."

  Ty had no intention of backing off. "What if Louis Sanborn's murder is the result of a garden-variety domestic dispute? Sterling comes in, finds his wife and their new employee in the library and renders his own personal justice."

  "And takes pictures before he starts shooting?"

  "To keep the wife in line in the future."

  "But he leaves the camera."

  "Because Manny shows up."

  Carine still was skeptical. "Sterling has an alibi."

  "So did Jodie Rancourt. Hers didn't hold up, did it?" Ty unfastened his own seat belt—she wasn't going in there alone. "I'm playing devil's advocate, babe.
All I'm saying is that anything's possible. And I'm with you all the way. That's not so bad, is it?"

  She pushed open her door, one leg hanging out as she turned back to him and gave him a quick once-over. "You're not armed. If Sterling or Jodie or whoever decides to shoot me, they'll shoot you, too."

  "Consider me a deterrent to violence." He gave her hisbestcockysmile."AndwhosaysIneedtobearmed?"

  That drew a small laugh. She looked steady enough when she got out of the truck. Ty followed her up a short walkway to a flat stone landing at the front door. He leaned into Carine and whispered, "Don't you feel like you've just climbed the beanstalk to the ogre's castle?"

  She bit back a smile, but she had her hands twisted together, obviously trying to keep them from shaking. It wasn't a pleasant errand she was conducting, but Ty knew she wouldn't give up now. That was Carine—in for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe it was her "strong moral compass" at work, but Ty suspected it was also plain stubbornness.

  "We can still go camping," Ty said. "I'd keep you warm—"

  "So would a good sleeping bag. Will you stop?"

  But when Sterling Rancourt pulled open the door a moment later, Carine somehow managed to look less tentative and guilty. It wasn't her fault the police had the pictures of Jodie Rancourt and Louis Sanborn, but that only just now seemed to sink in. Sterling looked like a wealthy country gentleman in his wide-wale corduroys and Patagonia sweater, but it was clear he was prepared for this encounter with his photographer. He must have seen them coming up the driveway, Ty thought.

  "Carine, Sergeant North," Rancourt said coolly. "What can I do for you?"

  Ty checked out the guy's stiff manner. No tea by the fire today. But Carine, stuffing her hands in her pockets, not intimidated, plunged ahead. "I'm sorry about the disk, and I'm sorry things have turned out the way they have." She paused, but Rancourt didn't say a word, and she went on. "I didn't feel I could give the disk to Gary Turner. I had no idea what was on it—Sterling, I hope you believe me when I say that I had nothing to do with those pictures."

  He shifted in the doorway, not meeting her eye. "I'm sure you did what you felt was right. It's not a pleasant situation for any of us, but I haven't seen the pictures. I'm not in a position to discuss them."