Cold Dawn bf-3

by Carla Neggers

  Rose didn’t see Bowie’s van anywhere on the road.

  She squatted down in front of her friend. “Are you hurt?”

  Dominique shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Thank you.”

  “Dom, what happened? What are you doing here?”

  “I came for a run. I arrived about twenty minutes ago. I saw a man.” She was panting, as if she couldn’t get a decent breath. “I just got a glimpse of him. I thought it was Bowie, because he’s been working out here.”

  “His van isn’t here.” Unless it was up at Elijah’s, Rose thought with a jolt of panic. “Did you see him, Dom? Is he in one of the cabins?”

  She looked up at Rose in terror. “I don’t know.”

  Rose saw Nick charging for a second cabin that had started on fire. He crashed his splitter into the door.

  “The man had on a black ski mask and parka.” Dominique’s lower lip trembled, but she was regaining her natural composure. “I didn’t notice until I got closer that he was too thin to be Bowie. He grabbed me. He threw me into the cabin. I fell. I hit the wall.”

  “Were you knocked unconscious?” Rose asked.

  Dominique shook her head. “I just had the wind knocked out of me. I was so stunned. Oh, Rose. I couldn’t get out. He locked me in. I smelled smoke.” She shivered, her teeth chattering. “I thought I was going to die.”

  Nick burst into the cabin and immediately backed out again, dragging a man into the snow. Even from where she stood with Dominique, Rose could see the man was badly burned and not readily identifiable.

  He was clearly dead. There was nothing anyone could do.

  Her heart almost stopped. It couldn’t be Bowie, she told herself. She saw bits of a black ski mask, a black parka, just as Dom had described. And the victim was lean. Too lean to be an O’Rourke.

  Rose remembered that Robert Feehan had been wearing a black parka when he’d grabbed her out by the sugar shack.

  Was Bowie in the cabin that was fully engulfed, orange flames shooting through the roof now?

  “Dom,” Rose said, “did you see Bowie at all?”

  “No. I left Myrtle in charge at the café and came out here for a run. Just a short one along the lake. Bowie said he’d be here. I thought I’d be safe. I saw someone up by the cabins. I called….” Dominique started shivering uncontrollably again. “I had no idea.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “I didn’t see anyone else. He didn’t say anything. He just threw me into the cabin and locked me in. He seemed to be in a hurry.” Her voice faltered. “I was terrified. Then I smelled smoke.”

  “You need to stay warm.” Rose rummaged in her pack for a bottle of water. “Here, try to drink some.”

  Dominique took the bottle. “I’m okay. I just can’t stop shaking.”

  Rose pulled an extra pair of gloves from her pack and handed them to Dominique as she strained to see if Bowie’s van was up at Elijah’s house. He could be working at a different site, or he could have already come and gone and Dominique had missed him.

  Nick covered the body with a tarp from the woodpile and started checking the rest of the cabins before flying embers or a bomb could ignite more of them. He’d gone in and out of two, finding no other victims, when the first fire trucks, ambulance and police cruiser arrived.

  Zack Harper was in the lead truck. He glanced at Rose and Dominique but said nothing as he and the other firefighters quickly got to work.

  The ambulance crew ran toward Dominique. Rose left her friend in their care and got Ranger’s attention, signaled for him to come to her. When he was at her side, she went with him up the slippery road to Elijah’s house.

  “Don’t go in,” Nick said, materializing next to her. He must have come through the trees that divided Jo’s property from Elijah’s. “This place could be rigged with some kind of explosive device.”

  She looked up at her brother’s deck. The steps hadn’t been shoveled. There were no prints in the snow. “The man is Robert Feehan, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it is,” Nick replied. “It looks as if he couldn’t get out of the cabin fast enough and got caught in his own scheme.”

  “Or that’s what we’re supposed to believe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I should call Elijah and let him know what’s going on. He can tell Jo.”

  Nick didn’t argue. She walked down to the lake for better cell reception but it took several tries to get through to Elijah in Washington. When she did, she tried to be as clear and succinct as possible in informing him about the fires.

  “I’m on the next flight up there,” Elijah said grimly. “Was this show meant for you and Martini?”

  “I don’t know.” Rose ran the toe of her boot over snow that clung to a low rock. “Either Robert accidentally got himself killed setting these fires or that’s what we’re supposed to think.”

  “Could he have known you two were out snowshoeing and rushed his plan?”

  “It’s possible. It must be his campsite we found. Maybe he was past caring about his own safety and got reckless.”

  Her middle brother was clearly tense. “Your voice is shaking.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Once you’re sure my place is safe, go inside. Get warm.”

  She almost smiled. “Yes, Sergeant Cameron.”

  He sighed. “You know what to do. I forget. Be careful. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “What about Jo?”

  “I don’t know if Jo will be with me. She’s got her own problems.”

  The death of Portia Martinez and the whereabouts of Marissa Neal’s former boyfriend, Rose thought, but Elijah had disconnected.

  She saw that Nick had returned to the cabins. He would want to talk to the firefighters about exactly how the fires had started.

  Two state detectives intercepted her as she started back to Elijah’s house. They asked her if she wanted to talk to them inside where it was warm, but she answered their questions in the driveway. Once she finished, they headed back to the cabins.

  Scott Thorne walked slowly up the icy road to her. “Hey, Rose.” His emotions were under tight control. “I’m glad you’re okay. We checked out here last night and didn’t see anyone.”

  “Robert could have been keeping an eye out for you.”

  “We didn’t see a trail, a light or footprints, but the snow was steady by then,” he said curtly. “Visibility was lousy. Jo’s cabins are a wreck, but this isn’t how anyone wanted to get rid of them. How many burned?”

  “Just the two. Grit’s and the one next to it. The one Dominique was locked inside wasn’t rigged. Robert, or whoever did this, might have planned to get to it next and wanted her to know what was in store for her.”

  “Elijah’s house?”

  “It’s okay,” Rose said. “Elijah and Jo haven’t been here in several weeks. Neither has Grit. Robert had to know that.”

  “Bowie’s been working out here,” Scott said.

  “It doesn’t look as if he’s been by yet today.” Rose noticed a few white clouds on the horizon across the lake, even as the sky cleared directly above her. “I used to think Derek and Robert were just a couple of fun-loving ski bums who wouldn’t hurt anyone. I learned about Derek’s darker side a year ago, but Robert…”

  “None of us knew them that well.”

  “Any idea how he started the fires?”

  “Martini says he thinks there was some kind of accelerant used.”

  “White gas? There was a canister at the campsite Nick and I found up behind the cabins.”

  “The investigation’s only just started, Rose,” Scott said. “Be patient, okay?”

  She noticed Nick coming up the road, moving smoothly. The physical demands seemed to have had no effect on him. “How did Robert get caught in a fire of his own making?” she asked Scott. “Did he trip?”

  “It’s tempting to speculate,” he said, “but you know better.”

  Nick joined
them, standing close enough to Rose that his arm brushed hers, but his eyes were on Scott. “Did Feehan have an alibi for the death of Portia Martinez in California?”

  Scott shook his head. “Not going there, Nick.”

  He didn’t give up. “Do you know for sure he was in Vermont when she was killed? Did he know this missing actor?”

  “Feehan worked with a number of private students at various ski areas and didn’t keep good records,” Scott said. “It’ll take some time to sort everything out and work a timeline.”

  “What about Marissa Neal?” Nick asked.

  Scott clearly didn’t like Nick’s questions. “Not going there, either.” He shifted back to Rose, his expression blank, impassive. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

  She watched him bypass an unsanded section of glare ice as he walked back to the cabins.

  Nick pulled off a glove and zipped up her jacket. “Don’t let adrenaline fool you,” he said, his hand lingering at her collar. “It’s cold out here. You’ll cool off fast now that you’re still.” He smiled slightly. “Which I realize you know.”

  “It’s easy to forget the basics when you’re emotionally involved. I don’t know why Dom’s cabin wasn’t set on fire.” She swallowed, her throat dry, tight. “Maybe because Robert didn’t get to it.”

  She called Ranger and they went up the snow-covered stairs to Elijah’s deck. He had someone plow and shovel while he was away, but the three inches of snow that had fallen overnight could wait. She heard Nick on the stairs behind her and slipped inside through the slider. Snow fell off her boots onto the hardwood floor of the comfortable main room, but her brother wouldn’t care.

  While Ranger sniffed out the place, Rose pulled off her hat and gloves and looked out the wall of sliding doors at the view of the lake. Nick entered the house through the slider next to her. She could feel his intensity, smelled the fire on him as he took in her brother’s house.

  “Elijah loves this place,” she said. “He left home at nineteen. I was fourteen. I wrote to him almost every day that first year. I’d made it my goal. Three hundred sixty-five letters to my soldier brother.”

  “Did he write back to you?”

  “Some, but I didn’t expect an answer to every letter. Even if he hadn’t been a soldier, that would have been unrealistic. The long silences didn’t come until later, when he became a Green Beret.” The sky had cleared and was a bright winter blue against the white and gray landscape. “He bought this land three years ago and worked on this place whenever he was home.”

  “He did a good job.”

  “Pop would come down and help. He knew Elijah always wanted to return home to Black Falls. I think Pop left Jo the lakefront property because he believed she and Elijah were meant to be together. He discovered them in one of the cabins. Running off with Elijah was the only time Jo veered off the path she’d set for herself and did something crazy. Elijah says he’d have ended up in jail if he hadn’t gone into the army when he did.”

  “But your father felt guilty,” Nick said.

  “Not in the beginning. He came to believe he’d interfered with something that was meant to be. I think leaving Jo the cabins was a way for him to make amends. She wouldn’t have been here in November if he hadn’t. Who knows if or when she and Elijah would have gotten back together again.” Rose glanced at Nick, realized his gaze was on her, not the view. “Do you have a place you want to be? A place you think of as home?”

  He shrugged as if he had never really considered such a question. “My father was career navy. We bounced around when I was growing up. I’m used to making a home where I am.” Humor played at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t grow up in a small New England town where my family had lived for generations.”

  “Not all Camerons stayed. For instance, some took off for Ohio after a brutal winter in the early nineteenth century.” Rose wasn’t letting him off the hook. “If you closed your eyes, clicked your heels together three times and whispered, ‘There’s no place like home,’ where would home be?”

  “It’s not a place. It’s an attitude. It’s the people who’d be with me.”

  His tone made her breath catch, but she saw more police cars arrive on the narrow lake road. “I should go check on Dominique. Nick, I was so scared. First Dom. Then…I thought it was Bowie in the burning cabin.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” He slipped an arm around her. “I know.”

  She leaned her head against him, his muscles taut, still tensed from wielding the splitter, carrying out first Dominique and then Robert. “I can’t imagine what Robert was thinking. None of this makes any sense. What about you? Are you okay?”

  “No worries.” He drew her closer still and brushed his lips over the top of her head. She hadn’t even realized she’d pulled off her hat. “I’ll snowshoe back up to the lodge. I want to take another look at the campsite. The police are there now.”

  “Dominique can’t be up to driving. I’ll take her back to town in her car. Someone there can give me a ride back to the lodge. Would you mind taking Ranger with you?”

  “Sure. Ranger and I have bonded.”

  “Say his name, then give a one-word command. Stick to basics.” Rose smiled. “Be the alpha dog. He’ll behave.”

  “I love being the alpha dog.”

  The humor helped her to absorb the events of the morning. “Nick…”

  He slipped her hat out of her pocket and tucked it onto her head. “Soon, Rose,” he said softly. “We’ll figure all this out soon.”

  Nineteen

  D ominique put on an evergreen-colored canvas apron in the café kitchen. She’d wanted to go right back to work. Rose hadn’t argued and watched her friend hop onto a stool at the butcher-block worktable. Dominique was visibly trembling, still ashen from her ordeal at the lake.

  Rose stood across the worktable from her. “Dom, what’s going on?”

  “We’ll have a late lunch spurt because of the fire. It’ll bring people out.” She placed her hands on the clean wood and splayed her fingers, as if she weren’t sure what to do with herself. “I just have to think a minute.”

  “The police want to talk to Bowie.”

  She nodded. “Of course. It only makes sense.”

  “Were you meeting him? Is that why you chose the lake for your run?”

  Dominique looked up, her dark eyes clear, shining. “I wouldn’t say I was meeting him. I knew he’d be there. Excuse me, Rose. I really have to get busy.”

  “Sure.”

  As Rose started out of the kitchen, Dominique jumped off the stool and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank Nick Martini for me, too.”

  “Dom…”

  She stood back, smiling, trembling even more. “Cooking’s my refuge.”

  She returned to the worktable, and Rose went out through the swinging door to the dining room, where, in fact, business was picking up. Myrtle was behind the glass case, filling an order for fruit salad and house-made yogurt. “Dom’s back?”

  “Yes,” Rose said. “Thankfully she wasn’t seriously injured. She’s more shaken up than anything.”

  “She’ll make soup. It’ll be good for her.”

  Rose noticed a coffee spill on the counter and grabbed a cloth and wiped it up. “Myrtle, did Dom tell you why she was going out to the lake?”

  “She said she was going for a run.” Myrtle handed the fruit and yogurt to a teenager from town, took her money and turned back to Rose with a sigh. “If Andrei could see me now.”

  Andrei Petrov was the Russian diplomat whose death Myrtle had looked into, bringing her to Lowell Whittaker’s attention. The result was the fire at her house—and, ultimately, her presence at Three Sisters Café on Main Street in Black Falls.

  Myrtle fussed with the tie on her apron as she continued. “You’d think a serial arsonist who sets fires for his own pleasure and contracts out as a paid killer wouldn’t end up burning himself to death in a falling-down Vermont cabin.” She str
aightened, her lavender eyes clear, incisive. “I suppose it could have been suicide, but he didn’t exactly go out in a blaze of glory, did he?”

  “Good points.” Rose helped herself to an apple from a plate on the counter. “Any idea what Dom’s hiding?”

  “She might not be hiding anything. She just might be keeping her business to herself. She’s pleasant to everyone, but she’s reserved. She doesn’t blab about her private life.”

  “Myrtle, are Dom and Bowie seeing each other?”

  “I don’t know,” Myrtle said as a couple from town walked up to the glass case.

  Rose ate her apple as she walked down to O’Rourke’s. She found Liam out back, taking off his winter gear. “I was out snowshoeing,” he said. “If it’s above zero, I like to get out before work. Just has to be above zero. I heard sirens and called a friend. I heard what happened.”

  She leaned in the doorway, every inch of the tidy back room lined with shelves and hooks for supplies, tools and Liam’s personal outdoor gear. “Where were you snowshoeing?” she asked him.

  “Cameron Mountain.” He leaned his snowshoes and poles against the wall. “I ran into Lauren, as a matter of fact. She was on the way to the sugar shack. She seemed preoccupied.”

  “Was anyone with her?”

  He pulled off his coat and shook his head. “She was meeting the guys delivering the new evaporator for the shack. I can’t believe you all are getting into sugaring.”

  “It’s more for fun than profit.”

  “Impractical,” Liam said.

  Probably true. Rose thought. “Did you see any smoke from the fires at the lake?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what was going on. I drove straight back here.” He frowned at her, his face still red from the cold and exertion. “You interrogating me, Rose?”

  “Dominique was attacked, Liam.”

  He went very still. “Dom? Is she okay?”

  Rose quickly explained what had transpired earlier at the lake. “Dom says she was meeting Bowie. He wasn’t there.”

  “I haven’t seen him today.”

  “Robert was camping up in the woods. You didn’t run into him?”

  “No. I didn’t snowshoe in that direction.”