Cold River

by Carla Neggers

  “Whoa, whoa.” Beth put up a hand. “Bowie? Hannah, what are you doing?”

  “He’s a stonemason, Beth. He knows cellar leaks. If you’re worried, which I’m not, Devin and Toby will both be here.”

  “All right, I’ll stay out of it. I just hope what happened up at the cemetery was an accident.” Beth grabbed her jacket off a hook by the door. “Have fun at dinner. You and the judge can go off on one of your tangents about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. It’ll take your mind off things. Dom, you want to join Jo and me at the lake?”

  “Not tonight, but thanks,” she said.

  It was Dominique’s standard response when she was invited anywhere in the evening. She rarely went out after work, saying she preferred to stick close to the little house she was renovating in the village and the café provided most of the social contact she needed. She and Beth left together. Hannah wrapped the rest of the cupcakes, got fresh ice and a fresh towel and locked the café for the night. She went out into the center hall and stared out the side windows at the Christmas lights twinkling on the trees across the street on the common. Dominique was a stickler about keeping decorations fresh. The wreaths, lights and baubles they’d put up in the café would be down by New Year’s Day.

  As if on cue, Jo Harper’s car angled into a parking spot in front of the building and she and Elijah got out. Hannah wondered if they could see her standing there in the hall or if she could run upstairs and lock herself in her apartment and refuse to talk to them.

  Best to get this done, she thought, setting the plate of cupcakes on the curving stairs to the second floor. She held her ice pack in one hand and opened the front door. “Elijah, Jo,” she said as the pair mounted the stone steps. “I’ve been expecting you. Beth and Dominique have gone home. We can talk in the café.”

  Even as a senior in high school, when Hannah was a freshman, Jo Harper, the eldest of the town police chief’s three children, had been direct and uncompromising. Her one weakness had been the man across the café table from her now—bad-boy Elijah. Their days holed up together in a cabin on the lake were probably her only departure from the straight-and-narrow.

  Fate in the form of the sixteen-year-old son of the vice president of the United States had brought her to Black Falls in November. While assigned to protect Marissa Neal, the eldest of Preston and Holly Neal’s five children, Jo had become the victim of one of Charlie Neal’s infamous pranks. Charlie was the youngest and the only boy. He’d hosted an airsoft battle at the vice president’s residence. Jo believed one of the guns was in fact real and jumped into the teenage fray, intercepting what turned out to be a barrage of airsoft pellets.

  The incident, captured on video by one of the boys, ended up on YouTube. The subsequent media sensation and Jo’s disgruntled boss had landed her back in her hometown until things settled down.

  Hannah had heard rumors that Charlie, who had a genius IQ, had played a role in discovering the existence of the network of killers-for-hire. It wasn’t anything Jo was willing to discuss.

  Regardless, Jo had always had a knack for rubbing Hannah the wrong way.

  Elijah had walked over to a riverside window while Jo stepped behind the glass case and poured herself a mug of coffee as if she owned the place. She brought her mug to a small table overlooking Elm Street and pulled out a chair. Her jacket was open, a black scarf hanging from her neck.

  She nodded to Hannah. “Have a seat.”

  Hannah tried not to bristle and sat opposite Jo, her back to the street window. She reminded herself that Jo was in a difficult position and she and Elijah had saved Devin’s life. Devin had said she’d been good to him on the mountain, careful with him, putting herself at risk to make sure he and Nora Asher were as safe as possible when the bullets had started flying. Jo had stood up to the pressure of a life-threatening situation and hadn’t taken care of just herself.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Hannah asked. “Soup, a sandwich—cupcakes?”

  “Not for me. Help yourself if you want anything.”

  Hannah understood that Jo was indicating this wasn’t a casual conversation among friends. “I just had a cupcake, thanks. I assume you’ve already talked to Sean and Bowie.”

  Jo nodded. “Sean’s still up at the cemetery. Scott Thorne and I went out to Bowie’s place and talked to him.”

  “How are his injuries?”

  “He says fine. He was on his way to see about some work he’s doing for the Whittakers. How’re your injuries?”

  “Nothing ice and a hot bath later tonight won’t cure.”

  Elijah turned from the window and walked over to their table, his deep, clear blue eyes fastening on Hannah for a half beat, but he said nothing and sat next to Jo.

  Stifling a surge of self-consciousness, Hannah kept her attention on the federal agent across from her. “It makes sense you’d want to check out what happened in the cemetery. Even if you weren’t in the middle of a major investigation, that was weird.”

  Jo drank some of her coffee, holding the evergreen mug in both hands. “Tell us what happened.”

  Hannah gave her account as thoroughly and objectively as she could, leaving out as much emotion and speculating as she could manage. Neither Jo nor Elijah interrupted.

  When Hannah finished, Jo set her mug on the table and looked out the window at the dark, quiet street. “We’ve been tracking Melanie Kendall’s and Kyle Rigby’s movements. We know for sure they were in Black Falls in April and again in November. Melanie met Thomas Asher here in the café in April.” Jo sat back in her chair. “Did you see Kyle then?”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, but he stopped by in November before he went up Cameron Mountain to look for Nora. You know that, Jo. He interviewed all of us. Dominique, Beth, me. He said he was a mountain rescuer.”

  “He wanted us to believe Devin was a troubled teenager,” Jo said. “Money turned up missing at the lodge, at Nora’s apartment and here at the café.”

  “That’s what we assume,” Hannah said, hesitant. “It’s not clear…”

  “What’s not clear, Hannah?”

  She saw it now. She’d stepped right into Jo’s trap. She had little choice but to press ahead. “We don’t know it was actually Rigby who stole the money. The cash stolen from the café was in a blue willow jar in the kitchen. If he’d come in here before his search for Nora and any of us had seen him, we’d almost certainly have remembered him. If we’d seen him anywhere near the kitchen, we definitely would have remembered him.”

  Jo drank some of her coffee. She was steady, as focused as Hannah had ever seen her. “Are you suggesting he and Melanie had an accomplice here in town?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Hannah said.

  “No one at the lodge remembers seeing him or Melanie near the shop where the money was stolen,” Jo went on. “Nora’s apartment at the Whittaker place is more isolated, but it still would have been risky for him to duck in and out of there with cash from her kitchen.”

  “I’m not a law enforcement officer, Jo. Or a prosecutor. I don’t have to build a case.”

  “That’s right. You’re a witness.”

  “I have no intention of meddling in your investigation. I just know how easy it is for any of us to jump to conclusions. It’s been a long five weeks and we’re all frustrated and maybe scared—”

  “Scared of what?”

  Another trap, Hannah thought. She didn’t hesitate before answering. “We’re all afraid there are more killers out there. More murders in the works. That scares you, doesn’t it, Jo?”

  “It doesn’t matter what scares me.”

  “What about the prospect of this network having a connection to Black Falls? Does that scare you?”

  Jo’s rich, deep turquoise eyes stayed on Hannah. “Did you help Drew with his cabin, Hannah?”

  “No,” Hannah said, recognizing the question as a deliberate non sequitur.

  “You know I’m a federal agent. Telling the truth—”

/>   “I am telling the truth, and I know the law. I didn’t help Drew with his cabin. My brother didn’t help him, either. He carried supplies up the trail and left them where Drew asked him to leave them.”

  “And you had no idea what was going on?”

  “Not until late October.” Hannah glanced at Elijah, who hadn’t said a word; his expression was neutral, making it impossible even to guess what he was thinking. She turned back to Jo. “Devin had a hard time after finding Drew’s body. He thought he could have done more to save him. We all know he couldn’t have.”

  Jo pushed back her chair slightly, stretching out her legs. She rubbed the engagement ring on her finger. Hannah saw Elijah notice, too.

  “Do you know who helped Drew with the cabin?” Jo asked.

  “I don’t know that anyone did,” Hannah said.

  “Did you know he’d found that old cellar hole?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you go up there today?”

  “I wanted to see for myself where my brother nearly died.”

  “You went on impulse. Alone.”

  Hannah shrugged. “So I did.”

  Elijah settled back in his chair, his gaze on Hannah. “Bowie had just been in the café.”

  “So had you, Jo, Sean, Zack Harper, Scott Thorne and who knows who else.”

  “We’re not ex-cons who grew up with you,” Jo said. “We don’t blame you for a bar fight that got us thrown in jail and put on probation and disrupted our lives. We don’t blame you for leading Drew Cameron to us so that the chief of police could arrest us.”

  “You’re assuming Bowie blames me, and he doesn’t.”

  Jo touched the rim of her mug with one finger. “Now who’s assuming, Hannah?”

  Her wrist throbbing now, Hannah resisted the urge to jump up and run out of there, get away from Jo Harper and her suspicions and attitude. “Bowie wasn’t an ex-con when we were kids. He was a boy with dreams and a hard row to hoe.” Her voice was under control, even as her heart raced. “Be grateful you didn’t have his childhood.”

  Jo started to say something else, but Elijah spoke first. “How’d you do up at the cabin?”

  “I was only there for a short time. It was cold and I’d been hiking for several hours. I didn’t want to stop moving. That’d only make me colder.”

  “Sean was there,” Elijah said.

  Hannah forced herself not to react. “He saved me from a long hike back to my car.”

  “What about Bowie?” Jo asked. “Has he ever been up to the cabin?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. Until this morning, I hadn’t seen him since his arrest. If you want to know if he’s been up to the cabin,” she added coolly, “you can ask him yourself.”

  “I did. He says he hasn’t been up there.”

  Hannah wondered if she’d stepped into another of Jo’s traps. As much as she’d learned in law school, she didn’t have Jo Harper’s experience as a federal agent. Best, she knew, to shut up now. “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?” she asked. “What about a scone? Jo, I know how much you love Dominique’s scones.”

  Jo surprised Hannah with a smile. “I keep trying to get Elijah to try them.”

  Hannah sighed. “It’s no secret you all are looking for a Black Falls connection to these killers. I understand that, and I understand that Bowie’s convenient—”

  “It’s not about convenience,” Jo said, rising. “We didn’t find anything up at the cemetery that definitively suggests you and Bowie were attacked. Sean says you ran straight to the hillside after you got back on your feet. Why?”

  Hannah shut her eyes briefly, remembering those first seconds after the rock fell, before Sean arrived. She looked at Jo. “I can’t say for sure. I don’t know if I saw or heard something and was so hyped up on adrenaline I can’t remember—or if I just operated on instinct.”

  “You didn’t go down the hill,” Jo said. “Why not?”

  Hannah kept her gaze steady. “Sean had arrived by then.”

  “Ah.” Jo nodded with understanding. “I see. He stopped you.”

  Elijah surprised her with a grin. “Sean didn’t tell us that part, either.” He stood up. “Next time you want to take off onto the mountain by yourself, call me.”

  “Take care of that wrist and cheek,” Jo said, rising next to Elijah. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse. Bowie, too.”

  “On that,” Hannah said with a small smile, “we agree.”

  “I suspect we agree on more than you want to admit,” Jo said quietly.

  She headed for the door to the center hall, but Elijah remained behind, his Cameron blue eyes leveled on Hannah with an intensity that made her glad she’d never had to encounter him on a battlefield. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “No one’s lumping you and Bowie together just because you grew up on the same part of the river, or because you were at O’Rourke’s in March when the fists started flying. You’re not responsible for what he does.”

  “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 ha
ve 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?”

  She didn’t answer as more footsteps sounded on the stairs. She remembered Bowie had promised to stop by and started to call out to warn him Sean was on the premises, but Devin ducked into the dim light.

  He was halfway through one of the cupcakes. “I figured this was meant for me.”

  Hannah collected herself, but she was aware of Sean’s eyes on her. Their clear blue had turned to a dark, smoky color in the cellar light. Whatever was going on between them, she would do well to remember that he was as relentless and mission-oriented as any Cameron ever born. He believed she was holding back on him, his brothers, Jo. He hadn’t given up the fight.

  “Toby’s back, too,” Devin said. “Your message—we were worried about you.”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, trying not to sound breathless, self-conscious. “Toby has to finish a trigonometry take-home test before he heads to California.”

  Devin peeled off more of the cupcake wrapper. “I hated trig.”

  “You hated math, period. Did you work at the lodge at all today?”