The turkeys had wandered off.
She got a decent cell signal and stood on an exposed pine root and tried her boss again. This time he picked up. “Don’t you have a duty assignment in some back-elbow place I could take?” she asked him.
“You’re in a back-elbow place.”
“What if I told you Ambassador Bruni’s stepdaughter decided to go camping in the mountains after hearing about his death?”
Silence—yet Francona didn’t hang up. Finally, he said, “I thought you were canoeing.”
“Can’t. It’s dark.”
“You and the stepdaughter should go canoeing together. Safer. Let me know if you see any loons.”
And that was enough for Jo. He’d made his point without being direct: If she found out anything useful, that was a good thing.
If she got herself into trouble, she’d swing for it. Alone.
Elijah listened to Grit’s report while the fire crackled in his woodstove and he tried not to think about kissing Jo, because if he thought about it, Grit would figure it out and come up there and shoot him for sheer stupidity. He’d wanted to do things his way and be unencumbered by a federal agent next door, and what had he done? Kissed her. More than once. Grit might know even without being told. He was tuned in to people in a way Elijah had never seen in anyone before. It was almost spooky. It’d gotten worse—sharper, weirder—since the firefight that had taken his leg and Michael Ferrerra, known far and wide as Moose, a legend even among SEALs and Grit’s best friend.
“The police found a car in a public garage a couple of blocks from the scene. It looks to be the one that struck Bruni.” Grit spoke briskly but without emotion. “Police dropped a net around the area once they got the 911 call about the accident—or whatever it was—but the driver slipped through. They’re not saying much. They’ll comb the car for evidence, but I’m guessing they won’t find anything.”
“Witnesses?”
“None yet. You’d think everyone at that hotel shut their eyes just as Bruni got hit.”
Grit had obviously worked on the scenario. “You have friends in the D.C. police department?”
“No.”
“You could make some.”
Grit was silent.
“Grit?”
“I’ve got a reporter I’m talking to. Myrtle Smith. She’s like a hundred and twelve or something, but she knows everything that’s gone on in this town since the Lincoln assassination.”
“Her name’s Myrtle?”
“Yeah. Like crape myrtle. That’s a flowering tree originally from Southeast Asia, but there are dozens of American hybrids. They love the heat.”
“A Southern thing,” Elijah said.
“That’s right. You’re a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee mountain man, Cameron. You wouldn’t know about Southern things.”
Grit was from the Florida Panhandle. He was a mix of Creek Indian and Scots Irish—and eccentric if not crazy. Elijah wasn’t entirely sure if Grit accepted that Moose was dead. Now he had a new friend. But even Grit wouldn’t make up a reporter named Myrtle. “Grit…you’re not serious about the Lincoln assassination, right? Myrtle—she’s one of us?”
“Yeah, yeah.” No irritation. “Myrtle feels guilty because of all the crap she’s written about the military over the past two hundred years. Figuratively. Not literally. Look her up, Elijah.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Let me see what I can get out of her. By the way, Moose says hi. He says you need a dog.”
Elijah had learned not to tell Grit that Moose was dead.
“Jo Harper is here with me.”
“The Secret Service agent you cut out on when you were kids? Great, Cameron. Lucky you. Now you can get yourself arrested on top of having gotten shot.”
“My father went to see her in Washington in early April before he died. Can you find out what all she’s been up to since then?”
“Maybe,” Grit said and hung up.
Elijah looked at his woodstove hearth. He’d thought about getting a dog upon his return home.
Two minutes later his phone rang again. “Grit—”
“Grit? Oh. The SEAL from your firefight on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April. No, it’s not Grit. It’s Charles Neal.”
Elijah took a moment before responding. The military chain of command didn’t include the vice president or his sixteen-year-old son, but Elijah couldn’t imagine any officer he’d ever served under wanting him on this call. He pictured Charlie’s red face in the video as Jo had grabbed him by the ear. “How’d you get this number, Charlie? And how do you know Grit?”
“I don’t know Grit. I know of him. Getting your number was easy. Seriously, it’s on the Internet. It’s getting Jo’s number that’s hard. Special Agent Harper, I mean. Is she there?”
“No. She likes her flowers. Did you know lilies are her favorite?”
“I found out. Mr. Cameron—is it okay to call you Mister, or should I call you Sergeant?”
The kid was something. “Elijah will be fine, Charlie.”
“Please give Special Agent Harper a message.” He paused, and when Elijah didn’t say anything, proceeded. “Tell her that I have reason to believe that Ambassador Bruni was the target of a team of international assassins who are also responsible for the deaths of at least four prominent Americans in the past six months.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because you have access to people in a way that I don’t. You’re one of them. The people who’d know things, I mean. Not the killers. I’ll report more details as soon—”
“No, you won’t,” Elijah said in his best drill-sergeant voice. “You’ll get your butt to school tomorrow and do what the Secret Service tells you to do. Got that, Mr. Neal?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” The kid was unruffled. “You’ll tell Jo, though, right?”
“Stay out of this thing before you screw up someone else’s career or get yourself into a bigger mess than an airsoft firefight.”
“You’re an American hero, Sergeant Cameron. Thank you for your service.”
The kid was gone.
Elijah considered his options. Odds were, if Charlie knew about assassins and unsolved murders, he’d found the information on the Internet, which everyone else could read, too. Law enforcement could have made the same connections he had—if any connections were to be made.
He called Grit, filled him in. They’d known each other for several years, but Grit was navy, Elijah was army—it wasn’t until the firefight in April that they’d become friends for life. Elijah would give his life for Grit. He knew Grit would do the same for him.
“We’re talking about the irresponsible, genius son of the vice president of the United States,” Grit said. “Right, Elijah?”
“Yeah. I like this kid. He called me an American hero.”
Grit burst out laughing and hung up.
Elijah resisted marching down to Jo’s cabin in the dark. The Secret Service had their eye on Charlie Neal. They probably kept track of what he was up to on the Internet. Then again, the kid was a genius. Probably he could outwit the Secret Service if he put his mind to it.
The wonder, Elijah thought, wasn’t that Jo had gotten him by the ear or said what she’d said to him. The wonder was she hadn’t strangled Charles Preston Neal with her bare hands.
Fourteen
Nora unrolled her sleeping bag in the pitch-dark of her small dome tent. She had a flashlight but didn’t want to use it and risk someone finding her. She felt safer that way. But she hadn’t considered how dark it would be. Even with the half-moon, it was a black night. She’d set up her tent on a level spot off the falls trail—Beth Harper had once described it to her. She and her sister used to camp up here as kids. It was located on the saddle that connected Cameron Mountain to an unnamed peak that had few trails and wasn’t popular with hikers. Devin had told her about a kind of pathway along the saddle, off the main trails, around to the north side of the mountain.
/> That was her ultimate destination. She could have driven out to the old logging road over there, but then it’d be obvious to anyone who found her car where she was headed.
She wanted to see the spot where Devin had found Drew Cameron.
She hadn’t known Devin then, but she believed the horror of that day was key to whatever was going on with him. Maybe if she could understand, she could help him—even if he had stolen money from her.
“Which he didn’t,” she whispered aloud, getting on her hands and knees and smoothing out her sleeping bag as best she could. She’d been lucky to find the campsite before nightfall. She could have hiked longer, but she hadn’t wanted to trip over a rock or a root in the dark and break something. Then what would she do?
Pitching her tent hadn’t taken her as long as it might have if she hadn’t practiced after she bought it for her class with Elijah. The poles were color coded, which had made things easier. She’d eaten up daylight trekking from where she’d left her car. Everyone would think she was on the east trail—it was one of the easiest and most popular—but she’d cut off onto a seldom-used spur that intersected the falls trail. And she hadn’t stayed on it, either. Going off trail was a huge risk, but she didn’t want anyone to stumble on to her—including Devin, she thought, feeling guilty at her disloyalty.
She’d started up the mountain too late in the day to get to the north side before nightfall. Even at a moderate pace, she could cover maybe a mile an hour hiking in the rugged terrain, but her heavy pack and the conflation of a thousand different emotions—fear, grief, shock, everything—had slowed her down.
She sniffled, crawling back to the head of her sleeping bag. She’d taken off her boots, but her feet were dry and warm in her socks—wool with a moisture-wicking liner. The tent was tight quarters, but Elijah had explained how a smaller space was easier to warm up and keep warm. He’d emphasized all the ways not to freeze to death.
Like his father did.
Nora pulled off her gloves—she’d put them and a hat on once she’d gotten up on the mountain—and tucked them back in her pack, her teeth chattering, although not from the cold. It was her jumble of thoughts and all the different scenarios that her mind kept throwing out to her of what was going on.
She wished she could just stop thinking.
There was, mercifully, no wind where she was, although supposedly her tent could withstand high winds. She could hear the rush of the waterfall straight down from her campsite and an owl in the nearby spruce tree, its rhythmic hoot eerie but not scary. It was as if it were calling to her, trying to reassure her that all would be well.
Fully clothed except for her hiking boots, Nora slid deep into her mummy-style sleeping bag. It was rated to keep her warm in temperatures as cold as minus twenty. It’d be cold tonight, but not that cold. She’d be fine. She’d eaten a couple of energy bars and drunk plenty of water; Elijah had pounded in the importance of staying hydrated.
She lay on her back, not feeling as claustrophobic as she’d expected. She adjusted the sleeping bag’s hood up over her head, another way to prevent heat loss.
Shutting her eyes was the same as keeping them open. Everything was black. Her tent had a little mesh stargazing window that she could open, but she thought looking up at the night sky would only make her feel smaller, more alone.
Alex is dead…Melanie hates me…Mom doesn’t care about me…
“Don’t think,” she whispered, wriggling inside her sleeping bag. She hoped she didn’t have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. She’d dug a cat-hole outside her tent, but she hated—hated—the idea of having to use it, especially in the dark. Such niceties wouldn’t faze Devin.
Maybe she should have trusted him.
She clutched the silky sleeping bag from the inside.
You’re in shock.
She wished Alex hadn’t been killed, but she didn’t delude herself. She’d never loved him and resented how he had treated her father. Ever since her mother and Alex got together, Nora had tried to be neutral about him. Devin didn’t understand why she’d bothered. “My father was a total cretin, but he’d never have done something like that—steal his best friend’s wife,” he’d said. “That’s really disgusting.”
But who were they to judge? Nora just wanted her mother to be happy. That was what her father had told her, too. “I just want your mother to be happy.”
Except it wasn’t that easy. Maybe, with Alex’s death, her father would dump Melanie and go back to her mother.
Just so long as no one thought he’d run over Alex. Her father had never shown any anger or sense of betrayal, but he wouldn’t. He was restrained that way—emotionally repressed, her mother would say.
A branch snapped down toward the trail, and Nora bolted upright and stifled a scream.
Dead leaves crunched nearby—she couldn’t tell how close.
She could feel her heart thumping as she took small, shallow breaths.
The owl had stopped hooting, but she could hear the rush of the falls down the mountain. She sat as still and as quiet as possible.
But she didn’t hear anything more.
A bear, maybe.
Making as little noise as possible, she eased deep into her sleeping bag. It was funny, she thought sarcastically—right now she’d rather have a bear find her tent than anyone she knew in Black Falls. Even Beth, Dominique and Hannah. Even Elijah. What did she know, really, about any of them? And why should they care about her?
Nora stared wide-eyed into the darkness and told herself over and over again not to think.
Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.
As if it was a mantra that could block out any intrusive thoughts and fears, and keep her safe.
Fifteen
Grit decided Myrtle Smith could drink him under the table without even putting her mind to it. It’d come automatically, effortlessly. She was a hard-nosed warhorse Washington reporter. He was a SEAL.
He didn’t stand a chance.
It was late at the bar in the hotel where Alexander Bruni had been run over by a black car, now in the hands of law enforcement.
“You know the natural result of banning smoking in bars?” Myrtle asked out of the blue. She was like that, Grit had figured out; her mind pinged around like a pinball machine.
He set down his scotch. “Less cancer?”
“More drunks. You wait, someone will do a study and discover those of us who smoke aren’t quitting—we’re just having an extra scotch or two when we’re trapped in a bar without our cigarettes.”
“You should quit.”
“Some politician will kill me in my sleep long before I die of lung cancer. But I did quit, you little snot. Two years, seventy-seven days, ten hours ago. The ‘us’ was in solidarity with smokers. I hate seeing smokers treated like criminals.”
“I don’t think I’ve been called a ‘little snot’ since I was four.”
“‘Little’ as in you’re younger than I am. ‘Snot’ as in—well, you know. You’re a SEAL. All that humility and professionalism is just your way of saying you’re better than the rest of us without being obnoxious.”
“How’d you know I’m in the military?”
“I’d like to say I have a nose for Navy SEALs, but I don’t. I checked you out with a source. Silver Star. Badly wounded in Afghanistan in April. Lost a friend.”
Moose gave a low whistle next to Grit. “She cuts to the chase, doesn’t she?” Grit ignored his comment.
“I’m sorry,” Myrtle said simply.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Grit appreciated how succinct she was.
She leaned forward, her eyes darkening to purple in the dim bar light. “Life sucks. So, want to get on with it?”
“Okay. What do you know about Ambassador Bruni’s enemies?”
“Nothing no one else doesn’t know. He was tough, smart and arrogant. Ambitious. Important. He divorced his first wife to marry the wife of his best friend. According to my sources, he had en
emies but no active threats against him.”
“Then there’s no reason to think the hit-and-run was a professional job,” Grit said.
Myrtle leaned back, eyed him. “Are you suggesting there is?”
“How would I know? Anything on where he was headed when he was hit?”
“Most likely a breakfast meeting that wasn’t on his calendar. No reservation in his name. No one left waiting in the restaurant, checking his watch for him—at least no one who stuck around after he got run over.”
“Maybe whoever it was didn’t hear the commotion outside and thought Bruni blew off their meeting.”
“I suppose it’s possible, but the news is out now.”
“Would you come forward, or would you fade quietly into the woodwork?”
“I’m not the fading-into-the-woodwork type.”
“If you were,” Grit said.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter what I’d do. The FBI and Washington PD are conducting a joint investigation.” Myrtle sat back, her eyes catching more of the light and turning back to lavender. “But it’s not like the hotel has a sign-up sheet for people who walk in off the street. A hotel guest would get asked his room number, but that’s a dead end so far. Interesting, isn’t it? My take—whoever was meeting Bruni doesn’t want to come forward.”
“Could be for political, personal or professional reasons—someone who wants to keep a low profile.” Grit sipped some of his scotch. He was careful about booze. It’d be too easy to dive into a bottle, even with Moose right there. Maybe especially with Moose right there. “There are endless possibilities. What if it wasn’t a breakfast meeting? What if the breakfast was a setup? There was no one waiting—it was just to get him here at a particular time so the car could be there and bounce him into oblivion.”
“You’ve got a twisted mind, Petty Officer Taylor.”
Grit shrugged. “I’m not a pro. The cops will have a dozen other possibilities by now.” He swirled the ice and booze in his glass. “What if he was going to someone’s hotel room?”
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