Cold Pursuit

by Carla Neggers

  Thirty minutes later, Grit met Myrtle at a popular restaurant near the White House. He sat across from her in a dark wood booth with comfortable red-cushioned seats. She’d called right after Francona had left saying she had a hankering for crab cakes. She already had a glass of iced tea in front of her and had put in her order, but she clearly wasn’t in a good mood. “I’ve been turning over rocks all over town. You didn’t tell me Bruni’s stepdaughter is in the same town where Jo Harper is from,” she said. “Harper’s there now. Did you see her video?”

  “Kid’s lucky she didn’t shoot him for real.”

  “Is she in Vermont because of Bruni’s murder?”

  “He was killed after she arrived.”

  “If she’s undercover—”

  “She’d have found an easier way to get sent home besides getting shot in the ass by a hundred airsoft pellets, never mind what she said about the veep’s kid.” He wasn’t getting into his or Elijah’s conversations with Charlie Neal. Myrtle was still a reporter, and Grit figured she was on a need-to-know basis.

  She picked up her tea. It didn’t look as if it had alcohol in it, but Grit couldn’t know for sure. “Fair point,” she said, “but if there’s anything going on in Black Falls, Harper will run into it. She’s the type. She’s the one who got you involved in this?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  There was a moment’s silence as Myrtle drank some of her tea and set the glass down as a waiter appeared. “What do you want to eat?” she asked Grit.

  “Nothing.”

  She looked at the waiter. “Bring him some crab cakes.” He retreated, obviously wanting to please Myrtle more than Grit, and she tapped two fingers on the table. “I can waste time scratching the itch, Grit, or you can just tell me. Who has you looking into the death of a prominent ambassador?”

  He thought of about twenty things he could to do shut her up, then said, “A friend of mine. You’re going to want a name, aren’t you?”

  “Not ‘going to.’ Do.”

  Grit debated. He didn’t need Myrtle spinning her wheels figuring out Elijah’s name. “Elijah Cameron. This is off the record.”

  “What’ll he do if I print his name, hunt me down?”

  It was Grit’s turn to be silent.

  Myrtle sighed. “You guys. Harper and Cameron?”

  “Love-hate thing since preschool.”

  “Yin-yang. Okay. Anything going on up there?”

  “Alex Bruni’s stepdaughter took off into the mountains after she learned about her stepfather’s death.”

  “I don’t like that,” Myrtle said.

  “You got kids?”

  “Why are you asking, Grit?”

  “I just wondered if you and the dead Russian in London got it on—”

  “You bastard.” She didn’t raise her voice. “I’m a split second from throwing my drink in your face.”

  “Question asked and answered. Want to tell me about him?”

  “No.”

  “He had enemies?”

  Her crab cakes arrived. Grit’s would be a minute. Myrtle dug in, ignoring him.

  He settled back against the comfortable booth. “We all have enemies, Myrtle, but not all of us have enemies willing to hire assassins to poison our soup.”

  “It was his toothpaste,” she said. “The poison was in his toothpaste.”

  “He didn’t notice?”

  “He didn’t have a chance. It was a fast death.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. I don’t know what kind of poison. Getting anything out of the Brits is next to impossible.”

  Grit considered a half-dozen options for a fast death by poisoned toothpaste. Most were ones Myrtle probably had considered herself by now. “So your interest in Bruni’s murder isn’t professional.”

  “No, Grit. It’s not. I don’t give a flying rip if I ever write this story or get paid for uncovering whoever these assassins are. I’m freelancing these days. I don’t answer to anyone but myself. If there are paid killers out there, I want them found. That’s it. Then I’m done.”

  The waiter brought Grit’s crab cakes. He wasn’t hungry, but Myrtle stuck her fork out at him and told him to eat up.

  He saw that she’d cleaned her plate. “Like those crab cakes, do you?”

  “I didn’t even taste them.”

  “You can have mine.”

  She shook her head. “No. Eat. Your pants hang on your ass. You need to put on some weight.”

  Grit knew he wasn’t getting out of there alive if he didn’t eat. He picked up his fork and had a bite. “Ever have tupelo honey, Myrtle?”

  “Honey’s honey.”

  “No, it isn’t. True tupelo honey is the only honey that doesn’t crystallize. It’s produced from the tupelo gum tree that grows in the river swamps of northwest Florida.” He set down his fork. Half a crab cake would have to satisfy her. “Come on. Walk with me to the White House. Tell me what it was like when it was being built. You remember, right?”

  “You’re a jerk, Grit.”

  Moose materialized next to him and laughed. “Old Myrtle’s got your number.”

  Grit ignored him and walked out into the late-autumn gloom of Washington. He wanted to take off his fake leg and climb into bed with a fifth of scotch, but Myrtle paid their tab and joined him.

  “Let’s go,” she said without looking at him.

  Moose blew out a breath. “She’s hurting in ways you don’t understand and don’t want to know.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Grit walked easily, his prosthetic giving him no trouble. Not that walking was the same as before that bad night in April. Not that anything was the same.

  He stood with Myrtle at the tall, black-iron fence on Pennsylvania Avenue and looked out at the White House and its still lush green lawn. He thought about assassins and high-profile targets like Ambassador Alexander Bruni, and he remembered Elijah, covered in blood, those piercing blue eyes of his connecting with Grit’s just for an instant as he’d said, “If I don’t make it, tell Jo it wasn’t her fault.” He’d tied on his tourniquet. “Tell her I loved her.”

  Jo Harper.

  Definitely the girl who got away.

  “The girl Cameron let get away,” Moose said.

  “Yeah,” Grit said. “Well. Those things happen.”

  Myrtle looked at him, the lashes of her lavender eyes glistening with tears, but she said nothing.

  Twenty

  Elijah climbed over an old stone wall that early farmers had built when they’d cleared the land to till, and thrashed through a thirty-yard strip of woods to the pond by the Whittaker guesthouse. No cars were parked in the small turnaround, but he’d driven past it and left his truck around a curve just down the road.

  Best not to draw attention to his presence, given what he had in mind.

  The mallards weren’t on the still, gray water. Elijah supposed they could have headed south.

  He hadn’t been home for a full winter in Vermont in a lot of years. He used to dream about snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, working on his house, reading by the fire. Now that he was healed, he had options available to him, in and out of the military, that used his particular skills.

  His family had ideas about what he should do. A.J. had invited him to work at the lodge. All four siblings were owners, but A.J. had always handled the day-to-day operations. Black Falls Lodge was his baby.

  Rose wanted him to train a search dog.

  Sean wanted him out in California—that was where the money was, he’d said.

  None of his options would matter, Elijah thought, if he spent a chunk of the coming winter in jail awaiting trial for breaking and entering.

  His cell phone vibrated. He checked the readout, and answered.

  “Where are you?” Grit asked.

  “Looking at ducks and avoiding arrest. You?”

  “White House. I wasn’t invited in.”

  “Just a matter of time.”

  “Charlie has my phon
e number,” Grit said bluntly. “Jo’s boss is on high alert. Myrtle’s Russian lover had his toothpaste poisoned. And Jo saved Marissa Neal’s life two months ago. Hang on.”

  Elijah gripped the phone, impatient.

  Grit was back. “It occurred to me the Secret Service agents on the other side of the fence read my lips when I said M-a-r-i-” Grit started to spell out Marissa’s name.

  Elijah cut him off. “If you get locked up, Grit, let’s see if we can share a jail cell. I’ll bring paper, and we can write a book on what not to do after you get chewed up in battle. How did Jo save Charlie’s big sister?”

  “She and friends borrowed a cottage in the Shenandoah Mountains for a weekend getaway. Marissa is a history teacher at Charlie’s private school, by the way.”

  “What happened at the cottage?” Elijah asked.

  “The gas stove blew up. Our Jo dived into the flames, basically, although she wasn’t burned, and saved Marissa from certain maiming or even death. Risked her life.”

  “Was Charlie there?”

  “No.”

  “Is the incident under investigation?”

  “You know, I’m brave, honorable and true, but I don’t walk up to Secret Service agents and ask them if an unreported fire I’m not supposed to know about that nearly killed the eldest daughter of the vice president is under investigation.”

  “You SEALs are just so damn smart.”

  “We’re missing something,” Grit said.

  “Yes—”

  Grit had already hung up.

  Elijah tried the front door of the guesthouse and wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. A small entry with a cold slate floor had a door to the left and a door to the right. He tried both. One was locked, one wasn’t. He’d bet real money that the teenager with the romantic view of Vermont had left her door unlocked and the humorless meat her father had hired to look for her had locked his.

  An unlocked door wasn’t a defense against a charge of breaking and entering, but Elijah figured Nora would either never know or never press charges.

  Either way, he went in.

  The apartment was decorated with cottage-style furnishings in light green, brown, rust. He couldn’t remember if Vivian had said she’d done up the place, but since nothing looked cheap, either she had or Nora had received more financial help from her family than she’d let on. She’d added her own laptop, a flat-screen television and DVDs that included collections of Jane Austen PBS movies, Dr. Who, Steve McQueen and Humphrey Bogart. Elijah remembered Nora telling him that she wanted to major in film, but both parents were opposed, on the grounds that she’d only become another Hollywood failure.

  “They said I’d just end up as a waitress who could name obscure facts about obscure movies,” she’d said with a little laugh that had struck Elijah as entirely fake.

  He checked the laptop, but it was password protected. He’d only go so far in his search and decided to move on to the bedroom, its windows offering a view of the duck pond and the woods from which he’d just come. A well-worn stuffed penguin looked forlorn and downright lonely on the pillow of the made bed; it was a reminder of just how young Nora was. Emotionally if not legally, she was straddling childhood and adulthood. She had to negotiate her own expectations with those of her successful parents, navigate the dynamics of a complicated family.

  Elijah figured his own father had simplified that age for him by kicking him out.

  A couple of skirts and tops on hangers in the closet. Expensive-looking shoes. A dressy coat. He checked the dresser drawers—no hiking clothes left behind.

  He returned to the living room and headed to the kitchen at the back of the apartment. He took a quick look around. Milk and eggs in the refrigerator. Dishes clean in the dishwasher. Nothing suggested Nora planned to be gone for more than a few days.

  Nothing on Melanie Kendall, the fiancée.

  He found a flower-covered notebook journal on the kitchen table. He debated, but he wasn’t ready to go so far as to intrude that deeply on Nora’s privacy. He’d check the date of the last entry and go from there. But he immediately saw that the journal contained graceful entries of poems and quotes she’d copied, all positive and uplifting. She’d apparently created her own book of inspiration for dark days.

  Elijah shut the journal. He’d never been one for inspirational quotes. Reading that stuff made him focus on why he needed uplifting. Easier just to focus on what he needed to do.

  He found Nora’s cell phone next to her toaster. She could have forgotten it, but he didn’t think so. There wasn’t much, if any, service in the backcountry, but there was some. He’d explained to his wilderness-skills class how a cell phone could sometimes help searchers find a lost hiker. Nora could have decided not to rely on anything but her own skills.

  On the other hand, she could have wanted to make sure no one found her.

  Or she could simply not want to talk to anyone.

  Elijah checked the screen and saw she had a half-dozen voice messages.

  He left the cell phone by the toaster. Whatever Nora’s reasoning, if she did get in trouble in the mountains, she’d have to find other ways to save herself. He thought back to what he’d told the class.

  Not enough.

  He took a key off a hook next to the refrigerator, walked back out to the entry and tried the door to the second apartment, where Rigby was staying. Sure enough, Nora’s key worked on that door, too. Elijah went into the combined living room and kitchen done in a style similar to Nora’s apartment.

  Before he could get started, he heard a car outside and checked a side window. Rigby had pulled into the turnaround. Elijah watched him get out of his car and start up the stone path. Big guy. But Elijah wasn’t worried. He continued his check of the small apartment, but he found nothing of interest—no weapons, no notebook filled with detailed plans, not even a laptop.

  He found a change of clothes, shaving gear, a pair of new wool socks.

  In other words, zip.

  He finished up and walked back outside, by which point Rigby was on the stone walk. “I locked the door on my way out,” Elijah said, trotting down the porch steps. “Locked Nora’s door, too. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you borrowed her copy of Pride and Prejudice.”

  “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you? I’ve heard a lot about you Camerons.”

  “All good, I trust. What are you doing back here?”

  “I’m running out of daylight. I could search in the dark if I had a credible lead or if I believed Nora was in serious trouble. I went back up the falls trail after I saw you at the lodge. I located Nora’s probable campsite—Devin Shay’s, too, just down the hill from hers.”

  “Did you get lost?” Elijah asked with only a trace of sarcasm.

  “No. I don’t get lost.” He nodded to the guesthouse, less combative. “I appreciate your caution. In your place, I’d do the same.”

  Elijah brushed past him and started back for the duck pond, but not soon enough. Jo pulled into the turnaround and got out of her car, looking like the Secret Service agent she was. She eased over to the stone walk. “What’re you boys up to?” she asked coolly.

  Rigby shrugged. “Cameron here was just leaving. I gave him my update on Nora Asher. Apparently she’s spending another night in the woods.” He paused, then said, “Devin Shay, too.”

  Jo slanted a look at him. “Thomas and his fiancée are on their way. He said Melanie recommended you. I got the impression you don’t know each other that well. Is that accurate?”

  “We ended up on the same ski trail in Colorado. I told her to give me a call if she ever needed a hand.”

  “No contact with her since then?”

  “None,” Rigby said. “I’m in close touch with Mr. Asher. He and Ms. Kendall are arriving soon. I offered to pick them up, but he’s renting a car. It’s a long drive from the airport. I guess it’d be hard to put an airport in around here, since there’s not much flat land.”

  “A storm’s on the way,�
�� Jo said. “Higher elevations could get a good dump of snow. It’s not supposed to start until later in the day, but there’s a chance it could start earlier.”

  “I’ve seen the forecast. Snow should get Nora’s attention.”

  He headed inside, and as soon as the door shut, Jo swooped around at Elijah, her turquoise eyes hot and suspicious. “You just broke into the guesthouse, didn’t you?”

  “Who says I wasn’t invited or didn’t hear someone in imminent danger?”

  “I do. I know what you’ve been up to.”

  “You can be sanctimonious, you know that?”

  He tried to make it a joke—a tease—but it must not have worked, because she grabbed his arm. “Did you search my cabin last night, too? Was that you—”

  “I expect it was Rigby. You might want to drop the third degree, Jo, and unless you want some real trouble, you’ll let go of my arm. That’s twice in two days. Yesterday I kissed you. Not without your cooperation, I might add. Today—”

  She dropped his arm as if it’d caught fire, and he figured she’d seen something in his eyes that reminded her that not all that much, really, had changed in fifteen years. The pure sexual energy that had always been a problem between them was still there. Well, not always a problem. A fact between them.

  He smiled. “Thought you’d see the light.”

  “I should call the damn police on you.”

  “Go ahead. Your future brother-in-law the state trooper likes me. Call him.”

  “Scott’s not necessarily…Never mind.” She breathed out, looked down at the placid water, the ducks visible again, floating under the low-hanging willows. “I don’t know why I bite every time you try to tweak me.”

  “Now, there’s an image.”

  She almost smiled but instead gestured back toward the guesthouse. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Nora’s cell phone, an old stuffed penguin and Tao quotes—”

  “If you saw anything that suggested she was a danger to herself or in danger from someone else, you’d tell the police.”

  “Without question.”

  She nodded. “I know, it’s tricky figuring out what to do.”