Cold Dawn

by Carla Neggers

  Even with the steam from her bubbling soup, Rose’s cheeks lost their color. “Then Robert could have killed Portia Martinez,” she said.

  Jo’s turquoise eyes narrowed on her fiancé’s only sister. “Placing Feehan in Los Angeles is an important piece of circumstantial evidence, but it’s not enough.” She walked over to the sink just down from Rose at the stove. “Anything I can do to help?”

  Rose grinned at her. “Where were you an hour ago?” But she pointed to the peninsula and a tray of drinks and snacks. “Grab a beer or something and relax. I’m just waiting for the bread to warm up.”

  A.J. kept his gaze focused on his sister. He’d come alone. Lauren was still at the lodge with their children. “If Cutshaw found out Feehan was in California and started asking questions, that could explain why he was killed.”

  “They both knew Sean lives out there,” Elijah said.

  Rose snatched up a long-handled spoon and dipped it into her soup pot. “If Robert was a serial arsonist—a serial killer—then he could have been drawn to Sean because of his smoke jumping. So why not go after him? He foiled Lowell’s attempt to frame Bowie and avoid arrest.” She yanked her spoon out of the soup and set it on the counter. “Why go after this woman mopping floors for Marissa Neal’s ex-boyfriend?”

  Jo leaned back against the peninsula, her arms crossed on her chest. “Let’s focus on Robert and Derek right now. If Derek suspected Robert was a killer and the two of them were also into pushing pills, maybe he went out to the Whittaker place to talk to you and figure out what to do.”

  “Why would he? I hadn’t seen him in so long. We didn’t part on good terms.”

  “But you’re a Cameron,” Jo said.

  Elijah and A.J. both grunted. Elijah said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Jo glanced back at him. “You all have been in the thick of this mess from the start. If Robert Feehan’s our guy, he was out of work as a paid arsonist because of you.”

  “Jo, we had nothing to do with the Neals until you came back home,” A.J. said quietly.

  “Fair point, A.J.” Jo lowered her arms, looking tired but no less focused. “We’ve got a lot to untangle.”

  “All right,” Rose said. “Let’s say Derek was about to go to the police with what he knew about Robert, and Robert found out and followed him to the Whittaker place and killed him—set up the lamp, rigged it so that it would explode when Derek lit it. He could have had a backup plan in case Derek didn’t do as predicted. He could have hid in the woods—” She stopped herself and switched off the heat under the soup. “It doesn’t explain Nick.”

  Nick waited two beats before he responded. “I came out here because the timing was right for me. I’d been wondering for some time if the serial arsonist Jasper was dogging was involved with Lowell Whittaker’s network. The police knew about my concern.” He felt the scrutiny of the three Camerons and the Secret Service agent, but his gaze was focused entirely on Rose. “My trip wasn’t a secret.”

  “So Feehan could have found out about it.” Jo picked a cube of cheese off a plate and popped it into her mouth. “I’m hungry. Let’s save all this speculating for dessert, at least.”

  Ranger needed to go out, and Nick seized the moment and escorted the golden retriever out the back door. Good dog that he was, Ranger dutifully headed halfway down the driveway and into the adjoining woods to do his business.

  Nick hadn’t put on his jacket. He could feel the temperature dropping with nightfall, but the air wasn’t frigid. He dialed Sean in California. “This missing actor is connected to me. I don’t know how, but he is.”

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “Maybe to both of us.”

  “And Jasper.”

  “The police are still searching for Stevens. They must be wondering if whoever killed Portia Martinez got to him and he’s dead, too. When are you coming back?”

  “Soon,” Nick said, although he hadn’t thought about the question. What the hell was he doing? Rose had a life here. She didn’t need him complicating it. “The investigation here is in capable hands. I’ve told law enforcement everything I know. They’re going over Jasper’s case files. There’s nothing more I can contribute.”

  “Your voice is off. What’s going on?”

  Ranger bounded out of the dark woods, a tennis ball in his mouth. Nick smiled. “Snow and a wet dog.”

  “You’re at Rose’s, then.”

  “Jo and your brothers are here for dinner.”

  “Lucky you,” Sean said.

  Nick pulled the slobbery tennis ball out of the golden retriever’s mouth and flung it down the driveway. Ranger leaped after it. Nick said, “I want to know why all this happened the minute I got here.”

  “Everyone does. That kind of coincidence—no one’s buying it.” Sean paused. “Rose doesn’t tell anyone much about her private life. Nick, I don’t get involved in your personal life, but Rose has had a tough year.”

  “You all have, Sean.”

  “She’s a professional when it comes to her search-and-rescue work, but fatigue can set in with anyone. She had a lot come at her at once. We’ve all been preoccupied and didn’t pay attention to how much she withdrew.” Sean’s voice was laced with regret. “She was already vulnerable before Pop died.”

  “She’s got you all focused on her now.” Nick watched Ranger return with the ball, drop it in front of him. “Sean, I’m not going to do anything to hurt Rose or your family.”

  “Hell, I hope not.”

  Nick quickly shifted the subject. “I’ve been thinking about the Hollywood types who came to see us to find out about smoke jumping. I’ve made a list of every conversation, every person who contacted me that I can think of.”

  “I’ve done the same. Grit Taylor’s all over this.”

  “If Trent Stevens isn’t dead, maybe he’s playing smoke jumper.”

  Nick disconnected and skirted a glistening section of the driveway that was slick with black ice from snow and ice that had melted and then refrozen.

  Go ahead, he thought. Fall. Get your butt all bruised and broken.

  At least a trip to the E.R. would keep him from making love to Rose Cameron tonight.

  Because that was what he wanted to do.

  He’d spent the afternoon working—answering emails, sending instructions to his assistant, brainstorming new projects—and staring at the woodstove, trying to figure out how Derek Cutshaw and Robert Feehan had ended up dead and what his decision to come to Vermont had to do with their deaths.

  All the while he’d fought the same burning desire for Rose that he’d felt last June and hadn’t resisted. He might be a rogue and a snake for having done it, but he couldn’t imagine not having made love to Rose then—or not having kissed her last night.

  She knew her own mind. All three of her brothers had to have that through their rock heads by now.

  But she’d been reeling for months, and Derek Cutshaw had done a number on her sense of confidence with men. His death had put her right back in his emotional grip.

  Nick’s BlackBerry notified him he had a text message. It was from his sister: SEAL stopped to see us.

  Grit Taylor.

  So Elijah Cameron’s SEAL friend had looked into him and his family. Nick wasn’t offended. Jasper Vanderhorn had done the same thing last year shortly before the fire that killed him.

  Nick heard someone on the back steps. In a moment, Elijah joined him. He had on a thick sweater, no coat, hat or gloves. “We’re not as trusting and as open as we were a year ago,” the Special Forces soldier said.

  “I get that.”

  Elijah didn’t respond at once. There were stars out now, sparkling in breaks in the milky clouds. Finally he said, “When we were kids, we’d hike up here. Rose was upset when this house was built, but it works with the land. She bought it, made it her own. She travels a lot, but she always comes home. That’s one thing we all have in common.”

  “You Camerons have more in common than you think som
e days, I imagine.”

  “Maybe so.” Elijah picked up the tennis ball and tossed it into the snow, but Ranger wasn’t as quick leaping after it. “Why are you so determined to find this arsonist?”

  “Because he killed a friend of mine, and I don’t like arsonists. I’ve dealt with them often enough. So has Sean.”

  “You don’t think it was Feehan,” Elijah said.

  Nick shrugged. “We need to know more.”

  “Is it possible Vanderhorn was wrong and there is no serial arsonist?”

  “Possible. Not likely. He went by his gut as well as evidence.”

  “So we might never have clear-cut answers.” Elijah almost smiled. “Jo won’t like that. She likes clear-cut answers.”

  “If Feehan didn’t set those fires, then someone else did,” Nick said, stating the obvious. “Feehan and Cutshaw could just have been targets of convenience.”

  “Eliminate a threat and provide a fall guy at the same time.”

  Nick had no trouble visualizing Elijah Cameron on a combat mission.

  Ranger returned and headed up the dark back steps, the tennis ball still in his mouth. Nick grinned. “Guess he’s done,” he said, and he and Elijah followed the dog back inside Rose’s little Vermont mountain house.

  Rose walked Jo and her two brothers out after dinner. They were off to the lodge for drinks and more talk. Jo and Elijah would spend the night there. They hadn’t bothered to argue with her about staying another night at her house.

  They knew Nick would be there, she thought, and they trusted him.

  She headed back inside and found him filling the woodbox. “Jasper didn’t suspect you,” she said without preamble. “I thought you knew.”

  Nick set the last of his armload of logs into the box that her father had helped her make one snowy afternoon.

  Rose grabbed the afghan off the couch and folded it. “If he did suspect you, it wasn’t for long, and it was because he suspected everyone. He sought me out because he’d seen the sparks between us.”

  “When?”

  “The day before the fire. I’d stopped by Sean’s office. You and Jasper were there, remember?”

  Nick nodded, his eyes almost black in the dimly lit room. “Jasper had a follow-up question about the fire in our building in January.”

  “You took that as a sign that you were on his list of suspects.”

  “It crossed my mind.” He stepped away from the woodbox and angled a look at her. “Sparks, though? I thought the sparks didn’t start until I got you into my condo.”

  Heat surged to her face. “Well. I don’t know. He was an arson investigator.” She set the folded afghan back on the couch. “Maybe he was tuned in to those things.”

  She remembered that day, before Jasper’s death. She’d been thinking about how good-looking Nick was in his sleek, expensive suit. He was hard-edged and self-aware, every inch a sexy rogue of a man. She’d dismissed her reaction as all mixed up because of Derek, her father’s death, Elijah’s near death, her nonstop work.

  And because she’d thought it useless to lust after a man she could never have.

  “You’ve been afraid Jasper died wondering if you were the one who killed him,” she said. “He didn’t. He knew you were his friend.”

  “I couldn’t save him—from himself or from the fire.”

  “Sometimes that’s how it works out.”

  He put a log on the fire, stirred the hot coals, adjusted the dampers. He didn’t have a fireplace or a woodstove in his contemporary high-rise condo in Beverly Hills. But he had views, she thought, as incredible as hers, if different.

  Finally he turned and eased his arms around her. “How do you know Jasper saw the sparks between us?”

  “He said so.”

  “Those exact words?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Rose, what did Jasper say?”

  She smiled. “He pulled me aside and said, ‘Nick’s not the playboy he pretends to be. You’re not the mountain woman you pretend to be. The two of you together…’” She felt tears form in her eyes but sniffled them back. “He stopped there, and winked. Then he left. That was the last time I saw him. I’ll never forget that knowing wink.”

  “Rose…”

  She placed her hands on his sides, splayed her fingers so that she could feel more of his taut muscles. His body was warm and firm under her touch. “You weren’t a mistake, Nick.” She let her hands drift down to his hips and tried to ignore the instant rush of heat that spread through her. “Not then, and not now.”

  “We can go back to the lodge now,” he said, his voice hoarse as he drew her tight against him, “and have whiskey with your brothers. Or we can—”

  “Or we can not go back to the lodge,” she said, smiling.

  His mouth found hers, or hers found his—she didn’t care. She just shut her eyes and gave herself up to the heat that burned deep into her. She felt as if she would melt.

  Nick lifted her up onto his hips as if she weighed nothing. He was fully aroused, every inch of him hard and taut. She opened her eyes again. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw his dark eyes riveted on her, as if she were the only person in the universe.

  “Nothing’s changed.” He slipped his fingers into her waistband. “I want you as much as I did in June. Even more.” Slowly, he moved his hands over the bare skin of her hips. “I know what’s in store for me.”

  He kissed her throat as he skimmed her jeans down over her hips. His hands were strong, rough against her smooth skin. He cupped her bottom, curving his fingertips lower. She felt her legs open for him and heard herself moan softly.

  He lowered her onto the floor, drawing her jeans down to her knees, then off altogether. For all she knew he cast them into the fire. He tugged her socks off next, then coursed his hands up the inside of her legs, working his way higher. Naked from the waist down, she ached for his touch.

  But he stopped, and in the stillness, she heard herself breathing rapidly. Her heart was racing. She shut her eyes and gave herself up to the sensations crackling over her, through her.

  “Nick.” Her voice sounded strangled. “What are you doing? If you’re having second thoughts—”

  “No second thoughts.”

  She felt a hot, moist touch between her legs and her eyes flew open. Her only contact with him was his tongue. He flicked and teased, probed and lapped. Without warning, he grabbed her by the hips, his grip strong, firm, and lifted her, driving his tongue deep, thrusting into her. She shut her eyes, giving herself up to the fire raging through her.

  She raked her fingers through his hair and cried out his name.

  He drew back, leaving her gasping, aching.

  She had no idea what was next. In another moment, she’d be a molten puddle on the floor. She heard a belt buckle, a snap. Her mind had only barely registered what was happening when he returned to her, settling between her parted thighs, his erection free, probing in the wet heat where his tongue had just teased and tormented her.

  “I’ve thought about this moment for months. I knew I shouldn’t…”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Rose…”

  He shifted, and in one swift motion, he was inside her, no hesitancy, no tentativeness. Her body responded, as if it’d been waiting, begging, for months for Nick Martini to be back inside her. She caught him by the hips and pulled him deep into her, matched his pounding rhythm.

  He raised up off her, paused and searched her face in the glow of the fire. When he moved inside her, she was lost, clawing at him as the climax overtook her.

  Spent, aware suddenly of the rug, the woodstove, poor Ranger dead asleep in his bed, Rose rolled onto her side, facing Nick as she smiled a little raggedly. She brushed her knuckles over his hard jawline, feeling a faint stubble of beard. “It’s still relatively early,” she said.

  He kissed her fingertips. “So it is.”

  They showered together and made love again in her bed, with the curtains open t
o the mountains and the cold, starlit winter night.

  Twenty-Five

  Rose appreciated the bright, cold morning as she drove up Ridge Road and pulled over at the trail leading to the falls. She, Nick, Jo and Elijah had loaded galvanized buckets and more taps and drills into the back of her Jeep. They were all meeting on the dead-end lane in a few minutes. Temperatures had fallen precipitously overnight but would climb above freezing again by midday. Why not take advantage of the continued warm spell and tap more trees?

  She had Ranger up front with her and let him out the passenger door. They would wait for Nick and hike with him up the near-vertical hill below the falls to mark a half-dozen big maples for gravity tubing. Hanging buckets and emptying them every day on foot would be too difficult. The sap would run through the tubing into large plastic containers placed discreetly at the bottom of the hill. It was a practical, efficient system, if not as picturesque or quintessentially Vermont as sap buckets.

  She noticed footprints and wondered if Elijah or Jo had gone ahead of her. She heard a moan and slowed down. Ranger’s head jerked up. He’d picked up a scent. Rose motioned for him to track anyone in the immediate vicinity, and he charged ahead of her, bounding up the steep hill. She followed him. She was in boots, not snowshoes, and the snow was deep, but she was still in sight of the road.

  Ranger took her past a misshapen pine tree and stopped suddenly, barking eagerly.

  Brett Griffin was sitting in the snow by a series of boulders. “Whoa, there.” He laughed nervously at Ranger. “Easy, boy.”

  Rose came around a boulder. “Ranger, heel,” she said, and he immediately came to her side.

  “Man,” Brett said. “I took a hell of a spill. There must be a spring under the snow. I hit ice and went flying.”

  Rose knelt down in front of him. “Are you hurt?”

  “Nah. I got the wind knocked out of me. I landed on my side against this boulder. I’m lucky I didn’t hit my head. I’ll have a nasty bruise.” He sank back against the boulder, his hat crooked on top of his head, and grinned at Ranger. “I’ve never owned a dog, but if I did, I’d have you help train him. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?”