Cold River (4 page)

S
ean Cameron abandoned his cranberry-nut muffin, which he didn’t much like, anyway, and got to his feet. The sight of Hannah’s banged-up red sedan that she’d been driving for years heading down Main Street seconds behind Bowie O’Rourke’s rusted van didn’t sit well with him.

He could see it didn’t sit well with Jo Harper, either. She sat back, her gaze cool as she raised her eyes to Sean. They’d graduated in the same high school class, but she’d been a lunatic about his brother Elijah for as long as anyone could remember. They’d run off for a time when she was eighteen and Elijah was nineteen, but they hadn’t gone far—just to the lake below Black Falls Lodge. Both their fathers had hunted for them, but it was Elijah’s who’d discovered them. By the end of the summer, he had left Black Falls for army boot camp and a career in the Special Forces and Jo for college and a career in the U.S. Secret Service.

She’d never wanted to stay in town. He’d never wanted to leave. Now they were back together again, one of the few positives that had come out of the events of mid-November.

It was a different kind of love, Sean thought, the love between two people who’d grown up together, who’d been in snowball fights and seen each other at awkward ages,
who knew each other’s families. He didn’t have such relationships. He’d never sought them. There wasn’t, and never had been, anyone in Black Falls for him.

At least that’s what he kept telling himself, but he hadn’t been thinking so straight on the subject since hauling Hannah Shay out of the brawl at O’Rourke’s in late March. He still could feel her slim little body as he’d lifted her off her feet. Her passion had caught him by surprise. The elbow in his gut, the flash of her eyes, the willingness to jump into the middle of a bar fight, outnumbered and outmuscled.

There’d been no question among him and his two brothers that he’d be the one to take care of her.

Just as there wouldn’t be now.

“Never come between Hannah and one of her missions,” Jo said, nodding toward the street, “and she’s on a mission.”

Elijah, who had a soft spot for Hannah, didn’t look nearly as concerned. “Maybe she’s gone to the store for bananas.”

Jo kept her gaze on Sean. “Are you going after her?”

“I’ll find out what she’s up to.”

“Be warned, Sean,” Jo said, breaking off a piece of scone. She had on the simple diamond engagement ring Elijah had bought for her fifteen years ago, only giving it to her last month when he’d finally proposed. She obviously wasn’t thinking about love and romance at the moment. “Don’t let Hannah’s unassuming manner put you off your guard. In her own quiet way, she can slice any of you Cameron boys to ribbons.”

Of that, Sean had no doubt. He could see Hannah turning to him in high school Latin class and giving him one of her cool, superior looks. Thirteen years old, and she knew she was smarter than anyone else in the room. He didn’t remember what he’d done to earn her disdain. Probably said something asinine.

He reminded himself that Jo was a federal agent and
Scott Thorne, sitting across from her, was a state trooper. He chose his words carefully. “Do we know if Bowie was ever in town at the same time as Melanie Kendall or Kyle Rigby?”

Jo didn’t respond. Neither did anyone else at the table. They didn’t have to. Sean knew what was on their minds. The bomb that had killed Melanie Kendall had exploded while Jo and Elijah had tried to talk her out of her car. It hadn’t been on a timer, and it had gone off
after
Kyle Rigby was already dead. It was a simple device constructed of a cell phone, copper wire, black powder and gunpowder, set off by the electric charge caused when a call came into the cell phone, completing the circuit and igniting the explosives.

Who’d made the call?

Who’d bought the materials and assembled the bomb and placed it in the car?

Who’d wanted Melanie Kendall dead?

Whoever had dialed the number of the cell phone and triggered the bomb had known that Melanie Kendall was in that car. How?

Was it someone local, or was there a local accomplice? Sean looked at his brother. “Maybe you should go after Hannah.”

Elijah shook his head. “Not me. I didn’t haul her butt out of the bar that night. You did. I’d have let her bloody those bastards. Even if Wes Harper had arrested her, there isn’t a jury in Vermont that would have convicted her.”

“She was about to get beat up and trampled.”

His brother shrugged. “Just would have made her madder.”

Sean had participated in enough negotiations to know when he’d lost. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Jo’s eyes fastened on Elijah, then Sean, in that kick-ass Secret Service manner of hers. “You two are on a short leash.”

Sean grinned at Elijah. “She hasn’t changed since she was twelve, has she?”

“Four,” Elijah said.

She didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You two can do your Cameron brothers thing,” she said, “but I’m still a member of the task force working this investigation.”

“So your life’s not on hold up here in the sticks?”

Sean had kept his tone light, but Jo didn’t answer for a half beat. “My life is not on hold.”

He saw he’d hit a raw nerve and regretted opening his mouth.

Elijah saved him. “I can follow you and cover you when Hannah checks out of the grocery with her bananas. She’ll never know I’m there.”

Given his brother’s fifteen years’ experience as a soldier, Sean had no reason to doubt him. “Hannah’s scary but not that scary.”

Jo still didn’t smile.

Sean headed out of the café into the center hall and found Devin Shay untangling ski poles in the mudroom. He was agitated, spots of color high on his thin cheeks. “I need a ride up to the lodge,” Devin said. “Hannah’s crazy.”

“What’s going on, Devin?”

“She’s hiking to your dad’s cabin. Alone. I can’t—I’m going with her.”

“Hang on. Hannah can take care of herself, and I can go up to the lodge and check on her. Are you working there today?”

“No.”

“Have you given A.J. notice?” Sean asked him.

Devin shoved the ski poles against the wall. Two clattered to the floor. “I don’t even know why we have so many stupid ski poles. Hannah already took two with her. She’s snowshoeing.”

“Devin—”

“Not yet. No. I will.”

“Get a ride up to the lodge and do it today. Be responsible and up-front. Unless you’ve changed your mind—”

“I haven’t.”

Sean went still a moment, eyeing the teenager. “You haven’t told Hannah yet, either, have you?”

Devin looked away and shook his head. “Have you said anything to A.J.?”

“It’s not my place to tell him or your sister. Devin, you’re almost nineteen. You can make your own decisions about your life. Including Hannah in the process is a good idea. It’s the right thing to do. But ultimately what you do is up to you.”

Toby Shay bounded down the stairs. He was a few inches shorter than Devin, his hair cropped so close, his head almost looked shaved. His obsession with mountain biking kept him in top-notch condition. He was a champion rider, but, according to what his older brother had told Sean, he’d promised his sister he wouldn’t let mountain biking take over his life and fully intended to go to college.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

Devin repeated the information about their sister.

Sean put up a hand before Toby could grab poles and snowshoes and head up the mountain, too. Hannah had delicate features and a small frame, which, Sean knew, people often mistook as an indication she was a fragile person. Her brothers, for example. His brothers, too. Sean didn’t. He’d learned a long time ago that she had a spine of iron.

“I’ll see to your sister,” he said. “Devin, you need to tell her—”

“I will.” He looked guilty but less agitated. “Tonight. I promise.”

“Damn right tonight. I’m not keeping secrets from her. Enough procrastinating. It’s time to be straight with her and give her the news.”

The brothers squirmed under Sean’s scrutiny, but he
didn’t care. Hannah had gone along with Toby’s desire to head to Southern California to go to school and indulge his passion for mountain biking, but she didn’t know that Devin was on his way west, too. He’d presented his plan to Sean and asked him for a job, and Sean had agreed to give him one. He’d had his doubts that Devin was ready to make such a big decision after what he’d experienced in November, but he’d proved otherwise. Devin had joined Sean and his brothers and sister on a Christmas Eve search for twelve-year-old twin sisters lost snowshoeing on Cameron Mountain. Physically recovered from the beating he’d received at Rigby’s hands, Devin had shown a mental resilience and confidence that Sean had found reassuring. But the search hadn’t taken them anywhere near the north side of the mountain, and it hadn’t put Devin in the position of worrying and disappointing the sister who’d sacrificed so much to raise her two much-younger brothers.

Sean remembered what it was like to have a burning desire to be on his own and see other places. He’d always been restless, driven and ambitious—and his family hadn’t always approved of his choices.

“Hannah could nail my hide to the wall as a coconspirator,” Sean said.

Devin raked a hand over the top of his head. “I’d be going to California even if you weren’t helping me get there.”

“But I know your plans and haven’t told her. That’s the point. See where I’m going with this?” Sean didn’t wait for an answer. “Talk or I talk. What route is Hannah taking?”

“She’s going up past the falls,” Devin said.

Sean hesitated, then asked, “Is she meeting someone?”

Toby’s eyebrows went up. “You mean like a boyfriend? Hannah? No way.”

“She’s going alone as far as I know,” Devin said. “That’s why I—”

“Forget it.” Sean was relieved her brothers hadn’t immediately thought of Bowie but decided not to bring him up. If Devin and Toby weren’t aware Bowie had been to the café, they didn’t need to know now. “Stick to your plans for the day. I’ll go after your sister.”

They didn’t argue with him, and Sean left through the back door. He climbed into the pickup truck he’d borrowed from Elijah, who wouldn’t hear of his brother spending money on a car rental. Being a soldier and an expert in wilderness survival skills, Elijah had a ready pack loaded with enough supplies to keep anyone alive on a frozen hilltop for days.

On his way out of town, Sean dialed Elijah’s cell phone. “Jo there?”

“She is. You want to talk to her?”

“No. Hannah’s hiking up to the cabin by herself.”

“She’s taking a big risk.”

“That’s her style. She just tells herself and the rest of us she’s careful.”

His brother would have his misgivings. He wasn’t one for solo operations. Given his own years fighting wildland fires out west, Sean wasn’t, either, but he wanted answers bad enough to take a few risks.

And he didn’t want to see Hannah get hurt.

“All right,” Elijah said. “You go argue with her in the cold. A.J. and I will meet you in front of the fire at the lodge before dark.”

“Well before dark. I’m not hiking up there the long way.”

Sean disconnected. He passed O’Rourke’s, not yet open for the day, a red-bowed wreath hanging crookedly on its front door. The temperature had risen to the low twenties, but if the temperature was above zero, Liam O’Rourke got outside. He loved Vermont winters. Sean didn’t know if Hannah did or not, but he wasn’t concerned about her
freezing on her solo hike up to his father’s cabin. She knew every shortcut on the mountain, and she knew how to handle herself in winter conditions. She was smart, reserved and utterly fearless.

Plus, he planned to catch up with her before she had a chance to go too far wrong.

H
annah paused at the edge of a cluster of spruce trees on the flat of a quiet knoll on the remote north side of Cameron Mountain. All that disturbed the blanket of snow was a twisting rabbit trail that disappeared under a low-hanging evergreen branch. There were no other tracks or prints. It had been at least a week since any investigators had made the trek up this way.

She stepped among the evergreens, her snowshoes and ski poles sinking into the fresh powder. The snow sparkled in the midday sun. There was no wind. The air was cold and dry, the trees creating still shadows under the cloudless, clear late-December sky. Exertion and her layers had kept her warm on her hike. She’d kept hydrated with sips of water, and although not hungry, she’d forced herself to eat a couple of energy bars.

Devin had found Drew’s body at the top of the shorter, steeper trail up the north side of the mountain, two hundred yards back through the woods. By then, much of the wet spring snow had melted and there were no tracks left to follow, at least none that anyone had noticed. As a result, no one had known about the cabin until five weeks ago, when Nora Asher, with Devin right behind her, had discovered it.

On sleepless nights, Devin would describe the cabin’s
location in detail. He’d drawn maps and noted landmarks—the trail, the tree-covered but distinctive knoll, the cluster of spruce trees.

This was the right place.

A clump of snow dropped into a drift as Hannah brushed past a gnarled spruce.

A chickadee fluttered out from among the evergreen branches and flew up into a tall, bare oak tree.

She couldn’t remember when she’d been to a place so quiet, so isolated.

Why had she come alone?

“You don’t let emotions dictate your actions,” Drew had told her.

Well, she just had.

“I wouldn’t feel nearly as crazy if I’d brought a dog,” she said half aloud. Rose Cameron, Drew’s only daughter, trained search-and-rescue dogs and handled one of her own. She could have recommended a dog who’d have appreciated a good run in the snow.

But Hannah couldn’t make herself smile. She continued past the spruce into a small clearing, which Devin had also described. After years of searching, Drew Cameron had finally come upon what he’d believed to be the site of the original Cameron dwelling in Black Falls. He’d cut down trees in the immediate area and, in apparent secret, had built a post-and-beam cabin on the old foundation.

Hannah spotted a tiny, batten-wood cabin on the far edge of the knoll and almost sank to her knees with emotion. This was it—this was Drew’s cabin.

This was the place where Devin and the three people with him had almost died.

Where his would-be killer
had
died.

Her snowshoes almost floating in the drifts, she hardly made a sound as she crossed the clearing. She had no time
to waste. She leaned her poles against the exterior of the cabin and squatted down, using both hands to scoop snow away from any exposed section of the foundation.

About ten inches of the foundation extended aboveground. She wasn’t a stonemason herself, but she could see it was rubble-stone construction, which made sense. Two hundred years ago, breakage would have been more practical—easier to find, dig up and haul—than whole stones.

Drew had placed a thick sill beam on the foundation, creating even more of a protective barrier between the ground and the cabin itself.

Hannah dug as much snow as possible out of the rock and saw that both the remains of the original foundation and any rebuilding Drew had done were dry construction. That meant he hadn’t had to figure out how to get mortar up here or decide between using an old-style lime-and-sand mortar or a modern cement. A strict historic renovation would have called for original materials where possible.

Hannah had crawled around in enough old cellar holes to have an idea of the work involved in rebuilding a foundation that had been left to the elements for generations. She remembered the fallen stones, caved-in dirt, trees and brush often growing right in the middle of what had once been someone’s home.

She stood up on her snowshoes. Drew hadn’t rebuilt the original chimney, opting instead for a woodstove that he hadn’t lived to hook up. He could have used stones from the chimney in repairing and extending the foundation wall. Still, he’d have needed equipment to do the job—trowels, stone hammers, drills, pry bars, fulcrums, rollers—and he’d have needed know-how. He was handy, but he wasn’t a stonemason.

If he hadn’t had help with the work itself, he’d at least had advice.

“Maybe,” Hannah said aloud.

She could be wrong. Drew had been a Cameron, after all. Who was to say he couldn’t have managed on his own, without help
or
advice?

She’d learned to keep her mouth shut until she was sure she had her facts straight.

Especially when the facts involved her past.

Leaving her poles outside, she pushed open the solid wood door, wincing at the loud creak of the hinges, as if it might wake someone, or alert someone to her presence. She stepped inside, pulled the door shut and tugged off her snowshoes. She didn’t want to stop moving for too long. Once she got cold, she’d have a hard time warming back up.

The cabin was just one room with windows, a front door and back door and the woodstove, which hadn’t been hooked up yet.

She went still, certain she’d heard a sound outside.

Not
a chickadee or the wind.

A deer? A moose?

She tiptoed to the front window next to the door. Kyle Rigby, hidden among the spruce trees with an assault rifle, had shot out the glass. After the police had released the cabin as a crime scene, Jo and Elijah had nailed thick, translucent plastic over the opening and cleaned up the shards.

Hannah tried to peer through the plastic but couldn’t see anything except blurry white snow and the vague outline of trees.

Again she heard a
whooshing
sound.

Someone on snowshoes or skis?

She held her breath and listened but heard nothing now.

Had whoever was out there paused to eye her tracks in the snow—her ski poles leaned up against the outside of the cabin?

Not waiting any longer, Hannah grabbed her backpack
and snowshoes and bolted across the plywood floor for the back door. It wouldn’t be locked. There was nothing in the cabin to steal except the woodstove, and who would bother hauling it down the mountain in winter conditions?

“Hannah. It’s me—Sean Cameron.”

Before Hannah had a chance to adjust to the idea of who it was out there, she heard the creak of the front door and spun around just as it opened.

Sean lifted his sunglasses onto the brim of his wool cap and frowned at her from just outside his father’s cabin. “Hannah, what are you doing?”

“Getting ready to bolt. Sean. Damn.” She took in a sharp breath. “Scare me to death, why don’t you?”

“I’m sorry I startled you.” He nodded to the snowshoes in her arms. “Were you going to beat me over the head with one of those?”

“I was just trying to get out of here.” She hoped she sounded calm, sure of herself. “I figured I’d need snowshoes once I outran you—or whoever it was.” She smiled. “Of course, I was hoping it’d be someone I could outrun.”

“Or a friend,” he said.

“Yes. Or a friend.”

Sean stayed just outside in the snow. He didn’t look particularly winded or tired from his trek up the mountain. But he wouldn’t. Hannah had never seen him in action as a smoke jumper, a job that required him to maintain a high level of fitness.

She followed his gaze to the plastic-covered window. “I finally had to come up here and see for myself,” she said.

“Why now?”

“Initially law enforcement wouldn’t let anyone near this part of the mountain. Then we had the holidays, and I was so busy. This morning I knew it was time.”

“What made you know?”

Sean wasn’t letting her off the hook, but she had no intention of lying to him, or of giving him a full explanation. She’d been thinking about Drew’s old cellar hole for days, and seeing Bowie walk into the café with Elijah and Sean and the law there—their reaction to him—had forced her into action. Bowie was a stonemason. They shared a difficult past. He’d worked with her father and knew as much as anyone in the area about historic stonework.

“I wanted to get things settled in my own head,” she said simply.

“Did you succeed?”

“I don’t know yet.” She walked past the woodstove, where Devin and Nora had taken cover when shots started flying. “Devin’s recovered physically. Psychologically—he seems to be doing all right. I think he is, anyway.”

“A.J. and Lauren do, too.”

Hannah started to say more, to tell Sean she was concerned about the effects of the trauma of the past months on her brother and his lack of direction, but she caught herself. “He’s strong. He’ll get through it.”

“He’s had a hell of a time. You, too.”

She let the snowshoes slide down her legs and stood them upright, leaning them against her thighs as she took in shallow breaths and looked around the small cabin. She pictured Elijah and Jo—armed, having headed up the mountain prepared for trouble—and the two teenagers huddled in the dark, a storm raging through the long night. They all had known a killer was out there in the cold. Had he run? Would he be back?

Still suffering from his encounter with Kyle Rigby before nightfall, Devin had been semiconscious, barely aware of the storm.

Then came morning…a foot of fresh snow…and the first shots that shattered the window.

“When the shooting started, there was nothing Devin could do. Being so helpless was hard for him….” Hannah pointed at the rough-wood beams high on the back wall, her hand shaking. She wondered if Sean noticed. “You can see where bullets struck the wood. One lucky shot, and anyone in here could have been hit.”

“Jo and Elijah had positioned themselves and Devin and Nora as best as possible.” Sean spoke with little detectable emotion. “Rigby had to have known what he was in for when he started shooting. He could have gone on his way. Instead, he waited out the storm and assaulted a cabin with an armed soldier and federal agent inside.”

“Jo pinned Rigby down from the front window while Elijah sneaked out the back door to go after him.” Balancing the snowshoes leaning against her thighs, Hannah looked back at the woodstove. “Jo told Devin and Nora to stay low. He said she was cool and focused under fire. Rigby had a chance to give up, but he kept shooting.”

“Devin did fine, too,” Sean said. “Eighteen years old, scared, targeted by contract killers—he still managed to save Nora Asher’s life. He warned her Rigby was after her.”

“He and Nora survived thanks to Jo and Elijah,” Hannah said, picking up her snowshoes. She tucked them under one arm and walked past Sean in the doorway, brushing against his arm, remembering—for no reason she could fathom—the feel of it around her back in March when he’d hauled her out of O’Rourke’s.

She stepped into the snow in her hiking boots, hyperaware of Sean watching her as she dropped her snowshoes side by side in front of her.

“Hannah,” he said, “what’s going on?”

She didn’t give him a direct answer. “Devin had his suspicions, but he didn’t know about this place. The police didn’t find it, either, when they investigated his death. It
seems so easy to find now, but if you don’t know where to look…” With the heel of her boot, she dragged one snowshoe closer to her. “Everything seems more obvious in hindsight.”

Sean steadied his gaze on the sunlit snow and still shadows. “Rigby didn’t have to come back here after the storm,” he said, “but he knew he’d be marked for death himself if he failed.”

Hannah looked at the evergreens where Kyle Rigby had concealed himself and taken cover in preparation for his assault on the cabin. “He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t crazy or suicidal.” She spoke in a steady voice, consciously keeping her emotions contained. This had always been her way, she thought, and wasn’t a skill she’d learned in law school. “He gauged his chances and did what he had to do.”

“He assessed the terrain and picked his spot.”

She took in a shallow breath, hearing, in her mind, the gunfire that frozen morning, picturing Elijah’s and Jo’s focus and intensity as they’d confronted the hidden shooter. “Rigby knew that failure wasn’t an option. His own people would kill him if he didn’t succeed up here. It didn’t matter to him that he was taking on a Green Beret and a federal agent.”

“It was kill or be killed.”

And he’d been killed, Hannah thought. A few hours later, his partner, Melanie Kendall, was blown up in her car at the lodge, presumably by the people who’d hired her and Rigby.

Sean pulled the cabin door shut. “Why are you here alone?” he asked quietly. “Any of us would have come with you.”

“Devin would have, too.” She eased her boot into the binding of her snowshoe. “I guess I just needed to come on my own. What about you? Are you alone?” She looked back at him with a quick smile. “Your brothers aren’t hiding in the trees, are they?”

He didn’t return her smile. He lowered his sunglasses, making his eyes impossible to read. “I’m alone.”

Hannah pulled off a glove and squatted down to adjust the strap on the back of her boot. “So you must not be afraid I’m the mastermind of this network of killers.”

Sean leaned into one of his ski poles. “Long hike?”

She realized she’d gone too far in trying to compensate for her self-consciousness around him—for not telling him the whole story about why she’d come up here. “Longer than I wanted it to be.” She stood up, feeling downright warm. “Did you follow me?”

“I parked on the old logging road and came up the back trail.” His tone was even, pragmatic. “You can ride back with me.”

She quickly put on her other snowshoe. Hike down the mountain with Sean? Sit next to him for the ten-mile drive back around the mountain to the lodge? She’d hiked up here for a reason, and he knew it, and he wanted to pry it out of her. Even under normal circumstances, she’d be reluctant to go with him, just because he was Sean Cameron.

These weren’t normal circumstances.