Cold Dawn

Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers

“Neggers’ passages are so descriptive that one almost finds one’s teeth chattering from fear and anticipation as well as from the cold. The chill from the emotionless and guiltless killers’ icy hearts is enough to cause frostbite to our very souls.”

—Bookreporter on Cold Pursuit

“No one does romantic suspense better!”

—Janet Evanovich

“Well-drawn characters, complex plotting and plenty of wry humor are the hallmarks of Neggers’ books. Jo and Elijah are very well matched, and readers will root for their romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on Cold Pursuit

“Neggers’ trademark use of atmospheric mood and setting, including the mist of the title itself, comes front and center. What she’s done is add aspects of the high-action thriller to traditional romantic suspense, combining the best of both in creating a genre all her own. Flat out great.”

—Providence Journal on The Mist

“Readers will be turning the pages so fast their fingers will burn…a winner!”

—Susan Elizabeth Phillips on Betrayals

“When it comes to romance, adventure and suspense, nobody delivers like Carla Neggers.”

—Jayne Ann Krentz

Also by CARLA NEGGERS

THE WHISPER

COLD RIVER

THE MIST

BETRAYALS

COLD PURSUIT

TEMPTING FATE

THE ANGEL

ABANDON

CUT AND RUN

THE WIDOW

BREAKWATER

DARK SKY

THE RAPIDS

NIGHT’S LANDING

COLD RIDGE

THE HARBOR

STONEBROOK COTTAGE

THE CABIN

THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

THE WATERFALL

ON FIRE

KISS THE MOON

CLAIM THE CROWN

CARLA NEGGERS

COLD DAWN

To Margaret Marbury and Adam Wilson—

many thanks!

One

Black Falls, Vermont—late February

N ick Martini rolled out of the four-poster bed in his spacious room in an older part of Black Falls Lodge and turned on a light on his bedside table. He glanced at the clock radio.

Four-thirty.

“Hell,” he said, tempted to crawl back under the down comforter.

Instead he stood up on a thick, brightly colored carpet—yellow sunflowers against a blue background—on the pine-board floor and walked over to the double windows, their cream-colored drapes pulled tightly shut against the Vermont cold.

He’d arrived after dark last night. It’d still be dark out now.

He opened the drapes, anyway.

Yep. Dark.

He felt the below-freezing outside air seep through the windows but left the drapes open. In Southern California, he’d be asleep. Even in northern New England, with the three-hour time difference, he should be asleep. After his long flight yesterday and his drive from a small airport an hour north of the lodge, he’d almost turned around and found somewhere else to spend the night.

He’d always expected he’d check out Black Falls, Vermont, at some point, but it wasn’t his ten-year friendship with Sean Cameron, his business partner and fellow smoke jumper in California, that had finally brought him East to the Green Mountains and Cameron country.

It was a serial arsonist. A killer.

And it was Sean’s sister, Rose.

Nick looked over at the bed with its posts and pictured Rose in his bed in Beverly Hills eight months ago, her skin glowing in the aftermath of their lovemaking. She’d caught him staring at her and had pulled the sheet over her nakedness, as if only realizing just then what a huge mistake she’d made.

He raked a hand through his hair and bolted for the bathroom, with its gleaming porcelain and chrome and its soft, ultrawhite towels. He turned on the shower and tore open a bar of Vermont-made goat’s milk soap while he waited for the water to heat up. He climbed in, stood under the stream of water as hot as he could stand and told himself he still could turn back.

He didn’t have to see anyone else in Black Falls.

He didn’t have to see Rose.

For ten years he’d fought wildfires, and for six years he’d served on a navy submarine. He’d faced dangers and hardships, and he’d seen people die—he’d come close to death himself. He’d always done his best and acted honorably, even when he’d screwed up.

Until Rose Cameron.

As he shut off the shower and reached for a towel, he could taste her mouth, feel her breasts under his palms, hear her soft cries as she’d climaxed under him, clawing at him, sobbing his name.

They’d known exactly what they were doing that night.

Exactly.

Nick toweled off and got dressed in the warmest clothes he’d packed. He doubted he’d pass for a Vermont mountain man, but he didn’t care. He headed out to the hall, shutting his door quietly behind him and taking the stairs down to the lobby. The lodge, long owned and operated by the Cameron family, hadn’t seemed crowded when he’d arrived at nine o’clock last night. From what he’d learned from Sean over the years, it drew its biggest crowds in the warm-weather months.

Just as well, considering the spate of violence the town had experienced since the fall.

Since last spring, really.

A brochure tacked open on a bulletin board in the lobby listed daily winter activities. Nick could take his pick of such diversions as snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, arts and crafts, yoga, nature walks and dance lessons. He wouldn’t lack for things to do, except he wasn’t at the lodge for fun.

A fire was already crackling in the stone fireplace just down from the front desk, where A. J. Cameron, the flinty eldest of the four Cameron siblings, stood, still in his canvas jacket. His blue eyes and the hard set of his jaw reminded Nick of Rose. She’d said Sean was the charmer of the family.

It definitely wasn’t A.J.

Or her, for that matter.

“Coffee’s available,” A.J. said. “Breakfast doesn’t start until six.”

“That’s fine. I thought I’d head over to the Whittaker estate. Sean mentioned Rose has been training her search-and-rescue dog out there one or two mornings a week.” Nick tried to sound matter-of-fact instead of like a man who’d impulsively slept with the Cameron brothers’ baby sister at a vulnerable moment in her life. “He says she’s an early bird.”

A.J. unzipped his jacket. Unlike his two younger brothers, he’d lived in Vermont his entire life. So had Rose, but as a search management consultant and member of an expert disaster search-and-rescue team, she traveled frequently.

Her eldest brother frowned. “I suppose you want to see for yourself where Sean nearly got himself killed last month.”

“Yes,” Nick said carefully, settling on an incomplete answer. “I’m up. Might as well get moving.”

A.J. didn’t relax, but he didn’t look suspicious, either. “I take it you know Rose from her trips out to California.”

“We’ve run into each other a few times when she’s stopped in to see Sean.”

That was Nick’s rehearsed answer, and he thought he delivered it reasonably well.

The Cameron blue eyes narrowed. Nick understood A.J.’s scrutiny. For eighteen months, quiet, cerebral Lowell Whittaker had run a network of paid killers, putting people who wanted someone killed together with people willing to do the killing. During that time, he and his wife, Vivian, had bought a country home in Black Falls.

Now they both were under arrest—Lowell on serious, multiple charges for his role as a murderous mastermind; Vivian, for attempted murder. She was cooperating with authorities to get the charges reduced. Her husband wasn’t cooperating with anyone, including, apparently, his own lawyers, who were urging him to turn over any information he had on his killers, his clients and their victims and potential victims.

Among Lowell Whittaker’s past victims was Drew Cameron, the seventy-seven-year-old father of A.J., Elijah, Sean and Rose Cameron, killed last April after he’d come too close to figuring out the Black Falls newcomer wasn’t the gentleman farmer he pretended to be.

At first, Drew Cameron’s death in an early-spring snowstorm had appeared to be accidental. By November, everyone knew better. He’d been murdered—deliberately left to die of exposure—by two of Lowell Whittaker’s assassins, both now dead themselves.

In between April and November, Rose Cameron had turned up in Los Angeles to lead a training session.

And now here I am, Nick thought.

A.J. tilted his head back. “You want to tell me what you’re doing in Vermont?”

“Curiosity,” Nick said with a smile.

A.J. didn’t press him further and gave Nick direct ions. And why not? Why shouldn’t any of the Camerons trust him with their sister?

No reason. None at all.

“I have no regrets about last night,” Rose had told him that morning in June. “I just want to go home to Vermont and pretend it never happened. I won’t say anything to anyone. I hope you won’t, either.”

Nick had promised her he’d keep his mouth shut.

He thanked A.J. for the directions and went out into the frigid mountain air. His jacket, boots and gloves weren’t rated for temperatures in the low teens, but they’d have to do. The sky was lightening, Cameron Mountain looming across the quiet road that ran along a ridge above the village of Black Falls. The Camerons’ mountain resort consisted of the main lodge, cottages, a shop, a recreational building and several hundred acres of picturesque meadows and woods that hooked up with public land, offering guests an extensive network of trails for hiking, mountain biking and backcountry skiing.

Another time, Nick thought.

His rented car started on the first try. Given the winter conditions and mountain roads, he’d gone with all-wheel drive. He followed the ridge past a line of bare maple trees to an intersection that A.J. had described as Harper Four Corners. A former early nineteenth-century tavern Sean owned was on one corner. Across from it was an old cemetery, its rectangular slabs of granite tombstones etched against the predawn sky. A white-steepled church occupied the corner across from the cemetery. On the fourth corner was a crumbling barn.

Sean had tried to explain his hometown of Black Falls, but Nick could see for himself as he turned up past the tavern and old barn, onto Cameron Mountain Road. He knew Rose’s house was up here somewhere.

She lived a totally different life from his in Southern California.

Eventually the road wound its way to a shallow, rock-strewn river, frozen and snow-covered in the Vermont winter cold. He came to a sprawling, boarded-up farmhouse on an open hilltop above the river. It had partially burned in January when Lowell Whittaker had set off a bomb, hoping to kill his wife and a local stonemason he was trying to frame. His wife had figured out what was going on, saved herself and left Bowie O’Rourke, the stonemason, to die in the fire. Sean had saved O’Rourke. Vivian Whittaker now insisted she’d been in shock. The truth was, she’d wanted her husband to get away with murder.

Just not her murder.

Nick had seen pictures of the Whittakers. They looked like an ordinary, upper-class couple.

He pulled into an icy but plowed turnaround and parked next to a black Volvo sedan. It wasn’t Rose’s. He didn’t know as much about her as he should, given their brief, intense love affair—never mind that she was Sean’s sister—but he did know she drove a Jeep.

So who owned the Volvo?

He grimaced as he got out of his car. What if she were meeting some guy here and just didn’t want her brothers to know? The prying eyes of a small town and all that. He hadn’t seen or even been in touch with Rose in eight months. He couldn’t expect her to keep her life on hold, especially since she was pretending their night together had never happened.

He wasn’t. He hadn’t spoken of it and wouldn’t, but he wasn’t about to pretend it had never happened. He wanted to remember every second of making love to her, even if it had been a mistake.

A big one.

Nick hunched his shoulders against a cold breeze and headed onto a shoveled walk that led to a small stone house that he knew, from Sean’s descriptions, was the Whittakers’ guesthouse. He noticed footprints in the blanket of white on the slope up to the main farmhouse. He didn’t much feel like a trek through knee-deep snow. All he needed was to trip and end up having Rose Cameron and her search-and-rescue dog come find him.

He stepped into one of the prints, a clump of wet snow falling into his boot. Served him right, he thought, and followed the prints, which looked relatively fresh, to the edge of the woods above the river. He figured he could always forget this whole thing, backtrack to his car and go have pancakes at the lodge, but he continued up toward the farmhouse.

The breeze stirred again as he crested the hill.

He smelled smoke in the air and went still.

The smell was distinct, unmistakable and recent. Nick was positive it wasn’t the residue of the January fire that had almost killed two people and burned down the place.

He dipped past a white pine and squinted up at the gray clapboard farmhouse. The sunrise glowed on the horizon, its deep pink color spreading across the sky.

Something was wrong. Badly wrong.

Rose.

Nick moved faster through the snow.

Two

R ose Cameron paused on the shoveled walk up to the farmhouse that had been built in the 1920s by a New Yorker with a romantic view of Vermont. Too expensive for Black Falls residents, it had always been owned by out-of-staters, but none, she thought, quite like the despicable Lowell and Vivian Whittaker.

But Rose didn’t want to think about them and shifted her attention to Ranger, her eight-year-old golden retriever, as he ran into the snow along the edge of the walk. He looked good, she thought. Healthy and agile, not as stiff as earlier in the winter. Taking the time to concentrate on training was paying off. She’d parked her Jeep in the main driveway, and he’d jumped out, as eager as a puppy.

She smiled as she watched the vibrant fuchsia and purples of dawn melt into the early-morning sky. The cold weather didn’t faze her. She was dressed for it. She appreciated the solitude and quiet beauty of the riverside estate, with its stone walls, mature maples and oaks and rich landscaping. She wanted to believe that the classic, picturesque setting would help everyone—including a future buyer—forget its last owners.

State and federal investigators had finished their work over a month ago, covering every inch of the place in search of evidence. Nowadays only the occasional local cruiser would swing by. Rose had never seen one this early in the weeks she’d been coming out here.

Ranger gave a short bark, getting her attention. She turned from the sunrise and saw that he was looking at her, expectantly, from his position near a shed behind the boarded-up farmhouse. He was clearly confused, but she couldn’t figure out why.

A light breeze blew up from the river, bringing with it the faint but distinct smell of smoke. It was jarring, unexpected.

Now she understood what was bothering her dog.

Rose signaled for him to wait and moved toward him. The smell didn’t dissipate. It was strong, persistent, unnatural in the clean winter environment. The farmhouse had sustained extensive fire, smoke and water damage in January. Could someone have removed the plywood from one of the windows and somehow let out fresh smells of the fire?

“Ranger, come.”

He obeyed, pushing his way through the heavy, wet snow back out to the walk. She instructed him to heel to her left—her nondominant side—and continued with him around to the back of the house, stopping in front of the shed. She peered down the wide, open slope toward the stone guesthouse of Lowell Whittaker’s dream-come-true gentleman’s farm. The early-morning light created undulating shadows in the undisturbed drifts of snow. There was no sign of anyone else there. No smoke from the guesthouse chimney, no footprints in the snow.

The breeze stopped, the stillness and silence almost complete. The river was frozen, no sound of its steady flow east to the Connecticut River. That would come later, with the spring thaw.

She could hear only Ranger panting next to her, awaiting her next command. He was an experienced search dog, but she hadn’t told him what to do. She hadn’t expected the smell of smoke and had to decide whether to check for its source or go ahead and call it in.

The sun rose over the horizon and sparkled on the snow, the sky turning to a clear, cold blue. She’d dressed in layers and was warm in her windproof and insulated outdoor clothing, but she’d left her ready pack in her Jeep. She and Ranger weren’t here on a mission. She patted him on his broad head. He was patient but paying close attention to the situation. They had encountered charred conditions in their work together, although not since last summer in Southern California.

Now wasn’t the time to think about that experience.

Rose noticed the door to the shed was padlocked. Lowell Whittaker had stacked cordwood out front, playing the congenial new neighbor while inside the shed he’d assembled at least three different crude pipe bombs.

She stood back from the door. The unoccupied buildings, the fire damage and the mix of open space, woods and river provided a challenging environment for keeping her high-energy search-and-rescue dog exercised and on top of his game. For the past six weeks, every Wednesday at dawn, and sometimes more often, they’d headed out whatever the weather—rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, fog, frigid temperatures. Except for the occasional passing car or truck, they’d never encountered a soul.

Could someone have camped out here, or stopped to check out where a wealthy killer mastermind had lived—where two homemade bombs had gone off?

The doors to the house were covered up with plywood. Getting in would require a crowbar or ax. The temperature was just in the upper teens now, but Rose wondered if the wet, warmer conditions over the past few days had brought out the smells of smoke and burnt wood.

Ranger raised his head, nose in the air as he sniffed, alerting to a fresh scent. She gave him a signal to follow the scent. He moved quickly, leading her onto a narrow, icy path that circled around to an ell off the back of the shed, facing the woods above the river.

Her normally playful, inquisitive golden barked fiercely, stopping at the solid wood door to the ell. Rose saw that it was ajar, its padlock broken in half.

The scent of smoke was sharp, nauseating.

She got Ranger back to her left side and signaled for him to stay. He sat on the path, panting but quiet, and she tapped the door, opening it farther. If any part of the shed had burned in January, she’d have heard about it.

She peered inside. The sun didn’t reach the solitary eyebrow window high up on the back wall, and her eyes weren’t adjusted to the dim light inside.

She kicked the door open wider, letting in more light and gagged at the overpowering odor of burnt flesh, burnt hair, burnt clothing.

With a gloved hand over her mouth, Rose stepped onto the threshold. A sleeping bag and a backpack lay on the rough wood floor to the right of the door, as if someone had just popped in and dumped them off. The ell was small, used primarily to store old furniture and seldom-used yard equipment.

She steeled herself against what she knew she would see and, remembering her training, focused on the task at hand.

Someone was dead in here, possibly someone she knew.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. In the back corner, the body of a man lay sprawled facedown on the floor. He was clearly dead, badly burned from his waist up, unrecognizable. Bits of glass and metal were embedded in his neck, head and upper torso. Something—a kerosene lamp, perhaps—must have exploded, and he’d taken the full brunt of the ensuing flames and shrapnel.

The fire appeared to be out. Rose suspected he’d extinguished any flames when he’d hit the floor, either from the impact of the blast or from trying to save himself. He’d almost certainly been dead hours before she and Ranger had left her house in the predawn darkness.

She could make out strands of dark blond hair that hadn’t burned. He appeared to be about six feet tall and had on insulated pants, thick socks and good boots that were untouched by the flames. Rose noticed he wasn’t wearing a coat and glanced to the side wall, where an expensive parka hung on the back of an old wooden chair.

Why camp out here, in the cold? How had he gotten here? Had he been hiking in the woods along the river? Had he been lost, unaware of who owned the property, and seized on a dry spot to spend the night?

Was his death just bad luck?

Had Lowell left behind a clever little bomb that the victim happened to trigger?

Rose shook off her questions. A basic tenet of her work was to stick to the facts and not leap ahead. Nothing indicated the man he was, but she knew she needed to let the police check his backpack and coat pockets for identification.

She stepped back outside, where Ranger was still in position, waiting for her. “Oh, Ranger,” she said quietly. “It’s not a pretty scene in there.”

She pulled off a glove and dug her cell phone out of a jacket pocket. As part of a regional wilderness search team, she and Ranger generally dealt with lost or injured hikers, Alzheimer’s patients who’d become disoriented, runaways in over their heads in the woods. Shock and hypothermia were usually the biggest concern, but they’d encountered scrapes, bruises, broken bones, head injuries and heart attacks.

And death, she thought.

Their disaster work was often intense, but this was different. She’d been caught off guard, and she and Ranger weren’t with a team. They were alone.

She couldn’t get a cell signal and motioned for Ranger to go with her around to the front of the shed. Lowell Whittaker had used a cell phone to detonate two bombs on his property. There had to be a signal out here somewhere.

She heard a movement in the woods just as Ranger stiffened and barked once. She quieted him with a hand command and steadied her footing, prepared to run or defend herself. She could grab a hunk of cordwood, a shovel. She wasn’t entirely sure how Ranger would react if she were attacked. He wasn’t trained in apprehension and his work in search and rescue, as well as his temperament, made him comfortable around strangers.

A shadow fell on the snow and a man walked out from behind a spruce tree.

Rose took in the short-cropped gray hair, the dark eyes, the strong jaw and lean, fit body and motioned to her golden retriever to remain at her side.

Sexy, rugged Nick Martini was in Vermont, less than ten yards from a dead man.

Less than five yards from her.

“Hello, Rose.”

His voice was tight, controlled, his gaze narrowed on her. She closed her fingers around her cell phone.

Eight months ago, they’d fallen into each other’s arms after another fire, another death.

“Nick,” she said, her own voice tight. “There’s been a fire. A man’s dead.”

“I know. I saw.”

“I have to call the police.” She noticed she had a signal and hit 911. “Why are you here?”

“I was looking for you. I stayed at the lodge last night. A.J. gave me directions here.”

“A.J.?”

“Your brother.”

“I know who he is. In Vermont—why are you in Vermont?”

“Later.”

“Is Sean with you?”

“Sean’s in California.”

Her call went through and the dispatcher came on. Rose gave him the details, her voice crisp, professional, even as her mind raced with the possibilities of who the victim could be—of why she was standing in Nick Martini’s shadow on a cold, bright Vermont morning.

“The police are on the way,” she said as she disconnected. She debated calling A.J. but dropped her phone back into her pocket. She’d wait for the police and the firefighters, get through their questions, before she tried to talk to her brother. “Do you know who the victim is?”

Nick shook his head, his eyes still on her, as if he were taking in every movement she made, every breath she took. “What about you? Any idea who it is?”

“No, none.” She slipped her gloves back on. “He had a sleeping bag and backpack. He must have planned to camp out in the shed. It looks as if he didn’t have much time to get settled before the fire.”

“The fire’s been out for a while,” Nick said, not casually but not with a lot of emotion. “It looks as if a kerosene lamp exploded.”

“That’s what I thought, too, but kerosene wouldn’t just explode like that.”

“Maybe the lamp wasn’t filled with kerosene.”

Rose blinked against the bright sun and tried to accustom herself to Nick’s presence. He was dressed warmly, but not for an extended period in cold winter conditions. As if to remind her of the weather, a gust of wind struck her full in the face, numbing her cheeks. Nick had his back to it and seemed not to notice.

“When did you get here?” she asked him.

“Just before you did. I parked at the guesthouse. Another car’s parked there. A black Volvo. It has Vermont tags and a several alpine skiing bumper stickers.”

Rose’s stomach lurched, and she could feel her legs buckling under her.

A Volvo. Ski stickers.

Derek.

“Rose?” Nick’s arm shot out, and he grabbed her by the shoulder, hard, steadying her. “Who does the car belong to?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Who, Rose?”

Her jaw ached from tension. “A private ski instructor named Derek Cutshaw.”

Nick’s intense dark eyes narrowed even more.

She eased herself from his grasp. “I don’t know it’s Derek. He could have loaned his car to someone. It could be stolen. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

“If it is this Derek?”

“We’re not friends, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Nick made no response. He kept his gaze pinned on her, assessing, probing. He was a skilled firefighter and a highly successful businessman in a very tough, competitive world. He was used to scrutinizing people, seeing through them—gauging what was in their minds, if not, Rose thought, in their hearts.

“He’s not local,” she added in a half whisper. “He’s not from Vermont.”

Rose didn’t tell Nick that if she’d seen Derek’s car, she’d have turned around and gone home without stopping.

“Where’s he from?”

She looked down past the main driveway to the quiet road, avoiding eye contact with Nick. “Colorado, I think.”

“What else?”

“Nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing else.”

“Did he know you train Ranger out here?”

His tone edged close to inquisitorial but she ignored it and gave him a straightforward answer. “It’s not a secret. Ranger’s very familiar with my house and the surrounding area. There are good challenges for him here—the river, the woods, ledges, open ground and, frankly, the fire damage.” She shifted back to Nick and added, keeping her own tone neutral, “And it’s quiet. No disruptions.”

“Until today.”

The wind gusted again, blowing through his short hair. His skin was California-tanned. Rose imagined her own was red from the cold. She knew the basics about him, mostly from Sean. Nick’s father was a retired navy captain. His mother was a geology professor. They lived in San Diego. He had one sister, a navy officer. Nick had served on a submarine for six years. After the navy, he’d trained and then worked full-time as a smoke jumper. He and Sean had pooled their resources, bought a run-down building in L.A., renovated it, sold it and turned a profit, thus launching Cameron & Martini. They both continued to fight wildland fires.

That was how Rose had seen Nick last June: as a firefighter. Only when she’d entered his condo in Beverly Hills had she remembered that he was also a multimillionaire…and her brother’s best friend.

At least at first. Once Nick had kissed her, she’d forgotten everything else.

Ranger rubbed against her leg, as if he knew she needed to get her head back in the game.

Nick touched her chin with a gloved finger, moving her head gently so that she was facing him and couldn’t avert her eyes. “You’re not in good shape, Rose. No BS, okay? Were you meeting this guy, Derek Cutshaw, here?”

“No.”

“Were you seeing him?”

“No, Nick, I wasn’t seeing him.” Not now, she thought. She wished she could say not ever, but it wasn’t true. “Ranger and I have been coming out here at the same time, on the same day, for the past six weeks.” She pulled back from Nick, and he lowered his hand, although his intensity didn’t lessen. “That doesn’t mean Derek—or whoever is back there in the shed—was here to meet me.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“A few weeks ago. In town. We didn’t talk. I hadn’t realized until then he was even in Vermont.”

A town cruiser barreled around a curve and turned into the main driveway, closely followed by a fire truck and ambulance. Rose felt her mouth and throat go dry as she watched Zack Harper, a firefighter she’d grown up with, jump down from his truck and glance in her direction, as if to say not again.

A state cruiser pulled in behind the town cruiser. Rose was surprised to see Scott Thorne behind the wheel.

She glanced at Nick. “I thought Scott was in California with Beth Harper.”

“He came home early.”

“When?”

“Monday night. He only stayed the weekend.”

Rose frowned. Why hadn’t Beth told her? But that was her friend Beth, a paramedic who was closemouthed about her love life if about nothing else.

Then again, Rose thought, she was standing next to a man she’d made love to on one wild night, and another man who hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer was likely dead a few yards from her—and almost no one knew about her association with either of them.

She watched Scott walk up the driveway, grim and ramrod straight in his trooper’s uniform. He was a fair, strongly built man with little sense of humor. Rose hated to see him and Beth go their separate ways, but the violence of the past months had been hard on everyone.

She wondered if the FBI and the ATF would be next to descend on the scene, perhaps even the Secret Service. Vice President Preston Neal and his wife and five children had visited Black Falls in early February and planned to come for the winter festival at the lodge in a couple of weeks. It was meant to celebrate the last days of winter and to put the violence of the past months behind them.

Everyone believed Lowell Whittaker’s arrest had put his killer network out of business.

Rose felt Nick standing close to her. Did he believe it? She remembered him sweeping her into his arms last June, holding her tight as he pushed back the memories of a friend who’d died earlier that day in a wildland fire.

The friend, Jasper Vanderhorn, had been an arson investigator obsessed with a serial arsonist.

She turned, facing Nick. “Are you in Vermont because of Jasper? Do you think his serial arsonist followed you and killed Derek?”

Scott Thorne was within a few yards of reaching them. More police cars and fire trucks arrived. Nick’s expression didn’t change. “Not now,” he said.

“We’re not done yet, Nick.”

He fixed his gaze on her. “That’s right. We’re not.”

Three

R ose welcomed the cold air as she let Ranger out of the back of her Jeep. She’d parked in front of Three Sisters Café on Main Street, across from the common in the middle of the village of Black Falls. She wondered if Sean had ever tried to explain their hometown to Nick over mojitos by the pool, or looking out at the view of Beverly Hills from their Wilshire Boulevard offices.

She’d left Nick with two state detectives.

She snapped a leash on Ranger and, bypassing the café’s main entrance, went into the 1835 brick house through its center-hall door. Sean owned the building. Three of Rose’s friends—“sisters” in spirit—had converted the corner rooms into a breakfast-and-lunch enterprise that few in town had believed would survive six months. Almost two years later, it was thriving.

Without waiting to be told, Ranger lay down in the hall. He looked tired. Rose had given him a treat and water in the Jeep, but he wasn’t as resilient as he’d been even just a year ago. She suspected he was reacting to her stress as much as his own at the unexpected scene on the river. A body burned beyond recognition. The likelihood that the victim was a man she knew and had hoped was long out of her life.

Nick’s presence.

She took off Ranger’s leash, hung it on a peg on the wall and entered the café. The early-morning rush was over, the only customers three middle-aged women fresh from their yoga class up the street. They’d leaned their rolled-up mats against the wall and were enjoying house-made yogurt, fresh fruit and muffins at a table overlooking Elm Street.

Dominique Belair, one of the café’s three owners, was behind the glass case, her fine dark hair pulled back neatly but her face pale, her brown eyes wide, shining with worry. “I heard about the fire,” she said as she reached for a mug in the café’s evergreen signature color. “Is it true the man who died is Derek Cutshaw?”

“There hasn’t been a positive ID,” Rose said, pulling off her coat. She’d left her hat and gloves in her Jeep. “His car’s at the guesthouse and footprints lead to the shed where the body was found.”

“So yes, it’s Derek. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you to go out there expecting a beautiful morning with Ranger and finding…” Dominique shuddered and pointed the mug at the glass case. “You should eat something. Coffee and a scone?”

Rose had brought a breakfast bar with her to the Whittaker place but hadn’t touched it. Now it was almost lunchtime. She couldn’t imagine eating and yet knew she had to. She nodded and attempted a smile. “That’d be great.”

Dominique filled the mug from a coffee urn on a counter behind her, then pulled a cinnamon scone off a stack on a tray and set it on a small plate. She handed both the mug and plate to Rose. “Anything else I can get you?”

“No, thanks,” Rose said. “This is perfect.”

Dominique started to say something, but another customer entered the café and Rose took her coffee and scone to a table overlooking the river that ran behind the café. She wasn’t sure why she’d come here. To have a few moments to herself, or to be among friends? Or just to avoid being alone at her house, or going up to the lodge and talking to her brother A.J. about what had happened—about Nick Martini and Derek Cutshaw?

She noticed Myrtle Smith come through the kitchen door behind the glass case. At fifty-four, Myrtle was tiny, with dyed black hair, lavender eyes and bright red nails. She’d been helping out at the café since January, when Hannah Shay, another of the three “sisters,” had departed for Southern California with her two younger brothers, not to mention, Rose thought, one Sean Cameron. He and Hannah, a recent law school graduate, had exposed Lowell Whittaker as a killer.

Myrtle was an experienced Washington reporter who’d been touched by Lowell’s violence herself when he’d arranged for the poisoning murder of a Russian diplomat she’d been involved with. Her investigation into his death ultimately had led her to Black Falls.

She headed straight for Rose’s riverside table. “I hate to speak ill of the dead,” Myrtle said, dropping into a chair across from Rose, “but Derek Cutshaw could be one unpleasant human being.”

Rose didn’t comment. “When did you see him last?”

“About two weeks ago. I haven’t seen him since. Dom, either. I don’t know about Beth.”

Beth Harper was the third “sister” who co-owned the café. She was in Beverly Hills visiting Sean and Hannah. Beth, her brother and Scott Thorne had flown back to California with them last Friday. Zack had always planned to stay just through the weekend. Not Scott.

“What about Hannah?” Rose asked. “Have you or Dom been in touch with her?”

“Dom said she’d call both Beth and Hannah when she knew more. They’re supposed to be having fun—swimming in Sean’s pool, shopping on Rodeo Drive, watching for Hollywood stars.”

“Scott Thorne’s back. Did you know that?”

“I’d heard,” Myrtle said but didn’t elaborate.

Rose decided not to try to figure out Beth’s love life. Her own was complicated enough, or at least had been. Nowadays it was downright simple: no love life.

“What about your brothers?” Myrtle asked. “Have you talked to them?”

“No, not yet.”

A.J. would be at the lodge. Elijah, her middle brother, a Special Forces soldier, was in Washington, D.C., with Jo Harper, Zack and Beth’s older sister, a Secret Service agent. Sean, the youngest of the three Cameron brothers, was home in Beverly Hills with Hannah, who was still figuring out her life. Rose had no doubt they were as in love as they had been in January. Their feelings weren’t rooted in the adrenaline of their encounter with the Whittakers. They’d been destined for each other since high school.

They were soul mates, if one believed in such things.

The yoga group departed, and the café was quiet. Rose stared down at the ice jams on the river, vaguely aware of Dominique setting a plate of quiche and fresh fruit in front of her.

She thanked Dominique before realizing her friend had already gone.

She felt Myrtle observing her as she tried a bit of her cinnamon scone. Only recently had she decided that what her family and friends didn’t know about the past twelve months of her life wasn’t anything she was hiding from them so much as letting be. She’d moved on, or had tried to.

Except now Derek Cutshaw was almost certainly dead, and Nick Martini was in Black Falls.

And walking into the café, Rose thought with a grimace, watching out of the corner of her eye as he glanced in her direction and headed to the glass case. His jacket was open, and he moved as if he didn’t have anything more momentous on his mind than figuring out what kind of coffee to order.

Myrtle raised her thin, penciled eyebrows. “You know him?”

Rose realized her expression must have given her away. She tried to appear more neutral. “That’s Nick Martini. He’s—”

“The Martini of Cameron & Martini and another smoke jumper,” Myrtle said with interest. “When did he get here?”

“Last night. He was at the fire this morning.”

“You’re friends?”

“I don’t know him that well,” Rose said truthfully.

Nick came over to their table, and, coffee in hand, pulled out a chair and sat down without waiting to be invited. “Nice spot,” he said, nodding to the frozen river. “Same river we were just on?”

“Yes,” Rose said, her voice almost inaudible. She picked up her fork and tried the quiche. Spinach, cheese, mushroom. She had no appetite for it, but it was warm and tasted good—and she knew she needed something more substantial than a scone.

Nick’s dark eyes settled on Myrtle. “You must be Myrtle Smith. I’m Nick Martini. Sean’s told me about you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. “I should have introduced you.”

“It’s all right,” Myrtle said, obviously already taken in by Nick’s good looks and compelling presence.

Nick glanced out the window again. “I saw Beth and Hannah at Sean’s pool yesterday before I headed East.” He shifted back to Myrtle. “You’re filling in for Hannah. Who’s filling in for Beth?”

“Dominique hired a new part-timer,” Myrtle said, “but there’s no way to replace either Hannah or Beth.”

Nick grinned. “That’s diplomatic.”

“I’m not staying in Vermont.”

Myrtle seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. She’d arrived in Black Falls in November, after surviving a suspicious fire at her house that had destroyed her office and all the materials she’d methodically compiled detailing a network of paid assassins. She’d stayed at the lodge at first but two weeks had ago moved into Hannah’s apartment above the café.

Whenever Rose saw her, Myrtle insisted she’d be back in Washington soon.

She got to her feet, retying her evergreen canvas apron. “I should get busy. I’ve been showing Dominique the art of making a four-layer fresh coconut cake like my mother used to make.”

Rose gave her a distracted smile. “Can’t go wrong with coconut cake.”

“You can if you haven’t made one in twenty years. Vermont seems to have brought out my Southern roots.” Myrtle sighed heavily, obviously distracted herself. “People can’t resist a good coconut cake. It looks like springtime itself.”

Nick shrugged. “I think it looks like snow.”

“We don’t get much snow in South Carolina where I’m from. We have a real spring there.”

“It’s still February,” Rose said, relaxing a little. “Spring’s not for another month.”

Myrtle grunted. “It won’t be spring here even then. You all can get snow well into April.” She winced, looking stricken. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cavalier.”

Nick’s eyes were half-closed, but he said nothing. Rose wondered where he’d been last April when her father had died on Cameron Mountain. Fighting a wildland fire? Making a deal for Cameron & Martini? Flying off somewhere in his private plane with a woman?

After all, what did she know about Nick Martini?

She and Ranger had searched for her father after he’d been caught in an fierce April snowstorm on the remote north side of Cameron Mountain, but it was Devin Shay, Hannah’s younger brother, who’d found him.

The storm hadn’t killed him. Lowell Whittaker’s paid assassins had, on Lowell’s orders.

“It’s okay,” Rose said quietly. “We’re all ready to make our peace with the past. Pop wouldn’t want us to be miserable. He’d want us to be happy.” She smiled. “Coconut cake is happy.”

Myrtle glanced out at the bright, snowy landscape, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was there, working in a Vermont café. “It’s made with egg whites. My mother would use the leftover egg yolks for boiled custard.”

Rose raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner. “Boiled custard, Myrtle?”

“Best stuff in the world. It’s like a cross between eggnog and pudding.”

“Sounds wonderful. How much longer can you hang in here?”

She turned from the window and gave a short laugh. “When you see me digging a pit out back to roast a pig for pulled pork, do an intervention, will you?”

Rose laughed, surprising herself. Myrtle seemed relieved, which told Rose just how pale she had to be. Definitely a welcome distraction, she thought, to talk about coconut cake and pulled pork instead of Nick Martini and the tragic scene out on the river.

Of course, Myrtle was no more focused on food than Rose was and fixed her lavender eyes on Nick. “Do the police suspect the fire this morning was deliberate?”

“Too early to say,” Nick said.

She shifted to Rose. “What do you think?”

Rose reminded herself that the woman scrutinizing her was a veteran journalist accustomed to rooting out lies, deception and simple stonewalling. “It looks as if a kerosene lamp or something similar blew up. Derek—the victim’s upper body was badly burned.”

Myrtle shuddered, turning ashen, her lips thinning as she swallowed visibly.

“It could have been an accident,” Rose added.

“I’ve been in this town for three months. None of the untimely deaths and near-deaths here so far have been accidents.” Myrtle turned back to Nick. “Sean was out here with Hannah last week for a few days. Why didn’t you come with him then?”

“Work commitments,” Nick said.

She obviously wasn’t satisfied. “What are you doing here now?”

“Visiting.”

Instead of stomping back to the kitchen, Myrtle didn’t seem bothered by Nick’s light sarcasm. “You and Rose know each other through Sean?”

Nick drank more of his coffee. “That we do.”

“He told you she’d be out there this morning?”

“Sean did.” Nick leaned over and helped himself to a chunk of Rose’s scone. “What do you know about Derek Cutshaw?”

Myrtle’s eyes darkened slightly. “I only met him a couple times when he stopped in on his way to different ski areas. He was well aware he wasn’t a favorite around here. What was he doing out at the Whittaker place, do you know?”

“No idea,” Nick said.

“Rose?”

“No, none,” she said, feeling Nick’s gaze burning into her. She smiled faintly at Myrtle. “Your reporter’s habits die hard.”

She adjusted her apron. “They’ve been buried in frosting and salad fixings and frozen in the snow. Apparently Derek was sharing a ski house in Killington with some of his friends.”

“How do you know?” Rose asked, surprised.

“Dominique. She knows everything. I imagine the police are up there by now.” Myrtle pushed strands of black hair out of her face. “They still don’t have the SOB who set fire to my house. They think it was one of Whittaker’s killers, probably the same one who taught him how to make a pipe bomb. He won’t say. I think he’s more afraid of this guy than he is of anything the FBI can do to him.”

Nick set his coffee, barely touched, back on the table. “I’m sure if there’s even the remotest possibility of a connection between your fire and the one this morning, the police are all over it.”

“This pyro, whoever it is, is still out there.” Myrtle moved back from the window and gave Nick an unflinching look. “You’re a firefighter. You must hate arson.”

“Most people hate arson,” he said.

“I don’t own a kerosene lamp. My granny did. I remember. What a great woman she was.” Myrtle seemed to give herself a mental shake. “I’ll be in the kitchen. My self-imposed northern New England exile continues. At home in South Carolina,” she said, obviously attempting to lighten her mood as she headed back to the glass case, “I’d be setting out pansies.”

Once Myrtle was through the swinging door to the kitchen, Rose jumped to her feet. “Dom’s quiche is amazing—help yourself,” she said quickly to Nick. In a few strides, she was in the center hall, fighting tears.

It would all come out. Her and Derek, her and Nick. There’d be no more secrets. No discretion. Everyone in town would know her private business.

Ranger was asleep on his back, paws in the air. She didn’t want to wake him, but he rolled over on his own and got stiffly up onto all fours. She grabbed his leash and snapped it back on. For the past eight years, he’d been her constant companion. They’d done so much together. He’d been tireless, solid and reliable, but he was slowing down.

She couldn’t bear to think about that now and headed outside with him. Across the street on the common, kids and teachers from a local nursery school were building snowmen. Rose could hear their laughter and hoped what she’d seen that morning had been a terrible accident.

She crossed Elm Street and continued up Main, passing the only flower shop in town, cyclamen and pots of ferns in its window, but her mind was back at the Whittaker estate. She could smell the smoke and see the pieces of glass embedded in what she knew, in her gut, was Derek Cutshaw’s burned body.

There was no question in her mind. The fire hadn’t been an accident.

Derek had been murdered, and his killer could still be in Black Falls.

By the time she and Ranger reached O’Rourke’s, a bar and restaurant whose owner, Liam O’Rourke, was a longtime friend of all three of her brothers, Rose was aware of Nick ambling behind her. He caught up with her as she started up the stone steps to O’Rourke’s front door, a couple of big green shamrocks already stuck on the glass ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.

“Pretty town,” Nick said as he eased in on her right side. He’d zipped up his coat, his only apparent concession to the cold walk up Main Street. “Did you ever build a snowman on the town common when you were a tot?”

“Not that I recall, no.” Rose cast him a sideways glance. “I’ve participated in a few snowball fights, though.”

“My fair warning.” He glanced out at the quiet street. “A lot of questions were raised back at the café.”

She pulled her hand from the door. Ranger sat quietly, expectantly, next to her.

“Rose, last March, Derek Cutshaw and two of his ski-bum friends got into a fight here at O’Rourke’s with the owner’s cousin, a local stonemason.

“Bowie O’Rourke,” Nick said.

“Sean told you the story?”

“That’s right. He, A.J. and Elijah were all in town that night. Derek insulted Hannah and wouldn’t leave her alone. His friends joined in, but he was the ringleader. Sean hauled Hannah out of here before she could rip out a few eyeballs. Bowie stayed and ended up getting arrested.”

“He’s still on probation,” Rose said. “No charges were filed against Derek and his two friends. He hurled most of the insults. He cut close to the bone, even bringing up Hannah’s mother, who used to work here before she died, and implying Hannah—well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“You weren’t here that night.”

Her mouth was dry, her heart beating rapidly. “No, I wasn’t.”

She yanked open the door and bolted inside ahead of Nick. Ranger flopped down in a corner. O’Rourke’s only did a light lunch business, and she knew Liam wouldn’t mind. She climbed onto a high stool at the dark wood bar. Nick stayed on his feet, taking in the scattering of empty tables, the deep red walls and the black-and-white framed photographs of old Black Falls. Tall, broad-shouldered Liam was behind the bar, polishing a glass with a white cloth and regarding Rose with open suspicion, as if she’d brought bad luck.

She couldn’t pretend not to know Nick, and introduced him. “Liam, this is Nick Martini of Cameron & Martini.”

“Yeah, I know,” Liam said. “He was with you this morning. I heard. This town’s too small for something like that not to get around fast. The dead man’s Derek Cutshaw, isn’t it?”

Rose nodded. “I’m almost positive, yes.”

Liam filled the glass he’d been polishing with water from a small stainless-steel sink, then set it in front of her. “He was in here last night.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen much of him this winter but I knew he was back in Vermont. He had coffee and a sandwich and left. No alcohol. He’s a mean bastard when he drinks.” Liam sighed. “Or was, anyway.”

Rose contained any reaction. “Have you seen Bowie yet today?”

“He’s working out at the lake. He’ll stop in later.”

If Nick knew what “out at the lake” meant, he kept it to himself. Bowie O’Rourke and Hannah Shay had grown up together in an isolated hollow a few miles past the Whittaker place. Bowie still lived there.

Rose drank some of the water Liam had placed in front of her. “Given Bowie’s history with Derek and where he lives—”

“The police will want to talk to him if they haven’t already,” Liam said heavily. “I’ve had my issues with Bowie, but he had nothing to do with Cutshaw’s death. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she said, resisting the temptation to look at Nick for his reaction.

Liam grabbed his cloth and another glass. “What about you, Rose? Have you had much to do with Cutshaw lately?”

“I barely knew him.”

“Then what was he doing out at the Whittaker place?”

She drank more of her water, just to give herself something to do and repeated what she’d told the police and then Myrtle Smith. “I have no idea.” She slid off the stool and stood up straight, turning to Nick, who hadn’t said a word since entering O’Rourke’s. “I’m sure I’ll see you back at the lodge at some point.”

Ranger jumped up and followed her outside. Rose grabbed his leash in one hand and broke into a run. He matched her stride, his tongue wagging, as if he thought they were finally playing—finally having the fun he’d anticipated at dawn.

The wind and cold whipped tears out of her eyes, and when she reached her Jeep, she choked back a sob and got Ranger into the back, patting him, hugging him. He was so damn soft, so warm and reliable.

“I can tell you anything, can’t I, buddy?” She sniffled and stood up straight, laughing at his eager expression as he panted at her. “Good dog, Ranger. Good dog.”

She shut him in and climbed into the front seat. She checked her rearview mirror but didn’t see Nick on Main Street. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was having a beer with Liam, getting what he could out of him about her, Derek Cutshaw and life in Black Falls.

In his place, Rose thought, she’d probably do the same.

She started the Jeep, picturing the backpack and sleeping bag in the shed. Had Derek planned to camp there, waiting for her? He wouldn’t have come to her house. He’d have known she wouldn’t have let him in. Out at the boarded-up farmhouse on the river, he’d have been able to catch her by surprise, force her to talk to him. But why now? Why after a year?

Nick.

Had Derek found out Nick was in town and would come to see her?

But how would he know, and why would he care?

I still care about you, Rose.

She knew better. Derek had never cared about her in any of the ways that mattered.

She pushed back her questions and circled around the common—the children and their teachers still hard at work on their snowmen—and drove out toward the lake and Bowie O’Rourke, hoping this time Nick Martini wouldn’t follow her.

Four

R ose navigated the dirt road—now covered in snow and ice—along the shore of a spring-fed glacial lake a few miles outside the village and pulled in behind Bowie O’Rourke’s mud-and-salt-encrusted van. He’d parked in front of the dozen small, run-down cabins on twenty acres that her father had left to Jo Harper, a shock to everyone in Black Falls, including Rose. She sometimes wondered if he’d suspected, at least intuitively, that his end was near and had deliberately put Jo into close proximity to Elijah, his second-born son, who had built a house just through the woods while on visits home from the army.

Leaving Ranger cozy in the back of her Jeep, Rose picked her way along an icy path to the cabin where Jo and Elijah had holed up when they ran off together as teenagers. An angry, frustrated Drew Cameron had discovered them. Jo, the daughter of the Black Falls police chief, had just graduated from high school. Elijah, a year older, had been knocking around town, aimless. After their three days on the lake had been disrupted, Elijah left Black Falls for boot camp and a career in the Special Forces, Jo for college and the Secret Service.

The cabin door was open, and Rose found Bowie inside, wearing his usual bright orange sweatshirt, complete with stains and tears, and baggy work pants. His black lab, Poe, was curled up on the sagging floor. Bowie was as tall and broad-shouldered as his cousin Liam, although their similarities ended there. Bowie had grown up in tougher circumstances, and his ready fists and impatience with bullies had put him on the wrong side of the law, as recently as last March when he’d stood up for Hannah in his cousin’s bar.

And for me, Rose thought.

Another of her secrets.

“Hey, Rose,” Bowie said, standing up from an open metal toolbox. “Where’s Ranger?”

“Asleep in my Jeep.”

“Afraid Poe would corrupt him?”

She reached down and rubbed the lab’s stomach, then stood up straight again. “Poe’s a great dog. He misbehaves from time to time, but that’s not his fault.”

“It’s because I haven’t trained him.”

She smiled. “Exactly. You haven’t trained him because you don’t care if he misbehaves.”

“True, provided he doesn’t bite small children, which he doesn’t.” Bowie shook his head, taking in the one-room cabin and its old, musty furnishings. “Jo’s crazy. She should bulldoze all these cabins and sell the land to you Camerons. The lodge could use some lakefront.”

Black Falls Lodge was straight up the wooded hill behind the cabins. “Maybe she’s nostalgic.”

“Nostalgic? Jo?”

Rose ran her fingertips over the red-and-white-checked vinyl cloth that covered a rickety square table under the front window. “You know why I’m here, Bowie.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. A couple of state troopers just left. They can’t say for sure it was Cutshaw you found, but they know.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “I answered their questions. I have nothing to hide. I’m not going to pretend I like Cutshaw any better now than I did this morning before I knew he was dead.”

“When did you see him last?”

“The fight at Liam’s place last year, at least as far as I know.” Bowie placed a measuring tape encased in yellow plastic in his toolbox. “I’m on probation. I’m supposed to avoid alcohol, trouble and troublemakers.”

Rose looked out at the lake, still and frozen in the winter sun. She could feel Bowie’s eyes on her and turned to him.

“You have to back off and let the police do their job,” he said, shutting his toolbox with the toe of his boot. “I have to check the rest of the cabins. Jo wants an idea of what she’s up against. She knows. She just needs to hear it from someone else. Then Elijah’s got some stonework for me to look at over at his place.”

“Do you think Jo and Elijah will come back to Black Falls to live?”

“Eventually.” He lifted his toolbox as if it weighed nothing. “Rose—”

“I’m okay, Bowie. I have some work I can do at home, and Lauren and I are planning winter fest weekend at the lodge. Have you heard from Hannah lately?”

“Emails once in a while. None today.” He jerked at thumb at Poe, who eagerly jumped up next to him. “Does she know about the fire yet?”

“I haven’t talked to her.”

Nick could have called Sean by now and he could have told Hannah. Rose was aware of Bowie watching her in silence. He knew about her brief, troubled relationship last winter with Derek Cutshaw but nothing about Nick.

“Rose?”

“I’m on my way to the lodge,” she said. “A.J. will have heard about the fire and likely have told Sean and Elijah. I don’t need those three worrying about me.”

“Not much you can do to stop them. Why’s it so bad to have your big brothers worry about you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Who said you couldn’t?” With his free hand, Bowie scratched Poe’s head. “How’d Ranger do with the fire?”

“He was confused at first, but he figured it out. He wasn’t expecting to find a body. Neither was I.”

“You two make a good team.”

“I think so.”

“But he’s a dog,” Bowie said with just the slightest hint of a smile.

Rose forced herself to smile back at him. “A dog is the best friend a woman could have, short of a stonemason willing to go to prison to save her reputation—”

“I wasn’t willing. It just worked out that way. I didn’t have to take the fight with Cutshaw as far as I did.”

“You kept him from blurting out about my past with him.” She watched a small clump of snow fall off the toe of her right boot and melt onto the cabin’s worn floor. “Derek was a huge mistake on my part, but he also exaggerated and outright made things up about us. You stopped him from telling lies about me that I’d never have lived down—that would have hurt me professionally.”

“It’s okay, Rose,” Bowie said gently. “I don’t need to know the details. I didn’t last year, and I don’t now.”

She looked up at him. He’d been Hannah’s friend and defender since childhood, and now he was hers. He’d seen her and Derek together at Killington and had warned her to steer clear of him. By then, she’d already broken off with him. Derek had been volatile, possessive and verbally abusive, turning a few dates into far more than they’d ever been. Embarrassed by her bad judgment, determined to get on with her life, she hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Bowie had kept her secret.

Then came the fight at O’Rourke’s and Bowie’s arrest, and her father’s death a few weeks later. She’d retreated into silence and solitude, focusing on her work.

Except for that night last June in Beverly Hills with Nick Martini.

“I would have told the police about Derek and me after your arrest last year,” she said.

Bowie shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“You don’t have to hide anything on my account.”

“I know that, Rose. Go on. Go see A.J. Better he hears the full story about this morning from you than from someone else.”

She grinned suddenly. “Just what I need, another big-brother type trying to boss me around.”

“Like anyone can boss you around. And I’m no Cameron. Not a chance. Call me if you need me.” He opened the cabin door, the sunlight catching the ends of his dark curly hair as he gave her a serious look. “I didn’t have anything to do with Cutshaw’s death. I’m sorry it happened. I really am. I didn’t like him and didn’t want anything to do with him, but he should have had a chance to mellow.”

Rose placed a hand on Bowie’s muscular upper arm. “We don’t know what happened today. Be careful, okay?”

“Yeah. You, too.”

He headed outside, and she glanced at the old iron bed, the oak veneer dresser and mismatched chairs, the crooked door to the bathroom. In the months after she’d inherited the cabins, Jo Harper had let friends, mostly in law enforcement, borrow them for a week or long weekend here and there. In November, after Charlie Neal, the vice president’s genius sixteen-year-old son, played a prank on her and she ran into trouble with the Secret Service, she retreated to the best of the lot until things in Washington could cool down.

Elijah had been home from war, a hundred yards up the lake. Now Jo was wearing the diamond ring he’d bought for her fifteen years ago, when he was nineteen and she was eighteen.

Rose shut the door tight behind her, barely noticing the cold on her walk back to her Jeep. Ranger sat up and yawned as she got behind the wheel. “Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it, buddy?”

He slumped back down, and she turned the Jeep around and headed back to the main road.

Next stop, Black Falls Lodge and her brother A.J.

With any luck, Nick wouldn’t be there.

When Rose arrived at the lodge, she didn’t see Nick’s rented car in the parking lot. She gave Ranger a quick walk, again not bothering with her hat and gloves. She paused and squinted out at the white-covered mountains in the distance. Up closer, she noticed a few cross-country skiers on the groomed trails in the meadow behind the lodge. If she’d brought Ranger here this morning instead of to the Whittaker place, who would have discovered Derek’s body? Would he even have gone out there?

Would he be alive now?

She shivered in the cold and headed inside with Ranger.

She was surprised to find Brett Griffin, one of Derek’s two friends who’d been in the fight at O’Rourke’s last year, standing in front of the stone fireplace in the lobby. Ranger flopped down next to him.

“It definitely was Derek,” Brett said, his voice quavering as he stared at the fire, flames rising from logs cut from managed woodlots on lodge property. He didn’t seem to notice the heat. His light brown hair curled below the line of his jaw, and he wore a heavy wool sweater and wind pants that were baggy on his lanky frame. “The police found me at Harper Four Corners and told me. I was taking pictures for a photography project I’m working on….” He trailed off, his anguish obvious.

“I’m sorry, Brett,” Rose said, suppressing her own emotions. “I know Derek was a friend.”

Ranger placed his head on Brett’s boot. Brett smiled, as if forcing himself to focus. “I guess I’m still in shock. I’ve only been back in Black Falls a few weeks. I’m house-sitting up the road for one of my ski students. It’s perfect, or so I thought.”

“Have you seen much of Derek since you’ve been back?”

“No, not really. I haven’t had much to do with him since last winter. I thought he was going to stay in Colorado, but he had established contacts in Vermont. I ran into him at Okemo last week. He seemed good.” Brett faltered, glancing back at the fire. “I know we weren’t favorites around here.”

Rose placed a hand on the back of one the comfortable, overstuffed chairs arranged in front of the fire. “People know you weren’t a big part of the fight last year. You didn’t harass Hannah.”

“I didn’t stop Derek.”

“When you saw him, did he mention he wanted to talk to me or that he planned to go out to the Whittaker place?”

“No, nothing like that. We just talked about skiing. Damn. This is awful.” Brett eased his foot out from under Ranger’s head. “Just what you all need.”

“Never mind us. We’ll get through it.”

“Finding him this morning must have been hard on you.”

“It was,” she said softly.

Brett didn’t speak for a moment. The fire crackled, glowing chunks of a log shifting as it burned. “Derek liked you, Rose. He never got into whatever went on between you two last winter, but I know he felt bad about it.”

Suddenly feeling warm, she unzipped her jacket. “None of that matters now.”

“I guess it doesn’t. It’s hard to believe he’s dead.” Brett pointed to the lobby door. “I should go.”

“I can run you up the road if you’d like.”

He gave a faint smile. “The exercise will do me good.” He lifted a down vest off the back of a chair and shrugged it on, then snapped it up, his hands steady but his movements slow, as if every snap were a struggle. When he finished, he looked at Rose, tears shining in his pale gray eyes. “I know that fight at O’Rourke’s last year wasn’t Derek’s first or his last. He could be a real bastard. What if someone had it in for him?”

“Who would?” Rose asked. “Just because some people didn’t like him doesn’t mean anyone wanted him dead.”

Brett pulled a knitted hat from his vest pocket but didn’t put it on, just held it bunched up in one hand. “Rose…do you think there’s any chance Derek killed himself? I don’t mean to be so blunt, but if his death wasn’t an accident, then maybe it was suicide and not murder.”

“I don’t know what happened to Derek.”

“Of course you don’t. Sorry. Damn, this isn’t what I expected when I got up this morning. I’ll be around. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” His cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “As if there would be. You Camerons can take care of yourselves, that’s for sure. I’ll see you later.”

He left quickly, mumbling hello as he passed A.J. coming in.

Rose watched her older brother walk stiffly to the stone fireplace. He patted Ranger, then grabbed a log from a copper box, pulled back the screen in front of the fire and set the log on the red-hot coals. “It’s quiet around here,” he said, replacing the screen. “Midweek, not that many guests. Most everyone’s out enjoying the good weather.”

“A.J.—”

He held up a hand and turned to her, his back to the fire. “I should have stopped you from going out to the Whittaker place from the beginning. I didn’t understand why you wanted to, but I wasn’t going to come between you and your work—you and Ranger.”

“I appreciate that.”

She could see the pain in A.J.’s blue eyes, which so reminded her of their father. “You must be beat. Have you had lunch?”

“I had something at the café. I just wanted to stop by before I head home.”

“You shouldn’t be alone, Rose. Why don’t you stay here tonight? Your favorite room’s available. Or you can stay with us at the house.” He seemed to make an effort to smile. “The kids love their aunt Rose.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine at home. I’ll have Ranger—”

“Ranger’s great, but he’s still a dog.”

Normally she’d have come back with a retort, but she didn’t have one.

A.J. sighed and unzipped his canvas coat. “I talked to Elijah. He’s debating whether to head back up here. He says he’s not getting much done in D.C., anyway.”

“What about Sean?” Rose asked.

“Nick Martini had already called him.” A.J.’s gaze narrowed slightly. “I assume you know Nick’s staying here.”

“I do, yes,” she said, keeping her tone neutral.

“He was just here. He grabbed a sandwich and took off again. He didn’t say where he was going. He drove. That’s all I know.”

Rose glanced down at Ranger, settled in comfortably on the hearth. She could hear the suspicion and curiosity in her brother’s voice, but he wouldn’t ask her outright if there was anything personal between her and Nick. She’d wondered last week when Sean was in town if he had begun to suspect, but he hadn’t said anything. Of her three brothers, Elijah was the most likely to flat-out interrogate her about her love life, but they all kept a watchful eye on her, especially since their father’s death. Now Nick would be facing her brothers’ scrutiny.

Would he even care?

Probably not, Rose thought.

She couldn’t imagine where he’d gone. To confer with the firefighters on the scene that morning? To pry information about her from people in town?

She could hear the squeals and laughter of small children down the hall and knew they were from Jim and Baylee, her four-year-old nephew and two-year-old niece.

A.J. took in a shallow breath. “Lauren’s having a hard time with this,” he said, referring to his wife of five years.

“I’m sorry, A.J.”

“Never mind. We’ll get through it. Take care of yourself, Rose. Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

“I will. Thanks.”

He left her by the fire to join his wife and children in the dining room. Rose quickly got Ranger onto his feet, acknowledging with a little jolt of surprise as they headed out that she felt better for having seen her brother. She didn’t lack for offers of company, friendship, solidarity and even protection, but she was looking forward to being back on her hill, alone, with her dog.

She drove out to Four Corners and turned up Cameron Mountain Road. Her small house was tucked onto a hillside, with expansive views of the surrounding mountains and valley. Anyone could stand at the top of her driveway with a pair of binoculars and see people getting in and out of cars in the Black Falls Lodge parking lot.

Which was what Lowell Whittaker had done in November.

He’d waited, watching for Melanie Kendall, one of his hired killers, to get into her car. When she did, he’d set off the crude pipe bomb he’d assembled and placed under the driver’s seat. She’d screwed up an assignment and the penalty was death.

Rose had been out of town at the time. When Hannah and Sean had uncovered Lowell’s role in the violence in Black Falls, they learned that he himself had killed Melanie Kendall.

But what if he’d had help?

As Rose pulled into her steep driveway, she noticed Nick’s rented car parked close to a snowback and eased in next to it, sighing at Ranger. “We have company.”

She noted smoke curling out of the chimney and figured Nick, being a bold type, had built a fire in her woodstove and made himself comfortable. Maybe he was taking a nap. He’d be jet-lagged, after all, and he hadn’t had a good first day in Black Falls.

She and Ranger took the stone steps to the back door. She kicked off her boots in the tiled mudroom, grabbed a rag from a peg and wiped off his wet, muddy paws, then went through the cozy kitchen into the adjoining living room.

Nick was stretched out on the couch with his ankles crossed. He hadn’t taken off his boots.

“Locks, Rose,” he said, sitting up. “Locks.”

Ranger seemed unoffended by Nick’s presence and collapsed on his bed by the woodstove, a brisk fire burning behind the glass doors. Rose stayed on her feet. “I have locks.”

“Doesn’t matter if you don’t use them.”

“How much difference do you think locked doors would make if someone wanted to get in here?” She gestured out at her view of the mountains, shades of white, blue and gray in the afternoon sun. “I have no neighbors. There’s no one else close enough to hear someone break a window.”

He rolled up onto his feet, his dark gray sweater—probably cashmere—falling neatly over his flat abdomen. “You’re obviously not afraid living up here by yourself.”

“Why should I be afraid? If you want to check the cellar and closets for intruders, go right ahead.”

“Maybe I already have.” He pointed to her small flat-screen television. “No cable?”

“I have DVDs, and I love to read.”

“I’ve been through your DVDs. You have the entire collection of the new BBC Jane Austen videos and all four Die Hard movies. You do mystify, Rose Cameron.”

She smiled. “Good.”

He glanced out at the mountains. “Nightfall comes early up here in the winter. Do you have an extra bedroom or do I get the couch?”

“You get to go back to the lodge.”

His eyes skimmed over her, as if he were gauging just what tone he should take with her. “Then you’re staying at the lodge tonight, too?”

“I didn’t say that—”

“I’ll sleep in my car at the bottom of your driveway if I have to, Rose. You found a dead man this morning. Either he wanted you to find him or someone else did.”

“Or his death was a terrible accident.” She spun over to her woodbox and saw that he’d refilled it. “Or you were meant to find him. Have you considered that, Nick? I hadn’t run into so much as a dead chipmunk at the Whittaker place. Then you show up in town, and look what happens.”

“Then maybe I should stay here so you and Ranger can protect me.”

“Give it up.”

She felt as if she were talking to a sexy stranger, not a man she’d slept with.

Nick walked over to the front windows. “Sean mentioned that he, A.J. and Elijah read you the riot act about spending so much time alone.”

“I’ve traveled a lot this past year with my work, but I haven’t gone anywhere this winter.”

She knew she’d taken on more than she’d needed to—that she’d been running away from her past with Derek Cutshaw, her grief over her father’s death, even the scare over nearly losing her brother Elijah in combat. Since Lowell Whittaker’s arrest in January, she’d made a conscious effort to refocus on her work with the lodge and reconnect with her hometown and even her family.

Nick continued to stare out at the mountains. “Tell me about you and Derek Cutshaw.”

His question caught her off guard. She felt her entire body stiffen and shook her head. “This isn’t happening.”

He glanced back at her and shrugged. “Okay. I’ll get one of your brothers to ask you.”

“You’re missing an important point here, Nick. My brothers and I may fight among ourselves, but we’re loyal to each other. You’re the outsider.”

“Cutshaw was, too.”

“You can go now,” she said coolly. “Ranger and I are fine here on our own.”

Nick walked over to Ranger and crouched down to pet him. “I had a golden retriever as a kid. Nothing cuter as puppies. How old was Ranger when you got him?”

“Twelve weeks.”

“Here locally?”

“Woodstock. From friends. They’d already named him Ranger, which has earned me some ribbing in the search-and-rescue world since it’s almost a cliché.”

“Did you know he’d be a search-and-rescue dog?”

“That was the plan.”

As Nick stood up, Rose noticed he moved smoothly, with no hint of fatigue or stiffness, and reminded herself that he was held to a high standard of fitness as a smoke jumper.

Not a man to underestimate.

“I’m not distracted, Nick,” she said, as much for herself as for him. “You can afford to buy half of Black Falls, so you can afford another night at the lodge.”

“Fair enough.” His eyes, even darker in the afternoon shadows, lingered on her for a few seconds longer than she found comfortable. “I’ll go if you agree to have dinner with me at the lodge. You can come early. Really early.”

“That’s blackmail. You’ll go even if I don’t have dinner with you.”

He reached for his jacket on the couch. “Get some rest, clean up and meet me there. If you don’t show up,” he said, heading for the front door, “I’ll come find you.”

“We’re not talking about anything serious over dinner.”

“Sounds good.”

She sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re completely relentless?”

He winked at her. “All the time.”

Only after he’d left did Rose acknowledge that she wouldn’t be spending the evening alone, wrapped up in an afghan, watching Jane Austen DVDs. She’d meant to keep her distance from Nick, but he’d just let himself into her house, lit a fire in her woodstove and invited her to dinner.

And she’d caved, completely.

Nick Martini was a mission-oriented man. He liked to get what he wanted. In this case, he wanted her not to be up on her hill by herself for any length of time. She didn’t know if he were concerned for her safety or her emotional state after this morning’s tragedy, or if he just wanted to pry information out of her.

Maybe all of the above.

“No wonder he’s rich,” she muttered to Ranger. “Who wouldn’t cave?”

Ranger stretched, yawned and went back to sleep. Rose plopped down on the couch, still warm from Nick, and admitted to herself that she’d also, at least to a degree, let him win this round.

The truth was she didn’t want to be alone right now.

She glanced at the open door to her bedroom and couldn’t remember if she’d shut it before she’d left for the Whittaker place in the predawn dark. She wondered if Nick had checked her closets and cellar for intruders. Had he gone through her small office in back? Had he looked for information about her and Derek?

About him?

She got up again and headed into her bedroom to shower and change, glad, at least, that she wasn’t the type to keep a diary.

Five

N ick tried to get up to his room without running into a Cameron or pink-cheeked guests enjoying a getaway in the mountains, but he didn’t succeed on either score. An older couple holding hands passed him in the parking lot, and A.J. intercepted him in the lobby and steered him to a booth in the lodge’s cozy wood-paneled bar.

Nick ordered whiskey. A.J. stuck with water and leaned back against the dark wood, in no way relaxed.

So, Nick, thought, it was going to be that kind of chat.

His whiskey arrived. He took a sip, eyeing the man across from him. He figured A.J. was as kick-ass in his own way as Special Forces soldier Elijah or smoke jumper Sean.

“First time in Vermont?” A.J. asked.

“It is.”

“You could have come last week when Sean was out here.”

He could have, Nick thought, but he hadn’t made up his mind yet about venturing East. More to the point, he’d known he wouldn’t want Sean with him when he saw Rose.

Bad enough to have to deal with big brother A.J. “I had business to take care of.”

A.J. waited a moment, then said, “What made you decide to come now?”

A state homicide detective and a state arson investigator had asked Nick the same question. “The timing was right,” he said, repeating what he’d told the detectives. “I figured now that things had settled down out here—”

“They haven’t settled down.”

Nick drank more of his whiskey, really wishing he hadn’t run into A.J. “No, they haven’t.” He set his glass down. “Sean and Hannah returned with company.”

“Beth Harper, Scott Thorne, Beth’s brother, Zack,” A.J. said, as if to point out to Nick that he knew what was going on. “I heard Scott left early.”

“He and Zack Harper both responded to the fire this morning. You all have had a hell of a year, which I guess made me even more curious to get out here.”

A.J. didn’t look satisfied. “There’s more to it than that. So long as you’ve told the police everything, you don’t need to tell me.” His tone suggested otherwise, but he didn’t push the point. “I didn’t realize you knew Rose that well.”

“She’s been to California a number of times.”

Nick didn’t want to lie or get into details about his relationship with Rose. Black Falls was a small town, and she was an intensely private woman who didn’t like making mistakes.

Then there was A. J. Cameron, who could have housekeeping short-sheet his California guest’s bed or poison his clam chowder.

“I’m glad Rose wasn’t alone this morning,” A.J. said, then abruptly got to his feet and left Nick to his whiskey.

Nick figured it was as close to a vote of confidence as he’d get from the eldest Cameron.

He settled back in the quiet booth, feeling jet lag and the events of the day gnaw at him. In Beverly Hills, he’d be by the pool or running on the beach, or working. The Vermont winter was beautiful, or at least it was today. He liked to ski and snowshoe, and he knew how not to die in a tent in a blizzard—but he also liked to return to Southern California sun and palm trees.

He’d gone under the North Pole in a submarine. He wondered if that’d count with the rugged Camerons.

He allowed himself one more sip of whiskey and went up to his room. He had a voice mail from Sean asking for an update and texted him back: It’s 24 degrees. Balmy. Say hi to Hannah for me.

Sean would get it: things were under control in Black Falls.

Sleeping with the sister of his business partner and friend had been one of his stupider moves, but Nick didn’t regret it.

He just wished he hadn’t done it.

He stripped and took a shower, ending it with a shot of ice-cold water that he hoped would clear his head. He put on clean clothes that didn’t smell like smoke, grabbed his jacket and headed down to the lobby and back out again. The older couple he’d seen earlier had moved to soft chairs in front of the fire. He imagined himself in another thirty years. Would he be resting by a fire, enjoying a few days at a mountain lodge with the woman he loved? Or would he be working long hours in his high-rise office, making new deals?

Scrooge, Nick thought, gritting his teeth.

Hell. In another thirty years, he could be Ebenezer Scrooge.

He put on his gloves and walked up the country road in front of the lodge, in the opposite direction of Four Corners and Rose’s house. The temperature was dropping as nightfall descended, the sky turning the color of slate, the mountains a deep purple in the distance. He pictured Rose that morning when she’d seen him. Her tight expression. Her self-control, even as her emotions churned under the surface.

She was hiding something, at least from him. No question in his mind.

He reached a marker for a steep, narrow trail up to the waterfall for which Black Falls was named. He noted rock outcroppings amid towering evergreens, bare maples, oaks and white birches—and the quiet. The stillness as night descended in the mountains. No houses were visible from where he stood on the edge of the road. No cars passed. No people.

Rose had grown up on this ridge. She’d lived in Black Falls her entire life.

It was different from Beverly Hills, for sure.

Nick headed back along the road to the lodge. Rose hadn’t arrived for dinner yet. He stopped in the bar and found Lauren Cameron, who, unlike her husband, had a glass of red wine. She motioned for Nick to join her at her booth. She was a beautiful woman, her long, shining blond hair pulled back. She wore a black sweater, jeans and black boots, her only jewelry a simple watch and wedding ring.

“Let me buy you a drink,” she said.

“Thanks,” Nick said as he sat across from her, “but I’m still working off the whiskey I had earlier with A.J. It’s a good day to keep a clear head.”

“Yes, it is.” She finished off her wine. “I’m not from Black Falls, either. I moved to Vermont to reinvent myself after a very short, very bad marriage. It took me a while to get used to the rhythm of life here, but I love it now.”

“Where are you from?”

“Suburban New York. There’s plenty to do in Black Falls and the surrounding area. It’s just different.”

Nick smiled. “Way different from Beverly Hills.”

“You mean you don’t have a life-size stuffed moose in your condo?” She laughed softly, nodding to a giant stuffed moose standing in the corner of the bar. “It used to be in the lobby. I had it moved in here. Fits, doesn’t it?”

“I’m just glad it’s not real.”

Her eyes sparked with humor. “You and me both. I should go.” She eased to her feet, pausing to look down at Nick. “Rose isn’t fragile. We all know that. She’s as tough as her brothers, but she’s the youngest and the only girl. I think sometimes she believes she can’t make the same mistakes they did.”

Nick leaned against the back of the bench. “Was her father hard on her?”

Lauren stood up straight, her manner elegant, restrained. “Drew was a good man, but he lived in a black-and-white world. Good, bad. Do, don’t. Own up to your mistakes. Move on.” Her eyes glistened suddenly with unshed tears. “He saw more shades of gray in life at the end. I think Rose knew that.”

“You’ve all had a rough year.”

“I have my little ones. They keep me from dwelling on the past for too long. Rose was close to her mother. She died a few months after A.J. and I were married.” Lauren sniffled, getting control of herself again. “She helped soften some of the hard edges around here.”

“I met her once when she and Drew came out to California.”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s so strange. You’ve never been to Black Falls, but we all know you.”

“The lodge is everything Sean said it was.”

She smiled. “I hope that’s a good thing. Well, I’ve had my time to myself. A glass of wine, a few pages of a book by the fire—I’m ready to brave a two-year-old and four-year-old again.”

She obviously relished getting back to her family. Nick watched her retreat across the bar and figured Lauren Cameron’s diplomatic manner had to be an asset at Black Falls Lodge. He could see why she was beloved by her brothers-in-law, and undoubtedly Rose, too.

Deciding he hadn’t drunk that much of his first whiskey, he went ahead and ordered another as he contemplated what to do if Rose didn’t show up. He probably shouldn’t drive out to her house to fetch her: alcohol, dark, unfamiliar winding roads, no streetlights. No traffic, either, but if he ended up in a ditch, he was a dead man in this cold.

He could walk but the same issues applied: alcohol, dark, unfamiliar territory, cold.

He took his whiskey to the dining room, where other guests had already gathered at tables covered in white linen, decorated with votive candles. A waiter led him to a small table by another fireplace.

In another two minutes, Rose rushed in, sexy as hell in boots, jeans and a thick sweater some grandma must have knitted. Her hair was damp, obviously from a recent shower. Nick shifted in his chair. That morning in Beverly Hills last June, even after they’d both realized they’d made a mistake, they’d made love a second time in his walk-in shower.

He shot to his feet at the vivid memory and greeted her. “Would you like to sit by the fire, or are you warm enough in that sweater?”

She pulled out a chair across from him, away from the fire. “Here’s fine, thanks.”

He nodded to her sweater as he returned to his seat. “Looks hand-knitted. Your grandma?”

“I never knew my grandmothers. My parents married relatively late.” She fingered the sweater. “I knitted it myself last winter.”

“Ah. Good job.”

She laughed. “You are such a liar, Nick. It’s a terrible job. Dropped stitches, uneven stitches—”

“Color’s nice.”

“Maybe in this light. I think it’s a sickly green. The yarn was on sale. I can see why, can’t you? I was experimenting.”

He studied her across the table, her eyes almost navy in the candlelight, her skin translucent but still pale. He’d liked hearing her laughter. “So you wore the sweater to remind me you’re a frugal Yankee mountain woman who doesn’t care how she looks?”

“It’s warm and it was handy. I don’t need to remind you of anything.”

“I’m drinking Jack Daniel’s if you’d care to join me.”

Instead she ordered a martini. “I don’t even like martinis,” she said when the waiter withdrew. Her laughter had vanished, her expression challenging now, about one click from outright suspicious.

Nick gritted his teeth. “Why don’t we pretend we just met? Rose Cameron, right? Well, hello, Rose, it’s good to meet you. I’m Nick Martini. Your brother Sean and I are business partners and wildland firefighters out in California.”

She was having none of it. “You and I have too much history, Nick. We can’t pretend anything. We can’t start over.” Her drink arrived and she held it in one hand as she nodded toward the crackling fire. “I could toss my martini into the fire, but not tonight. It’s the wrong symbolism.”

“Rose—”

She didn’t let him finish. “Scott Thorne stopped by before I came over here.” She took a sip of her martini but continued to hold on to the glass. “They’re looking for one of Derek’s friends, Robert Feehan. Robert was with Derek the night at O’Rourke’s last year. He’s a private ski instructor, too. The police have talked to Brett Griffin, who was also at O’Rourke’s, but he was less vocal than Robert, or especially Derek, and has distanced himself from both of them.”

“Are they concerned about Feehan?”

“Scott didn’t say. Robert and Derek were sharing a house for the season. The police talked to another of their housemates, who said Derek had told him he’d be gone for the night and back sometime today. He didn’t say why, or where he was going.” Rose stared into her drink a moment, then added, “For whatever reason, Derek decided to camp in that shed last night. He must have wanted to be there when I arrived at sunrise.”

“Had he ever met you out there before?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“Anywhere?”

She didn’t answer and tried more of her martini, making a face this time. “Needs a little lemonade or something.”

“Horrors,” Nick said with a mock shudder. But he didn’t let her off the hook. “Did you tell the police about your history with Derek?”

“You’re assuming we had a history.”

“Yeah. I’m assuming.”

“It doesn’t matter. I hadn’t had anything to do with him in months. What about you, Nick?” she asked coolly. “Last June we got in over our heads with each other after we tried and failed to save Jasper Vanderhorn. He was after an arsonist. Obsessed. Investigators haven’t produced a reason for that hot spot flaring up and trapping him, have they?”

“Rose, don’t.”

“Jasper burned to death, and now here we are. You and me, again, with a man dead…” She set her glass down and looked at him, her gaze unflinching. “You shouldn’t have come to Vermont.”

“If I hadn’t, you’d have been alone this morning.”

“If you hadn’t, maybe Derek would still be alive. Maybe this arsonist followed you out here and killed Derek to get under your skin, or he’s in Vermont and found out you were on your way. You’re a smoke jumper, Nick. You jump out of planes to fight fires. You’d drive a firebug crazy. If Jasper was closing in—”

“Jasper didn’t have a suspect.”

“It doesn’t mean he wasn’t closing in on one. He was working his own personal theory. You’re here to see for yourself if his death has anything to do with Lowell Whittaker and his network of killers.”

Nick nodded to the handwritten menu. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Nothing.”

“Not me. I’m starving. If you drink that entire martini on an empty stomach, you’re not going to be fit to drive home. It’s okay, though. There’s a pullout sofa in my room.”

She pushed her drink aside. “You’re right. No more martini.”

He got her play on words now. “Lemonade. Right. Clever, Rose.” He glanced at his menu, but he’d already made up his mind. “I’m going with the Vermont turkey.”

She finally relented and ordered a salad and butternut squash soup with nutmeg.

“Tell me about winter fest,” Nick said quietly.

“Nick—”

“Will there be sleigh rides?”

She ignored his slight sarcasm. “Sleigh rides, maple sugaring, guided snowshoe hikes, backcountry ski treks, a bonfire. We’re auctioning off a quilt that Myrtle, Dominique, Beth and I stitched from old fabric pieces Hannah discovered in the trunk in her cellar. It’ll be the centerpiece of a silent auction to benefit the local volunteer mountain rescue organization.”

“I didn’t know you could quilt.”

“I imagine there are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” she said. “Winter fest will run all weekend. It’s as much for the town as for the guests. Vice President Neal and his family want to come if they can. They were all here two weeks ago.”

“So I heard,” Nick said.

“They were quite taken with the old sugar shack. They cross-country skied out to it. It’s just in the woods across the meadow. It was built around 1900, but it’s in great shape. Lauren and I are trying to get it up and running and trees tapped in time for this year’s sugaring season.”

“Starts soon, doesn’t it?”

“As soon as the temperature warms up a bit. We need freezing nights and above-freezing days.”

Nick smiled at the prospect of maple sugaring. “Sounds romantic.”

She smiled back at him. “It’s fun work. I’ve been trying to do more here at the lodge, but Lauren’s in charge of winter fest. I just do what she says.”

“The Secret Service doesn’t object to the Neals coming?”

“Not enough to stop them, at least not right now.”

“Do you believe that all of Lowell Whittaker’s contract killers have been accounted for?”

Rose’s smile vanished, her eyes distant, cool again. “You get talking about sleigh rides and such, then spring that on me. You’re testing my reaction. Nice, Nick.”

He shrugged. “What’s the answer?”

“The answer is no. No, I don’t believe all of Lowell’s killers are either dead or in custody. I don’t think anyone does. It would be reckless to assume otherwise.”

A.J. joined them, giving no indication he noticed the tension between his sister and guest. “I know better than to ask how you are—you’ll just say you’re fine, no matter what.” He pulled out a chair and sat down, but clearly had no intention of lingering. “You can’t stay up in that house tonight by yourself. Listen to me, Rose. You can’t.”

“I feel safe there.”

“I’ll come up—”

“You can’t leave your family, A.J. You know I won’t let you do that.”

“We’ll all come. The kids would love it.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t feel unsafe, A.J. If Derek was murdered, his killer had every opportunity to attack me, too.”

“Maybe Nick here scared off the killer,” her brother said.

Nick picked up his whiskey but didn’t drink any. “I don’t think anyone was lurking in the woods when I arrived, but it’s possible.”

A.J. glanced at him but made no comment.

Rose sighed and took a healthy swallow of her martini. “The police will have checked for prints in the snow, tire tracks. If they believe Derek’s death wasn’t an accident or suicide and I’m in danger, they’ll tell me. I don’t take undue risks, but I’m not one to panic, either. But tonight,” she added, “for your sake, A.J., Ranger and I will stay here at the lodge.” She gave her eldest brother a faint smile. “I anticipated this and brought my things.”

“You always were the smart one,” A.J. said with a grin.

Rose waited for him to leave before she picked up her drink glass. “This means I can have another martini, this time with pomegranate juice.” She gave Nick an enigmatic smile. “I like my martinis a little on the sweet side.”

The radiator in Nick’s room clanked as if just to remind him he was out of his element, on Cameron turf. He didn’t have a radiator at home in Beverly Hills.

After dinner, Rose had ventured off to another part of the lodge with Ranger, his dog dishes and a backpack. Nick kicked off his shoes and called Sean. “Where are you?”

“Out by the pool. It’s sunny and warm today.”

“Go to hell.”

“Okay,” Sean said. “I’m in my car, stuck in traffic, looking at smog on the horizon.”

Nick grinned. “That’s better. I had dinner with your sister. She’s had to deal with dead bodies in her work. That part she can handle, but this time she knew the victim.”

“Training Ranger is repetitive and requires a lot of discipline. She loves it, but the Whittaker place was probably a welcome change of scenery. She’s always felt safe in Black Falls.”

“Feeling safe’s an attitude. Anything can happen anytime, anywhere. How well did you know this guy Derek?”

“Not well.”

Curt answer. Nick looked out the window with the full moon casting shadows on the snow. He could make out groomed cross-country ski tracks. Black Falls Lodge seemed less dark and isolated tonight. Maybe he was seeing the nuances Lauren had implied he would if he looked. Or maybe he was experiencing the effects of jet lag, whiskey and Rose Cameron.

“The bar fight last March,” he said. “What kinds of insults did Cutshaw and his friends hurl at Hannah?”

“The personal kind,” Sean said. “Her mother waited tables at O’Rourke’s before her death seven years ago, and Hannah hasn’t had it easy, working herself through college, raising her two younger brothers on her own.”

“So the insults were all about her?”

“As far as I know.”

That left a fair amount of wiggle room, Nick thought.

Sean added, “Hannah hasn’t seen Derek since he, Robert Feehan and Brett Griffin stopped by the café last March to apologize for their behavior.”

“Telling me to back off, Sean?”

His friend sighed heavily, less defensive. “Derek said some fairly nasty things before Bowie O’Rourke intervened and prevented him from saying more.”

“He wasn’t just talking about Hannah, was he?”

Sean clearly didn’t want to answer, but he said, “That’s my guess.”

Nick contemplated the moonlit landscape. “Hannah knows,” he said finally, certain he was right.

“She and Rose have been friends for a long time. Hannah was in Black Falls all last year after Pop’s death while I was out here in California.” Sean let it go at that. “She’s here now. I’ll talk to her.”

“If anything went on between Derek Cutshaw and Rose, this Bowie character knows, too.”

“Bowie was willing to get into a fight and end up on probation to shut Derek up.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nick said.

The comment went right over Sean’s head. “Bowie wasn’t just defending Hannah’s honor, or Rose’s if you’re right. He has a hot temper. He likes a good fight.”

“Used to be a bar was the perfect place for a good fight.”

“Now you sound like my father,” Sean said, almost amused.

“What about the two guys with Cutshaw that night?”

“Robert Feehan said a few things. Brett Griffin was mostly quiet. They’re not local guys. I didn’t have anything to do with them after the fight. I doubt A.J. did, either. Elijah was on leave. He headed back the next day.”

“Your father?”

“He died a few weeks later. We never talked about the insults. You can ask A.J. He might know.”

“You ask him.”

“You managed to piss him off already?”

“Scared to,” Nick said with a short laugh. He stepped back from the window, feeling his fatigue for the first time since he’d looked at the clock at four-thirty that morning. “Feehan and Cutshaw rented a house for the ski season up by Killington. Griffin’s in town—right up the road.”

“You’ve been doing your homework.”

Nick figured there was no point beating around the bush. “You and your brothers are in close touch. Maybe think about including Rose, too. Even with you three, she still seems isolated.”

“Her choice,” Sean said.

“Doesn’t matter. Sean, a fire killed this guy today.”

“Lowell Whittaker could have turned a kerosene lamp into one of his homemade bombs.”

“And investigators missed it?”

“They might not have thought twice about seeing an old lamp in a shed.”

“Where did Whittaker learn how to make bombs?”

Sean didn’t respond. Lowell Whittaker had placed a crude pipe bomb in Hannah Shay’s heap of a car. She narrowly escaped when it exploded, then warned Bowie O’Rourke, who was with Vivian Whittaker at the farmhouse, that they were next.

There was also the bomb Whittaker had used to kill Melanie Kendall, one of his hired assassins in November, as well as the unexplained fire at Myrtle Smith’s house in Washington.

Nick sank onto the edge of his four-poster bed, the charm of the room bypassing him. “If Jasper was right, his firebug is still out there. What if he decided to get paid for his work and hooked up with Whittaker?”

“So that’s why you’re in Vermont,” Sean said quietly. “I should have known. It doesn’t mean this match-happy idiot killed Derek Cutshaw.”

“I show up and someone dies in a fire? That’s too much of a coincidence for me.”

Nick had observed his friend under stress countless times on the fire line. Sean was levelheaded, committed, careful—not a reckless, glory-seeking yahoo. That didn’t work in the wildland fires they fought or the business they were in. It got people killed. Nick was more likely to leap without looking, but he’d learned to rely on his training and experience and to calculate and mitigate his risk-taking nature.

Eliminating risks altogether wasn’t possible.

If he thought his presence wasn’t a coincidence, the police would be thinking the same thing. Nick had answered their questions and provided them with contact information. They could find him if they wanted to talk to him again.

“Yeah,” Sean said finally. “For me, too. I’ll talk to Hannah.”

He disconnected, and Nick tossed his phone onto the side table.

The radiator again clanked loudly as heat surged into the room.

It’d be a long night. He checked the room service menu. He could order hot cocoa for two and go find Rose’s room.

He raked a hand through his hair.

“No, you moron,” he muttered. “Are you out of your damn mind?”

No hot cocoa for two, and definitely no finding Rose’s room.

Instead Nick stripped to his shorts, dropped onto the sunflower carpet and burned off his energy and frustration with a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups.

Six

Washington, D.C.

R yan “Grit” Taylor had dreamed about tupelo honey, which he didn’t think was crazy or anything, since that was his family’s business. Still, it had been a long time since he’d dreamed about honey, or growing up on the Florida Panhandle. He sat up in his bed in Myrtle Smith’s first-floor guest room at her home just off Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.

Less than a year ago, he’d been a Navy SEAL searching for enemy weapon caches in Afghanistan. Now he was waking up under a fluffy peach-colored blanket and watching sunlight stream through lacy shear panels on a tall window overlooking a dormant flower garden.

Myrtle’s house was more traditional and girly than Grit would have expected. She’d probably threaten something untoward if she knew what he was thinking, but he hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. She was still up in Vermont, bitching about the cold and snow and baking cookies and scones and such. The front of her house—especially her office—had burned in a suspicious fire in November, but the back was in good shape.

Grit went through his routine to put on his prosthesis, a new one, his left leg having adapted and adjusted to the mechanics of prosthetic use. The procedure was automatic now, at least most days. He seldom experienced phantom pain anymore, either. The nerves in his residual limb were learning a new way to communicate to his brain.

Not that he’d forgotten he’d had his left leg amputated below the knee in a remote Afghan mountain pass, after he’d been shot in an ambush.

A Special Forces master sergeant who’d been with him that day was camped out down the hall in Myrtle’s second guest room. Elijah Cameron had taken a near-fatal gunshot wound to the femoral artery and nearly bled out. Only his own quick action to tie a belt around his thigh, creating a tourniquet, had saved him. He was now fully recovered.

Grit didn’t know why things had worked out the way they did.

He put on his service uniform and headed to the kitchen. Elijah was at the little round table with his size-twelve feet up on the rattan-seated chair across from him as he cradled a flowered mug of coffee. He nodded out the French doors at the patio. “Do you think we ought to fill Myrtle’s bird feeders?”

“They’re the wrong kind. She’s only feeding squirrels with those things.” Grit got down another flowered mug and poured himself coffee. The kitchen had dark cherry cabinets and a collection of delicate china teacups and saucers—more flowers—displayed on a shelf. “A badass Washington reporter like Myrtle and look at this place. Reminds me of my grandmother’s house by the Apalachicola River. Myrtle even knows what tupelo honey is.”

“So do I,” Elijah said.

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. You told me after we were shot up. In the helicopter. White tupelo trees. Bees. Only honey that doesn’t crystallize.”

“No kidding. I said all that? You remember?”

Elijah shrugged. “It was something else to think about.”

Besides dying. Besides the dead.

Grit sat with his coffee. “Moose’s widow sent me a picture of the baby. You get one?”

“Yeah.” Elijah kept staring at the half-dozen empty feeders. “Cute kid. Ryan Cameron Ferrerra. I didn’t even know Moose that well. I couldn’t keep him alive. I get why his wife named a baby after you. Not after me.”

“We were with him when the Grim Reaper came for him.”

Elijah nodded. “We were.”

“I remember the two of you talking about why he was called Moose but grew up in Arizona and had never seen a moose, and you this Vermont mountain man.”

Grit glanced out the window, no sign of spring yet out in Myrtle’s backyard. He half expected Michael “Moose” Ferrerra to be on the patio. Moose had liked to joke about wanting to go back to Southern California and grill hot dogs on his patio. Instead he’d died in Afghanistan, doing the job he’d trained to do, made the commitment to do.

Half to himself, Grit said, “Doesn’t seem like almost a year.”

“Nope,” Elijah said, “seems like ten years.”

Grit almost laughed as he turned back to his friend. “What’re you up to today?”

“Painting Myrtle’s woodwork.”

“She won’t say so, but she’s afraid to come back here. She almost got her butt burned up in her own damn house. If I hadn’t come along and saved her, who knows.”

“That’s not her version,” Elijah said.

“She’s a reporter. You trust her version?”

“She says she’d have saved herself.”

“Ha.” But if that was what she needed to believe, Grit didn’t care. “It’d help if we knew who set the fire. You know my theory. Myrtle was onto Whittaker’s network. He ordered her house torched but he didn’t strike the match himself.”

“It was an electrical fire. No match.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”

Elijah grinned. “‘Metaphorically’?”

Grit nodded out the window. “Look, pansies. See them? They must have reseeded. We didn’t plant them. I like pansies. They’re like little smiling faces.”

“Grit, you worry me.”

“Projection. You worry yourself. What’s on your mind? Jo?”

“Jo’s fine. She won’t stay here and won’t let me stay with her until she gets herself straightened out with her job.”

“You two—”

“She’s at work now. What about you? You going in?”

“The Pentagon and Admiral Jenkins await. You want me to corral some general, get you a job?”

Elijah dropped his feet to the floor. “No need. I’ve been called in to do some intel work and analysis.”

“Ah. Involve toting a gun?”

“A.J.’s talked about having me back at the lodge.”

It wasn’t a direct answer, but Elijah would know that. Grit let it go. “With Jo down here working for the Secret Service?”

“She doesn’t have to stay in Washington.” A twitch of a smile from Elijah. “She and Myrtle could open a quilt shop in Black Falls.”

It was a ray of humor from Elijah, anyway. Grit wasn’t a contemplative sort. “The dead guy in Vermont’s on your mind. He would be even if your sister and this Nick Martini hadn’t found him. It was a kerosene lamp fire. Do those happen much up there?”

“We have electricity in Vermont, Grit.”

“Was it Lowell Whittaker’s lamp?”

“I don’t know.” That thought clearly didn’t sit well with Elijah. “Lowell might not be stupid, but I can see him putting the wrong fuel in the lamp. This guy sees it and figures he doesn’t need to waste his flashlight batteries.”

“Strike a match, and poof.”

Elijah stood up. He was tall, but Jo Harper liked to say she could take him in a fair fight. Grit wasn’t sure how she defined fair. She was another native Vermonter, in love with Elijah since high school—but he was the bad boy and she was the police chief’s daughter. Grit had spent enough time in Vermont in recent months to work out who was who in little Black Falls.

“At least it wasn’t the woodstove,” Grit said. “I hate woodstoves.”

“What’s to hate?”

“Wood boxes, smoke, ashes. Every time I ran out of wood in my cabin up there, it was icy and snowy out.”

“It’s winter, Grit. What did you expect?” Elijah walked over to the sink and rinsed out his mug. “Rose didn’t need this.”

Grit turned from the pansies and bird feeders. “She picks through rubble for survivors of disasters. She finds lost little kids. She can handle herself.”

Elijah gave Grit a hard-assed Cameron look. “You aren’t thinking about asking her out, are you?”

“No. She’s like a sister to me.”

“She is my sister.”

“That’s why you don’t see her as one of you.”

Elijah frowned. “Grit, that makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. What’s with this Nick Martini character?”

“I’ve met him a few times out in California, but I don’t know him well. Sean trusts him.”

“Vivian Whittaker trusted her husband, and turned out he was running a network of paid assassins out of their study for fun and profit. You’ll talk to Sean between coats of paint?”

“Yeah.”

Grit started for the utility room, which led to Myrtle’s tidy garage. “Say hi to Jo for me. You know, three’s a crowd. If I stayed at her apartment in Georgetown and she stayed here—”

“Won’t work that way.”

Grit didn’t pursue the subject, because he had a feeling if he did, Elijah would shoot him—not to kill, just to wing him and shut him up.

Or maybe to kill him, after all. Elijah and Jo had reunited under stressful conditions, and fast. They had stuff to work out. Not the big stuff. The little stuff that could eat away at a relationship.

Not, Grit thought, that he knew from experience. He’d never found anyone he’d been tempted to marry. He wasn’t sure now he ever would, not specifically because he was missing his lower left leg—it had more to do with the ambush, watching a friend die. He’d watched himself become more and more distanced from everyone he knew. He realized what was happening, but as can-do as he was, he couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

He went out to the garage and got into Myrtle’s second car, a 1989 Buick that she’d inherited from some dead uncle in South Carolina. The interior smelled faintly of cigars.

Grit was almost at Massachusetts Avenue when his cell phone jingled next to him on the passenger’s seat. He picked up.

“Where are you?”

He recognized the voice of Charlie Neal, the sixteen-year-old son of the vice president of the United States. “Stop sign,” Grit said. “I’m driving. I threw caution to the wind and answered the phone. Aren’t you in school?”

“On my way. I have a calculus test today. So boring.”

“You aren’t taking one for your coconspirator cousin Conor, are you?”

“Conor took a test for me. I didn’t take one for him. He did terrible.”

The two look-alike cousins had done prince-and-the-pauper switches so that Charlie could get out from under his Secret Service detail. They both were in trouble with their parents, the Secret Service, Elijah Cameron and Grit Taylor.

Grit pulled over into the shade. He wasn’t that used to driving again, and he’d learned to give any conversation with Charlie and his 180-IQ his full attention. “What do you want, Charlie?”

“Our arsonist is back.”

Grit wasn’t that surprised by Charlie’s comment. Cars zipped past him on the residential street that ran perpendicular to the one he was on. The Buick was warm, the morning temperature almost springlike, but he didn’t roll down his window. The car wasn’t bugged—he’d checked. The Secret Service was onto his friendship with Charlie Neal. Jo Harper didn’t like it, but Charlie’s dad, the vice president, had decided Grit was someone the incorrigible teenager would listen to.

A positive influence, Grit thought. Him.

Preston Neal probably hadn’t thought Grit and Charlie would be talking pyromaniacs again. Charlie had figured out a network of paid killers was at work back in November, before anyone else. He didn’t need such nice-ties as evidence. He remained convinced a serial arsonist had been one of Lowell Whittaker’s contract killers and was still on the loose.

“Whose phone are you on?” Grit asked him.

“A friend’s.”

Defensive, vague. Grit knew better than to try to get specifics out of him. Charlie would be ten questions ahead by now. Being direct with the kid was his only chance. “The Secret Service know?”

“I have to be in class in one minute forty-eight seconds.”

“Any candidates for who this firebug is?” Grit asked.

“I have a list of names.”

Charlie would. Grit regretted his question. “‘Firebug’ can mean anything.”

“Serial arsonist, then.”

“Go take your calculus test.”

“I told you my sister Marissa has an ex-boyfriend in L.A., right? An actor. He writes screenplays, too. He dumped Marissa when Dad was tapped as veep.”

Marissa Neal was the eldest of Charlie’s four sisters and a history teacher at his northern Virginia private high school. She was also beautiful, and she didn’t think Grit was such a positive influence on her brother.

“The only connection—and I use the word loosely—between your sister and this guy is an ex-boyfriend in California?”

Charlie was undeterred. “Jasper Vanderhorn was a California arson investigator.”

“Do you know how many millions of people there are in California?”

“He was based in Los Angeles County. The ex-boyfriend’s in Beverly Hills. Well, maybe not quite. On the border. Close.”

“You’re a genius, Charlie. Do the math on the odds—”

“Nick Martini is a smoke jumper, and he was with Rose Cameron when she found the victim of yesterday morning’s fire in Black Falls.”

“Charlie.”

“I asked Jo about it. She wasn’t that nice.”

“Good.”

“You’re missing the nuances.”

Grit felt the sun hot on the back of his neck. “I’m not good with nuances.”

“The ex-boyfriend and Marissa broke up eighteen months ago. Last June, Jasper Vanderhorn, the arson investigator, died in a suspicious wildland canyon fire north of Los Angeles. Sean Cameron and Nick Martini tried to get to him but they were too late. At the same time, Rose Cameron was nearby, searching for an eleven-year-old boy who’d wandered off when his family had to evacuate.”

“So? I’m not connecting the dots here, Charlie.”

Charlie ignored him. “Jo was assigned to protect Marissa then.”

“Special Agent Harper,” Grit said, not letting it go this time.

“Right. Special Agent Harper. Then last October, Marissa was almost killed when a gas stove blew up at a place she rented with friends in the Shenandoah Mountains. Jo—Agent Harper—saved her.” When Grit didn’t respond, Charlie took a breath. “Then in November, we had the fire at Myrtle’s.”

“Miss Smith or Ms. Smith.”

“She said I could call her Myrtle.”

Grit was silent.

“Miss Smith could have been killed. The same day as that fire, we had the improvised explosive device in Vermont that killed Melanie Kendall. Then in January, we had the two IEDs that almost killed Hannah Shay, Sean Cameron and Bowie O’Rourke—and Vivian Whittaker, too, but I’m not sure I want to count her. Awful woman.”

Grit tried not to let himself get sidetracked by Charlie’s pinball-machine of a mind. “We don’t know who set Myrtle’s house on fire, but the bombs were Lowell Whittaker’s doing.”

“With the help of one of his hired killers, who happens also to be a serious pyromaniac,” Charlie said with absolute certainty. “I have a list of other fires around the country he could have started.”

“Could be a she.”

“Eighty percent of arsonists are men.”

Grit knew better than to doubt, never mind argue with, Charlie Neal’s information. “I know you’re working hard on this, Charlie. Your sister’s fire was an accident.”

“What if it just looked like an accident?”

“Your one minute forty-eight seconds are up. Good luck on the calculus test.”

“I’ll get a ninety-six. I’ve already decided where I’ll shave off the points. It’s obnoxious to get a hundred all the time. I stopped doing extra credit in fifth grade.”

“There’s no hiding you’re smart, Charlie.”

The kid was already gone. Grit finally rolled down his window. He thought he could smell lilacs in the air, but it was still too early for lilacs. He turned onto Massachusetts Avenue, again thinking about tupelo honey. His folks had told him he could come home if he decided to quit the navy. “There’s always a place here for you here,” his mother had said.

Good to know, given what he was thinking.

Charlie texted him a name: Trent Stevens, Beverly Hills.

Marissa Neal’s actor ex-boyfriend.

Grit tossed his phone back onto the seat next to him. Charlie Neal was playing with a fire of his own.

By the time he arrived at the Pentagon, Grit had formulated the bones of a plan. Admiral Jenkins had been after him to go to San Diego to meet with some experts or some such out there—Grit hadn’t paid attention and didn’t care about the particulars. Charlie wanted him in L.A. to check out the actor.

Grit figured he’d found a way to make everyone happy.

Seven

Black Falls, Vermont

R ose stayed in a small room on the second floor of the main part of the lodge, its dormer windows looking out on Cameron Mountain. It was one of her favorite rooms. She and her mother had picked out the cheerful blue-and-white fabrics and colorful autumn prints.

She’d slept fitfully, waking up sweating, heart racing, from nightmares she couldn’t remember but knew had been bad. At first light, she grabbed Ranger and went for a run, sticking to Ridge Road. At Four Corners, she waved to the McBanes, the elderly couple who lived in the old tavern directly across from the cemetery. They were sanding their walk and filling their bird feeders. Sean had quietly bought the place, making them life tenants.

Rose continued a half mile past the partially collapsed barn on the opposite corner before turning back, Ranger trotting comfortably at her side. A few guests were up at the lodge, but she didn’t see Nick as she helped herself to a muffin and coffee and slipped up to her room for a hot shower. She changed into warm, dry clothes, brushed Ranger and headed back down to the lobby. She and Lauren had agreed to meet at the old sugar shack in an hour.

Both Scott Thorne and Zack Harper were in the lobby. Rose didn’t detect any awkwardness between the two men given Scott’s sudden breakup with Beth. Rose suspected the trauma of the past year had taken a toll on both of them, but neither would admit it. They were professionals. They weren’t supposed to fall apart. At least, according to Hannah, it had been an amicable split. Beth and Scott, who hadn’t grown up in Black Falls, had always done well as friends.

“Hey, Rose,” Zack said, cider doughnut in hand. He looked so much like his two older sisters, but his eyes were a darker turquoise, his hair a darker copper. He was one of a handful of full-time firefighters in the town’s otherwise volunteer department. “Quiet morning.”

“I ran five miles first thing. I can feel it in my legs.”

“Running off your stress?” Scott asked.

Rose doubted he was teasing her. She smiled. “Running to run.”

Nick came in from the dining room, moving easily, as if he’d slept well and didn’t have a care in the world. He had on a thick, soft-looking sweater, canvas pants and boots. “While you were running,” he said, “I was helping myself to the breakfast buffet. They’re serious about breakfast here.”

Rose was aware of Scott and Zack observing her with obvious interest and hoped her face hadn’t turned red, despite the rush of heat she felt at Nick’s presence. “What would you have had at home?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not good for you.”

Nick grinned at her. “Pancakes, sausage, butter and maple syrup are?”

“You can have whole-grain pancakes, turkey sausage and not overdo the butter and syrup. Nothing, though…you need to jump-start your engine in the morning.”

“I do. I have coffee when I get to work.”

“You’re on California time. It’s still early there.” Ranger, who had been sitting beside her, lay down and put his head on her feet, as if he understood how ridiculously self-conscious she was all of a sudden. She turned to Scott. “Are you here on official business?”

“Just stopping by,” he said, not giving a direct answer.

“I’ve been thinking about yesterday,” she said. “It had to be a hot, sudden fire for Derek to have been killed. He must not have had any serious chance to put out the flames. How does a kerosene lamp basically turn itself into a bomb?”

“Different possibilities,” Scott said.

Zack dusted cinnamon sugar off his hands. “We’re not getting into them with you, Rose.”

“White gas would do it,” Nick said, leaning against the back of a chair in front of the stone fireplace. “It’s highly refined petroleum that burns very fast and very hot. It’s great in camp stoves for just that reason. Kerosene burns at a slow, steady rate, even under pressure. Put white gas under pressure in an old lamp and light it, and you’ve got what we saw yesterday.”

Zack didn’t look annoyed at Nick’s explanation, but Scott did. Rose felt Ranger warm on her feet. “White gas is easy to find, easy to transport, easy to store.” She reached for a cider doughnut on a sideboard. “Anyone could get their hands on it. Derek could have had it for a camp stove and just not realized it was the wrong fuel for the lamp. It’s the simplest explanation, isn’t it?”

“Simplest doesn’t matter,” Scott muttered. “Right matters.”

“Did you find a camp stove in Derek’s things? A container of white gas?” She didn’t expect an answer and bit into her doughnut as she considered where she was going with this. “Was a kerosene lamp in the shed after Lowell’s arrest and no one ever looked to see what was in it?”

“We’re checking,” Scott said curtly.

“Even if there was, it doesn’t mean Lowell filled the lamp with white gas himself, or if he did, that he meant for it to explode. The white gas just could have been a mistake. If the lamp wasn’t in the shed, then either Derek brought it with him, which seems unlikely, or someone put it there. A killer would have to have known Derek would be there and would light the lamp.”

“That sums it up,” Zack said.

Rose kept her gaze on Scott. “Does anyone suspect Derek had anything to do with Lowell’s network of killers? Could he have been targeted by one of them—one who got away?”

Scott watched her closely, expressionless. Zack cleared his throat, as if Rose had suddenly gone too far. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Nick calmly cross his arms over his chest and continue to take in the conversation. She had no illusions that he wasn’t paying attention to every word.

“Time to pull back, Rose,” Scott said finally, serious but not surly. “Let us do our jobs. You just be sure you’ve told us everything.”

She couldn’t tell if he suspected she hadn’t. “What about Robert Feehan? Have you all caught up with him, yet?”

Scott sighed but answered her. “Not yet. He hasn’t been in touch with you, has he?”

She shook her head. “I saw him and Brett Griffin going into O’Rourke’s one night a couple of weeks ago. Otherwise I haven’t seen or talked to him in months.”

Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Derek Cutshaw wasn’t with them?”

“No.”

“What were you doing in town?”

“It was cleaning night at the café. I was helping.”

Rose thought she saw a flicker of pain in Scott’s face but whatever it was didn’t last. He would never let his relationship with Beth interfere with his work.

Zack squatted down to pat Ranger. “Hey, fella,” he said, rising as he glanced at Rose. “Did you ever refer ski clients to Cutshaw, Feehan or Griffin?”

“No, never,” Rose said. “Did you?”

“I’d have to know someone who couldn’t ski,” he said good-naturedly. “I have to roll. Tell A.J. to put the coffee and doughnut on my tab.”

“They’re on me,” Rose said.

A.J., Lauren and their two children entered the lodge. Her brother regarded the gathering in the lobby with obvious displeasure. Scott took the hint and followed Zack out. A.J. glanced at Rose, then silently retreated with his family into the office behind the front desk.

“I don’t blame A.J. for being annoyed,” Rose said as Nick stood up straight. He was intense but not, she thought, easily ruffled. “I should have moved us to a less public spot. What are you doing today?”

“I might take a cross-country skiing lesson. You?”

“You aren’t taking a skiing lesson. Never mind. Right now I just want to put yesterday behind me. Black Falls is a safe, quiet little town. Lowell Whittaker bought a house here, and we all suffered the consequences of his warped thinking and violence.”

Nick tilted his head back, studying her with those dark eyes. “What aren’t you telling Trooper Thorne and Zack Harper?”

She pretended she hadn’t heard him and fought an urge to lay her head against his thick, warm sweater and feel his arms around her. But where would that get her?

Nowhere good, she thought, and finished her doughnut. Nick watched her but said nothing as she headed outside, leaving Ranger asleep on the warm hearth.

Zack Harper was waiting for her at the edge of the parking lot. “So what are you holding back, Rose? An affair with Derek Cutshaw or with Nick Martini? You found Cutshaw yesterday. Martini was with you.”

“Nick wasn’t with me. He came on his own.”

“Yeah, to see you. What was that all about?”

“I’ve answered all the questions the police asked me.”

“I’m not a cop, Rose. I’m a friend.”

“I know,” she said quietly, then changed the subject. “Have you talked to Beth lately? How’s she doing in Beverly Hills?”

Zack looked out toward the mountains, the sky cloudless, the air cold. “She called last night. She’s trying to enjoy herself, but it’s hard. First Scott leaves her out there, and now this thing yesterday.”

“Did she and Scott have a fight?”

“All I know is that Scott planned to stay longer and didn’t.” Zack shrugged, his jacket open over a worn sweatshirt. “I liked Beverly Hills just fine, but it’s good to be back.”

“I hope you told Beth to enjoy her break and not worry about us.”

“Pretty much. I suggested she and Hannah go shoe shopping on Rodeo Drive.” He grinned. “Beth’s even cheaper than you are.”

“Ha-ha. How’d she sound?”

“You know Beth. She’ll never let anyone see she’s hurting.”

“Did you see Nick while you were out there?”

“Yeah, briefly,” Zack said. “He didn’t mention he was planning to come to Vermont.”

“Maybe you inspired him.” Rose glanced at her watch. “Lauren and I are meeting out at the sugar shack in a little while. We’re opening it up again. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”

Zack grinned at her. “Sounds like work.”

“It is—more than I thought it’d be. We want to get it done in time for winter fest.”

“Because of Vice President Neal?”

Rose almost winced when he said the name aloud, but she knew it was just agitation and adrenaline on her part. Nothing in the investigation into Lowell Whittaker and his killers suggested the vice president or his family had ever been targeted by them. She relaxed somewhat. “Apparently the Neals love the idea of collecting maple sap and boiling it down. Opening up a historic sugarhouse will help take everyone’s minds off the mess of the past year. A fresh start.”

“I hope so, Rose,” Zack said dubiously.

“I’m sure Jo and her Secret Service friends will go over all our buckets and pans to make sure they’re safe. Bugs and bacteria are my biggest worries.”

“Let me know what I can do to help get things ready.”

“You could help tap trees. Anyway, I should get over there.”

“Sure, Rose. Martini going with you?”

“No idea,” she said. “I’m leaving Ranger by the fire.”

“Golden retriever. California smoke jumper.” Zack shook his head, amused. “Two different animals, Rose.”

She felt another surge of heat, but he was already on his way to his truck.

Eight

F ive minutes later, Rose walked down Ridge Road in the opposite direction she’d taken on her run, checking for tap-worthy maple trees. Ranger loved being out on the ridge and had moved well earlier, but her aging golden retriever could miss this trek.

She turned onto a short, dead-end lane across from a trail up to the falls. It was plowed but just barely. She’d have at most a hundred yards of slogging through snow in her boots to get to the sugar shack through the woods. Lauren would head across the meadow on snowshoes, pulling the kids on a toboggan, and meet her there.

As Rose navigated icy ruts on the lane, she wondered where Nick might be, what he was up to, but knew that would only frustrate her. She’d focus on her routines and her work and let him go about his business.

She paused, noticing the sun was higher in the sky, the early promise of spring. She peered down the steep hill on the side of the lane, past a cluster of white pines, and took note of mature, healthy-looking sugar maples that would be perfect for tapping.

She heard a whooshing sound and spun around, just as Robert Feehan jumped out from behind a hemlock and dropped next to her. His dark hair fell into his face and curled out from under his wool knit hat, hanging almost to his shoulders. He was thin, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept, with shadows under his eyes and a gray cast to his skin. He had on a black ski jacket, wind pants and heavy cold-weather boots but no gloves—they were stuffed in a jacket pocket, despite the temperature.

“Rose,” he said, gulping in a breath, “I have to talk to you.”

“You need to talk to the police.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

She didn’t like his panicked tone, and took a step back toward the lane. “All right. Let’s go back to the lodge.”

“No, we talk here.” He grabbed her wrist, clamping down hard on bare skin. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want—”

“Let me go, Robert. Then we can talk.”

He tightened his hold on her wrist and nodded down the hill. “I’m going to take you down there. Out of sight.” He was agitated but seemed to have himself under control. “Then you can go.”

Not a chance, Rose thought, quickly debating her options.

He yanked her into the deep snow under the tall, gnarly hemlock. Shaking visibly, he lifted her wrist and pressed her forearm against her chest, pushing her into the prickly boughs of the hemlock. “What happened? Why is Derek dead?”

“There was a fire—”

“I know there was a fire. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know any more than you do.”

“The police think I was involved, don’t they?” He sniffled but didn’t ease his hold on her. “This damn town’s been nothing but bad luck for me.”

“Robert,” Rose said, forcing herself not to tense under his grip and waste energy, “you have to let go of me. Don’t make things worse for yourself. I know you’re upset. I know you and Derek were friends.”

“He cared about you. He never would have hurt you.”

Rose didn’t argue with him. “We hadn’t had anything to do with each other in a long time.”

Robert’s grip on her softened. “Rose, did someone kill him? Was he murdered?”

“A state trooper was just at the lodge. He can’t be that far—”

“I saw his cruiser go up the road. I waited for it to go by again.” He kept his voice low, but he practically spit his words. “I’m an outsider around here. I don’t know anyone. It’d be easy for someone to set me up, blame me—come after me.”

“Brett Griffin’s in the same position you are. He talked to the police.”

“Brett’s not sharing a house with Derek. He’s kept both of us at a distance since last year.” Robert glanced up at the lane, then back again at Rose. “What if someone did kill Derek? What if I’m next?”

“All the more reason to talk to the police.”

“They can’t help me. What’s with you and this guy from California?”

His question took her by surprise. “Nick? What do you know about him?”

“Nothing. Derek was all freaked out about him.”

“When?”

“Last night. He stopped at the house and got his camping gear and took off. What’s this Nick character doing in Vermont?”

“He’s my brother Sean’s business partner. Why would his presence freak out Derek?”

“He didn’t say,” Robert said, suddenly loosening his grip on her. “I have to go.”

Rose started to pull her wrist free, but Robert shoved her backward into the hemlock and bolted up the hill. She twisted away from the tree and its sharp, dried-up lower limbs, and sprawled into the snow, breaking her fall as best she could with an outstretched arm.

She rolled onto her hands and knees.

“Rose!”

It was Nick, swooping down the hill toward her. Robert must have spotted him through the woods. She scrambled to her feet, but Nick caught her by the elbows and stood her up. “I’m going after him,” she said.

“Hold on,” Nick said, his dark eyes on her, intense. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She shuddered at the shock of cold as snow melted on her face, into the heels of her hands, into her ankles—down her back. “Robert Feehan just shoved me and took off through the woods, toward the road. He must have seen or heard you.”

“I saw him. I didn’t realize what was going on.”

“I’m going after him,” Rose said again, pulling herself out from Nick’s hold.

He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

Rose realized her hands were shaking from cold, anger, fear—and Nick. His presence, his touch, his hard gaze. She pushed past him in the deep snow. “Lauren’s on the way to the sugar shack. You should go there. I’ll meet you—”

“Not a chance, Rose.”

She didn’t respond and followed Robert’s footprints past a pine tree. She heard Nick sigh and cut up the hill, intercepting her just as she reached the dead-end lane. He was in boots, too, not on skis or snowshoes, and wore his lightweight jacket from yesterday. Again no hat, but he didn’t seem cold.

“Robert Feehan is Derek Cutshaw’s friend,” she said without looking at Nick. “The one the police are looking for. He wanted to talk to me.”

“Did he attack you?”

“Attack is too strong a word. He wanted to talk to me alone. I told you—he didn’t hurt me. I just got snow down my back.”

“Now there’s an image,” Nick said, his voice husky, but his humor didn’t reach his eyes. “Do you want to call 911, or one of your friends in law enforcement personally?”

“Robert was agitated—”

“He knows the police want to talk to him and took off when he saw me. What does that tell you?”

“Why didn’t you go after him?”

Nick’s dark eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t about to leave you alone.”

It was what she’d have done in his place. Rose wiped melted snow from her cheek. “Robert didn’t have to run.” She exhaled, feeling calmer. “I’ll try Scott first. I have his cell number and he was just at the lodge.”

“Can you get a call out?”

“I don’t know. Cell service is spotty. Robert lost a friend yesterday. He’s upset, understandably. He said Derek knew you were in Vermont and was freaked out.” She pulled off her gloves and withdrew her cell phone from her jacket pocket, her fingers stiff, red with the cold. She found Scott’s number, not looking at Nick as she dialed. “I don’t know if the call will go through. The signal’s pretty weak.”

Scott answered on the first ring. “What’s up, Rose?”

“Robert Feehan just paid me a visit,” she said, then briefly told him what had transpired between them.

He listened without interruption. “Feehan pushed you?”

“Yes, but it was no big deal. I’m not hurt, just cold and irritated.”

“Where are you now?”

“Nick Martini and I are on our way to meet Lauren at the sugar shack.”

“Good. Wait for me there.”

Rose disconnected and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She turned to Nick. “Did you see Lauren and the kids before you left?”

“They were just starting out across the meadow.”

“They should be there now. I don’t want Robert backtracking through the woods and harassing them.”

She climbed over a snow bank at the end of the lane. Nick stayed with her, and she led him to a narrow path, the snow disturbed only by the occasional deer and wild turkey tracks. Just past a curve, she saw the old sugar shack through leafless, graceful deciduous trees.

She found herself smelling for smoke, but the air was clear, clean and cold.

Nick moved ahead of her as they came to the small field where the sugar shack, constructed of rough-cut lumber, grayed now with age, was situated above a stream, just through the woods on the edge of the expansive, open meadow behind the lodge. A few days ago, she and Lauren had shoveled out the area in front of the entrance, exposing an outside stone fireplace.

Rose heard the happy squeal of her niece and nephew through the trees and felt her knees weaken in relief, telling her just how keyed up she was.

Nick opened the barn-style door.

“You can go on about your business,” Rose told him. “We’ll be fine. I’ll tell Scott—”

“You’re my business.” Nick peeked inside the rectangular-shaped shack and asked, his tone deceptively casual, “Does Feehan know what happened between you and Derek Cutshaw?”

She stiffened. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

He glanced back at her. “I just saved you from being thrown down a frozen hill.”

“You did not. Robert wanted to avoid you. He panicked.”

“Right,” Nick said skeptically. “Ever take private ski lessons from him or his friends?”

“No. I know how to ski.”

“Feehan’s good?”

“I would think so if he’s giving private lessons.”

“But you don’t know,” Nick said. “Do you know why Cutshaw would be upset because I was in town?”

She shook her head. Her sister-in-law, laughing, ducked around a scraggly white pine, with little Jim and Baylee, in puffy snowsuits and mittens, clinging to the edges of their toboggan.

Lauren pulled the sled up to the entrance and moaned, grinning at the same time. “These kids are getting too heavy for me to haul this far!” She kicked off her snowshoes, then swooped down, scooped them up and leaned them against the door frame. She clapped her gloved hands at Jim and Baylee, who hadn’t moved off the toboggan. “Up you go. Say hi to Aunt Rose.”

They jumped up, and ran to Rose. She hugged them, but they couldn’t wait to play in the snow.

Lauren listened quietly as Rose explained that Scott Thorne was en route and what had happened. Her sister-in-law swallowed visibly but maintained her composure. “Is Nick staying until Scott gets here?”

“I imagine so. Lauren, I’m sorry. If I’d had any clue—”

“It’s not your fault, Rose. Show Nick around. I’ll hang out here with the kids. I have the radio. I’ll let A.J. know what’s going on.”

Rose started to argue but instead stepped into the shack. She and Lauren had already replaced broken panes in the windows and cleaned them, and they now let in the late-morning sun.

Nick stood next to the old evaporating pan in the middle of the floor. “Looks like something from a postcard out here,” he said.

“This is part of the original farm.” She pulled off her hat and gloves, wet from when she’d landed in the snow. “We’ve ordered a new evaporator. It should be here any day. This one’s ready for a museum. I’m surprised it’s still here, but I guess who would want it?”

“Will the new one also be wood-fired?”

She nodded. “We’re bringing in a couple of cords of wood and stacking it on the back wall. It’ll stay dry there. We’ll collect sap from trees close by and boil it down to syrup. It’s about a forty-to-one ratio—forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.”

“That’s a lot of sap.”

“A lot of boiling, too. The evaporation pan speeds up the process. It creates lots of steam.” She pointed up at a vent in the ceiling. “Hence the vent.”

“Clever.”

“We’ll collect most of the sap in buckets. Guests can participate if they want to. We’ll bottle the syrup in mason jars and sell it at the lodge. Any profit will go to our local mountain rescue team.”

“A nice little cottage industry.”

“I hope so. There’s an outdoor fireplace, so we can do some boiling outside. That’s really more for atmosphere. The fireplace is made from local stone. I love that, don’t you?”

His eyes were on her as he smiled. “A lot of rock in Vermont.”

Rose laughed. “Something to keep in mind when you try to argue with one of us.” Suddenly warm, she unzipped her jacket. “Nick, if there’s someplace you need to be—”

“There isn’t.”

“It’s supposed to get above freezing today. Of course, you’re spoiled from living in Southern California and might not realize what an event that is. When are you going back?”

“Sometime. Not today. You forget I haven’t always lived in a high-rise condo. Some days…” But he didn’t finish his thought and nodded to the open door. “Go on and do what you came here to do. Pick out maple trees, whatever. I’ll be right here.”

“Scott will want to talk to you.”

“No problem.”

Rose felt the snow melting in her hair, dripping onto her forehead. Nick struck her as a rich Californian who didn’t belong in the middle of the Vermont woods, but maybe it was just her. She’d first met him five years ago, when she was starting out in search management and he and Sean had just formed Cameron & Martini and were struggling to make it work.

Nick had been fearless, confident and sexy, but it hadn’t occurred to her to sleep with him.

He’d had his share of close calls fighting wildland fires. She’d run her fingertips over burn scars when they’d made love in June. She’d realized he could be vulnerable, could suffer and bleed. He’d continued to do the work he loved even after he’d taken a hit.

She resisted saying anything else and headed back outside. Jim and Baylee were helping their mother dig snow out of the fireplace. “We have a lot of work to do,” Lauren said, her cheeks pink with cold and exertion, “but I think we’ll make it before we seriously start collecting sap.”

“We should have some warm days coming up to drill tap holes.”

Lauren smiled through her obvious uneasiness. “Excellent.”

She was clearly holding her breath, hoping Derek’s death had been a terrible accident and Robert had simply panicked given the violence of the past few months.

The lodge didn’t need another Cameron in the middle of more violence.

Rose heard someone coming through the woods, but it was just Scott Thorne, arriving along the same path she and Nick had taken from the lane. He wore his state trooper’s parka over his uniform, his expression tight and serious as he approached the old fireplace. “No sign of Feehan,” he said.

Lauren herded the kids into the sugar shack with her. Rose, feeling the cold again, rezipped her jacket and told Scott about her encounter with Robert Feehan. Nick joined them outside and related what little he’d witnessed.

Scott glanced up at the cloudless sky once they finished. “All right,” he breathed, then sighed at Rose. “If you see Feehan, call 911. Don’t approach him.” He shifted to Nick, whose eyes were unreadable. “You, either.”

“Scott,” Rose said, “do you have any reason to believe Robert’s a danger to anyone?”

“You mean other than you?”

“I told you—”

“Just do as I ask, Rose,” he said. “No argument, okay? For once?”

She smiled. “Sure, Scott.”

He trudged through the snow back to the path. Rose watched him disappear around a curve before turning to Nick. “You look cold,” she said.

“That’s because it’s twenty-six degrees out.”

“It’s a beautiful winter day. Lauren and I will be fine. Don’t let us keep you.”

“If I got lost, would you come find me?”

“You won’t get lost.”

“Bet you’re a good skier. I’m okay with snowboarding and alpine skiing, but Nordic skiing—that’s work.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You think we’re quaint.”

“Quaint?” He sputtered into incredulous laughter. “No, not quaint. I’d put A.J. up against any Los Angeles businessman I’ve ever dealt with. Three Sisters Café would clean up on Wilshire Boulevard.” He placed a foot on the icy, rough edge of the stone fireplace. “And you, Rose. I know you’ve been offered jobs in Southern California.”

“Only two jobs, both in emergency management.”

“But you don’t want to leave Vermont,” he said quietly.

She shivered from a sudden light breeze, but her mind was on the other side of the continent, on a hot, dry, windy day in June. Without looking at Nick, she said, “We did what we could to save Jasper. We all did. If his death is related to Lowell Whittaker’s network of killers and Derek somehow found out and that’s why he freaked out when you showed up—”

“We don’t know that Feehan was telling the truth.”

Rose pulled her hat out of her pocket and put it back on, yanking it down over her ears. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

Nick frowned at her. “Your knee hurts, doesn’t it?”

She hadn’t noticed but realized her right knee did, in fact, ache. “Some. I must have twisted it when Robert shoved me.”

“You should ice it.”

“Thanks, Dr. Martini, I will.”

“I have EMT training.”

But he didn’t press the issue as Lauren emerged from the sugar shack. “A.J.’s meeting us with the car out on the road,” she said. “He’s got the lodge on alert for Robert Feehan. No sign of him as yet.”

She tucked her snowshoes under one arm and got the kids back on the toboggan, which Nick pulled as they hiked back to the dead-end lane. Rose spotted Brett Griffin out on Ridge Road with her brother and went ahead of Nick, Lauren and the kids. A.J. gave her a quick glance as he ran down the lane to his family.

Brett was decked out in winter gear, his camera hanging from a cord on his neck. “I just told A.J. that Robert Feehan flagged me down a few minutes ago.”

“Where?” Rose asked.

“Up the road, not far from the place I’m staying. He jumped out of the woods. Scared the hell out of me. He asked about you. He said he wanted to talk to you. I know he’s upset about Derek, but he really wasn’t himself. I told him he might want to calm down before he saw you.”

Rose grimaced. “Too late.”

“Ah. He found you already. I wondered. I gather it didn’t go well.”

“As you saw yourself, he’s on edge. Do you have any idea where he might be now?”

“No, sorry. He ran up the road. I didn’t follow him. I think he might have had a car up there. I heard an engine start.”

“He didn’t drive back by you?”

Brett shook his head. “He must have gone in the other direction. I don’t have a cell phone—I borrowed A.J.’s and called 911. I know the police want to talk to him about Derek’s death.”

“Robert could be anywhere.”

“I wish I could have delayed him but I had no idea what was going on.” Brett tilted his head back and sighed. “You don’t look so good, Rose. Did Robert hurt you?”

“No, but he was out of control.”

“Yeah. It’s crazy. I think he wishes now he hadn’t gotten mixed with up Derek, too, but Derek had his good qualities. He thought he could do anything.”

“He could put on the charm,” Rose said tightly, “but he could turn it off in a heartbeat. Brett, you’re house-sitting just up the road. Could Robert have come out here this morning to talk to you, too?”

“I suppose so.” Brett fingered a button on his camera. “I got the feeling he was hiding in the woods and jumped out on impulse when he saw me. I wish I could be more help. Robert didn’t say so in as many words, but he obviously thinks Derek went to the Whittaker place to kill himself.”

Rose’s stomach twisted, but she said nothing.

“So that you would find him,” Brett added.

“Did he say why he thought Derek might be suicidal?”

Brett shook his head. “He really wasn’t making much sense.”

“If Robert knows anything,” she said evenly, “he should tell the police.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She followed his gaze down the road as Nick walked out from the lane carrying the empty toboggan. A.J. was behind him with a child on each arm, Lauren next to him.

“I hope Derek didn’t commit suicide,” Brett said. “I hope he just wanted to talk to you, and the fire was an accident—just one of those dumb things. From everything I hear, Lowell Whittaker’s the type to leave flammable stuff around.”

Would he put a volatile, highly flammable liquid into a kerosene lamp and just leave it for anyone to light? Rose shuddered at the thought. “Given what else he’s done, I suppose anything’s possible.”

“He puts a whole new spin on the term ‘gentleman farmer.’” Brett gestured toward Nick as he loaded the toboggan into the back of A.J.’s SUV. “Who’s that? Got a new boyfriend, Rose?”

Rose squinted at Brett in the strong midday sun. “That’s Nick Martini, my brother Sean’s business partner.”

“What’s he doing out here? Is Sean with him?”

“Sean’s not with him, no,” she said carefully.

“Wait, is this the guy who was with you yesterday when you found Derek?”

“Nick was there, but we weren’t together.”

Brett blew out a breath, shaking his head. “What a mess. Well, I should go. I told the police I’d meet them up where I saw Robert. I’ll leave you to your family.”

Rose watched him cross the road and head past the trail up to the falls. She was still looking in his direction when she felt Nick next to her. “I’m walking back to the lodge,” she said. “You can ride with A.J., Lauren and the kids—”

“I’ll walk with you.”

She didn’t argue with him. A.J. muttered something to her about hoping she knew what she was doing and headed off with Lauren and their now tired children.

“I think I’m getting used to the cold weather,” Nick said as he started up the road. “Feels good in its own way.”

“The low humidity today helps,” Rose said.

She walked with him up the quiet road, telling him about Brett’s encounter with Robert. Nick stopped abruptly and took her by the arm, not ungently. “Do you ever ask yourself if you’re too brave by half?”

“I’m not reckless, Nick.” She faced him as he continued to hold on to her. “Black Falls and my family have had their problems this past year, but I’ve never felt unsafe here.”

“Problems? A woman was blown up in the lodge parking lot—”

“A killer, killed by the man who hired her to murder people, including my father. Yesterday…” She pulled her arm free of Nick’s grasp, aware of her reaction to him, the same mix of physical and emotional sparks that had landed him in bed with her eight months ago. “We don’t know what happened to Derek.”

“A kerosene lamp exploded and burned him to death.”

The raw words rocked her back onto her heels.

Nick didn’t relent. “You’re an amazing woman, Rose, as well as brave, but you’re fighting demons. You won’t let anyone help you. Your brothers, your friends—me.”

“I don’t even know you, Nick.”

He took her scarf, hanging loosely down her front, and tied it warmly under her chin. She felt the brush of his bare hands on her skin. “Maybe that’s why I’m here,” he said. “So you can get to know me.”

Her breath caught but she shook her head. “You’re here because of Jasper. If he hadn’t died last June…” She didn’t finish, shaking off any thought of the tragic death of the arson investigator. “What if Lowell Whittaker filled the kerosene lamp with Coleman fuel with the plan of killing his wife? I could see Vivian walking into the shed, lighting the lamp—”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Nick said next to her.

She pretended not to hear him. “Fire scenes are difficult forensically. We might never know how the Coleman fuel—assuming that’s what caused the fire—got into the lamp.”

“Rose. Stop ignoring me.”

She plunged down the road, feeling the scarf rub against her chin, but stopped after a few yards, turning back to him. “You didn’t hurt me, Nick,” she said. “We had a good time together that night. Let’s not beat ourselves up over it.”

“Easy to say.” He walked up the road to her. “You were still dealing with your father’s death and Elijah’s near-death. You’d done some difficult searches. You almost didn’t get to the missing boy in time. The search for him put you dangerously close to the flare-up that killed Jasper.”

“You’re right about all that, Nick. I still have no regrets.”

“If I took advantage of you—”

“You didn’t. You’d just lost a friend yourself.” She raised her hand and skimmed her knuckles across his cheek. “I hope I didn’t take advantage of you.”

Nick winked at her, his serious mood over, or pushed down deep. “Sweetheart,” he said with a grin, “you can take advantage of me like that anytime.”

She groaned, shaking her head. “You started this conversation. I’m not letting you off the hook with a joke and off we go. You’re Sean’s best friend. We were both still reeling from some tough stuff that’d happened to us. There’s no way you and I could have made anything real happen.”

His dark eyes flashed. “What happened between us was very real.”

“We had a moment in time that came and went. We were there for each other. That’s how I think of what happened.”

“Were you also on the rebound from Derek Cutshaw?”

She bristled involuntarily, his question catching her off guard—as he’d intended, she realized. She kept her tone steady. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Fair enough.” Nick took off a glove and with one finger pushed strands of hair off her face, then let his fingertip trail across her cheek to her lower lip. “Anything you need or want, I’m here in the sticks with nothing to do.”

Without answering, she continued down the road at a brisk pace.

“Come sit by the lodge fire with me,” Nick said, easily keeping up with her. “We can play Scrabble. Join Ranger.”

“I have work to do. You must, too.”

“Yeah, sure. Calls to make, asses to kick.” Clearly he didn’t believe her. When they reached the lodge, he said, “I’ll be upstairs. Lunch?”

She nodded in spite of herself. “I’ll meet you in the dining room.”

As he trotted up the stairs, she noticed the shape of his hips, the energy with which he moved and the same sheer, unbridled masculinity she’d experienced during their night together.

She found Ranger right where she left him, enjoying the fireplace in the lobby. “Not a word, puppy dog. Not a word.”

Nine

N ick bought a decent winter hat and rented cross-country skis at the lodge shop, a short walk down from the main building, and headed for the groomed tracks in the meadow. Rose hadn’t joined him for lunch. He couldn’t say he blamed her. She’d disappeared with Ranger down a hall past the front desk, presumably to discuss winter fest plans with her sister-in-law. After seeing the old sugar shack, he’d decided he wouldn’t mind checking out winter fest. He’d pictured galvanized buckets hanging from maple trees, steam rising out of a bubbling pot, snow and bonfires.

Could be fun.

First they had to find Robert Feehan. Accosting Rose and avoiding questioning by the police weren’t helping him. He’d already bolted when Nick spotted him. He’d focused on getting to Rose, making sure she wasn’t hurt. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Feehan, but Scott Thorne had shown him a photo.

Not a glimmer of recognition, Nick thought as he put on his skis. He doubted he’d run into Feehan in California or anywhere else.

The air was brisk but not frigid, with little wind. Nick couldn’t ski worth a damn, but he did all right on groomed and backcountry trails. All right enough, anyway. He wasn’t skiing for the fun of it.

He needed to think.

He had the meadow to himself. No other lodge guests were on the trails. He skied hard, pushing himself. He remembered Rose last June during the frantic search for the missing eleven-year-old boy, and then for Jasper Vanderhorn. She’d been dedicated, tireless, determined and professional.

And also eaten alive by her own limitations.

Nick had thought he understood then, but he did even more so now that he’d been to Black Falls. She hadn’t been able to save her father. She’d been helpless when her brother Elijah was shot in Afghanistan. According to Sean, Rose had buried herself in her work that spring. When she arrived in Los Angeles in June, Nick had considered her off-limits, but that was nothing new. She was mountain man Sean Cameron’s little sister. A Vermonter. A search-and-rescue type. Nick had dated real estate agents, decorators, actresses and producers, but he’d been too devoted to his work with Cameron & Martini and as a smoke jumper to have a serious relationship.

In the aftermath of his long, hot days on the fire line and Jasper’s tragic death, there was Rose with those incisive blue eyes. That tight, fit body.

Sexy. Very sexy.

And there’d been vulnerability, need, heat—and a night of nonstop sex.

By daylight Nick had come to his senses. He had seized the moment with her in an attempt to distract himself from his own anger and grief. They’d both encountered death in their work, but Jasper’s death was different. He’d been an intense, dedicated arson investigator, and everyone knew he’d been targeted that day—murdered.

Nick could rationalize his behavior, but only to a point. Rose had needed him to keep his distance, and he hadn’t.

Now he wondered if she’d also been struggling to put whatever had happened between her and Derek Cutshaw behind her.

Nick paused at the top of a curving downhill stretch, with woods to the left and a snow-and-ice-encased rock outcropping to the right. He noted a spot in a drift off the trail where someone had obviously taken a tumble.

Great, he thought without enthusiasm.

Then again, if he went headfirst into the snow, Rose could rescue him.

He smiled at the thought and plunged down the hill, navigating an icy patch with ease. He only just made the curve without going down. He paused at the bottom of the slope, in the shadows of a tall oak under a clear blue sky. He’d hoped that eight months apart from Rose would lessen his attraction to her, but no such luck.

Then he’d hoped coming to Vermont, seeing her on her home turf, would do the trick.

No luck there, either.

He followed the groomed tracks along the edge of the woods and cut back across the middle of the meadow toward the lodge.

In January, when Sean and Hannah had confronted Lowell Whittaker and nearly became his latest victims, Nick had worried about the impact of their close call on Rose. When he met Hannah in Los Angeles, she made it clear she suspected something had gone on between him and her friend. He’d admitted to nothing. He’d promised Rose to keep their night together a secret.

A bundled-up couple he’d seen at breakfast passed him, going in the opposite direction, laughing as they moved haltingly on their skis. Nick stopped on top of an open knoll. He could see a trail that wound down the steep hillside to the lake where Elijah Cameron had built a house.

The Camerons were a tight-knit lot. No question. A.J., Elijah and even Sean wouldn’t be pleased, Nick thought, that he’d hopped into the sack with their little sister at a vulnerable moment for her.

He’d never convince them he’d been vulnerable, too.

Not that he’d ever convince himself.

If nothing else, staying at Black Falls Lodge had crystallized the differences between Rose and him.

Nick headed back to the lodge and returned the skis before going up to his room. He took a shower, changed clothes, checked his email and made a few calls. When he ventured back to the lobby, there were no guests by the fire.

No aging golden retriever, either.

He settled onto a comfy sofa facing the massive stone fireplace and let himself become transfixed by the flames, let them take him back to the moment he and Sean had realized a hot spot had flared up and Jasper was trapped.

The hot spot had had help flaring up. It hadn’t been an accident.

But suspicions weren’t evidence.

A. J. Cameron dropped into the chair next to him and stretched out his legs, his boots scuffed, worn. “How was the skiing?”

“Good. You don’t stay cold cross-country skiing.”

“I know what you mean. Lauren and I are twisting Rose’s arm to have dinner at our house tonight. She’s been spending a lot of time alone lately, and with what happened yesterday and this morning…” A.J. cast his steely eyes on Nick. “She needs to be with family.”

“Makes sense.”

“You’re welcome to join us.”

Nick took it as a grudging invitation. “Thanks, but another time.”

A.J. leaned back in his chair, but there was nothing casual about his mood. “Sean says you’re solid but you can be thickheaded.”

“That sounds like Sean, and Hannah tells me he’s the charming Cameron.”

A.J. didn’t respond with even a hint of humor. “Rose doesn’t want to stay here again tonight. I think it’s partly because of you. If she told you to get lost, you’d leave her alone, right?”

Nick listened to the fire hissing as a hunk of bark burst into flames. “I can take no for an answer if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“If she asked you to go back to Beverly Hills?”

“She hasn’t. I don’t know what’s on your mind, A.J., but I can see it’d take a strong man to fall for Rose with her three big brothers ready to pounce.”

“Consider the situation,” A.J. said grimly.

“There’s always a situation to consider, isn’t there?”

A.J. got heavily to his feet. “Not one involving a man burned to death.”

Two men burned to death, Nick thought—Jasper Vanderhorn and now Derek Cutshaw.

The firstborn Cameron seemed genuinely concerned for his sister’s well-being. Nick tried to lighten the dark mood. “What’s for dinner? You aren’t going out to shoot a moose, are you?”

A.J. glanced down at him. “Derek Cutshaw isn’t dead because of you, is he?”

“I hope he’s not dead because of anyone. I hope his death was an accident.” Nick could feel the heat of the fire. “Did Rose agree to meet you for dinner?”

“I’m picking her up myself,” A.J. said.

Nick stood up. “Maybe I’ll head into the village and check out the Black Falls nightlife.”

A.J. grinned slightly. “That won’t take long.”

Nick parked in front of the Black Falls library across from the town common. It was open, lit up against the dark night.

Looked cozy.

He took a sanded, shoveled walkway through the middle of the picturesque common and crossed Main Street to Three Sisters Café. It was closed, but lights were on and he could see Myrtle Smith and Dominique Belair with a patchwork quilt spread out over a couple of tables they’d pushed together. They had needles and thread in hand and were doing what appeared to be a few last-minute stitches.

Nick didn’t think he’d ever actually seen anyone quilt anything.

He wondered if Rose could quilt any better than she could knit.

He left the two women to their sewing and continued down Main Street. The temperature had dropped fast with nightfall. The village was dark and quiet, but O’Rourke’s appeared to be filled with people. He could hear raucous laughter inside as he mounted the sanded concrete steps.

A three-person band was setting up opposite the bar and nearly every table was filled with Vermonters and tourists enjoying their drinks and the hearty food.

Nick sat on a high stool at the bar. Liam O’Rourke took his order. “Sean’s told me about you,” Liam said. “You two have been friends for a long time.”

“Ever been to Beverly Hills?” Nick asked him.

“I like winter.”

“You could come in summer.”

“Too hot.”

“That’s Arizona. Most of the time Beverly Hills is relatively mild.”

“Then why the fires?”

“It’s dry.”

“Fire season’s over out there?”

“Fires can happen anytime, but the peak season is September and October. We’re relatively wet and cool right now. That helps keep fires down.” That was the short answer. Nick doubted Liam wanted the long answer. “It’s good you like Vermont. Is your cousin Bowie here?”

“I don’t have patience with troublemakers.”

“You mean Bowie or me?”

“I mean anyone who makes trouble.”

Did that include Hannah Shay? Derek Cutshaw and his friends? Rose?

“Have you seen Robert Feehan today?” Nick asked as Liam set a frosted beer glass in front of him on the worn bar.

“Not in a week or more. Same as what I said yesterday when you were here with Rose.” In case you’re testing me, Liam’s tone said. “I told the police the same thing, so don’t think you’re being subtle.”

“I’m not the subtle type.” Nick glanced at a narrow, vertical menu. “I’ll have the beef stew.”

“Salad?”

“No, thanks.” He grinned. “Stew’s got carrots and onions.”

Liam didn’t seem amused.

Another big guy who looked a lot like Liam entered O’Rourke’s. The stonemason, Nick thought. Bowie O’Rourke, currently on probation after taking on Derek Cutshaw right here in his surly cousin’s bar.

Liam made what passed for introductions, handed his cousin a Coke and moved down to the end of the bar. Bowie stood next to Nick. “How’s Hannah doing in California?”

“Loves it,” Nick said.

“Is Sean spoiling her?”

“Trying, but she’s stubborn and self-sufficient.”

“Her brothers? They like it there?”

Nick knew Devin Shay, the older of Hannah’s two younger brothers, better than he did Toby. “They like California even more than Hannah, at least for now. Devin’s working for Sean and starting on the road to becoming a smoke jumper. Toby’s mountain biking to his heart’s content. He likes being an exchange student. I think he’ll end up finishing his senior year there.”

“Hannah still studying for the bar?”

“Every day by the pool, but I don’t know if she’s signed up to take it yet.” Nick sipped some of his beer. “She seemed happy to have Beth come for a visit.”

Bowie nodded, not touching his Coke. “Hannah’s like a sister to me,” the stonemason said, making it sound like a warning. “We grew up in a hollow out past the Whittaker place.”

“So I hear. What about Rose Cameron? Is she like a sister to you, too?”

Bowie glanced sideways at him. “What difference does it make to you?”

Nick took no offense. “I’ve been trying to figure out why Derek Cutshaw might have gone to the Whittaker place when he did. I’ve picked up an undercurrent around here. I think he had something going on with Rose, and you knew. You weren’t just keeping him from spouting off about Hannah last year in that fight, were you?”

“Rose wasn’t even in Black Falls then.”

“Hannah’s one of her closest friends, and she was here. So were all three of Rose’s brothers. If Cutshaw was out of control and lied or exaggerated about her in front of everyone—or even told the truth, shared a secret—”

“Now you’re the one going too far,” Bowie said darkly.

“I don’t care about any history between Cutshaw and Rose. If you intervened to keep him from embarrassing her, then good for you. It’s a small town. She’s entrusted with people’s lives. She didn’t need some drunken idiot carrying on about her. I only care that she’s safe.”

Bowie relaxed slightly. “Derek was an SOB, especially when he’d been drinking. He was manipulative, controlling and self-absorbed. Everything had to be his way.”

“Was he potentially suicidal?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hesitate.”

“Correct, I didn’t.”

Nick drank more of his beer. “Cutshaw was from somewhere out West?”

Bowie nodded. “Colorado, I think. I don’t really know. Not California, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“What about Robert Feehan?”

“I don’t have a clue. From what I’ve heard, Feehan and Brett Griffin hung out with Derek because he was always up for anything—skiing, partying, driving up to Burlington or down to Boston at the drop of a pin. Feehan stuck with Derek after the fight here. Griffin got out.”

“You seem to have good insights into people.”

“I don’t know about that.” Bowie shrugged, glancing at the band as they finished setting up. “I’ve just had to figure things out to survive. I haven’t kept track of Derek and his friends since last year. I can’t afford to mix it up with anyone again. I’m on probation as it is. I stay busy with work.”

“Do you come in here often?”

“Yeah, but I don’t drink or get into it with anyone. I’m working on my house out on the river.” He frowned at Nick. “What are you doing, playing arson investigator?”

“I’m just a friend.”

“Rose has helped a lot of people with her work. People are alive now who’d be dead without her. If she needs anything, I won’t be the only one who’s there for her.”

“Anyone good enough for her?”

Bowie didn’t hesitate. “Probably not.”

Nick thought he could get along with Bowie O’Rourke.

“I didn’t kill Derek if that’s on your mind. I didn’t wish him well, but I didn’t kill him. I heard about Feehan this morning. I haven’t seen either one. We don’t operate in the same circles. I expect you already know that.” Bowie tapped a thick finger on the bar. “You’re looking for trouble. I know the signs. Pull back.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Bowie seemed to give up on the idea of eating anything and left with a curt farewell to his cousin. Nick didn’t have high hopes for his beef stew but it was fine—rich, thick, just what he needed after cross-country skiing and raising the hackles on the Black Falls natives.

He finished his stew and left as the band started on their first set. Even in the village, the stars and half-moon stood out against the black night sky. When he arrived back at the lodge he passed a young couple and their curly-haired daughter, who couldn’t be more than ten, playing Scrabble in front of the fire.

The kid was about to nail her folks with a seven-letter word.

Nick headed upstairs. His room was toasty warm. He stood at the window, the drapes open to a view of the moonlit meadow, and called Sean. “Derek Cutshaw and Rose—what does Hannah know?”

“None of the details,” Sean said, obviously not completely taken aback by the question. “She doesn’t want to talk about Rose behind her back.”

“These aren’t ordinary circumstances, Sean. Rose is a perfectionist. She doesn’t like to make mistakes.”

“I have a feeling Derek Cutshaw was a big mistake.”

Nick backed away from the cold air seeping through the window. “Bowie O’Rourke knows something, but whatever it is, he’s keeping it to himself.”

“Rose wouldn’t keep anything germane from the police.” Sean sighed. “Hell, Nick. She would hate owning up to falling for some weasel like Cutshaw to A.J., Elijah and me. It’s her own pride. We wouldn’t do anything. We’ve made enough mistakes of our own.”

“None of you Camerons likes to make mistakes,” Nick said, leaving it at that as he hung up. He wouldn’t lie, but he had no intention of discussing his night with Rose last June with Sean or anyone else.

Nick thought of her alone in her isolated little mountain house. He agreed with A.J. that she wouldn’t stay at the lodge again tonight if she could get out of it. A.J. and Lauren lived on Ridge Road, a few miles from her. She had friends she could call if she wanted company or protection.

Nick grabbed his coat anyway and headed back down to the lobby. The Scrabble players were still in front of the roaring fire. The kid was killing her folks, who seemed surprised she could spell that well. Lively piano music emanated from the bar, laughter from the dining room. Nick could have had a warm, enjoyable evening on his own, but he slipped outside.

His car had cooled off. He’d left his gloves in his room, and the steering wheel was irritatingly cold. He cranked up the heat as he drove along the dark road and turned onto Cameron Mountain Road up to Rose’s house.

There were no other cars in the driveway. He assumed she was still at dinner with her family and parked in front of her garage. She hadn’t left on any outdoor lights.

Nick wasn’t even sure the place had outdoor lights.

As he got out of his car, he noticed the glow of a green tennis ball in a snowbank. Ranger’s doing, undoubtedly. Nick smiled, thinking of Rose out here playing fetch with her golden retriever, and started up the stone steps to the front door, which surely she had locked.

He’d check, anyway.

He heard a sound in the evergreen shrubs by the door and reacted instantly, dropping back down a step, but he already knew he was too late. A man sprang out of the darkness, wielding a snow shovel. Nick raised his arm in an effort to minimize the blow, the shovel glancing off the side of his head. He landed a fast, hard, low kick, striking his attacker below the knee, catching the soft tissue just above a thick boot, forcing him to drop the shovel.

The man groaned and leaped down the steps, bolting onto the driveway.

Nick felt blood trickling into his mouth, tasted it. He jumped off the steps but saw headlights through the trees and heard an engine. He grabbed the shovel, reaching the bottom of the steep driveway just in time to see the rear lights of the car disappear on the narrow, twisting road.

He swore and turned back up to the house. The driveway seemed icier and more treacherous than on the way down. His head throbbed as he mounted the stone steps and checked the front door.

Yes, indeed, Rose had locked it this time.

He descended the steps once more and got back in his car, turned on the engine for the heat and dialed Sean in California. He didn’t give his friend a chance to speak. “What’s A.J.’s number? Never mind. Call him.” Nick wiped blood off the side of his face. “Tell him not to let Rose come home alone. I’m at her house. I don’t want her on the road by herself.”

“Nick, what the hell—”

“I just surprised some jackass breaking into her house. We scuffled. He took off. He had a car parked out of sight. I’m calling the police next.”

“Got it.”

“Do you know where Rose keeps her spare key?”

“She usually doesn’t lock up.”

“I know.”

“The gutter by the back door,” Sean said. “Stay in touch.”

Nick got out of the warm car. He hadn’t switched on the headlights, and his eyes had adjusted to the dark. He found the key stuck in the base of an icy gutter, above another bright green tennis ball. He let himself in through the back door, flipping on lights, checking for any sign the intruder had gotten inside.

He dialed 911 as he moved into the kitchen. He dug a dish towel out of a drawer and pressed it to his bloody head. He got ice from a small freezer and explained the situation to the dispatcher, who clearly knew Rose.

The dispatcher instructed him to stay in a safe place.

Yeah, good idea.

Nick put ice on his scrape and sat on a chair in front of the cold woodstove. It was a cute house. Little. Nice location, except some SOB could walk in and toss the place without worrying about nosy neighbors. Rose didn’t have an alarm system. His condo had twenty-four-hour security, cameras, proper locks, alarms.

Rose felt safe here because this was her hometown, and because until Lowell Whittaker had picked Black Falls for his country home, she had been safe here.

The ice was damn cold. Nick pulled it off his head and considered standing up, but what if he passed out? What kind of rugged smoke jumper would he be to the Vermonters about to descend? He’d fit Rose’s stereotype of some rich Southern Californian who couldn’t make it in the mountains of northern New England.

He heard her at the back door. “Nick? Nick, where are you?”

And A.J. “Hold on, Rose.”

She ignored her brother and ran into the living room, immediately checking the bloody scrape just above Nick’s right cheekbone, her hands soft, warm. “You’re bleeding. Damn it, Nick, what happened?”

“I got hit in the head with a shovel. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Who was it? Did you see—”

“I didn’t get a good description. He was six feet tall, lean, white. Black gloves. Black hat and ski coat.” Nick concentrated on Rose’s face, her blue eyes as she stood back from him. She wore a sleek dark burgundy sweater and slim jeans, her tawny hair shining as she studied him. He forced himself to stay on task. “He had a ski tag on his jacket.”

“Robert Feehan,” she said without hesitation.

Nick wasn’t surprised. A.J. eased in next to her, looking grim as the first of the police arrived.

Ten

R ose did her best to keep her emotions in check with Scott Thorne and the two police officers from town who responded to Nick’s call. Her house hadn’t been tossed. The man who’d jumped Nick, presumably Robert Feehan, hadn’t gotten inside.

As Scott and the two officers left through her front door, she could feel their mounting urgency to find Robert and talk to him. If he simply was in a panic, terrified because of Derek’s death, then why? If he believed he was in danger, all the more reason to turn himself in to police and tell them what he knew.

Nick had refused even the idea of an ambulance, never mind a trip to the E.R. Rose wasn’t worried about him. He was an EMT. He knew he hadn’t been seriously injured. He’d started to build a fire, but A.J. had gruffly asked him to stay on the couch and was tackling the woodstove himself.

Her brother and her former lover were a strong presence in her little house, she thought as she went back to the kitchen. She pulled more ice out of the freezer and wrapped it in a fresh, soft towel.

“Maybe Robert thought you were breaking in,” she said, returning to the living room.

Nick took the ice-filled cloth from her. “Why would he think that?”

“He’s scared, on edge, because of Derek.” She stood back from Nick and added, “Because of you and why you’re here. Maybe he’s afraid you’re Jasper’s firestarter, or one of Lowell’s killers.”

A.J. glanced back from the woodstove but said nothing. Nick placed the ice to his bloody scrape for half a second, then set it on the coffee table. “I don’t need more ice, but thanks.” His voice was even, unemotional. “How would either Cutshaw or Feehan have known about Jasper?”

“I didn’t tell them if that’s what you’re asking,” Rose said, not defensively.

“Just wondering if you have a theory. I didn’t see his car on the road when I turned up your driveway.”

“Scott says he must have parked in the small turnaround just past my driveway. You can’t see it coming up the road. I use it when I can’t get up the hill because of freezing rain, sleet or whatever.”

Nick settled back against the soft cushions of her couch. “Feehan knew I wasn’t an intruder,” he said. “He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing here. I surprised him, and he smacked me with a shovel and took off.”

Rose sat on a chair at the end of the couch. Ranger had taken the men in the house in stride and was curled up on his bed by the woodstove. Nick didn’t look that bad for someone who’d just been ambushed on icy steps. She frowned at him. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse.”

“It wasn’t luck,” he said lightly. “Feehan just wasn’t as good as I am.”

“Ah. I see. So you don’t have a concussion or need stitches right now because of skill.”

“You got it. If he wasn’t here for trouble, why didn’t he go up your driveway?”

“A lot of people don’t like going up my driveway in winter.”

“The guy teaches people how to downhill ski. He must be used to driving up mountains in snowy weather.” Nick studied her a moment, his injury having no apparent effect on his ability to focus. “Why are you defending him?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to figure out what just happened. I have to keep an open mind.”

A.J. adjusted the dampers on the woodstove. “You can’t stay here alone, Rose.”

She bristled. “The police are looking for Robert. He won’t be back.”

“Non sequitur,” her brother said.

She shifted to Nick and attempted a smile. “A.J. gets even gruffer and bossier when he’s worried.”

“He’s had a lot to worry about lately,” Nick said quietly.

Rose jumped to her feet, ignoring both men as she sighed down at Ranger. “Well, fella, looks as if we’re back at the lodge again tonight.”

Nick rose smoothly, steady on his feet, and stood next to her. “You can stay here. I don’t need to make the drive back to the lodge. I’ll camp on the couch out here by the fire.”

A.J. turned from the woodstove. “Is this okay with you, Rose? You know you’re welcome to stay with Lauren and me at the house.”

“I’m used to being on my own,” she said. “It’s probably a good idea for Nick to have someone within yelling distance, in case he’s hurt worse than he thinks.”

Neither A.J. nor Nick argued with her rationalization, which she didn’t quite know how to interpret.

“I’ll have your stuff sent over,” A.J. said to Nick.

Nick thanked him and returned to the couch, and Rose followed her brother out through the back. The night air was frigid, but A.J. didn’t seem to notice as he paused on the steps. “Having Nick Martini here is maybe half a notch better in my mind than you being here alone.”

“He’s not going to hurt me, A.J.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. What if Feehan’s right and Cutshaw’s death and Martini’s arrival in Vermont aren’t a coincidence?”

“We don’t even know for sure if Derek was murdered—”

“Yeah, right,” her brother said skeptically. “Why would Cutshaw have cared about Nick being in Vermont?”

“I don’t know that Robert was telling the truth, or what Derek was thinking.”

“Who else knew Nick was on his way to Vermont?”

“Sean did.” Rose shivered in the cold night air. “Do you suspect him?”

“I don’t suspect anyone. I’m asking questions.” A.J.’s gaze narrowed on her. “So are you.”

“Nick’s asking the same questions,” Rose said.

“Yeah. I know. Call me if you need anything.”

She crossed her arms on her chest to stay warm. “This all will end, A.J. We can’t beat ourselves up because we didn’t figure out about Lowell Whittaker and his killers sooner. They wanted us to believe that Pop’s death was an accident.”

“Elijah knew it wasn’t.”

“In his gut, but it didn’t do any good until he had more to go on. He wasn’t here when it happened. He could put fresh eyes on the situation. He was almost killed the same week Pop died. He was tuned in, maybe.”

A.J. looked out at Cameron Mountain rising behind her house, silhouetted against the night sky. “I’ve never wanted to live anywhere but here. I want my kids to grow up in Black Falls. I want them and Lauren to be happy and feel safe.”

“They will, A.J. Black Falls hasn’t changed.”

Her brother turned back to her. “Have you, Rose?”

She hesitated, then said, “It’s been a rough year.”

“You can talk to us, Rose. Sean, Elijah, me,” A.J. said. “Any one of us or all of us together. You know that, right?”

“Always.”

“You know it, but you don’t think you need to talk to anyone.” He let out a heavy breath. “Keep me posted. Be careful.”