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  "Of course, Val, I remember you." He was polite, almost formal, no doubt because he knew he was talking to the wife of a possible murder suspect. Or maybe because she'd never called him before. "What can I do for you?"

  God, she was an idiot. A card-carrying idiot. "Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing. I'm sorry to bother you."

  She hung up.

  She couldn't ask a U.S. marshal to do a background check on Louis Sanborn on the sly. That just wasn't the way to go. Manny would have her head. Her ass'd be out the door for sure.

  She'd have to do it herself.

  Twelve

  Carine woke up in the wrong bed. Wrong bed, wrong house.

  But she knew where she was. She wasn't disoriented for even half a second as she sat up in the snug, four-poster bed and tried to guess what time it was. Seven? Sunlight angled in through the windowpanes. At least seven.

  She imagined her life pre-Tyler North, pre-Boston, pre-Louis Sanborn's murder, when she'd get up in her cabin across the meadow on just such a sun-filled, pleasant morning and make herself a pot of tea and build a fire in her woodstove to take any lingering chill out of the air before she got to work. She loved every aspect of what she did. Assignments from various magazines and journals were her mainstay, but she was selling more and more prints, earning a name for herself at shows, and she had her own Web site and taught nature photography workshops. Before moving to Boston, she'd been putting together plans for a set of New England guidebooks, new specialty cards and her annual nature calendar for a local mountain club.

  She viewed her life in the city as a kind of sabbatical, not a permanent move. But she'd felt that way about her log cabin, too, when she moved in five years ago. She hadn't meant to spend the rest of her life there.

  After his mother died and Ty decided not to sell the house, he'd asked Carine to check on it when he was away, make sure the yard guys were mowing the lawn, let the cleaning people in, pick up packages. He'd offered to pay her, but she considered herself just being a good neighbor. She had no idea how he could afford to keep up the place—a big house with a shed, a long driveway, fifty acres. The property taxes alone had to be astronomical. Even after they became engaged, she hadn't asked for specifics, which, in a way, summed up their relationship. She hadn't taken care of business. But, she hadn't exactly been thinking straight.

  Like yesterday in her apartment, she reminded herself with a groan.

  She debated going for a run, then remembered collapsing against the lamppost yesterday morning. Ty would have been on her trail then and must have seen her. She didn't like it that he'd caught her at her most vulnerable, in shock, shattered by what she'd seen. But she didn't have to be professional, distance herself. It wasn't her job to catch the killer.

  But a run could wait until she was more secure on her feet.

  When she got out of bed, she felt steadier, less stripped raw by her experience. She headed down the hall to the shower, taking her time, washing her hair twice, scrubbing her skin with lavender-scented bath salts left over from her last stay there. She took the time to blow-dry her hair and dressed in her most comfortable pair of jeans and her softest shirt, determined to go easy on herself today in every way she could.

  She brought her digital camera downstairs with her and set it on the table then she poured herself a cup of grayish coffee. Jodie Rancourt liked the instant gratification of the digital camera, but Carine had explained her preference for film. It'd be a while before she replaced her 35 mm Nikon and 300 mm zoom lens with a digital camera. But she wasn't resistant to change— she would do whatever worked, whatever got her the right picture.

  The coffee was undrinkable. Ty must have made it hours ago. Carine spotted him outside at the woodpile, splitting maul in hand as he whacked a thick chunk of wood into two pieces. He looked relaxed, at home. He deserved this time off, she thought, dumping her coffee in the sink. She knew his military career had been intense during the past nine months—he didn't need to spend his leave making sure she didn't meddle in a murder investigation.

  She returned to the table and decided she'd take pictures today. That would reassure everyone she was back in her right mind. She popped out the memory disk she'd used at the Rancourt house and popped in another disk with less memory. Whoever broke in to her apartment yesterday had ignored her less sexy Nikon, but her digital camera might have been too great a temptation if she hadn't brought it into Boston with her that morning.

  She slipped the Rancourt disk into an inner coat pocket and headed outside with the camera. The morning was brisk and clear, the frost just beginning to melt on the grass. "You need a dog," she said, joining Ty at the woodpile. "Maybe Stump could father puppies."

  He paused, eyeing her as he caught his breath, his eyes greener somehow in the morning light. "I'm never here long enough for a dog, and if I were, I wouldn't get one with any blood relation to Stump. He digs."

  "All dogs dig."

  "All dogs don't dig. All Gus's dogs dig."

  She smiled. "Gus has never been much of a disciplinarian."

  Ty lifted another log into place. He was wearing heavy work gloves, with wood chips and sawdust on his jeans and canvas shirt. She noticed the play of muscles in his forearms. "Your brother called," he said.

  "Nate? What did he want?"

  "He said Val Carrera called him at the crack of dawn and hung up." He glanced up at her, everything about him intense, single-minded. "What do you suppose that

  was all about?"

  "I have no idea. Did Nate?"

  "Nope. He and Antonia talked last night—apparently they decided you were in good hands. Or at least you could be in worse hands. He says Hank and Antonia are hiring Val as an assistant."

  "With all her bookstore experience, I think she'd be great at just about anything." Carine didn't know Val Carrera all that well but liked her. "It must be weird for her with Eric away at school. She was so devoted to him when he was sick."

  "Still is. She knew she had to pull back." Ty swung the heavy maul idly in one hand. "Nate told me to tell you hi."

  "He's not happy about this situation, is he?"

  "Hates it. But we all do."

  Ty raised the maul, then heaved it down onto the log, splitting it in two, both pieces managing to fly in her direction. She jumped aside, and he grinned at her, shrugged without apology. If she didn't know how to get out of the way when someone was splitting wood by now, she deserved her fate. She felt an urge to grab a maul and have at a chunk of wood herself.

  "Nate thinks Louis's murder had something to do with Hank, doesn't he? Newly elected senator, and the Rancourts supported him in the campaign—"

  "A lot of people supported him."

  "But I'm right?"

  "Hank didn't know Louis Sanborn. I told Nate that."

  "There, you see? That's my brother, ever one for a conspiracy theory." She moved a few steps out of the sun, which was higher in the sky than she'd expected. She hadn't looked at a clock yet, but it was more like nine, not seven. "I'd like to walk over to my cabin. Gus has supposedly been checking on it, but I think he's been preoccupied with his tropical paradise half bath. Do you want to come with me?"

  "Want has nothing to do with it. I'm coming." He leaned the splitter against the shed, a mix of weathered wood and black tarpaper that, like the rest of the place, needed work. "I'll scramble you up some eggs first. Gus brought them by the other night. Apparently there's some new egg lady in town. I think he's sweet on her."

  "Gus?"

  Ty laughed. "Don't look so shocked."

  She jumped up on the counter and watched him while he brewed fresh coffee and made eggs and toast, but he finally said she was in the way and shooed her over to the table. He brought her a steaming plate, then sat down with a mug of black coffee. "Gus has already called this morning, too. The Rancourts rolled in last night. They stopped by his shop this morning to congratulate him on the rescue of the boys from Mount Chester. He thinks they were fishing for what he knew about
what happened in Boston."

  The Rancourts' twenty-acre property was a rare chunk of private land in that part of the surrounding White Mountain National Forest, up an isolated hill with incredible views and just yards from a seldom-used trail, a spoke off the main Cold Ridge trail.

  "Did Gary Turner come with them?" Carine asked. "He's their chief of security—"

  "The one with the skin and the missing fingers?"

  She nodded. "You were paying attention yesterday."

  "Always. Gus didn't mention him."

  Carine hid her relief. She didn't want to have to deal with the Rancourts, much less Gary Turner. "Turner encouraged me to come up here. So did Sterling. He and Jodie must have decided they liked the idea themselves. Well, I suppose it's their house. They can come and go as they please."

  "You don't much care for them, do you? Why'd you take the job if you don't like them?"

  She shrugged. "I don't dislike them. I'm neutral."

  Ty laughed, getting to his feet. "Yeah, right. Define neutral. I'm ready to go whenever you are." He dumped out the rest of his coffee in the sink, then stared out the window a moment. "Carine—I never meant to run you out of town."

  She took her dishes to the sink. "You didn't."

  He shifted, eyeing her. "You know that's not true."

  "It's true enough." She rinsed off her plate and put it in the dishwasher, drank the last of her coffee, aware of his gaze still on her, as if even the small things she did might betray her. "I've always lived in Cold Ridge. It's been good to expand my horizons."

  "You've traveled all over the Northeast, taken assignments in the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica—don't give me 'I needed to expand my horizons.'"

  "I didn't say I needed to. I said it's been good—"

  "Hairsplitting. You should have been a lawyer."

  She smiled. "This has always been home. I've never lived anywhere else."

  "It still is your home."

  She sighed at him, slipping her coat back on. "Do you want to listen to me or argue with me?"

  He leaned back against the counter, his arms crossed on his chest as he studied her. "Then no bullshit."

  "You cut-to-the-chase military types. Think creatively—"

  "Carine."

  "All right, all right." But she didn't have the emotional resources to dig deep and could only try to explain in a superficial way what the past nine months had been like for her. "After you dumped me—"

  "Jesus," he breathed.

  "Well? You're the one who doesn't want any BS. Call a spade a spade. After you dumped me, I started to look at my life here in a new way and realized I had taken everything I have for granted."

  "You've never taken anything for granted."

  He'd always argued with her, pushed her, prodded her. For most of her life, it'd been irritating. But last winter, she'd loved him for it. She'd thought she could talk to him about anything and hoped he could do the same with her. Only that wasn't the way it was. He'd never opened up his soul to her the way she had hers. Maybe that was why it'd been easy—at least possible—for him to walk away.

  But she pushed back such thoughts. He wasn't asking about him and their relationship, but about her. "I was too rooted," she said. "I didn't want this to be the only place I'd ever lived, ever could live."

  "What about men?" He tilted his head back, but if he was trying to be lighthearted, he was failing. There wasn't a hint of amusement in his expression. "Expanding your horizons where men are concerned?"

  Carine groaned as she buttoned up her coat. "I give up. I lived a good life before you, and I've been living a good life since you. So don't feel sorry for me because of what you did. Let's just leave it at that. Whatever else that might or might not be going on with me is none of your business. Not anymore."

  "Fair enough." He pulled away from the sink and grabbed his leather jacket off the counter, shrugging it on. "People wouldn't blame you if you'd set my house on fire before leaving town."

  "I think they're breathing a sigh of relief that we didn't get married, after all. Imagine the kids we'd have had." Her voice caught, but he didn't seem to notice. She quickly headed for the back door. "I'm not still in love with you, if that's what you're worried about. 'Lust' might still be an issue, but, trust me, I can resist."

  "Like you did yesterday afternoon?"

  "Like I am right now," she said lightly, pushing open the door, smiling back at him. "There's something about a sweaty man covered in wood chips."

  "If that's all it takes—"

  But she was out the door, walking quickly down the driveway before she could do anything stupid. So far she'd had a good start to her day. She didn't want to blow it by ending up upstairs with him, or, even worse, having him decide her easy manner with him was an act and she wasn't over him, after all.

  Keep practicing, she thought, and maybe the act would become reality.

  Thirteen

  Her cabin was cold and empty and had an odd nasty smell that she noticed the minute she walked through the back door. Ty located the cause before she did—a recently dead bat in her woodstove.

  Lovely, Carine thought, and tried not to view it as an omen.

  Ty carried the bat carcass out on a cast-iron poker, and she turned on the heat and stood in her kitchen as if she were a stranger. She touched the scarred, inexpensive countertop, ran her fingers over the small table, which barely fit in front of a window that looked out on the back meadow. The kitchen, bathroom and the small room that served as her studio were all on the back of the cabin. The great room stretched across the front, with its woodstove and hooked rugs, its comfortable furnishings. A ladder led up to a loft under one half of the slanted ceiling. Her bedroom. At night, she could peer through the balcony railing and watch the dying embers of the fire through the tempered-glass door of her woodstove.

  It was, at most, a two-person house, all wood and dark greens, rusts, warm browns, intimate and cozy. Carine had done a lot of the work on it herself. Gus would help, Antonia and Nate—and Ty—when they were in Cold Ridge, even Manny Carrera a couple of times.

  No one in town had believed Saskia North would sell Carine the one-acre lot. Saskia likes her isolation, they'd said. Her privacy. She's strange, weird. Indeed, she had been a solitary, intensely creative woman, in her late seventies when she surprised her doubters and sold Carine the lot. Even as a neighbor, Saskia was unreliable in many ways, not showing up when she said she would, making and breaking countless promises as if they were nothing. It was as if her brain was so cluttered up with ideas and whims, sparks of imagination, that little else could get in, never mind stick. Anything she thought of would be worth pursuing, at least for a while.

  But only her best ideas grabbed her and held on, and when they did, she pursued them with a vengeance—a painting, a tapestry, a collage, whatever it was. That was something to see. Her folk art was sought by collectors, and had become even more popular since her death, although Ty seemed only vaguely aware of either the financial or the artistic value of what his mother did.

  After she died, Gus had often said he didn't know which he liked less, having Carine out there alone, or having her out there alone with Tyler North.

  Ty came in through the back door. "Bat's where it won't stink up the joint."

  "Did you bury it?"

  "No, Carine, I did not bury it or hold a memorial service for it. I threw it in the woods." He zipped up his jacket. "I'll leave you here and go back and finish up the wood. Take you to lunch in town?"

  His words caught her off guard. Leave her on her own? Suddenly she didn't want him to leave, or perhaps she just didn't want to be here alone, raking up memories, trying to feel at home. But she didn't want him to notice her ambivalence. "That'd be good."

  He winked. "It'll be okay. See you soon."

  The door shut softly behind him, and Carine felt the heat come on, clanging in the cold pipes. She checked the refrigerator. Empty, no scum to clean out. She ran the water in the kitchen
sink and walked down the short hall to her studio, her desktop computer, her easel, her worktable, her shelves tidy but dusty, as if she'd died and no one had gotten around to cleaning out her house.

  "Damn," she breathed, darting outside into the cold air.

  Nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  She went into her one-car garage, her much-diminished woodpile just as she'd left it months ago. She loaded cordwood into her arms, one chunk of ash, birch and oak after another, until she was leaning backward against the weight of it. Gus had brought her two cords last fall, before the shooting, and dumped it in her driveway, figuring that'd spur her to get it stacked before winter. What was left was super-dry and would burn easily. But she'd need another two cords at least if she planned to spend any part of the winter here.

  She dumped her sixteen-inch logs into the woodbox she'd made herself from old barnboards, then went back for another load.

  A midnight-blue car with Massachusetts plates pulled into her dirt driveway, and Gary Turner waved from behind the wheel, smiling, as if he thought she mightbeonedgeandwantedtoreassureher.Heclimbed out, wearing a black pea coat with no hat, the slight breeze catching the ends of his white hair. "I was going to call, but I don't have your cell phone number—"

  "That's okay. I don't have it on, anyway, and coverage out here is iffy at best." She brushed sawdust off her barn coat. "I heard the Rancourts were in town. I wasn't sure if you'd come up with them."

  "I drove up this morning. I was going to drive up with Mrs. Rancourt last night, but Mr. Rancourt decided to join her, so they came on their own." He squinted at her, his eyes washed out, virtually colorless in the sunlight. "You look better, Carine. Being back here must agree with you."

  She smiled. "I suppose it does."

  "To be honest, I don't know why you left, man problems or not."

  "It's complicated."

  He laughed, surprising her. "Probably not as complicated as you think. You've just got a knack for complicating things, and that's not an insult. It's why you can do what you do with a picture of a bird. To most people—you know, it's a bird. With you, it's part of a bigger deal." He looked at her a moment, shaking his head. "You can see why I ended up in security work, not in the arts. How're you doing?"