Cold River Read online

  She walked past them down Main Street, which formed the heart of the pretty village of Black Falls, located in a narrow river valley in the Green Mountains. The sand and salt that had accumulated on the sidewalk over the long winter handled any of the cold rain that would have otherwise frozen.

  None of the Camerons followed her.

  A town cruiser passed her on the street, its lights flashing. She didn’t look back to see it stop in front of O’Rourke’s.

  She finally came to the graceful 1835 brick house across from the town green, on the corner of Main and Elm Street, where she’d lived with her brothers for the past seven years. Sean Cameron had inherited them as tenants when he’d bought the house two years ago. Hannah had expected him to kick them out and renovate and sell the place at a tidy profit, but he hadn’t. Then she and two friends talked him into letting them create a café on the first floor. They’d scrubbed, sanded, painted, installed a kitchen, brought in tables and chairs and a big glass display case and come up with a name, a logo, a signature color.

  As Hannah unlocked the heavy front door, she thought of the family who’d built the house. They’d made a fortune in Vermont’s burgeoning wool business in the early nineteenth century. Then came high tariffs and an economic bust, and they’d cleared out for a new start in Ohio.

  Part of her wanted her own fresh start. To just pack up and take off.

  But that wouldn’t happen. Devin was struggling with his grades and needed her help and support to graduate. Toby had another year of school. She had law school to finish, then the bar exam and hopefully a clerkship and work as a prosecutor. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  A second cruiser raced down Main Street.

  Shivering now, biting back tears, Hannah went inside.

  There was nothing she could do to help Bowie O’Rourke.

  There never had been.

  The three men who’d insulted Hannah came to the café two days later and apologized to her for their behavior that night at O’Rourke’s. Derek Cutshaw did most of the talking. Robert Feehan was flushed and clearly embarrassed. Brett Griffin, who hadn’t participated in the fight, stayed quiet.

  They’d been drunk. They were idiots. They didn’t mean what they’d said.

  They were so sorry.

  “It was all me,” Derek said. “Robert and especially Brett didn’t do anything.”

  “Apology accepted,” Hannah said.

  They all received the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

  Bowie, on the other hand, was charged with aggravated assault. His court-appointed lawyer got the charge reduced to simple assault, for which Bowie received a split sentence of sixty days in prison and three years’ probation. He’d had too many run-ins with the law. He wouldn’t just get a fine and a warning to behave.

  The Cameron men went back to their lives. Sean returned to Beverly Hills. Elijah returned to war. A.J., as ever, continued his work at Black Falls Lodge.

  Two weeks later, their father shocked his three sons and daughter and everyone in Black Falls when he went missing on Cameron Mountain in a fierce spring snowstorm. Search parties fanned out into the wilderness, but it was Devin Shay, Hannah’s eighteen-year-old brother, who found the seventy-seven-year-old Vermonter’s body on the remote north side of the mountain. The autopsy indicated that Drew Cameron had died of hypothermia, probably after becoming lost and disoriented in the storm.

  The one consolation to A.J., Elijah, Sean and Rose Cameron was that if their father could have chosen where to die, it would have been on the mountain he loved.

  But he hadn’t chosen.

  It wasn’t until November—seven months later—that everyone in Black Falls knew the truth.

  Drew Cameron had been murdered.

  Two

  December 28—Black Falls, Vermont

  Hannah raised the shade in her bedroom window and looked down at the frozen branch of the Black River that ran through the middle of the village. There were actually two Black rivers in Vermont. The other was farther north. This one originated in the western Green Mountains and flowed south and east, emptying into the Connecticut River on the Vermont–New Hampshire border.

  Sunrise wouldn’t come for another hour, but she could see white drifts of new snow on the ice and exposed rocks of the shallow river, and, on its banks, the silhouettes of naked trees, dormant for the long, cold northern New England winter.

  She’d finally given up on sleep and was dressed and finished with her to-do list for Sean Cameron. She’d itemized everything his house on the town green needed, from painting the woodwork to replacing the gutters and fixing the leak in the cellar. He hadn’t asked for a list, but the holidays were over, things needed to be done and he was in town.

  Strike while the iron is hot, her mother would say.

  As Hannah turned from the window, she admitted to herself that she wasn’t ready to crack open her law books and start her marathon of studying for her bar exam in a few months.

  She still had too many images of the past five weeks to keep at bay.

  She made her bed, pulling up the simple patchwork quilt her mother had sewn for her, using scraps of fabric she’d collected from people at work. Hannah had debated putting it in mothballs, but her mother had never been one to not use what she owned—and she’d sewn things to be used. They’d been living in the hollow out on the river then. Mary Shay had never liked town. She’d learned the names of the different birds in the area and had enjoyed putting up feeders during the winter. She’d aspired to so little and yet had suffered so much. She’d fallen for the wrong man. She’d been bitten by the wrong tick.

  Hannah shot out of her bedroom. Better to think about how to get her absentee landlord to spring for needed maintenance on his Vermont house.

  Anything, she thought, to keep her mind off cold-blooded killers.

  She headed up the short hall to the small kitchen. Its window—one of the ones that needed replacing—looked down on Elm Street and the jut of the one-story ell that had been added to the house eighty years ago and was now part of the Three Sisters Café.

  Neither of her brothers was up yet. She hadn’t heard Devin pacing in the night or tossing and turning in his bedroom next to hers. She hoped that was a good sign. He’d graduated high school in June but hadn’t decided on a course for his life. He’d moved out over the summer, living up at Black Falls Lodge while he worked for A.J. and Lauren Cameron, but he’d returned home just before Thanksgiving, after nearly becoming a victim of the hired killers who’d left Drew Cameron to die in the cold in April.

  Although not specifically targeted by the killers as Devin had been, Toby wasn’t unaffected by the bloodshed in November, but he was optimistic and driven by nature. He’d already made plans for the future. In two days, Sean Cameron would fly the younger of her two brothers, his mountain bike and all his mountain-biking paraphernalia to Southern California for a minimum of three months as an exchange student. Toby would be living with the family of a mountain-biker friend, another avid downhill racer. Hannah had met them all last summer. As much as she would miss him, she had no worries for her brother’s safety or care. Toby was still a minor and had needed her permission to go to school in California, but how could she have denied him this chance?

  She noticed a mountain-biking magazine he’d left open on the table. She’d done her best by both her brothers, never pretending she was anything but their older sister. She knew their relationship was different—given the gap in their ages, it would have been even if both their parents had lived.

  Hannah peeked at the thermometer in the window above the table.

  Seventeen degrees.

  She smiled to herself. It wasn’t mountain-biking weather, but it wasn’t bad for a late-December dawn in northern New England. She wouldn’t mind a break from the long Vermont winter herself, but she had friends who were such serious winter-sports enthusiasts, they cheered every inch of new snow.

  Letting both her brothers sleep, Hannah tipt
oed out of the small apartment and took the curving stairs down to the center-hall entrance of the old house. It had such character—such potential—but its owner seemed only interested in the basic maintenance necessary to keep the place from falling down, presumably until he decided the time was right to kick everyone out—her and her brothers, the small first-floor gallery and the café—and gut it, renovate it and sell it for a fortune.

  Hannah unlocked a solid-wood door that was original to the house and entered the café’s dining room. It had its own entrance onto Main Street, as well as one off the center hall. She’d heard Dominique Belair and Beth Harper, her two partners, arrive earlier. They’d decided on the name Three Sisters Café, considering themselves sisters in spirit if not by blood. Each of them knew what had to be done to get scones, muffins, homemade yogurt, fresh-cut fruit and other goodies ready for the café’s 7:00 a.m. opening.

  Her heartbeat quickening at the same time her pace slowed, Hannah took in the gray early-morning light, the gleaming hardwood floor and the dozen-plus wood tables and chairs. On the interior wall, the countertops and glass case were empty, spotless. Before long, the bright winter sun would stream in through the tall windows and customers would start arriving.

  But mentally, Hannah was back in April—eight months ago—as small, black-haired Melanie Kendall sat across from Thomas Asher in the café and pretended to be an interior decorator from Washington, D.C., taking a break from her busy schedule. She and Kyle Rigby, her partner in killing, had already made sure Drew Cameron had died of hypothermia on Cameron Mountain.

  Hannah stopped breathing. Don’t…

  She couldn’t stop the images.

  After years of searching, Drew had discovered the site of the Camerons’ original house in Vermont in what was now a wilderness on the north side of the mountain. He hadn’t told anyone while he secretly built a small cabin on the remains of the old foundation. What supplies and equipment he couldn’t get up the mountain on his own, he’d enlisted a local high school senior—Hannah’s brother Devin—to carry for him, never admitting why or showing off his work-in-progress.

  He’d meant the cabin as a surprise for his four adult children.

  Melanie had flirted with Thomas Asher while the children of her and Rigby’s victim had called in search teams and headed up the mountain themselves to look for their father. She had known Drew was dead—that the cold had done its work before anyone had realized he was missing.

  Hannah eased behind the glass counter. For the past five weeks, every morning had been the same, and she knew what the next rush of images would be. She stared across the counter toward the windows overlooking the river, the landscape taking shape under the lightening sky. She’d been the one who’d hired Nora Asher, Thomas Asher’s eighteen-year-old daughter, to work at the café when Nora had moved to Black Falls after dropping out of Dartmouth College in September. Nora had wanted to experience life in small-town Vermont. By then, her father and Melanie Kendall were engaged. Already suspicious of Melanie, Nora had enlisted Devin’s help to conduct their own background check on her future stepmother.

  In November, Nora’s stepfather, Alexander Bruni, a prominent ambassador, was killed in a hit-and-run in Washington, D.C. Nora panicked at the news of his likely murder and took off up Cameron Mountain.

  Devin went after her, as a friend, telling no one.

  Clever, calculating Melanie manipulated her fiancé into hiring Kyle Rigby to search for his missing daughter.

  Hannah could see Kyle on that bleak November morning, his broad shoulders, his aura of competence and reassurance as he’d walked into the café. Posing as a mountain rescuer, he’d asked her to tell him what she could about where Devin and Nora might be.

  He had fooled everyone. He hadn’t wanted to help. He’d wanted to make sure Nora and Devin didn’t get off Cameron Mountain alive and had tried to paint Devin as a troubled teenager whose obsessions and recklessness had led to tragedy.

  Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall were killers who were themselves now dead.

  With a gasp for air, Hannah broke the cycle of images. Investigators believed Kyle and Melanie had been part of a sophisticated network that paired clients who wanted someone dead and were willing to pay with professional killers who’d do the job—a network that didn’t tolerate screwups. Elijah Cameron had shot and killed Kyle Rigby in Kyle’s do-or-die mission on Cameron Mountain. Hours later, Melanie Kendall was killed at Black Falls Lodge when a bomb went off in her car, presumably triggered, or arranged to be triggered, by her employer, for whom failure was not an option.

  So many unanswered questions, Hannah thought as she burst through the swinging door into the kitchen. Dominique and Beth were on backless stools at the counter-height worktable. Beth, a copper-haired, high-energy paramedic a year older than Hannah, was willing to do anything to keep the café running but focused her efforts on maintenance and comfort food. Small, dark-haired Dominique was, at thirty-four, the eldest of the three “sisters” and decidedly not a local. Something of a mystery in town, she was an expert cook and the creative vision behind the café’s success.

  Without a word, Hannah reached for a dark green canvas apron. Dominique and Beth each wore one, too. They’d agreed on evergreen as the café’s signature color. The kitchen was toasty warm. It was one of Hannah’s favorite rooms in the house. They’d kept the design simple, with an emphasis on efficiency, openness and food safety.

  “Is Toby packed?” Beth asked, lifting a thick round of dough onto a baking sheet.

  “He started packing his bike paraphernalia Christmas night. The rest doesn’t matter.” Welcoming the distraction from her post-trauma visions, Hannah filled a mug—also evergreen—with coffee. “He wants to get in shape for a big race in California in late January.”

  Beth looked up from the worktable. “You should go out there for the race. While you’re at it, you can make Sean take you shopping on Rodeo Drive.”

  Hannah laughed as she leaned back against the counter with her coffee. “What on earth would I buy on Rodeo Drive?”

  “Five-hundred-dollar shoes,” Beth said without hesitation.

  “To tramp through snowbanks when I got home? I don’t think so. Toby’s caught up in the excitement of getting to go mountain-biking during the winter. I don’t blame him. At least his host family in California wasn’t scared off by what happened here in November.”

  Beth’s deep turquoise eyes darkened. She’d been on the search-and-rescue team that had gone up Cameron Mountain in November. She’d strapped Devin to a stretcher herself. He’d been injured after Kyle Rigby had taken Devin’s own walking stick from him and beat him with it—but not before Devin was able to warn Nora, giving her a chance to run and almost certainly saving her life.

  “Sean will look after Toby,” Beth said, shoving the tray of plump buttermilk scones into the oven. “He’s every bit the hard-ass mountain man as Elijah is. Or A.J., for that matter.” She shut the oven and grinned. “Hell, or Rose.”

  After two sips, Hannah set her mug on the counter. She’d come to rely on Beth’s restless energy and good humor to help her through the past five weeks. “The Camerons are all mission-oriented types. Not knowing who ordered their father killed and why is tough on all of them.”

  “It won’t last.” Dominique didn’t look up from her bowl of cut fresh fruit as she spoke. “They’ll get their answers.”

  Beth nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, they will.” She pulled open the freezer and turned to Dominique. “Wild blueberry muffins for a cold post-Christmas morning?”

  Dominique, never one for surprises, frowned. “I hadn’t planned on making blueberry muffins.”

  “All the more reason to get out the blueberries,” Beth said, grinning as she reached into the freezer for a container of wild blueberries she and Hannah had picked back in August.

  Dispelling the last of her early-morning visions, Hannah returned to the dining room, just in time to greet Scott Thorne, Beth’s boyfriend, a sta
te trooper and a member of the task force investigating the violence in Black Falls. He was a man with a limited sense of humor, but then again he’d been working night and day since he’d joined Beth hiking up Cameron Mountain in mid-November and had discovered Elijah Cameron standing over Kyle Rigby’s body.

  Scott ordered coffee, which he took to the largest of the café’s tables.

  Zack Harper, Beth’s younger brother and a local firefighter, arrived next and ordered coffee, a cranberry-nut muffin and a scone. “Did Jo get you out running this morning already?” Hannah asked cheerfully. With their Secret Service agent sister back in town, both Zack and Beth liked to complain that Jo was killing them with exercise.

  Zack shook his head. “Grit Taylor did. Guy’s got one leg, and he’s up at oh-dark-thirty to do three miles along the lake.”

  Hannah had met Ryan “Grit” Taylor, a Navy SEAL, several times at the cafe. He and Elijah Cameron had both been wounded in combat in Afghanistan in April, around the same time Elijah’s father had died of the cold in Vermont. Shot in the femoral artery, Elijah had managed to tie a tourniquet on his thigh and save his own life. He’d eventually made a full recovery. Grit’s progress was slower. He had helped find an eyewitness to Alex Bruni’s murder in Washington, D.C., and had joined Elijah in Black Falls after Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall were dead. He’d been back and forth to Washington since mid-November, with no apparent official role in the investigation.

  Zack took his coffee, muffin and scone from Hannah and headed over to Scott’s table. As a firefighter, Zack was primarily interested in the particulars of how Melanie Kendall’s car had blown up. Who’d placed the crude pipe bomb in her car? Who’d set it off? Were there other bombs tucked away in Black Falls for future use?

  Zack and Scott were followed by Jo Harper and Elijah Cameron. Jo, two years older than Beth and a Secret Service agent, happened to be in her hometown in November when Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall had targeted the two teenagers. She and Elijah had stopped them, and Jo had been assigned to the joint federal, state and local task force investigating the tangle of crimes.