Cold River Read online

  Jo might be stuck in Black Falls, Hannah thought, but she was stuck there with Elijah. Their rekindled romance amid the violence in November was the talk of the town.

  Of all the Cameron brothers, Hannah had the easiest relationship with Elijah. “What’s good today?” he asked.

  “Beth and Dominique did all the cooking,” Hannah said, “which means everything’s good.”

  He laughed. “Then I’ll have one of each.”

  Jo rolled her eyes, but she was obviously amused. “He’s trying to learn charm from Sean. Speaking of whom—” She nodded to the main entrance. “Here he is right now.”

  Hannah felt the draft from the open door as Sean walked into the café and approached the glass case. Unable to stop herself, she noted the shape of his shoulders and hips and the cut of his dark hair. He had on his mountain man jacket, not his long black cashmere coat, and, like his older brother, was bareheaded.

  Hannah cleared her throat and saw that Elijah had noticed her sudden awkwardness, but he made no comment. If Jo noticed, she didn’t show it. Hannah handed them two mugs of coffee and two plates with muffins and scones, and they retreated to the table with Zack and Scott. Investigators had made the café a regular stop, but this morning’s gathering was more one of family and friends than anything official, never mind that it included a local firefighter, a state cop and a federal agent.

  And an experienced Special Forces soldier. According to Beth Harper, the shots Elijah had fired to stop Kyle Rigby from killing him, Devin, Nora and Jo on Cameron Mountain five weeks ago had been dead-on.

  Hannah hadn’t been up to the spot yet where her brother had nearly died. She knew she’d go. It was just a question of when.

  Sunlight was spreading into the café, sparkling on the snow-covered river, but it would be dark again by four o’clock. She was aware of how much daylight had leaked out of the shortened winter days.

  Sean eyed the offerings in the glass case. He had flown to Black Falls in November the moment he’d learned about Melanie Kendall and Kyle Rigby and their trail of violence and bloodshed. He’d stayed through Thanksgiving, then returned a few weeks later to spend Christmas with his family. He’d be heading back to California in two days.

  Taking Toby to his host family.

  “I have a list of repairs for you,” Hannah blurted.

  “What kind of repairs?” Sean asked without looking up at her.

  “The place needs work—not fun work, either. Stripping wallpaper, scraping paint, caulking windows. Several windows need to be replaced. There are wiring issues in the upstairs hall.”

  He glanced at her now with a smile. “Wiring issues?”

  She met his gaze. His eyes so reminded her of his father. “I can get Zack Harper to go up and have a look, if you’d like. He doesn’t like a fire hazard.”

  “There’s no fire hazard.”

  “I didn’t say there was. I said Zack—”

  “Anything else?”

  She pivoted, her back to him, and filled a mug from the urn on the counter behind her. Sean was an experienced firefighter himself. He’d left Vermont after college and headed west to realize his dream of becoming a smoke jumper, one of the elite firefighters who parachuted into remote wildfires. For the past decade, he’d tackled one raging fire after another. He and another smoke jumper, a Californian Hannah had never met named Nick Martini, had pooled their resources and invested in a run-down Los Angeles building in a great location. They renovated it, leveraged it, bought more buildings, and now were worth a fortune, although they both still fought wildfires.

  Hannah turned to him with his coffee. “There’s water in the cellar.”

  “There’s been water in that cellar for two hundred years.”

  “Not quite two hundred. The house was only built in 1835.”

  A muscle in Sean’s jaw worked. She didn’t know if he was amused or irritated—or both. “All right,” he said. “I’ll have a look.”

  “I looked. I’m not an expert, but I can recognize water on a cellar floor when I see it.”

  His very blue eyes leveled on her. “Sleep at all last night, Hannah?”

  She ignored his question as well as the flutter in the pit of her stomach and let her voice soften. “I have the list upstairs. I can fetch it when things quiet down.”

  “Ah. Please do.”

  He took his coffee and sat across from Elijah, facing Hannah behind the glass case. She could feel the focus as well as the frustration of the men and one woman at the table. In the first frenetic days of the investigation, everyone had hoped answers would come quickly. They hadn’t. They still didn’t know who had hired Kyle and Melanie to kill Drew Cameron and make his death look like an accident and why. How had they known he’d be on the mountain? How had they known where he’d be on the mountain?

  What had he known about them and their network of killers?

  How was Drew’s murder connected to the hit-and-run murder of Ambassador Bruni seven months later?

  How many murders was this network of paid assassins responsible for?

  How many killers were still out there, and who were their next targets?

  As far as Hannah could see, the law enforcement agencies working on the investigation were as determined and unyielding now as they had been five weeks ago. They’d put together time lines and maps, figured out the movements of perpetrators, victims and possible victims—not just in Black Falls and Washington but throughout the U.S. and even internationally.

  Hannah also understood that everyone in town was hoping for a break in the investigation that would take it in a new direction—preferably away from Black Falls.

  She busied herself going back and forth to the kitchen for fresh, warm scones and muffins—Beth had indeed talked Dominique into making wild blueberry muffins—and arranging them on the shelves of the glass case.

  She noticed Sean stiffen visibly at the table, his attention directed toward the café’s main entrance.

  Uneasy, Hannah followed his gaze.

  She saw what was wrong.

  Bowie O’Rourke, out of jail and back in Black Falls, had entered the café for the first time since his arrest two weeks before Drew Cameron was murdered.

  Three

  Hannah placed the blueberry muffins inside the glass case and tried to focus on their smell, the smell of coffee, the sounds of the radiators clanking against the winter cold.

  “Hey, Hannah,” Bowie said as he walked over to her.

  She stood up. “Bowie. It’s been a long time.”

  “I heard you were looking for me.”

  She glanced at the table of law enforcement officers, Camerons and one firefighter and saw they all were eyeing the man in front of her. She could hardly blame them. After getting out of jail, Bowie worked in Burlington through the summer and fall. In late November, he’d taken a job repairing a stone culvert in a cemetery down the road from Black Falls Lodge, and just before Christmas, he’d returned to his place on the river.

  Hannah hadn’t actually seen or spoken to him since his return to Black Falls. She’d only heard rumors about him. She’d stopped at the cemetery late yesterday looking for him, but he hadn’t been there. The elderly couple who lived across the road from the cemetery must have mentioned her to Bowie, and now here he was.

  His timing couldn’t have been worse.

  “I’d have called,” she said, “but you don’t have a phone.”

  “Correct. No phone—no landline, no cell phone.”

  “No e-mail, either.”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. He was wearing his habitual down vest and orange sweatshirt. “I get by without any of them. What can I do for you?”

  “Water’s getting in the cellar here.” She avoided even glancing in Sean’s direction. “I was wondering if you could check it out.”

  Bowie’s brown eyes were without expression. “What does your landlord have to say?”

  “He lives in California. I look after the place in exchange
for a break in rent.”

  “I worked on the cellar here with your father when I was a kid. Whatever needs to be done, it’ll either be in the part we didn’t work on or it won’t be much. I’m on my way to a job now. I’ll come by later.”

  Hannah nodded. “Thanks, Bowie. Can I get you anything?”

  He grinned at her suddenly. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. What’s the difference between a blueberry muffin I make in my kitchen and one we make here?”

  “One’s free and the other isn’t.”

  She laughed and grabbed a muffin she’d accidentally broken in half. He wouldn’t accept anything that smacked of charity. “Here, take this one. I didn’t make it, though. Beth and Dominique did.”

  “Even better.” He pointed to the coffee urn behind her. “I’ll take a coffee to go. I’ll pay for it. Regular coffee. Don’t give me coffee with raspberry flavoring or something in it.”

  She filled a large to-go cup and handed it to him. He left money on the counter and walked over to the small coffee station. He added two sugars to his cup and put on a lid. As he reached for a napkin for his muffin, he addressed the gathering at the large table. “I heard about Drew. I know it’s a tough loss. He always tried to give everyone a fair shake.”

  Elijah tilted back in his chair. “Appreciate the thought.”

  If a wisecrack entered Bowie’s head, he had the self-control—or the survival instinct—to keep it to himself. “See you around. I have to get to work.”

  “Bowie,” Jo said, rising, “I hear you’ve moved back to town in the past few days. Why now?”

  “I never left. My place here’s my legal address.”

  Jo bristled visibly, but Bowie just turned and walked out the front door of the café, the door thudding softly behind him.

  Hannah didn’t wait for Jo or the men at the table to pounce. She ducked through the swinging door to the kitchen, untying her apron and hanging it on a hook. She ignored Beth’s and Dominique’s looks of concern, not stopping until she was through the hall door and in the mudroom.

  Seeing Bowie. His past. Her past.

  It was time, and she knew it. She was haunted by questions. Bowie. Drew Cameron. The old cellar hole on Cameron Mountain.

  She had to know.

  She reached for Devin’s empty daypack on the floor in a corner. He’d had it with him on the mountain in November. He’d tried to do everything right and still he’d almost been killed.

  Hannah yanked open a closet door and pulled out energy bars, a water bottle, a flashlight, waterproof matches, trash bags that could be used as an emergency shelter—she grabbed everything she could think of to take on a winter hike and shoved it into the pack.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Hannah was so startled, she dropped the pack on the floor. But it was Devin, not Jo Harper or a Cameron. Not Sean. She picked up the pack. “I’m getting ready for a hike.”

  Her brother frowned at her. Always thin, he’d lost weight in the weeks since his ordeal on Cameron Mountain, but he was up and showered and dressed, not lying in bed staring at the ceiling. His eyes, as pale a blue as hers, showed the strain of the past weeks as he took in her pack, her obviously agitated state. “Where are you going?”

  She shut the closet door. “Cameron Mountain.”

  Devin didn’t respond.

  She lifted her winter jacket from a hook by the back door. It wasn’t suited for a prolonged hike in late December, but she’d compensate with proper layers that would protect her from the elements. Drew Cameron hadn’t succumbed to hypothermia because he wasn’t prepared for the conditions on the mountain, even in the worse-than-expected April snowstorm. He’d succumbed because Melanie Kendall and Kyle Rigby had killed him. They’d made sure he slipped into hypothermia. As his body temperature continued to drop, he would have become increasingly disoriented and confused, stumbling around, until he finally lay down in the freshly fallen spring snow and didn’t get up again.

  Hannah shrugged on her jacket as her brother frowned at her. “You’re going to Drew’s cabin.” His tone was without emotion, but his face had lost color. “Aren’t you?”

  “If I can find it. I think I can.”

  Devin’s breathing was shallow. “I haven’t been back up there.”

  Hannah touched his rail-thin upper arm. “When you’re ready, we’ll all go. You, Toby, me.”

  “Who’s going with you?”

  She grabbed a pair of ski poles and snowshoes she’d picked up at a yard sale. “No one.”

  “What, are you crazy? You can’t go alone.”

  “The Camerons would have my head for hiking alone, I know—especially Elijah. I’ll be fine. I’ll take the falls trail. It’s longer than the trail up the back of the mountain, but it’s easier, and I’ll be able to use my cell phone more of the way. Trust me, I won’t be lingering up there.”

  “Hannah,” Devin said, an edge of worry creeping into his voice, “what if whoever hired those two to kill Nora and me follows you up there?”

  “The police have already searched Drew’s cabin and the surrounding area. It was a crime scene, Dev. Whatever bad guys are still on the loose aren’t going to care if I go up and take a look.”

  “I can go with you,” her brother said simply.

  “Are you supposed to work this morning?”

  “Just for a few hours. I can call A.J.—”

  She shook her head. “Go on to work, Dev. Don’t worry about me. I need to get moving or I’ll run out of daylight before I can get back here.” She opened the back door, barely noticed the rush of cold air. “The Robinsons invited me to dinner tonight. I’ll be back in plenty of time to get ready.”

  Everett Robinson was a Vermont district court judge and her friend and mentor, and Hannah suspected he’d push her at dinner to describe her plans for studying for the bar. Thanksgiving and Christmas were behind them. New Year’s was almost over. He’d want her to get serious.

  Devin still looked uneasy but didn’t try to stop her. She headed out back and followed the icy stone walk through a white-painted wooden gate to the driveway.

  Elijah Cameron’s truck was parked very close to her beat-up car, but before she could get annoyed at his nerve for not parking in the street, she realized Sean must have borrowed the truck from his older brother.

  And since Sean owned the place, he could park wherever he wanted.

  She managed to maneuver her way out of the driveway without scratching either vehicle and headed up Main Street past the green toward the back road up to Cameron Mountain.

  After the bar fight in March, Bowie had slipped out the back before the police arrived at O’Rourke’s. Drew Cameron had gone out to the hollow the next morning to find him.

  Hannah was already there.

  Drew had tried to talk her into going back to town. She hadn’t listened. Instead she’d led him through the woods out to an old cellar hole down by the river. It was where Bowie had always gone to escape his drunken father. As she and Drew picked their way through the mud and wet snow, he had moved steadily, no sign the uneven terrain or conditions bothered him in his late seventies.

  “In the old days,” he’d said, “you could have a scuffle in a bar, and if no one was seriously hurt, all was forgotten. Lessons were learned. People figured out who they could mess with and who they couldn’t. Nowadays…” He’d shrugged, not finishing his thought. “Bowie’s been in trouble before. He knows what he has to do.”

  They’d found him standing in the mud at the edge of the cellar hole. The outer foundation wall and the caved-in chimney were all that remained of the tiny, original nineteenth-century house. His back to them, Bowie stared through the trees down at the river, the water high with runoff from the melting snow in the mountains and huge chunks of ice up on the banks as spring slowly came to Vermont.

  “Wes Harper has a warrant for your arrest,” Drew said. “He’s on his way.”

  “Sean and Elijah and A.J. weren’t involv
ed. The three of them can finish any fight anyone starts.”

  Drew nodded thoughtfully. “They can. So can you. That’s not the point, though, is it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “They gave statements. Hannah here did, too.”

  Bowie continued to stare at the river. “I’ll go.” He’d turned to Drew. “Give me a ten-minute head start. I don’t want Hannah to see.” Then he’d turned to her. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Sure, Bowie. I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “If I hadn’t been there, none of this would have happened.”

  “You don’t know that,” he’d said, and started up the mix of snow and mud toward the road.

  Drew put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  She’d managed a smile. “Not in front of a Cameron.”

  “Sean’s going back to California in the morning. The police have his statement.”

  “Do you want me to pack him some scones?”

  She immediately regretted her bite of sarcasm. Drew dropped his hand back to his side and didn’t smile. When he’d first heard about Three Sisters Café, he hadn’t understood the day-to-day appeal of things like hand-ground coffee, scones and “comfort food” that could be made at home. Nonetheless, he’d been the café’s first customer. He’d ordered a buttermilk scone and wished the three “sisters” well, leaving a ten-dollar tip and going on his way, never to return.

  His eyes—the same riveting blue as the eyes of all four of his children—had stayed on Hannah that cold March morning as if he could see right through her to all her fears and secrets. She’d noticed the lines in his face, the shape of his jaw that she’d noticed more in A.J. than any of his other children.

  “You’ll make a good prosecutor,” he’d said. “You’re a gentle soul who believes in getting to the truth, but that’s not why. You don’t let your emotions dictate your actions.”