Cold Ridge

“Manny’s not hired muscle. He—”

“I know, Val. Manny’s one of the best at what he does.”

“He’s demeaning himself, working for those phonies. He should be training new PJs,” she said half under her breath, then sighed. “Just what Manny needed, a couple of wannabe types sucking him in. What the hell’s the matter with him?”

“Val.”

She glanced over at the pilot-turned-senator, the man whose skill and quick thinking as a Pave Hawk pilot had saved more than one life in his air force career. He said he wanted to work toward the common good as a senator. Hank Callahan had steel nerves and a kind heart, but right now, Val could sense his uneasiness. “What is it, Hank?”

“Manny should call you—”

“Manny’s not going to call me. He won’t want me to worry.”

Hank sighed. “Val, the police think he’s their man. You need to prepare yourself if he’s arrested.”

She couldn’t take in his words. “What?”

Hank said nothing.

She absorbed what he’d said, then made herself stop, breathe and think, not let her first physical reaction get out of control, suck her in to the point where she couldn’t function. It was as if all her nerve endings had been rubbed raw by the months of stress over Eric, how close she’d come to losing her son—and now that he was okay, she could let her emotions run wild. She had to work to keep them in bounds.

There was no way Manny had committed murder. He was a lot of things, but not a murderer. If the police thought they had their man, they were wrong.

It was that simple.

She glanced over at Hank. “Are you reading the tea leaves, or do you know?”

“I know.”

He was a senator, and he was a Callahan. He knew everyone, had contacts everywhere. If he said he knew, he knew. “Carine Winter?”

“Innocent bystander.”

“Manny—should he get a lawyer?”

“He has one.”

Val sank back in her seat, her coffee crawling up her throat. Manny Carrera was her husband. He was in Boston facing a possible murder charge. So much had happened, and all she knew, she’d learned from the newspaper and her friend the senator-elect from Massachusetts.

That bastard.

She cleared her throat, summoning her last shreds of dignity. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Val—”

“Manny’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. If he needs me, he’ll be in touch.” She stared out her window and saw that they were on one of the prettier streets of Arlington now, the last of the autumn leaves glowing yellow in the morning sun. “Let’s go see your beautiful bride and have breakfast. I’m starving.”

Five

Carine tried sleeping late, but that didn’t work, and she finally got up and made herself a bowl of instant oatmeal that tasted more like instant slime. She downed a few spoonfuls, then drank a mug of heavily sugared tea while she pulled on her running clothes. When she didn’t pass out doing her warm-up routine, she decided she might be good for her run.

She did a quarter mile of her one-and-a-half-mile route before she collapsed against a lamppost, kicking it with her heel in disgust. A quarter mile? Pathetic. She was determined to do one-and-a-half miles in under ten minutes and thirty seconds. It wasn’t the distance that got to her—she could run ten miles—it was the time, the speed. But running a mile and a half in ten-and-a-half minutes or less was one of the fitness requirements for the PJ Physical Abilities and Stamina Test, which, if passed, led to a shot at indoctrination. She’d pulled the PAST off the Internet.

Of course, she was a woman, and women didn’t get to be pararescuemen. But she didn’t want to be a PJ—she just wanted to pass the initial fitness test. It was the challenge that drove her. The test included the run, plus swimming twenty-five meters underwater on one breath—she’d damn near drowned the first time she tried that one. Then there was swimming one thousand meters in twenty-six minutes…doing eight chin-ups in a minute…fifty sit-ups in two minutes…fifty push-ups in two minutes…fifty flutter kicks in two minutes. Technically, she was supposed to do the exercises one after another, all within three hours, but she had to cut herself some slack. She was thirty-three, not twenty.

Normally, it was the swimming that killed her. And she hated flutter kicks. Who’d invented flutter kicks? They were torture. But this morning, after yesterday’s shock, she suspected everything on the list would do her in.

She decided to be satisfied she’d been able to keep down her oatmeal.

She trudged back to her apartment, pausing to do a few calf stretches on her porch before heading inside to shower and change clothes. She made short work of it—jeans, sweater, barn coat, ankle boots, camera bag. She doubted she’d be taking any pictures today, but she wanted to go back to the Rancourt house. Provided the police no longer had it marked off as a crime scene, she thought it might help her to see the library again, although it wouldn’t, she knew, erase the memory of Louis. After the incident last fall, she’d returned to the boulder on the hillside and touched the places where the bullets had hit. Real bullets. No wonder she’d been scared. Going back had helped her incorporate what had happened into her experience, accept the reality of it and find a place for it in her memories so it didn’t float around, popping up unexpectedly, inappropriately.

But she’d had Ty with her that day.

She’d parked her car, an ancient Subaru Outback sedan, down the street. She’d gone to the trouble of changing her plates from New Hampshire to Massachusetts and getting a new license, just so she could get a Cambridge resident’s sticker—otherwise, parking was a nightmare. But she didn’t like driving into Boston and took public transportation whenever she could, picking up the Red Line in Central Square, which was a fifteen-minute walk from her apartment. It could be her exercise for the day.

She stopped at a bakery for a cranberry scone and more tea. Her mind was racing with questions and images, but she pushed them back and tried to focus on her scone, her tea, the brisk morning and the other people on the streets. Kids, workers, bag ladies, students. She passed a nursery school class of three-and four-year-olds hanging on to a rope to keep them together, their young teacher skipping along in front of them like the Pied Piper. The kids were laughing, making Carine smile.

She got a seat on a subway car and shut her eyes briefly, letting the rhythms of the rapid-transit line soothe her as the train sped over the Charles River, then back underground. She got off at the Charles Street stop and walked, peeking in the shop windows on the pretty street at the base of Beacon Hill, giving a wistful glance at the corn stalks and pumpkins in front of an upscale flower shop. They reminded her of home.

When she turned down Beacon Street and her cell phone rang, she almost didn’t answer it, then decided if it was Gus and she ignored him, she risked having him send in the National Guard. She hit the receive button and made herself smile, hoping that’d take any lingering strain out of her voice when she said hello.

Gus grunted. “Where are you?”

“Just past the corner of Beacon and Charles.”

“Boston?”

“That’s right,” she said. “What’s up, Gus? How’s the weather in Cold Ridge?”

“Gray. Why aren’t you home with your feet up?”

“I’m on my way to the Rancourt house. I want to see—”

“Carine, for chrissake, they can’t possibly need you today. Why don’t you drive up here for the weekend? Or jump on the train and go visit your brother or your sister for a couple days. They’d love to have you.”

“I’m fine, Gus. I’ve been thinking about it, and I just need to go back there.”

“For what, closure? Give me a break.” But he sighed, and Carine could almost see him in his rustic village shop, amid his canoes and kayaks, his snowshoes and cross-country skis, his trail maps and compasses and high-end hiking clothes and equipment. “The police haven’t arrested anyone for this guy’s murder. You know what that means, don’t you? It means whoever did it is still on the streets.”

“I’ll be careful. Besides, the police and reporters are still bound to be there—and if not them, the Rancourts, their security chief—it’ll be okay.”

“You thought it’d be okay yesterday before you walked into the library, didn’t you?”

“Gus—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Nothing I can do. But I don’t have to like it.”

She heard something in his voice and slowed her pace. “Gus? What?”