Echo Lake

“Alpha dog, Vic.”

Vic scowled and headed back into the kitchen. Rohan sat on Brody’s foot, looking irresistible. Brody pointed the newspaper at him. “No more messing on the floor, you hear?”

Whether Rohan was worn-out or heard something authoritative in Brody’s voice, the puppy sat politely, as if he were the best-minding golden retriever in the world.

“Good dog,” Brody said.

Rohan responded by diving face-first into his water bowl and then licking Brody’s hand as he squatted down to clean up the mess. When he finished, Rohan had curled up in his bed, all innocence.

Brody took a picture and sent it to Greg.

Meet Rohan.

Greg texted him back immediately.

All hope is lost.

Brody was surprised to find Adrienne standing in the driveway, looking at the stars. She must have gone out through the front. “I can’t resist the night sky here,” she said, crossing her arms on her chest. She had on a coat and hat but no gloves. “There isn’t much ambient light to spoil the stars. It’s freezing, though. I think this is the coldest it’s been since I’ve been here.”

“It’s supposed to drop below zero tonight.”

“I can’t remember the last time I was in below-zero temperatures.”

“You sound excited.”

She laughed. “I guess I am. Vic’s never stayed here through an entire winter. He says he likes winter, but I wonder if he’ll end up buying a condo in Florida.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Not well at all. He goes way back with my parents. I looked him up one day when we were both in New York, and we hit it off. Next thing, I’m house-sitting.”

“When was this meeting in New York?”

“November.” She shot him a quick look. “Easy, there. It was just lunch. Vic didn’t pass me any state secrets.”

Brody smiled. “That’s good.”

“We got to talking about wine, and he mentioned he’d like to know more about wine now that he was retiring to his country house in Knights Bridge. I’d never heard of Knights Bridge.” She stuffed her bare hands under her arms, presumably to keep them warm. “Vic says you’re like a son to him. He’s relaxed since you got here, even with Rohan’s escape this afternoon. He’s been keyed up. He won’t tell me why.”

Brody buttoned his jacket, trying to appear casual. He wanted to get a read on Adrienne without alarming her. “Vic’s had an intense job for a lot of years.”

“You’d know more about that than I would. He doesn’t talk about his past with me, or with Heather, that I’ve been able to see.” There was no trace of criticism in her tone. “He’s been great to me, though. I’m not broke or desperate or anything, but I’m between apartments.”

“Your work doesn’t tie you to an office,” Brody said.

“Exactly. I have a freedom of lifestyle that I’m taking advantage of in a variety of ways. Fortunately, I have friends all over the place who let me stay with them. I help with things like wine tastings and stocking wine cellars.” She gave an easy smile. “I always bring a few bottles of my favorite wines.”

Brody looked up at the spray of stars in the black sky. “It’s quiet here. Do you like the quiet?”

“Right now I do. Vic’s excited about renovations, but I think retirement has taken him by surprise. It’s one thing to have it figured out intellectually. It’s another to experience it. He’s used to a fair amount of drama. There’s not much drama around here.”

“Small towns often seem sleepier than they are.”

“Well, there might be local dramas. People are people, after all. I doubt international diplomacy is ever at stake.”

Brody shrugged without answering. He pointed to the dark sky. “Nightfall comes early this time of year. Plans for the evening?”

“Vic and I were going to make dinner together, but the hors d’oeuvres filled us up. An early night with a book sounds good to me. The comforter on my bed is to die for. Fluffy goose down. I snuggle under it and read until my eyes can’t stay open. It’s a luxury, that kind of night.” She shivered. “It’s almost always colder than I expect when I come outside. You’re welcome to help yourself to any food you want, of course. I stocked the pantry.”

“Thanks. I’m not hungry, either.”

“Do you cook?”

“Not well, but I can chop, slice and clean.”

Adrienne turned to him, the light from the back door catching her dark eyes. “I will keep that in mind.”

“I can set a table, too. I even know my wineglasses.”

“Vic makes it easy. He only has one kind.”

“You’ll be correcting that?”

She laughed. “Absolutely.” She hunched her shoulders. “I’ll say good-night. I’m freezing.”

Brody waited as she dashed up the back steps and went inside. It was damn cold, but it felt good to him. He didn’t have a good sense of Adrienne Portale and her reasons for house-sitting in Knights Bridge, but he hadn’t found anything suspicious, never mind alarming, in their conversation about Vic, wine and dinner.

He took the shoveled walk to the guesthouse but didn’t go inside, instead heading through the snow down to the lake. The stars were out in full force now, penetrating the darkness and creating shadows in the woods and on the lake. He could see Heather’s footprints from her Rohan rescue. He pictured her climbing up from the brook with the puppy in her arms, her pant leg soaked, her scarf dangling, one glove. She’d been focused and determined, and she hadn’t needed his help.

He ducked past white pines to the lakeshore. A breeze whistled in the clear night air. He remembered standing in this spot as a boy, waiting for the stars to come out, imagining being on a different planet—in a different place. He hadn’t hated Knights Bridge then. He’d wanted to go places, see things, do things, get out in the world.

He’d done that in spades, and now here he was again, on the shore of Echo Lake. He hadn’t lied. He had dreamed about Echo Lake in the days before Vic’s call. He’d just returned to the US to begin an extended home leave, and it had struck him that he had no real home, except for his land in Knights Bridge—and it wasn’t home. He’d picked up his car and considered dividing his time between visits with his mother in Orlando and his father in Key West.

He felt the cold sting his face and ears. He gritted his teeth. Damn. He was a tough federal agent. He’d endured all sorts of extreme conditions. He could handle a southern New England January evening.

He turned away from the lake and walked up to the guesthouse. He’d had a rough few months on the job, and being back in Knights Bridge—running into Heather, even if she wasn’t one of the Sloan brothers—was messing with his head. He didn’t like digging into his emotions. Didn’t want to go there. Thinking about the past wouldn’t help him size up what was going on with Vic. So far, it seemed as though he was in the throes of adjusting to retirement and making mountains out of molehills. Brody wasn’t even sure there were any molehills, never mind mountains.

He went into the guesthouse through the side door. The two-bedroom cottage was solid and only about forty years old, a late addition to the original 1912 estate. It needed work, but not as desperately as the main house. He didn’t care one way or the other. It suited his purposes. He liked keeping some distance between him and Vic, and time alone, even here, with the past so near, worked for him right now. He hadn’t been back in the US in months, and his mind was still thousands of miles away in North Africa and his unfinished business there.

He filled the wood box and started a fire in the woodstove. Its crackling was the only sound in the place. He stood at the windows and looked out at the night sky. His mother loved stars and had pointed out various constellations to him when he was a kid. It wasn’t until he was in middle school that he’d realized her names were all of her own creation and not the actual names. Eric Sloan had told him. “Dude, that’s not Camel Head. That’s Orion. There is no Camel Head constellation.”

Brody had felt like a dumbass. At first he’d blamed his mother for lying to him, but she hadn’t lied. She’d made up her own names because she didn’t know the real ones—couldn’t sort herself out enough to go to the library and find out—and needed something to grab on to for herself, and maybe for her only son, too. She’d been restless and depressed, hating her life, hating Knights Bridge, and by his fourteenth birthday, Mary Hancock had left him and his father.

Brody hadn’t told Eric he’d gotten Camel Head from his mother. He’d covered for her.

That was what he was good at—watching people’s backs.

She’d loved Echo Lake itself, though. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, Brody. I can’t imagine any place prettier than right here, even if it’s not for me.”