Cold Ridge

Ty shook his head, grinning to himself. He and Hank had damn near become brothers-in-law. They would have, if Ty had gone ahead and married Carine in February. Instead, he’d cut and run.

It was the only time in his life he’d ever cut and run.

“Have you decided whether or not you’re selling the house?” Gus asked him.

Ty pulled himself from his darkening thoughts. “No. I haven’t decided, I mean.”

He’d been on assignment overseas when his mother took a walk in the meadow and died of a massive stroke. Carine had found her and tracked him down to make sure he got the news, to tell him his mother had painted that morning and died in the lupine she’d so loved. But Saskia North had never really fit in with the locals, and few in Cold Ridge knew much about her, beyond her skills as a painter and a weaver—and her failings as a mother.

“You should sell it,” Gus said. “There’s nothing for you here, not anymore. What do you want with this place? You’re never here long enough to fix it up. Basic maintenance isn’t enough. It’ll fall down around your ears before too long.”

Now that Ty had broken Carine’s heart, Gus wanted him to clear out of Cold Ridge altogether. The man made no secret of it. It hadn’t always been that way, but Ty knew that was before and this was now. To Gus, Carine was still the little girl he’d loved and protected since she was three years old—the little girl whose parents he’d helped carry off Cold Ridge.

People make mistakes.

It was the way life was. You make mistakes, you try to correct them.

North frowned at a strange ringing sound, then watched Gus grimace and pull a cell phone out of his back pocket. He pointed the cell phone at North. “Just shut the hell up. I’ve never used it to call for someone to come rescue me.” Then he clicked the receive button and said, “Yeah, Gus here.” His face lost color, and he got to his feet. “Slow down, honey. Slow down. What—” He listened some more, pacing, obviously trying to stay calm. “Do you want me to come down there? Are you okay? Carine—” He all but threw the phone into the fire. “Goddamn it!”

Ty fell back on his training and experience to stay calm. “Service kick out on you?” He kept his voice neutral, careful not to say anything that would further provoke Gus, further upset him. “It does that. The mountains.”

Gus raked a hand through his gray, brittle hair. “That was Carine.”

Ty felt a tightening in his throat. “I thought so.”

“She—” He sucked in a sharp, angry breath. “Damn it, North, I hate it that she’s in Boston. With Antonia and Hank married, she’s alone there now for the most part. And, goddamn it, she doesn’t belong there.”

North didn’t argue. “You’re right, Gus. What happened?”

Tears rose in the older man’s eyes, a reminder of the years he’d invested in his brother’s three children. His own parents couldn’t take them on—they were shattered by the untimely deaths of their older son and daughter-in-law and had chronic health problems. It was Gus who’d made the emotional commitment at age twenty to raise his nieces and nephew. Ty thought of the sacrifices, the physical toll, it all had taken. For thirty years, Gus Winter had put the needs of Nate, Antonia and Carine ahead of his own. He was the only one who didn’t know it.

“Gus?”

“There was a shooting. A murder. She found the body. Christ, after last fall—”

“Where was she?”

“At work. She’s photographing the renovations on that old house the Rancourts bought on Commonwealth Avenue. She went out for a latte—Christ. That’s what she just said. Gus, I went out for a latte. When she got back, she found a man dead on the library floor.” Gus snatched up his beer bottle and dumped the balance out in the sink. “She didn’t want me to hear about it on the news.”

“Did she say who the victim was?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t have a chance. I’ll go home and call her.” He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, and when North started to his feet, Gus, refusing to look at him, added abruptly, “It’s not your problem.”

“All right. Sure, Gus. If you need me for anything—”

“I won’t.”

Ty didn’t follow him out, but he was tempted. He pulled his chair over to the fire and let the hot flames warm his feet. He still had on his hiking socks. It felt good to get out of his boots. One of the prep-school boys needed to be carried off the ridge in a litter. The other two responded to on-site treatment, warm duds and warm liquids, and were able to walk down on their own. Gus didn’t think they were contrite enough. But Gus had been in a bad mood for months. For good reason. Antonia’s wedding had temporarily lifted his spirits, but North’s return to Cold Ridge had plunged him back into a black mood.

The old house seemed huge and empty around him, the late afternoon wind rattling the windows. It got dark early now. November. No more daylight savings. North put a log on the fire. The fireplace supposedly was made from stone that Abraham Winter had pulled off the ridge when he carved the main ridge trail, still almost intact, almost two hundred years ago.

Ty felt the flames hot on his face. His mother had never minded living out here, even after he’d gone into the air force and she lived in the big house all alone. She said she was proud of him, but he doubted she really knew what the hell a PJ did.

“I understand you,” she used to say. “I understand you completely.”

Whether she did or didn’t, Ty had no idea, but he had never come close to understanding her. When she died, she’d left him the house and fifty acres, which he’d expected.

A trust fund. He used to make fun of people with trust funds.

For five years, he hadn’t touched a dime of it except what he needed to hang on to the house.

He lifted his gaze to the oil painting his mother had done in those solitary years here. It depicted the house and the meadow on an early summer day, daises in bloom. She hadn’t put Cold Ridge in it. She’d never said why. As far as he knew, she’d never climbed any of the hundreds of trails in the White Mountains.

He wanted to call Carine. He wanted to be in Boston. Now.

His telephone rang. His hard line. He thought it might be Gus, changing his mind about wanting to shut him out. He got up from the fire and picked up the extension on the wall next to the refrigerator.

“North? It’s Carrera.” Manny Carrera’s normally steady, unflappable voice sounded stressed, tightly controlled. “I’ve got a problem. I need you here.”

“D.C.?”

“Boston.”

North didn’t let himself react. “Why Boston?”

“I flew up here last night to talk to Sterling Rancourt about Louis Sanborn, his new security hire. By the time I got to Sanborn, he was dead.”

“Manny—”

He took a breath. “You’ve heard.”

“Carine just called Gus. I don’t have the details. She found this guy shot to death? What happened? Where the hell were you?”

“There. I don’t want to get into it now. We both gave statements to the police. They want me to stick around in case they have more questions. Which they will. I figure I don’t have long before they slap on the cuffs.”

“Cuffs? Manny, you didn’t kill this guy—”

“It’s not that simple.”

North stared out the kitchen window into the darkness. The fire crackled behind him. Manny Carrera had surprised everyone when he retired from active duty in August, but North didn’t fault him. Manny had done his bit, and he had different priorities nowadays: a son who’d almost died and a wife who was on edge.

But North wasn’t going to coddle him. Manny would hate that. “What’s not simple? You either killed him or you didn’t kill him.”

“I’m not going there with you.”

“Then what about Carine?”

“She doesn’t know the police have their eye on me. When she finds out—”