Cold Ridge

“She’ll want to spring you.”

Carine had always liked Manny Carrera. Everyone did. He’d show up in Cold Ridge from time to time for a little hiking, fishing and snowshoeing. Even Gus liked Manny. The air force tried to tap him as a PJ instructor, but he was determined to retire and go into business for himself. He was in the process of getting a Washington-based outfit off the ground, which trained individuals and companies in a broad range of emergency skills and procedures—not just self-defense and how to treat the injured, but how to think, how to respond in a crisis, before a crisis. He wanted his clients trained, prepared, able to help themselves and others if something happened. Ty didn’t know how it was going or what kind of businessman Manny would make. Manny Carrera was a hard-ass, but he was fair, scrupulous and, at heart, a natural optimist.

He also had the skills and worldwide connections to disappear before the police got to him—just melt away. If he put his mind to it, he could probably even gnaw his way out of a jail cell.

Except he had a fourteen-year-old son with severe asthma and allergies at the prep school just outside the picturesque village of Cold Ridge.

“What do you want me to do?” Ty asked.

“Make sure Carine doesn’t pursue this thing. She knew Louis Sanborn. She liked him. She found him dead. Plus,” Manny added pointedly, “she had her life pulled out from under her not that long ago. She’s ripe for trouble.”

“She’s a Winter, Manny. She’s always ripe for trouble.” What Manny didn’t say—what he didn’t need to say—was that Ty was the one who’d pulled her life out from under her. “Is she in danger?”

“Five minutes sooner, she’d have walked in on a murder. Anything could have happened. For all I know, it still could. Just keep an eye on her, North. That’s all I’m asking.”

Ty was silent a moment. “You’re not telling me everything.”

Manny almost laughed. “Hell, North, I’m not telling you anything.” But any humor faded, and he asked seriously, “You’ll do it?”

As if there was a question. “If Gus doesn’t let all the air out of my tires before I can get there. If Carine doesn’t kill me when I do. I haven’t seen her since I left her at the altar.” North sighed heavily, feeling the fatigue from his long day. He hadn’t quite left her at the altar. At least he’d come to his senses and called off their wedding a full week in advance. It could have been worse, not that anyone else saw it that way. “Manny, Jesus. Murder—what the hell’s going on?”

“Looks like Carine and I are shit magnets these days. Jesus. Look, Ty. She found a dead man this afternoon. I should have made sure that didn’t happen. I didn’t, so now I’m asking you to do what you can to make it right.” He groaned to himself. “Ah, screw it. You’re on a need-to-know basis. It’s the best I can do. Just get down here.”

“I’ll be there tonight.”

Manny hesitated. “I saw the story about the rescue you did today on the news. My son—”

“Eric wasn’t involved. He’s only a freshman. These guys are seniors.”

“Geniuses, from the sounds of it.”

“Ivy League material. They’ve got their applications in. Watch. They’ll all be running the show when we’re in the home.”

“Scary thought. Ty—”

“Forget it. It’s okay.”

But Manny Carrera said it, anyway. “I know I’m asking a lot. Thanks.”

Three

After throwing up for a third time, Carine staggered into her kitchen. She hoped that was the last of it. Nerves, she thought. Fear, disgust, grief, horror. Poor Louis. Dead. Murdered. Why?

She found the little bag of oyster crackers the Boston Police Department detective had given her when she’d almost passed out on him. He’d said she looked green. At least she hadn’t thrown up then. She’d given her statement, read it, signed it and, when told she could leave, got a cab and came straight back to her apartment. She didn’t know what else to do. The Rancourts were with the police. Manny was with the police. And Louis Sanborn was dead, his body transported to wherever the medical examiners performed autopsies.

Her hands trembled, and she couldn’t get a good hold on the package of crackers to pull it open. Finally, she grabbed a fork from the strainer and stabbed the cellophane, and little round crackers popped out all over her counter and floor.

“Damn it!”

She picked one up off the floor and nibbled on it, making herself fill her kettle with water and set it on the stove for tea. It wasn’t much of a stove—it wasn’t much of an apartment. It was a one-bedroom unit on a narrow, crooked street off Inman Square in Cambridge, an eclectic neighborhood of working-class families, students and professionals. She’d painted the walls and her flea-market furnishings with a mix of mango, lime green, raspberry, various shades of blue and violet, whatever she thought would be cheerful and not remind her of the rich, woodsy colors of her log cabin in Cold Ridge.

The tiny cracker didn’t sit well in her stomach. Her mouth was dry. She was wrung out. She’d cried, she’d screamed, she’d barfed. Yep. What a rock she was. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t embarrassed by her reaction—she didn’t ever want to get used to coming upon a murder.

Manny Carrera had called the police by the time she got out to the street. He wouldn’t tell her a thing—why he was there, what he saw, nothing. Just that he was consulting for the Rancourts, whatever that meant. Then the police arrived, as well as Sterling and Jodie, their security chief, the media, onlookers. Carine and Manny were separated. He was as self-contained as ever. Definitely a rock.

“Think of it,” he’d said in the minutes before the police got there, “if you’d married North, you could be in flea-infested military housing right now.”

“Manny…I knew Louis. He—he was shot, wasn’t he? Murdered?”

“Carine, something you need to keep in mind.”

He hesitated, but she prodded him. “What?”

“Louis Sanborn wasn’t a nice man.”

He didn’t have a chance to elaborate, and she’d repeated his words to the detective when he asked her what she and Manny had talked about.

Louis Sanborn wasn’t a nice man.

Manny could have meant anything. It didn’t have to be ominous.

She switched off her kettle. Even tea wasn’t going to stay down. She wished she hadn’t called Gus. Talking to him was comforting on one level, because he was unconditionally on her side, but, on another level, it added to her tension—because he’d wanted to head to Boston. It’d been a near thing to keep him up north. She’d called him for moral support. She needed time to pull herself together. Gus would hover. He’d scowl at her living accommodations. He’d tell her she didn’t belong in the city.

He’d make her soup. He’d listen to her for as long as she wanted to talk.

Her doorbell rang, the noise sprouting an instant headache. Carine knew she was dehydrated, her reserves exhausted, but her first-floor apartment didn’t have an intercom or buzzer, which meant she had to stagger out to the front hall. Her old tenement building had three floors, with two apartments on each floor and a main door that creaked and stuck half the time, making it easy for people to just walk in.

Her sister gave her an encouraging smile and wave through the smudged glass panel. When Carine pulled open the heavy door, Antonia grimaced and shook her head. “Good God, you look awful.”

“Is that what you say to all your ER patients? I’ve been throwing up.”

Antonia felt her sister’s forehead, then grabbed her wrist. “No fever. Your pulse is a bit fast. Are you keeping anything down?”

“I just ate an oyster cracker.”

“Try a little flat Coke.”

“I don’t have any.”

Carine led her sister back to her apartment, but Antonia’s tight frown only worsened when she looked around at the kitchen and the spilled crackers. “Half the rats in Boston live better than you do.”

“What? It’s a great apartment.”

Antonia sighed. She was dressed elegantly in a black top and pants and a pumpkin-colored coat that brought out the softer tones of her auburn hair. It was shorter than Carine’s, not as dark. “You can only do so much with paint,” she said. “Why don’t you go home? Let Gus fuss over you.”

“I live here now. Don’t you remember your hand-to-mouth years in medical school?”

“That’s the point. I was in medical school. You’re just—I don’t know what you’re doing. Marking time.” She squatted down and scooped up a handful of the crackers, dumping them in the trash. “You weren’t going to eat them off the floor, were you?”