US Marshall 01 - Cold Ridge (10 page)

"I don't have any other choice."

"That's just it. You do have a choice."

He brought in more wood while she and Ty did the dishes. Carine washed, dipping her hands into the hot, sudsy water, trying to stay focused on the simple chore, the routines that reminded her of normalcy. She and her sister and brother used to take turns doing the dishes. In his various home improvements, Gus had never seen the need to buy a dishwasher.

She rinsed a handful of silverware under hot water and set it in the dish strainer. "You've seen dead men," she said. "Men you knew."

"Yes," Ty said.

"What do you do?"

He lifted out the silverware into a threadbare towel. "Focus on the job I'm there to do."

"That must be when all the years of training pay off. Do you think Manny misses the work?"

Ty opened a drawer and sorted the dry silverware into their appropriate slots. "I think Manny's eaten up inside."

After they finished the dishes, Carine put on her barn coat, noticing her reflection in the window. She didn't look as raw-nerved and traumatized as she had earlier, but she was exhausted. "It'll be good to sleep in my own bed tonight."

"Sorry, toots." Ty shook his head, shrugging on his brown leather jacket. "You don't have a guest room, and I'm not sleeping on your couch. Been there, done that. I don't fit, even without you."

"Ty-you can't be serious." Once she got to Cold Ridge, she thought she'd be on her own, at most with only Gus's hovering to deal with. "I'm home. I'm safe. It's okay-"

He wasn't listening. "I have three guest rooms, and there's a pullout sofa in the den. You can have your pick."

"I'm not in any danger!"

"Someone broke into your apartment today."

"We don't know that."

"You were first on the scene after a murder yesterday. We do know that. And we know the police haven't made an arrest and are, in fact, barking up the wrong tree for their man. So-" he zipped up his jacket "-it's my house or here with the parrots and the okra."

"Let's not make this Gus's problem."

"Suits me."

She was left to choose between bad and worse- staying with Gus and Stump was clearly worse. At least at North's place, if it came to actually staying there, which she hoped it wouldn't, she'd be within short walking distance of her cabin, and there wouldn't be dog hair on her blankets. "All right. Have it your way."

"I know you're not giving in, Carine," he said cockily. "You're buying time. You think you can talk me out of it before we get to my place. Put yourself in my position. What would you do?"

"Give me a nine-millimeter to put under my pillow."

"You might be good at flutter kicks, but a gun's a different story."

"Gus gave us basic firearms instruction when we were kids. I can shoot." But she didn't want a nine-millimeter-she wanted her life back, and she thought North knew it. "You're in your Three Musketeers mood,

Ty. I'm not going to fight you."

"Because you don't know what happened yesterday."

"No, because I
do
know what happened." Her barn coat, she realized, wasn't warm enough for the dropping nighttime mountain temperatures. "I hope the police don't focus on Manny for too long. Whoever killed Louis-" She swallowed, feeling a fresh wave of uneasiness, even fear. "I don't want anyone else to end up dead. That's all I care about. Just catch whoever killed Louis, and make sure no one else gets hurt."

Ty nodded. "Fair enough."

Gus appeared in the kitchen doorway. "You two leaving? Carine, I'm here if you need me. Got that?"

"I know, Gus. Thanks. I love you."

"Love you, too, kid." His tone hardened. "North? You'll be wanting Carine looking better tomorrow morning, not worse."

A neat trick that'd be, Carine thought, but said nothing as she followed her ex-fiancé outside, the night clear, cold and very dark. But without the ambient light of the city, she could see the stars.

By the time they reached his house, Ty noticed that Carine was ashen, sunken-eyed, drained and distant. He'd watched the energy ooze out of her during their ride out from the village, along the dark, winding road to his place, the ridge outlined against the starlit sky, a full moon creating eerie shadows in the open meadow that surrounded the old brick house her ancestor had built.

He suddenly felt out of his element. What the hell was he doing? Even with the dangers and uncertainties of a combat mission, he would know exactly what was expected of him, exactly what he was supposed to do. Right now, nothing made sense.

Carine was used to his house-she'd been coming there since they were kids. His mother had given her painting lessons, helped to train her artistic eye and encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. As much as odd-duck Saskia North had been a mother to anyone, Ty supposed she'd been one to orphaned Carine Winter.

Carine insisted on carrying her tapestry bag to the end room upstairs and said she could make up the bed herself, but North followed her up, anyway. Her room was next to his mother's old weaving room, which he'd cleared out a couple of years after her death. The different-size looms, the bags and shelves of yarns, the spinning wheel-he had no use for any of it and donated the whole lot to a women's shelter. His mother would sit up there for hours at a time. Her room had a view of the back meadow and the mountains, but she seldom looked out the window. She had a kind of tunnel vision when it came to her work, a concentration so deep, Ty could sneak off as a kid and she wouldn't notice for hours.

He didn't know why the hell he hadn't died up on the ridge. Luck, he supposed. But he'd started to wonder when his luck would run out-how much luck did a person have a right to?

"It's so quiet," Carine said as she set her bag down on the braided rug. "I never really noticed before I moved to the city. One of those things you take for granted, I guess."

"It's supposed to be good weather tomorrow. On the cool side, but maybe we can take a hike."

"That'd be good."

Ty got sheets out of the closet, white ones that had been around forever, and they made the bed together, but Carine looked like she wouldn't last another ten seconds. "Sit," he told her. "Now, before you pass out."

"I've never passed out."

"Don't make tonight the first time."

"You've got your own medical kit downstairs. What do you call it?" She smiled weakly. "Operating room in a rucksack."

"Yeah, sure. If you start pitching your cookies, I can run an IV."

"Is that a medical term? 'Pitching your cookies'?"

"Universally understood."

"I'm fine."

But she sank onto a chair and started shivering, and he tossed her a wool blanket, then threw another one over the bed. He added a down comforter, thinking, for no reason he could fathom, of her and her ab muscles. Flutter kicks. Hell.

"Tomorrow will be better," he told her.

She gazed out the window at the moonlit sky. "I didn't win any battles today."

"No one was fighting with you, Carine."

"It felt that way. Or maybe I'm just fighting myself-or I just wish I had someone to fight with, as a distraction. I don't know. It's weird to be this unfocused. Last fall, at least we had the police out combing the woods for clues. I heard the bullets. Manny saw the guys, even if he couldn't get a description. This thing- it's like chasing a ghost." She paused, tightening the blanket around her. "What about you? Are you okay? Manny's your friend."

"Manny can take care of himself."

"You PJs. Hard-asses. Trained to handle yourselves in any situation, any environment."

"Carine-"

She didn't let him argue with her. "I know, just average guys doing their job. Thanks for coming after me." She got to her feet and looked for a moment as if she might keel over, but she steadied herself, grabbing the bedpost. "I think I'll just brush my teeth and fall into bed."

He wanted to stay with her, but he'd done enough damage for one day. "You know where to find me if you need anything."

He went back downstairs, hearing her shut the door softly behind her. They'd planned to fix up the place after they were married, turn her cabin into a studio. She was so excited about the possibilities of the house, he'd teased her about falling for him because of it.

Never. It could burn down tonight and I'd still love you.

Ty poured himself a glass of Scotch and sat in front of the fireplace, the wind stirring up the acidic smell of the cold ashes. He felt the isolation of the place. Three hours to the south, a man was dead. Murdered. Shot. The police thought Manny had pulled the trigger.

And he was on Carine duty. Manny was the one in Boston under police surveillance. Whatever he was dealing with, he was doing it on his own. His choice.

When he finally headed upstairs, Ty walked down the hall and stood in front of Carine's door, listening in case she was throwing up or crying or cursing him to the rafters, although he didn't know what he'd do if it was crying. The other two he could handle. He'd never been able to take her tears, as rare as they were, as much as he told himself she was stronger because she could cry. He remembered coming upon her in the meadow, sobbing for his mother soon after her death, and even then, when he never thought he'd let himself really fall in love with auburn-haired, sweet-souled Carine Winter, it had undone him.

But he didn't hear anything coming from her room, not even the wind, and he went back down the hall to his own bed.

Val collapsed into bed early, but she didn't sleep for more than an hour at a time. She finally got so frustrated at her racing thoughts, she threw off her blankets and turned on a light, her gaze landing on her wedding picture. Manny was in uniform, so handsome and full of himself. Clean-cut in his maroon beret. Lately, he didn't even shave every day.

She grabbed the picture and hurled it across the room.

He hadn't called.
Bastard, bastard, bastard.

But she was so worried about him, it was making her sick. At least Eric was okay. She'd talked to him, and he sounded saner than she did. And her breakfast with Hank and Antonia had gone well-they'd formally offered her the job. An assistant in the Washington, D.C., offices of a United States senator. It sounded exciting.

"Okay, so you won't stick your head in the oven tonight," she said. "You'll get through this."

Manny. Damn him. Why wouldn't he talk to her?

Because he wanted to protect her. Because she couldn't be trusted not to go off the deep end when faced with the truth, even an artful lie.

Except neither was true. He hadn't called her because he was in trouble, and he was a proud man, independent to a fault. Even if she hadn't turned into a nutcase, he wouldn't have called. He was Manny Carrera being Manny Carrera.

Her shrink had suggested she stop referring to herself as a nutcase and playing fast and loose with phrases like "sticking her head in the oven."

She'd promised she would.

She stepped on a book she'd tossed on the floor after three pages. Tolkien. Bookworm that she was, she'd never gotten hobbits. But Eric had read the
Lord of the Rings
trilogy twice, and she'd promised she'd try again.

So many promises.

Her laundry was still stacked on the bureau. She'd meant to put it away after she got back from her meeting with the Callahans, but she hadn't gotten around to it. No energy. No focus. She'd heated up leftover Thai food and checked the Internet for Boston newspapers and television stations, trying to get an update on Manny's situation. Not much new. No arrests yet-that was something. At least it meant he wasn't in jail.

She wandered into the living room and opened the blinds. Damn. Still. Dark. She glanced at the clock-

4:18. Too early to make coffee.

With a husband in the military, she was accustomed to being on her own-she didn't get spooked. She lay down on the couch and pulled a throw over her, but knew she was too fidgety to sleep. She turned on the television and watched CNN. Nothing much going on in the world. That was probably good. She flipped over to the Weather Channel and got the weather for Europe. She wanted to go to Spain one day. Paris and London didn't interest her as much. Rome might be fun.

At six o'clock, with a mug of hot coffee in her and a sketchy plan of action in mind, she flipped through Manny's address book on the computer and found Nate Winter's number in New York.

He answered on the first ring. She almost hung up, but he was a U.S. marshal and probably the naturally suspicious type. "Nate? It's Valerie Carrera, Manny Carrera's wife. We met at your sister's wedding. Actually, we've met a couple of times-"

"Of course, Val, I remember you." He was polite, almost formal, no doubt because he knew he was talking to the wife of a possible murder suspect. Or maybe because she'd never called him before. "What can I do for you?"

God, she was an idiot. A card-carrying idiot. "Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing. I'm sorry to bother you."

She hung up.

She couldn't ask a U.S. marshal to do a background check on Louis Sanborn on the sly. That just wasn't the way to go. Manny would have her head. Her ass'd be out the door for sure.

She'd have to do it herself.

Carine woke up in the wrong bed. Wrong bed, wrong house.

But she knew where she was. She wasn't disoriented for even half a second as she sat up in the snug, four-poster bed and tried to guess what time it was. Seven? Sunlight angled in through the windowpanes. At least seven.

She imagined her life pre-Tyler North, pre-Boston, pre-Louis Sanborn's murder, when she'd get up in her cabin across the meadow on just such a sun-filled, pleasant morning and make herself a pot of tea and build a fire in her woodstove to take any lingering chill out of the air before she got to work. She loved every aspect of what she did. Assignments from various magazines and journals were her mainstay, but she was selling more and more prints, earning a name for herself at shows, and she had her own Web site and taught nature photography workshops. Before moving to Boston, she'd been putting together plans for a set of New England guidebooks, new specialty cards and her annual nature calendar for a local mountain club.

She viewed her life in the city as a kind of sabbatical, not a permanent move. But she'd felt that way about her log cabin, too, when she moved in five years ago. She hadn't meant to spend the rest of her life there.

After his mother died and Ty decided not to sell the house, he'd asked Carine to check on it when he was away, make sure the yard guys were mowing the lawn, let the cleaning people in, pick up packages. He'd offered to pay her, but she considered herself just being a good neighbor. She had no idea how he could afford to keep up the place-a big house with a shed, a long driveway, fifty acres. The property taxes alone had to be astronomical. Even after they became engaged, she hadn't asked for specifics, which, in a way, summed up their relationship. She hadn't taken care of business. But, she hadn't exactly been thinking straight.

Like yesterday in her apartment, she reminded herself with a groan.

She debated going for a run, then remembered collapsing against the lamppost yesterday morning. Ty would have been on her trail then and must have seen her. She didn't like it that he'd caught her at her most vulnerable, in shock, shattered by what she'd seen. But she didn't have to be professional, distance herself. It wasn't her job to catch the killer.

But a run could wait until she was more secure on her feet.

When she got out of bed, she felt steadier, less stripped raw by her experience. She headed down the hall to the shower, taking her time, washing her hair twice, scrubbing her skin with lavender-scented bath salts left over from her last stay there. She took the time to blow-dry her hair and dressed in her most comfortable pair of jeans and her softest shirt, determined to go easy on herself today in every way she could.

She brought her digital camera downstairs with her and set it on the table then she poured herself a cup of grayish coffee. Jodie Rancourt liked the instant gratification of the digital camera, but Carine had explained her preference for film. It'd be a while before she replaced her 35 mm Nikon and 300 mm zoom lens with a digital camera. But she wasn't resistant to change- she would do whatever worked, whatever got her the right picture.

The coffee was undrinkable. Ty must have made it hours ago. Carine spotted him outside at the woodpile, splitting maul in hand as he whacked a thick chunk of wood into two pieces. He looked relaxed, at home. He deserved this time off, she thought, dumping her coffee in the sink. She knew his military career had been intense during the past nine months-he didn't need to spend his leave making sure she didn't meddle in a murder investigation.

She returned to the table and decided she'd take pictures today. That would reassure everyone she was back in her right mind. She popped out the memory disk she'd used at the Rancourt house and popped in another disk with less memory. Whoever broke in to her apartment yesterday had ignored her less sexy Nikon, but her digital camera might have been too great a temptation if she hadn't brought it into Boston with her that morning.

She slipped the Rancourt disk into an inner coat pocket and headed outside with the camera. The morning was brisk and clear, the frost just beginning to melt on the grass. "You need a dog," she said, joining Ty at the woodpile. "Maybe Stump could father puppies."

He paused, eyeing her as he caught his breath, his eyes greener somehow in the morning light. "I'm never here long enough for a dog, and if I were, I wouldn't get one with any blood relation to Stump. He digs."

"All dogs dig."

"All dogs
don't
dig. All
Gus's
dogs dig."

She smiled. "Gus has never been much of a disciplinarian."

Ty lifted another log into place. He was wearing heavy work gloves, with wood chips and sawdust on his jeans and canvas shirt. She noticed the play of muscles in his forearms. "Your brother called," he said.

"Nate? What did he want?"

"He said Val Carrera called him at the crack of dawn and hung up." He glanced up at her, everything about him intense, single-minded. "What do you suppose that was all about?"

"I have no idea. Did Nate?"

"Nope. He and Antonia talked last night-apparently they decided you were in good hands. Or at least you could be in worse hands. He says Hank and Antonia are hiring Val as an assistant."

"With all her bookstore experience, I think she'd be great at just about anything." Carine didn't know Val Carrera all that well but liked her. "It must be weird for her with Eric away at school. She was so devoted to him when he was sick."

"Still is. She knew she had to pull back." Ty swung the heavy maul idly in one hand. "Nate told me to tell you hi."

"He's not happy about this situation, is he?"

"Hates it. But we all do."

Ty raised the maul, then heaved it down onto the log, splitting it in two, both pieces managing to fly in her direction. She jumped aside, and he grinned at her, shrugged without apology. If she didn't know how to get out of the way when someone was splitting wood by now, she deserved her fate. She felt an urge to grab a maul and have at a chunk of wood herself.

"Nate thinks Louis's murder had something to do with Hank, doesn't he? Newly elected senator, and the Rancourts supported him in the campaign-"

"A lot of people supported him."

"But I'm right?"

"Hank didn't know Louis Sanborn. I told Nate that."

"There, you see? That's my brother, ever one for a conspiracy theory." She moved a few steps out of the sun, which was higher in the sky than she'd expected. She hadn't looked at a clock yet, but it was more like nine, not seven. "I'd like to walk over to my cabin. Gus has supposedly been checking on it, but I think he's been preoccupied with his tropical paradise half bath. Do you want to come with me?"

"Want has nothing to do with it. I'm coming." He leaned the splitter against the shed, a mix of weathered wood and black tarpaper that, like the rest of the place, needed work. "I'll scramble you up some eggs first. Gus brought them by the other night. Apparently there's some new egg lady in town. I think he's sweet on her."

"Gus?"

Ty laughed. "Don't look so shocked."

She jumped up on the counter and watched him while he brewed fresh coffee and made eggs and toast, but he finally said she was in the way and shooed her over to the table. He brought her a steaming plate, then sat down with a mug of black coffee. "Gus has already called this morning, too. The Rancourts rolled in last night. They stopped by his shop this morning to congratulate him on the rescue of the boys from Mount Chester. He thinks they were fishing for what he knew about what happened in Boston."

The Rancourts' twenty-acre property was a rare chunk of private land in that part of the surrounding White Mountain National Forest, up an isolated hill with incredible views and just yards from a seldom-used trail, a spoke off the main Cold Ridge trail.

"Did Gary Turner come with them?" Carine asked. "He's their chief of security-"

"The one with the skin and the missing fingers?"

She nodded. "You were paying attention yesterday."

"Always. Gus didn't mention him."

Carine hid her relief. She didn't want to have to deal with the Rancourts, much less Gary Turner. "Turner encouraged me to come up here. So did Sterling. He and Jodie must have decided they liked the idea themselves. Well, I suppose it's their house. They can come and go as they please."

"You don't much care for them, do you? Why'd you take the job if you don't like them?"

She shrugged. "I don't
dislike
them. I'm neutral."

Ty laughed, getting to his feet. "Yeah, right. Define
neutral.
I'm ready to go whenever you are." He dumped out the rest of his coffee in the sink, then stared out the window a moment. "Carine-I never meant to run you out of town."

She took her dishes to the sink. "You didn't."

He shifted, eyeing her. "You know that's not true."

"It's true enough." She rinsed off her plate and put it in the dishwasher, drank the last of her coffee, aware of his gaze still on her, as if even the small things she did might betray her. "I've always lived in Cold Ridge. It's been good to expand my horizons."

"You've traveled all over the Northeast, taken assignments in the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica -don't give me 'I needed to expand my horizons.'"

"I didn't say I needed to. I said it's been good-"

"Hairsplitting. You should have been a lawyer."

She smiled. "This has always been home. I've never lived anywhere else."

"It still is your home."

She sighed at him, slipping her coat back on. "Do you want to listen to me or argue with me?"

He leaned back against the counter, his arms crossed on his chest as he studied her. "Then no bullshit."

"You cut-to-the-chase military types. Think creatively-"

"Carine."

"All right, all right." But she didn't have the emotional resources to dig deep and could only try to explain in a superficial way what the past nine months had been like for her. "After you dumped me-"

"Jesus," he breathed.

"Well? You're the one who doesn't want any BS. Call a spade a spade. After you dumped me, I started to look at my life here in a new way and realized I had taken everything I have for granted."

"You've never taken anything for granted."

He'd always argued with her, pushed her, prodded her. For most of her life, it'd been irritating. But last winter, she'd loved him for it. She'd thought she could talk to him about anything and hoped he could do the same with her. Only that wasn't the way it was. He'd never opened up his soul to her the way she had hers. Maybe that was why it'd been easy-at least possible-for him to walk away.

But she pushed back such thoughts. He wasn't asking about him and their relationship, but about her. "I was too rooted," she said. "I didn't want this to be the only place I'd ever lived, ever
could
live."

"What about men?" He tilted his head back, but if he was trying to be lighthearted, he was failing. There wasn't a hint of amusement in his expression. "Expanding your horizons where men are concerned?"

Carine groaned as she buttoned up her coat. "I give up. I lived a good life before you, and I've been living a good life since you. So don't feel sorry for me because of what you did. Let's just leave it at that. Whatever else that might or might not be going on with me is none of your business. Not anymore."

"Fair enough." He pulled away from the sink and grabbed his leather jacket off the counter, shrugging it on. "People wouldn't blame you if you'd set my house on fire before leaving town."

"I think they're breathing a sigh of relief that we didn't get married, after all. Imagine the kids we'd have had." Her voice caught, but he didn't seem to notice. She quickly headed for the back door. "I'm not still in love with you, if that's what you're worried about. 'Lust' might still be an issue, but, trust me, I can resist."

"Like you did yesterday afternoon?"

"Like I am right now," she said lightly, pushing open the door, smiling back at him. "There's something about a sweaty man covered in wood chips."

"If that's all it takes-"

But she was out the door, walking quickly down the driveway before she could do anything stupid. So far she'd had a good start to her day. She didn't want to blow it by ending up upstairs with him, or, even worse, having him decide her easy manner with him was an act and she wasn't over him, after all.

Keep practicing, she thought, and maybe the act would become reality.