“Be prepared to cut your losses,” he’d told her.

She’d tucked the Browning into her handbag. Thomas was too much of a gentleman ever to paw through any of her things without her permission. She would do what she had to do to protect herself.

But so would Kyle. How much hadn’t he told her? She couldn’t count on his loyalty. If he had a client who’d pay him to do it, Kyle would kill his own mother. An apt cliché in his case.

Melanie trusted her own instincts. She had succeeded in her violent work this past year not just because she enjoyed it and understood her strengths and weaknesses, but also because she didn’t defer to Kyle or anyone else. She had her own mind. Her own plans.

Melanie snuggled closer to Thomas in front of the fire. She sensed his worry and grief-and guilt-and held his hand. Lowell Whittaker offered her a brandy, but she didn’t dare accept. Alcohol in her hyperalert state would be dangerous.

Lowell and Vivian told a funny story about Alex almost falling into the duck pond on a visit to Vermont, and Thomas managed a smile. Melanie nudged him. “Tell us what he was like in law school,” she said. “I can just imagine what you two were like then.”

It took a bit more prodding, but Thomas finally reminisced about his and his dead friend’s days together at Yale. Melanie mumbled a few appropriate comments, but mostly listened sympathetically. He was still in shock, the poor thing. She hated to think what he’d be like after his daughter was dead, too, but nothing to be done about that now. They might have to postpone their wedding. Never mind the cold, New Year’s Eve might be too soon.

Melanie felt her heartbeat quicken with irritation at the position Nora had put her in. She deserved to die-and to suffer before she gave up her last breath. Kyle never concerned himself with making a target suffer. Get in, get out. Do the job. That was his philosophy. Melanie wasn’t that noble.

Maybe a Valentine’s Day wedding would work. It could be fun. More fun, even, than New Year’s Eve.

She smiled inwardly, already visualizing venues and decorations.

Twenty-Five

Elijah was loading his backpack on the kitchen counter when Jo got up and eased onto a stool at the breakfast bar. It wasn’t quite light out, and it was cold. He wasn’t much on keeping the thermostat up and hadn’t yet lit a fire in his efficient little woodstove.

He had the look of a man with a mission.

She’d slipped his nightshirt back on but was barefoot, her toes already cold. “You could hand me over a pair of your wool socks,” she said.

“Top drawer of my dresser. All the socks you need.”

He hadn’t even looked up from his array of supplies. He was fully dressed-wool pants, fleece pullover atop an army-green undergarment of some kind. Not cotton, Jo thought. Cotton was a poor insulator when wet, dried slowly, and therefore tended to promote hypothermia.

He’d made coffee. She’d smelled it while she lay snug under his soft wool blanket and down comforter, warm and loose from their night of lovemaking. She’d heard him get up, run the shower, dress and head to the kitchen, and she’d debated whether it would be better to get up herself and go find out what he was up to, or if it was better that she didn’t.

He had food, water, a tent, extra clothes, a sleeping bag that would keep him warm on Mount Everest. Snowshoes. Basic rescue equipment. If he had to spend the night in the elements, he’d be fine. If he had to dig a snow cave, he could.

“Only thing missing there is a mule,” she said lightly.

He didn’t answer. His hair was still a little tousled from last night. She remembered coursing her fingers through it as he’d spun her into orgasmic ecstasy.

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

He tucked a couple of protein bars into an outer pocket on his pack and zipped it up. “To find Devin and Nora or meet them coming down off the mountain. Out. Doesn’t matter.”

“Your route?”

“I can handle myself.”

“Elijah.”

He lifted the pack onto one shoulder, grabbed his coat off the back of the bar stool next to hers and finally looked at her, his eyes resigned, as if he’d known he wouldn’t get out of there without having to deal with her. She hadn’t disappeared in a poof with the coming of dawn. “I’ll start on the falls trail and take it from there,” he said. “I’ll probably end up taking the saddle around to the back side of the mountain. Ten to one that’s the route Nora and Devin took.”

“To where your father died.”

“Correct.”

He headed out of the kitchen and down the short hall to the front room. Jo jumped off her stool, grimaced at the feel of the cold wood floor on her bare feet and went after him.

The view down the hill through the trees and out across the lake was, indeed, breathtaking. Mist rose up from the water, and frost clung to the rust and burgundy oak leaves as the sun burned through in places, sparkling.

But Elijah didn’t seem to notice. He shoved open a slider and stepped onto the deck, looking back at her with a harshness she hadn’t experienced last night and knew had nothing to do with her. “Devin should have told us that Pop had cooked up something with him.”

Jo’s heart broke at the way he said “Pop.” Drew had been a commanding force in the lives of his four children-in the lives of the people of Black Falls -and now he was gone. Elijah, in particular, had never had a chance to say goodbye.

But she nodded to the milky sky. “The weather isn’t going to be good today.”

“More reason to get moving.”

She crossed her arms against the draft. “I can go with you.”

“You’re not dressed, and I’m not waiting.”

“All right. I’ll meet you.”

Some of his intensity eased, and she thought she saw a spark in his very blue eyes. “Bring your own sleeping bag.” But he sighed as he eased the door shut a little ways. “You need to go back to your life. You don’t belong here, Jo. You never did.”

“Nothing like waking up with regrets.”

“I didn’t say I had regrets. Jo-we’re not right for each other. We weren’t right fifteen years ago and we’re not right now. Let’s not break each other’s hearts again.”

“I didn’t break your heart, Elijah.” She moved right up to the slider screen and focused on the man in front of her and the old hurt deep inside her. “I’d have followed you to the army. Leaving me behind made it possible for you to do what you wanted to do.”

“Saved me from your father having me thrown in jail.”

“That, too. Elijah…I’m sorry.” Jo saw it now, what needed to be said. “I should have let you go. I shouldn’t have held on the way I did.”

“Jo, Jo, Jo. Sweet pea. You didn’t do anything that needs forgiving, including falling for me.”

“Did you get my letters?”

She saw the muscles in his jaw tense and knew he hadn’t expected her question.

Then his gaze softened, and he said, “Every one of them.”

He shut the slider and headed down the deck stairs, his mind, she knew, back on his mission of the day. She shivered in the draft, thinking back to herself at eighteen, sitting on a boulder on the lakeshore and pouring out her soul in letter after letter in those first weeks after he’d left Black Falls for the army.

She hadn’t let go easily.

She returned to the kitchen, splashed more coffee in her mug and sat at the breakfast bar as she debated her options, none of which involved leaving Elijah Cameron to his own devices.

Everyone in Black Falls had always known he would end up back there.

Everyone except Elijah-he had never expected to come home alive.

That was what Drew had tried to make her understand on their walk among the cherry blossoms. Elijah didn’t court death. He wasn’t reckless or pessimistic. He was forward looking and had a strong, positive mental attitude.