“Hey, kid.”

Elijah eased in close to her. He was covered in snow but so strong and warm, and she suddenly imagined him bleeding in combat and felt horrible for how condescending she’d been about his military service.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He got down low in front of her. His hat was covered in snow. His shoulders. Nora squinted, trying to focus. How much snow had fallen? She didn’t even know.

“Nora. Look at me.” His voice was quiet and reassuring, but firm. “Let me keep you safe, okay? Will you do that for me?”

She couldn’t stop shivering. She thought she nodded, but she wasn’t sure, and she hated him seeing her like this, crying and scared and shivering.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He put a snowy, gloved hand toward her. “Can you stand?”

“I-I don’t know. I did everything I could to stay warm and dry.” Her words sounded strangled, unintelligible. Her mind felt fuzzy. Fresh tears flowed down her face. “Rigby found us. He had to have known about your dad’s cabin.”

She thought she saw Elijah falter, but she couldn’t imagine such a thing. He was so strong. She’d never known anyone that strong. But he said, “Let’s get you warm. Then we can go from there.”

“I think I have mild hypothermia. I can’t-stop-shivering…”

“I’m going to pick you up and carry you, okay?” He just scooped her up, as if she weighed no more than her stuffed penguin. She sobbed into his chest and for a second thought she’d throw up all over him, but she didn’t.

“If he’s still out there-” She got a death grip on his jacket and raised herself off his chest. “How did you find me?”

“Footprints, but they weren’t easy to spot. I spotted his, too, but they lead down off the mountain.” Elijah spoke calmly, clinically, as if he were discussing tracking a rabbit. “The weather’s our ally right now. It’s making us harder to find.”

“Devin warned me…”

“He’s hurt, but Jo’s taking good care of him.”

Elijah walked over the rough ground, not even straining under the weight of her and his backpack. He carried her up the steep hill onto the flat area where his father had built his cabin, where the Camerons had first settled in Vermont.

“There,” Nora whispered. Her teeth still chattered, but she wasn’t shivering as much as she absorbed some of his warmth and pointed. “Up by those evergreens.”

“Spruces,” he said, and she heard a smile in his voice.

She sank into his arms, vaguely aware of his movements and the howl of the wind, then the creak of a door and the smell of the cabin’s fresh wood as he set her on the floor. She didn’t want to be out of the protective cocoon of his arms, but she saw Devin curled up in a sleeping bag near the cold woodstove and almost screamed. He looked so awful. She crawled over to him, shivering and crying. “Dev, Dev. You saved my life. You did.” But he was half-asleep and didn’t respond, and she turned back to Elijah. “What can I do to help?”

Jo Harper answered. “Talk to him,” she said as she grabbed Nora’s backpack and got her sleeping bag and handed it to her. “Reassure him that you’re fine. And get yourself warm and stay warm.”

“I can do that.”

Her eyes stayed on Nora. “And tell me what happened.”

Jo was scarily focused, but pretty, Nora thought, fighting back tears. “I wish my dad were marrying you instead of Melanie.”

Jo looked shocked for a split second, then was back under control. Elijah didn’t comment, just went to the back of the cabin and checked the rear door while she got dry clothes out of her own pack and handed them to Nora. “Put these on. Can you manage on your own?”

“I think so.” The thought of Jo or Elijah helping her made her feel self-conscious. “Yes. I can do it.”

The wind picked up, whistling, beating fiercely against the cabin. But Nora decided the walls had to be solid, because any man who’d fathered Elijah would have insisted on building a structure that could withstand a Vermont storm.

She sniffled. “I shouldn’t have come up here.” Her fingers stiff inside her gloves, she unzipped her sleeping bag. Somehow she’d use it to create a little privacy as she changed, although she knew she had to be careful with her wet clothes. I’m such a dope. She sniffled again and said half to herself, “I didn’t mean to cause problems for everyone. Just help Devin. Please.”

“I’ll help both of you,” Jo said, “but I need your cooperation.”

Startled by Jo’s tone, Nora realized that in her own way Jo was just as big a hard-ass as Elijah.

He returned from checking the back door and touched Jo’s arm. “Rigby’s either waiting out the storm, or he’s already cut his losses and gotten out of here. Either way, it’s near-zero visibility out there right now. We’re not going anywhere.”

Nora saw something between them. A spark, a look. She wasn’t quite sure, but what it meant was obvious to her. Jo was falling for Elijah-and he for her.

“Elijah,” Jo said, “if Rigby comes back and tries anything, you know you can defend yourself, don’t you?”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, Agent Harper, I know.”

Nora got closer to Devin. “Avert your eyes while I change.”

He smiled weakly at her. “Sure, Nora.”

“Dev…you saved my life.”

“We’ll be okay,” he said. “Promise.”

She suddenly felt warmer, safer. Jo and Elijah would protect her and Devin.

They’d all be okay.

Twenty-Nine

The storm had forced Melanie and Thomas back to the lodge. She washed her hands with Vermont-made goat’s milk soap in the ladies’ room. Thomas was getting on her nerves. He was so preoccupied with his daughter, never mind how irresponsibly she’d behaved. Melanie knew she needed to be understanding, but she hated Nora for all her dramatics.

She hadn’t thrown up. That would come later. Right now, she knew she needed to push her fury down deep and focus on making sure Kyle had a chance to execute his plan for her almost-stepdaughter and her no-account boyfriend. Melanie had her instructions. Kyle had found her before he went up on the mountain. She felt a familiar jolt of excitement mixed with panic at the prospect of doing her part to make everything work out.

“Mislead any search teams, Melanie,” Kyle had told her early that morning. He’d been so grave and humorless with all his misgivings about their situation. “Pick a spot and send them there. Anywhere but the north side of the mountain.”

He’d been so confident that was where Devin and Nora would be. Melanie had argued that they’d have to explain the lie to A.J. Cameron and any search teams once Nora’s and Devin’s bodies were discovered.

But Kyle had an answer for that, too. “We blame Devin for the misinformation. Leave that part to me.” He’d paused, then added, “He and Nora aren’t making it down the mountain.”

Melanie still had misgivings. The more she thought about why she and Kyle had been dispatched to kill both Drew Cameron in April and Alex Bruni yesterday, the more she didn’t like it. Drew had never made any sense-he didn’t fit the profile of anyone else she and Kyle had killed. Who was he? As far as she knew, he was just an old Vermonter with no serious connections.

Except, she thought, to Alex Bruni, a repeat guest at Black Falls Lodge.

What if the person-or people-who dispatched killers like her and Kyle, paid them and kept them from knowing too much about their targets, had decided Drew and Alex were threats to them? To their network of paid assassins?

That made screwing up that much more complicated and dangerous.

And if she suspected she and Kyle had been hired to kill Drew Cameron and Alex Bruni to protect one of their own, then Kyle suspected it, too.

No wonder he was so serious.

Melanie dried her hands. She liked the soap. It had a clean, soft scent. Roses, maybe? She didn’t know. She inhaled the scent, calming herself, and returned to the dining room. It was almost dusk now. Scott Thorne, the Vermont State Police trooper, had left after interviewing both her and Thomas, every indication suggesting an official search for Nora and Devin would be launched before long. Melanie had done everything possible to make sure that wouldn’t happen.