He wasn’t all that sure himself. “Just trying to help. Your daughter-”

“Nora knows what she’s doing. She’s very capable. She’s young, but she’ll find her way.”

“You’re not worried about her going off on this camping trip by herself?”

“I’m concerned about how she’s handling Alex’s death, but no, I’m not that concerned about her camping in Vermont. She’s very levelheaded. She and Alex got along all right, but they didn’t see that much of each other. If you’re wondering if she hired someone to kill him, that’s ridiculous. She wouldn’t know the first thing about how to do such a thing.”

“You just said she’s capable.”

“In the woods, not with hired killers.” Her cheeks reddened suddenly, but she remained under control. “I should go. I don’t normally pour out my soul to a perfect stranger.”

“Melanie Kendall went up to Vermont with your ex-husband,” Grit said. So far, his turning-over-of-rocks and shaking-of-trees hadn’t turned up much on the fiancée and future stepmother.

Carolyn Bruni’s gaze steadied on him. “Good for her.”

“Nora get along with her?”

“I have no idea. We haven’t discussed Melanie. She has absolutely nothing to do with me. Good to meet you, Mr. Taylor.” Carolyn Bruni paused and gave him a cool, superior smile. “Perhaps you and Elijah Cameron should mind your own business.”

She marched past Grit, got into a little BMW parked on the side of the road and sped off.

Moose fell in next to Grit on the walkway. “The mother’s conflicted,” Moose said.

“Well, I guess she is. She’s also a Type A control freak who thinks her daughter hates her and she deserves to be hated.”

“She has regrets. Big regrets. It’s tough living with big regrets.”

Grit breathed out. “Yeah. It is.”

He noted a surprising lack of security at the Asher house. He could have gotten inside in seconds. Instead, he walked down to a dark sedan parked a half block from the spot that Carolyn Bruni had just vacated. His leg wasn’t hurting much today. He liked walking.

A window rolled down, and Grit said to the beanpole of an FBI agent behind the wheel, “I’ll save you the trouble of trying to figure out who I am and what I’m up to. I just need a ride back to town. I took the bus, and my leg-”

“Get in the car.”

He climbed into the backseat. Up front next to the beanpole FBI agent was a very cute female FBI agent who turned a little in her seat and gave Grit a steel-melting look. “You’ve been talking to a lot of people today, Petty Officer Taylor.”

“You know my name? I’m flattered. You’re-”

“We’re the ones driving you back to Washington.”

“Guess you don’t need directions to my place, do you?”

Not even a twitch of a smile. “You were outside the vice president’s residence today,” she said.

Grit didn’t respond. The street he’d been on was a public street, and they all knew it. He’d begun to wonder if maybe the assassins theory was just the product of a bored genius kid with an Internet connection, but that didn’t feel right to Grit, mostly because of Myrtle and the Russian and the poisoned toothpaste. Myrtle didn’t get bored. She didn’t make up stuff.

“We appreciate your service,” the cute FBI agent said when they finally pulled up to his dump of a building. “Now mind your own business.”

“Mrs. Bruni said the same thing, except she didn’t add the platitude-”

“It’s not a platitude.” She seemed chagrined.

“You don’t want to know my assassins theory, do you?”

“No. Good night, Petty Officer Taylor.”

One thing about his military service, Grit thought dispassionately, was how good it had made him at detecting when people were hiding things. Even those people who were good at hiding things.

The two FBI agents already knew about assassins.

The beanpole glanced in his rearview mirror at Grit’s reflection. “You okay back there? Your leg…”

Grit opened the door and got out. He wasn’t getting into the nuances of transtibial amputations with the guy. Besides, he’d spotted Myrtle hiding behind a sick cedar tree on the corner of his building and figured she wouldn’t really want to talk to the FBI.

After they left, she stepped out onto the street and shuddered. “Holy moley. I just saw a rat the size of a raccoon.”

“Ah. Little fella.”

“Why do you live like this?”

“Like what?”

“Never mind. I’d go in, but for all I know, you have pets, and I can only just imagine.” She nodded at the retreating car. “Feds?”

“I caved and gave you up after the girl fed batted her eyes at me.”

“Are you ever serious? Don’t answer-I know. You’re a man of action. Words mean nothing, so you might as well be irreverent.” Her lavender eyes stayed on him a fraction longer than he would have preferred. “I did more research on you, Grit. It wasn’t easy. You and your friend Elijah Cameron are a couple of ghosts, but you’re both bona fide, indestructible American heroes.”

He thought of Moose, who really was a hero. “No one’s indestructible.”

“Figure of speech,” Myrtle said. “You know what I mean. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. We can talk about the vice president’s son, a dead ambassador, his best friend, his stepdaughter and assassins.”

“And Drew Cameron,” Grit said.

Reporter that she was, she pounced. “Who?”

“Coffee first.”

“Not here. We’ll take my car,” she said, eyeing the cedar tree. “I don’t do well with rats.”

Thirty-One

Staying low, Jo crept to the back window of the cabin. Elijah was checking the window on the side wall. Weapons drawn, they’d taken turns on watch overnight. It was first light, and the storm was over, leaving behind eight or ten inches of wet snow. The branches of the spruce trees surrounding the cabin drooped under the weight of the snow, but the cabin itself had remained dry. Even the worst of the winds hadn’t penetrated its weather-tight walls.

Leave it to a Cameron, Jo thought as she noticed Nora stir. Devin was already awake, just not talking. He’d slept little and had tried several different positions before he’d found one that was the least painful, propping himself against the woodstove. He hadn’t moved since.

Nora sat up, her sleeping bag twisted around her, and tried to smile. “I wish the woodstove was hooked up and we could build a fire.”

“A fire would confirm to Kyle that we’re here and you and Devin survived,” Jo said. “Are you warm enough?”

Nora nodded, then gave Devin a worried look. “You okay, Dev?”

“Yeah.” His lips barely moved as he spoke. Any movement seemed to cause him pain. He was clearly miserable, but he said, “I’m fine.”

As the storm had raged around them, Nora had quietly related how she and Devin had been conducting their own background check of her father’s fiancée. Both Jo and Elijah had forbidden the use of flashlights, and with the storm, there was no moonlight or starlight to help ease the darkness on the mountain. She’d heard the pain, grief and loneliness in Nora’s voice as she’d told her story.

“I’ve made a mess of things,” she’d said, almost tonelessly. “I’m sorry.”

Elijah had spoken up at that point. “Sorry for what?”

“For putting you all in this position.”

“Did you hit Devin? Did you chase yourself into that gully? You’re not the enemy here, Nora. You’re a kid. If you made mistakes-hell, why should you be exempt? Put them behind you. Focus on what you can do right now.”

“I can’t do anything. I’m useless.”

“You can stay warm and dry and get some rest.” When he’d paused, Jo had felt his smile as he teased. “I’ll have all I can do to carry Jo down this mountain.”

Of course she had protested, and Nora had sniffled and laughed, at least a little, Elijah’s comment providing the distraction it was meant to.

He and Jo both checked on Devin regularly through the long night.