He jerked a thumb at Charlie. “Let’s go.”

“Are you kidnapping me?”

“I’m taking you back to school.”

Except he didn’t have a car. Where the hell was Myrtle?

Ten seconds later, as if he’d conjured her up, she pulled next to the curb in a fancy little car, her window rolled down. “Sorry I’m late.” She frowned at Charlie. “Who are you?” She swallowed, obviously recognizing him. “Oh. You do have some interesting friends, Petty Officer.”

They got in her car, Grit in back with Charlie, and Myrtle drove them out to the rolling northern Virginia campus of a very private school. Grit’s high school in the Florida panhandle had been a series of trailers. Charles Preston Neal was good-looking, smart, athletic-and surprisingly invisible. It was tough to stand out when you were good at everything and were handed everything. He wanted to matter.

Not your problem, Grit reminded himself. “How does your cousin explain where he’s been when you’re off following people and hunting bad guys?”

“We’re careful. Except for that one time during calculus, we switch during play practice. It’s intensive, total immersion into the play. We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Conor and I work production. We switch off, so it’s easy-he can be himself and me. Neither of us is missing that way. No one notices when one of us isn’t there.”

“You’ve pushed it. He took a test for you. Ever take one for him?”

“He was going to fail trig. He has this awful, obtuse teacher-”

“Conor sounds like he’s as big a pain in the ass as you.”

“I have four sisters,” Charlie said quickly. “They’re all pretty. If you don’t rat me out, I can arrange a date with one of them. Come on. Cut me some slack.”

The kid wasn’t exactly begging, but Grit said, “I’ve got enough problems without dating one of your sisters. Go on. Get to class. Myrtle and I will keep your secret.” He glanced up front. “Won’t we, Myrtle?”

“Sure.” She smiled into her rearview mirror. “You’ve got that look, Grit. I’ll agree to anything you say. I don’t want you killing me in my sleep.”

Drama. He reached across Charlie and opened his door, then sat back again. “You and your cousin are not to pull this stunt again. Understood?”

Charlie nodded, then hesitated, his skin losing some of its color. “I don’t care what happens to me,” he said quietly. “These assassins. They’re not done. There’s a network of them out there. They’re ruthless, Petty Officer Taylor. I don’t know if it’s all about money or what. There has to be a middleman who hires killers on behalf of different clients. It’s so clear to me.”

“Fair enough. Any theories about who ordered Alex Bruni killed?”

The kid hesitated, then said, “What if he knew Drew Cameron’s death in April wasn’t an accident? What if he was killed by these assassins? Alex Bruni was a prominent ambassador. He probably had enemies who’d be willing to pay someone to kill him-who’d be able to figure out how to get in touch with such people. But he also knew Drew Cameron, and…” Charlie didn’t go on.

Grit finished for him. “Cameron was just a guy from the mountains. He doesn’t fit with the other victims. Bruni does, but since Cameron and Bruni both have connections to Black Falls, it’s a problem.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “It’s a problem.”

“That’s why we have cops. Anything you haven’t told me? Your father-”

“He’s not in danger that I know of. Absolutely not.” Charlie blinked back sudden tears, his breathing rapid and shallow now.

Up front, Myrtle didn’t say a word. Grit stayed very still. “Charlie?”

“I told you. Marissa was almost killed in September. Agent Harper saved her life. Jo could have died. Marissa could have died.”

“According to my sources, that fire was an accident.”

“What if it wasn’t? I don’t want anyone dying for me. The airsoft prank…I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“On some level, that prank made the risks Jo and her colleagues take feel less real to you.”

“Yeah.”

“And it was funny,” Grit said.

“Jo got sent to Vermont. I didn’t realize that’s where Nora Asher moved after she dropped out of Dartmouth. If her father’s mixed up in this network…if Drew Cameron and Alex Bruni were among its latest victims…if it’s connected to Black Falls somehow-”

“Whoa. Slow down. How do you know about Nora Asher?”

He rolled his eyes. “Facebook. Come on. That was so easy.”

Charlie noticed everyone and everything. Couldn’t be an easy way to live.

A stunning, fair-haired young woman appeared on the walkway down from Myrtle’s car. She was flanked by Secret Service agents. Charlie pulled his sweatshirt hood up over his cap and sank low in his seat. “That’s Marissa. She teaches history here. I told you, didn’t I?”

Very pretty, Grit had to admit. Even prettier than the pictures of her he’d found on the Internet.

Charlie slipped out of the car and ran, as if he were just a regular kid.

Moose slid into the seat Charlie had vacated. “Wow. She’s a knockout. The FBI agent, now the veep’s daughter. Myrtle’s not bad, either. Not so sorry you lived after all, are you?”

“Don’t speak too soon,” Grit said. “The Secret Service is running Myrtle’s tags right now.”

“Not mine,” Myrtle said. “It’s my mother’s car. And who the hell are you talking to?”

Grit grinned at her. “Your mother’s still alive? She must have been born during the War of 1812.”

“Revolutionary War.” Myrtle sighed at him. “Don’t you have PT exercises to do for your leg?”

“Did them. You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“No. My problem. I’ll deal with it.”

“You and the dead Russian?”

“Go to hell, Grit.”

Charlie’s seat was empty again, and Grit pictured Moose bleeding, screaming at him to let the Special Forces medic cut off his leg. He said, “Been there.”

Thirty-Three

Jo took her mug of coffee and followed Melanie Kendall onto the terrace. The snow-half as much as up on the mountain-spread smooth and untouched down across the meadow and into the trees. The sky was clear now, a heart-stopping shade of blue. The police were still processing the scene on Cameron Mountain. As Elijah had anticipated, a search-and-rescue team had arrived soon after Rigby’s first shots into the cabin. They’d heard them on their way up the mountain.

Jo’s sister had been part of that first team to reach them and had treated Devin and helped transport him down to the old logging road and then to the hospital by ambulance. Beth had hardly spoken, but her expression had said everything. Words weren’t necessary to convey just how close she knew Jo, Elijah and the two teenagers had come to getting killed early that morning.

There was much work to do to re-create Kyle Rigby’s activities since arriving in Black Falls.

And even before then, Jo thought as she looked out at the beautiful view. She didn’t see her hawk and wondered if he knew, by instinct, that it had been a bad day in his mountains. Elijah was in the dining room with A.J. and a couple of local police officers. A.J. hadn’t believed what Rigby had told Melanie Kendall in his call to her.

Thomas was inside by the fire with his daughter.

Melanie shivered as a gust of wind blew across the meadow, whipping her black hair into her face. She wore a putty-colored shearling jacket but was hatless, her nose red, her eyes sunken. “I’m sick,” she said as she stared at the view. “Just sick. That awful man wormed his way into my life. Then I invited him into Thomas’s life. He used us all.”

“He told me you two met in December,” Jo said.

Melanie nodded. “Yes, in Colorado. I’ve been through all the details with the police. He told me he was an experienced, private search-and-rescue expert. That’s why I thought of him when Nora took off after Alex’s death. I didn’t think anything of calling him. I was drawn to his certainty, his clarity, his decisiveness.”