"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.

Thirteen

Her cabin was cold and empty and had an odd nasty smell that she noticed the minute she walked through the back door. Ty located the cause before she did-a recently dead bat in her woodstove.

Lovely, Carine thought, and tried not to view it as an omen.

Ty carried the bat carcass out on a cast-iron poker, and she turned on the heat and stood in her kitchen as if she were a stranger. She touched the scarred, inexpensive countertop, ran her fingers over the small table, which barely fit in front of a window that looked out on the back meadow. The kitchen, bathroom and the small room that served as her studio were all on the back of the cabin. The great room stretched across the front, with its woodstove and hooked rugs, its comfortable furnishings. A ladder led up to a loft under one half of the slanted ceiling. Her bedroom. At night, she could peer through the balcony railing and watch the dying embers of the fire through the tempered-glass door of her woodstove.

It was, at most, a two-person house, all wood and dark greens, rusts, warm browns, intimate and cozy. Carine had done a lot of the work on it herself. Gus would help, Antonia and Nate-and Ty-when they were in Cold Ridge, even Manny Carrera a couple of times.

No one in town had believed Saskia North would sell Carine the one-acre lot. Saskia likes her isolation, they'd said. Her privacy. She's strange, weird. Indeed, she had been a solitary, intensely creative woman, in her late seventies when she surprised her doubters and sold Carine the lot. Even as a neighbor, Saskia was unreliable in many ways, not showing up when she said she would, making and breaking countless promises as if they were nothing. It was as if her brain was so cluttered up with ideas and whims, sparks of imagination, that little else could get in, never mind stick. Anything she thought of would be worth pursuing, at least for a while.