"He was in Cold Ridge in September to visit Eric. I wasn't here. Neither were you. Gus was on a hiking trip. While Eric was in class one morning, Manny drove up to the Rancourt house to see if anyone might be up there, get the lay of the land so he could make recommendations. It was just something to do, really." He paused, glanced up at Carine. "Guess who was there?"

"Jodie? She's come up here on her own a number of times."

Ty nodded. "Yep. She was here. With Louis Sanborn."

"In September? But the Rancourts only hired him two weeks ago. I didn't realize they already knew each other. Louis acted as if they didn't-"

"Sterling Rancourt didn't know Louis. Only Jodie."

"Oh." Carine sank onto a chair, wincing at the implications. "Ouch."

"Somehow or another, the rescue last fall made Sterling feel vulnerable, so he started paying more attention to his personal and corporate security. He hired Gary Turner, then Louis Sanborn. He got Manny in to consult."

"If Jodie and Louis were already having an affair, you'd think she would have tried to stop her husband from hiring Manny."

"For all we know, she tried. Manny met with Sterling Rancourt, Gary Turner and Louis Sanborn in Boston a few days after Sanborn was hired. He realized right off the bat that Sanborn was the same guy he met in September."

"Did Sanborn say anything?"

Ty shook his head. "And Manny was pretty sure Jodie Rancourt introduced Sanborn under a different name. Tony something. Italian."

"Jesus-so she knew he was using an alias? Then why hire Manny? If he'd already met Louis under a different name why take the chance? Unless there's an innocent explanation for the alias and no one was worried about it."

"Manny couldn't swear to what Jodie told him in September, at least according to the log." Ty sighed, leaning back in his chair. "You should see this thing. He's not a talker on a good day, but there are places he's downright cryptic. A lot of it's in military lingo. No wonder Val couldn't make much sense of it."

"He must have told the police all this."

"I'm not making any assumptions at this point. He decided something wasn't on the level and started digging into Sanborn's background. Nothing added up. He already knew the guy sure as hell wasn't southern-"

"That was an act?"

"According to Manny. He's a Texan. He thinks he can smell a Yankee at a thousand yards."

Carine smiled. "Why isn't the reverse true?"

"Because we Yankees don't give a rat's ass." But Ty's humor was strained, and he leaned over and, without getting up, grabbed a log and pitched it one-handed onto the fire. It landed hard, the sparks just missing Carine's toes. He went on, settling back in his chair. "Manny thought Sanborn might have a Cold Ridge connection."

She shook her head. "I'd have recognized him if he did, wouldn't you think? The way he acted, I'd be surprised if it had occurred to him I might recognize him- I'm sure it didn't. He played the southern guy who thinks fifty degrees is cold. How far did Manny get in his background research before he went up to Boston?"

"Not far enough."

Ty was silent, and the fire hissed, one of Carine's logs breaking up into red-hot chunks. She watched it, trying to piece together different conversations she'd had with the Rancourts in the weeks since she'd started working for them, with Louis-or whoever he was-before he was killed. But there was nothing. She'd had no idea anything was going on beneath the surface until she walked into the library on Wednesday afternoon and found Louis dead. And even then…

But she realized Ty had drifted into silence. "What else?" she asked quietly, knowing there was more.

"Speculation."

"What kind of speculation?"

"Carine-it could all be nonsense. We don't know."

"Okay, with that caveat, what kind of speculation?"

"If Manny's right…" Ty sank back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his head, then sighed, plunging on. "He made a note in his log about the weapons the Ran-courts have up here. Expensive rifles. Bolt action and semiautomatic. Scoped. Jodie Rancourt had them out, showing them to Louis the day Manny met them up here. Sterling told him about the guns when he discussed what training he wanted Manny to do."

"A lot of people up here have guns, but I had no idea the Rancourts did."

Ty rose, his back to the fire as he started unloading the day pack. "Manny intended to get to the bottom of whatever was going on with these people. Nothing was going to stop him."

"It makes sense if it was his job-"

"Not because of his job. He has a kid up here. And there's you."

She took her wilderness medical kit off the table where Ty had laid it and slipped it into her coat pocket. "Because I worked for the Rancourts?"

But she knew that wasn't the whole answer, even before Ty spoke. "And because you're from Cold Ridge, and because of last November."

The shooting. The burned-down shack, the missing smugglers. "Manny can't think the Rancourts had anything to do with that smuggling operation. Louis? Could he have been-" She stopped herself, not wanting to phrase the question. Could Louis have been involved? Was that why he came up with an alias? "The police don't have any suspects."

"Not that we know of."

"Nate-he'd know."

Ty shook his head. "He won't tell you even if he does know. Neither would you in his place." He lifted a water bottle out of the pack and set it on the table. "I won't be going to Boston. I see now why Manny put me on Carine Winter duty. You're not on the sidelines, babe. Whatever's going on, you're right in the thick of it."

North split wood until he'd worked up a blister on one hand. He thought about letting Carine treat it. But he was sweating, irritable, ready to jump out of his damn skin. He'd decided to give Val ninety minutes before calling her back. It seemed like enough time for the cops to execute their search warrant and clear out of the Carreras'apartment.

He'd debated heading back up the notch road to ask the Rancourts to explain their relationship with Louis Sanborn, aka whoever, but he'd had a good dose of the Rancourts yesterday. And there was Carine.

There was always Carine.

She sat on the back steps, bundled up in a moth-eaten wool blanket she'd dug out of a hall closet, so old it might have been left behind by one of her ancestors.

"Doesn't the wool scratch?" he asked her.

"Not that much. It reminds me of being a kid."

"I think that's the same blanket Nate and I used when we rolled you and Antonia up and sent you down the hill over by the road."

"I remember that. We almost got run over."

He sat next to her, smelling the damn blanket. Mothballs, dust, that musty wool smell. "You didn't almost get run over. Gus just said that when he yelled at us, and it stuck in your mind.You were, what, six or seven?You didn't know enough not to believe everything your uncle said."

Even then, there'd been an unspoken rule in his life. Never get involved with the little sister. Nate was his friend. The Winters, in many ways, were his family. Ty had violated the bond between them by falling for Carine-never mind that she hadn't exactly been dragged kicking and screaming into bed with him. He'd still made the first move. It was his doing more than hers.

And there was no undoing it. He'd learned that in the last few days. Even now, it wouldn't take much for him to carry her and her moth-eaten blanket upstairs for the rest of the afternoon.

Maybe Gus was right, and he needed to sell the house. If not for the damn trust fund, he would have had to by now, anyway.

He could sell the house, quit the air force, buy a boat and sail away.

Or go find other mountains to live in.