Sarah’s relationship with him and the women who’d raised him was analyzed and dissected, her academic career and her various projects on the Poe house and the people who’d lived there were explored-but she’d refused all interviews. Her work on the Poes was now in the hands of the Poe Trust. When the house opened to the public as an historic site, she would visit it only as a tourist.

It was time for her to move on.

Gus Winter cleared his throat, pulling her out of her thoughts. “You don’t want to climb the ridge alone, especially not this time of year. Nate’s over at the house. He’s been hiking every day since he got here. He’s in good shape.”

“They say he’s good at tracking people. One of the best.” Sarah handed over her signed receipt and gathered up the two big bags of gear. They barely cleared her chin. She smiled at Nate’s uncle, the man who’d raised three orphans on his own. He was younger than her own mother. “Let him track me if he wants to.”

She borrowed a pair of scissors and ducked into the changing room. She cut off all the tags of her new gear, then peeled off her travel clothes and put on the primary layer of her hiking clothes. She glanced in the full-length mirror. Not very attractive, but they’d do.

“Where is the ridge?” she asked Gus Winter on her way out.

He blinked at her. “It’s above you.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “I mean the trail.”

He gave her directions to a brick house out of town-Carine and North’s place, he said-and told her to turn left past it and follow the signs.

She did, and within an hour of tramping up the trail, she’d decided spring took way too long to get to New Hampshire.

It was just plain cold.

But the rock formations, the tiny new leaves fluttering in the midday sun, the crystal-clear streams-and the views-were incredible. As she climbed higher, Sarah stopped every few feet to look out at the valley and the surrounding mountains. It was a clear, bright, cool, magnificent day.

When she got closer to the tree line, the wind picked up, whipping her face, blowing across the gnarled, squat evergreens and struggling new grasses. There were pockets of snow in the rocks above her. She put on her hat and her gloves and bundled up in her fleece, thinking that in Tennessee, she’d be on the front porch, having barbecue and strawberry pie with her family. Gus Winter had tossed a half-dozen power bars into her pack. They did not rival prune cake, fried apricot pies, squash casserole-

She stopped her train of thought and rested a moment on a rounded boulder in the middle of the trail.

When she’d left last night for New Hampshire, her mother had hugged her for longer than usual. It was enough. Nothing more needed to be said between them. If the Dutch police hadn’t found them, she believed Conroy’s man would have killed them. But he’d given up without a struggle. Authorities were still interviewing him.

Nicholas Janssen had intercepted her, courted her, stalked her. He had his own agenda, his own plan for obtaining a pardon-for wooing the girl he’d known in college.

Her mother had been horrified, shaken, when she learned that the army captain who’d told her Nicholas was facing prosecution in the United States for tax evasion had turned up murdered. That the man fishing on the dock that day in early April was Charlene Brooker’s husband.

She simply hadn’t known, she said.

Wes Poe had arranged transportation to the Nashville airport. Sarah’s father had walked her to the car. “The worst part about being held captive was thinking not just that we’d never see you and Rob again, but that you’d have to live with the knowledge of what happened to us.” He’d paused, his eyes shining. “I didn’t want you to have that burden.”

Sarah thought she understood what it was to want to spare someone else a burden, to want to ease a burden from someone else’s shoulders-and that it couldn’t always be done, not just because it was impossible, but because that experience was a part of who that person had become.

Which she didn’t have to explain to her father. He knew.

She’d spent the night at an airport hotel, rented a car early that morning and arrived at Gus & Smitty’s in time to spend a fortune.

She experienced a wobble of vertigo as she looked off one side of her boulder, down into the valley, much greener than it was up high. The wind whistled in the cracks and crevices of her granite surroundings.

She hoped Nate would get on with tracking her down.

But his uncle had outfitted her for the conditions, and she could scoot down the trail, back amongst tall trees, if the wind picked up and she really started to feel the cold.

She took another bite of her power bar and washed it down with water, but she’d noticed a pleasant-looking diner when she was in the village of Cold Ridge. She’d rather get off the ridge and eat there.

When she climbed down off her boulder and turned to resume her ascent, Nate was there above her, sitting on a ledge as if she’d conjured him out of the thin mountain air.

He leaned back against another boulder and didn’t say a word as she made her way up to him. He had on scuffed boots, hiking pants, a black fleece-no hat, no gloves. And no gun, she thought. The horrors of the sniper attack and Conroy’s manipulations were slowly receding.

“How did you get ahead of me?” she asked. “Did you drop out of a helicopter?”

“With an ex-pilot and a pararescueman in the family, I suppose I could have. But you’d have heard a helicopter.”

“I don’t know. With this wind, I might not have.”

But he’d found a spot sheltered from the wind, still and quiet as she sat next to him.

“There’s more than one way up here,” he said.

“Then you weren’t already here. You saw your uncle-”

“He said he did what he could to make sure you wouldn’t be fined for recklessness when he had to come pluck you off the ridge. I told him not to underestimate you.” He moved in closer, and she had the feeling if she scooted away from him even an inch, she’d fall off into oblivion. “It’s easier to track a woman who wants to be found than a fugitive who doesn’t.”

“Well, I did narrow your options.”

He smiled and touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “I’ve missed you.”

“Good, because I wasn’t sure if I was crazy-” She caught his wrist in her hand and slipped her fingers into his. “Sometimes it’s hard to know what of that week was real and what wasn’t.”

He kissed her fingers. “I was real.”

“My family-it’s wonderful to have Rob home. He’s doing well. And my parents are fine. They’re resilient, already planning their return trip to Amsterdam so that Dad can finish his project there.”

“You Dunnemores and your projects.”

She laughed. “Yes, it’s true.”

“And the president?”

“He was in Night’s Landing yesterday.”

“I saw on the news.”

“He’s holding a press conference today in Washington. He’s setting the record straight on the snake story and letting reporters exhaust every possible question they have about our relationship. Honestly, when the snake thing happened, I just wanted him to be okay. None of the rest mattered. I don’t think it really did to him, either. People will think it did, but he had so much else on his mind besides who’d saved who from a water moccasin.”

Nate withdrew his hand from hers and skimmed his fingertips along her jaw, down the right side of her neck. “How’s your snakebite?”

His touch had her feeling warm again. “All healed.”

“Wes Poe’s surrogate daughter. I’ll probably be guillotined for making love to you, almost getting you killed.”

“You knew we were close when you threatened to arrest me that day in New York.”

“That’s different.” He threaded his fingers into her hair and kissed her softly. “We can’t make love up here. We’d kill ourselves on the rocks.”