“Because of me.”
She’d tried to tell him that it wasn’t because of him. Elijah had made his choices, too.
So had she.
The image of her and Elijah and kids on the lake wasn’t one Jo wanted on a cold November night.
She threw off the fleece, jumped up, grabbed her flashlight again and charged back outside, following the footpath and checking the rest of the cabins one by one for an intruder or any sign of one. But she only ran into spiders and heard an owl nearby.
The turkeys had wandered off.
She got a decent cell signal and stood on an exposed pine root and tried her boss again. This time he picked up. “Don’t you have a duty assignment in some back-elbow place I could take?” she asked him.
“You’re in a back-elbow place.”
“What if I told you Ambassador Bruni’s stepdaughter decided to go camping in the mountains after hearing about his death?”
Silence-yet Francona didn’t hang up. Finally, he said, “I thought you were canoeing.”
“Can’t. It’s dark.”
“You and the stepdaughter should go canoeing together. Safer. Let me know if you see any loons.”
And that was enough for Jo. He’d made his point without being direct: If she found out anything useful, that was a good thing.
If she got herself into trouble, she’d swing for it. Alone.
Elijah listened to Grit’s report while the fire crackled in his woodstove and he tried not to think about kissing Jo, because if he thought about it, Grit would figure it out and come up there and shoot him for sheer stupidity. He’d wanted to do things his way and be unencumbered by a federal agent next door, and what had he done? Kissed her. More than once. Grit might know even without being told. He was tuned in to people in a way Elijah had never seen in anyone before. It was almost spooky. It’d gotten worse-sharper, weirder-since the firefight that had taken his leg and Michael Ferrerra, known far and wide as Moose, a legend even among SEALs and Grit’s best friend.
“The police found a car in a public garage a couple of blocks from the scene. It looks to be the one that struck Bruni.” Grit spoke briskly but without emotion. “Police dropped a net around the area once they got the 911 call about the accident-or whatever it was-but the driver slipped through. They’re not saying much. They’ll comb the car for evidence, but I’m guessing they won’t find anything.”
“Witnesses?”
“None yet. You’d think everyone at that hotel shut their eyes just as Bruni got hit.”
Grit had obviously worked on the scenario. “You have friends in the D.C. police department?”
“No.”
“You could make some.”
Grit was silent.
“Grit?”
“I’ve got a reporter I’m talking to. Myrtle Smith. She’s like a hundred and twelve or something, but she knows everything that’s gone on in this town since the Lincoln assassination.”
“Her name’s Myrtle?”
“Yeah. Like crape myrtle. That’s a flowering tree originally from Southeast Asia, but there are dozens of American hybrids. They love the heat.”
“A Southern thing,” Elijah said.
“That’s right. You’re a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee mountain man, Cameron. You wouldn’t know about Southern things.”
Grit was from the Florida Panhandle. He was a mix of Creek Indian and Scots Irish-and eccentric if not crazy. Elijah wasn’t entirely sure if Grit accepted that Moose was dead. Now he had a new friend. But even Grit wouldn’t make up a reporter named Myrtle. “Grit…you’re not serious about the Lincoln assassination, right? Myrtle-she’s one of us?”
“Yeah, yeah.” No irritation. “Myrtle feels guilty because of all the crap she’s written about the military over the past two hundred years. Figuratively. Not literally. Look her up, Elijah.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Let me see what I can get out of her. By the way, Moose says hi. He says you need a dog.”
Elijah had learned not to tell Grit that Moose was dead.
“Jo Harper is here with me.”
“The Secret Service agent you cut out on when you were kids? Great, Cameron. Lucky you. Now you can get yourself arrested on top of having gotten shot.”
“My father went to see her in Washington in early April before he died. Can you find out what all she’s been up to since then?”
“Maybe,” Grit said and hung up.
Elijah looked at his woodstove hearth. He’d thought about getting a dog upon his return home.
Two minutes later his phone rang again. “Grit-”
“Grit? Oh. The SEAL from your firefight on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in April. No, it’s not Grit. It’s Charles Neal.”
Elijah took a moment before responding. The military chain of command didn’t include the vice president or his sixteen-year-old son, but Elijah couldn’t imagine any officer he’d ever served under wanting him on this call. He pictured Charlie’s red face in the video as Jo had grabbed him by the ear. “How’d you get this number, Charlie? And how do you know Grit?”
“I don’t know Grit. I know of him. Getting your number was easy. Seriously, it’s on the Internet. It’s getting Jo’s number that’s hard. Special Agent Harper, I mean. Is she there?”
“No. She likes her flowers. Did you know lilies are her favorite?”
“I found out. Mr. Cameron-is it okay to call you Mister, or should I call you Sergeant?”
The kid was something. “Elijah will be fine, Charlie.”
“Please give Special Agent Harper a message.” He paused, and when Elijah didn’t say anything, proceeded. “Tell her that I have reason to believe that Ambassador Bruni was the target of a team of international assassins who are also responsible for the deaths of at least four prominent Americans in the past six months.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because you have access to people in a way that I don’t. You’re one of them. The people who’d know things, I mean. Not the killers. I’ll report more details as soon-”
“No, you won’t,” Elijah said in his best drill-sergeant voice. “You’ll get your butt to school tomorrow and do what the Secret Service tells you to do. Got that, Mr. Neal?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” The kid was unruffled. “You’ll tell Jo, though, right?”
“Stay out of this thing before you screw up someone else’s career or get yourself into a bigger mess than an airsoft firefight.”
“You’re an American hero, Sergeant Cameron. Thank you for your service.”
The kid was gone.
Elijah considered his options. Odds were, if Charlie knew about assassins and unsolved murders, he’d found the information on the Internet, which everyone else could read, too. Law enforcement could have made the same connections he had-if any connections were to be made.
He called Grit, filled him in. They’d known each other for several years, but Grit was navy, Elijah was army-it wasn’t until the firefight in April that they’d become friends for life. Elijah would give his life for Grit. He knew Grit would do the same for him.
“We’re talking about the irresponsible, genius son of the vice president of the United States,” Grit said. “Right, Elijah?”
“Yeah. I like this kid. He called me an American hero.”
Grit burst out laughing and hung up.
Elijah resisted marching down to Jo’s cabin in the dark. The Secret Service had their eye on Charlie Neal. They probably kept track of what he was up to on the Internet. Then again, the kid was a genius. Probably he could outwit the Secret Service if he put his mind to it.
The wonder, Elijah thought, wasn’t that Jo had gotten him by the ear or said what she’d said to him. The wonder was she hadn’t strangled Charles Preston Neal with her bare hands.
Fourteen
Nora unrolled her sleeping bag in the pitch-dark of her small dome tent. She had a flashlight but didn’t want to use it and risk someone finding her. She felt safer that way. But she hadn’t considered how dark it would be. Even with the half-moon, it was a black night. She’d set up her tent on a level spot off the falls trail-Beth Harper had once described it to her. She and her sister used to camp up here as kids. It was located on the saddle that connected Cameron Mountain to an unnamed peak that had few trails and wasn’t popular with hikers. Devin had told her about a kind of pathway along the saddle, off the main trails, around to the north side of the mountain.