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“Or a grandchild,” she said, and was quiet for a while before turning to him and touching his right thigh where he’d been shot. “Your father feared for your life, and maybe he had a premonition of the danger you were in. But that’s not why he died.”

“Jo…”

“If he built his own cabin on that old cellar hole, he had shelter. Good shelter. Better than trash bags. He could have survived the storm.” She eased her fingertips gently along Elijah’s scars, as if trying to imagine the pain, the blood, how close he’d come to death. “He didn’t go up the mountain with a storm on the way to die. He knew what he was doing.”

Elijah didn’t speak.

“Someone killed him, Elijah.”

He slid his arms around her and drew her to him. “I know.”

Twenty-Four

Melanie felt exhilarated and nervous at the same time, relished the tension between the two emotions as she pulled the shades in Kyle’s bedroom in the Whittakers’ guesthouse. She was tingly with wanting him. She’d told Thomas she needed air after their flight and the long drive from the airport. He’d worried about the dark, but she’d assured him there was plenty of light from the house-and there was.

But Kyle wasn’t in a good mood.

“It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?” She sat on the edge of his bed. “Although I’m not sure I’d want a second home in Vermont. It’s too cold here most of the time. Thomas loves it, though.”

“The way things are going, you’ll be lucky your new home’s not a prison cell.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic.” She chided him with a smile-no point in annoying him-but he always saw the downside to the situation, and she always saw the upside.

“The police are looking for the messenger you were worried about,” he said.

“You’re the one who said not to worry.”

“Who do you think called in the tip?”

Her stomach twisted. Thomas. “I have no idea, and I don’t care.”

“The people we work for don’t like screwups. I dealt with one before you came on board. It wasn’t pretty.”

“We’re not screwups.”

“I’m not.”

But he was her partner. He’d recruited her. If their employers were unhappy with her because of Nora Asher and her snooping into Melanie’s background, Kyle would be held responsible, too. He looked concerned, which wasn’t like him, but he got nervous when he had to think on his feet. He wasn’t good at it. She was, and when she wanted something, she put her mind to it and got it.

More than once on her trip up from Washington she’d realized she might end up having to kill him. Let him take the fall for Nora, both with the police and with their employers. Melanie wanted Kyle’s plan to work and Nora to die up on the mountain because of the cold, Devin Shay’s obsession with her, her own out-of-control emotions. Drew Cameron’s death seven months ago would actually work to their advantage and provide more substance, even poignancy, to the deaths of the two teenagers.

It was a good plan, but Melanie was prepared to take matters into her own hands. Blaming Kyle. Painting herself as one of his victims-vulnerable, innocent.

Thomas was up at the Whittaker farmhouse in front of a roaring fire in their living room. Melanie liked Lowell and Vivian. Thomas was handling himself with such grace under pressure. Melanie looked forward to tapping into his network of friends once they were married. A shame Alex Bruni wasn’t in the picture anymore, given his prestige as an ambassador, but that hadn’t been Melanie’s call to make. She’d driven the car-but she wasn’t the one who’d decided to kill him.

When she and Thomas had arrived at the Whittakers’ farmhouse from Jo Harper’s wreck of a cabin, Kyle had reported on his actions on Nora’s behalf. Mostly lies, of course, but Thomas was obviously impressed and relieved to have Kyle involved. Melanie had felt good for arranging for Thomas to hire him.

She’d thought about what it would be like to sneak down to the guesthouse in the middle of the night and have Kyle make love to her, with Thomas and the Whittakers none the wiser. But Kyle had barely acknowledged her existence. He was obviously in no mood for her risk taking. He could be like that.

Kyle had recommended that Thomas inform local and state authorities of his concerns, especially with bad weather coming in-and the talk he’d heard about Devin. The Whittakers had heard the talk, too, which helped. But that was all Kyle’s doing. He’d been setting up Devin even before Alex Bruni’s death.

The planner.

But then he’d given Melanie a nod that told her he wanted to speak with her in private.

Kyle unbuckled his belt and ripped it off his pants. “Jo Harper and Elijah Cameron are a problem.”

“Then deal with them,” Melanie said.

He dropped the belt onto a chair. “Did Nora or Devin ever see us together?”

“No. Impossible.” She shook her head, as much to reassure herself. “We’re safe.”

“What about your would-be client who came to a bad end?”

“We’ve been through that, Kyle. There’s no way to connect him to me. You’d never have taken me on as a partner if there had been. Nora and Devin don’t know anything. They’re just looking for something to break Thomas and me apart.”

“You should never have invited Nora’s scrutiny by getting involved with her father.”

“Spilled milk, Kyle.”

She felt a sudden chill. She’d never liked the cold-she certainly hadn’t wanted to hike up that stupid mountain in April. Kyle had insisted. They’d been instructed to make Drew’s death look like an accident, an old man who’d miscalculated the elements and went to sleep in the snow.

Kyle unbuttoned his pants. She didn’t know, really, if he wanted a quick round of sex or just wanted to go to bed. “Why did we kill Drew Cameron?” she asked in a low voice.

“You’re asking for trouble with that kind of question. We do a job. We don’t get to know who wanted it done or why.” He stepped out of his pants and folded them onto the chair. “You’re caught up in a fantasy. You think you’re two different people, but you’re not. Your life this past year was for real. You can’t erase it. You did what you did.”

“I’m not in denial. I’m moving on.”

“I never should have let you get involved in my business. It was a mistake.”

“You needed a partner. Even with what I got paid, you earned far more these past eight months than you would have on your own. Don’t you have hopes and dreams, Kyle?”

“Yeah. Living through this mess we’re in up here.”

But Melanie could see he had a level of calm that indicated he believed he had a solid plan. “You’ll miss me when we’ve gotten through this mess.”

“No, I won’t, Melanie.”

He continued to stare at her. She shivered, not with the cold-with fear, with excitement. “What?”

“We have to get this right or we’ll be on the list for one of our colleagues. We’ll be a liability.”

“Drew and Bruni got too close to our people, didn’t they?”

“I know as much as you do. You have to stop, Melanie. Just stop.”

He pulled off his shirt and laid it neatly on top of his pants, then took off his socks. There was nothing erotic about his movements.

“If you got an assignment to kill me,” Melanie said, “you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

His eyes were slits on her. “Would you tell me?”

“I just want to be Mrs. Thomas Asher.”

He stood in front of her and took her hand, pressed it against his crotch. “Do you?”

“Yes.” But she cupped him, stroked him. “I do.”

“Then help me make sure his daughter doesn’t get off that mountain. We have to deal with Elijah Cameron and Jo Harper. You’re a rookie compared to them. You have no idea.” Kyle shook his head, even as he thrust himself against her hand. “You’ve never gone up against real professionals.”