"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.
Carine had placed his cell phone on the steps. He grabbed it and clicked onto his phone book, found Val's number and hit the button for an automatic dial. She answered almost before it rang, static making her hard to understand. "Ty? They're gone. They took the computer, a bunch of folders he had-he doesn't have an office yet, so he's been working out of here."
"You okay?"
"I just wolfed down cold pepperoni pizza, right out of the refrigerator. You'd have thought I was starving. It was disgusting. All that coagulated grease."
Ty smiled. "Val, you're a trip and a half. Anything out of Manny?"
"Are you kidding? He's lucky I don't drive up to Boston and shoot him myself."
She was handy with a gun. Ty wouldn't put it past her, except he'd never seen a couple more committed to each other than Manny and Val Carrera. "He must be cooperating with the police. He has nothing to hide. If it turns out Louis Sanborn traces back to the shooting here last year, we'll know it. Law enforcement will put the pieces together."
She sighed, deflating. "This past year-it hasn't been easy. He did good work as a PJ, you know? He loved it. Then Eric got sick, and I went kerplooey on him-"
"Kerplooey?"
"Yeah." He could almost feel her smile. "It sums up what happened to me rather nicely, a very nasty mix of clinical depression, burn-out, stupidity and guilt."
"Manny says you just need a job."
"He does better with other kinds of head injuries than the kind I had. He got sucked into this Rancourt mess, Ty. He's not going to let go until he's got it sorted it. That's the way he is."
North nodded. "I know."
"This business thing wasn't a great idea. I saw that crap in the file about doing it for me. Bullshit. I think- " She swallowed, no hint of any good humor coming through from her end now. "I'm not sure he likes the idea of being alone with me for the rest of his days. With Eric away at school-"
"Val, don't do this to yourself, okay? You two are going to the home together. You know that."
"I keep thinking-" Her voice quavered. "I don't know, if I could just do something to bring order back to the universe."
Ty tried to smile. "It's not your job to bring order to the universe, Val. Jesus. Some days it's enough just to get in three meals and eight hours of sleep."
But she didn't relent. "Haven't there been times in your life when you've felt as if you're under siege and nothing's ever going to go right again?"
"You bet, Val," Ty said gently. "We've all had those times."
When he hung up, Carine eyed him, obviously curious about what Val had said, but he put her off and dialed Hank's cell phone, remembering the Pave Hawk pilot he'd flown combat missions with just a few years ago was a senator now. But his voice-mail message was unchanged-"Hi, it's Hank. Leave a message…"
"Check on Val Carrera if you can," Ty said. "She's had a bad day. The cops searched-ah, hell, Hank. You're a senator. You can't get mixed up in this mess. Forget it. Val will be fine. So will Manny." He clicked off and tossed the phone onto the steps. "Gus and I agree on one thing. Cell phones should be banned."
Carine slipped her hand out of her blanket and placed it on his thigh. "Val knows she has to hang in there. She will."
He covered her hand with his, noticed that even without the blanket, his was warmer. "You do realize your brother-in-law is a senator?"
"It's sinking in. I'm not registered to vote in Massachusetts -isn't that awful? I didn't even vote for him." She lifted Ty's hand and examined his blister. "I've still got my first-aid kit. I can treat it."
"It hardly even counts as a blister. Share a corner of your blanket with me?"
She tossed a section of it over his shoulder, and he scooted in closer to her. But the thing didn't make him feel nostalgic at all. It stunk, and it scratched. He put a finger through one of the holes. She smiled. "Waste not, want not. Saskia got that part of living up here. I tried to explain to Louis that we Yankees are frugal, not cheap. There's a difference." She took a breath, her voice cracking almost imperceptibly. "Except he wasn't southern after all."
"We don't know that for a fact. We just have Manny's notes."
She shook her head. "Ty, I never would have guessed he wasn't on the level. Never. He was funny, irreverent, nice. Jodie-she lied, too. I never would have guessed they were having an affair. I must not be a very good judge of character."