"Louis could have been funny, irreverent and nice and still not be on the level."
"Not nice. That's what Manny said to me on Wednesday before the police got there. Louis Sanborn wasn't a nice man. I guess he was trying to warn me."
Ty said nothing, just leaned back against the step, taking Carine with him in the blanket. She laid her head against his shoulder, the smell and the roughness of the old blanket apparently not fazing her. He kissed her hair, which was soft and smelled of some citrusy shampoo, not mothballs, and if he smelled like sweat and sawdust, she didn't seem to mind.
Nineteen
Carine tried to go for her run on her own, but Ty put on running shorts and a ragged shirt and joined her, saying he could provide motivation for her to get her speed up.
Just what she needed.
At some point, he'd mapped out the same mile-anda-half route she had. He also had the same three-mile, five-mile and ten-mile routes. Ten miles was as far as she'd ever run. Any farther, she was in hiking boots and packing food and a tent.
But her morning hike and the tension of the past few days affected the muscles in her legs, her stamina, her breathing. She couldn't get a rhythm going in her stride. She had on close-fitting leggings, a moisture-repelling running shirt, special running socks and her expensive running shoes, but they weren't doing her any good.
"I'm dying here," she said after they'd made the turn and were on their way back. "I feel like I'm sprinting."
Ty trotted alongside her with little apparent effort. "Push harder. You can make it."
"You should see me do five miles. It's this damn speed-"
"Carine, you're not running that fast."
"Easy for you to say." They turned into her driveway, and she glowered at him when she saw that he wasn't even breathing hard. "North-I hate you. I've always hated you."
"The refrain." He grinned at her, the run obviously not fazing him. "No, you have not always hated me. That's what kills you."
Her knees were wobbling, and she was sweating and gasping for air, her chest aching, when just a week ago she'd have been fine-not breaking any records, but not ready to drop, either. Ty looked as if he'd just done a warm-up. Plus, he'd chopped wood. And he'd gone on the hike with her.
"Couldn't you at least cough and spit?" she asked him. "Get a stitch in your side?"
"Can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
She scowled at him. "My body must have been possessed by aliens when we were engaged."
"Well, maybe your mind was. I know your body wasn't." He swatted her on the rear end. "Now, come on. Hoof it the last few yards. Sprint. Go all out."
She tried to kick him, but he was ready for her and bobbed out of her reach. The hell with it. She dove for his midsection. Headfirst, the way she always had. But he grabbed her by the hips, flipped her over, and before she knew what was happening, she was upside down, looking at the ground. "Hey!" she yelled. "You're going to step on my hair."
Her running shirt dropped down to her chin, and she felt the cool air on her overheated skin-and his hands. "Christ, you have been doing your ab work."
She did her level best to kick him in the jaw.
He laughed and swooped her back over and onto her feet. The blood that had rushed to her face while she was upside down rushed back out again, and she felt herself get dizzy and almost tripped. He caught her by both shoulders, steadying her. "You okay?"
She blinked at him. "I should have thrown up on your shoes."
"Yeah, probably."
"The idea was for me to think twice before I attack you again?"
"No, the idea was for me to feel your abs."
"You felt my abs the other day."
"I wasn't paying attention. I was more interested in other parts of your body."
"Ty." She put her hands on her hips, breathing hard. "Damn, you're not cutting me any slack, are you?"
He shrugged. "Who just plowed into who?"
"I'm standing here having this wonderful fantasy of hanging you upside down by your toes. But it'll probably never happen, will it?"
"Not literally. Figuratively-" Something changed in his eyes. "One way or another, babe, you've got me hanging by my toes every damn day."
His comment, his delivery, unsettled her enough to give her the spurt of energy she needed to sprint the rest of the way to her back deck.
"I'll have to remember that," he said, walking to the deck."Nice way to get you moving. You showering here?"
"Damn straight," she muttered, scooting inside before he could get to her even more.
She skipped her post-run stretches and climbed up the ladder to her loft, and when she opened a dresser drawer, she heard a distinctive squeaking inside the slanted ceiling. Damn. More bats. And mice droppings in her underwear drawer.
She had visions of scurrying rodents and bats swooping up in the rafters while she slept. Her loft-her bedroom-was in the rafters.
Not a good development.
Ty wandered into the great room below her, and she leaned over the rail. "I'm going to have to sleep up here with a baseball bat."
"Hey-"
"Not because of you. I've got bats and mice. Your house has been empty even longer than mine. Why don't you have rodents?"
"I pay people to take care of the place. You've got Gus." He smiled up at her. "I also have ultrasonic pest-chasers. I think I have a few extra if you'd like me to fetch them."
"Sure. Run there and back so you can work up a sweat. By the way," she said, rising up off the rail, "your abs aren't so bad, either. I could feel them when you had me upside down."
"Watch it, toots. If you think I can run fast, you should see how fast I can climb a ladder."
It felt good to laugh, but after she got out fresh clothes and slipped back down the ladder to shower and change, she found herself making a detour into her studio. She wiped her palm over her dusty filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer, squatting down to flip through the files, until she came to one labeled simply Hunting Shack, because she needed no further prompting to remember what was inside.
She laid the photos one by one on the floor, on the rug Saskia North had designed and hooked for her one winter.
The police had the memory disk. She'd printed out copies of the photos before it had occurred to anyone to ask her for it. She hadn't touched them in a year. In hindsight now, as she looked at the pictures, she realized the photo of the shack never would have worked as a Christmas card or anything else. The lighting was off, the building itself more an eyesore than a quaint relic of rural New England. There were no vehicles, no people, no snow or footprints-yet minutes after taking the pictures, someone shot at her. Then blew up the shack and let it burn to the ground before the police could get there.
One of the best shots was of the front porch. She'd had to get down low for it. A pair of antique cross-country skis was tacked above the door, and she'd captured about a dozen old-fashioned signs mounted on the outside wall. She took the photograph to her worktable and turned her lamp on it, then got out her magnifying glass for a closer look.
Was someone in the window?
No. And surely the police would have noticed if there were.
She smiled at the moose-crossing sign. There were also cow-crossing signs, but most of the signs were of stores and dairies long out of business-including the Sanborn Dairy. It had gone out of business in the early 1960s. Its old glass bottles were a collectors' item. Carine thought she had a couple in the cellar. They had black lettering, with a line drawing of the heads of two happy-looking cows. The last of the Sanborns had sold off their acreage to the local paper mill that owned the land on which the shack was located. But they owned hundreds of acres, and Sanborn wasn't an uncommon name.