Cold River by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online

herself.”
    “She’s taking a big risk.”
    “That’s her style. She just tells herself and the rest of us she’s careful.”
    His brother would have his misgivings. He wasn’t one for solo operations. Given his own years fighting wildland fires out west, Sean wasn’t, either, but he wanted answers bad enough to take a few risks.
    And he didn’t want to see Hannah get hurt.
    “All right,” Elijah said. “You go argue with her in the cold. A.J. and I will meet you in front of the fire at the lodge before dark.”
    “Well before dark. I’m not hiking up there the long way.”
    Sean disconnected. He passed O’Rourke’s, not yet open for the day, a red-bowed wreath hanging crookedly on its front door. The temperature had risen to the low twenties, but if the temperature was above zero, Liam O’Rourke got outside. He loved Vermont winters. Sean didn’t know if Hannah did or not, but he wasn’t concerned about herfreezing on her solo hike up to his father’s cabin. She knew every shortcut on the mountain, and she knew how to handle herself in winter conditions. She was smart, reserved and utterly fearless.
    Plus, he planned to catch up with her before she had a chance to go too far wrong.

Five
    H annah paused at the edge of a cluster of spruce trees on the flat of a quiet knoll on the remote north side of Cameron Mountain. All that disturbed the blanket of snow was a twisting rabbit trail that disappeared under a low-hanging evergreen branch. There were no other tracks or prints. It had been at least a week since any investigators had made the trek up this way.
    She stepped among the evergreens, her snowshoes and ski poles sinking into the fresh powder. The snow sparkled in the midday sun. There was no wind. The air was cold and dry, the trees creating still shadows under the cloudless, clear late-December sky. Exertion and her layers had kept her warm on her hike. She’d kept hydrated with sips of water, and although not hungry, she’d forced herself to eat a couple of energy bars.
    Devin had found Drew’s body at the top of the shorter, steeper trail up the north side of the mountain, two hundred yards back through the woods. By then, much of the wet spring snow had melted and there were no tracks left to follow, at least none that anyone had noticed. As a result, no one had known about the cabin until five weeks ago, when Nora Asher, with Devin right behind her, had discovered it.
    On sleepless nights, Devin would describe the cabin’slocation in detail. He’d drawn maps and noted landmarks—the trail, the tree-covered but distinctive knoll, the cluster of spruce trees.
    This was the right place.
    A clump of snow dropped into a drift as Hannah brushed past a gnarled spruce.
    A chickadee fluttered out from among the evergreen branches and flew up into a tall, bare oak tree.
    She couldn’t remember when she’d been to a place so quiet, so isolated.
    Why had she come alone?
    “You don’t let emotions dictate your actions,” Drew had told her.
    Well, she just had.
    “I wouldn’t feel nearly as crazy if I’d brought a dog,” she said half aloud. Rose Cameron, Drew’s only daughter, trained search-and-rescue dogs and handled one of her own. She could have recommended a dog who’d have appreciated a good run in the snow.
    But Hannah couldn’t make herself smile. She continued past the spruce into a small clearing, which Devin had also described. After years of searching, Drew Cameron had finally come upon what he’d believed to be the site of the original Cameron dwelling in Black Falls. He’d cut down trees in the immediate area and, in apparent secret, had built a post-and-beam cabin on the old foundation.
    Hannah spotted a tiny, batten-wood cabin on the far edge of the knoll and almost sank to her knees with emotion. This was it—this was Drew’s cabin.
    This was the place where Devin and the three people with him had almost died.
    Where his would-be killer had died.
    Her snowshoes almost