Cold River by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page A

floating in the drifts, she hardly made a sound as she crossed the clearing. She had no timeto waste. She leaned her poles against the exterior of the cabin and squatted down, using both hands to scoop snow away from any exposed section of the foundation.
    About ten inches of the foundation extended aboveground. She wasn’t a stonemason herself, but she could see it was rubble-stone construction, which made sense. Two hundred years ago, breakage would have been more practical—easier to find, dig up and haul—than whole stones.
    Drew had placed a thick sill beam on the foundation, creating even more of a protective barrier between the ground and the cabin itself.
    Hannah dug as much snow as possible out of the rock and saw that both the remains of the original foundation and any rebuilding Drew had done were dry construction. That meant he hadn’t had to figure out how to get mortar up here or decide between using an old-style lime-and-sand mortar or a modern cement. A strict historic renovation would have called for original materials where possible.
    Hannah had crawled around in enough old cellar holes to have an idea of the work involved in rebuilding a foundation that had been left to the elements for generations. She remembered the fallen stones, caved-in dirt, trees and brush often growing right in the middle of what had once been someone’s home.
    She stood up on her snowshoes. Drew hadn’t rebuilt the original chimney, opting instead for a woodstove that he hadn’t lived to hook up. He could have used stones from the chimney in repairing and extending the foundation wall. Still, he’d have needed equipment to do the job—trowels, stone hammers, drills, pry bars, fulcrums, rollers—and he’d have needed know-how. He was handy, but he wasn’t a stonemason.
    If he hadn’t had help with the work itself, he’d at least had advice.
    “Maybe,” Hannah said aloud.
    She could be wrong. Drew had been a Cameron, after all. Who was to say he couldn’t have managed on his own, without help or advice?
    She’d learned to keep her mouth shut until she was sure she had her facts straight.
    Especially when the facts involved her past.
    Leaving her poles outside, she pushed open the solid wood door, wincing at the loud creak of the hinges, as if it might wake someone, or alert someone to her presence. She stepped inside, pulled the door shut and tugged off her snowshoes. She didn’t want to stop moving for too long. Once she got cold, she’d have a hard time warming back up.
    The cabin was just one room with windows, a front door and back door and the woodstove, which hadn’t been hooked up yet.
    She went still, certain she’d heard a sound outside.
    Not a chickadee or the wind.
    A deer? A moose?
    She tiptoed to the front window next to the door. Kyle Rigby, hidden among the spruce trees with an assault rifle, had shot out the glass. After the police had released the cabin as a crime scene, Jo and Elijah had nailed thick, translucent plastic over the opening and cleaned up the shards.
    Hannah tried to peer through the plastic but couldn’t see anything except blurry white snow and the vague outline of trees.
    Again she heard a whooshing sound.
    Someone on snowshoes or skis?
    She held her breath and listened but heard nothing now.
    Had whoever was out there paused to eye her tracks in the snow—her ski poles leaned up against the outside of the cabin?
    Not waiting any longer, Hannah grabbed her backpackand snowshoes and bolted across the plywood floor for the back door. It wouldn’t be locked. There was nothing in the cabin to steal except the woodstove, and who would bother hauling it down the mountain in winter conditions?
    “Hannah. It’s me—Sean Cameron.”
    Before Hannah had a chance to adjust to the idea of who it was out there, she heard the creak of the front door and spun around just as it opened.
    Sean lifted his sunglasses onto the brim of his wool cap and frowned at her from just outside his