Colder Than Ice

“Okay.”

The screen door creaked open, and Bryan stepped out onto the porch with a toaster pastry in one hand and a glass of chocolate milk in the other. Both had to have been in the pickup, because neither would have been within a mile of Maude’s kitchen.

“Good morning, Bryan,” Maude called, sounding as cheerful as if she hadn’t noticed a thing out of the ordinary this morning, much less overheard his fight with his father. “Did you sleep well?”

He offered her a halfhearted smile, his dark hair falling over his forehead before he pushed it back. It was so much like the way Josh had pushed his hand through his hair earlier that Beth almost smiled.

Bryan avoided his father’s eyes. “Slept better than I do in the city, that’s for sure.”

“Well, now that you’re up, I’ll get your breakfast out of the oven.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I made my own.”

Maude looked at his pastry and rolled her eyes. “That is not a breakfast. It’s a future health crisis. Now, I’ve had a real meal staying warm in the oven for you for the past hour.” She glanced at Beth. “Join us, dear?”

“No way, Maude. I eat one of your meals, I’ll be crawling home instead of running.”

“Oh…you’re going home?” Bryan asked. He sounded a little…off.

“That’s the plan, Bry.”

He shot his father a look, and Beth got the feeling their earlier argument was suddenly the furthest thing from the young man’s mind. “Well, why don’t you stay? You can, uh, talk to my dad about that tutoring thing.”

Something had certainly snapped Bryan out of his petulant state. “I already did that,” she said. “Was kind of surprised you hadn’t done it yourself by now.”

He nodded, all but admitting he probably should have clued his old man in.

“I gotta go. See you at noon, Bryan?” She reached for her tea to finish the cup.

“Uh, yeah, about that…” Bryan began. He sent his father another quick look, as if uncertain whether to speak.

“What is it, Bry?” Josh asked.

“It’s probably nothing. I mean, one summer in the city and all of the sudden, I’m paranoid, you know?” He offered a half smile and shrugged. “Can’t help it, though.”

Beth frowned at him. “Paranoid about what?”

“It’s just…there’s been a car parked up the road a little ways for a while now. I can just see it from my bedroom window.”

Beth’s hand jerked, and the still-hot tea sloshed onto her bare legs. She sucked air through her teeth and wiped it away with her hand.

Maude handed her a napkin. “Oh, it’s probably someone bird-watching or checking on the progress of the foliage,” she said. “We have a lot of nature lovers living in these parts, and this time of year every leaf-peeper in the country seems to show up. Was it a red Blazer, Bryan? That would be my nearest neighbor Frankie Parker. Loves to watch the birds, that one.”

“No, it’s a brown sedan. Chrysler, I think.”

“Brown Chrysler,” Maude repeated to herself. “Maybe I should give Frankie a call.”

When they all looked at her oddly, Beth clarified for them. “Frankie’s the police chief.”

“Oh.” Bryan nodded. “Right next door, that’s handy.”

“Well, right next door is a half mile, but still…” Maude said.

Beth dabbed the tea from her thighs and tried not to notice Josh’s scrutiny, until he forced it. “Call me a paranoid city slicker, if you want, but, um…why don’t you let me take you home, Beth? Just to be on the safe side.”

She looked up at him, crushed the damp napkin in her hand and shook her head. “I may not look like much, Joshua, but trust me, I can handle myself.” She glanced at Bryan. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” She dug into her shorts pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “You’ll need these books for our session today. You can pick them up at Books Ink, in town.”

“Cool. I can pick them up right now and drop you off on my way,” Bryan said.

What was with these two? You’d think she was made of glass, the way they were acting. “And miss out on the great breakfast your grandmother made you?” Beth asked. “No, I don’t think so. Besides, I live in the opposite direction. And I run for a reason. I’m not messing up my daily routine by taking the lazy way home.”

Bryan looked at his father. Joshua sighed and glanced at Maude.

Maude frowned. Then she lifted her chin. “Joshua, go change your clothes. She won’t let you drive her, so you can run with her. And, Beth, don’t even begin to argue with me. I’ll worry myself sick if you go off alone.”

“Since when is there anything in Blackberry scary enough to worry you, Maude Bickham?”

“Since you got so scared you spilled tea on yourself at the mention of a strange car, young lady. Now, my word is law, and I have spoken. Finish your tea while Josh changes his clothes.”

“Fine. Fine, he can run with me.” She looked at Josh as he rushed into the house and added, “If he can keep up!”

Beth was running faster than her normal pace in honor of his presence; Josh was sure of it. He broke a sweat ten minutes in, but he wasn’t complaining. It felt good to run. It had been too long. He watched the lengthening and flexing of her calf muscles and her thighs with every stride, and he thought it was too damn cold to wear shorts, and yet he was irrationally glad she had. She was probably as strong as she claimed she was. She certainly ran like she meant it. Not that it would matter much if some maniac came after her.

She wasn’t happy about Maude’s insistence that he come along. Her jaw was tight, her eyes serious. She hadn’t spoken a word or cracked a smile since they left. God, it was difficult for him to believe this was the same pale, weak, comatose girl he’d visited in the hospital so long ago. She wasn’t pale. Her skin was sun-kissed, and her cheeks pink right now with exertion. Steady, powerful breaths rushed in and out of her lungs, not the steady mechanical rasp of a respirator. Heat rose from her body in spite of the autumn chill.

When she slowed to a walk for the final quarter mile and he caught his breath again, he wanted to talk to her, ask her what her life had been like since coming out of that coma eighteen years ago. He wanted to hear every detail, in her own words, rather than the dry accounts in the typed pages Arthur had sent him. He’d been up most of the night reading those. They’d given him nightmares.

But he couldn’t very well ask about her past, and even if he did, she wouldn’t tell him. So he made conversation about the one topic he thought would interest her in talking to him: Bryan.

“I think Bryan must like you already,” he said.

“He doesn’t even know me. But yeah, the way he reacted to seeing a strange car—I suppose after losing his mom, it makes sense he might feel a little protective of me. I’m probably around her age. Maybe I remind him of her in some way.”

It made perfect sense, except that she was nothing like his ex-wife, Josh thought. Kathy had been confident, demanding, had known exactly what she wanted and would settle for nothing less. Beth was…nervous. Skittish. Strong, but he got the feeling she was never quite sure which path she would choose at the crossroads of Fight and Flight. “He likes you better than he seems to like me, at the moment,” he said. “That’s worth something.”

“He thinks you don’t care about his mother’s death.”

“He acts as if I caused it.”

“Did you?”

He looked at her sharply.

“I mean, in his mind? Is there any way he might blame you?”

“I don’t see how. It was a weekend getaway with her second husband. The plane went down in the mountains.” He shook his head. “Bryan would have been with them, but he got sick at the last minute. Some stomach bug.”

“Oh. Well, no wonder.”

He lifted his brows.

“He feels guilty,” she explained. “Wishes he had been with them, wonders why they had to die when he was spared. Survivor’s guilt. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

“You don’t know the half.” She looked at him, a question in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard of it.”

“So that’s part of it, then. I mean, it might be.” She shrugged. “Maybe I can get him talking.”

He looked up as a car passed. A brown sedan. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see inside. Only one person, though, he thought. The driver. The license plates were too coated in dirt to read.

“I suppose you’ve tried that already, though.”

He glanced her way again. “Tried what?”

“To get him to talk to you. About his feelings.”

“I’ve asked him to talk to me. It hasn’t worked.”

She licked her lips, then pressed them tight.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, you were going to say something just now.”

“I’m butting in, and that’s not my way. It’s none of my business.”

“If I’m asking, you aren’t butting in.” He waited. Then, “Please, Beth. I need all the help I can get here.”

She sighed. “I don’t know Bryan very well, so this could be way off base. But what I’ve found in other kids his age is that the best way to get them to open up to you is to open up to them first. Maybe he needs to see your feelings before he’ll feel safe showing you his own. It’s hard to admit to weakness and confusion to a man you see as always strong, in control, perfect.”

“You were right in the first place. You don’t know Bryan very well. He doesn’t think I’m anything close to perfect.”

“You’re his dad. You might be surprised. Even my…”

He studied her face. “Even your what?”

She shrugged and stopped walking. “This is my place.”

Her place was a little square cottage with siding designed to make it look like a log cabin, though it wasn’t. “Thanks for seeing me home, even though it was far from necessary.”

He looked beyond her, seeing no sign of the car that had driven past them. Not at the moment, anyway. But her house was in the middle of a stretch of empty road. A thorny hedgerow marked the boundaries of the open field behind it. A stream meandered through. The water caught the morning sun and changed it into diamonds. Across the street there was a woodlot bordered by scrub brush. Cover. Not another house in sight in either direction.

“I don’t suppose I could hit you up for a glass of water before I head back? I’m not as used to running as you are. Out of shape.”

“Liar.” She led the way to her front door.

He followed her inside, even though she hadn’t really invited him, and took everything in. The front door led into a small living room, where a settee and overstuffed chair sat on a brown area rug in front of a television set. A large punching bag dangled from a hook in the ceiling, near one corner.

“I’ll get your water.” She walked through, into what he presumed was the kitchen. He heard ice rattling into a glass, took a few steps farther inside and peeked into the only other room he saw—her bedroom. There were a twin bed with rumpled covers and a weight bench with a bar balanced in its holder. He thought it had fifty pounds on each end.

“Snoop much?”

He spun around fast, almost bumping into her. “Sorry.”

“So what are you looking for?” She shoved the icy, dewy glass into his hand.

He took a long pull, mostly to give himself time to come up with a convincing answer. Then he lowered the glass, licked his lips. “Just looking. You spend a lot of time with my grandmother, after all.”

“Oh. And you think I might be some sort of a con-artist, out to fleece her? Maybe offer to reshingle her roof and then vanish with her money, something like that?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just…curious about a woman who lives in a small town like this for a whole year and only makes one friend. One elderly, vulnerable friend.”

“Maude Bickham is far from vulnerable. And who said she was my only friend?”

“She did.”

She lowered her head. “You done with that water or what?”

“No.” He took another drink, a slow one. He could see it was pissing her off. She wanted him out of there—now. When he swallowed, he nodded toward the punching bag. “So you box?”

“You want a demonstration?”

He blinked in surprise.

“Look, I know what you’re doing. I saw that brown car go by. It was nothing, okay? I’m fine. Perfectly safe all by myself. Have been for over a year now. No bogeymen have come calling. And if you knew your grandmother at all you’d know what she was up to with all this make-believe worry about me walking the streets alone.”

“She’s up to something?”

“Of course she’s up to something. You’re single, I’m single. She’s probably hoping you won’t even come back home tonight.”

“Oh,” he said. Then he lifted his brows. “Oh. Well, there’s no danger of that happening.”

She blinked, clearly not sure whether she’d just been insulted.

He let it hang there for a moment, then added, “Your bed is way too small for both of us.”

She snatched the water glass from his hand, turned and marched to the front door. “Very funny. Tell your son I’ll see him at noon.”

“I will,” he said following her. “And, Beth?”

She stood there, holding the door open, his glass in one hand. He was glad he’d drained it, or he thought he might be wearing it.

“What?”

“Thanks. For offering to tutor Bryan, and for the advice. I mean it.”

Her bristles softened almost visibly. “Like I said, Josh, I’m no expert.”

“That’s ten times the expert I am.”

Smiling just slightly, she nodded, and he thought he was forgiven for intruding and even for snooping. She didn’t like people looking out for her. He’d been warned about that, he thought, studying her eyes, how green they were, and the stubborn set of her jaw. Arthur had sent federal agents to protect her, but she always spotted them and sent them packing. That was why, he’d said, he wanted someone else, a civilian, and Josh had been the logical choice. Josh and his former partner had a very successful private security firm; they’d gone into business together after leaving the ATF. After the raid. After he’d shot Beth.

A wave of nausea rose and receded with the thought as he stared at her, the curve of her neck, the little pulse he could see beating there after their run. Alive. God, it was a miracle.

In truth, he thought, Arthur Stanton must have had a whole other set of reasons for sending Josh, of all people, on this mission—reasons Josh still wasn’t certain he understood.

“Do I pass inspection?”

He shook free of his thoughts and realized he’d been staring at her. Her cheeks were a little pinker than they had been just from the run. Embarrassed? Flattered, maybe?

“Sorry. You’re…you’re a beautiful woman, Beth. I got distracted there for a minute.” And he still was. Did she look this good to him because she really was as beautiful as she seemed? Or did she only look that way to him because he was so God damn glad to see her alive?

“Thanks,” she said. “I think. Goodbye, Josh.”

It was his cue to leave. Sighing, he stepped outside, and Beth closed the door.

He didn’t leave right away, though. He walked down the road a short distance, then stopped and looked back. He wasn’t used to cases where the client didn’t want to be protected, much less those where she wasn’t even supposed to be aware of her bodyguard’s presence.

Much less those where you don’t particularly want to leave the client’s side, his inner voice scolded.

He ignored it. He liked being able to have someone watching his clients 24/7. And though it was doubtful, there was always a chance that brown car might come back. Its driver could just be waiting for him to leave.

So he would spend a few minutes doing surveillance, just in case.

The brown car didn’t return. But Beth did step out onto the porch. She looked around carefully, up and down the road. And he thought maybe she was looking for the brown car, too, but he couldn’t be sure.

He could be sure, though, of the item she held in her hands. He figured any man who’d worked in law enforcement could spot a gun from three hundred yards away, just by the way a person held it, the shape of the thing, its weight. Identifying firearms in the hands of suspects was something he’d had drilled into him during his training. You didn’t want your agents shooting people for pulling out wallets or cell phones, after all.

He hadn’t lost the skill.

Beth had a gun in her hands. A large caliber semiautomatic handgun. Black, not silver. From here it looked like a .45; a damn big gun, and the scope on the top made it look even bigger. You didn’t see scopes on handguns very often. Avid hunters seldom had them, because avid hunters had much better luck with shotguns. Militarily trained snipers rarely used them, because rifles were so much more accurate. Professional killers used them, because, though huge, they were easier to conceal than a shotgun or rifle would be.

Beth Slocum meant business. She could probably take down a small elephant with that thing.

She held the gun two-fisted, in front of her body, muzzle to the ground, arms extended. She handled the weapon as if she knew how to use it.

She was nervous, he thought. But she was ready, too. Or thought she was.

Whether that readiness would make her safer or put her at greater risk remained to be seen.

Beth looked up and down the street, waiting, watching, listening. She didn’t see anyone. Probably, she told herself, the brown car had been nothing more than a sightseer or nature lover. Probably her blood pressure was going through the roof over nothing.

After several minutes she went back inside, hit the release and let the fully loaded clip drop from the hollow butt into her waiting palm. Then she locked the gun in its assigned drawer, next to the tiny derringer. The key was on a chain around her ankle. She returned the clip to the top of a bookshelf, where she could grab it fast but no one else would ever notice it.

Her telephone was ringing. She snatched it up and whispered hello, half-afraid the man she’d been thinking about—Mordecai, not Joshua—would somehow start whispering to her from the other end.

“Hey, Beth. It’s Julie.”

“And Dawn!” Dawn called from somewhere in the background. Not on an extension, though.

Beth closed her eyes against the rush of sheer pleasure hearing her daughter’s voice brought welling up inside her. God, it was heaven to hear her voice. Warm, sweet heaven. The night of that horrible raid, Dawn had been only a baby. Beth had been shot, certain she was dying, when she’d given her daughter to her best friend, begged her to take Dawn out of that place. And Jewel—Julie now—had done it. She’d raised Dawn as her own, believing, as the rest of the world had, that Beth had died in the raid. By the time Beth found them again, Dawn had been happy, thriving, and calling Julie “Mom.”

And yet…. “Are we private?”

“Yeah. Pay phone, outside a convenience store. Nowhere near us. It’s clean, don’t worry. I’ll put Dawny on after we talk.” Her next words were muffled. “Dawny, go grab us a couple of Diet Vanilla Cokes, will you?”

“Sure, Mom. Be right back. Don’t you dare hang up.”

Beth sighed, ignoring the blade she felt twisting in her heart every time she heard her daughter call her best friend “Mom.” She swallowed the pain, kept it hidden from her voice. “It’s not like it matters. Sooner or later, he’s going to find me.”

“Not necessarily,” Julie told her, just as she always did. “Beth, you have a new name, new town—”

“It won’t matter. His gift is genuine, Jewel. Even if his mind is broken, his gift is for real. He’ll track me down.”

“You have some reason to feel like he’s getting close? You sound…shaky.”

Beth swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. I’m probably overreacting.”

“I have never known you to overreact. Maybe it’s time you accept some of the help the government is always offering—the bodyguards, I mean.”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t trust anyone who works for the government. Hell, it was a government man who shot me.” Her and thirty other teenagers, she thought silently, in a riot that should have been avoided. She’d lost everything because of it. Her soul, for a time, as she lingered in a coma. Her memory for years afterward. Her daughter, the only one she would ever have. Her identity, her entire life. Gone, all of it, because of one gung ho soldier with an itchy trigger finger and a lousy aim. “I don’t want another one like him protecting me.”

“Then maybe you should get out of there.”

She pursed her lips. “No, Jewel. Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m just paranoid. Besides, I’m sick of running and hiding.”

“Yeah, and when did you decide that?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a long time coming.” She licked her lips. “When he comes, I’ll be ready. Maybe I should just face him. Only one of us would walk away, but at least the running would be over.”

“You’re scaring me, Beth.”

Beth swallowed hard. “I’m being melodramatic. I’m lonesome. I miss you guys. I miss Dawny.”

“I know. She misses you, too. She’s been begging me to let her come up there for a visit.”

Beth closed her eyes. It was strictly against the government’s rules for her to see her daughter. Then again, according to Arthur Stanton, she wasn’t supposed to communicate with Dawn by phone or e-mail, either. It hadn’t stopped her from doing so. Still…

“It may not be the best time to risk it, Jewel. Try to put her off until I can be sure it’s safe.” She didn’t think Mordecai would harm Dawn, and he probably wouldn’t try to abduct her again now that he’d surrendered his parental rights to her. But given his state of mind, there was no point putting her within his reach.

“Will do. Listen, Beth, I got wind of something at the newsroom. I don’t know if it means anything. In fact it probably doesn’t, but…David Quentin Gray—Mordecai’s ex-lawyer—escaped from Attica last week. They found him dead, shot once in the head, the next day.”

Beth got a chill that didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. “Who shot him?”

“They don’t know.”

Beth sighed. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “He didn’t know anything about me. I mean, how could he?”

“No. It’s nothing. I’m sure of it. I just thought you should know.”

“Thanks, Julie.”

“Here’s your drink,” Dawn said. “Can I talk now?”

“Just a sec, hon. Beth, if you need us, let us know. Sean and I can be there in no time. We love you, you know. And we owe you a hell of a lot.”

“I’m the one who owes you, Jewel. Now put the brat on the phone before she has a fit.”

She heard the telephone move, then Dawn’s voice came on the line, and Beth let it wash over her like rain over a dying flower. Dawn talked about her senior year of high school, her teachers, her classes, her plans for graduation and where she might go to college. She was driving now. Her Jeep had gotten a dent from a kid in the school parking lot, and she was mortified about it, and so on and on and on.

Beth listened, commenting in all the right places, and she somehow managed to keep the tears that were sliding down her cheeks from being evident in her voice.

Chapter Four

It was Lizzie. This was her!

Mordecai’s heart had pounded, and he’d barely been able to catch his breath as he watched her running along the winding country lane. Running. Hands clenched into fists pumping at her sides. As if she were fighting.

And then she slowed and walked right up to the front porch of the very house he’d been watching: the fading, former Blackberry Inn. All night, he’d been parked in his car, keeping the boy under surveillance, just as the guides had told him to do. It had made no sense. He’d been frustrated, thinking it stupid and senseless to sit there, cold and uncomfortable, overnight. He knew where the boy lived now, so what was the point? Even if he was to be Mordecai’s heir…

Now he understood. This was the point. The boy was a beacon, pointing the way to Lizzie. Already he was connected to Mordecai, already aiding him in his work. He had led Mordecai to Lizzie. Obviously he was the one. The boy, Bryan, was the one he’d been waiting for. He should have trusted, had more faith. The guides always had a reason for everything they told him to do.