Cold Pursuit Read Free Page B

been a real gun. No one had been seriously hurt that day. The rest didn’t matter.
    On her drive north, Jo had tried to be optimistic and thought of the various ways that being in Black Falls would do her good. She could go for runs in the fresh, crisp northern New England air. She could watch the last of the leaves fall off the trees. Wait for the first real snow. Watch the birds migrate for warmer climates.
    Listen for bats in the rafters and avoid her nearest neighbor.
    She got busy unpacking before she could change her mind and load up her car again and head to Montreal or Buffalo—anywhere, she thought, that would put her more than a couple hundred yards from Elijah Cameron.
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    Ten minutes later, Jo was already bored with unpacking. She opened a bottle of merlot, poured herself a glass and took it outside, crossing the dirt road and heading down to the lake.
    She stood on a rounded boulder and sipped her wine. The sky was almost dark now. The air was frosty, and the landscape had the stark, empty feel of November, so different from the warm spring afternoon when she’d walked among the cherry blossoms with Drew Cameron.
    She hadn’t told anyone—family, friends, colleagues or, most of all, Drew Cameron’s three sons and daughter—about the strange visit two weeks before his death.
    She could see him now as they’d walked along the Tidal Basin. He’d surprised her when he’d shown up at her apartment and asked her to go with him to see the cherry blossoms. He was alone—A.J. was working nonstop at the lodge, Elijah was deployed to parts unknown, Sean was in southern California making money and Rose was off with her search dogs, picking through the remains of a string of Midwestern tornadoes.
    The brown flannel shirt Drew wore was too warm for early April in Washington, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. Surrounded by the stunning pale pink blossoms, the hard-bitten man Jo had once blamed for helping to ruin her life had startled her further by asking if she was okay these days.
    â€œYou’ve never married, Jo,” he’d said.
    â€œI’m only thirty-three.” She’d laughed. “There’s still time.”
    â€œI guess things are different now. Elijah’s never married, either, but I don’t think he ever expected to live this long. I’m not saying he has a death wish or anything. He’s just being practical.” Drew had paused, his face lined with deep wrinkles as much from a life spent mostly outdoors in the mountains he loved as from age. “We Camerons are a practical lot.”
    Uncomfortable with his seriousness, Jo had gone for another lighthearted remark. “I don’t know that moving to Vermont in the middle of the Revolutionary War was all that practical. Then staying there. Your ancestors could have cleared out and joined the westward expansion.” She’d caught a falling cherry blossom in a palm and smiled at him. “Taken a flatboat to Ohio or something.”
    â€œHarpers got to Vermont before any Camerons did.”
    â€œNot all of us Harpers stayed,” she said.
    â€œTrue. Jo, there are days…” He’d hesitated and gazed up at the cherry trees and the cloudless sky. It was one of those rare, glorious early-spring afternoons in the nation’s capital. Finally, he’d shifted back to Jo, with tears in his eyes. “I wake up on cold mornings and see the grandchildren you and Elijah should have had. They’re as clear to me as you are right now. They line up in front of my bed and look at me as if I did something wrong.”
    Jo had needed a moment to collect herself. She hadn’t expected such words—such an image—to come from Drew Cameron. But she’d sensed his pain, his age, and however much she’d hated him in the past, blamed him for the way he’d humiliated her at eighteen, she couldn’t hate him then. “Don’t torture