Free Cold Dawn by Carla Neggers

saved him. He was now fully recovered.
    Grit didn't know why things had worked out the way they did.
    He put on his service uniform and headed to the kitchen. Elijah was at the little round table with his size-twelve feet up on the rattan-seated chair across from him as he cradled a flowered mug of coffee. He nodded out the French doors at the patio. "Do you think we ought to fill Myrtle's bird feeders?"
    "They're the wrong kind. She's only feeding squirrels with those things." Grit got down another flowered mug and poured himself coffee. The kitchen had dark cherry cabinets and a collection of delicate china teacups and saucers--more flowers--displayed on a shelf. "A badass Washington reporter like Myrtle and look at this place. Reminds me of my grandmother's house by the Apalachicola River. Myrtle even knows what tupelo honey is."
    "So do I," Elijah said.
    "No, you don't."
    "I do. You told me after we were shot up. In the helicopter. White tupelo trees. Bees. Only honey that doesn't crystallize."
    "No kidding. I said all that? You remember?"
    Elijah shrugged. "It was something else to think about."
    Besides dying. Besides the dead.
    Grit sat with his coffee. "Moose's widow sent me a picture of the baby. You get one?"
    "Yeah." Elijah kept staring at the half-dozen empty feeders. "Cute kid. Ryan Cameron Ferrerra. I didn't even know Moose that well. I couldn't keep him alive. I get why his wife named a baby after you. Not after me."
    "We were with him when the Grim Reaper came for him."
    Elijah nodded. "We were."
    "I remember the two of you talking about why he was called Moose but grew up in Arizona and had never seen a moose, and you this Vermont mountain man."
    Grit glanced out the window, no sign of spring yet out in Myrtle's backyard. He half expected Michael "Moose" Ferrerra to be on the patio. Moose had liked to joke about wanting to go back to Southern California and grill hot dogs on his patio. Instead he'd died in Afghanistan, doing the job he'd trained to do, made the commitment to do.
    Half to himself, Grit said, "Doesn't seem like almost a year."
    "Nope," Elijah said, "seems like ten years."
    Grit almost laughed as he turned back to his friend. "What're you up to today?"
    "Painting Myrtle's woodwork."
    "She won't say so, but she's afraid to come back here. She almost got her butt burned up in her own damn house. If I hadn't come along and saved her, who knows."
    "That's not her version," Elijah said.
    "She's a reporter. You trust her version?"
    "She says she'd have saved herself."
    "Ha." But if that was what she needed to believe, Grit didn't care. "It'd help if we knew who set the fire. You know my theory. Myrtle was onto Whittaker's network. He ordered her house torched but he didn't strike the match himself."
    "It was an electrical fire. No match."
    "I was speaking metaphorically."
    Elijah grinned. "'Metaphorically'?"
    Grit nodded out the window. "Look, pansies. See them? They must have reseeded. We didn't plant them. I like pansies. They're like little smiling faces."
    "Grit, you worry me."
    "Projection. You worry yourself. What's on your mind? Jo?"
    "Jo's fine. She won't stay here and won't let me stay with her until she gets herself straightened out with her job."
    "You two--"
    "She's at work now. What about you? You going in?"
    "The Pentagon and Admiral Jenkins await. You want me to corral some general, get you a job?"
    Elijah dropped his feet to the floor. "No need. I've been called in to do some intel work and analysis."
    "Ah. Involve toting a gun?"
    "A.J.'s talked about having me back at the lodge."
    It wasn't a direct answer, but Elijah would know that. Grit let it go. "With Jo down here working for the Secret Service?"
    "She doesn't have to stay in Washington." A twitch of a smile from Elijah. "She and Myrtle could open a quilt shop in Black Falls."
    It was a ray of humor from Elijah, anyway. Grit wasn't a contemplative sort. "The dead guy in Vermont's on your mind. He would be even if your sister and