Free Cold Dawn by Carla Neggers Page A

this Nick Martini hadn't found him. It was a kerosene lamp fire. Do those happen much up there?"
    "We have electricity in Vermont, Grit."
    "Was it Lowell Whittaker's lamp?"
    "I don't know." That thought clearly didn't sit well with Elijah. "Lowell might not be stupid, but I can see him putting the wrong fuel in the lamp. This guy sees it and figures he doesn't need to waste his flashlight batteries."
    "Strike a match, and poof ."
    Elijah stood up. He was tall, but Jo Harper liked to say she could take him in a fair fight. Grit wasn't sure how she defined fair. She was another native Vermonter, in love with Elijah since high school--but he was the bad boy and she was the police chief's daughter. Grit had spent enough time in Vermont in recent months to work out who was who in little Black Falls.
    "At least it wasn't the woodstove," Grit said. "I hate woodstoves."
    "What's to hate?"
    "Wood boxes, smoke, ashes. Every time I ran out of wood in my cabin up there, it was icy and snowy out."
    "It's winter, Grit. What did you expect?" Elijah walked over to the sink and rinsed out his mug. "Rose didn't need this."
    Grit turned from the pansies and bird feeders. "She picks through rubble for survivors of disasters. She finds lost little kids. She can handle herself."
    Elijah gave Grit a hard-assed Cameron look. "You aren't thinking about asking her out, are you?"
    "No. She's like a sister to me."
    "She is my sister."
    "That's why you don't see her as one of you."
    Elijah frowned. "Grit, that makes no sense."
    "It makes perfect sense. What's with this Nick Martini character?"
    "I've met him a few times out in California, but I don't know him well. Sean trusts him."
    "Vivian Whittaker trusted her husband, and turned out he was running a network of paid assassins out of their study for fun and profit. You'll talk to Sean between coats of paint?"
    "Yeah."
    Grit started for the utility room, which led to Myrtle's tidy garage. "Say hi to Jo for me. You know, three's a crowd. If I stayed at her apartment in Georgetown and she stayed here--"
    "Won't work that way."
    Grit didn't pursue the subject, because he had a feeling if he did, Elijah would shoot him--not to kill, just to wing him and shut him up.
    Or maybe to kill him, after all. Elijah and Jo had reunited under stressful conditions, and fast. They had stuff to work out. Not the big stuff. The little stuff that could eat away at a relationship.
    Not, Grit thought, that he knew from experience. He'd never found anyone he'd been tempted to marry. He wasn't sure now he ever would, not specifically because he was missing his lower left leg--it had more to do with the ambush, watching a friend die. He'd watched himself become more and more distanced from everyone he knew. He realized what was happening, but as can-do as he was, he couldn't seem to do anything about it.
    He went out to the garage and got into Myrtle's second car, a 1989 Buick that she'd inherited from some dead uncle in South Carolina. The interior smelled faintly of cigars.
    Grit was almost at Massachusetts Avenue when his cell phone jingled next to him on the passenger's seat. He picked up.
    "Where are you?"
    He recognized the voice of Charlie Neal, the sixteen-year-old son of the vice president of the United States. "Stop sign," Grit said. "I'm driving. I threw caution to the wind and answered the phone. Aren't you in school?"
    "On my way. I have a calculus test today. So boring."
    "You aren't taking one for your coconspirator cousin Conor, are you?"
    "Conor took a test for me. I didn't take one for him. He did terrible."
    The two look-alike cousins had done prince-and-the-pauper switches so that Charlie could get out from under his Secret Service detail. They both were in trouble with their parents, the Secret Service, Elijah Cameron and Grit Taylor.
    Grit pulled over into the shade. He wasn't that used to driving again, and he'd learned to give any conversation with Charlie and his 180-IQ his full attention. "What do you