Cold Ridge by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2003-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Ty tried to concentrate on the scenery as he drove Carine up the notch road, a pass in the mountains with a small lake, a waterfall, a rock-strewn brook, ledges, cliffs and breathtaking views. But it wasn’t easy to focus on anything but the tense and distracted woman beside him. She wanted to see the Rancourts. He told her he didn’t think it was a good idea. She said, fine, she’d rent a car. She’d take a bus back to Boston and get her own damn car. She’d hike up the ridge to the connecting trail that led down to the Rancourt house.

She wouldn’t get Gus to take her, that was for damn sure. Gus didn’t like the idea of her going up to the Rancourts, either. She and Ty had dropped off the embarrassing pictures of Jodie Rancourt with the Cold Ridge police and met Gus for lunch at a village café. Gus didn’t get it. Why would Carine want to see the Rancourts? Why would they want to see her?

But Gus couldn’t talk her out of it, and Ty sure as hell couldn’t. They tried all through lunch. The café was owned by a couple of ex-hippies who scrawled their daily menu on a chalkboard. Carine had turned over her digital camera and camera bag as well as the memory disk. The police had warned her to expect a visit from the Boston detectives now on their way to New Hampshire to pick up the evidence—they’d want to talk to her, as well as the Rancourts.

Carine had hardly touched her sweet potato chowder. Gus had a bowl, too, but Ty didn’t go near it—he had a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. He didn’t like Carine’s lack of appetite. “Flutter kicks’ll really kill you if you don’t keep up your strength,” he told her.

“They kill me, anyway.”

“Why are you doing flutter kicks? Why not just take an exercise class in Cambridge? Pilates. Kickboxing. Something like that.”

She’d given him a smile that he couldn’t quite read. “Maybe I’m training for a triathlon.”

“Okay. You’ve always been fit. You need to do flutter kicks to train for a triathalon?”

“Can’t hurt.” She seemed evasive. “I have endurance. I don’t have a lot of power and speed. I’m working on it, though. You can swim twenty-five meters under water on one breath, right?”

He suspected she was trying to distract herself—or distract him. “It’s not something I do every day—”

“How did you do it at all?”

“Willpower.”

“I have willpower.”

“When it comes to a picture you want. You’ll wait around for the wind to blow the right way a lot longer than I ever would. But swimming underwater—nothing’s at stake for you if you pop up for another breath. For me, it was a requirement. I had to do it.”

“You’re saying if you want to be a PJ bad enough, you’ll stay under.”

“It helps.”

“That’s a crock. I think it has more to do with lung capacity and efficient strokes.”

He grinned. “There’s that, too.”

But she hadn’t smiled back, and he knew the illicit pictures bothered her.

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