Elijah put the flowers on the small drop-leaf table near the window overlooking the lake. Three of her colleagues who’d stayed in the cabins in October had referred to the decor as early junkyard, but they’d enjoyed the setting-the woods, the lake, the hills. They’d hiked, fished, gone canoeing, read books in the quiet.
That was before Jo’s bad week. She doubted any of her fellow Secret Service agents would head to Vermont anytime soon, even if she did fix up the cabins.
She avoided looking at the iron four-poster bed in the alcove-it was the same bed she and Elijah had found so useful fifteen years ago.
“How long are you planning to stay?” he asked.
“Until the dust settles in Washington.”
Jo bent down and grabbed the bananas from the top of her box. How long would she be here? As she stood up straight again, she tried not to wince in front of Elijah, a matter of personal pride, but she knew she’d failed.
“Still hurting?” he asked with no detectable amusement or sarcasm.
“Not really.”
“Baking soda and water might help.”
Now she detected a note of amusement and sarcasm. “Thanks. I’m fine.”
She had heard every conceivable homemade remedy in the past seventy-two hours, ever since she’d fallen victim to a prank orchestrated by the sixteen-year-old son of the vice president of the United States. Charles Preston Neal was a notorious handful. He had invited his cousins and friends over to the madhouse that was the vice president’s residence for an elaborate simulated firefight with realistic-looking fake weapons. Jo was assigned to Marissa Neal, the eldest of Charlie’s four older sisters, who lived nearby and was there for a visit.
Five minutes into their firefight, Charlie had pointed at his cousin Conor, who was about to shoot, and yelled, “I think it’s a real gun!”
Jo had reacted instantly, jumping into action to save Charlie and his friends from possible injury or death. But the “weapon” turned out to be another of the authentic-looking toy pistols and rifles in the boys’ extensive arsenal. She’d intercepted a barrage of airsoft pellets zipping toward Charlie and took the dozens of tiny, fake rounds meant for him.
Trying to live down the spray of pinprick welts on her left arm, side and hip would have been bad enough, but Charlie had collapsed in hysterical laughter, and that was it. Jo pulled him up by the ear and gave him an uncensored piece of her mind.
That was what one of his cousins or friends-no one knew which one-had secretly captured on video and put on the Internet.
Hence, today’s drive up to Vermont.
Vice President Neal had mandated the boys all take a police-sanctioned safety course if they were to have any more simulated battles in the backyard, and he’d personally sat them down at the kitchen table and had them write notes of apology to Jo. There was no telling how many of them were in on the prank, but Charlie clearly was the ringleader.
But the damage was done. The video was out there forever, with Secret Service Special Agent Jo Harper grabbing the vice president’s son by the ear and giving him a piece of her mind.
Not one of the finer moments in her career.
Marissa Neal was sympathetic, having fallen victim to her brother’s pranks herself. Jo’s quick action a few weeks earlier had saved Marissa from severe burns and possibly death when a gas stove had exploded in a cabin she and friends had rented in the Shenandoah Mountains. A simple accident. It wasn’t publicized, much less splashed over the Internet.
“Dyeing your hair these days, Jo?”
She frowned at Elijah. “What?”
“I like the copper,” he said, then nodded to the flowers. “That must explain Charlie’s choice of colors for your lilies. They go with your hair.”
“He has an IQ of a hundred and eighty. He knows how to manipulate people.”
“Maybe he has a crush on you.”
“I doubt that.”
The youngest of five and the only son of a busy, popular vice president, Charlie was also desperate to be noticed, desperate to matter. As a Secret Service agent, and one not directly assigned to him, Jo couldn’t let that be her concern-but she couldn’t help but notice, either.
He was also fair-haired, good-looking, exceptionally bright and surprisingly unworldly given his wealthy, high-profile family background.
Elijah pushed open the screen door and glanced back at her. “You really can’t tell a toy gun from a real one?”
“Go ahead, Elijah, have your fun. Yes, I can tell. That’s not why I got hit.” She set the bananas on the two-foot cracked Formica counter in the bare-bones kitchen area. They’d be mush by morning. “It doesn’t matter. Charlie and the rest of those kids are all safe.”
“You did your job,” Elijah said.
“That’s the way I look at it.”
His eyes stayed on her for a fraction longer than she found comfortable. “Didn’t know I was back, did you?”
“No.”
She returned to the box and saw that she’d made a mistake in packing the three cartons of yogurt she’d had in her fridge. They were squished now, and ten hours in her trunk couldn’t have been good for their contents.
Thinking about yogurt gone bad wasn’t enough to distract her from the man standing in the doorway.
“I heard you were wounded,” she said, raising her gaze to him. “You’re okay now?”
“Never better.”
His response was classic Elijah. Jo had never met anyone more resilient. Most of his years as a Special Forces soldier were clouded in mystery and the subject of much speculation in Black Falls. Even with her high-level security clearances, Jo doubted she could find out the specifics of the April firefight. She’d heard that a bullet had nicked his femoral artery, a highly dangerous injury. He could have easily bled to death.
According to her sister, he was evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany, and only when he was out of danger had his family informed him of his father’s death. Beth had heard the story straight from Rose Cameron, Elijah’s younger sister, who had flown to Germany to be with her brother.
“But he already knew,” Beth had said. “No one had to tell him.”
Jo suspected that one look at Rose’s face probably had been enough for Elijah to figure out the bad news for himself.
“I’m sorry about your father.” She ran a finger along the delicate edge of a dark maroon lily. “I had no idea he planned to leave me this place. I never asked him for anything, Elijah. Ever. He didn’t owe me.”
His expression was unreadable. “That doesn’t seem to be how he saw it, does it?”
She resisted comment. To get into a discussion about Drew Cameron now, after her long day and lousy week, in the very cabin in which he had discovered her and Elijah as teenagers and changed the course of their lives, made no sense.
“Thanks for delivering the flowers,” she said.
“Anytime. And relax. Give yourself time to heal.” He grinned suddenly. “I hear those airsoft pellets sting like hell.”
“Funny, Elijah.”
“You haven’t seen the video, have you?”
“No, and I don’t intend to.” A colleague had brought his personal laptop to her desk to show her two-minute video, but his battery had run out. Her one stroke of luck all week, as far as she was concerned. “You have?”
“A.J. and I had a couple of beers the other night and watched it start to finish at least three times.”
“You did not.”
“Okay. Six times.”
The screen door creaked shut as he headed out, laughing.
After he left, Jo checked the card tucked among the lilies.
Thank you for your willingness to save my life.
Someday I’ll make amends. Charles P. Neal.
She sighed and told herself she was glad there hadn’t 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.