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blurting out about my past with him." She watched a small clump of snow fall off the toe of her right boot and melt onto the cabin's worn floor. "Derek was a huge mistake on my part, but he also exaggerated and outright made things up about us. You stopped him from telling lies about me that I'd never have lived down--that would have hurt me professionally."
    "It's okay, Rose," Bowie said gently. "I don't need to know the details. I didn't last year, and I don't now."
    She looked up at him. He'd been Hannah's friend and defender since childhood, and now he was hers. He'd seen her and Derek together at Killington and had warned her to steer clear of him. By then, she'd already broken off with him. Derek had been volatile, possessive and verbally abusive, turning a few dates into far more than they'd ever been. Embarrassed by her bad judgment, determined to get on with her life, she hadn't wanted anyone to know. Bowie had kept her secret.
    Then came the fight at O'Rourke's and Bowie's arrest, and her father's death a few weeks later. She'd retreated into silence and solitude, focusing on her work.
    Except for that night last June in Beverly Hills with Nick Martini.
    "I would have told the police about Derek and me after your arrest last year," she said.
    Bowie shrugged. "It wouldn't have made any difference."
    "You don't have to hide anything on my account."
    "I know that, Rose. Go on. Go see A.J. Better he hears the full story about this morning from you than from someone else."
    She grinned suddenly. "Just what I need, another big-brother type trying to boss me around."
    "Like anyone can boss you around. And I'm no Cameron. Not a chance. Call me if you need me." He opened the cabin door, the sunlight catching the ends of his dark curly hair as he gave her a serious look. "I didn't have anything to do with Cutshaw's death. I'm sorry it happened. I really am. I didn't like him and didn't want anything to do with him, but he should have had a chance to mellow."
    Rose placed a hand on Bowie's muscular upper arm. "We don't know what happened today. Be careful, okay?"
    "Yeah. You, too."
    He headed outside, and she glanced at the old iron bed, the oak veneer dresser and mismatched chairs, the crooked door to the bathroom. In the months after she'd inherited the cabins, Jo Harper had let friends, mostly in law enforcement, borrow them for a week or long weekend here and there. In November, after Charlie Neal, the vice president's genius sixteen-year-old son, played a prank on her and she ran into trouble with the Secret Service, she retreated to the best of the lot until things in Washington could cool down.
    Elijah had been home from war, a hundred yards up the lake. Now Jo was wearing the diamond ring he'd bought for her fifteen years ago, when he was nineteen and she was eighteen.
    Rose shut the door tight behind her, barely noticing the cold on her walk back to her Jeep. Ranger sat up and yawned as she got behind the wheel. "Funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it, buddy?"
    He slumped back down, and she turned the Jeep around and headed back to the main road.
    Next stop, Black Falls Lodge and her brother A.J.
    With any luck, Nick wouldn't be there.
    When Rose arrived at the lodge, she didn't see Nick's rented car in the parking lot. She gave Ranger a quick walk, again not bothering with her hat and gloves. She paused and squinted out at the white-covered mountains in the distance. Up closer, she noticed a few cross-country skiers on the groomed trails in the meadow behind the lodge. If she'd brought Ranger here this morning instead of to the Whittaker place, who would have discovered Derek's body? Would he even have gone out there?
    Would he be alive now?
    She shivered in the cold and headed inside with Ranger.
    She was surprised to find Brett Griffin, one of Derek's two friends who'd been in the fight at O'Rourke's last year, standing in front of the stone fireplace in the lobby. Ranger flopped down next to him.
    "It