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behind bars.”
    “I can’t help that.”
    The old man had studied her a moment in that incisive, uncompromising way he’d had. “You were missing your mother. That’s why you went to O’Rourke’s.”
    “It’s a good place.”
    “Your mother always wanted you to make something of yourself, but she made something of herself, too. Never forget that.”
    “I never will. Thank you. Your sons respect you as well as love you. You never forget that, okay?”
    He winked at her. “Okay, kid.”
    Hannah had gazed up through the woods, no sign of life yet on the bare tree limbs dark against the gray sky. Except for the softening ground, the flowing river, spring had seemed impossibly far away. She’d first come out here as a little girl with her father and had pictured the house that had stood on the old cellar hole and wondered who’d lived here, what had brought them to this quiet, beautiful spot on the river and what had become of them.
    It was the last time she’d encountered Drew Cameron. By mid-April, captivated by an old cellar hole up on the mountain, he was dead.

Four
    S ean Cameron abandoned his cranberry-nut muffin, which he didn’t much like, anyway, and got to his feet. The sight of Hannah’s banged-up red sedan that she’d been driving for years heading down Main Street seconds behind Bowie O’Rourke’s rusted van didn’t sit well with him.
    He could see it didn’t sit well with Jo Harper, either. She sat back, her gaze cool as she raised her eyes to Sean. They’d graduated in the same high school class, but she’d been a lunatic about his brother Elijah for as long as anyone could remember. They’d run off for a time when she was eighteen and Elijah was nineteen, but they hadn’t gone far—just to the lake below Black Falls Lodge. Both their fathers had hunted for them, but it was Elijah’s who’d discovered them. By the end of the summer, he had left Black Falls for army boot camp and a career in the Special Forces and Jo for college and a career in the U.S. Secret Service.
    She’d never wanted to stay in town. He’d never wanted to leave. Now they were back together again, one of the few positives that had come out of the events of mid-November.
    It was a different kind of love, Sean thought, the love between two people who’d grown up together, who’d been in snowball fights and seen each other at awkward ages,who knew each other’s families. He didn’t have such relationships. He’d never sought them. There wasn’t, and never had been, anyone in Black Falls for him.
    At least that’s what he kept telling himself, but he hadn’t been thinking so straight on the subject since hauling Hannah Shay out of the brawl at O’Rourke’s in late March. He still could feel her slim little body as he’d lifted her off her feet. Her passion had caught him by surprise. The elbow in his gut, the flash of her eyes, the willingness to jump into the middle of a bar fight, outnumbered and outmuscled.
    There’d been no question among him and his two brothers that he’d be the one to take care of her.
    Just as there wouldn’t be now.
    “Never come between Hannah and one of her missions,” Jo said, nodding toward the street, “and she’s on a mission.”
    Elijah, who had a soft spot for Hannah, didn’t look nearly as concerned. “Maybe she’s gone to the store for bananas.”
    Jo kept her gaze on Sean. “Are you going after her?”
    “I’ll find out what she’s up to.”
    “Be warned, Sean,” Jo said, breaking off a piece of scone. She had on the simple diamond engagement ring Elijah had bought for her fifteen years ago, only giving it to her last month when he’d finally proposed. She obviously wasn’t thinking about love and romance at the moment. “Don’t let Hannah’s unassuming manner put you off your guard. In her own quiet way, she can slice any of you Cameron boys to ribbons.”
    Of that, Sean had no doubt. He could see Hannah turning to him in high school Latin class and