Praise for the novels of
CARLA NEGGERS
“Neggers’s characteristically brisk pacing and colorful characterizations sweep the reader toward a dramatic and ultimately satisfying denouement.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Cabin
“Tension-filled story line that grips the audience from start to finish.”
—Midwest Book Review on The Waterfall
“Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre.”
—Debbie Macomber
“Neggers delivers a colorful, well-spun story that shines with sincere emotion.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Carriage House
“A well-defined, well-told story combines with well-written characters to make this an exciting read. Readers will enjoy it from beginning to end.”
—Romantic Times on The Waterfall
“Gathers steam as its tantalizing mysteries explode into a thrilling climax.”
—Publishers Weekly on Kiss the Moon
CARLA NEGGERS
COLD RIDGE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A very special thank-you to Merline Lovelace, a retired air force colonel, a terrific writer and friend, and to Monty Fleck, an air force pararescueman (PJ), for answering my many questions about the air force and pararescue. I’m also grateful to Monty, R. B. Gustavson, Patty Otto and Dr. Carla Patton for sharing their medical expertise with me, and to Lynn Camp for her insight into nature photography. Thanks also to Lieutenant Kevin Burns, Nancy Geary, Robyn and Jim Carr, my brother Jeffrey Neggers—and to my teenage son, Zack Jewell, for his technical know-how.
Finally, I’d like to thank the incredible team at MIRA Books—Amy Moore-Benson, Dianne Moggy, Tania Charzewski and all the rest of the “gang”—as well as my tireless agent, Meg Ruley, and my talented Webmaster, Sally Shoeneweiss, for all your hard work on my behalf.
Enjoy!
Carla Neggers
P.O. Box 826 Quechee, Vermont 05059
To Fran Garfunkel
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Prologue
Carine Winter loaded her day pack with hiking essentials and her new digital camera and headed into the woods, a rolling tract of land northeast of town that had once been dairy farms. She didn’t go up the ridge. It was a bright, clear November day in the valley with little wind and highs in the fifties, but on Cold Ridge, the temperature had dipped below freezing, wind gusts were up to fifty miles an hour and its exposed, knife-edged granite backbone was already covered in snow and ice.
Her parents had hiked Cold Ridge in November and died up there when she was three. Thirty years ago that week, but Carine still remembered.
Gus, her uncle, had been a member of the search party that found his older brother and sister-in-law. He was just twenty himself, not a year home from Vietnam, but he’d taken on the responsibility of raising Carine and her older brother and sister. Antonia was just five at the time, Nate seven.
Yes, Carine thought as she climbed over a stone wall, she remembered so much of those terrible days, although she had been too young to really understand what had happened. Gus had taken her and her brother and sister up the ridge the spring after the tragedy. Cold Ridge loomed over their northern New Hampshire valley and their small hometown of the same name. Gus said they couldn’t be afraid of it. His brother had been a firefighter, his sister-in-law a biology teacher, both avid hikers. They weren’t reckless or inexperienced. People in the valley still talked about their deaths. Never mind that weather reports were now more accurate, hiking clothes and equipment more high-tech—if Cold Ridge could kill Harry and Jill Winter, it could kill anyone.
Carine waited until she was deep into the woods before she took out her digital camera. She wasn’t yet sure she liked it. But she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on any serious photography today. Her mind kept drifting back to fleeting memories, half-formed images of her parents, anything she could grasp.
Gus, who’d become one of the most respected outfitters and guides in the White Mountains, would object to her hiking alone. It was the one risk she allowed herself to take, the one safety rule she allowed herself to break.
She’d climbed all forty-eight peaks in the White Mountains over four thousand feet. Seven were over five thousand feet: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Lafayette and Lincoln. At 6288 feet, Mt. Washington was the highest, and the most famous, notorious for its extreme conditions, some of the worst in the world. At any time of the year, hikers could find themselves facing hurricane-force winds on its bald granite summit—Carine had herself. Because of the conditions the treeline was lower in the White Mountains than out west, generally at around 4500 feet.
It was said the Abenakis considered the tall peaks sacred and never climbed them. Carine didn’t know if that was true, but she could believe it.
Most of the main Cold Ridge trail was above four thousand feet, exposing hikers to above-treeline conditions for a longer period than if they just went up and down a single peak.
But today, Carine was content with her mixed hardwood forest of former farmland. Gus had warned her to stay away from Bobby Poulet, a survivalist who had a homestead on a few acres on the northeast edge of the woods. He was a legendary crank who’d threatened to shoot anyone who stepped foot on his property.
She took pictures of rocks and burgundy-colored oak leaves, water trickling over rocks in a narrow stream, a hemlock, a fallen, rotting elm and an abandoned hunting shack with a crooked metal chimney. The land was owned by a lumber company that,