Cold Pursuit Read Online Free PDF

village café. She’d introduced herself as Melanie Kendall and said she was taking a few days to get away from New York and her work as a self-employed interior decorator.
    Thomas’s life hadn’t been the same since. With Melanie, he finally understood how dull and routine his first marriage had become. He wouldn’t have ended it if Carolyn hadn’t made the first move, but now, in retrospect, he could see how tedious their relationship must have become for her, too.
    His waiter had left him a heavy silver pot of strong coffee and a small, chilled silver pitcher of cream—Thomas knew he should request low-fat milk, but he didn’t.
Go with the real stuff.
He was, after all, meeting the man who’d stolen Carolyn from him, and passing on cream in his coffee struck him as something that Alex would seize upon as a sign of weakness.
    When he’d called yesterday Alex claimed he wanted to discuss Nora, but Thomas couldn’t imagine that Alex really cared that she’d dropped out of Dartmouth and moved to Black Falls to work in a café. The same café, in fact, where Thomas had met Melanie seven months ago.
    He suspected Alex’s motives for inviting him to breakfast weren’t that simple—nothing with Alex ever was.
    And everything, Thomas thought with a fresh surge of annoyance, was always on Alex’s terms. When to meet. Where. What they’d discuss. But not only would Thomas do anything for his daughter, he also had to admit he was curious about what else was on Alex’s mind—something, certainly. He had called instead of e-mailed and insisted on speaking directly to Thomas, refusing to leave a message with his secretary.
    “We need to talk about Nora and Vermont,” Alex had said. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain when I see you.”
    Alex had obviously assumed Thomas would drop everything and show up, which was exactly what he’d done. He’d also kept their meeting to himself, not out of paranoia, he told himself, but habit and discretion.
    And because it was Alex. He had recently ended a stint as the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Speculation about what he’d do next was rampant. Persistent rumors put him in consideration for a very high-level appointment, possibly even Secretary of State. Washington thrived on gossip and scandal, turning the innocent into the sensational. Alex Bruni was born knowing how to play such games; Thomas had never quite learned.
    He opened up another section of the
Post,
flipped through it, studied the ads, read the commentaries and drank his coffee.
    Ten minutes ticked by. Where the hell was Alex?
    Thomas glanced at his watch.
Fifteen minutes late.
Any lingering amusement over the op-ed on Jo faded. Although he’d cleared his calendar for the entire morning, he was a busy man—as busy in his own way as Alex. But Thomas knew better than to compare himself to Alex, a lesson learned twenty years ago when he and his ambitious, overachieving friend were law students at Yale—long before Alex had taken up with his best friend’s wife.
    In spite of that blinding act of betrayal, Thomas couldn’t hate Alex, and there was no gain to such negativity and strong emotion, anyway. Alexander Bruni was a respected diplomat on everyone in Washington’s short list of “good people to know.”
    And if his longtime friend had any fresh insights into what to do about Nora and her behavior, Thomas was willing to listen. He was convinced the combination of the early northern New England winter and limited funds would nip her sense of romance and adventure about life in Vermont in the bud. Alex and her mother had decided to help Nora out with cash and a car, a source of friction, but Thomas doubted it was what had prompted Alex to arrange this meeting. At least Carolyn, an expert on emerging markets, was in Hong Kong at a conference and wouldn’t be there.
    Thomas’s newspaper moved, startling him, until he realized he’d put it on top of his cell phone, which was set on vibrate. He picked up