Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) Read Online Free PDF Page A

old his father had given him a small pocket knife. He still had it. Carried it in his pocket at all times. It was strange how such an insignificant gesture could turn a person’s life in an unexpected direction. Though he tried to not equate that event with anything except what it appeared to be on the surface—a gift from father to son—he sometimes wondered about it.
    Knife. Blood. Death …
    Symbolism was not to be discounted when it came to the human psyche.
    Maybe that was why he’d taken the knife out and used it the first time.
    Though by then, he had to admit, it was all over.
    *   *   *
    Bryce sat at the table by the long windows and watched the sun come up.
    He’d woken early, made coffee—it was a little stale from the grounds being months old in the can on the counter, but better than nothing. The rain had moved on toward the Canadian border and the morning was pretty, the lake shining steel gray, a light wind rippling the surface of the water. The cabin sat up high on a hill, surrounded by birch in their ghostly splendor, stately elms, hemlock, and a scattering of white pine. Winding mossy steps led down the steep hillside to the dock, the latter now raised on a hinge with a winch to keep it out of the mangling grip of the ice for the winter. The solitude was complete, nothing moving anywhere except for the gentle lap of the water on the rocky shore.
    In the Land Rover he had about a dozen books he’d been waiting to read, and he’d made a vow to himself when he’d decided to come north that he would write, read, and relax for the next couple of weeks. This last project had been a tough one. He deserved some time to sit with his feet propped up.
    But he was not interested in starving to death. It was seventeen miles or so back to town, but he knew there was a little café there, and Hathaway’s—a true old-fashioned general store where you could buy everything from minnows to roofing nails to ice cream. He could pick up some essentials until he decided to drive into Tomahawk and do some real grocery shopping.
    So he changed into jeans and a clean shirt, brushed his teeth with bottled water he’d brought along in the car, and drove off toward Carney.
    The sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony about sent him off the road, the sudden break in the silence unexpected enough he swore and jerked the wheel.
    What the hell?
    It took a moment before he realized the music was coming from somewhere in the region of the floor of the SUV on the passenger side.
    A phone, he realized. Not his phone either, for not only was the ring different from what he had programmed but he patted his jacket pocket just to be sure and the weight of his cell was there, small and square.
    He found a small turnoff and pulled his car into a patch of dying goldenrod, the ground still sodden from the rain as he got out. It made him glad he’d worn boots instead of his expensive shoes. He went around the vehicle, opened the passenger door, and bent to try and locate the source of the noise, which had stopped. He spied the cell phone on the edge of the floor mat, almost under the seat.
    It had to belong to Melissa. He remembered she’d been leaving the message for the tow company as she’d gotten into his car, so maybe that was when she’d dropped it, or maybe it had just fallen out of her pocket.
    He weighed it in his hand. It wasn’t a bad excuse to see her again, which he wouldn’t mind. Almost as if it was meant to be. Besides, she was probably half frantic without it, especially since she didn’t even have her car. In his experience most people couldn’t function without their cell phones—he sure couldn’t—and obviously someone had just tried to get in touch with her, maybe even the towing company. He got back into the Rover and pulled out onto the pavement again as he headed toward the road that snaked off the county highway to her rental cabin.
    Fifteen minutes later, as he tried to judge just where exactly she