US Marshall 01 - Cold Ridge Read Online Free Page A

moldings, marble fireplaces, chandeliers, wainscoting, fixtures. It had taken most of the past eighteen months for the team of architects, preservationists, designers and contractors just to come up with the right plans for what to do.
    Carine's job photographing the renovations could easily take her through the winter, while still leaving room for her to pursue other projects. She'd been at it for six weeks. Work would happen in a frenzy for a few days, the place crawling with people. Then everyone would vanish, and nothing would happen for a morning, an afternoon, even a week. That left her with spurts of time she could put to use doing something more productive than drinking lattes and window shopping.
    She noticed Louis Sanborn's car parked out front and smiled, shaking her head. Leave Louis to find a convenient parking space-she never could, and almost always walked or took public transportation in the city.
    Since she'd left for lunch, someone had set out a pot of yellowmums on the front stoop; the wrought-ironrail was cool to the touch as she mounted the steps to the massive dark wood door. It was open a crack, and she pushed it with her shoulder and went in, immediately tossing her latte cup into an ugly green plastic trash bin just inside the door. Sweeping, graceful stairs rose up to the second floor of the five-story house. She'd never been in any place like it. Not one inch of it reminded her of her little log cabin with its rustic ladder up to the loft.
    "Hello?" she called. "Anyone here?"
    Her footsteps echoed on the age-darkened cherry floor of the center hall. To her left was a formal drawing room with a marble fireplace and a crystal chandelier, then a smaller room and the library. There was even an elegant ballroom on the second floor. The Rancourts had promised to invite Carine the first time they used it, teasing her that they wanted to see her in sequins.
    She retrieved her camera from a cold, old-fashioned radiator in the hall. There had to be someone around. Nobody would leave the door open with the place empty.
    "Louis? Are you here? It's me, Carine."
    He could be upstairs, she thought, slinging her camera bag over her shoulder. She'd assumed workers would be in this afternoon, but she didn't keep close track of their comings and goings. As she turned to head back to the front entry, something caught her eye in the library. She wasn't sure what-something out of place. Wrong.
    She took a shallow breath, and it was as if a force stronger than she was compelled her to take a step forward and peer through the double doorway. Restoration work hadn't started yet in the library. Intense discussions were still under way over whether it was worth the expense to have its yellowed wallpaper, possibly original to the house, copied.
    Carine touched the wood molding, telling herself she must have simply seen a shadow or a stray drop cloth. Then she jumped back, inhaling sharply, even as her mind struggled to take in what she was seeing-a man facedown on the wood floor. Louis. She recognized his dark suit, his scrub-brush hair. She lunged forward, but stopped abruptly, almost instinctively.
    A pool of something dark, a liquid, oozed toward her. She stood motionless, refusing to absorb what she was seeing.
    Blood.
    It seeped into the cracks in the narrow-board floor. It covered Louis's outstretched hand.
    Help…
    She couldn't speak. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
    His hair…his hand…in the blood…
    "Oh, God, oh, God-Louis!" Carine leaped forward, yelling back over her shoulder. "Help! Help, someone's hurt!"
    She avoided stepping in the blood. It wasn't easy- there was so much of it.
Louis…he can't be dead. I just saw him!
    She had only rudimentary first aid skills. She wasn't an ER doctor like her sister or a highly trained combat paramedic like North and Manny Carrera. But they weren't here, and she forced herself to kneel beside Louis Sanborn and control her horror and fear as she touched two fingers