Murder on the Mountain. Cassie Miles

she said.

      “Apparent suicide,” Paul corrected her. “We still need to go through the drill. Taking fingerprints. Checking the room for fibers, hairs and tiny spots of blood. I’ll need to interview your guests to see if any of them heard or saw anything unusual.”

      “I’d really appreciate if this could be handled with as little fuss as possible. It’s bad for business and—” She paused midsentence. Her gaze turned to the dead man. How could she be scheming in his presence? “God, I sound cold. I shouldn’t be thinking about business.”

      “I understand,” Paul said.

      “My other guests knew the general. I don’t want to upset them any more than necessary.”

      “They’ll probably call off their meeting,” Paul said.

      That was what she had expected. But the senator had been adamant about moving forward with their mission; he had no other free time in his schedule. “They’ve decided to carry on.”

      Clearly taken aback, Paul said, “Doesn’t sound like your other guests are concerned about the general’s suicide.”

      “They’re task-oriented people from Washington. It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove of their decision.”

      Her job was to keep them safe. And she’d failed miserably. As she glanced at the lifeless body stretched out on the bed, her heart ached with the weight of her guilty secrets. I’m sorry, General. So horribly sorry. He deserved to have his death investigated. Suicide was looked upon as the coward’s way out. A Marine deserved better.

      She felt Paul’s arm encircle her shoulders. Gently, he guided her toward the bedroom door. “Don’t worry, Julia. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll be as discreet as possible.”

      Standing in the hallway outside the bedroom, she allowed herself to accept his comforting embrace, leaning her head into the crook of his neck. Her arms wrapped around his huge torso. He was so big and solid.

      Though his touch was in no way inappropriate and he patted her shoulders in an almost impersonal manner, she felt a surge of erotic tension. Her breasts rubbed against his chest. She inhaled his masculine scent. Gazing up, she noticed that his chin was marked with morning stubble. Though he was in his deputy uniform, he had to have come here immediately without even stopping to shave.

      He was anxious to help, and she repaid him with lies, using him for her own purposes. Julia stepped away from his embrace. There was a depth of meaning in her voice when she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

      “No need for you to be sorry. This isn’t your fault.”

      If only he knew what she’d done. In his warm brown eyes, she saw the glow of kindness. She didn’t merit his friendship. “What happens next?”

      “I’ll call the sheriff. He’s not going to be happy. Two fatalities in two days.”

      “Is that unusual?”

      “Not for a city,” Paul said. “But we’re a fairly quiet little county.”

      “I hate to bring this up,” she said, “but there will be media attention. General Naylor was well known. He did commentary on a lot of news programs.”

      “Which means the sheriff is going to be talking to the press,” Paul said. “He can handle it.”

      She envisioned television trucks with satellite dishes and reporters with microphones. A nightmare! “I really don’t want my lodge to be the backdrop for those interviews.”

      “No problem. We’ll evacuate the body to the hos-pital before autopsy. The sheriff can make his statement to the press from that location.”

      For that, she was endlessly grateful. The last thing she needed was a mob of curious interviewers crawling all over the safehouse.

      “Yesterday,” Paul said, “the general reacted strangely when you mentioned his television commentaries. What did he say? Something about not believing everything you hear. It was like he thought he was being unfairly criticized.”

      “Paranoid,” she said. “That fits with suicide, doesn’t it?”

      “Did you notice anything else unusual about his state of mind?”

      “Other than shooting at rabbits off the deck behind the lodge?”

      “Strange behavior,” he said.

      “But not typical. The general kept to himself. He got here a day ahead of the others and spent most of that time in his room.”

      Paul glanced down at his boots, then looked up at her again. “How much do you know about makeup? You know, lipstick and stuff.”

      That question came out of the blue. “On occasion, I’ve been known to use cosmetics.”

      “You don’t need that stuff,” he said quickly. “I like the way you look. Healthy. And your eyes…well, your blue eyes are beautiful.”

      His gruff compliment took her off guard. Had he really said that she was beautiful? Her eyes were beautiful? Self-consciously, she glanced away. “Thank you.”

      “This is about my two daughters. They have an ice-skating performance tonight at the rink near Vail, and they need to put on makeup. That happens to be a topic I don’t know much about.”

      She peeked up at him. Though he was trying to scowl, the dimples in his cheeks deepened. Adorable. “I’d like to help you, Paul.”

      He waved his hand back and forth as if to erase his words. “Forget it. You have enough to worry about.”

      “Tell you what. I’ll put together a little makeup kit for you to take with you.”

      “Thanks a lot, Julia.”

      His gratitude was utterly sincere. The sheepish expression on his face almost brought her to tears. For the first time in her life, Julia had purposely done wrong. She was lying to this terrific guy, and it was tearing her apart.

      Unable to look in Paul’s trusting eyes for one more second, she pivoted and headed down the staircase.

      In the kitchen, they found Craig Lennox, the other FBI agent who worked with her at the safehouse. Craig, a computer expert, was nearly as concerned as Julia about the true purpose of the safehouse being discovered. The office on the basement floor—filled with high-tech surveillance and computer equip-ment—was his domain, and he didn’t want anybody touching anything.

      His dark eyes darted nervously in his thin face. He nodded to Paul, who he’d met yesterday. “Is there anything I should be doing?”

      “Sit tight,” Julia said. “The police will be here soon.”

      He held up a videocassette. “I made copies of the surveillance tapes that show the hallway outside the general’s room.”

      “For all night?” Paul asked.

      “From eleven o’clock when the general went to bed until this morning when Julia opened his door.”

      “Nobody entered the room?”

      “Nobody,” Craig said. “These tapes are time coded on the bottom. There’s not one second missing.”

      Paul took a cell phone from his utility belt and punched in a number on his cell phone. “Jurisdiction can be complicated up here, but your resort is well outside Vail’s city limits so the Eagle County sheriff will be handling this incident. There’s no need to call in the state investigators for a suicide.”

      A suicide. Paul seemed convinced. She could only hope that the other county officials would also be satisfied by that explanation.

      Chapter Four

      That evening at half past five o’clock when Paul herded everybody out of the house, the girls were wearing their sparkly