Colder Than Ice by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page A

you spilled tea on yourself at the mention of a strange car, young lady. Now, my word is law, and I have spoken. Finish your tea while Josh changes his clothes.”
    â€œFine. Fine, he can run with me.” She looked at Josh as he rushed into the house and added, “If he can keep up!”
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    Beth was running faster than her normal pace in honor of his presence; Josh was sure of it. He broke a sweat ten minutes in, but he wasn’t complaining. It felt good to run. It had been too long. He watched the lengthening and flexing of her calf muscles and her thighs with every stride, and he thought it was too damn cold to wear shorts, and yet he was irrationally glad she had. She was probably as strong as she claimed she was. She certainly ran like she meant it. Not that it would matter much if some maniac came after her.
    She wasn’t happy about Maude’s insistence that he come along. Her jaw was tight, her eyes serious. She hadn’t spoken a word or cracked a smile since they left. God, it was difficult for him to believe this was the same pale, weak, comatose girl he’d visited in the hospital so long ago. She wasn’t pale. Her skin was sun-kissed, and her cheeks pink right now with exertion. Steady,powerful breaths rushed in and out of her lungs, not the steady mechanical rasp of a respirator. Heat rose from her body in spite of the autumn chill.
    When she slowed to a walk for the final quarter mile and he caught his breath again, he wanted to talk to her, ask her what her life had been like since coming out of that coma eighteen years ago. He wanted to hear every detail, in her own words, rather than the dry accounts in the typed pages Arthur had sent him. He’d been up most of the night reading those. They’d given him nightmares.
    But he couldn’t very well ask about her past, and even if he did, she wouldn’t tell him. So he made conversation about the one topic he thought would interest her in talking to him: Bryan.
    â€œI think Bryan must like you already,” he said.
    â€œHe doesn’t even know me. But yeah, the way he reacted to seeing a strange car—I suppose after losing his mom, it makes sense he might feel a little protective of me. I’m probably around her age. Maybe I remind him of her in some way.”
    It made perfect sense, except that she was nothing like his ex-wife, Josh thought. Kathy had been confident, demanding, had known exactly what she wanted and would settle for nothing less. Beth was…nervous. Skittish. Strong, but he got the feeling she was never quite sure which path she would choose at the crossroads of Fight and Flight. “He likes you better than he seems to like me, at the moment,” he said. “That’s worth something.”
    â€œHe thinks you don’t care about his mother’s death.”
    â€œHe acts as if I caused it.”
    â€œDid you?”
    He looked at her sharply.
    â€œI mean, in his mind? Is there any way he might blame you?”
    â€œI don’t see how. It was a weekend getaway with her second husband. The plane went down in the mountains.” He shook his head. “Bryan would have been with them, but he got sick at the last minute. Some stomach bug.”
    â€œOh. Well, no wonder.”
    He lifted his brows.
    â€œHe feels guilty,” she explained. “Wishes he had been with them, wonders why they had to die when he was spared. Survivor’s guilt. Surely you’ve heard of it.”
    â€œYou don’t know the half.” She looked at him, a question in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard of it.”
    â€œSo that’s part of it, then. I mean, it might be.” She shrugged. “Maybe I can get him talking.”
    He looked up as a car passed. A brown sedan. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see inside. Only one person, though, he thought. The driver. The license plates were too coated in dirt to read.
    â€œI