The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

her. She’s baking again—Valentine sugar cookies. Try to snag us a couple if you can.”
    The closet was bursting with coats of all shapes and sizes. Cameryn was glad Justin couldn’t see how unorganized the Mahoneys really were, at least when it came to their undersized closets. Her grandmother’s coat made from lamb’s wool jammed up against her father’s heavy parkas and down vests, which were in turn compressed against Cameryn’s snowboarding pants and summer jackets. Snow boots had been placed in a line, one next to the other, in a formation so tight they looked like bowling pins. She found her tan and brown pair from L.L. Bean and tugged them on, then slipped into her coat, pausing just long enough to catch a glimpse of herself in the entryway mirror.
    Oh, great, she said to herself. Her hair was impossible, mostly because she’d given it only a cursory brushing that morning and now it sprung from her head like tree roots. It wasn’t just her hair that was out of control. Her skin was pale, and dark smudges shadowed the area beneath her eyes. She looked . . . haunted. For a fleeting moment she thought of pinching her cheeks, a fast way, her grandmother once told her, to “bring back the roses,” but decided against it.
    A small shelf beneath the mirror contained knickknacks. Among the various keys and paper clips she found a cinnamon ChapStick, an elastic, and a peppermint wrapped in cellophane. As fast as she could, Cameryn pulled up her hair and yanked it through the elastic at the base of her neck, applied a thin coat of ChapStick, and popped the mint into her mouth. Well, it was something, she told herself, and the best she could do.
    “Hey, are you coming, Cammie?” Justin called from the kitchen.
    “Yeah,” she said, zipping her coat to her chin and digging her gloves from the pockets. She, at least, was aware of how cold February air could get high in the mountains. When she stepped into their kitchen she drank in the vanilla smell. Her grandmother was squeezing a pastry bag filled with red frosting.
    “These look like they were made in a bakery.”
    Mammaw, who had a smudge of flour on her face, glanced up at Justin and smiled like a schoolgirl. “There’re just cookies, plain and simple. Off with you now,” she said, shooing both of them through the door. “And don’t stay out too long, it’s about to get dark. A hat, Cammie,” her grandmother called out after them, a dictum Cameryn chose not to hear. She looked at the large thermometer that had been nailed to the outside wall of their house. The temperature read seventeen degrees.
    “Your mammaw really gets into the holidays,” Justin said, gingerly holding two heart-shaped cookies on a napkin balanced on the palm of his hand. The paving stones that led to the glider were buried beneath a layer of snow, but her father had shoveled a path that led to the back of the house. The snow on either side of them was three feet high, so they had to walk single file. Justin led the way.
    “Unfortunately, we have decorations for every occasion. You should see what she does for St. Patrick’s Day—green pancakes, green beer. Personally, I think the whole ‘holiday cheer’ thing can get a bit cheesy.”
    “We had too many kids in my family for my mom to have time to decorate or bake or do any of that kind of thing. Everything came from a box. For a while there I thought Sara Lee was my aunt.”
    “Well, I can’t cook, so don’t get your hopes up. The cooking gene is one I did not inherit. No baking, no nothing. Nada.”
    “I’m a big boy. I know how to open a can.”
    They stopped in front of the glider. Behind it, a clutch of aspen stretched out bare arms, their tissuelike bark studded with knotholes. “By the way,” Cameryn said, suddenly serious, “am I being watched? Right now, I mean.”
    “Yeah,” Justin nodded. “They’re out there.”
    “I guess I’m glad. I mean, I want to be safe. But it feels kind of . . . weird. I hate being spied on. I’ll be so happy when this is all over.”
    “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” His tone had shifted and there was something new in his voice that made her nervous. He cocked his head as he looked down at her, his eyes narrowing. She could tell he was searching for the right words for what he’d come to say. “Maybe we should sit,” he suggested. With his bare hand Justin began to brush off the glider, still carefully holding the cookies in the