Page 57 of A Killing Cold

I can’t tell exactly what he’s asking. “I haven’t been many places,” I say. “But I haven’t found one I’ve cared to stay in, either.”

“Not a big traveler?”

“That takes money,” I tell him.

“That handsome boy of yours doesn’t take you on fancy trips?” Mr. Vance’s eyebrows raise.

“He tried to take me to Paris for our two-month anniversary, but I didn’t have a passport,” I admit. Instead he’d taken me to the desert, where the sun baked the earth and made the air shimmer, and he slid an ice cube along the inside of my elbow to keep me cool. I had neverseen a sky that full of stars. We stayed in an enormous house made of white stone with a pool that ran the whole length of it, and I didn’t see another human being for eight days.

I’ve had a rapid education in how people—including me—react to the level of wealth that Connor and the Daltons represent. There are the fawners, the sneerers, the stammerers. My own reaction has been something akin to relief. Like a fist around my throat has eased off for the first time. Maybe money can’t buy happiness, but it buys peace of mind. Security. Safety.

Comfort. Pleasure. The sure knowledge that I’ll never have to live in a place like the room I’m sitting in now.

Mr. Vance, for his part, seems utterly untroubled one way or another by the vast resources commanded by his employer—unbothered by the fact that he’s sleeping in this cabin while the Daltons rest in comfort up the road. He stands up to check on the progress of the water now steaming on the stove.

“You’ve worked for the Daltons for a very long time,” I remark.

“Thirty years or so,” Mr. Vance acknowledges.

“Then you were here…” I swallow. “You mentioned being here when Liam Dalton died. Connor’s father.” As if I have to specify.

Mr. Vance scratches his chin. His beard rasps under his dirt-packed nails. Their tips are yellowed, and the smell of tobacco clings thickly to him. “Like I said, I wasn’t actually here when it happened. Might have been able to do something if I had been.” His voice is tinged with regret.

“What exactly happened?” I ask. “I thought from what you said that the damage was to Dragonfly, but T—someone said it was the main lodge.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right. Guess I can see how you got that impression. No, Dragonfly was just…” He trails off, and for the first time since I encountered him in the woods hunting that deer, he looks nervous.

“He had a woman living there,” I say. Letting him know he doesn’t have to break that confidence. He visibly relaxes.

“That’s right. Mallory Cahill. Sweet woman.”

Cahill. I have a last name now. “You knew her.”

“Sure. You can hide from just about anyone up here, but not me,” he says. “Mr. Dalton—Liam, that is—let me know that someone would be staying here and that I wasn’t to ask questions or tell anyone about it, including his family. I can’t say it was something I was comfortable with, but, well…” He shifts.

“He paid you,” I guess.

“I didn’t see how it would cause any harm. The lodge was locked up tight, and there wasn’t anything in the cabins worth stealing. I saw her now and again, just to check if she needed anything. Her and the girl.”

“So you met her daughter, too?” I ask. My mouth is dry and my heart is pounding.

“Sure. Cute kid,” he says. “Of course, any kid’s cute at that age. She could talk your ear off. About everything. I had a big old hound back then—Bishop. She was scared to death of him, but if I came up on my own, she’d follow me around while I was working, making me tell her what every plant and bird was. Wouldn’t accept that I didn’t always know, either, so sometimes I had to make things up.” He chuckles.

I was the little girl with a vocabulary you could track on one hand for almost the first year I was with the Scotts. Moody. Wouldn’t go near anyone I didn’t know, and not even the ones I did. Sometime after, that insatiable curiosity appeared—the need to know things, collect names and meanings. I thought it was a consequence of not knowing my own name. The peculiar shape my scar tissue took. But it was part of me all along.

“What happened to them?” I ask. “Mallory and the girl.”

The water has started to boil. He hauls himself to his feet again and gets out a coffee maker, spooning out grounds from a giant container of Folgers. “They were gone by the time I got up here to help with Mr. Dalton. The body, I mean.”

He’s lying, I think. I don’t know what about, but the way he won’t look at me, the way his eyes fix on his task and his normally steady hand shakes—there’s something he’s hiding from me.

“I suppose,” I say delicately, “that she wouldn’t have wanted to stick around after that. It might lead to awkward questions. About why she was here.”

“I try not to judge,” he says uncomfortably. The coffee is done. He takes down two mugs, blowing dust off one before he fills them both halfway with coffee that smells like it may melt my molars. He carries them over, hands one to me before taking a seat. He adjusts the mug in his hands, fidgety. “She was a sweet woman. A real sweet woman.”

“Mr. Vance,” I say. Hesitate. He looks at me, expectant. I blow ripples across the surface of my coffee to buy myself time. “Is there any chance—is it possible there was something more going on that day? The day that Liam died, I mean.”

“What exactly are you asking?” he asks, sitting up straight.

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