Page 15 of A Killing Cold

“No cannibals hiding in the old cabin?” I ask with a forced note of humor.

“Nobody’s stayed there in years,” Vance says. “Not since Liam died.”

“The accident,” I say; he grunts. “Connor said… he fell off a roof?”

Vance takes a moment to speak. “A storm blew through. There was some roof damage. I couldn’t get out on short notice, so Liam came up. By himself. I should’ve been with him, but there you go.” He sets off again, tramping through the snow. Duchess gives me ayou coming?look.

Liam came up, he said. Camehere. Which means that Connor’s father died at Idlewood. I look behind me, at the cabin with its shaggy eaves and unkempt shutters. Left abandoned when all the others were gleaming. No wonder, if it was where Liam Dalton died. I burrow into my coat, suppressing a shiver that has little to do with the cold.

The return trip doesn’t take nearly as long as it did to get here. Vance follows the tracks the whole way, shines his flashlight on where they stop by the window. He’s scowling, but that seems to be his natural expression.

“Well,” he says, “it’s probably nothing.”

“Probably nothing,” I agree. My mind is still on the cabin with its blank door, its empty windows. Its history. Why didn’t Connor mention that his father diedhere, at Idlewood?

At least now I know why the table fell so silent when I asked about the fifth cabin.

“Still,” Vance adds, his light still fixed on the prints, “you ought to be more careful. Wandering around after dark. During the day, too. It’s hunting season.”

“Do lots of people hunt up here?” I ask.

“This time of year, it’s just me and the Daltons allowed. From time to time, we do get folks sneaking up without permission, though.” He’s quiet, long enough that I wonder if he expects me to leave. Then he speaks again. “Can I ask you, Miss Scott—have you been around here before?”

“Nope. Never been here in my life,” I answer. “Why?”

“No reason, I guess,” he says, staring intently at me. “Good night, Miss Scott.”

He gestures to the front door and stays put until I step inside. I watch through the window as he sets off, the flashlight tracing the course in front of him. He said it was probably nothing—but I notice that he follows the trail of the footprints back the way they came, all the way to where they vanish into the more numerous tracks of the main path.

He stands there for a long time. Then he ruffles Duchess’s ears and sets off again.

Why did he ask me if I’ve been here before?I wonder.

And why does it feel like I answered wrong?

6

I wake with Connor’s arm around me, his face burrowed against my shoulder. He sleeps like this often, not holding me so much as half-flung over me, like he’s afraid I’ll slip away from him in the night. As if, as he once confessed, he’ll wake to an empty bed and no evidence that I was ever there.

You came out of nowhere. Like a magic trick, he told me. He meant an illusion. Something that isn’t real.

I wriggle out from under the weight of his arm. In the bathroom I press two fingers against my cheekbone as I stare at my reflection. Real enough.

By the time Connor gets up, I’m dressed and the coffee is made. I always wake up before he does—it’s an old survival instinct I’ve never shed. Sloth is one of the deadly sins, and you didn’t want Beth finding you still asleep in bed past the appointed hour.

I sit alone, sipping my coffee, letting the sense of Theo Scott seep into my limbs. She’s never there when I first open my eyes. I am an empty house without her. Restless, dull. And then she enters in: not something I’ve constructed, no meticulously planned illusion. More like a visitor—someone who arrives every day and yet remains in some ways a stranger.

Connor stumbles into the shower, then out to press a kiss into my hair, praise me for the coffee. He moves like a bear in the morning. Lumbering, slow, seemingly fifty pounds heavier as he thumps down into a chair and takes his first slurp. He’s wrapped himself in a plush robe, one of two left hanging in the bathroom for us. There’s something different about him, I think: a lassitude to his limbs I can’t put down to sleepiness.

“Something on my face?” he asks.

I hum a nonanswer. “So what do you do in a place like this for two weeks?” I ask.

He scratches his neck, stifles a yawn. “Drink,” he says. “Stare at fires. The guys go hunting, the women always bake something. There are walks in the woods and snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, and did I mention the drinking? Or you can read. Mom always brings a stack of books,” he says. His eyes glitter. “And we can keep each other busy, of course.”

He’s looking for a laugh, but I only tilt my chin. I think of telling him—the footprints, the possibility of a presence outside our window. I would sound paranoid. Fearful. Perhaps even delusional. None of these words are acceptable descriptions for an aspiring wife. I’m not an idiot. I know Connor Dalton is out of my league. A step out of line, and he will realize this—or remember it.

So when Connor reaches out, I let him tug me from my seat into his lap. He tips his face up, and I meet his lips with mine. He abandons his mug, freeing both hands to rove up under my sweater, warm palms against the skin of my hips.

---