Page 66 of A Killing Cold

“Endocrinologist,” he says. “But don’t worry, I know how to stitch up a cut.” He takes a syringe from the tray beside him, filling it from a tiny bottle. I look away when he brings it to my arm, biting the inside of my cheek at the pinch. The pain recedes, fading into cold and absence.

Images play through my mind in an endless loop. My blood, speckling the snow. The antlers of the deer. Connor’s face, replaced by his father’s.

Nick works in silence. He leans close as he pushes the needle through my skin. I feel minuscule next to him, swamped in this armchair. I watch the clock on the wall. It’s not even lunchtime.

“Nick, can I ask you something?” I say when he’s almost done. He doesn’t pause in his work but ticks his chin in a nod. “Was Liam ever violent?”

He pulls the needle free of my arm slowly. The suture draws shut, bringing the edges of my skin together. With his other hand he presses a gauze pad to the edge of the wound, dabbing up the blood that still oozes from it.

“You worried about Connor?” he asks at last.

“No,” I say. I look away. “I don’t know.”

“This was an accident,” Nick says.

“I know.” But everything is too strange. That flash of metal in the woods. Mr. Vance, appearing out of nowhere. Magnus directing me to a clearing alone. Stories of poachers in the woods: a perfectly plausible explanation, if the worst were to happen.

I cannot help but feel hunted.

We’re silent again. The needle glides through my flesh once, twice. “Liam had a temper. But he never hit the kids, if that’s what you’re asking.” He says it carefully.

“Did he hurt someone else?”

He’s on the last stitch. He finishes it. Clips the thread. “What is it you’re asking?”

I wait until he looks at me. “Mallory Cahill,” I say. “You knew her. Didn’t you.”

He pauses. His eyes flick to me—and then down, and there he stops. I’m not wearing a turtleneck today, but a scoop-neck, and his gaze has frozen on the two dark birthmarks just above my collarbone. He looks at me again, and his face is pale.

I go still, instinct telling me not to make a sound, not to twitch. I don’t even breathe.

He jerks. Looks away. He sets his tools down on the tray, cleans blood from his fingers with the gauze. “You’ll need to keep that clean and dry, but it can stay uncovered. The stitches should dissolve on their own in a couple of weeks, and of course I’ll check it for you. You’ll have a scar.”

He stands, gathering his things. When the door closes behind him, tension floods out of me. Relief doesn’t come in its place, only a scraping emptiness as the pain in my arm begins to leach back, and suddenly I’m biting back tears.

I don’t want to cry. Crying is useless. The feeling in my chest, in my gut, in my throat is useless. I don’t have time for sorrow or self-pity; I never have.

So I won’t feel them. I knuckle the tears from my eyes, but I can’t seem to get a proper breath.

These people knew me. They know that something happened here. And the Daltons don’t do scandal. They don’t let the misdeeds of their sons become known. What happened here, what Liam did, was covered up. I’m a threat to that.

And Nick recognized me. I know he did.

I blink the tears from my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. I need to think.

My gaze catches on a scrap of green, slotted between the heavy bookshelf and the side table opposite me. A curl of paper, fallen into the gap and forgotten. I stare at it a moment, not quite sure why it’s caught my eye, and then I realize with a jolt that I’ve seen it before.

It’s wrapping paper. The same wrapping paper from the gift that was left so lovingly on my windowsill just days before.

My fingers dig into the chair’s arms, fingernails scraping against leather. That scrap of paper might have blown in from anywhere. But it’s here, in Magnus’s study.

So Trevor wrapped that little present in here—but no. Why would he cart it all the way here to the lodge, the place he was most likely to be spotted? Trevor’s angry. Lashing out without particular direction or intent. Those messages, though, that warning? They had purpose, and it wasn’t to wound. It was to drive me away.

Louise gave me that check so I would go. Magnus tried to talk me into it, directly. And when I didn’t…

I check the door quickly—closed, and no sound of anyone approaching. I’m sure they’re off discussing what happened. Planning how to keep it all under control. Keep the story straight.

I rise. I don’t know how much time I have or what I’m looking for, but I know how to dissect a room, to slit open its secret places. I go to the side table first. It has a set of drawers, but these don’t offer much—a heavy set of scissors, a blank legal pad, a set of inks. I snatch the scrap of paper from the floor and shove it into my pocket, and then I go to the desk.

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