Page 70 of A Killing Cold

Did you try?

I can see her. Honey-brown hair. Hand clapped against the side of her neck, trying in vain to stop the blood. She reaches out as if to grab me but pushes me away again.

Hide.

My memories swirl around each other in impossible combinations, tainted and warped by the images from my dreams. I can’t be sure of them. I try to reorient myself, stick to what I know.

Alexis has photos of my mother. Her father was having an affair with my mother. My mother was beaten.

Alexis was fifteen years old when her father died. Just a kid, really. Could she have known about Mallory? About what her father was doing? Maybe not.

The sound of a key scraping in a lock startles me. I jump to my feet, the photographs clutched in my hands. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide, unless I want to try to shove my way under the bed and get found in an even more compromising position than I already am.Indecision paralyzes me, and so I’m standing there, clearly visible in the doorway, when Paloma enters.

She freezes, keys in hand, her face flushed. “What the fuck are you doing?” she demands.

“I—I can explain,” I say, which is what you say when you have no idea how to explain yourself.

She says something rapidly under her breath and strides forward. “You had better start, then,” she says. She’s holding the key in her fist like a weapon. Her eyes are red-rimmed; she’s been crying. “What are those?” she demands.

I hold them out, opting for honesty—it’s not like I have a better idea. “I found them earlier, when I was looking for Sebastian’s book,” I say.

She takes them from me slowly, stares at them. “What the fuck are these?” she says. She swears with the condensed intensity of someone who does not get many chances to do it.

“Do you know who she is?” I ask.

“No,” she says, voice clipped. “What are you doing, digging around for dirt on the family?”

“No. Not exactly,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure some things out.”

She snorts. She walks over to the kitchen, tossing the photographs onto the table, and opens a cabinet. She takes down a glass and a bottle of whiskey, pouring herself a sloppy portion.

I hesitate. “I talked to Alexis, about the ornament.”

“She mentioned.”

“You already knew, she said.”

“Trevor’s a pretty shitty blackmailer. Or he would be, if the point was to get anything out of it, not just piss us all off.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “I’m so tired of pretending like all this is normal. Like having this many fucking secrets is anything but diseased.” She looks at me over the rim of her drink. “Do you know who that is, in the pictures?”

“Her name was Mallory Cahill,” I tell her. “She was… involved. With Liam Dalton.”

Her eyes widen. “That’s her?” she says.

“You know about her?”

“Everyone knows,” she says. “I mean, everyone in the family.” She walks back over, picks them up. “God. He did this to her?”

“I don’t know. Do you have any idea what Alexis would be doing with these?”

Paloma blows out a breath. “No. But… she’s been helping her mom clear some things out of the old house. Maybe she found them there?” She sets them down. “Did Connor tell you about her?”

“No. Trevor,” I say.

“Shit-stirrer,” she notes. She crosses her arms. “I cannot tell you how much I hate that man.”

“Trevor?”

“Liam,” she says. My eyebrows go up. “It’s not my best quality. I know I shouldn’t, given the way—but it destroyed her, you know? She was my best friend. I saw what it did to her. She almost didn’t survive it herself.”

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