Page 89 of A Killing Cold

Nick mutters something under his breath; the stairs creak to mark his retreat.

He says he didn’t kill her.

I don’t want to believe him. But why lie about that at this point?

I remember. I remember him, I think stubbornly, and I do. But I never saw him shoot her.

Someone else was there.

39

Mr. Vance goes to the window. He takes off his knit cap as he looks out, crushing it between his hands. The front door opens. Closes. Toenails click. Duchess pads into view. She sniffs at me, giving me a curious, concerned look, and then goes to sit next to Vance.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask him.

He looks down at his hands, wringing that gray hat between them. “The Daltons, they’re good people. I don’t want you thinking they’re not. I told you I traveled a bit when I was younger. Got into a bit of trouble. A lot of it, really. Magnus, he was the only person who really believed I was worth anything after that. Gave me a chance to start over. I owe him my life, not that it’s ever been of much value. Still. You owe a debt like that, it doesn’t get repaid easy.”

He turns those sorrowful eyes on me and I want to gouge them out.

I start to speak, but I cough, my mouth still dried out from the drugs and the horrible rag. Mr. Vance makes a sound liketschand comes over, hauling me upright by the elbow and helping me scoot over to lean my back against the bed. He takes a flask from his pocket and puts it to my lips. It’s warm from his body and tastes of turpentine, and I cough again, but I can talk.

“They’re going to kill me.”

He looks at me sadly. He already knows. “It was supposed to be quick. So you wouldn’t know,” he says.

“You were going to shoot me. After you told me all those things about my mother,” I say. “About how much you liked her.”

“Mr. Dalton did his best. He tried to protect you. Told you to leave,” Mr. Vance says.

“So I’ve heard.”

“That night you came over, that’s when I saw it. I worked out who you were and I told him—about the questions you were asking. You shouldn’t have asked, is the thing. And I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t—you’re all grown up. I didn’t recognize you properly, I didn’t know. It’s not my fault.”

Funny, how none of this is anyone’s fault.

He scratches the side of his neck with blunt fingernails. “I’m the one who figured out you weren’t dead, you know. Back then. Heard you making this little noise, all whimpery. Like a little puppy. I bundled you up, got you warm. Snuck you back to my cabin. Don’t know what I was thinking I was going to do after that, only couldn’t stand to have anything else happen to you, poor little thing.”

He doesn’t seem to realize how much this contradicts his rosy view of the Daltons. The only reason he’d need to keep me secret, sneak around, is if they were a danger to me. To a five-year-old child.

“Magnus found me out, of course,” he says. “He came up with the plan. A place for you to go. Didn’t tell me where.”

“And my mother?” I ask.Blue scarf—she smiles, wraps me up in her arms. Red scarf—she tells me to run.

“We buried her,” he says. “Off in the woods. I made sure to find a nice spot. A really nice spot. There are wildflowers in the summer. Mallory would have liked that.”

“Are you going to bury me in the same place, Mr. Vance?” I whisper, and I don’t try to hide the fear snaking through the words.

“That’s not my call,” Vance says, but he looks uncomfortable. “You can’t blame them, Miss Scott. You can’t blame them wanting to protect their own. She was angry. She wasn’t thinking straight.”

My brow furrows in confusion. Everything still a bit sloshy from the drugs, and for a moment I think I’ve missed something. “She? She who?” I say. Louise?

“She just meant to talk to Mallory. The gun was for show, that’s all,” Vance says.

I can imagine Louise angry easily enough, but threatening someone with a rifle is harder. Louise is the kind of person who lets someone else hold the gun.

But Rose—

Rose is the one who gave me the tea. All that talk was just to draw out what I knew. Rose found out that her husband was cheating on her—or so she thought. She found out where he was stashing them.

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