Page 78 of Cold as Hell

What about the situation that brought him here? It would seem, logically, that a violent person would retaliate with violence if they were being threatened. But is that faulty logic? If you were a serial killer being hunted by your girlfriend’s violent ex, would you end the threat? Or would you duck and weave to avoid drawing too much interest from the police?

Marlon matches the size of the person Carson saw. By telling us he saw Lynn with Sebastian, Marlon could be redirecting us to the false suspect he’d chosen… and also removing himself from the suspect pool. He’d even solidified his “alibi” by hailing Grant and saying he’d seen Lynn.

Am I really considering Marlon as a suspect? Or is it just that middle-of-the-night phenomenon where even ridiculous fears seem reasonable?

I catch sight of my laptop on the desk. Then I slide out of bed, patting Storm when she rouses and whispering for her to go back to sleep.

I ease into the desk chair and turn my screen brightness down to the lowest setting before I flip on the browser.

Émilie gave me enough to look up Marlon’s case, and she said it made the local news. If I find it, I findhim—his real name—which goes against every assurance of privacy we give residents.

I should just ask Émilie to…

To do what? Keep digging? She said she would. But she clearly thinks I’m wrong. I need to do this myself, and I know I’ll regret it later, but this is a breach of confidence I need to make.

I barely start before stress sweat trickles down my back. I move the chair so if Dalton wakes and I’m deep in my work, he won’t see what I’m doing before I have the chance to Alt-Tab away. That launches a wave of guilt so overwhelming that nausea overtakes me, and I crawl back into bed and tell myself I am not doing this.

As I lie there, all I can see is Lynn dead on the ice, her eyes open.

They wouldn’t have been open when she died, right? While she’d have screamed at first, eventually hypothermia would have set in. That’s why we hadn’t seen as much struggling as we might have expected—by the time she realized she was going to die, her mind would have already been wandering. She would—I expect and sincerely hope—have drifted off in a fog, overwhelmed by the need to sleep.

Her killer opened her eyelids. Opened them and looked into her eyes and left her like that.

I push up from bed. I need to find Lynn’s killer. I need to make sure they don’t do that to anyone else, and I need to make sure they don’t get away with what they did to Lynn. If that means violating a resident’s right to privacy, then I need to remember what Émilie said.

We are in charge here. We are not beholden to some faceless council and even more faceless investors. Our duty is to resident safety, which trumps privacy.

Back in Rockton, we’d thought nothing of researching a resident online if we needed to. Dalton had been doing that before I arrived. But that was because we couldn’t easily ask thecouncil for their backstory, and even if we got it, we couldn’t be sure it was real.

I trust that Émilie gave me Marlon’s real backstory. But if I don’t dig myself then I feel as if I’ve half-assed this. I’m the detective, the investigator.

What’s really holding me back isn’t guilt over betraying Marlon’s trust. It’s guilt over betraying someone else’s trust.

I tap Dalton’s shoulder. “Eric?”

His eyelids flutter. Then they spring open, and he vaults up, blurting, “The baby?”

I squeeze his arm. “No, sorry. The baby’s fine. I’m fine.”

He blinks and looks around. His gaze goes to the window, where it’s pitch-black outside. “Okay. So what’s…” He glances over. “The case.”

I nod. “I have a suspect that I haven’t shared with you, and I believe I need to research them. I got their backstory from Émilie but… I need more. I was going to start digging online, and then realized I was going behind your back.”

He arches a brow. “Going behind your boss’s back or your husband’s?”

“My husband’s. I’d have no problem sneaking behind my boss’s back.”

He lets out a low laugh.

“And not even my husband’s as much as my partner’s,” I say. “I didn’t want to tell you that I suspect this person, because it’s awkward. Then Émilie gave me his story, which she thinks means he couldn’t have done it, and I agreed at the time but…”

“Then you went to sleep and woke up second-guessing.”

I nod.

He pushes up onto his elbows and looks over at me. “Are we talking about Marlon?”

I exhale. “Yes.”

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