Page 4 of Cold as Hell

If I didn’t know the speaker, I’d think that tone meant a very minor problem, an inconvenience and an annoyance that unfortunately did require my personal touch… such as our deputy being unable to access the gun locker because baby brain meant I misplaced the key again.

The speaker, though, is Sebastian.

Sebastian had been our youngest resident in Rockton, and at twenty-two, he’s still the youngest adult resident in Haven’s Rock. He came to Rockton because he’s too infamous to live a normal life down south. At the age of eleven he killed hisparents. He had his reasons, but no court would consider them a defense. If hehada defense, it’s that he was an undiagnosed sociopath who thought this seemed a valid solution to the problem of rich parents who wouldn’t let him attend school because it interfered with their social calendar. He served his time and while serving it, he dealt with his diagnosis and continues to deal with it. He’s not a serial killer. He has no interest in hurting anyone. He just needed to understand that murder is not a valid problem-solving strategy.

All this means it’s really hard to rattle Sebastian. Maybe impossible. He could stumble over a dead body, and unless it’s someone he cares about, his response would be purely practical. Go find someone to deal with it.

I dress and tell Storm to move. Her eyes roll up to meet mine, her disapproval clear, but she’s technically my dog, and she knows it. She lumbers to her feet and down the stairs.

I expect Dalton to spot her and tell me he can handle this, but before Storm’s even down the stairs, he’s at the bottom, looking up, his expression grim.

“You do need to handle this,” he says.

“What happened?”

Sebastian pops in behind him. “Kendra was attacked. She’s fine—unhurt, that is. But it seems… Well, it looks as if someone dosed her in the Roc and dragged her into the woods.”

“Dragged—”

He lifts his hands. “They didn’t do anything to her. She got away in time. But, yeah, that’s why I, uh, thought you should come. Because it looks as if they planned to…”

He trails off, and genuine emotion flashes over his face. He likes Kendra, and that flash is undiluted anger. He reins it in fast.

“I thought of going after them, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. So I helped Kendra instead.”

“Thank you. Where is she?”

“At the clinic with your sister.”

Sexual assault had always been a serious concern in Rockton. The population had been three-quarters male with no couples allowed, and as law enforcement, we’d been dealing with the potentially explosive situation of women escaping victimization and men who could be victimizers snuck in under a cover story. Explosive and completely unacceptable, but Dalton’s only option had been solid policing and the strictest of penalties. Oh, and there was a brothel—women residents were allowed to sell sex. Isabel and I had endless disagreements over that, the feminist politics of consensual sex work versus the fact that it presupposed men needed that outlet or there’d be trouble. Yep, it was complicated.

Haven’s Rock has no sex trade. Unless you count Gunnar, but he’s free, so there’s no “trade” involved. We allow couples, and we have a mixed group of men and women and sexual orientations, so… Well, if you want sex and you aren’t an asshole about it, you can probably get it, especially if you’re a straight woman because… Gunnar.

Now, as a cop, I’m the first to say that sexual assault is not always about sex. The type thatisabout sex is the sort that involves coercion and dubious consent, where someone has manipulated a situation to get what they want. Drugging a woman in the Roc could be that sort or it could be the other sort, where it’s about control and violence.

Coercion sexual assault is the most likely scenario, whether it’s Rockton or Haven’s Rock. One would hope that anyone driven to drag a resident into the forest would realize he wasgoing to get caught. We have seventy people in Haven’s Rock and a professional police force of three.

But if you’ve convinced yourself that you just “talked her into it,” you don’t see a crime. Even if drugs are involved, it’s their word against yours, and besides, you didn’t give them any drugs and so you thought it was consensual sex. Really.

If Kendra was attacked and possibly dosed, there is no way I’m turning this over to Dalton and Anders, as I have—grudgingly—with most of my late-pregnancy workload. I absolutely trust both of them to treat it with all due gravity and respect, and if I weren’t here, they could handle it. But I am here.

The clinic front door is unlocked. That’s the only way I know April is inside, because the windows are shuttered, blinds drawn. To avoid giving the town away at night, all of the buildings have been designed to be as close to dark as possible, even if someone has a light on, because in the dead of winter, you can’t expect people to be in bed by four when the sun sets.

I still tap on the door as I open it. Inside, it remains dark, meaning my sister unlocked the front door but didn’t turn on the waiting-area light. I don’t make it to the next door before it’s yanked open.

The first time Dalton ever saw April, he knew she was my sister. Of course, siblings often resemble each other. It’s genetics. But I grew up hearing how different we looked, and I realize now that what people really meant was that I have distinctive features that favor our Chinese-Filipino mother, and April does not, and by “distinctive features” I really mean just eye shape and skin tone. It only takes that, though, for me to look Asian and her to look white.

Get beyond that, and it’s very obvious that we’re sisters, with the same straight dark hair, heart-shaped face and cheekbones. But those differences are one of many things that drove a wedgebetween us growing up, the other main one being April’s previously undiagnosed place on the autism spectrum.

April steps out, flipping on the light and closing the door as she glares at me. “What are you doing here?”

I make a show of looking around. “Have I lost clinic-visit privileges? Or sister-visit privileges?”

“Both if it’s one in the morning. I thought Eric was handling all this for you.” Her glare moves to my shoulder and hardens to annoyance when Dalton isn’t there to receive it. The fact that she’s glaring at all tells me she’s out of sorts. When it comes to irritating April, Dalton gets the free pass that her little sister never does.

“April?” I motion toward the door and for her to make sure her voice is lowered so Kendra can’t hear.

Her eyes narrow.

---