Page 79 of Cold as Hell

Dalton nods. “I started wondering about that myself last night. We’re resting a lot of the investigation on what he said because it’s an eyewitness report from a reliable source. But if Carson saw something different, then the answer is either that Carson saw someone else or…”

“Or Marlon lied.”

“What did Émilie tell you?”

I relay the whole story, along with my doubts.

“We need to confirm all that,” Dalton says. “No question about it. We’ve already worried about relying on Émilie too much. This is one situation where that’s a problem. She’s confident in her recruitment methods, and no one likes being questioned on their work.”

He pulls on his sweatpants and stretches as he stands. “I’m not saying she’d hold anything back, but she thinks her methods are foolproof and if Marlon’s background suggests he can’t be our killer, she’s not going to dig as deep as we need her to.”

“Agreed.”

He picks up his watch and checks it. “Still too early to grab coffee, but let me take Storm for a walk while you start digging. I’ll make coffee when I get back.”

I’m on my second cup of decaf. Dalton is stretched out in bed, wearing only his boxers again, and it’s proof of how engrossed I am in my work that I barely notice. Barely. I’d need to be wearing blinders to not notice at all.

I tried working in bed, but with a basketball for a belly, there’s no lap for a laptop. So I’m at the desk, searching while he half dozes, ready for questions but not interrupting.

I’m halfway through that second cup when I find Marlon.Or I find his case, at least. Émilie might have given me his story, but I soon realize how few details she provided. Correctly, I might add, but that makes searching for his case tricky.

What helps in the end is, well, Marlon himself. Or Martin, as it turns out. That’s his real name. I know he served in the military, and I know he’s not white, which helps narrow it down. Any article on him is likely to mention the military service—that this idiot of an ex was foolish enough to go after a serviceman. As for “not white,” that comes into play because, as it turns out, the ex isn’t just some random guy with a propensity for violence. He’s a card-carrying member of a white nationalist group. Okay, maybe they don’t have cards, but they should—preferably stapled to their foreheads. In any event, the guy who went after Marlon had clear ties to some Aryan group I’ve never heard of, and one paper speculated that’s why he went after Marlon so hard. No shit.

From there, the story is as Émilie described it, though I now get the details filled in. Marlon was working at a software firm when he started a relationship with a coworker. The coworker’s ex confronted him in a local bar and there was an altercation. Two more altercations followed, with the reports making it clear that Marlon was being targeted and only defended himself in the fights. The relationship ended, but the persecution did not.

One thing that Émilie skipped in her account? That Marlon’s stalker started posting garbage online about Marlon’s behavior as an employee, accusing him of sexual harassment and theft and everything else he could come up with. It was laughable really, how obviously the ex was behind it, with his ridiculous scattershot accusations. The not-so-laughable part was that the negative publicity must have made the software firm uneasy. Marlon and his firm “parted ways” with a severance package. All this information comes in articles written after the fact,because the incident that got it in the paper was the attempted kidnapping, with the rest as backstory.

The kidnapping attempt hadn’t been something as simple as grabbing Marlon in a parking lot and trying—but failing—to get him into a panel van. No, he’d been Tasered and stuffed into a car trunk, driven into the wilderness and told to dig his own grave. That’s when he finally leaned into his military training. He slammed his shovel into the back of one guy’s knees, taking him down, and then smacked the other guy in the head hard enough to daze him. But the dazed guy managed to get into the car and take off, leaving Marlon with a wounded—but armed—assailant… miles from civilization.

He’d fled the guy with the gun, and he’d been shot at before making it to safety. That’s what got the story in the local papers—the kick-ass escape.

As I read those articles, I find it impossible to keep seeing Marlon as a guy who’d stake a woman on the ice and watch her die. I read them rooting for Marlon and being impressed as hell by how he handled it. In the same situation, would I have been able to run after disabling my attackers? Or would I have used that shovel to beat them until they couldn’t fight back?

I glance over at Dalton. He only arches his brows.

“I found him,” I say. “There’s nothing in his story that gives me any cause for concern, but now I’m going to dig into him personally. Okay?”

“Of course. Do whatever you need to do.” He sits up. “Can I go grab you breakfast? The bistro must be open by now.”

“Please.”

He pulls on his clothing as I begin my search. I’ve just found Marlon’s social media when Dalton picks up the leash and heads for the door.

“Not going to ask what I want?” I say.

“You’re my wife. I know what you want.”

I arch my brows. “Do you?”

“Sure. One of everything.”

I grin. “Good man.”

He calls Storm over, and I return to the screen. Marlon doesn’t have a lot of social media, but like many people of his generation—a little ahead of mine—he has a Facebook account for keeping up with family and former colleagues and old school chums.

When the page pops up, the profile picture is of a guy in fatigues, chilling with his feet up. It’s one of those shots that probably looks great at full size, but as a profile pic, it’s a blob of camo green. I click it, hoping to get a full picture, but he’s uploaded a low-res file, and it’s still blurry.

I move to his last update, which was made a few days before he left for Haven’s Rock. It’s a personalized variation on the one we give all residents to post. The trick to disappearing successfully, as I’d been told, is not to disappear at all. Tie everything up and walk away.

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