Snowblind (31 page)

“Hey, hey,” Doug said, going to her and putting his hands gently on her shoulders. “What’s going on?”

Angela shook him off, using a plastic spatula to chop and scramble the eggs. The bacon had started to burn, so Doug turned off that burner and slid the pan onto one that she hadn’t been using.

“Angela. Look at me.”

When she turned, her face was flushed pink and there were tears on her cheeks. She pursed her lips as if trying to hold back words she refused to speak.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “What did I do?”

Rolling her eyes, she allowed herself a little laugh, but the sadness quickly returned.

“You didn’t do anything,” she said. “It’s just this storm. And you’re going out, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The eggs had been on too long now, and Doug moved to her and kissed her forehead and whispered for her to let him take over. She stepped back, swiping at her tears and taking deep breaths to get herself under control. As he slid the eggs around in the pan, he lifted it off the stove and shut off the burner.

“Plates?” he asked.

Angela nodded, wiping her eyes one last time before standing on tiptoe to get a pair of plates from the cabinet. Doug used the spatula to scrape the eggs onto the plates in equal portions.

“That’s too much for me,” she said.

“They’re good for you,” he said, handing her the plate. “Get your bacon and sit. I’ll bring over your coffee and get us some juice.”

She did as he’d asked and in another minute they were facing each other across the small table. Doug couldn’t resist stuffing a slice of bacon into his mouth while she played with her eggs and took a sip of juice.

“We forgot the toast,” Angela said quietly, not looking at him.

“Screw the toast.”

She picked up a forkful of eggs and gave him a weary smile. “Kinky.”

As beautiful as she was, for the first time he noticed just how dark were the circles beneath her eyes.

“Did you have trouble sleeping last night?” he asked.

“Maybe a little,” she said, and they both knew this was a lie. She’d had a lot more than a little.

“What’s going on, Ange?” he asked, and then he let the question float there. He picked up his orange juice to give her time to gather herself, watching her over the rim of the glass as he took a sip. She hadn’t wanted him just to hold her, to comfort her, so he needed her to talk.

She cupped her hands around her coffee mug, enjoying the heat coming through the ceramic. Cherie had always done the same thing when the weather turned cold and it reminded him just how close the two women had been.

Angela fixed him with a hard look, no trace of a smile. “Take me with you.”

“Take you where? You think I’m leaving—”

“Today,” she said. “Take me with you today.”

Doug blinked, mouth opening in a silent
O.
He sat back in his chair and slowly shook his head.

“Babe, you know I can’t do that.”

“You have to.”

He studied her face. Where the hell was this coming from? He liked the new Angela Ristani—might even be able to love her—but if her transition from bitch to sweetheart included this neediness, that was going to be a problem.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said grimly, leaning forward to put emphasis on his words, studying her eyes. “This isn’t some kind of boys’ outing. We’re not going sledding or ice fishing or something. Baxter and Franco would not react well to you showing up. Hell, Baxter might just shoot us both.”

Angela scoffed, picking up a piece of bacon. “Bullshit.”

Doug grabbed her wrist as she tried to put the bacon into her mouth. He squeezed, knowing it might hurt her a little but needing her to pay attention. Her eyes brightened with surprise and anger.

“Listen. Franco’s an asshole, but I don’t think he’d kill anyone. Baxter, though … I’ve known that guy most of my life. He did time in prison. I’ve heard rumors, some drug thing, once upon a time. Point is, I have no doubt that if it came down to him going back inside or pulling the trigger, we’d both be dead. So, I’m sorry, but you’re staying right here. The guy’s not going to commit a whole fucking boatload of felonies with someone he’s just met.”

He saw that she wanted to argue, watched the struggle in her eyes, and then she turned away, her breakfast forgotten. Doug got up from his seat and went around the table to kneel beside her, touching her hair, turning her face toward him.

“You know this. You’re a smart woman. So what gives?”

When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper and with eyes downcast.

“I just think we should stay together,” she said. “I’m afraid something’s going to happen.”

“I’ll be fine, I swear,” he said, trying to reassure her. “I’ll be careful.”

“It’s not…” she began, faltering and then finally lifting her gaze. “I don’t want to be taken away again. I just got back to you.”

Doug knitted his brows at the odd phrasing, but the message was clear enough. The first time they had dated, he’d had no idea how much she cared for him. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

“I told you I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Neither are you. I know it’s early days for us, but I like this … like being with you … very much. It was a little weird the last time. I felt like we both loved Cherie so much that in some way she was still between us. But now it’s just you and me, and I think she’d approve.”

Her smile was bittersweet, but did not erase the worry in her eyes.

“I think she would,” Angela said.

“And I want to see where it goes.”

“Me too,” she said, closing her eyes as if it hurt her heart to say it. “You have no idea.”

Angela sighed and kissed him, first on the forehead and then on the mouth, lingering for a while, her tongue touching his.

“Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself,” she said, searching his eyes as if trying to memorize them in case she never saw them again. “And watch out. You never know what’s going to be waiting for you in a storm like this.”

Harley strode through the storm, fighting the wind and the snow that pelted his face. It was midafternoon but it might as well have been midnight for all the daylight the storm let in. He would have cussed about it but his jaw was clenched in aggravation at the bitter cold that seemed to bite right through his clothes and cut him to the bone. The wind raged and swirled so much that it drove snowflakes down the back of his jacket and the collar of his shirt. Violent meth-heads and back-alley gangbangers he could handle—hell, he’d made short work of his fair share—but out here in the storm he felt like a little kid again. He just wanted a blanket and his old sofa and the TV remote. And cookies. Hell yeah, he wanted cookies, still hot from the oven.

The crew from National Grid had arrived and was already raising the bucket on their truck to reach the power lines. One of the lines had come down and the transformer had blown. The good news was that the downed line wasn’t going to electrocute anybody; the bad news was that thousands of people in Coventry were without power. On the way over here, Harley had driven through several neighborhoods that had gone dark. Tonight there would be candles and flashlights and lots of blankets. The ones who could manage it and were smart would visit relatives or get a hotel room somewhere with power and heat, but that would also mean traveling in the blizzard, and that might be more dangerous than a frigid night at home.

“You guys need anything?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the blizzard.

Several of the crew looked up at him, then went back to their work. An older guy, winter hat pulled down tightly over his ears, waved to Harley.

“We’re good. Long as you keep anyone from plowing into us, we’ll get this bitch purring again.”

“You got it!” Harley said, waving as he turned back to his vehicle. Only once he had climbed back inside and moved the car to block oncoming traffic, flipping on the blue lights, did he continue grumbling to himself.

There had been plenty of shifts that he had spent sitting on speed traps and lots of overtime working traffic details for road construction. It bored the crap out of him. If it hadn’t been for the weather, he would at least have stood outside and directed traffic, giving him a chance to talk to the crew or to passersby, but nobody would be passing by tonight. And no way in hell was he going to stand around in the middle of a blizzard when the blue lights were all the warning that drivers needed.

He left the engine running so that the heat would stay on, watching the blues strobing off the trees and the National Grid truck and every fat snowflake and listening to the static and garbled voices on his police radio. It had already been a long day and it was barely half past one. He didn’t want to think about what the night would bring. The shift he’d been scheduled for wouldn’t normally take him into the evening hours, but he was fairly low in seniority and he had a feeling some of the older guys would be playing that card, leaving the rookies and the young guys out in the cold.

Harley sighed and slouched in the seat, leaning his head back. Idly, he slipped his cell phone out and glanced at it to see if he’d had any calls or texts. In the past couple of days he’d left three messages for Jake Schapiro and hadn’t heard back. Something was definitely going on with Jake and Harley worried that his friend was in some kind of trouble. Had he not gone out to the house and seen Jake with his own eyes, he might have been worried that he had somehow offended the guy. But whatever had gotten into Jake’s head, he hadn’t seemed pissed at Harley. Just preoccupied and a little paranoid. Harley thought of the way the shades had all been drawn and how strangely Jake had acted when he’d gone to the door. At first Harley had thought Jake had a woman inside, but when he’d ruminated on it later, he’d decided that didn’t seem likely. If he’d been having some kind of torrid sex weekend, that would explain how tired he looked and maybe—just maybe—the shades being drawn. But Jake had been unshaven and appeared not to have taken a shower. He’d looked skittish and not a little ill. That wasn’t the look of a man who’d fallen in love, or even a guy who’d gotten very lucky.

What the hell are you up to?
Harley thought, checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any texts.

“What are you hiding?” he said aloud, and then he frowned. The question had come unbidden, as if surfacing from his subconscious, but now that the idea had been voiced it stuck in his mind.

The way he’d stood in the doorway that day, blocking Harley’s view into the house, holding those cards …

Harley stopped breathing. Closed his eyes and focused on his memory of those cards. He leaned forward and put his forehead against the steering wheel, slowing exhaling.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered in the confines of the car.

He’d thought they might be playing cards, even tarot cards, but something about them had been familiar. He hadn’t seen the backs of the cards or he would have recognized them right away. The way Jake had been holding them, he’d gotten only a glimpse of the front, and even then only the mostly yellow borders at the tops of the cards. They had seemed familiar and now he understood why. He’d played the game often enough as a little kid.

They were Pokémon cards.

A dreadful suspicion filled Harley. He stared out the windshield at the National Grid crew but barely saw them, his mind turning inward. What the hell was Jake Schapiro doing playing Pokémon with all the shades drawn, and whom had he been playing it with?

He reached for the radio but his fingers froze a few inches from it.
This is Jake we’re talking about,
he told himself.
The guy’s your friend. You’re gonna ruin his life on a damn hunch?

No. He wasn’t going to do that. He felt guilty enough just to be thinking the things he was thinking. Jake Schapiro had never been the kind of guy to share his most intimate emotions or his secrets, but the same could be said of Harley. They were friends, and he had never gotten any indication that there was anything deviant about the guy. He had to go about this carefully.

Please,
he thought to himself
Please, don’t be a monster.

His cell phone had been acting hinky ever since the storm began, so it didn’t surprise him that his call didn’t go through the first time. By the fourth try, he’d grown frustrated enough that he was on the verge of leaving the National Grid crew on their own, but then the static on the line cleared and he heard it ringing.

On the fourth ring, there came a fresh burst of static and then a voice. “This is Keenan.”

“Detective, it’s Harley Talbot. We need to talk.”

As night came on, Ella popped a fresh pod into her coffeemaker and hit the button, listening to it gurgle and hiss for a few seconds before the French roast began to flow into her mug. Just the smell of it was enough to please her. Once she’d added the cream—she wouldn’t dare taint it with so much as a grain of sugar—she held the mug up and blew ripples across the liquid surface. The coffee would help warm her. Even with the heat on and the thick, black sweater she’d donned, the view out the kitchen window made her shiver. The storm raged out there and it didn’t look like there would be any end in sight.

Part of her was relieved. Business at The Vault had been thinner than usual with all this inclement weather and somehow it had lifted the burden of worry from her shoulders when she had realized that she had no choice but to stay home and keep the restaurant closed.

Of course, home had its own worries.

Ella sipped her coffee and tried to ignore her fears.

“Hey.”

She flinched, spilling hot coffee onto her hand.

“Son of a bitch,” she said, putting the mug down and rinsing her hand in the sink.

TJ came over and ripped a paper towel off the roll, wiping up the mess with a penitent expression.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I’m just jumpy,” Ella said. One hell of an understatement. “Been jumpy all day.”

Paper towel balled in his hand, TJ leaned against the counter and looked at her. Ella used a dish cloth to wipe the coffee off the exterior of the mug and then took another sip, grateful that she had spilled only an ounce or two.