The Cold Kiss (18 page)

Part III

38

We made it to Omaha just before sunrise.

I found a twenty-four-hour SaveMore off the interstate and I pulled into the parking lot and stopped under a streetlight. It was snowing, and the parking lot was almost totally empty.

“Is this place open?” Sara asked.

I pointed to the
OPEN
24
HOURS
sign above the door, then gave Sara a list of things to buy. Once she went inside, I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes.

It wasn’t much of a rest, but it helped.

When she came out, she had a plastic shopping bag filled with sterile gauze, rubbing alcohol, and antibiotic ointment.

“Is this going to work?”

I told her it would.

We got back on the interstate and drove through town. I wanted to find someplace outside the city where I could get cleaned up and grab something to eat.

To the east, a thin slice of light ran pink along the horizon, and by the time we were out of the city, the sky was a burning twist of orange and red.

“How about there?” Sara pointed at a large red neon sign. “Sapp Brothers. Is that a truck stop?”

The sign was shaped like a giant coffee percolator.

It made me think of Caroline and Marcus.

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

I stood over the sink and watched the swirl of blood circle down the drain, then I looked at my shoulder in the mirror and examined the bandage.

It wasn’t the best patch job, but it would do.

I took a clean shirt out of my bag and slipped it over my head then down past my shoulder. I’d managed to wash most of the blood off my face and hands, but I could still feel it in my hair and under my clothes.

I hoped it was my blood, but I wasn’t sure.

I stayed in the bathroom for a while longer, staring at the bags under my eyes and the tiny cuts on my face from the plastic shrapnel under the slide. When I was ready, I picked up the gauze and the rubbing alcohol and put them back in the SaveMore bag, then I turned and walked out of the bathroom and into the diner.

There was a row of newspaper boxes by the front door. One of them had the
Chicago Tribune.
I dropped in a few quarters, then opened the front and grabbed a copy.

When I got back to the booth, Sara was sitting there, staring out the window. Our food had come while I’d been in the bathroom, but it didn’t look like she’d eaten any of hers.

I dropped the paper on the table and sat down.

Sara didn’t look at me.

“You should eat,” I said.

“Not hungry.”

I kept quiet.

If she didn’t want to eat, it was her choice. There wasn’t a thing I could do to make her.

But I was starving.

I picked up my fork and cut into the eggs and hash browns on my plate. They were hot and greasy and absolutely delicious. I ate them all in five bites then finished what was left of my coffee.

I was starting to feel alive again.

“You sure you don’t want to eat?”

Sara looked down at her food then pushed the plate across the table toward me. “You can have it.”

“You need to eat.”

Sara shook her head. “I can’t stand to look at food right now. Go ahead.”

I didn’t argue.

When I finished, I reached for the paper and scanned through the local stories. On page three I saw an article about a real estate developer named Rodney McGee who’d been murdered at his house in Hyde Park.

According to the article, Rodney had made a fortune through questionable business deals. He’d also had strong ties to organized crime, so no one was surprised when he turned up dead. But the actual focus of the article had to do with his wife, Lilith McGee, who was still missing.

The paper didn’t have much on her.

They knew she’d been born in St. Petersburg and had immigrated to the United States almost five years ago. They could find no records of her life in Russia, other than a short period of military service. All they had to go on were the couple’s friends who told the
Tribune
that Lilith and Rodney met while he was in Russia on business, and that she moved back to the States to marry him.

Most people who knew them believed if she wasn’t dead, then she had something to do with his murder.

I read the entire article twice.

There was no mention of Syl or the missing money.

When I closed the paper, I debated telling Sara. In the end, I decided not to.

I wanted her to forget, even though I knew she never would.

I reached for the coffeepot on the table and refilled my cup then said, “If we go nonstop, we can make it to Salt Lake City tonight, then Reno tomorrow.”

Sara was quiet.

“It’ll be a push, and we won’t have a lot of time to rest once we get to Nevada, but we can do it.”

Sara whispered something I didn’t quite hear.

I asked her to say it again.

“I said what kind of people are we?”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Forget it.”

I pushed, and after a while she gave in.

“Don’t you feel responsible for what happened?”

“We didn’t kill anyone.”

“I did.”

“She wanted to kill us,” I said. “She was going to kill us. Butch was going to kill us. You did the right thing.”

My voice came out louder than I thought it would, and I noticed the couple at the next table look up briefly, then back down at their plates.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “We didn’t.”

“I don’t want to talk about it here.”

“Butch was right,” she said. “It was our fault. We brought it with us, like a curse.”

“Sara, stop.”

“What kind of people are we, Nate?”

I turned and waved to our waitress then picked up my coffee and finished it.

“God isn’t going to let us get away with this.” There were tears on her face. “We’re going to have to answer for what we’ve done.”

The waitress came by and asked if we needed anything else. I told her we didn’t and she set the ticket on the table then took the empty plates.

When she was gone, I leaned toward Sara and said, “What do you want me to do about it now?”

“Just admit it,” she said. “Admit that it was our fault, that we’re the reason all those people are dead.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Zack was a crazy fuck, that’s why.” I looked at the couple at the next table and they looked back. When I spoke again, I fought to keep my voice quiet. “He was a tweaker and he was out of his mind and that’s why all those people are dead, not because of us.”

“We could’ve stopped him.”

“How?”

“We could’ve done something,” she said. “But we didn’t.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I got up and grabbed our ticket then walked to the front of the restaurant and paid.

Something about what she’d said burned in me, but I pushed it away and tried to forget.

When I looked back, Sara was staring out the window at the highway and the line of cars moving west toward the horizon. I watched her for a long time. When I went back to the table, I sat across from her and reached out for her hands.

She didn’t want to give them to me at first, but eventually she did.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “You saved our lives.”

Sara looked at me but all I saw in her face was sadness. She let go of my hands, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft.

“I didn’t do it for us.”

39

It was a long drop.

I eased my way toward the edge, then took a couple nails from my belt and picked up another shingle. The sun was low on the horizon, but the air was hot. I could feel the lines of sweat rolling over my neck and down my back.

It was the greatest feeling in the world.

I finished the row then climbed to the top of the roof and looked out over the string of new houses snaking their way through the canyon. The ones closest to me were practically finished, but the farther down the line, the more work needed to be done.

I reached for another stack of shingles.

“Nate?”

I looked down and saw Hank Johansen, the foreman, looking up at me. He had his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the setting sun. The rest of the crew shuffled past him on their way out to their cars.

I’d lost track of time.

“Come on down,” Hank said. “I need to see you in my office before you take off.”

I waved, then set the shingles back on the stack and walked to the ladder on the opposite side of the roof. When I climbed down, I stopped by the cooler for a drink of water, then I crossed the road toward Hank’s office.

The office was a white trailer parked on the far end of the job site. There were two desks inside and four filing cabinets. In one corner, an oscillating fan pushed hot air from one end of the room to the other.

Hank was standing at one of the filing cabinets when I walked in. He had a folder in his hand, and when he saw me he used it to point to a metal folding chair.

“Have a seat.”

I did.

Hank went behind his desk and sat down. “How do you like Reno so far?”

“I love it.”

“Heat’s not getting to you?”

“Can’t get enough of it.”

“Wait until July,” he said. “You might have a different opinion.”

I told him he might be right, but I knew he wasn’t.

The hotter the better.

“Listen, Nate. I want to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done these past few weeks. You’re a hell of a hard worker.”

I thanked him.

“So this is tough for me, but I’m going to have to let you go.” He sat back in his chair. “Believe me, I don’t want to do it, but with the way the market is nowadays, I just don’t have the work.”

I wasn’t shocked, but at the same time I felt something heavy settle at the base of my stomach.

“The market?”

“Afraid so, and since you’re the low man on the totem pole around here . . .” He paused. “In a perfect world, there would be two or three guys I’d like to see go before you, but that’s just not the way it works.”

I told him I understood.

“I hope you do.” He opened the folder then took a piece of paper and a pen from his desk and started to write. “Here’s a name and a number for one of the foremen over at Orin Construction. Talk to Ben and tell him I sent you. I’ll give him a call tomorrow and tell him to keep an eye out for you. Can’t promise what he’ll say, but I’ll do what I can to get you on over there.”

He finished writing then handed me the paper.

“I appreciate it.”

“We’ll keep your name on file, too,” he said. “Once things change, I’ll make sure to give you a call.”

I nodded then got up to leave.

“Real sorry about this, Nate.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

I wasn’t ready to go home, so I stopped by the Washoe County Library and sorted through the periodicals until I found the
Chicago Tribune.
The library only got the Sunday edition, and it was always late, but I’d made a point of coming by and reading it every week.

At first, the story of Rodney and Lilith McGee was big news, but eventually it faded from the first section to smaller articles buried in the back of the paper.

Today, there was nothing at all.

It was a good sign.

A few weeks earlier, I’d found another article in the
Des Moines Register.
This one mentioned a motel fire forty miles south of Frieberg.

According to the report, the blaze started when an unchecked candle was placed too close to a set of curtains. Then, with the help of the wind, the fire spread from one building to the next, destroying the entire property.

No fatalities were listed.

The next week, I went back and searched the
Register
for more news, but there was no mention of the fire.

The motel was forgotten.

I stood up and walked to the window and looked out at the city lights hovering brown and dull in the dry air.

Even at night, Reno looked dirty.

After a while, I put the paper back in the rack then took the stairs to the main level and walked out to my car. I still didn’t feel like going home, but I knew I had to. Sara was probably worried.

I got in the car and started the engine.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

I decided to take the long way home.