Before I Wake (25 page)

The linoleum floor felt great. Cool against Arden’s hot face, which was a foot from the base of the toilet.

A murmur of conversation crawled along the lead water pipes and slipped through the floorboards beneath her ear.

Daniel’s voice. And Eli’s. They were talking about gas. About trying to siphon some from Daniel’s truck. Arden heard her brother say something about waiting until morning, until the snow let up.

She was glad it wasn’t her problem. Glad it wasn’t her concern. Let them handle it. Let them figure it out.

With that thought, she passed out.

Would there ever be a time when the weathermen got it right? The important stuff, anyway?

For as long as Fury could remember, people had been griping about the inaccuracies of weather reports. And with good reason.

The predicted storm had hit a day early, and roads were already impassable.

After catching a flight from Charleston, West Virginia, to Cleveland, Ohio, by way of Columbus, he’d pulled his rental car into the parking lot of an all-night truck stop.

The place was packed.

“Refill?”

The waitress on the other side of the worn counter was a middle-aged woman with a gold nametag that said BRENDA. The overhead lights were as blinding as those in a doctor’s office.

The glass double doors behind him opened, then closed with a whoosh of cold air and a blast of snow. “They’re closin’ the roads,” a truck driver announced. “Just heard it on the radio.”

A groan moved through the room.

“I gotta load of hogs. They’ve already been on the trailer too long. Half of ‘em will be dead by tomorrow.”

Fury hadn’t told anybody where he was going. Not the FBI or the local Madeline police. His secrecy wasn’t standard FBI procedure, but he was dealing with Arden, and so far all he had were theories and suppositions. He needed to find out if they were valid before giving voice to his fears.

His immediate concern was how to complete the last leg of his journey. The rental car was front-wheel drive, but that didn’t help when the snow was over a foot deep. He turned to address the crowd. “Anybody going to Lake County?”

That brought stares.

“You must be lost,” some guy in a corner booth finally said, taking in Fury’s black overcoat, black pants, black shoes. “New York City’s that way.” He pointed.

Everybody laughed.

Fury hated to do this. He reached inside his coat and pulled out the folded leather that held his badge. He flipped it open. “It’s imperative that I get to Lake County—near the town of Grove.”

Dead silence. More stares.

Why had he said
imperative
? Bad word. Stuffy word. Not the kind of word this bunch would embrace. Not the kind of word
he
embraced.

A man—or kid, really—stepped forward. He wore a quilted flannel shirt, heavy canvas overalls, and a green cap advertising some kind of herbicide pulled down over shoulder-length black hair. “I’m a township road commissioner. I’m heading that direction. Grove’s not too much out of my way, but we need to take off before the roads get worse.”

Fury put a five-dollar bill on the counter and slid off the stool. Outside, he grabbed a few things from his rental car; then they were off.

The mode of transportation was a road grader. A massive thing, with tires as tall as a man’s shoulders and a front blade that took up a lane and a half. They wouldn’t get stuck, but they wouldn’t get there anytime soon.

Top speed was twenty-five miles an hour.

Hands touched her.

“Arden?”

Harley’s voice. Harley’s hands, pulling her away from the frigid floor.

“You’re cold.”

He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her to him, pulling her close, practically holding her like a baby. “What are you doing on the floor?” He stroked the hair from her eyes, back from her forehead. He ran a hand down her arm, her side, her leg. “Your feet are like ice.”

“Cold feet, cold heart.”

He stood and pulled her up after him. “I’m not as strong as I was. I used to be able to carry you. Remember?”

She didn’t.

“But I’ll get there again.”

With his arm around her, they walked down the dark hall to her bedroom.

The illuminated lamp was still on the floor. The house was silent. Just the ticking of a clock somewhere, and the sound of a loose antenna wire clanging against a metal pole outside the window.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“After three.”

He closed the door.

Everyone was asleep.

He reached for the button of her jeans.

“Your clothes are wet from the snow.”

She put her hands on his. “I’ll do that.”

“I want to. You take care of me; I take care of you.”

He unbuttoned and unzipped her pants. With a hand braced on his shoulder, she toed off her old sneakers, then, with his help, stepped from the soggy jeans. Leaving her sweatshirt on, she dropped into bed, tugging the heavy comforter over her.

He turned off the light, lifted the comforter, and joined her, wrapping his arms around her, his body like a blast furnace.

He ran a hand down her leg. “Your skin is so soft.” He nuzzled her neck, then pressed his lips to the area just below her ear. He slid his hand inside her panties, pulling her against him.

She tugged his hand away. “Harley, don’t.”

“Why not?” he whispered.

“Not here. Not now.” For a second, she felt a flutter of hysteria rising in her.

“Shh,” he whispered against her neck. “Everything is going to be okay.” He wrapped his arms around her and just held her. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Arden woke up with a hangover.

Not a little one that would go away with a couple of aspirin and several glasses of water. This was the kind that stuck around all day. The kind that made you wonder how many brain cells you’d killed.

Downstairs, someone was making coffee—and it didn’t smell good.

She rolled to her back and opened her eyes a crack. It was daylight, but the room was dark. Not like night, but the kind of dark that went with a storm. That kind of quiet gray.

She was alone, which was good.

She tossed back the comforter and swung her feet to the floor.

Cold
! The room temperature was unusually cold. She exhaled, half expecting to see her breath. The coolness felt good on her hot skin, her hot face, but that wouldn’t last.

Barefoot, she walked painfully to the dresser, opening drawers and digging until she found a pair of white, waffle-weave long underwear. She stripped down to panties, put on the underwear top and bottoms, then the pair of jeans Harley had helped her out of last night. Or rather, this morning. He’d been thoughtful enough to drape them over the back of a chair.

They were cold and stiff, but dry.

From downstairs, she heard the clang of something solid, something metal.

The opening and closing of the woodstove.

For a moment, her mind slid backward and she was confused. For a moment, she thought maybe everything that had happened in the past months had really been a dream and her parents were alive. Her dad was downstairs, filling the stove with apple wood, the sweet scent wafting up to her room.

That was the hard thing about death. The trick about death. Those jarring flashes of time travel that ricocheted you into the past and back to the present in a fraction of a second.

In the closet, she found an old flannel shirt that had once belonged to her dad. She put it on, following it with the blue sweatshirt, which she zipped all the way up for a change. Heavy wool socks and the old jogging shoes.

Coming here had been a mistake.

And she was afraid she was losing her mind.

She’d once read about a period of time in the mid-1800s when an entire Wisconsin town had gone mad.

Settlers had dropped in their tracks, fever wiping out most of the town. But perversely, the fever had spared a member or two of each family. Those were the ones who went crazy, because there was only so much the human psyche could take before it broke. Only so much death a person could handle.

In the bathroom, she turned on the sink faucet. Air sputtered in the pipes, along with a few spits of water. The electricity was out. Which meant the well’s water pump was off.

But somebody was downstairs making coffee.

She brushed her teeth with a dry toothbrush.

Eli.

God. She’d completely forgotten about the fight she’d had with him.

She leaned over the bathtub and pulled the curtain aside to look out the window.

Still snowing. She’d hoped it had stopped. Hoped Eli had found some gas and was now on his way home.

Daniel was right. She was always running. If the snow hadn’t been so bad, she’d run right now too.

She should have stayed in New Mexico. So what if her life there had been in a holding pattern? Everybody’s life was in a holding pattern to some extent. And compared to everything that had happened since she’d left, a holding pattern would be welcome. Not every loose end had to be tied up. Not everything
could
be tied up, no matter how much she wanted it.

She opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, found a bottle of generic aspirin, shook four tablets into her palm, and tossed them down, swallowing the dry pills with a shudder.

She couldn’t stay upstairs forever. She needed water. She needed heat.

She returned to her room and eased herself down on the bed, careful of her head. Ten minutes passed before she gave up and left.

At the landing, she paused to listen.

Sounds of conversation. Franny. Talking softly. About college.

Arden took a deep breath, went down the stairs, and stepped into the living room.

Four people, huddled around the woodstove, coffee cups in their hands, staring at the fire that could be seen through the glass window. Daniel must have been stranded there last night.

Franny looked up from where she sat on the floor. “Hey, Arden.” Her voice was cautious. She was probably wondering if Arden was going to attack Eli again.

All the guys nodded, then turned back around and stared awkwardly at the floor. All except Harley, who smiled at her.

What was going on?

Had they been talking about her?

In less than a second, she got it. They thought she and Harley had slept together last night. The walk of shame, it was called. When everybody in the room assumed sex had occurred, but nobody mentioned it.

“Want some coffee?” Harley asked. “Daniel made some on the woodstove.”

“I’d rather have water. Where’d you get the water for coffee?”

“Daniel filled some jugs before the power went out.”

If Arden hadn’t been wasted, she would have thought of that herself.

In the kitchen, she found the jugs lined up on the counter. She was getting a glass from the cupboard when Harley came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed the back of her neck.

“Harley.” She bent her head and scooted away.

He followed.

“Don’t.”

“What? Why?”

She opened a jug, filled the glass, and turned to face him. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Us. You and me.”

“Somebody’s here!” came a euphoric shout from the living room.

Nathan Fury now knew everything there was to know about Richard Sheppard. Where he’d gone to high school. His first job—at a gas station in Little Canada. His first car—a Chevy Impala with a 350, V-8 engine. His two kids—Sheila and Brian.

With briefcase in hand, Fury jumped from the cab of the road grader, landing in snow above his knees. Wind whipped around him, creeping down his neck. He flipped up his jacket collar and reached for the suitcase the driver was handing him.

“I’ll wait to make sure somebody’s here,” Richard said.

Fury waded to a buried car and brushed snow from the front plate.

Eli Norton’s car.

Fury returned to the road grader.

Richard peered intently through the windshield, his wipers going like crazy. “Isn’t that the Davis place? Where those people were murdered? This isn’t in my territory, but I remember hearing about it on the news. Stuff like that doesn’t happen around here.” He shivered, gave the grader some gas, and put his hand on the gearshift. “But they caught the guy right away. That’s good. ‘Cause I wouldn’t want to know he was still prowling around.”

Fury muttered some kind of affirmative response, thanked Richard, then turned and headed for the house. At the back door, he lifted his hand, paused, took a deep breath, and knocked.

Arden’s brother, Daniel, answered.

Had Arden ever mentioned Fury’s name to her brother? Would Daniel remember him from the one dark time they’d met?

Behind him, Richard honked, put the grader into gear, and pulled away, the heavy odor of diesel exhaust filling the air.

Fury pulled out the leather case containing his badge, flipped it open, introduced himself, then slid the badge back in his pocket. “Is Arden home?”

Daniel hesitated, then opened the door wider. “Come on in.”

Fury stepped inside.

A familiar kitchen.

“You were here after my parents were killed,” Daniel said, closing the door.

“That’s right.”

He’d come as soon as he’d heard. By the time he got there, the killer was gone. It was theorized that he’d been gone by the time the first officer had arrived on the scene.

At first, Fury thought Arden had been killed too, since she was unaccounted for and her car was in the driveway.

The next hour had been a blur.

“When she was little, she used to hide in the crib,” Daniel had told them.

That’s where Fury had found her. In the top of the cupola, half-frozen and in shock. She’d clung to him so tightly that he’d had trouble prying her loose so the paramedics could get her down the ladder.

It was the last time she’d looked at him with any sign of recognition.

“Fury.”

He turned.

Now here she was, standing in the kitchen doorway with a
what the hell are you doing here
? pose.

She wasn’t thrilled to see him; that was obvious.

And she looked like hell. Worse than when he’d last seen her, if that was possible. The circles under her eyes were deeper, and she was thinner.

Was she eating?

Without a word, she swung around and left. He heard her striding across the living room, heard her footfalls on the stairs until the floorboards above his head creaked and a door closed.

Daniel stood with his feet braced apart. Fury gave him a twisted smile that was really an awkward acknowledgment of the situation. “She’s not as glad to see me as I’d hoped,” he said.

Daniel raised one eyebrow in response.

The road commissioner had been an anomaly. Most people from these parts didn’t do a lot of unnecessary talking.

Eli came skidding around the corner wearing a puffy, unzipped jacket and clutching a stocking cap. “What’s going on?” He was out of breath. “Did the guy with the plow leave? Is he coming back? I thought I heard him leave.”

“The roads are closed,” Fury told him. “The driver is on his way home to wait out the storm. Nobody’s going anywhere for at least twenty-four hours.”

Eli stared at Fury in disbelief, looking like he might cry. Then he tossed down his stocking cap, turned, and stomped from the room.

Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and let out a derisive snort. “Welcome to Hotel Hell.”

Sarcasm seemed to run in the family.