Chapter 10
Nothing was missing because there wasn’t anything to go missing.
“She wanted something,” Tean said from where he perched on the fieldstone hearth. He wasn’t shivering anymore, and his teeth had stopped chattering. Jem still wouldn’t let him move, even though his back was getting toasty. “She was looking for something.”
Jem was still making his way around the room—for the third time now—inspecting everything like he was going to spot something he’d missed: opening drawers, shifting the phone across the desk, crouching to search under the bed. When he got to his feet, he stopped to rub the back of his leg.
“Let me look at that,” Tean said.
“It’s fine. I just bumped into that chest thing and fell on my ass like a fucking clown.”
“Come here. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“It’s nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, then come over here and let me take a look.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Jem, I’m upset and a little frightened. Would you please come over here?”
There was some grumbling, but Jem made his way over to the fireplace. He did limp a little, but Tean suspected that might have been for pity points.
“Here?” Tean asked, touching the back of Jem’s leg, the fabric of the chinos whispery under his touch.
“A little higher.”
Tean ran his touch up, and Jem grunted. For a few minutes, they stood there, Tean massaging what he suspected would be a bruise, Jem with his hands on his hips, glowering into the middle distance.
“She caught you by surprise,” Tean said gently.
“She sure fucking did.” Jem sounded like he wanted to stop there—the statement had a brutal punctuation mark at the end of it. But more words screwdrivered out: “If she’d had a knife or a gun, I’d be dead. And what the fuck would have happened to you?”
“I’d probably be dead too.”
Jem shook his head, but more in anger than disagreement.
“Look at the bright side,” Tean began.
“No. I refuse.”
“The bright side is that if we’re already dead when the generators fail, we won’t have to go through the ensuing societal breakdown into tribalism, internecine warfare, and inevitable cannibalism.”
“It took you three steps to get to cannibalism.” Jem held up three fingers and shook them in Tean’s face. “Three! And I don’t want the bright side. I want the dark side.”
“Well, the dark side is that the generators would probably function perfectly until they restore power to the lodge.”
“But we’d still be dead.”
“Well, yes. We’d still be dead. And decomposing in this room until someone found us. Which would inevitably take longer than normal because of the storm, the overwhelmed staff, and the chaos that would come in the aftermath of the blizzard.”
“We’d be super gross by the time they found us, though, right?”
“Oh, definitely. And, I mean, that’s assuming that she didn’t shoot me while I was sitting on the hearth.”
Jem perked up a little. “Why? What would happen?”
“Well, I’d probably catch on fire.”
“Oh shit.”
“Eventually. I mean, I’m sitting too close to the flames. And once this fabric dried out, it would ignite.”
“Would the whole lodge burn down?”
“Probably not, because of the storm—”
Jem started making a growly noise in his throat.
“But then again,” Tean corrected quickly, “it’s entirely possible that the fire would be too hot for the snow to put out. The smoke would be even more dangerous. And, of course, any survivors would be trapped up here without food or shelter, which would inevitably lead to cannibalism.”
The scowl almost made Tean smile.
“There,” Jem said. “Was that so hard?”
“Was it hard for me to catastrophize about our dead bodies becoming the fuel for a fire that would kill hundreds of people?”
“Yes. Was that so difficult?”
“Uh, no?”
Jem groaned. “Not like a question, babe.” But before Tean could respond to that, Jem gave a considering look around—as though seeing the burned-out ruins of the lodge—and in a surprisingly satisfied voice, said, “This place would be haunted as shit.”
“Well, in theory. But not actually, because ghosts aren’t real.”
“Sure, they are,” Jem said. “Scipio and I saw one. What do you think she was looking for?”
The change in topic almost left Tean behind—he was still working on Scipio and I saw one. But after a moment, he managed to say, “I’m not sure.”
“This room isn’t near the elevator. It’s not on the ground floor. There’s no chance she picked it by random. Plus, she was watching you last night.”
Tean made a noise of assent.
“But we don’t have anything,” Jem said. “That’s what’s so fucked up. We weren’t even going to stay the night, so we didn’t bring anything.”
“I don’t know,” Tean said. “But she was in here. So, she wants something.”
Jem scratched his beard. After a moment, he said, “Is it crazy to think she had something to do with Gerald?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what that connection might be. But on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a connection.”
“Right,” Jem said. “That’s kind of what I was thinking.”
He lapsed into silence after that, sweeping the room with more of those glowers.
Tean squeezed his leg.
“It was all right fucking there,” Jem said. “The drawer was sticking out, for fuck’s sake.”
“Jem, we both missed it.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t miss stuff like that.”
“Why not?”
Jem just glared out at the room.
“Why is it your responsibility?” Tean asked. “Why aren’t you angry at me for not noticing?”
“Because,” Jem snapped. And then something closed in his face. The fire crackled, and then, in a voice that almost sounded like normal, Jem said, “That’s it. I’m punishing myself. No McDonald’s for two months.”
“For two months?” Tean asked.
“Fine, three.”
“Jem—”
“Do you want me to make it four? Keep it up, buster.”
Tean fought the urge to adjust his glasses—they didn’t need it, but he still caught himself reaching for them sometimes.
“I don’t understand what’s happening. Are you punishing yourself?
Or are you punishing me? Because I want you to eat less McDonald’s.
Jem, they wave when we drive into the parking lot, and I know you were joking about opening a McDonald’s-branded credit card, but at the same time, even with the value menu, the cost—”
“I guess all we can do is wait and see,” Jem said over him.
“And your cholesterol—”
“I didn’t get a good look at her, so if you see her again, point her out.” Jem glanced down at him. “How are you feeling? Do you want to stay here while I check out where they found Gerald?”
“I’m fine,” Tean said. He tried to think of a better way to ask the question, but all he could come up with was “Jem, I know what I said when we examined the body. But do you really think he was murdered?”
The light from the flames shifted on Jem’s face, raising gold and silver in his beard. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. Yes. But—” A smile tightened his face. “—I’m having a hard time trusting my own judgment right now. Why would someone kill him?”
Jem held out a hand to help him up. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”