Lucas #2
The room smelled of dust and cold metal the second I pushed the door open.
Not unclean, exactly—just unused. A single bed sat in the middle of the room, the old iron frame, chipped in places.
The furniture didn’t match: a squat dresser with one crooked drawer, a chair that looked as if it belonged at a kitchen table somewhere else, a tall armoire shoved to the far wall that loomed more than it helped.
There was no bedding on the bed, just a bare mattress wrapped in crinkled plastic, the shine of it catching the weak light.
New, I guessed. Or at least newly purchased.
Someone had done the minimum when I said I’d be staying.
Had Jesse done this?
A pile of crocheted blankets sat folded on a chair, thick and heavy-looking, handmade and old as if they’d been dragged out of a cupboard and deemed good enough.
Snow feathered the outside of the windowpanes, and I crossed the room and looked out. The land stretched away in every direction, open and exposed, nothing to hide behind. Beyond it, the mountains rose sharp and distant against the backdrop of the sky.
Grudgingly, I had to admit the view was beautiful.
It was also so damn desolate it made my chest tighten. In the city, I had places to go, to hide, to be alone with my thoughts. Here, there was nothing but emptiness.
The room was at the front of the house—I could see my car parked outside, small and temporary in all that space. Proof I still had an exit in case I needed to remind myself.
I’m not going anywhere.
There was no attached bathroom, but there was a sink jammed into the corner, its porcelain stained with rust where a tap had clearly been dripping for years. I turned it on out of spite and watched it stutter before settling into a thin, steady stream, then shut it off again. At least I had water.
I levered the suitcase up onto the bed and winced as pain sparked through my hip and down my spine.
Swearing under my breath, I bent and rummaged through the side pocket, fingers closing around the pill bottle.
I swallowed two with the last of the lukewarm water from the bottle I’d tucked in there, then sat on the bed until the edge of the pain dulled to something manageable.
I blew out a breath and stared around the room.
I could work from here. Numbers didn’t care about location. The room could be cleaned. I could strip the plastic off the mattress, layer on those ridiculous blankets, maybe find a space heater, make it warmer and livable.
It was an icebox now, but ice could be dealt with, and I’d slept in worse places. I straightened, rolled my shoulders, and nodded once to myself, as if that settled it.
Six months. I could survive six months.
Nope.
I was wrong.
I wasn’t going to survive six minutes, let alone six months. I’d been slowly moving boxes upstairs, one trip at a time, but the pills weren’t touching the pain, my hip was starting to cramp, and the cold had worked its way through every layer I owned. I needed coffee. Immediately.
I headed down the hall into what I hoped was the kitchen. The space opened up into something functional but dated—old cupboards, scarred counters. Too much brown wood and not enough light.
But… thank goodness… right in the middle of the counter, front and center, sat a sleek chrome coffee machine—expensive, modern, completely out of place.
It gleamed against the surrounding clutter, as if it had been dropped in from another house entirely.
I stared at it for a second, stunned, then huffed out a laugh.
I could run an antique fair out of this place, and someone had still found the money—or the will—to buy this beautiful, sexy machine. Not that I’d ever used one before, but hell, I’d stood and watched baristas. How hard can it be?
“Okay then, how hard can it be to get you to give me a coffee?” I asked the machine, standing in front of it and pressing a couple of dials as if confidence might translate into competence.
Was there supposed to be an on switch? I traced the cord back to the wall to make sure it was plugged in—it wasn’t, so I pushed the plug in, startled by a discharge of static, but not to be deterred from getting caffeine in me.
I opened the refrigerator. No cream. No obvious sugar anywhere either, but honestly, I didn’t care. Coffee was right there if I could figure out how to make the damn thing cooperate.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket on instinct, thumb hovering as I thought about looking it up.
A quick video, a diagram, something idiot-proof.
The screen loaded slowly, two signal bars clinging on.
No Wi-Fi. Of course, there was no Wi-Fi.
The signal dropped another notch as I moved further inside, the walls apparently as hostile as everything else here.
I glanced toward the front window. Outside, a decent amount of snow was coming down now, thick flakes drifting across the view and sticking to the ground.
The idea of trudging back out to the car, standing there freezing, just to get enough signal to learn how to make coffee, made me want to scream.