Chapter 9
Hudson fell into step beside Sarah as they crossed the lot.
She glanced sideways. “You know, I can make it to my truck without a federal escort.”
“I know.”
She looked at him for a second, as if deciding whether to argue, then kept walking with a shake of her head.
They crossed the remainder of the lot in companionable silence, the afternoon already fading toward the blue-gray light that came before dusk.
Sarah reached her truck first.
“See?” She spread her hands. “Survived.”
“Congratulations.” Hudson turned toward his rental.
Powder compressed beneath his boots.
A stuffed whale named Blubbs surfaced unexpectedly, followed by Sarah solemnly shaking its flipper like she was meeting a visiting dignitary. He hadn’t seen that version of her coming. For reasons he had no intention of examining, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Behind him, Sarah’s radio sputtered into life.
“Got your Jake Mercer.” Walter’s voice crackled through the radio. “Leased a place on Birch Hollow Road eight months back. You want it or should I keep it for myself?”
Hudson spun around, meeting Sarah’s gaze.
“Send it.” Sarah ended the call before Walter could improve on the information.
“The day’s not done with us yet.” She eyed his rental. “That isn’t fit for these roads. We’ll take my truck.”
The drive took fifteen minutes. Sarah drove one-handed around curves that would have had most visitors backing off the accelerator. Every time she turned her head a loose strand of hair brushed her cheek before the heater blew it away again. With an effort, Hudson forced his attention to the road.
The town thinned, then disappeared. Dark spruce crowded both shoulders where the plow had cut through fresh snow.
At some point the road stopped feeling like it led somewhere and started feeling like it led to someone. This was the part he never liked.
The house was small, and a porch light burned yellow above the front door. Two pairs of rubber boots on the doormat. A coat hung on a hook visible through the window.
Someone lived here.
Someone who expected another person to come home and had left the porch light on for them.
He followed Sarah to the front door, spotting that the porch steps were glazed with fresh ice.
His hand closed around her elbow because evidently his body had stopped asking permission before making decisions where Sarah Meyer was concerned.
She looked down at his hand, then up at him. “I know.”
He released her immediately. “Right.”
Sarah rolled her shoulders and knocked.
It took a while. Finally the door opened on a chain. “Yes?”
She was younger than Hudson had pictured. Dark hair pulled back, glasses, pearl drops in her ears. Her eyes went from Sarah’s badge to Hudson and stopped there. Something shifted in her expression—a woman recognizing the arrival she’d spent days dreading.
“Nora Mercer? Ma’am, I’m Sheriff Meyer. This is Deputy U.S. Marshal Kane.” Sarah’s voice had gone into the register she used at the bar—calm, level, designed to keep a room from going anywhere bad. “We’re looking for a man named Jake Mercer. We understand he lives here.”
The chain didn’t come off. “What’s this about?”
“Is he here?”
“No.” Too fast. “He’s been gone four days. Said he had a few days at the cabin. Fishing.” Her eyes went to Hudson again, lingered. “Has something happened to him?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Sarah said, which was true and also not an answer. “Can we come in?”
The math ran behind her eyes—strangers at the door, badges, a man gone four days without contact. She landed on the side of letting them in, because the alternative was standing on her own porch not knowing.
The chain came off.
Sarah went inside first. Hudson took a last glance at the surrounding countryside and followed her in.
Nora wore a pale blue cardigan. One hand stayed wrapped around the front of it as she led them inside, holding it closed at her throat. The house was warm enough to make him loosen his collar with one finger after the dry cold outside.
A wood stove worked hard in the corner and the air smelled faintly of coffee and vanilla.
The kitchen and living room shared the same space. A pound cake cooled on a wire rack beside the stove and a knitted blanket had been abandoned across the arm of the couch. One mug sat in the sink. Another waited upside down beside the coffee maker.
Across the room, Sarah was already cataloging everything.
Photographs lined the wall above the couch. A fishing trip. A Christmas tree. Nora laughing at something outside the frame.
Nora smiling in the arms of a man. Cord.
Sarah took the chair nearest the window. Hudson waited until she was seated before taking up position by the door. From here he could see the kitchen, the hallway. Sarah. The fact that his brain included her in the same assessment annoyed him more than it should have.
Men’s work boots were paired neatly at the door. Hudson looked away. He didn’t need to see that side of Cord.
“When did you last hear from him?” Sarah asked.
“Four days ago. Before he left for the cabin.” Nora’s hands twisted in her lap. “He said two nights. Maybe three if the fish were good.”
Her mouth tried for a smile and missed. “He always says that. Then he comes home smelling like a campfire and won’t talk about how many fish he actually caught, which means none.”
Sarah’s pen didn’t move as she let the silence do its work. “Has he ever stayed longer without telling you?”
“No.” Lines around Nora’s eyes tightened. “He calls. Even when there’s no signal at the cabin, he drives up to the ridge for one bar and calls. Every single time.”
“He hasn’t called?”
Her eyes lifted, fear showing now. “No.”
The room went quiet. A log tumbled in the stove. A man who drove to a ridge for one bar of signal. Every time. Without fail. So the woman waiting at home wouldn’t have to wonder.
Hudson stared at the photograph of Cord and Nora. At the worry she’d been trying and failing to hide since they stepped through the door. The contradiction landed like a stone. Which version had come first?
“Was anything different before he left?”
Nora worried at the hem of her cardigan. “He wasn’t sleeping much.”
Sarah waited as Nora glanced toward the dark window over the sink.
“He kept checking outside.”
“Checking for what?”
Nora made a small helpless movement of her shoulders. “I don’t know.” The answer sounded honest. “Sometimes I’d wake up and he’d be standing at the window.” Her fingers picked at a loose thread. “I’d ask what he was looking at and he’d say nothing.”
Sarah exchanged a brief look with Hudson. “What else?”
“He’d started locking the door during the day. He wasn’t scared exactly.” She swallowed. “More like he was waiting for something.”
Hudson blew out a breath. Because he knew that feeling. Waiting was different from fear. Fear looked outward. Waiting looked over your shoulder.
“Can you tell us where the cabin is?”
“Sure.” Nora pushed herself upright and disappeared briefly into the kitchen.
When she came back she had a reporter’s notebook and a pen. The page tore unevenly because her hands trembled. She sketched quickly. Forest Service road. An unmarked turnoff. A creek. A cabin miles beyond where a vehicle could go.
“He loves it out there,” she said, handing the page across to Sarah.
“Says it’s the only place he can hear himself think.
” A brief smile touched her mouth. “I always thought that was a strange thing to want.” The smile faded.
“To go somewhere that quiet when your own head is already following you around.”
Sarah studied the map, concentrating hard enough that a crease appeared between her brows.
Hudson wanted to smooth it away with a brush of his thumb, take some of the burden from her.
“Thank you.” Sarah folded the map and stood. “If he turns up or you hear anything—anything at all—you call me.” She set a card on the table. “Day or night. Doesn’t matter what time.”
“I will.”
“I mean it, Mrs. Mercer.”
“I know you do.” Nora’s hand covered the card but she didn’t pick it up. Her palm rested over it as if she needed to know it was within reach.
Nora walked them to the door. The cold came in around the edges as she opened it, but she didn’t step back. Her hand stayed flat against the frame.
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “For the directions. For talking to us.”
Nora’s eyes had already gone past them, out toward the dark and the road that led, eventually, toward the cabin. “Whatever you think he’s done, that isn’t all he is.”
Hudson held her gaze. “I believe you.”
The words followed him out to the truck, but he didn’t examine them too closely.
The engine rattled to life and warm air pushed weakly through the vents.
Sarah didn’t put the truck in gear. “You were quiet in there.”
The cab felt smaller than it had fifteen minutes ago. Maybe because the heater was finally winning. Maybe because Sarah was only six inches away.
Her eyes stayed on the windshield. Giving him room, the same way she’d given Nora room.
“She loves him.” Hudson said eventually.
“Yeah.”
Hudson dragged a hand across his face. “He’s been lying to her for years. Different name. Different history. Probably a different birthday for all I know. And she’s spent four days driving herself crazy because, for once, he hasn’t called.”
“You think she doesn’t know?”
Hudson looked at her. “Know what?”
“That he’s carrying things he doesn’t talk about.” Her eyes met his, only for a second but long enough to make it impossible to pretend the question was only about Jake Mercer. “Or maybe she doesn’t care.”
Something tightened low in his chest. Sarah had always done that. Walked straight past the words people were saying and found the thing underneath.
“Maybe.” God. His voice sounded like shit. “Or maybe she knows exactly who he is and decided it wasn’t a deal breaker.”
Sarah nodded as if she’d already considered that possibility.
For years he’d told himself there was freedom in owing nobody anything. Looking at the house with its porch light and waiting wife, he wasn’t as sure anymore.
Sarah still hadn’t put the truck in gear.
One hand rested on the steering wheel. The other rubbed absently at the spot just above her temple.
Long day. Too much coffee. Not enough rest. Hudson focused on the darkness outside before he told her to go home.
She’d tell him exactly where to shove that suggestion.
He stared straight ahead. “We should go.”
For one strange second the silence was crowded with things neither of them were going to say.
Then Sarah shifted into drive and the moment was gone.