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“Oh, yeah? Then why haven’t I heard from Jonas?” she asked out loud.
Maybe you already have. Maybe he sent you that text last night suggesting that Marlie’s alive.
“If it was about Marlie,” she said aloud.
Who else?
The Jeep shimmied, tires slipping again, and she realized she was driving across a short, single-lane bridge that spanned a now-frozen creek.
Still the tracks continued.
How far did this road go? She squinted through the shroud of snow.
Around a sharp bend, she spied a single-wide that had seen better days. The mobile home was wedged in a grove of fir trees, needles and snow collecting on the roof, icicles pointing like crystal daggers from the edge of the overhang near the front door. Kara might have missed the mobile home altogether except for the fact that she’d seen the recent tire tracks visible beneath the new-fallen snow and had caught a glimpse of a crumpled red fender through the trees.
“Here we go,” she said, recognizing Margrove’s aging BMW. The car was barely visible as it, like the trailer, was partially covered in snow.
Fingers tight over the wheel, she tried to ignore her apprehension, but the place was so isolated, Kara second-guessed herself. She parked next to the old Beemer, then cut the engine and braced herself. Obviously Margrove wouldn’t be all that happy to see her; he’d been avoiding her even though he’d known, according to Celeste, that she was trying to reach him. Feeling her nerve slipping away, she glanced at the glove box, then opened it, dug behind the owner’s manual and a box of tissues, until she found two airplane-size bottles of vodka.
“Liquid courage.”
Pulling off her gloves, she didn’t think twice, just cracked open a bottle, tossed back the alcohol, felt the familiar burn in her throat and the warming sensation in her stomach. She repeated the process, capped the empties, and threw them back into the open compartment and snapped the lid into place.
Eyeing the beat-up mobile home, she set her jaw and pulled on her gloves again. “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then . . .” She opened the door of her Cherokee and stepped into the storm.
The path to the front door was deep in the snow, pounded by footsteps leading directly from Margrove’s BMW, though now several inches of snow covered the tread. She followed it to the stoop, which consisted of two steps and a covered landing, all constructed of rough-hewn graying boards. The door was shut, but a flickering blue light was visible around the edges of a window shade that wasn’t quite shut.
She pressed the doorbell.
Heard nothing and decided maybe the bell wasn’t operational.
Shivering, she knocked.
Waited, pulled the coat tighter and stomped off some of the snow from her boots. Still she heard no footsteps, no heavy tread from inside.
“Come on,” she muttered, then knocked again, rapping hard. “Merritt?” she called through the rusting metal door. “It’s me. Kara.”
Again, nothing.
Was he asleep? Well, too bad. Time to get up!
“Merritt?” More pounding.
But silence from within.
“Oh, come on. It’s freezing out here.” And though the vodka was beginning to take the edge off, she still wasn’t buzzed; probably hadn’t drunk enough to even smooth out the rough edges in her mind. Most likely it had been a bad idea.
“Another one,” she told herself, pounding once more and hearing no response. Well, she was over this. Freezing on a dilapidated stoop wasn’t her idea of how the morning should go.
She tried the damned door.
The knob turned easily in her hand. As if it had been oiled.
Good.
She pushed and the door swung inward without a creak.
“Merritt?” she said again as she peered inside and her eyes adjusted to a shadowy, shifting darkness. A burst of warm air that smelled of cigarette smoke and booze wafted out. No wonder Merritt wasn’t answering. Obviously he had tied one on last night.