Page 35 of Cold as Hell

I lean my head on his arm. “If I need the nagging, go ahead. But I’m still hoping we can wrap this up fast.”

The first person we need to interview is the one I least want to interview. Dalton asks me to rest at the town hall while he tracks down Grant and brings him in.

I expect Grant will be easy to find. He certainly was while we were searching the residences. But it takes twenty minutes for Dalton to return with Grant, both of them scowling and grumbling.

Grant doesn’t make any attempt to remove his outerwear. He starts barreling toward me until Dalton grabs his parka. Grant wheels, hand lifted. He thinks better of that and settles for yanking from Dalton’s grip and kicking off his boots.

“Happy?” he says. “Or will you be happier when you find my wife and publicly humiliate me by having let everyone know she spent the night in another guy’s bed?”

“You seem very sure of that,” I say.

He turns a hard look on me. “I am, because I’m not as clueless as everyone here seems to think. My wife is hell-bent on cuckolding me, and I just wish she’d get it out of her system.”

“That’s an… interesting approach.”

His glare sharpens. “Don’t patronize me,Detective.My marriage is none of your business, but I’m going to get this over with, so we can move on to finding Lynn. I screwed around, okay? She found out right before we came here, and she wants revenge. I’m letting her have it.”

I bite my tongue against saying that’s very generous of him.

Grant slumps into a chair. “I don’t expect you to understand. What happened to us back home is confidential. Let’s just say my wife got herself in trouble, and she was so wrapped up in it that she started forgetting she had a husband. I got frustrated. I stepped out. She wants her turn, and then we’ll be square.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. I reallydon’tknow why Grantand Lynn are in Haven’s Rock, but that doesn’t seem germane to her disappearance.

“You and Lynn had agreed she was entitled to a fling.”

“What kind of guy do you think I am? I’d never haveagreedto it. I’m just looking the other way until she’s done. Apparently, she picked the worst possible time—middle of a fucking blizzard—and instead of her just getting it over with and us moving on, I have to deal with this bullshit.”

“Has it occurred to you that she could actually be missing?”

His jaw sets. “She’s not.”

“We’ve checked all the apartments. You saw us checking.”

“How does that prove anything? She just ducked out before you got there, and now she’s lying low until she can come slinking back.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

He crosses his arms. “I don’t know.”

I turn to Dalton. “Please note that if Lynnisactually missing, her husband refused to cooperate—”

“Yesterday,” Grant spits.

“Any chance you can be more specific?”

“I went to the store to see her. It was nearly noon. I caught her with Thierry.”

My chest tightens. Damn it, I should have followed my gut and interceded. “You caught her with Thierry doing what?”

“Giggling.”

I stare at him. “Giggling?”

“My wife is thirty-six, Detective. She doesn’t giggle unless she’s flirting.”

That’s a fair point, but I keep any acknowledgment out of my face and only busy myself making a note. “You found her in a conversation with Thierry that you deemed to be flirtatious and you did what?”

“Walked out. Like I said, I’m giving her space to get this thing over with. Better Thierry than…” He waves a hand that might be indicating Anders’s apartment above. “Seems she’s finally scraping the bottom of the barrel.”