Page 80 of Cold as Hell

It helps that our residents are already in difficult situations. When they say they’re going traveling and will be offline, no one questions that. Marlon’s post says he needs a break from “everything that’s been happening” and his new job allows him to work remotely, so he’s going to travel. While he’ll be taking a social media hiatus, expect lots of photos when he gets back.

I flip through a few more entries. He’s a sporadic poster, and once the trouble started, the endless advice became more than he cared to deal with.

Hire a lawyer!

Why aren’t the police arresting the guy?

Show that asshole who he’s messing with.

He’d stopped posting—probably went offline so he didn’t need to see that.

I’m going to need to go back farther if I hope to find…

I stop. All the updates have been text only, but I reach a photo of a guy at a party. He’s hoisting a beer and grinning at the camera. I wouldn’t have paused at it except for the caption.

Finally got my hair cut.

Now that’s a cause for celebration, right?

I frown at the photo. Is that Marlon? The answer should be obvious. I’ve spent four months with the guy in Haven’s Rock, and this photo is less than a year old. The haircut matches the short hair he has now, as does the meticulously trimmed short beard. In the photo, his skin tone is a tad darker, but this photo was taken in the summer, which means it’s probably from the sun. The eyes are brown, like Marlon’s. The facial shape and the eye shape are the same. So why am I hesitating?

Because it’s not Marlon.

It looks like Marlon… but it’s not.

The guy in the photo has a different smile. He’s also leaner, without Marlon’s bulky muscles.

Still, we all have different smiles for different circumstances and audiences. And the photo was taken six months before he came to Haven’s Rock. With all the stress of the stalking, he could have been hitting the gym hard and bulked up. Also, it’s just one photo. I’ve seen photos of myself where I do a double take because of the angle or the lighting.

All of that could explain it. But none of that stops my brain from screaming that this is not Marlon.

And maybe it’s not supposed to be him. I might be misinterpreting the caption.

I open the images tab and breathe a sigh of relief. My gaze goes straight to Marlon, in a photograph taken on what looks like a hike. The other guy has his arm thrown around Marlon’s shoulders.

I click and read the attached post.

A rare visit from my favorite cousin (sorry to all the others… you’ll be my favorites when you come to visit, ha!) Out for a hike with Jerome, whom I can’t tag because the guy’s a Luddite without an FB profile.

Okay, so that explains it. The guy in the other photo was Marlon’s cousin Jerome. I click the back button to read more posts, but instead it returns me to that page of images. I’m about to get out when I stop as my gaze slides over the gallery of photos.

I see more now of Marlon’s “cousin.” And none of the person I know as Marlon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dalton walks in with a bag of breakfast sandwiches and finds me standing by the door, as if I’ve been waiting to pounce.

“That hungry, huh?” he says. Then he sees my expression.

“Marlon isn’t Marlon,” I say. “He’s his cousin.”

“I… What?”

I back onto the bed and take a moment to corral my thoughts as I pet Storm. Then I try again: “The man from those articles—the one Émilie admitted to Haven’s Rock because he was in trouble—is Martin Moyer. Martin Moyer isn’t the person we know as Marlon.”

“I… What?”

I point to my laptop, with the photo of the two men on it. “The man on the left is Martin Moyer.”