Frost Line

by Linda Howard

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  By Linda Howard and Linda Jones

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Elijah’s nose was running. He used the sheet to wipe it, knowing Mom wouldn’t like it. He was mad at her so he didn’t care. It was her fault he was crying, anyway, and if he wasn’t crying his nose wouldn’t be running. His bottom lip stuck out a little as he sniffed resentfully, almost hoping there would be more snot so he could wipe his nose on the sheet again.

  It wasn’t fair she’d sent him to bed. He wanted to play with Uncle Bobby. Tomorrow wasn’t a school day, they had another week of Christmas vacation, and Mom always let him stay up later on the weekends. But tonight she’d sent him to bed even before his bedtime, when Sammy came over. Now Sammy was gone, Uncle Bobby was here, and she still wouldn’t let him stay up. He was seven years old, not a little baby. It wasn’t fair!

  He knuckled the wetness from his eyes, his heart swelling with outrage. He always got to play with Uncle Bobby, who got down on the floor with him to wrestle and brought him candy and cool stuff to play with, and when Mom fussed about it always said, “Now, Amber—” that was Mom’s name “—a boy’s got to have some fun.” Then he’d ruffle Elijah’s hair and say, “Right, son?”

  It always made Elijah feel happy inside when Uncle Bobby called him “son.” No one else did. Uncle Bobby had even given him a Christmas present! A Captain America, a big one. It wasn’t a doll, either; it was an action figure. Girls played with dolls; boys had action figures.

  He’d asked his mom a couple of times about his real dad but she’d always say they were better off without him and look mad, so he’d stopped asking her even though he’d really like to see his dad one day. The other boys in his class had dads, even if they didn’t live in the same house. None of Mom’s other boyfriends ever called him “son” the way Uncle Bobby did. Mom said he couldn’t talk about them, though, especially when Uncle Bobby was here, but he liked Uncle Bobby way better than he did that jerk Sammy. Sammy was never nice to him, and his mom always sent him upstairs to play when Sammy was there, and told him not to come down or she’d spank him. She never said that when Uncle Bobby came.

  Sammy had been here just a little while ago, which was why Elijah had been sent to bed the first time. But he hadn’t gone to sleep; after Mom left his room, he got up, turned on the light, and played with his Transformers instead. He’d sent the Transformers against the Avengers; usually he liked the Avengers best and let them win, but this time he’d played a different game and after a long battle the Transformers had come out on top.

  Sammy hadn’t even bought him a present for Christmas.

  Then Sammy had left, and Uncle Bobby had come to visit. When Elijah heard his voice he’d raced downstairs, excited and sure Mom would let him stay up now, but instead she’d gotten mad and sent him back to bed.

  He was so preoccupied with his sense of ill-usage that at first he didn’t pay any attention to the thumping noise from downstairs. A second thump made him raise his head and listen intently. Mom better not be wrestling with Uncle Bobby, he thought fiercely. Wrestling was what Uncle Bobby did with him. But that’s what it sounded like, and the injustice of it propelled him out of bed. He stood in the dark—well, almost dark, because the basketball night-light kept it from ever being really dark. He’d told Mom he was too old for a night-light, but he was secretly glad she’d left it.

  He heard some sounds that he couldn’t identify, kind of yelling but not yelling, maybe some coughing, then finally the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

  They were definitely wrestling! They’d broken something. He never broke anything!

  He tiptoed to the door and eased it open, listening intently. The light from the living room spilled up the stairs and across the hall. His bare feet didn’t make any noise as he crept down the stairs. He was just going to peek around the corner to see if they were wrestling, and if they were he … he didn’t know what he’d do. Maybe he’d break something, to show Mom how mad he was.

  Christmas was over, but the tree was still up and the tiny white lights were on. He could see just the edge of the tree as he reached the foot of the stairs. The tree made him feel good, as if he could hold on to Christmas for a while longer even though he was mad because he couldn’t play with Uncle Bobby.

  There was a drumming sound, as if something was beating against the floor. Elijah knew how to sneak, because he’d seen it in the movies. The sneaking people always got close to the wall, and kind of slid closer. He couldn’t get right against the wall because there was a table there, so instead he got down on his hands and knees and crawled. Slowly he eased his head around the corner just enough to see what they were doing.

  Confused, he stared at them. He didn’t know if they were wrestling or not. Mom was on the floor, flat on her back, and her heels were making that drumming sound, beating slowly up and down. Uncle Bobby was on top of her, his hands around her throat, and he was kind of shaking her. Mom’s face was a strange dark color, so dark at first he wasn’t sure it was her. What was wrong with her? Her head moved to the side and she saw him—he thought she saw him, only she didn’t say anything.

  Her hands were around Uncle Bobby’s wrists but then her fingers opened and she kind of slapped at his arms a little, mostly missing, and her arms fell down to her side. She kicked slower and slower, only one foot moving now in a thunk … thunk … thunk. Then the sound stopped, and her feet were still. Her tongue stuck out a little, and her eyes …

  Her eyes looked like his dog Bosco’s had when he got hit by that car last year, open but not seeing anything.

  Elijah knew what “dead” was. Bosco had been dead.

  Uncle Bobby was breathing hard, sweat running down his face. He looked really mad, his lips pursed together, his eyes squinty. He didn’t stop squeezing Mom’s neck. He slammed her head against the floor, twice.

  Mom was dead.

  Uncle Bobby had hurt her, and Mom was dead.

  Sheer panic flooded Elijah’s body. What would he do without Mom? He wanted her to get up and laugh and say she’d just been fooling; he wanted her to give him one of her special extra hard hugs, the one that always made him laugh as she swung him back and forth. His mom couldn’t be dead.

  But she was.

  He didn’t want to see her dead eyes anymore. Slowly, barely able to move, still on his hands and knees, he backed away from the living room. He didn’t look where he was going. He meant to go upstairs and hide in his room, but suddenly there was cool tile under his hands and he knew he was in the kitchen. The light was off, but there were electric clocks on the microwave and on the oven so he could see a little bit. Wildly he looked around, not knowing why he was here. Could he get to his bedroom?

  Then a shadow loomed across the tile, and Uncle Bobby’s heavy footsteps sounded as he came out of the living room and started up the stairs.

  Elijah almost squealed with terror, but he pressed his lips hard against the sound. He could hear himself breathing. Could Uncle Bobby hear him breathing? Would he put his big hands around Elijah’s throat and squeeze and shake the way he’d done to Mom?

  He couldn’t go up
stairs. Uncle Bobby was up there. He had to run, and hide; he had to hide really good or Uncle Bobby would find him and then he’d have dead eyes like Mom and Bosco.

  Dead.

  Mom was dead.

  Elijah’s chest heaved but he didn’t let himself cry. He had to be quiet, and he had to be brave and fast. He had to be like Captain America.

  He stood up and crept to the kitchen door. He stretched on tiptoe to reach the latch Mom always fastened as soon as it got dark, and slid it back. It made a metallic click and he froze, unable to look around in case he saw Uncle Bobby reaching for him. Nothing happened, though, and with trembling hands he turned the lock in the doorknob. As quietly as possible he opened the door. Cold air poured in through the widening slot. He was skinny—Mom always said so—and he didn’t need a big opening to get through. As soon as possible he squeezed through. The chill of the concrete porch bit into his bare feet, but he couldn’t go back inside. He darted across the porch and into the backyard.

  Elijah ran. The grass was stiff with frost and scratched, and his feet were really cold, but he wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t go back. Couldn’t, wouldn’t. His heart was pounding so hard his chest ached from it and he thought he might burst from the tears inside but he held them back. Captain America, he thought desperately. Captain America wouldn’t cry.

  Instead of thinking about what he’d seen, he focused straight ahead. It was dark, and he was scared. He was never outside after dark; Mom wouldn’t allow it. But he knew his way around the neighborhood, even this late at night. He ran through Miss Sally’s backyard, past the spot where her stupid flowers had been before the cold had come and they’d died. She’d yelled at him when his ball had landed in her stupid flowers. She was probably home, but he didn’t want to knock on her back door or go around front and ring her doorbell. The house was dark. She might be asleep. She’d yell at him again.

  Besides, he knew where to go. Through that backyard, then cutting across to the sidewalk since the old people that lived in the next house had a fenced yard. They had a dog, and he wondered if the dog would start barking, but it didn’t. He crossed the street at a run, looking left and then right. A few Christmas lights were still on, but most houses were dark. No one saw him; he was sure of that.

  Elijah passed under a streetlight and wondered, too late, if Uncle Bobby was already looking for him. He didn’t want Uncle Bobby to find him, especially not in the dark.

  Maybe he should have knocked on Miss Sally’s door, after all.

  Panic made him run harder; a few steps and he was in darkness again. He felt safer in the dark, where no one could see him. Elijah cut into a yard he knew well, skirted the darkest edges of the two-story house that was a lot like his own, and opened the gate that led to the backyard. He left the gate open, then stopped to turn around and close it, his cold fingers shaking as he slipped the lock into place.

  He ran to the back door that opened onto the kitchen, just like at his house. Shaking with cold, he tried to turn the doorknob. It was locked, and he whimpered in fear. Then he remembered the doggy door; Zack’s Cookie was pretty big, not one of the biggest dogs in the neighborhood, but not a little yapper, either. Maybe he could get through the doggy door.

  Elijah got on his hands and knees and pushed against the thick plastic of the door. Maybe Cookie wasn’t as big as he’d thought, because the opening seemed awful little. He pushed his head inside, and warm air hit him in the face. He sobbed, swamped with relief, terror, and confusion all at once. Wiggling his shoulders and turning a little sideways, he slid through the door, scraping his side just a little as he tumbled into the warm kitchen. He rolled across the tile to get away from the cold and the dark and Uncle Bobby.

  The dark silence of the house scared him. Zack and his family were gone for the weekend, having another Christmas with his granny. Cookie was at what Zack’s mom called doggy day care. Elijah sat on the floor hugging his knees, unnerved by being alone in someone else’s house. At least … at least he was safe here. Uncle Bobby was too big to get through the doggy door.

  His lips trembled. He saw it in his head again, what had happened at his house. It didn’t make sense, but he hadn’t been dreaming. Uncle Bobby had been so mad. His mom … Tears welled up in Elijah’s eyes. Mom was dead. He wanted his mom, but he didn’t want to be dead, too.

  When the red haze cleared from State Senator Robert Markham’s gaze, when the lava-hot rage cooled enough that he could think again, he looked down at his hands still clenched around Amber’s throat. He felt so distant, so dazed, that for a moment he didn’t recognize the hands as his own. But they had to be, because they were at the ends of his arms. Everything was just so unreal; he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. He had to concentrate to move, to slowly force his fingers to relax. Numbly he stared at the dark red marks left on her flesh.

  He was astride her on the floor. He didn’t remember how they’d gotten down there; the last thing he clearly remembered, she’d spat in his face, and he’d felt as if he were turning inside out with rage.

  She was dead. Her eyes were open and blank, her tongue sticking out a little. He’d killed her.

  Shock hit him, an almost physical force that made him sag sideways. His ass hit the floor with a thud. He sat there staring stupidly at Amber’s body, trying to grasp what had happened, trying to think.

  The first coherent thought to surface was: What should I do?

  It went without saying that the underlying meaning of that was how to get away with what he’d done.

  He’d killed his mistress, but he couldn’t find even a shred of regret for the fact that she was dead, only anxiety that he might be found out. Vaguely he looked around, as if he might find inspiration in the overturned coffee table, the shards of glass from the broken picture frame, the cell phone lying half under the couch.

  Robert reached out and picked up the cell phone, and his hand shook. If it hadn’t been for the phone none of this would have happened. Amber would still be fucking her other boyfriend, and both of them would be laughing at him for being such a doofus that he thought a woman as pretty as Amber would care about him. But the asshole boyfriend had forgotten his phone, and on the phone was a video he’d made of himself and Amber having sex, and laughing about Robert for being naive enough to provide this house for her, Amber calling him “LD” and the boyfriend laughing like a hyena when she explained that it stood for “little dick.”

  It was all so unreal. The evening had started quietly enough. He hadn’t intended to stop by, but had a last minute impulse to get in some time with her, because around Christmas it was tough getting away from the family. Damn holidays; he hated them. He was later than usual, so late Elijah was already in bed, though the kid had gotten up when he’d heard “Uncle Bobby” downstairs, and definitely been unhappy when Amber had sternly insisted he go back upstairs, which now in hindsight Robert knew was because she was afraid the kid would say something about her earlier visitor that night. The bitch—that was how he thought of her now, after seeing that video—had excused herself to the bathroom, probably to clean up from having sex with the guy who had left just before he arrived.

  That idea now seared him like acid, but at the time he hadn’t thought anything about it. He’d been sitting there, clicking through the television channels, when he’d glanced down and seen the corner of the phone sticking up from between the cushion and the arm of the couch.

  He’d pulled it out, and stared curiously at it. He knew it wasn’t Amber’s phone; hers was an Android, with a flowered case. This was an iPhone, and it had a chunky black case, the kind people bought to protect the phone from rough handling. He thumbed the home button and the screen lit, inviting him to swipe it. He did, expecting to see the security code screen, but instead the regular screen came up; whoever the phone belonged to hadn’t put in a security code.

  He felt an illicit thrill; finding an unsecured phone was like looking through someone’s bedroom window after dark. The first t
hing he did was check the text messages. The screen hadn’t been closed, and the most recent texts popped up.

  u at home, baby

  yes, Amber had replied.

  old fart coming over 2nite?

  no Im free

  b there in 30

  The times on the texts were earlier that evening. Robert had stared at the string of messages, cold anger building. He wasn’t stupid; obviously he was the “old fart,” and whoever owned the phone had called Amber “baby.”

  Quickly he scrolled through the other messages, finding others to and from Amber, and the intimate tone of the texts said it all. She’d been cheating on him all along. He shook with anger, but he tried to control it. He was married, and a state senator; Amber could do a lot of damage to his career if she got mad. He had ambitions, goals, and she could ruin it all.

  He wanted to know who the asshole was, what he looked like. Robert didn’t love Amber—that would be stupid, she was just a young(er) and pretty piece of ass—but if the guy was also married and was sneaking around with her, maybe he could leverage that to keep her from raising hell.

  Next he went to the photos, flicking through them. Most of them were selfies, of the guy by himself, or goofing around with friends, some of them with Amber. He looked about Amber’s age, dark-haired, on the skinny side, sometimes wearing a blue shirt with the logo of an auto repair company above the left pocket. Okay, he didn’t know the guy’s name yet, but now he knew where he worked.

  There were some videos, and he tapped the most recent one.

  It was of the guy and Amber fucking, right here on the couch. Their voices came clearly through the phone’s speaker:

  “Do you like it? Can the old fart fuck you like this? Can he?”