What the hell had he done? He cupped the hand to his chest and reached out the other one for his meds. They had to be on this table.
But his hand struck wood and nothing else. Shit. Where were his damn pills? He sat up, his stomach rolling again. He squinted against the assault of the dim lights, reached across to the coffee table, and pushed aside the pizza box that held last night’s dinner. No pills. He patted the pockets of the jeans he was still wearing. No pills. He forced himself to his feet, then shuffled toward the kitchen, stepping around his own vomit. He made it as far as the doorway, leaned against the jamb, and blinked as gently as he could, every motion of his eyelids a jackhammer. From the doorway, he scanned the countertops. No pills.
“Think,” he said, stumbling toward the bathroom. The air was sour. The nausea returned. Holding his breath, he opened the medicine cabinet and searched the line of bottles. No headache pills.
He’d been at work last night. He’d taken a couple of pills in the bar. He remembered that. He’d been in the office, trying to finish up an order. Kevin had brought him a Jack and Coke. Then another. And one more. Was there a fourth? Doubles, probably. Kevin always made him doubles. The sugary film still coated his tongue. Kevin had been complaining about his girlfriend. They’d been talking about exes. He must have left the pills there.
Closing his eyelids, Iver pushed the knuckles of his index fingers against the pain behind each eye. You can do this, he told himself. Pull yourself together and get in the car. He opened his eyes and noticed a thread caught in the band of his watch, pulled it free.
The thread brought back the night air, the sting of hard wind. He felt a bruise on his shin as though it had just happened. Reached down to finger it through his pants. There was something hard and crusty on the denim. It looked like blood. Damn. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his jeans, kicked them toward the laundry room and grabbed a pair of sweats off his bedroom floor. His head throbbed like a mother now.
He dropped the hand towel on the vomit.
Get the pills from the bar, come home, and clean this shit up. Clean yourself up.
As he walked toward the front door, a wave of debilitating fear swept over him. He didn’t remember coming home. Had he driven? What if his truck wasn’t there?
When he reached the front door, he was relieved to see the white pickup parked in the driveway. He opened the front door, and Cal stood, making his way toward the sunlight, nails clicking on the wood floor.
“You coming, boy?”
Cal answered by moving past Iver and down the front stairs, toward the truck.
Iver opened the passenger-side door and stooped to lift Cal into the cab. An Australian shepherd–collie mix, Cal had been a gift from his ex-wife after his second tour in Afghanistan. His second and last tour. The accident had ensured he wasn’t going back.
Cal had been wandering the streets of town, abandoned, when he’d been hit by a car on the 1804. Thankfully, the roustabout who hit him had brought him to the local vet, who set his broken leg and got him back to health before turning him over to the Hagen pound. When his wife had brought Cal home, the dog’s leg had still been in a cast, and Iver had still been battling vertigo and nightmares and a dozen other symptoms of his brain injury. She’d brought her crippled husband a crippled dog. She must have taken one look at that pathetic beast and thought immediately of Iver.
The beginning of the end.
Iver rounded the truck, shivering against the cold, and pulled himself into the cab. He grabbed the ball cap from the bench seat and lowered it down over his eyes. The morning light was a killer, and he’d lost his sunglasses somewhere. Just get to the bar. Get to your meds. If he’d been smarter, he’d have stashed some pills in his car, some in the house, some in the bar. Hell, he’d have them on every surface. But they were hard to get, and the doctor only prescribed so many.
Iver found the keys, still in the ignition. As the truck whined once, then coughed to life, Cal made a couple of awkward circles on the passenger seat before settling down. Iver revved the engine.
On the drive through town, the early-morning light reflected brightly off storefront windows, the side mirror of an oncoming car, even the dash of his own truck. Every glare made Iver wince. Since the accident, sunlight was painful. Doctors couldn’t explain it. “The brain isn’t fully understood,” they’d said.
Sunglasses. He had to get new sunglasses.
He turned down the gravel road to his dad’s bar. His bar now. Snow clung to the curled shingles on the roof and the rounded wooden sign that hung from a rusted iron arm. Once upon a time, the ring over the a in Skål had been painted bright cobalt blue. Iver wasn’t sure if he could actually remember the color or if he had just heard about it so many times that his memory had filled in the blank. Either way, the color had faded decades earlier, like most aspects of the bar, which sat like a stubborn reminder that the thing his father had been most proud of was not his son.
By the time Iver pulled up to the bar, a blind spot had formed in his left eye, and it hurt to blink. His father’s bar. The place had been giving him headaches for as long as he could remember, but this was no regular headache. He knew from experience that he’d have a full-blown migraine in a matter of minutes. He lifted Cal to the ground and made his way to the front door. When he reached to unlock the bolt, the door was ajar. Who the hell had closed last night?
He pushed through the door and into the dimly lit space. The smell of rancid beer made his stomach turn. Seated at one of the low tables was his bar manager, Mike Hammond. Next to him was Sheriff Jack Davis. Both men looked like they’d been up all night. Only then did he notice a woman in a blazer on the far side of the table.
“What’s going on?”
“Hey, buddy,” Jack Davis said, standing from the table.
The sheriff crossed the room and reached out to shake Iver’s hand. Forgetting about the cut on his knuckles, Iver shook, wincing at the pain. The sheriff still had the same grip he’d had in high school. Three years ahead of Iver, Jack Davis was big, with a wide neck and a thick head of blond hair. Varsity quarterback from the time he was a freshman, played varsity basketball as a sophomore. He’d gotten some kind of scholarship to college. When he’d come back to Hagen, he’d become deputy sheriff at twentysomething. Sheriff by thirty and married to a gorgeous woman. The guy was perfect. Until Mrs. Davis had up and left for no reason. No one stayed perfect forever. At least Jack Davis had had a turn at it.
Davis glanced down at the hand.
“Cut myself,” Iver said as Davis’s gaze sliced across the room.
Davis motioned to the table. “This is Detective Kylie Milliard,” Davis said. “She joined us from Fargo PD a few months ago.”
Iver didn’t need to see her expression for more than two seconds to know Jack was bullshitting him with the whole “Hey, old buddy” routine. Iver sank into a chair, legs suddenly weak as a new wave of nausea crested in his gut.
CHAPTER 5
LILY
Lily shivered in the dark shed, shifting against the hard concrete ground. Bright light shone from under the door. Her bare feet were cold in the open air, her ankle stiff, painful with even the slightest motion. She looked around the small space as the memories of the night flooded back.
After walking on and off for two hours toward what she’d thought were city lights, she’d come upon a huge flare, its flame hissing like an angry snake. Beside it, two oil pumps had cranked up and down in the night sky. Steel machines, like something from a Star Wars movie. She had walked past the pumps and stared out into the dark.
Beyond the flare, the night sky was an extensive swath of blackness. She was still miles from civilization. A small shed sat beyond the pumps, its door unlocked. She had heaved the door open and entered to take refuge from the cold night air. A small voice in her head had reminded her to remove the wet boots—a half-remembered lesson about frostbite. A generator of some sort was running inside, and the machine kept the space almost
warm enough to be comfortable.
She tried to think back further, shuffling through her mind for memories.
The man from the car. Brent. With the nice clothes and the cash in his wallet. Cash she had taken. What was he to her? Was he the one who had told her not to go to the police? To hurry back to Abby?
To fight the spinning thoughts, she recounted what she knew. First, her name was Lily Baker. She had an inexpensive bag with cheap makeup and a wallet with seven dollars. She had been driving with a man named Brent Nolan. They’d had an accident. She’d taken his money but had tried to save him. Then she’d left. The lines repeated in her head. Never talk to the police. Never give anyone your name.
She had a gun. She closed her eyes and tried to remember something about that gun, about herself before waking in that car. She shivered at the memory of standing in the snow with the other girl, Abby. Only she wasn’t a girl; she was a woman. The two had huddled in the dark, frozen, as they’d listened. Lily could feel her own terror. Then there was the slashing sound of boots crunching through the snow. “He’s coming,” Abby had said.
Lily squeezed her eyes closed, searching for more images. Nothing came. She opened her eyes and shifted in the tight space, taking stock of the pain that radiated through her. Neck, face, back, ankle. The tender scratch on her hand, thin slices along her neck that disappeared into her shirt.
But aside from her ankle being caught in the car door, she could recall none of those injuries happening. The final moments were hauntingly clear—the shrieking of metal as the car had tipped over the edge, the hot rush of fear. Had Brent survived the night? She’d heard the ambulance. The OnStar operator had said the response team was two minutes out. If she’d stayed, she would have been in a warm bed right now. But then there was the money she had taken from Brent, the gun, the sense that all of this was wrong. That she was wrong.
You don’t make good choices.
Start, she thought. Start to make good choices.
First, she needed to get out of here. Then she needed to make sure Brent was okay. Find Abby.
Leaning across the space, she cracked open the shed door. The sun was a bright fiery ball in the sky. Immediately she felt the warmth of its rays on her skin. Her stomach growled, and her mouth was tight and parched. She also needed food and water.
She had to move. She needed something to wrap her ankle. With her bag emptied onto the floor, she pushed past the makeup, looking for some piece of fabric to use as a bandage. Only then did she notice that the bag had an inside zipper as well. She pulled it open, slid her hand inside, and felt a small, thick book.
The book was a paperback, its exterior covered with a brown paper bag, like a high school textbook. Intricate black pen designs covered the paper, flowers and vines in and around the lines. The drawings had been sealed with clear packing tape that was worn at the corners. Bits of dirt ran in lines where the tape had come up off the paper.
Had she done that? And why? She was an adult, and this looked like a child’s schoolbook. She flipped the book open. A Bible. The book of Job, chapter fourteen: Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. The words were familiar. She held the book by its spine and shook it, letting the pages flutter open in hopes that some clue would fall from its pages. None did.
Setting the book on her lap, she opened to the inside cover and found small, square handwriting. I. Larson, 416 4th Street, followed by a seven-digit phone number. Someone’s name was on the inside of her Bible. What did the I stand for?
She pulled the picture from her wallet and studied the two women. The name she remembered was Abby, but maybe the woman’s name was something else—something that started with an I. But if they were sisters, why would they have different last names? Unless Baker was a married name? And she had a husband? The questions pinged across her brain like a pinball, striking hollow, empty notes.
She tucked the Bible back into the bag and searched the other pockets. Had she overlooked anything else?
But there was nothing else. She felt in her jeans pockets, back and then front. In her right front pocket, she found something about the size of a wadded tissue. She pulled out a folded strip of newspaper. She held it in one hand, afraid. What else? What. Else.
The thin newsprint felt like it might dissolve in her grip. Unfolding the strip with careful hands, she laid it out against her leg and scanned the page. An image, severed three-quarters of the way down, showed the bottom edge of a mattress. Below, in bold, it read, EVERYTHING MUST G— The edge of the G had been torn off.
On the flip side of the page was a single headline. Police Still Investigating Possible Second Suspect . . . She skimmed the words, her vision blurred by the too-rapid beating of her heart. Her gaze froze on the words second suspect. Why did she have this article? Was she the second suspect? Her sister?
She drew a shaky breath to calm herself. She had a Bible, an address and phone number, a wallet with seven dollars, some piece of a newspaper article, and a picture of herself and another woman. Even with these things, she could not answer the most basic questions about who she was and why she was here, in this place.
Teeth chattering from the cold, she rubbed her ankle gently, trying to work out some of the swelling. She had nothing to use as a wrap, and there was nowhere for her foot to go but back inside the boot. Her eyes teared from the effort of getting back into the damp boots. After quickly repacking her bag, she rose and pushed the door open, squinting in the bright sunlight as she filled her lungs with cold air.
For a moment, she considered leaving the gun behind. Why did she have it? Surely there was some reason. What if she needed it? In the end, she kept it. With a last look around, she left the shed behind and set out into the day, hoping town wasn’t far.
CHAPTER 6
IVER
The bar felt dank, the way it did when the old wood floors were swollen from the moisture in fall and spring. But it was the dead of winter now. The table had gone quiet. Iver kept his gaze on Jack Davis while, across the table, that detective’s eyes bored into him like a drill, which only added to the sensation that his head was about to explode. As though sensing trouble, Cal sidled up close.
“Sheriff.” Iver rubbed Cal’s neck and tried to hide his own fear. “What’s going on?”
“Can you tell me what time you left the bar last night?” Davis asked.
Iver glanced at Mike, who sat motionless in the chair beside Davis, avoiding his eyes. Mike held a notebook in his hands, the one he carried to keep track of tasks he had to accomplish for the bar. Iver could picture his friend’s small block print, the cramped way he held his pen—the same way he’d been holding it since kindergarten. Fear expanded in Iver’s chest until it felt like he couldn’t breathe. A stab of pain, excruciating behind his left eye.
“Iver?” Davis repeated.
He shook his head, pressing his palm against his eye. The pressure eased the pain only slightly.
“Are you all right?”
He turned to the woman’s voice. She had removed her blazer and now leaned forward on her forearms, shirtsleeves rolled up above her elbows. Dark hair pulled back, a woman ready to get to work.
“I need to get my medication. Excuse me, Sheriff.” Iver stood and pushed past Jack Davis, fumbling with the keys to unlock the office. The vision in his left eye was all but gone. He flipped on the overhead light and flinched at the brightness that usually seemed too dim to work by. He staggered to the desk and scanned its surface. Come on. Come on.
He spotted the empty drink glass and slid it into the open drawer of his desk, still scanning for the meds.
Panic built in his chest as he pushed aside paperwork. Where were the meds? His fingers found the bottle beneath the pages of an order fulfillment. He sank into the chair, unscrewed the top, and shook two of the small white pills into his palm, then into his mouth, where he chewed them and swallowed them dry, wincing at the bitter taste. They worked faster when he chewed them. Or that was what he told himself
. His cell phone was on the desk, too.
The screen was filled with notifications of missed calls and texts.
Where are you?
The police are here.
Sheriff Davis stood in the doorway. Iver had seen Davis around—in this town, you saw everyone around—but he hadn’t talked to Davis since they’d played high school football together. Or, more accurately, since Iver had sat on the bench while Davis had starred in the games. Iver had been a freshman, Davis a senior. Since then, Iver had talked to Davis exactly once—at the Christmas tree lot before his first tour in Afghanistan. Iver and his wife had been picking out a tree, as had Davis and his wife. They’d had some stupid exchange about which was better—the Scotch pine or the balsam fir.
How things had changed.
Davis looked at him long and hard. “I heard about the accident. You were lucky.”
“Yeah,” Iver said. Lucky to survive the IED that had hit his Humvee. His head pounded harder, and his vision faltered. Luckier than his four buddies, anyway.
Not wanting to be cornered in his office with the sheriff, Iver forced himself out of the chair. Back in the main part of the bar, he sat down next to Mike and across from Davis, leaving an empty chair between him and the detective. The pain in his head was no better, but he was momentarily distracted by fear. Fear of what, he didn’t know. He absently touched the scratch on his knuckles, the vague memory of anger at the periphery of his mind.
“What’s going on?” Iver asked again.
“Just a few questions,” Davis said. “Can you tell me what time you left the bar last night?”
Iver swallowed the bitter aftertaste of his meds and looked at Davis. He didn’t actually remember when he’d left the night before. “I usually leave about ten thirty,” he said carefully. “That sound about right?” he asked Mike.
Mike rubbed his face, the middle finger on his left hand a little shorter than on the right from an accident with an ax when he was a kid. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked up at the sheriff. “Like I told you, Sheriff, it gets nuts in here. I’ve got fifty or sixty people plus the bartenders and the girls. I can’t keep track of everyone.” The way Mike said “everyone” made Iver sound like a child who’d gotten lost.
White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller) Page 3