Page 10 of 44.1644° North
I moved to squeeze past Rory, who stepped back against the wall, putting the receiver to his chest. I was close enough to smell his aftershave—something light, reminiscent of cedar and sage—and to see that his eyes were gray. I’d been thinking blue. I mean, I hadn’t been thinkinganything, but if I had, I’d have assumed blue.
He said, “Uh…every other guy in the place is wearing a hoodie.”
“Did anyone run out the back?”
Rory looked blank. Was it a complicated question?
I gave him a look of exasperation, jogged to the end of the hallway, and shoved open the panic hardware. The tall doors swung open onto blackness as frigid as outer space.
From the doorway, I could see the silhouettes of scattered trees and a few small structures with dark windows, which were the guest cabins. They looked even less inviting in the dark than they had in the daylight.
Behind me, I heard Rory’s quiet, “Jason, I’ve got to go. I’ll phone back.” I heard him replace the phone on the hook and his footsteps as he joined me at the exit door. “No one went out while I was on the phone.”
I nodded, eyes straining the darkness. Nothing moved. I couldn’t hear anything to indicate someone was sneaking through the garbage pails and discarded boxes. That didn’t mean nobody was out there. I glanced at Rory, who was watching me with a curious expression. “How long were you on the phone?”
“Only a minute or two, but I was waiting to use the phone for at least five minutes.”
God, it’s dark out there.
The idea of sleeping in one of those little black boxes was less appealing by the second.
“Who are you looking for?” Rory’s shoulder brushed mine as he peered into the night.
I glanced at him. He had a nice profile—and a tiny mark on his earlobe where there’d once been a piercing. I shook my head and turned, brushing past him as I headed for the restrooms.
Restroom. Singular.
It was locked.
“She’s been in there a while,” Rory informed me with a hint of commiseration.
“Onerestroom? For the entire pub?”
Rory shrugged. “It’s not a problem three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.”
The guy on the road could not have come this way.
Either hehadn’tentered the pub—and I knew what I’d seen,knewthe guy had walked into the Swiftwater—or he’d somehow managed to enter the pub and instantly blend into the crowd.
Which I guess would be relatively easy to do if he was one of this crowd.
The latter was what had to have happened.
The whole thing was weird.
WasI making too much of nothing? I didn’t know for a fact that the man on the road had been following me. I didn’t even know for sure he’d heard me call out.
Sure, I trusted my instincts, but if I was honest, I’d been worried and uneasy from the point I’d received that first threatening email. Inevitably, I was going to be looking for connections—and maybe jumping to some wrong conclusions.
As I had to keep reminding myself, whoever had sent that email could—probably was—just pranking me. If so, he was probably laughing his ass off at this very moment.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
Rory’s voice jarred me out of my grim thoughts, and I threw him a distracted look. “No.”
“No?”
I started back toward the bar area.
