A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(15)

A sudden laugh vibrates through him.

He shakes his head. “You punished yourself enough. Lesson learned. All I cared about was finding you. That storm blew up, and I started thinking of how big this forest is and how I might never—” He takes a deep breath. “Enough of that shit. You found Nicole.”

“Right. Good change of subject.” I start to roll off him, saying, “I’ll let you get comfortable,” and he says, “This is comfortable,” pulling me back on and adjusting the blanket over us. “If you get cold, let me know,” he says.

“Weirdly, despite being naked in an igloo, I’m not cold.” I purse my lips. “Except maybe my toes. I’m putting on my socks.” I do that, and I put his on him, too, which makes him smile, and then I stretch back out on his chest, cuddling into his body heat as I say, “So, about Nicole…”

“I fucked up. I—”

I press my fingers to his lips. “You thought she was dead, so you stopped looking for her. Will said you found a body. That’s not fucking up, Eric. I know you’re good at taking blame. Even better than me.”

“Nah, I’m minor league. You’re pro.”

I stick out my tongue and then say, “Well, as a pro, let me speak from experience and stop you right there. Skip it and move on, Sheriff. Tell me about Nicole.”

He does. Nicole Chavez came to Rockton eighteen months ago and hadn’t made much of an impression. That’s not a bad thing. She wasn’t a troublemaker, kept to herself.

She disappeared last year. It was late October, and the weather seemed fine, not unlike yesterday, but Dalton could read the signs that told him a storm was brewing. Come morning, Nicole’s roommate reported she’d been out all night.

That wasn’t uncommon in Rockton. We’re the Vegas of the north, with population stats that are clearly in the ladies’ favor. If Nicole wanted overnight company, she’d have no problem finding it. But that wasn’t normal for her, so Dalton set the militia checking door-to-door while he and Anders headed into the forest. When the storm hit, they hauled ass home. The moment it cleared, they went back out again.

After three days of searching, they gave up. The roommate admitted Nicole sometimes snuck past the town boundary, taking time for herself. Dalton figured she went walking and got lost. He kept looking, but he knew as time passed, the likelihood of finding her alive plummeted.

Come spring, they found a woman’s badly scavenged and decayed body at the foot of Three Peaks Mountain. Her skull and spine showed signs of trauma, and our town doctor Beth had ruled that she’d been climbing, maybe searching for shelter from the storm, when she’d slipped and fallen. The corpse had matched Nicole’s hair color and size, but with the condition too bad for a proper ID, Dalton would still never have leapt to the conclusion it was Nicole … if the body hadn’t been wearing her clothing.

“Her captor set it up,” I say. “He found a corpse—a settler or hostile. He might have even killed a woman who roughly matched Nicole. He staged it so you’d stop looking.”

“And I fell for it.”

“Yeah, you messed up. I mean, obviously, if a woman goes missing out here and you find a body matching hers and wearing her clothing, your first thought should be that she was kidnapped by a crazy person who staged her death.”

When he hesitates, I roll my eyes. “That’s sarcasm, Eric.”

He says nothing.

“You’re still going to blame yourself, aren’t you?”

“So would you.” He shifts, arm going under his head. “Tell me about finding her. I didn’t get much from Will. He was filling me in as fast as he could while I got the sled going.”

I tell him about the man in the snowsuit and about finding Sutherland’s toque. I plan to hold off on my up-close-and-personal encounter with the guy today, but he says, “And you didn’t see any sign of him after that?” and I won’t lie. Not to him.

I admit that snowmobile-suit guy came after me, and with every word, Dalton tenses and by the time I finish, it’s like I’m lying on a wooden plank. I decide it’s time to crawl off and get my clothes.

“He’s long gone,” I say as I dress. “I was careful when I set off the flares. I knew I might draw him in. I was ready.”

“I know that. I just…” He takes a deep breath. “Are you okay?”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“I don’t mean that, Casey. Are you…?” He trails off and rubs his mouth. “Stupid question, right? You’re going to tell me you’re fine, even if I’m sure you’re not.”

I want to brush it off. No, really, I am fine. But I’m trying not to do that with Dalton. “It did freak me out. I kept thinking of Nicole and that hole and…” I inhale. “Can we talk about something else? Please?”

He nods, pulls on his jeans, and takes bars from the bag, saying, “Ran into an interesting guy in Dawson City.”

I smile. “Shocking.”

“No shit, huh.” He roots in the bag and hands me another bar. “This particular guy caught my attention because he was running down the street stark naked, which, in summer, wouldn’t be all that strange, but at this time of year, even for Dawson City, it seemed a little odd. So I went out to see what was going on and…”