“Excellent,” Old Man Winter said, cocking his head, blue eyes glaring with cold. “I had heard … that you would be a reliable person in this matter. Someone we can … count on.”
The world of Old Man Winter’s office faded, slipping away as surely as if I were falling through the floor. Everything went black around me, and I awoke with a sharp intake of breath, the cold air frosting in front of me. The temperature had dropped before I made it to the car, and by the time I had driven back to the farmhouse and raided Parks’ stash of weapons it was well below freezing. I blinked the spots of light out of my eyes; I was still parked just outside the back door and the light was shining down on me. I took another breath, felt the cold air fill my nose and lungs, and realized that as I awakened, I could feel Zack recede to a dark place in the back of my head. I wanted to reach out to him, to bring him forward like the others, but I couldn’t figure out how.
I lifted my head off the headrest and saw my new, pay-as-you-go cellphone sitting where I had left it in the cup holder below the front seat. I picked it up, watching the little blue LED indicator blinking to tell me I had a message. I thumbed it on and saw the time—four-thirty in the morning. I had been asleep for hours, and the chill had seeped in, and I realized that I felt it all the way through my aching body. I flipped to the message, which was a simple text, from Kurt:
Tomorrow. Nine AM.
He followed it with an address in St. Paul which was north of downtown, about a thirty-minute drive from my house. I cursed under my breath. I had an hour’s drive just to get back home, and unless I wanted to go to bed covered in mud I’d have to shower. I’d be lucky to make it to bed before six a.m. I sighed and leaned my head against the headrest and shut my eyes again, just for a minute.
This one was for you, Zack, I thought. I felt the stir of the other three, but not him.
It was a very good job, Little Doll. A very good first step.
“Thanks for nothing.” I fumbled and stuck the keys in the ignition, whilst trying to rub my hands enough to create some warmth. I eyed the light above Parks’s door one last time as I shifted the car into drive. I ignored the groans of protest from the cold car as I turned around in the frozen driveway and headed up the dirt road back to the highway.
7.
“He’s gonna be a tough one,” Kurt said, squinting his piggy eyes in the glare of the sunlight.
“Always has been,” I said. I wore dark glasses, not only because of the sun shining overhead but because I didn’t feel like having people look me in the eyes right now. “Why should it be any different when the time comes for him to die?”
There was a grunt of almost-amusement from the big man, and he nodded toward a building in the distance. The air was cold but not bitterly so. The sun had warmed it, and temperatures were back above freezing. We stood in a vacant lot, the ground soft beneath our feet as we stared at the ramshackle brick building across the street. It was a bar, an old one, and it looked as though it might fall down at any given moment. The decaying red brick looked as if it had been built a hundred years ago and repurposed into a bar in the last twenty or so. My eyes swept the street and found more of the same. The whole avenue was near-empty save a few parked cars, one of which was sitting on concrete blocks. In a parking space. Parallel parked. I shook my head at that, wondering if it had been the owner’s choice and somehow doubting it. The whole place smelled of old diesel exhaust and oil, as if all the years of being near a major thoroughfare had left an olfactory mark on the neighborhood.
“Wanna go over it again?” Kurt asked, jamming his ham-like hands deeper into the pockets of his brown trench coat. A fedora was all that was missing to reinforce the illusion that he was a first-rate private eye from the thirties. I scanned the street again; the neighborhood was only helping that illusion.
“Simple enough,” I said, throwing a hand out to point at the bar. “He’s got a night off, he gets hammered in there, stumbles out around one a.m. if the pattern holds.” I glared at the front door of the bar, which was red. “After that, it’s all up to me.”
“So, what are you gonna do?” Hannegan stared into the lenses of my glasses.
I felt a flash of annoyance but kept myself level. “Let me worry about that. What about the next one?”