“Liquid courage.”
Pulling off her gloves, she didn’t think twice, just cracked open a bottle, tossed back the alcohol, felt the familiar burn in her throat and the warming sensation in her stomach. She repeated the process, capped the empties, and threw them back into the open compartment and snapped the lid into place.
Eyeing the beat-up mobile home, she set her jaw and pulled on her gloves again. “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then . . .” She opened the door of her Cherokee and stepped into the storm.
The path to the front door was deep in the snow, pounded by footsteps leading directly from Margrove’s BMW, though now several inches of snow covered the tread. She followed it to the stoop, which consisted of two steps and a covered landing, all constructed of rough-hewn graying boards, and the door was shut, but a flickering blue light was visible around the edges of a window shade that wasn’t quite shut.
She pressed the doorbell.
Heard nothing and decided maybe the bell wasn’t operational.
Shivering, she knocked.
Waited, pulled the coat tighter and stomped off some of the snow from her boots. Still she heard no footsteps, no heavy tread from inside.
“Come on,” she muttered, then knocked again, rapping hard. “Merritt?” she called through the rusting metal door. “It’s me. Kara.”
Again, nothing.
Was he asleep? Well, too bad. Time to get up!
“Merritt?” More pounding.
But silence from within.
“Oh, come on. It’s freezing out here.” And though the vodka was beginning to take the edge off, she still wasn’t buzzed; probably hadn’t drunk enough to even smooth out the rough edges in her mind. Most likely it had been a bad idea.
“Another one,” she told herself, pounding once more and hearing no response. Well, she was over this. Freezing on a dilapidated stoop wasn’t her idea of how the morning should go.
She tried the damned door.
The knob turned easily in her hand. As if it had been oiled.
Good.
She pushed and the door swung inward without a creak.
“Merritt?” she said again as she peered inside and her eyes adjusted to a shadowy, shifting darkness. A burst of warm air that smelled of cigarette smoke and booze wafted out. No wonder Merritt wasn’t answering. Obviously he had tied one on last night.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had to rouse him from overindulging.
Nor is it close to the first time that he did the same favor for you.
“Touché,” she told the nagging voice in her head as she heard. As she stepped inside, she heard the quiet murmur of the television that was casting the eerie bluish light into the room.
“Merritt?” she said again as a new prickle of anxiety trickled down her spine. For a second she thought she heard footsteps.
Running.
Outside.
But when she stopped and listened over the rapid beating of her heart, she heard nothing.
But the television. The sound must’ve emanated from the television.
She took another step.
Stopped short.
Her heart froze.
“Oh. God.”
First she noticed the dark stains on the carpet.
Then Merritt Margrove. Wedged between the futon and coffee table. She let out a scream and jumped back, her eyes riveted on the unmoving body. He was sprawled on the dirty green carpet, his face pale, a red gash slicing his throat ear to ear.
Blood, so much blood, pooling beneath him, dark red and coagulating. “No,” she whispered, backing up. “No, oh, no . . . no!”
Was there a chance he was alive?
No—impossible.
He was just so . . . dead.
His skin where it wasn’t sprayed in blood was gray, his eyes fixed, no breath rattling from his lungs, no bubbles of red gurgling from his throat where the blade had severed his flesh.
No. No. No!
Her stomach lurched.
Hyperventilating, she backed toward the door.
You can’t just leave him like this! You have to check. There’s a chance he’s still alive.
“He’s not,” she whispered aloud, but forced herself forward, her boot slipping in blood as she reached the unmoving body and bent down. Unable to find a spot to touch on his neck, she reaching for his hand and felt for a nonexistent pulse on a cold, cold wrist.
Nothing.
Of course.
She dropped his fingers and leapt backward, but her gaze was fixed on the dead man she had known, the murdered lawyer she had trusted.
Someone had come here and slit his throat?
Why?
Jonas!
Of course it had to do with her brother’s release!