Dead of Winter_Aspen Falls Novel

by Melissa Pearl

  “I’m sorry. I have a migraine and I should’ve called in before going back to sleep but it was too early. You wouldn’t have been at work yet.”

  Elly huffed. “Okay, fine. I get it. Take the day. Rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Elly. You’re the best.”

  “Whatever.” Her boss hung up with another huff and Rosie winced.

  She didn’t have a migraine.

  A hangover headache, yes, but she probably could’ve found the strength for work. Truth was, she’d come home drunk way too late and had simply slept in. But she didn’t have the guts to admit that to her boss. She was sure the woman wanted to fire her anyway and was probably just looking for the perfect excuse.

  Rosie frowned, flinging the covers back. “Who cares? You hate that job anyway,” she mumbled to herself.

  Telemarketing was nothing but painful. Cold-calling people all day—it was a new kind of torture. But it was income she needed, and so she couldn’t quit just yet.

  Damien had needed a loan, so her bank account was basically empty.

  He told her he’d be paying her back by the end of the month, so maybe she could reassess her job situation then.

  Shuffling to the edge of the bed, she rested her feet on the floor and yelped. It was freaking freezing! She grabbed a pair of thick socks off the floor and shoved them on before padding to the bathroom. The cold still seeped through the fabric, so she ran on her tiptoes to relieve herself.

  As she sat on the toilet, she rested her pounding head in her hands and groaned. She needed water—lots of it—and some Advil.

  She walked to the kitchen and gulped down a large glass of water. Wiping the droplets off her lip, she then turned to one of the kitchen cupboards and found the bottle of Advil empty.

  “Seriously?” she whined, tossing the bottle in the trash and huffing back to the bathroom.

  Hopefully Damien had an extra bottle somewhere.

  She hunted through the drawers to no avail and then tried the cupboard under the sink. It was packed with so much stuff that she ended up pulling it all out, reading bottle labels and throwing them aside as she desperately hunted for pain relief.

  She was close to accepting that she’d have to get dressed and head out to the drugstore when she noticed another box in the very back corner. It stuck when she tried to pull it out. It was carefully wedged behind the pipework. With a grunt, she wrestled it free, surprised by the weight of it.

  Her forehead crinkled with a frown as she lifted the flap and pulled out a Ziploc bag of blue pills. A small pentagram was stamped on each one.

  “What the hell are these?” she murmured.

  The pinch in her gut told her they weren’t good.

  She opened the bag and gave them a sniff. She smelled nothing, but something was off. The fact that her throat was swelling with unease told her she should put those little blue pills back where she found them and forget they existed.

  Her insides roiled as questions attacked her from all sides.

  Were they illegal drugs?

  Why did Damien have so many of them?

  He’d obviously been hiding them from her. What else didn’t she know about him?

  A knock at the door made her jump. Her eyes bulged wide and then she flew into action, scrambling to put the cupboard back in order.

  She did a haphazard job and the cupboard wouldn’t close properly, but the knocking at the door was growing faster and more persistent.

  “Police! Open up!”

  She jerked to a stop in the living room, her heart thundering in her chest. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she padded to the door and checked the peephole.

  Sure enough, there was a man in a black trench coat with two uniformed officers standing behind him.

  Rosie closed her eyes and swallowed, her mind reeling as she wondered if she’d somehow woken up in a parallel universe or something.

  Drugs and a visit from the police?

  Drugs!

  Rosie held in her gasp and yanked the door open.

  “Morning.” The detective flashed his ID.

  His cool blue gaze assessed her before he introduced himself.

  “I’m Detective Monroe from the Brookvale PD. Is your boyfriend home?”

  “Um.” Rosie swallowed, then licked her lips. “No. I’m not sure where he is. I woke up after he left.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m sorry to wake you, but we have a warrant to search this apartment.”

  “A warrant?” Rosie took the white sheet of paper and quickly skimmed it, not understanding any of the legal jargon. “What for?”

  “We believe Damien Swanson is involved in dealing illegal drugs, and we’d like to search his apartment for evidence.”

  “What? Drugs?” Rosie tried to put on the best show she could, hoping he wouldn’t see through it. “Damien would never do that.” Her protective instincts kicked in, and she used them to bolster her performance. “Detective, I think you’re making a big mistake.”

  “I’m sure you do, but maybe you don’t know your boyfriend as well as you think you do.”

  “We live together. I’m pretty sure I know him better than you do.” She raised her chin. Her heart was beating so fast, he could probably see the pulse pounding through her neck vein.

  She hoped it didn’t give her away.

  She may not know why Damien had drugs in the bathroom, but there was no doubt a good explanation, and she wanted to talk to him about it before giving him up to the police.

  The detective snickered. “I have a warrant, so whether you know him or not doesn’t really make a difference now, does it?”

  A chill ran through her as she stared into his cold blue eyes. She couldn’t win this one. The apartment would be searched, and if they found that bag of blue pills, Damien would be arrested. And she might be too.

  She couldn’t let that happen, especially when she had done nothing wrong.

  Rosie folded the warrant and handed it back to him. “So I have no say?”

  He shook his head and her shoulders deflated. Fear was drumming through her in sick waves. They’d find the drugs. There was no way they wouldn’t.

  Closing her eyes, she softly muttered, “Can I at least get dressed and use the bathroom first? After that, you can search every inch of this place. You’re not going to find anything.”

  She swallowed, hoping they couldn’t smell her lie.

  The man’s lips twitched and he gave her a short nod. “Okay, then. An officer will accompany you to your room.”

  Rosie struggled to hide her annoyance. “He’s going to watch me undress?”

  “If you’re uncomfortable with that, then you can stay as you are. If you need to pee, then you’ll just have to get over yourself, because we’re not letting you out of our sight. Got it?”

  Her eyebrows dipped into a sharp frown.

  The detective pointed at the officer behind him. “This is Officer Cole. He’ll go with you.”

  She let out a noise of disgust and walked away from them.

  “We’ll start in the living room,” Detective Monroe instructed the other officer.

  Rosie tensed, hoping that Damien didn’t have any other hiding places she didn’t know about. Grabbing the sweater off the end of the bed, she threw it on and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  Officer Cole’s footsteps were loud and intrusive behind her. She refused to look over her shoulder. She didn’t want him reading anything on her face, like the sheer panic that rushed through her every time she pictured them walking into that bathroom and finding those pills.

  The idea was nauseating. She rubbed her roiling stomach. Fear was amplifying her hangover, and bile surged in her stomach like a tidal wave rising up her throat.

  She slapped her hand over her mouth and barely managed to say, “I’m going to be sick.”

  Racing for the bathroom, she flung the door shut behind her and quickly locked it. Her fingers were trembling as she slid the bolt across and then
dropped to her knees. She only just made it to the toilet before her body convulsed and she threw up.

  “Hey!” The officer pounded on the wood. “Open this door!”

  She ignored him, unable to do anything else as she emptied the remnants of the previous night’s alcohol from her body.

  “You open this door right now!”

  She wiped the spittle off her lower lip with the back of her hand and reached up to flush the foul-smelling vomit away.

  But then a thought hit her.

  Flush it away.

  “Flush it away,” she whispered, crawling to the cupboard and wrenching out the drugs. An earthquake tore through her body as she wrestled to open the box and yank out the bag.

  “Hey!” The pounding increased as the detective joined in the party. “You open this door right now or I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

  Rosie didn’t know what the hell that meant, but she managed a feeble “Let me just clean up. I’ll be out in a second.”

  “No. You come out now or I will force this door open!”

  With a frantic whimper, she tore open the bag of blue pills and tipped them into the toilet. Thanks to their insistent hammering on the door, they hopefully couldn’t hear it.

  As soon as the bag was empty, she held her breath and flushed. She nearly cried with relief as she watched the damning evidence disappear. Scrunching up the bag, she shoved it in her pocket, flattening it out so it wouldn’t make a bulge and then covering it with her sweater.

  “This is your last chance!”

  She washed her hands and quickly put the cupboard back together before pulling in a breath and unlocking the door.

  The second it was open, Detective Monroe grabbed her and roughly walked her through to the dining room table. His grip on her arm was painful and unrelenting to the point that she actually cried out in pain.

  He was unmoved.

  Forcibly shoving her toward a dining room chair, he didn’t bother to catch her when she tripped and stumbled forward. Her hands slapped against the table and he wrenched her around to face him.

  “Sit.” He pushed hard on her shoulders until she toppled into a chair.

  Leaning forward, he got in her face, his blue eyes bright with rage.

  “If I found out you’ve pulled some kind of stunt in there, I’m taking you in.”

  “No stunt.” She swallowed. “I’m hungover and it got the better of me.”

  His glare narrowed, his laser eyes trying to drill a hole through her forehead.

  She licked her bottom lip and whispered, “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

  His sharp narrow nostrils flared with annoyance before he finally turned to Officer Cole and nodded.

  A glass of water was slammed down on the table beside her.

  “You stay put.” Officer Cole pointed at her, his dark gaze sizing her up before turning to search the kitchen.

  Rosie did as she was told, resisting the urge to bite her nails and look like the nervous wreck she felt.

  She’d hopefully just saved Damien from a whole heap of trouble.

  14

  Tuesday, February 20th

  9:45pm

  But she hadn’t saved Damien. She’d just thrown him into a different kind of trouble.

  “It’s not my problem,” she muttered, rushing down the stairs and out the back door.

  Slipping on the ice, she banged her knee on the hard concrete and swore. Pain radiated up her leg and she hobbled to the old Escort, praying it would start like it was supposed to.

  The engine turned over a few times, tired and belligerent.

  “Come on, you fucking car!” She banged the wheel. “I have to get out of here!”

  The car responded to her reprimand, reluctantly sputtering to life and groaning out of the lot behind Lulu’s.

  The sky was clear, the moon bright. White puffs of air filled the car as Rosie waited for the freaking heater to start working. It was pathetic at the best of times. At least she had a jacket for this escape.

  Charging down the road, she headed for Main Street, ignoring the little pulls of nostalgia that were trying to keep her put.

  “Shut up.” She gripped the wheel and kept pushing forward.

  She knew better than to speed. The roads were icy and treacherous. The last thing she needed was an accident.

  Cruising through the intersections, she headed south. And she nearly made it too.

  But as she reached the outskirts of town, where the buildings were far apart and barren farmland covered in snow stretched for miles on either side, the Escort sputtered to a stop and refused to start again.

  “No, no, no,” Rosie whimpered as she turned the ignition and got nothing but a pitiful whir. “You piece-of-shit car!”

  Tears threatened to take her out, burning her eyes and restricting her airways.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” She thumped the wheel repeatedly until she was exhausted from the effort, then slumped back in her seat.

  Maybe it’d be easier to freeze to death and just be done with it.

  She could fade away like that girl in the snow, and all her problems would disappear. Damien couldn’t reach her. Chester couldn’t touch her.

  Her lips trembled as she contemplated the idea, but then thoughts of Blaine crashed into her. His skinny fingers wrapped around that gun. He was no doubt thinking all the same things she was. One shot and it’d all be over. His body would tumble over the edge and he’d be lost to the waterfall, where his tormentors could never hurt or humiliate him again.

  Rosie closed her eyes. A lone tear trickled down her left cheek. She let it run, tickling her skin as it slowly descended.

  The chilly air closed in around her and her teeth started to chatter. She needed to move. To get walking. To do something or she seriously would freeze to death.

  You don’t want to die, Rosie.

  She squeezed her eyes tight, telling herself it was the truth.

  But she was such a hopeless mess. She kept screwing up, and she didn’t know if she could survive this last one. Did she honestly think she could hide out in some little town and the past would just forget about her?

  Life wasn’t that easy.

  It hurt to swallow. Her teeth tapped together in a steady rhythm as her insides began to quake as well.

  “M-move, Rosie. Do something.” She rubbed her arms vigorously, knowing it wasn’t enough. She should call someone. But who? The only number in her phone worth calling was Louanne’s. If she came out to rescue her now, Rosie would have to admit what she was doing—stealing the last of Louanne’s money and running out of town. Louanne would want to understand why, and then the whole ugly story would have to come out.

  She couldn’t do it.

  That woman had been too good to her already. A person’s patience could only be stretched so far.

  What she needed was some nice stranger to drive past and rescue her, which was why when two headlights appeared on the other side of the deserted road, she thought she was imagining it.

  Rosie held her breath as the car slowed to a stop. She peered into the darkness, hoping it was someone kind. Maybe some elderly farmer who would tell her everything would be okay, and he’d take her home for a hot cocoa by the fireplace.

  Please don’t let it be some rapist…or Chester…or Damien.

  Her heart rate increased to frenetic, and when the person’s gloved knuckles rapped on her window, she actually screamed.

  White puffy breaths punched out of her as she stared into the flashlight beam and squinted.

  “Rosie?” The voice was muffled, but the man definitely said her name.

  She froze still, gripping the wheel with both hands as terror told her it was Chester. He was there to claim her, to take her to whatever miserable club he worked at and sell her body.

  “Rosie, it’s me, Blaine.”

  She flinched and looked out the window as Blaine turned the flashlight beam on himself. His handsome face wa
s illuminated by the soft glow, and she let out a shaky, whimpering breath.

  Lowering the window, she bit her lip as he bent down to talk to her.

  He grinned. “Having a little car trouble?”

  “Yeah, it’s nothing surprising really.”

  His expression flickered with concern. “How long you been out here?”

  “Not sure,” she croaked.

  “You call for help already?”

  She swallowed, embarrassed that she hadn’t had the guts to call anyone. Honestly, what kind of person sits in their car feeling sorry for themselves on a Minnesota winter’s night? She was crazy.

  “Well, uh, I don’t know much about cars, but if you’re willing to leave it until the morning, I could give you a ride home, and then we can sort out a tow first thing. It’s way too cold to do it now.”

  “Yeah.” Her face bunched as she gritted her teeth to stop them from chattering. “It’s pretty freezing.”

  “Come on, my car’s nice and warm.” Blaine opened her door and held out his hand. She had no choice but to take it.

  Grabbing her bag, she trailed him across the road and slipped into his car. It was freaking luxurious compared to hers, and she couldn’t help nestling into the seat like it was a comfy sofa.

  The heater was blasting, and she relished the hot air hitting her face. Pulling off her gloves, she held them up to the heat and let the warm air thaw her chilled fingers.

  Her hands were slowly starting to defrost as Blaine headed back into town.

  “So, can I ask where you were going? You looked like you were heading out of town.”

  She bit her lips together and looked away from him.

  He wasn’t in uniform. The question was just a friendly one, but she still didn’t want to answer it.

  After an extended, uncomfortable silence, Blaine cleared his throat and filled the space.

  “I was just visiting my dad. I usually see him on Sundays for lunch, but he’s come down with the flu, so I thought I’d take him some hot soup and see how he was doing.”

  Rosie’s expression buckled. She was grateful to be staring out the window as a surprising desire tore through her. She’d never been into nice guys. The bad, wild boys were more her style, but just the idea of being with someone who was sweet enough to take his daddy soup made her insides twist with longing.