Davis met her gaze but said nothing.
Over in Fargo, it wouldn’t be so strange if a dozen people didn’t recognize someone. But in Hagen, even with the influx of oil workers, an unfamiliar face was rare. There was no main highway within twenty miles of Hagen. People who drove the 1804 were either coming to Hagen or leaving it. They didn’t just happen through.
Another pair of headlights turned into the parking lot. Kylie recognized the squared shape of the department car’s lights. The evidence tech. Now at least they could move the body. Maybe that would help them figure out who the mystery woman was.
And how she’d ended up murdered in Hagen.
CHAPTER 4
IVER
A slant of bright light cut across Iver’s face, and he opened his eyes. As he scanned the familiar living room, his heart drilled a violent beat into his ribs. He blinked a single time, and a bomb exploded in his head. Pitching forward off the couch, he vomited. Puke splashed across the hardwood floor. Cal stood, the dog’s hind legs trembling as he moved away from his owner. Iver wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and caught sight of the Jack bottle on the floor.
It was empty. Iver groaned.
“The alcohol messes with the medications,” his ex-wife’s voice shouted in his head. “You have got to get smart, Iver.”
The familiar pressure weighed on his chest. All the fighting. He’d hated how angry she always was. He exhaled, trying to relieve the pressure. She was his ex-wife now. No more fighting. He saw the flash of an angry face. Had Debbie been in the bar last night? Had they fought? Damn, his head hurt.
Iver closed his eyes and breathed past the steady drill of his pulse in his eyeballs, swallowing carefully as though he could lure his stomach into calmness. The saliva met with a lurch in his gut, and another wave rose in his throat. Cupping a hand over his mouth, he sprinted to the bathroom. Hands gripped the porcelain as bile and brown liquor splashed into the bowl.
He imagined the scene from Debbie’s perspective. How hard it must have been for her. Every time he’d woken up hungover. Every time she’d had to come get him at the bar when one of his friends had called to tell her that he couldn’t drive. Every time she’d woken up to him coming home drunk. “I can’t live like this,” she had said. “You have to quit the drinking.”
He had tried. He really had. Like that was so easy.
That bar was his business. Now that Debbie had left him, the bar was also his life.
He splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth, then found his way back to the couch, a damp towel pressed to his cheeks. He should clean the vomit. At least it was on the hardwood floor this time. He’d clean it. Soon. He just needed a little more rest. The morning light was so damn bright. With the towel across his face, he closed his eyes, tried to find his way back to the empty bliss.
No more Jack. The Jack always made the pain worse. He could quit the Jack. Promise, he thought, as though he could barter away the pain in his head. But it wouldn’t let up. The agony built, like a vise clamping his optic nerve. Squeezing his eyes closed against the ache, he palmed the table for his meds and noticed a sharp pain radiating from his hand. A long red scratch stretched across his knuckles, oozing blood. He shook it as though it might loosen the sting.
What the hell had he done? He cupped the hand to his chest and reached out the other one for his meds. They had to be on this table.
But his hand struck wood and nothing else. Shit. Where were his damn pills? He sat up, his stomach rolling again. He squinted against the assault of the dim lights, reached across to the coffee table, and pushed aside the pizza box that held last night’s dinner. No pills. He patted the pockets of the jeans he was still wearing. No pills. He forced himself to his feet, then shuffled toward the kitchen, stepping around his own vomit. He made it as far as the doorway, leaned against the jamb, and blinked as gently as he could, every motion of his eyelids a jackhammer. From the doorway, he scanned the countertops. No pills.
“Think,” he said, stumbling toward the bathroom. The air was sour. The nausea returned. Holding his breath, he opened the medicine cabinet and searched the line of bottles. No headache pills.
He’d been at work last night. He’d taken a couple of pills in the bar. He remembered that. He’d been in the office, trying to finish up an order. Kevin had brought him a Jack and Coke. Then another. And one more. Was there a fourth? Doubles, probably. Kevin always made him doubles. The sugary film still coated his tongue. Kevin had been complaining about his girlfriend. They’d been talking about exes. He must have left the pills there.
Closing his eyelids, Iver pushed the knuckles of his index fingers against the pain behind each eye. You can do this, he told himself. Pull yourself together and get in the car. He opened his eyes and noticed a thread caught in the band of his watch, pulled it free.
The thread brought back the night air, the sting of hard wind. He felt a bruise on his shin as though it had just happened. Reached down to finger it through his pants. There was something hard and crusty on the denim. It looked like blood. Damn. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his jeans, kicked them toward the laundry room and grabbed a pair of sweats off his bedroom floor. His head throbbed like a mother now.
He dropped the hand towel on the vomit.
Get the pills from the bar, come home, and clean this shit up. Clean yourself up.
As he walked toward the front door, a wave of debilitating fear swept over him. He didn’t remember coming home. Had he driven? What if his truck wasn’t there?
When he reached the front door, he was relieved to see the white pickup parked in the driveway. He opened the front door, and Cal stood, making his way toward the sunlight, nails clicking on the wood floor.
“You coming, boy?”
Cal answered by moving past Iver and down the front stairs, toward the truck.
Iver opened the passenger-side door and stooped to lift Cal into the cab. An Australian shepherd–collie mix, Cal had been a gift from his ex-wife after his second tour in Afghanistan. His second and last tour. The accident had ensured he wasn’t going back.
Cal had been wandering the streets of town, abandoned, when he’d been hit by a car on the 1804. Thankfully, the roustabout who hit him had brought him to the local vet, who set his broken leg and got him back to health before turning him over to the Hagen pound. When his wife had brought Cal home, the dog’s leg had still been in a cast, and Iver had still been battling vertigo and nightmares and a dozen other symptoms of his brain injury. She’d brought her crippled husband a crippled dog. She must have taken one look at that pathetic beast and thought immediately of Iver.
The beginning of the end.
Iver rounded the truck, shivering against the cold, and pulled himself into the cab. He grabbed the ball cap from the bench seat and lowered it down over his eyes. The morning light was a killer, and he’d lost his sunglasses somewhere. Just get to the bar. Get to your meds. If he’d been smarter, he’d have stashed some pills in his car, some in the house, some in the bar. Hell, he’d have them on every surface. But they were hard to get, and the doctor only prescribed so many.
Iver found the keys, still in the ignition. As the truck whined once, then coughed to life, Cal made a couple of awkward circles on the passenger seat before settling down. Iver revved the engine.