The Hand on the Wall(44)

That was a lot to ask of a mug of cocoa dust.

“Do you want something?” she said to Hunter, leaning out of the kitchen. “To drink? I’m . . .”

She jabbed her hand in the direction of the kettle to indicate “I am bringing water to the boiling point in order to make hot beverages of all kinds.”

“Sure,” he said. “Some tea or something?”

Stevie stuck a tea bag in another mug and brought both drinks out. Hunter had chosen one of the coldest spots in the room to sit. There was frigid air coming down from the chimney, as well as slipping in from the front door.

“Find anything good?” she asked, setting down the mug on the brick edge of the fireplace.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” he said. “We got a drive each to read. I read about a thousand emails about campaign strategy and dozens of spreadsheets of financial transactions. The emails show that everyone in this campaign is an asshole. No surprises there. I don’t know what the spreadsheets mean. Someone is paying a lot of money for something, but I have no idea what it is or what it’s for. This is a weird way to spend a night.”

He shoved the tablet between the sofa cushions and picked up the mug.

“Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t think my aunt’s house was going to burn down. I didn’t think I’d be up here, in a blizzard, reading emails from inside the Edward King campaign.”

It was a good reminder that someone had bigger problems than she did.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “David? Is he . . .”

Stevie waited for the end of the question, because questions about David could go a lot of ways. Everything inside her coiled up like a defensive snake.

“I mean, the first time I saw him was when he was getting beaten up. And he’s King’s son. And getting this stuff? I mean, stealing it . . . it’s pretty hardcore. It’s good? I think? I don’t know what to think.”

“Me either,” Stevie said.

“You and he . . .” Hunter let the words linger. “There’s something. There’s obviously something.”

“No,” she said, looking into the sludge of chocolate she was drinking, with gray, scummy lumps of undissolved cocoa floating on top.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

Hunter was perceptive enough to know that sorry was probably the right word. She felt her shoulders relax a bit but kept her gaze deep into the murk of her drink. They settled into an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Hunter was an easy person to look at—not in the sense that he was stunningly handsome, like some kind of consumable. He was easy in his manner. Unlike David, he didn’t appear to be sizing you up. The spray of freckles across his face was like a starry sky. He had a strong build. He was solid and real. He could be trusted.

“Can I talk to you about your aunt a little?” Stevie asked.

He nodded.

“On the night—the other night—I called her,” Stevie said. “She seemed busy. She said she couldn’t talk. It seemed like someone was there. Did you see anyone?”

“No,” he said. “I had my headphones on. You know she used to play her music really loud, and the downstairs smelled a lot, so I stayed upstairs most of the time. I was working on my end-of-semester paper. I was way into all the plastics we find in the ocean.”

“So the first thing you noticed . . .”

“Was smoke,” he said. Something passed across his face as he said the word. His gaze turned away from her and went up and over, which, according to the books Stevie had read about profiling, meant someone was remembering. “I smelled it. I’ve smelled smoke before, but this was a lot of smoke, and it had this really harsh smell. Not like woodsmoke. Like things were burning that shouldn’t be burning. You know when you smell something like that that something is wrong. I pulled off my headphones and then there was this sound, like cracking. Imagine a tray of glasses falling over and over. By the time I got to the door and to the stairs, it all happened really fast. There was smoke, fumes. I had trouble seeing getting down the stairs; it was burning my eyes . . .”

He was shaking his head as he spoke, as if he couldn’t believe what he had seen.

“The kitchen, where she was, must have gone up quickly. I guess the gas had been going for a while. It spread into the living room. There was so much flammable stuff everywhere—books and papers and trash. All that furniture was old, and the carpets were too. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs . . . I saw fire pretty much everywhere leading to the kitchen. I called to her. I think I tried to get to her office to see if she was in there, then I was going to try to run through to the kitchen. Somewhere in there I passed out.”

Stevie had no idea what to do for a moment. Her thoughts of David were temporarily suspended. Hunter lingered in his memory for a moment, then let out a loud sigh and rubbed his face.

“Maybe I’m more freaked than I realized. I’m fine, but it’s . . . it was a lot of fire.”

Stevie looked back down into her drink.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“Go to therapy,” he replied, dealing the cards. “I was just in a house fire that killed my aunt. I’m calm now, but I don’t think that’s going to last forever.”

“That seems really smart,” Stevie said.