Skin Privilege

This had to be Lena 's mother. She had the same olive skin and piercing eyes. She wore her hair a little shorter, but it looked almost the same as Lena 's did now. Her neck had that same swan-like curve and Jeffrey could tell from looking at her that she had that same attitude that some women took as threatening and most men took as sexy. Jeffrey imagined she'd been quite the draw to the locals. It would have taken a cop's arrogance to look past that haughty tilt to the woman's chin and the wry amusement in her eyes.

Jeffrey finally left the house, turning the thumb latch on the knob to lock the kitchen door. He'd left all the lights on in hopes of discouraging burglars, or maybe it was the thought of going back into the depressing house that made him not bother.

He was finished fucking around with this. A woman had been burned alive. Jeffrey had been shot at. A man had been stabbed to death and thrown through their window. Hank Norton was on his deathbed at the hospital.

It was time to find Lena.

Jeffrey sat on the front steps and studied the map until he found the route he was looking for. Sara had been right about the town being laid out in a large rectangle with a forest in the middle. There would be trails through the forest, shortcuts that had been used for years. Maybe even a fort or some kind of hastily built shelter where kids went to smoke pot and get laid. When Jeffrey was a teenager, he'd had a similar hideout. It wasn't a big stretch to think there was one in Reece, too.

Jeffrey had given Sara his cell phone because the battery on hers was dead. He went to the BMW and took her phone off the charger, slipping it into his pocket and locking the car before heading toward the end of the street. Given Hank's current condition, there was no way the old man had helped Lena in her escape from police custody. This left Lena on her own, which meant she had left the hospital by foot. Looking at the map, Jeffrey could see the path she might have taken from the hospital to Hank's house. He assumed she had come here first to search for money. The house had been turned upside down by somebody. That somebody could very well have been Lena.

Jeffrey doubted very seriously that the cruiser Jake Valentine had sent to the house the night of Lena 's escape acted as a deterrent. Hank's backyard co

He was losing what little daylight was left standing there thinking about all this. Jeffrey took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves as he walked up the street. He passed the high school, and wondered where Lena was going to sleep now that the classroom wasn't an option. Hank's bar had burned down, but he remembered Valentine telling him that the police tape on the door had been cut. Jeffrey shook his head, thinking if Lena had been staying at the bar all this time while Jeffrey and Sara were next door at the motel, he was going to kill her.

There was only one certainty in all of this, and that was that Lena would have to go somewhere for shelter. She would need food, clothes, water. Jeffrey looked up at the sun, wishing he had brought some water with him. Of course, given the state of the house, it was probably wise he hadn't ingested anything there.

At the top of the hill, he took out the map again, checking to make sure he was still on the right route. He saw skid marks on the road where two cars had almost collided and figured a couple of kids had narrowly missed getting their cars totaled.

Jeffrey could hear traffic from the highway as he took the next left. A large field on his right led into a dense forest, and he wondered if this was the same forest that backed onto the motel. Jeffrey consulted the map again and saw that it was. Lena could have walked from Hank's to the bar. The hospital was just a few streets over.

As expected, there were all kinds of trails crisscrossing the field. It was colder inside the forest and he put his jacket back on. There were no signs of secret hiding places, no trash other than some cigarette butts and more empty beer bottles than he

could count. Jeffrey could still see the sun peeking through the limbs and he made sure to keep it on his right as he walked a straight line toward the motel. He kept checking his watch as he walked so that he wouldn't lose his sense of time, which always moved more slowly when you thought you were lost.

Jeffrey was starting to get a little nervous when he heard the stream that he'd seen behind Hank's bar the other night. Briefly, he had the entertaining idea that he might find whatever Boyd Gibson had dropped, but by the time he reached the bank of the stream, he'd pretty much given up on that miracle happening.

Jeffrey saw the room he and Sara had shared. Someone who wasn't exactly handy had nailed a large sheet of plywood over the broken window. The door was ajar, and Jeffrey poked his head in and checked to make sure they had gotten all of their things. The room looked exactly as they'd left it, but for some reason, Jeffrey didn't find the place as disgusting. Maybe it was because he'd spent a couple of hours in Hank's house. He didn't know how Lena had stood it.

'Shit,' Jeffrey whispered. Lena hadn't stood it. There was no way she'd stayed in that house. She wasn't exactly a neat freak, but no sane human being would sleep in that pigsty.

Jeffrey jogged to the front office. The night clerk was gone, but an orange-haired teenager was sitting behind the counter playing video games on the computer.

The kid didn't look up from the screen as he jabbed his thumbs at the buttons. 'What's up?'

'Was somebody, a woman, staying here last week about this tall.' Jeffrey held up his hand to indicate Lena 's height. 'Brown hair, brown eyes-'

'You mean Lena?' The kid kept his eyes glued to the screen.

Jeffrey reached over the counter and ripped the controller out of his hand. 'Give me the key to her room.'

'The sheriff's already checked-' The kid seemed to understand this didn't matter. He quickly handed Jeffrey the passkey, saying, 'Room fourteen. It's on the second floor.'

Jeffrey bolted up the stairs. He jammed the key in the lock and threw open Lena 's door as if he expected to find her standing there with a full explanation.

She wasn't.

He closed the door behind him and dropped the key on the plastic table. Lena 's toiletries were neatly lined by the sink, her clothes still folded in her suitcase. Jeffrey couldn't begin to know what, if anything, was missing because he didn't know what she had packed. Still, he opened all the drawers, checked the nightstand, even looked under the sink.

There was nothing except a rusted flathead screwdriver that had rolled under the air conditioner by the window.

Jeffrey sat on the bed, trying to think. He had never seen Lena carry a purse, but then carrying a bag wasn't conducive to the job. He would have to ask Sara about that. Or maybe Valentine would be the person to question since the sheriff had already checked the room. On second thought, there was no need to let the sheriff know he'd gotten one up on Jeffrey.

Jeffrey stood from the bed and lifted up the mattress, finding the remnants of what he guessed had been a couple of Cheetos but nothing else. He dropped the mattress, a rush of air blowing back on him. Jeffrey's olfactory system was understandably out of whack since his time at Hank Norton's, but he could have sworn he'd gotten a whiff of gun oil. He flipped the mattress off the bed and knelt down to examine the bedskirt that covered the boxspring. Glad that no one could see him, he sniffed around the thin cotton, stopping when he heard a key sliding into the lock on the door.