Though I was still a little upset that she’d left the Twin Cities against my will, I was relieved to see her, and when she came toward me, I held out my arm to her. “Tessa, I’m so glad you-”
Instead of an embrace, however, she smacked me hard in the arm. Not a friendly nudge at all.
I blinked. “What was that for?”
“Almost getting killed.”
She could really pack a punch. “Keep that in your repertoire in case you need it for some guy sometime.”
She looked at me incredulously. “I’m seriously upset and you’re making light of everything?”
Sean stepped to the other side of the lobby to give us at least a modicum of privacy.
“Listen,” I said to her. “I haven’t seen you all week, and now you just walk in here and-”
“Hang on.” A hand in the air, palm toward me. A teenage girl’s stop sign. “You almost drown, you almost freeze.” Her voice caught. “I have to drive through a complete blizzard…” As she struggled to get through her sentence, I could tell she truly was upset. It hadn’t struck me so much yesterday, but she must have been terrified when she heard that I almost died. She falteringly picked up her thought where she’d left off, “And then everywhere I go, everybody’s cooking animals.”
She unzipped the pink snowmobile suit, and it looked like she was going to comment about that too, but instead her jaw quivered slightly and a wide tear formed in her right eye. I stepped forward, took her in my arms.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“You seriously cannot die on me.”
“I won’t,” I said, although I was aware I was promising something that was beyond my control.
As anxious as I was to get going, I could tell that right now I needed to be here for her, at least for a minute or two. “I didn’t mean to make light of anything.”
At last she stepped away and quickly brushed her hand across her face to dry her eyes. “Yeah, I know.” She tweaked her hair back. Tried to smile.
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, because I just need you to-”
“Don’t overdo it,” she said. “It’ll get weird.”
“Right.”
“I’m just… I’m glad you’re still here.”
“That makes two of us.”
“But I have to say, jumping into a river in subzero weather? That is way off the screen. Even for you.” Her gaze drifted toward my feet. “So, frostbite?” she said uneasily. “Any toes missing or anything?”
“Still intact.”
“Good. ’Cause that would have totally creeped me out.”
Pat, you need to get going.
I turned to Sean. “Thanks for bringing her over.”
“No problem. It’s good to see you on your feet.” He handed me a bundle of manila envelopes. “The papers you gave me yesterday at the sawmill.”
Donnie’s personnel files and time cards. “I appreciate it.”
A second passed.
How to do this.
I turned to Tessa again. “Listen, I’m really glad to see you, but-”
“I said that’s enough.” She spoke softly, and I noticed that she was eyeing the young man working behind the counter. I hadn’t really noticed before, but he was in his midtwenties, with ruffled hair, dark, deep-set eyes, and a cute, sly sort of grin. He’d been checking her out too and abruptly averted eye contact when he saw me look at him.
Tessa always goes for the older guys and doesn’t always show prudence when it comes to vetting dates, boyfriends, on-the-spot crushes.
“Come here.” I led her to the room beside the lobby, and when we were alone and the guy at the counter was out of sight and wouldn’t distract her, I said, “I need to go somewhere for a little bit. It’s very important, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She looked at me quizzically. “I just got here and-by the way, were you limping just now?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I turned my ankle a little yesterday. It’s no big deal. So, I’m just saying-”
“You’re leaving.”
“Yes. This isn’t about us. This is-this was from before.”
“Then why did I even come?” She didn’t sound angry, just confused. “Why’d I have to go and ride a snowmobile all the way over here in this weather if you were just gonna leave as soon as I got here?”
Obviously I hadn’t even known she was on her way, but that wasn’t really something I needed to point out at the moment.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I repeated. The words were true enough, but I was also aware that if I did head out with Alexei to look for the Pickron killers, I might be gone for hours.
“This has to do with the case?”
“Yes.”
She scrutinized me. “Agent Vanderveld’s here, right? So have him check it out.” She knew I’d been working with Jake on the Reiser case in Merrill, so it wasn’t a master feat of deduction to guess that he was here.
“This time it has to be me.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Really.” Ice had crept into her voice, and I was getting disoriented by our conversation’s penduluming swing of emotions. “Just a minute ago you were telling me how glad you were to see me and now you’re just taking off.”
“This doesn’t have to do with you.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Tessa-”
“You almost died and I would have been alone.”
“I wish I could stay here, right now, with you, but I have to-look, we’ll talk through everything later, okay?”
She started for the lobby. “Right.”
“Hang on a sec.”
She spun. “What? I just agreed with you.”
“Trust me on this. Okay?”
“Trust you?”
“You can stay here with Sean and Amber.”
“End of discussion, right? Is that it?”
“Don’t be like this, Tessa.”
She turned on her heels and swept out of the room, and I followed, ready to confront her again, but then I saw that Lien-hua had entered the lobby. Her eyes flicked from Tessa to me to Tessa.
“Hey, Tessa,” she said.
“Lien-hua. I didn’t know you were here.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Tessa strode to the far side of the lobby and then stared, arms folded, out the window. The guy behind the counter looked toward her, then glanced my way and quickly went back to texting someone on his iPhone.
Oh, boy.
Salvage this and then get out of here.
