Page 32 of A Future To Remember

I turned away before the melancholy overcame me and headed out of the bathroom to change into one of the T-shirts and fresh underwear, then I padded across the still-chilly room and quickly began to make the bed, shivering until I paused to put on the clean sweatshirt.

As I bent down for it, I heard some muttered voices outside. I leaned toward the window and looked down, seeing Levi as he left through the back exit while Wanda shut the door and turned off the light.

Even with the light off, I could still make out the alleyway behind the diner, which wasn’t much. Just a dumpster and some broken bottles littered the alley. While I looked on from the window, watching Levi pull up the hood on his sweatshirt and shove his hands into his coat pockets, I wondered where he lived. Things became even more curious when I saw him look first right, then left, as if trying to decide which way to go.

He hesitated long enough for me to question if the young man actually had a place to call home. Even from up here, I could tell that the poor guy simply looked lost.

I was about to open the window and call out to him when he shuffled off. He headed to the right, away from the street on the side of the building, moving farther down the alley.

I leaned all the way against the window, watching him go. He wore only those two layers of clothing, had no extra meat on his bones, and he walked stiffly with hunched shoulders.

It was maybe forty degrees out. And it was likely to get eight to ten degrees colder as the night wore on.

I continued to watch Levi, when he paused near the far end of the building where the dumpster was kept, and then I was shocked to see him rummage around the area next to the dumpster where all the discarded boxes were kept until he came up with three boxes that still held their shape.

Then he moved off with them. I stared at the space where he’d fished out the boxes long after he’d gone, simply knowing in my gut that Levi was as lost and alone as I was.

CHAPTER 8

Him

After going over every inch of the Tahoe, using nothing more than our flashlights, Oscar and I finally tarped the SUV and put it on a flatbed. It’d make the journey to Salt Lake City for a thorough going-over at the FBI crime lab there. Brice had pulled some strings to make processing it a priority, thank God.

“What next?” Oscar asked me while we watched the flatbed drive out of sight.

I had no goddamn idea. “We start asking questions.”

“What questions and who’re we asking?”

I sighed. I was tired. Exhausted, even. And definitely missing the adrenaline dump of earlier, when I’d found Abby’s note inside the baggie. “I don’t know, Oscar. Let’s start with reviewing who we’ve already asked and what questions we’ve already covered.”

“Sounds like a plan. Back to the hotel?”

I shook my head. “Let’s get something to eat.” It was well past one o’clock, and my stomach was grumbling, which I took as a positive sign because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt hungry.

I’d lost a good twenty pounds since Abby’s disappearance. It’s hard to eat when your heart is broken.

Oscar drove us to a bar down the street from the sheriff’s station that looked decent enough.

Making our way inside, I heard the bartender say, “Is that a baby? Man, you can’t bring a kid in here.”

I looked down at the sling that Eggy was cuddled up in, fitting his long sausage body perfectly against my rib cage. Since he was almost completely hidden, it was probably easy to see why he’d be mistaken for an infant.

“Not a baby,” I told him. “It’s my dog.”

After I pulled open the flap of the sling a bit to show him Eggy’s long nose, the bartender widened his eyes and said, “You can’t bring a dog in here either!”

I looked over my shoulder toward the door, then back at the guy behind the bar. Squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, I said, “Seems like I just did.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t.”

“But I have.”

“Well, then, you gotta go.”

Oscar stood next to me, his eyes pivoting back and forth between me and the bartender like he was watching a pickleball match.

I moved over to a table—the place had only a few patrons—and pulled out a chair. It scraped along the wood of the bar’s floor, and I sat down like I owned the fucking place. “Make me.”