Part 2
"A single room," Julian said, his throat raw from the biting mountain air. "Just for tonight. Cash."
He pulled three damp twenties from his breast pocket, placing them on the scuffed counter alongside a smear of melting road sludge. His thumb compulsively found the silver cufflink at his left wrist, rolling the cold edge against his knuckle until the skin went pale.
The woman didn't reach for the money immediately. Instead, she slid a yellowed ledger across the counter, tapping a nicotine-stained fingernail beside a chipped ballpoint pen. Gold and silver bands crowded every knuckle of her hands, flashing dully under the buzzing fluorescent tube overhead.
"Name and plate number," she said. "I'm Mona. I run the place, fix the pipes, and throw out anyone who makes trouble. Checkout is ten sharp, assuming the pass is cleared, which it won't be."
Julian picked up the pen with stiff fingers. He scrawled an illegible tangle of cursive for the name and left the license plate line completely blank, praying she wouldn't look out the clouded picture window at the steaming, dead sedan sitting beneath the flickering neon vacancy sign.
The federal subpoena burning a figurative hole in his leather briefcase felt ten times heavier in his grip. The last thing he needed was his name logged in Blackwood County.
Mona scooped the twenties into a dented steel cash drawer without checking the signature. From a row of rusted hooks behind her, she lifted a brass key attached to a scratched green diamond tag.
"Room 212," Mona said, dropping the key onto the counter. "Up the outside stairs, top floor on the western corner. Radiator takes twenty minutes to bang the air out of the pipes, but it'll keep you from freezing."
Julian reached for the key, but Mona laid her heavy, ring-laden palm flat over it, pinning it to the laminate.
"One more thing, mister," she said, her gray eyes locking onto his with sudden, predatory sharpness. "Room 214 shares your western wall. The door between the two rooms is deadbolted, and the exterior door is chained from the walkway."
Julian frowned slightly, trying to pull his gaze away. "Is there someone in there?"
"Nobody's been in Two-fourteen for years," Mona snapped, her jaw tightening. "Roof gave out during the ice storm back in nineteen. The ceiling collapsed, and the joists underneath are rotten straight through to the lath. It's condemned. Unsafe. You so much as lean against the connecting drywall, you'll put your shoulder through wet plaster."
She lifted her hand, leaving the key bare.
"Don't rattle the knob. Don't go trying the lock out of curiosity. If I catch you prying around that door, I'll put you back out in the blizzard without your deposit. Understood?"
"I just need to sleep," Julian murmured, taking the cold brass into his palm.
"Good," Mona said, turning her back to him and disappearing through the beaded curtain before he could ask for an extra blanket.
[[AD]]
The wind outside was a living wall of ice that nearly ripped the motel office door from Julian's grasp. He hunched deep into the collar of his trench coat, clutching his leather briefcase to his ribs as he trudged toward the rusted metal staircase leading up to the second-floor balcony.
His salt-stained dress shoes offered no traction on the frozen steel steps. Every gust threatened to pitch him over the railing into the black pines thrashing below.
At the far end of the balcony, tucked under the sagging eaves, hung the tarnished numerals: 212.
Right beside it stood Room 214.
Julian paused in the driving snow, his gaze drawn involuntarily to the condemned threshold. A heavy steel hasp had been screwed into the frame, secured by a thick, oxidized padlock crusted in frost. The lower six inches of the wood were blackened, soft with advanced rot, and bowed outward as if buckling under an invisible weight.
A violent shiver racked his body, born only half from the howling cold.
He turned his back on 214, jammed his key into the lock of 212, and threw his weight against the swollen door until the frame groaned and surrendered.
Julian stumbled inside, kicked the door shut, and threw both deadbolts with shaking hands. The room smelled of trapped dampness, dust, and scorched dust from the violently clanking baseboard heater.
Across from the sagging double bed, half-hidden behind a warped dresser, stood the painted interior door connecting his quarters to the ruined space next door.
A rusted chain hung slack across its center latch, and from beneath its bottom seam, a razor-thin draft of freezing air whispered across the threadbare carpet, carrying the faint, impossible scent of mothballs and wet wool.
The radiator in the corner of Room 212 clanked like a dying engine, spitting a thin hiss of steam that did nothing against the mountain draft. Julian kept his charcoal trench coat buttoned to the throat, shivering as he kicked off his salt-crusted dress shoes.
He paced the narrow strip of threadbare carpet between the sagging mattress and the adjoining door. His thumb worked relentlessly at the silver cufflink at his left wrist, grinding the metal against the heel of his palm until the skin burned raw.
On the laminate nightstand, his burner phone remained lifeless, its screen dark and useless in the storm. Two counties back, a federal process server held an indictment with his name on it, but out here there was only the smell of sour water and lye.
