Free The Cold Nowhere by Brian Freeman

said.
    ‘Yeah, I guess.’
    Cat climbed off the sofa and Stride gestured at the spare bedroom, where he’d put a few bags from Target with new clothes in. ‘Why don’t you go get dressed? I want to talk to the Greens and check out the area around your house. You can come with me.’
    Cat froze. She crouched in front of the sofa with her hands on his knees and shook her head frantically. ‘Don’t make me go back there! Please, I don’t want to!’
    ‘I’ll be with you,’ Stride said.
    ‘No, just let me stay here. I’ll be fine.’
    Stride watched the pleading in her face. It was as if he’d suggested putting her in a cage. He didn’t tell her his real concern, which was that she would be gone when he returned. Without someone watching her, she would become a runaway again, lost somewhere in the wind.
    ‘Okay, listen,’ he said. ‘There’s a young woman house-sitting one of the mansions down the Point. Her name’s Kim Dehne. I’ll see if you can hang out with her while I’m gone.’
    ‘I don’t need a babysitter.’
    ‘Kim’s not a babysitter. I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone. You’ll like her.’
    Cat twirled her hair around her fingers. ‘Yeah, okay. Sure. Whatever.’
    ‘You leave home a lot,’ Stride added. ‘It’s not safe to be on the streets by yourself. It puts you in dangerous situations. Why do you do it? Why don’t you stay with the Greens?’
    ‘I don’t like it there.’
    ‘Are there problems?’
    ‘Everybody’s got problems.’
    Stride pointed at her bare calf, where her skin showed the fading colors of an old bruise. ‘Someone hit you. Where did you get that?’
    ‘Brandy,’ she said.
    ‘Why did she hurt you?’
    ‘Because that’s who she is.’
    ‘Does anybody else hurt you?’ he asked.
    Cat didn’t answer him. She swiveled nervously on her knees and pulled a strand of hair through her pale lips. ‘Can I ask
you
something?’
    ‘Sure,’ he said.
    ‘Why are you alone?’
    ‘That’s a good question.’
    ‘You weren’t alone when my mother was alive.’
    ‘No, I was married to a woman named Cindy,’ he said. ‘She was my high school sweetheart.’
    ‘What happened to her?’
    ‘Cindy died of cancer.’
    ‘Sorry. It sucks to lose people.’
    ‘Yes, it does.’
    ‘What about that woman who was in the house this morning?’
    ‘Maggie’s my police partner,’ Stride explained.
    ‘There’s nobody else? How about that woman whose clothes you gave me? Serena.’
    Stride realized that Cat didn’t miss much. ‘Serena and I aren’t together right now.’
    ‘That’s sad.’
    ‘It is what it is,’ he said.
    Cat pushed off her knees and kissed him on the cheek. Her breath smelled of peppermint. He saw a small birthmark on her forehead, like a dimple. When she stared at him, he recognized her eyes from long ago, when she was a child, and it took him back to those days.
    Bad days.
    ‘You’re looking at me funny,’ she said. ‘What is it? What do you see?’
    ‘You look like your mother,’ he said.
    It was January. Insanely cold – twenty degrees below zero. Stride felt the wind chewing like maggots at his face. Beside him, Michaela appeared unaffected. He wore a wool cap pulled down over his ears, but she wore no hat, and her straight black hair blew loosely into a bird’s nest around her cheeks.
    ‘He’s back,’ Michaela told him. ‘Marty snuck into Catalina’s bedroom last night after I was asleep. She won’t say anything to me about it, but I know he was here.’
    Stride stared at the girl playing in the winter yard. She was bundled up in a white down coat that was so thick she could barely move her arms, and her pink scarf flew behind her as she chased a smattering of dead leaves. A stand of evergreens towered over her, and behind the trees, the red-and-green lights of antenna towers flashed like sentinels. He smelled smoke. Someone had built a wood fire. Below the porch, he spotted the tracks of deer and rabbits crinkling the