Outside, the weather radio in the living room was still muttering about wind chills and whiteout conditions and emergency travel warnings. Nobody in Mercer Hollow needed the radio to tell them what the cold could do. We lived in a town of forty-three people in January, not counting the folks on the farms outside the limits, and every winter there were stories. Frozen diesel. Burst pipes. Cattle gone stiff in the drifts. A hunter found sitting in his truck with his gloves still on, dead before dawn because he thought he could wait out a storm.
This wasn’t the night to bluff.
“Let us stay till morning,” I said. “I’ll take him somewhere else tomorrow.”
Daryl took a long swallow and wiped his mouth. “No.”
My jaw tightened. “You’re drunk.”
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