Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

1. Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

J esse

It’s fucking cold. Not just “oh brr, I wish I had some cocoa and a fireplace” chilly but “eternal wintry apocalypse, step outside and death by imminent frostbite” cold.

I slump in the seat and pull the lapels of my brand-new puffer jacket over my scruffy beard. The frigid air seeps in through the centimeter of space between the door and the frame of the SUV.

“You don’t mind The Rolling Stones, right?” Harbor Stryke, a pseudonym if ever I heard one, turns up the volume on “Sister Morphine.” If anyone would know about pseudonyms, it’s him.

Under normal circumstances, no, I do not mind The Rolling Stones. There was a period of time in my angsty ’90s-era teendom when I would, in fact, claim to be a major fan of The Rolling Stones.

This is not that time.

We turn eastward from civilization, driving down the two-lane highway, deeper into the Wisconsin woods.

Harbor has an open, pleasant face with firm cheekbones and dark brown skin. His demeanor does not fit my mood. “Come on, it’s a new adventure, Jesse.”

A new adventure. Right.

“Is this east of Bumfuck Nowhere or west?” I ask, my face to the window. All I can see are trees and fields of snow. Prior to this, I couldn’t even picture snow fields, but there they are. Acres of white. Islands of ice.

No use for my saucy chef novelty swim trunks up here.

Harbor shrugs. For a US Marshal, he’s compact. I pictured an Army Ranger type, but he’s shaped more like an accountant. An accountant who could probably murder me with his left pinkie toe. I would have preferred that to being sequestered in the literal middle of nowhere.

“Sister Morphine” rolls into “Sway.” Seeming to realize I am in no mood to converse, Harbor whistles along. Is there anything in the world more irritating than a grown man whistling?

For starters, being forced to move to the frostbitten version of hell.

We drive in silence for a few more miles. It’s more preferable than feigning any interest in small talk, in my opinion.

Not, apparently, in Harbor’s. “You’ll like St. Olaf. Sure, it’s not Ft. Lauderdale, but at least no one will try to kill you there. The Midwest is a pretty friendly place. You’ll get a job in no time. We arranged an apartment and a car for you, just like we talked about in orientation, but feel free to find something else if it doesn’t suit. Sometimes you need to live in a place before you find the right spot, you know?”

I don’t reply. With any luck, a rogue snowball will hit the SUV and I’ll die in the rollover with frostbite on my dick. It will be a glorious end to my ignominious life, and vastly superior to moving to St. Olaf, Wisconsin.

Harbor nudges me in the side, and I grunt. “Do you want to know the history of the town?”

“What’s the point?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine, but I can’t bring myself to care. “It doesn’t matter.”

Harbor exhales slowly, his unlined face marked with an expression of disapproval. Like he is my favorite third-grade teacher and caught me cheating on my multiplication tables with a hidden abacus.

Okay, I never would have done that. Grandma would have flayed me alive if I cheated on a test.

He turns east again off the two-lane road and down another, smaller lane cutting through two thick stands of trees. They look like skeletons, harbingers, their branches covered in ice, heavy with snow and devoid of leaves.

“It’s especially pretty here in summer,” Harbor says, blithely ignoring my black hole of a personality. “The lakefront lights up with festivals and activities and tourists flock to this town.”

“But how is it still winter?” I can’t help saying. “It’s March and it looks like a post-nuclear war zone.”

Harbor scoffs. “Please. It’s not that bad. Two weeks ago it was eighty degrees. Get yourself some snowshoes or cross-country skis. Take up ice skating. St. Olaf is a great place. My wife is from here.” His tone softens at the mention of his spouse.

The overwhelming forest thins, now interspersed here and there with houses. Harbor stops at an intersection and points down the northward-facing road. “Downtown’s that way. Perfect little Main Street, USA. Best kringle you’ve ever had.”

“Sounds like they eat Santa Claus,” I grumble.

Harbor tosses aside that comment with a wave of his hand. “Best coffee is at Sweet and Salty. There’s a little bookstore too: Time Enough at Last.”

I blink. “That was a Twilight Zone episode. Talk about an omen, Marshal Stryke.”

“It makes sense when you meet the owner. What I’m saying, Jesse, is you’re going to like it here. It’s a nice town. You’ll make friends. You’ll find a job.”

Despite there being absolutely no one else on the road, Harbor pauses at a stop sign for an extended period of time. Then he turns left onto a side street and away from the idyllic-sounding downtown. “Make it work. It won’t be forever. I’ll keep in touch and let you know when the trial is. Then you can go back to your old life, if you even want it anymore.”

What’s left of it to return to? Even before an ICBM named Esme LaDanza obliterated my life, I hadn’t had much but dreams. Now they’re charcoal too. No, less than charcoal. Ash caught in one of those fricking ice swords hanging from the trees up here.

A familiar aching sensation threatens to swallow me whole, but I choke it back.

Harbor turns into a long driveway, remarkable only for being a half-plowed impression between two walls of snow. “Enjoy yourself, is what I’m saying.” The SUV bumped along the snow, catching and then popping out of little grooves in the hardpack.

I’ll need a four-wheel drive and chains out here. I’ll also need to google how to apply said snow chains. “Are you going to tell me to find some nice person and settle down?” It sounds even more bitter out loud than in my head.

Harbor’s brows crease, and, beneath his neatly trimmed beard, his jaw tightens. “Wow, this place has changed.”

I follow his gaze out the front windshield. Coming into view is the most dilapidated excuse for a house I’ve ever seen. Shack, would be more like it. Hovel. Crack den, although that might be an insult to crack dens.

It’s a single-story cabin, or had once been. The front porch appears to be held up only by thick layers of snow and ice, any buttressing woodwork a mere suggestion of aid. There is no paint to speak of, but the entire structure is a limpid shade of pine brown, like a Christmas tree left out until the last week of February.

“The roof looks solid.” Harbor’s voice sounds pained. He stops the car in what might have been a driveway or a full flower garden—it’s impossible to tell underneath the foot of snow. “I mean, I know we have budget cuts, but I still thought—”

“It’s fine,” I say. I glance up at the roof of the cabin, which defies the odds by looking almost sturdy, even underneath the layers of snow. “It’s a fixer-upper. I don’t need much, right?”

Harbor unbuckles his seat belt, his posture relaxing. “Right. You’ll make it work. It has good bones, from what I remember. Or you can find something else. You have a stipend for about six months.”

Like that will be anything substantial. Budget cuts.

The vast amount of change wells up inside me again, but I tamp it all back down. I know my options, bleak as they are. It’s a simple choice between live or die. Live in this falling-down murder shack or die with a bullet to the back of my head while grocery shopping at the Publix.

I chose falling-down murder shack. Yet another winner in my long line of poor decisions.

Harbor opens his door and steps out. I follow suit a moment later. No use in delaying the inevitable. My brand-new snow boots sink into the powder, leaving two deep impressions of my size thirteen feet. It’s even colder outside the car than in. I shiver and pull my thick woolen hat further down over my brow.

“Oh.” Harbor stops halfway to the front door. “By the way, about the whole ‘settling down’ thing. Have fun, play the field, whatever, but I wouldn’t recommend anything more than that. A relationship built on lies isn’t much of one, right?”

I bark a laugh that tastes like acid. “I think I know that better than anyone, Marshal Stryke.”

“I suppose that’s true.” He stares at me, his expression empathetic. Whatever. I don’t need his pity. I need a roof, a hammer and some nails—screws? I’ve never exactly done a lot of home repairs before—and a case of beer to get drunk enough to forget that I now live in this barren wasteland. I brush past him, climbing the snowy stairs to the front door, and pull on the handle.

It falls off into the palm of my glove, showering my arm with a fine spray of rust and other toxic debris.

Harbor attempts a laugh and slaps me on the back, a little too hard. “Welcome to St. Olaf, Jesse.”