Beastly Winter — Chapter 30

Zellner stopped at the end of the drive and examined Jenny’s small home. He marveled at how many times he had been here but never really looked at it. Of course, the majority of those arrivals had been after dark fell, and he would be headed home to dress for work long before the sun shone its scary face.

There hadn’t been much of that sunny face to hide his eyes from today. The storm was blasting everything with its finest glory. The roads were glazing over quickly with a mixture of hard snow that was quickly becoming pellets of ice. Zellner couldn’t remember anything like this in the years since he’d moved here with his parents during his senior year in high school. His no-longer-living parents. He hadn’t even been a suspect in their fiery deaths. A boating accident that only he survived. The inheritance he’d counted on had been much smaller than he thought, and the money was long gone. At least he still had their mortgage-free house.

He’d been watching the curtains for over a minute, and they hadn’t moved. He didn’t see any trace of Lance. As he pulled in and drove to the side, his patrol car came into view, so the pervert was here after all. His own car, and the man inside also had his gun. Zellner knew not to walk up to the cottage door. He pulled around to the back of the house and drove the cruiser up to the wall between the bedroom and the bath where there were…