Dusk Snow Hides All Return (Rowan and Adrienne) novel Chapter 14

Chapter 14.

Twelve hours in the air. Adrienne couldn’t sleep a second.

Her mind kept replaying that surveillance clip on loop–Rowan pulling his suitcase to the gate of the Ashford Estate, stopping, looking back one last time.

On the screen, his face was small, blurry. But she could still make out the look on it.

No lingering. No hate. Just a dead calm, like something in him had already died.

Then he turned. Got in the cab. Disappeared into the traffic. Clean. No looking back.

The same way he’d peeled her fingers off his arm.

When the plane touched down at Pearson International Airport, it was local dusk.

Late–fall Canada. Wind slicing through everything. Sky heavy and gray.

Adrienne didn’t even bother with the jet lag. She walked out of the airport, flagged a cab, and headed straight for the Backpackers‘ Hostel.

The hostel sat on a shabby–looking street, small storefront.

She pushed through the door and got hit with a wall of smells–food, cheap cleaner, the mingled body odor of travelers from everywhere.

A few young backpackers were sprawled across the lobby, laughing loudly in half a dozen different languages.

Behind the front desk sat the elderly American innkeeper with gray hair and reading glasses perched on her nose, head down over a newspaper.

Adrienne hurried over and asked, her voice urgent, “Excuse me, I’m looking for one of your guests. Rowan Ashford. He checked in about a week ago.”

The elderly Chinese innkeeper looked up, pushed her glasses up her nose, and gave her a long once–over. The woman in front of her wore expensive clothes, carried herself like money–but the dark circles under her eyes and the desperate edge in her face did not belong in a cheap backpackers‘ hostel.

“Mr. Ashford?” The old woman thought for a moment, then shook her head. “He only stayed one night. Checked out first thing the next morning.”

Adrienne’s stomach dropped. “Did he say where he was going? Leave a number? Anything?”

The old woman set her newspaper down and studied her. Then, out of nowhere, she asked with a heavy accent, “What is he to you?” Adrienne froze for a second. “I’m his fiancée,” she answered on reflex.

“His fiancée?” The corner of the old woman’s mouth pulled into a sharp, sarcastic curve. She gave Adrienne another head–to–toe look, her eyes hard. “The night Mr. Ashford checked in, I was on duty. When he walked in, he could barely stand. His face was flushed, but not in a healthy way. He kept touching his forehead. Coughing the whole time. I asked him if he was sick, if he needed me to call a doctor. He shook his head. Said no. Said he was just tired.”

The old woman paused. A chill crept into the way she was looking at Adrienne now.

She’d snuffed out the last bit of light in the eyes of the one person who’d once had no one but her–the man who used to be happy all day just because she’d smiled at him.

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