I tear into the eggs like I haven’t eaten in days, gobbling half of them down before Chet has cracked his own into a bowl. The omelet is delicious, light and fluffy and perfectly salted, without even the tiniest touch of browning. And just like I knew it would be, it’s heavy on the cheese.
“You know, this chef thing isn’t such a bad idea,” I say, working off another bite with the side of my fork. Hot goo gushes out of the center, an avalanche of cheese and tomato and translucent onion. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
Chet shrugs. “TV. YouTube. It’s not that hard.”
The toaster pops, shooting up two slices of bread, and he cuts them into perfect triangles while rattling off his repertoire. Eggs and hash browns wrapped in bacon, anything that can be fried in a pan or grilled, fat cheese dogs smothered in chili. Behind him, onions sizzle in the pan.
I am digging out some organic jam from the top refrigerator shelf when the mudroom door opens, and Micah’s voice calls out, “Hey, Charlotte.”
“In the kitchen.”
A few seconds later he appears in the doorway in his socks, a thermos dangling from a finger. “Why does it smell so good in here? Hey, Chet. How’s it hanging?”
Chet eyes him from across the island. “Sheriff.”
Micah gives him a good-natured smile. “Better not let Chief Hunt hear you say that. He likes being the only sheriff in town. And you know neither of us are sheriffs, right? I’m not even officially a cop.”
Chet knows all this, of course, but he also knows that Micah’s father is scary as hell, and that at the first sign of trouble, he and his deputies will roll through the trailer parks on the other side of the mountain and whoop their sirens at anybody who happens to be sitting outside. He knows they’ll search the trunk of an old hooptie but let a BMW fly by without so much as a warning. He’s grown up fearing men like Chief Hunt with their guns and billy clubs and handcuffs chinking from their uniform belts. Micah may not be a cop, but he’s still connected to law enforcement, and not only because he’s the police chief’s son. He worked in search and rescue for years until founding his underwater criminal investigations training and consulting company, Lake Hunters.
Chet turns back to the stove with a shrug. “If you say so.”
Micah lets it go, lifting the thermos into the air. “Can I bother you for a refill?”
“Of course.” I motion him over, abandoning the rest of my breakfast. “You look like you’ve warmed up some.”
He’s no longer corpse-white but pink from the chill, his lips no longer a vibrating blue. If he was smart, he used one of the towels I laid out downstairs to soak up some of the lake water.
“The coffee helped some. Thanks.” He hands me the thermos and I settle it in the sink, rinsing it out along with the dripper cone. “Sam just called with a lead on the woman. She was staying at one of the B and Bs in town.”
“Oh. That’s good news, right?”
“Mostly, it is. It’s good news that they know her name and where she’s from, which means they can contact her next of kin. But word’s gonna get out soon, if it hasn’t already. Sam’s trying to get out in front of it. It’s better for everybody if her family doesn’t hear about it from the news.”
He’ll have to hurry. It doesn’t take much to ignite talk in this town, and a tourist found floating in the lake will be a fast flame. As soon as the cops show up at that B and B, as soon as they start slinging around the crime tape and interviewing witnesses, conjecture will spread through these hills like a late-summer forest fire. I give it until the end of the day before people start showing up here.
I look up, and Micah is watching me. “‘No comment.’ Dad asked me to impress upon you that those are the only two words he would like to hear coming out of your mouth—except he didn’t say it that nice and he didn’t ask. He wants you to say it to friends, to family, to whoever comes knocking on your door wanting to know what you saw down there at the lake. If somebody won’t take no for an answer, maybe don’t send them to Dad. Send them to Sam instead. Let him deal with them.”
I nod, settling the dripper on the thermos rim. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Don’t be so sure. Reporters are a persistent bunch, and they will go to all kinds of crazy lengths to make you think they’re not one. They’ll pretend to be a friend or a prospective client. They’ll ambush you in parking lots and at the grocery store. They will follow you around town like your shadow if they think they’re gonna get the first word out of you. Dad says his team is going to be strategic in which details of this investigation they release to the public, and he doesn’t want things getting out there he’s not ready to talk about, okay?”
“Okay, okay, I get it. ‘No comment’ to anyone and everyone.”
He nods, satisfied. “Where’s Paul?”
“He had a work thing. He left about an hour ago.” I reach for the electric grinder, pry open the plastic top. I can’t quite make myself look Micah in the eye.
“How?”
I frown, my fingers freezing on the cord. “How what?”
“How did he get to his work thing?” Micah clarifies. “I thought his car was in the shop.”
Shit. It’s a point Paul and I didn’t think through, how we’d explain his transportation. I can’t say he went bobbing up the driveway with a thirty-pound backpack on his shoulders. Micah knows Paul too well, and he’ll know if there’s something I’m not telling him.
Out on that hill, Paul and I made a decision, a silent pact. Our lie tipped over that first domino, setting off an avalanche that now there’s no stopping. The only way forward is to spout off another one, cloak it in an occasional truth to serve as a decoy, pile on the details to build a believable story. My pulse flickers under my skin, turning it hot and sticky—or maybe that’s the heat of Micah’s stare.
I clear my throat. “He didn’t say. I just assumed somebody was picking him up. There’s a replacement car waiting for him at the office.”
I busy myself with the coffee while Chet finishes up his omelet, sliding it onto a plate he carries in a wide arc around Micah, now tapping away at his cell phone screen. He presses the phone to his ear and I know who he’s calling. I also know there’s no way in hell Paul is going to pick up. Not after he made me swear not to tell Micah where he was going. Better to ignore the call and make up some excuse when he gets back.
Micah hangs up without leaving a voice mail, and I feel him in the room, taking up space, sucking up all the air. This is a man who knows how to dig up the truth, and from dangerous and watery depths. If he thought I was keeping something from him, he would poke poke poke at me until he cracked me like one of Chet’s eggs. That’s why he’s so good at finding things people want to stay hidden, he’s relentless, and why I clamp down on my expression.
Micah slips the phone back into his pocket. “When you see Paul, tell him to give me a call, will you? I need to talk to him about something. It’s pretty urgent.”
I smile. “Sure thing.”
He fetches his boots from the mudroom, puts them on by the back door. “I’ll check in before heading home tonight, see how y’all are doing.”
“Sounds good,” I say, even though it doesn’t sound good at all. I don’t want Micah swinging by, not without Paul here as a buffer. Every second I spend alone with that man is another chance for me to lie or worse—to talk myself into a corner. A flash of anger blooms in my chest at Paul for leaving me here, for trekking off into the woods for who knows where or how long. When he gets home, I’m going to kill him.
“Hey, Charlotte?”
I look to where Micah is standing, one foot in the mudroom.
“Keep the doors locked and the alarm on at all times, okay? And maybe have Chet check the windows. Until we figure out who put that woman in the lake and why, nobody’s safe.”
Nobody’s safe.
The words punch a panic button in my chest. Even with a backyard full of cops, even with big, badass Micah in the house next door, the murderer could show up here. My breath comes in a shallow spurt, hollowing out the room and my lungs and my stomach. But somehow I manage a nod.
As soon as Micah leaves, Chet turns to me. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”
“What was what all about?”
He reaches across the counter for the pot of jam. “Don’t you play coy with me, Charlie Delilah McCreedy. Where is Paul, really? And why did you just lie to the sheriff about it?”
I don’t correct Chet or ask what gave me away. It could be any one of a number of things—my shaky hands, my twitchy gaze, the unambiguous pauses while I thought through my string of lies. Chet knows all of my tells.
I pour the beans in the grinder and flip it on with a thumb. “No comment.”