“Bat!” I shouted.
It wasn’t a bat though.
“Erica!”
Candace and I stumbled back clutching each other, before falling to the ground.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know!” I fumbled for the lantern and raised it toward the trees.
Man! Definitely man! Running for the woods!
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Shockingly, he didn’t answer. Didn’t even stop.
Candace and I stayed clutching each other, listening to him crash away through the trees.
A moment later, we were still clutching each other, but in silence.
The only sound was our breathing.
Candace and I helped each other get to our feet. Luckily neither one of us impaled ourselves on our marshmallow sticks.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She looked at me with big eyes. “I think … I think maybe I recognized that guy.”
“Really?”
“Well, Lyssa only showed me one picture on her phone. But that … that could have been Justin, her boyfriend.”
* * *
I dropped Candace off at the sheriff’s department, and told her I’d be back to pick her up in a bit. I didn’t exactly want to waste any time talking to Sheriff Bigly at the moment. One because she would probably see my helping a friend out as investigation interference, and two, I had another sheriff that I wanted to have a word with.
Enough was enough already.
Yup, I was feeling pretty righteous and wound up by the time I got back into my mom’s boat. Somebody needed to tell Sheriff Grady Forrester that it was time to get back to work, and if nobody else was going to do it, I guess it had to be me.
I started out across the water feeling like I totally had right on my side. The cool night air brushing back my hair as I headed on my mission seemed to prove it.
Sadly, in the short, short time it took me to get to Grady’s part of the lake though, I had decided that seeing him was the worst idea I had ever had, and I was really praying he wasn’t home.
I’m mean, seriously, for all I knew that lady who made sampler plates was back … or he was baking more cupcakes.
One never knew with Grady these days.
Unfortunately for my failing nerves, as I pulled alongside his dock it became clear that he was home. His boat was there and a yellow glow filled the front window of the cabin, so, yup, he was home.
It would have been a pretty cozy sight, if, you know, this didn’t severely suck.
I took a deep breath. I could do this.
This town was in crisis, and it needed its sheriff back. I knew with all my heart that Grady would have gone over to Candace’s to check things out when she first called, and maybe this whole tragic chapter in Otter Lake history could have been finished. I mean, it wasn’t like I was asking him to cut his vacation short because some kids were running wild with spray paint. This was murder.
Worse yet, a part of me was wondering if maybe Sheriff Bigly hadn’t been a little bit on to something when she accused me of ruining Grady’s reputation. Not that I believe his reputation as sheriff was ruined, but maybe it was partially my fault that Grady thought this town didn’t need him. Freddie and I had undermined his authority more than once the last couple of years. Maybe he thought people didn’t care if he was heading up this investigation or not.
But they did.
At least I knew that I did.
And he didn’t just get to bail on everything.
I trudged my way up the path that led to Grady’s door, checking my phone quickly to make sure I hadn’t missed a text from Candace.
Nope, no text.
Okay, well, no problem. As I had told myself many times now, I could do this.
No matter how difficult.
I took a deep breath.
Hard to deny that seeing Grady, though, always stirred up all sorts of feelings—longing, regret, sadness, anger …
… lust.
I stopped walking. My eyes were glued on the front window of the cabin.
What the…?
Grady was sitting on his couch, wearing earphones … and not much else. In fact, I couldn’t quite be sure, but he might not be wearing anything at all. It was hard to tell because he was … knitting … and the yarn was draping over all the right—or wrong, depending upon how you looked at it—places.
This too … was new. I swallowed hard. Grady had never been into the yarn arts when we were together.
I tried to get my feet moving again, but … my God, the muscles in his forearms danced beautifully with the rhythm of his needles. It was mesmerizing. And all those muscles with the yarn? The contrast was just … overwhelming. It was kind of like seeing a fireman holding a kitten. Or a Viking holding a lamb. Not that I had ever seen a Viking holding a lamb. But if it looked anything like Grady holding yarn then—
Oh my God! What was I doing? This was wrong! I had only meant to come up and knock on Grady’s door, and now … now I was an exhibitionist! No, wait, that wasn’t right. It was the other one. A voyeur! A Peeping Tom! Like I had been at the cake shop … oh no, it was a pattern!
Just then my phone buzzed in my hands. I yelped and flung it in the air.
I bent quickly to pick it up.
Maybe Grady hadn’t seen that. It was dark out here, and he had been really focused on his stitches. I knew you had to be careful with knitting. It wasn’t like crocheting. You drop a stitch and—
I knew that wasn’t the case.
Nope, something had already changed in the air.
It was that strange prickly feeling you get when you know someone is looking at you.
I slowly rose to my feet and looked back at the window.
Grady’s face was still tilted down toward his knitting, but his eyes were targeted directly at me.
I waved a hesitant hand of greeting in the air. It withered and sank back down pretty quick.
He waved back.
Well, that was a good sign … unless he waved at all the Peeping Toms in his yard.