Page 43 of The Woman By the Lake

I looked to him to see he had his phone to his ear.

New priority task at hand, I returned my attention to his son and greeted, “Hey, Ledger.”

He swallowed and said, “Hey.”

We both turned to Riggs when he started growling.

“No, you didn’t need to tell her,” Riggs said, paused, then, “And no, I wasn’t going to say anything because it’s all bullshit. Why people are still talking about that crap, I do not know.”

“Let me guess,” Ledger began. “Kimmy told you the lake is haunted.”

Seemed Kimmy might have a bit of a reputation.

“Yes,” I replied.

He did a kid shrug, took a bite, chewed a couple of times, but with mouth still full, he said, “This place was supposed to be haunted too, but Dad’s been here years, and nothing.”

Well, I’d been at my place for weeks, and the first night, someone was scratching at the windows.

I didn’t tell Ledger that.

I said, “Good to know.”

We both looked back to Riggs when he irately announced, “I don’t care about Hoover or Kennedy or the fuckin’ Bermuda Triangle, and hear me, Kimmy, neither does Nadia. Lay the fuck off.”

With that, he took his phone from his ear, hit it with his thumb and tossed it with a clatter to the counter.

“Jesus. Kimmy,” he muttered, still irritable, if his tone and the laser beams he was trying to shoot out of his eyes to annihilate his phone, and Kimmy through it, were anything to go by.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked, and shifted my attention back to Ledger, “No offense, but I need a few words with your dad alone.”

“Bet,” he replied.

Cool is as cool was, the father and son version.

I went to Riggs and grabbed his hand, intent to walk him out the front door, but he had other ideas.

He twisted his hand from mine, curled an arm around my waist, and part guided, part shuffled me around the corner of the kitchen counter that had a clear view of the lake through windows across a landing big enough to waltz in. From there, he pulled me into a shadowy recess that I saw led to a winding staircase made into a wide column paneled with dark wood.

Whoa.

It was weird and gorgeous all at once.

We climbed one floor to another landing, hooked a left rather than going down a long hall that led to some rooms, and almost immediately entered another wood-paneled alcove winding staircase, and we went up that.

We came out directly into a bedroom made almost entirely of windows. It had a king-size bed covered in cobalt-blue sheets with a matching comforter (unmade and no toss pillows or euros to be found). The room also had a tan leather club chair that sported an exploding duffle bag and a variety of button downs, T-shirts and jeans of various fading thrown over it, to the point that I knew the chair was tan leather only by a bit of the arm showing through.

There were attractive nightstands with equally attractive lamps on top, both all but covered with books, coins, crushed receipts, and dual smatterings of new and opened condom packets (of course).

There was further a gorgeous low bureau that was so long and fit so well against the half wall below the windows, that it looked made for the space.

And there was a stone fireplace cutting through the windows, above which was a flat screen TV.

I had no idea why I was, but I was in Riggs’s bedroom.

I felt a shiver much like the one I’d felt when he’d rubbed his whiskers on my cheek the night before, just as pleasant and promising, but not as strong.

I turned to him.

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