Page 20 of By the Book

“They picked us up as soon as we turned out of Hemlock House,” Bobby said.

“But it’s probably somebody out for a drive, right?”

That didn’t seem likely, though, and we both knew it. Yes, this was the tourist season. And yes, Hastings Rock was filled to overflowing. But we were south of the city proper, and there weren’t any hotels or motels or even Airbnbs out this way. Tourists did drive south for day trips, but those would be—wait for it—during the day. And while it could have been a local, the odds were slim—the coast wasn’t exactly overpopulated.

Bobby’s answer jarred me out of my thoughts: “Only one way to find out.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he slowed the Pilot and eased onto the shoulder of the road. For a moment, I had a flashback—not that long ago, someone had tampered with the Jeep, and I’d ended up stranded on a similar stretch of road. That same someone had followed me, waited for me to break down, and taken the opportunity to try to shoot me. I watched the headlights, waiting for them to follow us onto the shoulder.

But as our tires rumbled over gravel, the car zipped past us.

“Chevy Malibu,” Bobby said. “White. Driver appeared to be female, short hair, thirties or forties.”

“Uh, roger. Copy. Am I supposed to say roger or copy?”

He rubbed his eyes.

“Oh,” I said. “No bumper stickers. And the license plate was covered in mud.”

“Now you decide to be helpful?”

“What was that?”

Instead of answering, Bobby eased us back onto the road, and we continued south.

“Could you really tell all that from a glance?” I asked.

“It’s more of a guess.”

“But a good one.”

He shrugged.

“Maybe it was Colleen,” I said.

“The hair was wrong.”

“Maybe she was wearing a wig!”

“Let’s think about that theory,” he said. “In silence.”

“Bobby!”

He let me smack his shoulder a few times before he caught my hand. He was trying not to grin.

“Since you’re so smart,” I said, “was she following us or not?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t like that her license plate was conveniently unreadable. And even though she kept driving…”

He didn’t finish, so I supplied the rest of the answer. “Something felt off?”

Bobby nodded.

“Yeah,” I said, slumping back into my seat. “That’s what I thought too.”

We drove the rest of the way in an easy silence, the way you can when you’re totally comfortable with someone. It didn’t even feel like silence. In part, that was because I was thinking so loudly that I was surprised Bobby didn’t ask me to keep it down. And in part it was because Bobby was right there, and it felt like half of the things we communicated to each other we did without words. Like when he wrapped his hand around my knee without even looking over, and we just kept driving like that wasn’t the single most romantic thing anyone has ever done in the history of the world.

The further south we drove, the more curious I became. Hastings Rock proper was in the opposite direction, and the farther we drove in this direction, the more remote and rural the area became—I mean, we were in a temperate rainforest, for heaven’s sake. In my mind, it would have made sense for themayor to live in town. That’s what I would have assumed people wanted from their mayor. But then, I also assumed people would have wanted a mayor who lived in town year-round and wasn’t exclusively focused on building up the tourism industry.

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