Page 54 of Stranger in the Lake

Somehow, they ended up in a tobacco field. Jax wasn’t sure how it happened, didn’t really remember much other than the music blaring and Paul shouting to slow down and suddenly they were airborne, flying over the field like the Dukes of fucking Hazzard. Jax hung his head out of the window and yee-hawed, or maybe it was Micah. They landed with a thud in the dirt and plants, teeth rattling in their heads, everybody laughing but Paul.

“Are youinsane?” Paul unhooked his belt and flung himself between the seats. “I know you have a death wish, but Micah and I don’t. We’d really like to live, and we sure as hell don’t want to do that in a jail cell or worse, because if we get arrested Micah’s dad will kill us.”

Jax looked at Micah, and the two collapsed into giggles. They were way past buzzed now, wasted on too much tequila and thin mountain air. In the back of his head, Jax knew he shouldn’t be driving.

But he was also too drunk to care.

“He’s right,” Micah said, clutching his stomach. “My dad will murder us, and then he’ll bury our bodies somewhere nobody will ever find.”

They were right. Jax didn’t doubt Officer Hunt’s anger could boil over into revenge, or that he was capable of covering up a triple murder. Micah’s dad was scary as hell.

Suddenly, Jax’s door lurched open. He blinked, and there were two of Paul.

“Get out of the car.”

“It’s my car.”

“Stop messing around and get out. You’re done driving.”

Jax opened his mouth to say he was nowhere near done, but somehow, Paul had already unhooked Jax’s seat belt. He grabbed a fistful of Jax’s T-shirt and hauled him out of the car, then shoved him through the open back door. Jax landed facedown in the leather.

Micah clutched his stomach, laughing like a hyena.

Paul dropped into the driver’s seat and stabbed a finger across the console. “You shut up. I mean it, Micah. Not one word. I need to concentrate.”

Jax closed his eyes and they were moving again, bouncing across the dusty field, mauling some poor farmer’s tobacco crop.

25

“Here she is. I found her.” Chet twists in the passenger’s seat of my Honda and wags his cell phone in the air. “Sienna Anne Sterling.”

For the past twenty minutes, we’ve been sitting here in the deserted Dominion lot, vents spewing hot air at our heads. Sam is long gone, but Chet and I haven’t moved other than to scroll through our phones because I’m desperate for more information. I need to know what Sienna was doing here, why she was going around town, asking about Jax and Paul. I need a sign if I can trust my husband or not.

Chet passes me his cell phone, and there she is, the stranger I found in the lake. Those light blue eyes. That light blond hair. I’m staring at her Twitter profile.

I expand the screen and read from her bio. “‘Yogi. Vegan. True crime slut. Aspiring podcaster blowing shit out of the water in Lake Crosby, NC.’” I look at Chet. “That’s her. What shit?”

“I don’t think she means it literally.”

“Well, I know that. But she was in town to look into some old crime, and this bio makes it sound like she’d found something.” I say the words and realization creeps up my body, paralyzing me to the seat. Sienna came here to ask about a past crime. I found her talking to Paul. She was asking Wade about him. And now she’s dead.

The phone slips from my fingers and onto my lap. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Then give me back my phone before you yak all over it.”

He snatches it from my thigh, and I lean my forehead against the steering wheel and try to breathe around the panic. What if Sienna came here looking into Katherine’s death? What if when I found them, she was asking Paul about his swimmer wife who slipped under the waves and drowned? The doubts rise, pouring up and out of me, filling the air in the car with a sweet, sickly dread.

Chet yammers away, oblivious to my distress. He scrolls through her Tweets, reading them aloud with a running commentary. An expensive yoga retreat in Florida. Restaurants she’s tried. Books she’s read. Nonsense about the Kardashians. I hear him, but he’s miles away. Right now, it’s just me and Paul in this car, a man with six million dollars’ worth of motive and no real alibi.

“Hey, listen to this one,” Chet says, twisting in his seat. “‘Why were Lake Crosby police so quick to write #SkeletonBob off as a runaway?’”

I lift my head from the steering wheel. Blink. “What did you just say?”

“I said she wonders why the cops were telling people that Skeleton Bob was a runaway. I don’t remember anything about him running away from home.”

I snatch the phone from his fingers, and there it is, her Tweet from October 28. A little over three weeks ago. Relief slackens my bones, and I think I might cry. I think my body might melt into the grubby upholstery because she didn’t come here for Paul.

“She was here because of Skeleton Bob.” He was the unsolved crime she came here to solve. Skeleton Bob, not Paul, not his late wife.

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