Page 75 of Stranger in the Lake

Jax.

Something prickles up the back of my neck—shock, disbelief, a disturbing kind of unease. What is Jax doing here? How long has he been watching? I stare at the glass, searching for his shape in the shadows, but all I see is the reflection of the room, Micah twisting around on the couch.

“What?” he says, turning back, studying my face. “What did you see?”

“Nothing. The storm’s close, that’s all. That lightning hit right outside.”

The room goes deathly quiet, an empty, heavy sound that expands and fills me with dread. I think about what I should do now that I know the truth. I could run. I could leap over the couch and arm myself with a kitchen knife. But I can’t make my body move because it’s Micah. Paul’s friend and mine. The one person who never made me feel unwelcome on this side of the hill. When he smiles at me, I smile back, half wondering if this is a dream.

“I thought you were different than her,” he says, and I’m guessing we’re back to Katherine. “The way you look. Where you come from, your white-trash upbringing. But the more I got to know you, the more it made sense. You and Katherine are a lot alike, you know. You’re both smart. Relentless. So goddamn righteous. You won’t be able to sit on this secret, will you?”

“Katherine knew?”

“Paul told her. That asshole broke the pact we made that night, that we’d take this secret to our graves. But Paul blabbed it to Katherine. She was trying to talk us into turning ourselves in. She gave us a motherfucking deadline. That’s what they were fighting about. What we all were fighting about.”

On the other side of the glass, the woods light up with a streak of lightning, followed by a boom that shakes my bones with meaning.

Fury flashes across Micah’s face, flaring his nostrils, pressing his mouth into a thin line. “I don’t take kindly to ultimatums. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends.”

It’s not an admission but his words still wash over me like a wave. Could Sam have been right? Were those marks on Katherine’s ankle really fingerprints?

I picture Micah swimming up underneath her with his flippers and a tank strapped to his back. Nobody would have looked twice when he walked into the water in his dive gear. He would have been invisible to everyone but Katherine. My cheeks tingle with shock, burning like they’ve been slapped, leaving me gasping.

“You didn’t. Youwouldn’t.”

He pushes to a stand, and I think about Chet in his car, somewhere between here and town. How long ago did he leave? How long before he gets here? Micah is so big, so strong. Fast, too. There’s no way I could outrun him. My fingers creep across the cushion, but Micah gets there first. He grabs my phone and tosses it onto the opposite couch.

When he turns back, everything about him is hard. His face. The set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. His voice when he glares down at me.

“She didn’t give me a choice.”

“Oh my God. Micah! Katherine was your friend. Your best friend’s wife. And youkilledher for what—to save your own skin?”

“Well...yeah. That’s exactly why I did it—that and because of her ultimatum. It was either that or go to jail, and I am not going to jail. Do you know what they’d do to the son of a police officer in there?” He shakes his head, a slow side to side. “No way. I am not going to jail for Jax’s mistake. Not happening.”

How did Micah do it? How did he drink our beer and do flips off our dock and pose for pictures with his arm around Paul’s shoulders and a smile that said everything was just fine?

“What kind of monster are you?”

It’s probably stupid to say it out loud, but I’ve already tipped irreversibly off course here, soared well past the point of no return. If Micah has gone to all this trouble to conceal being in the car with Bobby, he’s not going to let me go. These truths, the worst ones, die here with me tonight.

There’s only one way for this to end.

I blink, and he’s yanking me up off the couch by my bicep, sloshing tea all over his designer mohair couch. I struggle to break free, but he’s like a brick wall, his grip hard and unyielding.

“Charlotte, stop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

But I already know Micah Hunt is a liar.

One chance, that’s all I get.

I use the only weapon I have. I swing back an arm, send the mug thunking hard against his temple. The impact vibrates up my arm, douses us both in hot tea, but it was a direct hit. Micah growls in pain, in anger.

The backhand to my jaw is both shocking and disorienting. The world goes upside down and I go flying. My foot catches on a leg of Micah’s coffee table, and I hurtle over it and crash to the floor, rolling across the carpet in a messy heap. My mouth fills with a warm gush of blood, and some of it trickles out of me and onto the carpet, bright red liquid soaking into his custom Berber carpet.Evidence, I think, right before my head connects with a wall. If nothing else, they’ll get him for me.

And then...

Nothing.

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