Page 21 of It Happened on the Lake

She bit her lip, hoping beyond hope that Gram hadn’t wakened as she sometimes did in the night. But the rooms were quiet. Even the nocturnal cats were hidden and hopefully sleeping. Throat dry, she focused the lens, then swung the telescope away from the Hunt house to search the blackness of the lake.

Yes! There it was!

The Triton!

The two-toned mahogany hull was distinct.

Tom Hunt’s sleek pleasure boat.

Rocking in the water.

Silent.

No signal light flashing to her.

No one at the helm.

No movement on board.

Almost ghostly.

She went cold inside.

Where the devil was Chase?

Frantically, she moved the telescope over the dark craft, stern to bow, but saw no one aboard.

And the water surrounding the boat?

Black and silent.

No sign of Chase.

Chapter 5

“No.” Harper let out a little cry as she stared through the telescope. She was certain it was Tom Hunt’s boat . . . no . . . oh . . . God . . . She searched the surrounding area around the boat again, and with every beat of her heart her dread mounted. It was dark, far from a hint of sunlight in the eastern sky, but, as far as she could discern, the black water appeared unbroken. No person in the water. No Chase. Nowhere.

Call his house! You have to call and check!

Harper didn’t. Instead, she raced to the back hallway where the keys to Gram’s old Cadillac hung and pulled them from the hook.

Wait a second!

If she started the car and drove across the bridge, then opened the gate on the other side, she’d have to drive by the gatekeeper’s cottage. Her father or stepmother would probably hear her. Even if she kept the headlights off so that the Caddy’s beams wouldn’t splash against the windows, there was no way they wouldn’t hear the gears of the gate grind or miss the rumble of the car’s big engine.

Her grandmother might be partially deaf.

Not so Bruce or Marcia Reed.

The canoe!

She could use it without waking anyone.

She scrabbled on the shelf above the keys for a flashlight, nearly tripping over her father’s wet boots in the process and startling a cat that was perched on the shelf in the dark. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath as that damned Diablo hissed, switching his long tail as Harper snagged the flashlight.

Silently praying that Gram wouldn’t wake, she slipped through the side door and retraced her steps to the dock, where she found the canoe positioned upside down near the boathouse.

Heart in her throat, she pushed the craft off the dock and didn’t care that it scraped loudly. She rolled it into the water, then slid inside and began to paddle feverishly around the old willow tree that jutted out over the water from the island’s only small beach.

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