Page 26 of It Happened on the Lake

The door opened, and Harper held her breath, hoping that Rand answered. His father, Gerald Watkins, was known as a tough cop, one who never bent the rules.

Luckily Rand stepped through the door. His black hair was shorn in a military cut and he was barefoot, she noted, wearing only jeans and an army jacket thrown over a T-shirt. He and Levi stepped off the porch and talked in low tones beneath a towering fir tree.

The dog went nuts. Barking. Growling. Leaping on the fence.

Illumination suddenly flooded Sievers’s yard.

The old man with his thinning long hair and bristly beard peered out the window. He opened the sash, surveyed his property through narrowed eyes, and focused on his guard dog. “Duke!” Sievers yelled. “Settle down!”

Harper didn’t dare breathe.

Levi and Rand stepped farther from the fence.

With a snort the dog sat on its big haunches and continued to stare through the fence, but Sievers retreated, satisfied no one was trespassing on his property. Rand cast a narrowed gaze at the truck where she was hiding and she recoiled, then chided herself. She wasn’t usually a coward. She should talk to Rand herself. Or Chase’s parents. Or her own. Or have the guts to phone the police.

But here she wascoweringin Levi’s truck.

Because something bad happened.

Something very bad.

Something she couldn’t face.

She caught sight of Levi returning and slid across the bench seat to open the pickup’s door, the interior light winking on. She stepped onto the street, the damp air hitting her in the face. “Did Rand know anything?”

“No.” Levi shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Oh God.” Again, the tears threatened as she shut the Dodge’s door quietly and leaned against it. “I need to tell the police,” she said. “Maybe I should . . . I could talk to your dad?”

“No—no, I’ll do that.”

“But I should explain—”

“Listen, Harper,” he cut in, taking hold of her arm. His fingers were like steel. “You need to go home. Got it?” Then, more calmly, “Just wait. Okay? I’ll talk to my folks and tell them that I knew Chase was going to meet you.” He released her arm. “They’ll probably come talk to you, and you can tell them that you were waiting for him and you saw the boat. Or whatever.”

“The truth,” she said in a barely audible voice. But not all of it.

“Well, yeah. Just let me break it to them. They’re not all that crazy about you and Chase seeing each other.”

“I know. They hate me. Especially your mom.”

“No, no, it’s just—”

“They hate me,” she said again as a car approached, engine roaring.

Levi pulled her to the side of the road.

Headlights washed over them.

The car—a Chevrolet sedan—slowed, and the driver tossed a newspaper over the fence and into Sievers’s yard. Along with cigarette smoke, music filtered through the car’s open window, the organ intro to “Light My Fire” by the Doors breaking the quiet of the pre-dawn hours. The driver hit the gas only to slow for a group of mailboxes grouped together between two firs. He slipped copies of the daily paper into the accompanying yellow boxes.

“You have to go,” Levi insisted, dark eyes serious.

The sedan’s engine revved again, and the driver pulled a quick U-turn near the rental house at the end of the street.

“Now,” Levi insisted. “Before my folks wake up.” He was pulling her to the side of the road as the Chevy shot past again, music thrumming over the sedan’s knocking motor. “I’ll drive you.”

“No. I can’t just leave the canoe at the swim park.”

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