Page 76 of It Happened on the Lake

What?

Harper stopped eating.

It’s not that unusual, she told herself, but she still kept her eyes riveted on Craig. And the gun.

Furtively, he glanced toward the glass doors, as if he’d sensed her. He tilted his head, staring upward at the mansion.

For a second she thought he was staring straight at her. As if he’d felt her hiding in the darkness, observing his every move.

Which, she supposed, she was.

Her heart dropped, and she told herself that nothing he was doing was any of her business. So he had a gun? So what? Didn’t she, after all?

She should look away.

But couldn’t.

Mesmerized, her eye still glued to the telescope, Harper watched as Craig reached inside once more and retrieved something—she couldn’t tell what—that fit in the palm of his hand. A packet of ammo, maybe? Or something else? He closed the safe and replaced the dartboard, setting the gun and other item down before retrieving a black sweatshirt from the handlebars of the exercise bike. He yanked the sweatshirt over his head, adjusted the hood, and scooped up the pistol and smaller item.

With one final look at the door to the room, he moved to the slider and stepped barefoot onto the wet deck where unused patio furniture, boxes, and firewood were stacked. As if he were expecting an ambush, he advanced slowly, half crouched, easing stealthily across the wooden planks, the long-barreled pistol raised in both hands as his gaze swept across the dark water.

The gun.

She recognized it.

It looked similar to her grandfather’s handgun, but it was too dark to see the grip, to confirm its pearl handle.

Like the one in the cabinet?

Or was she imagining things? All guns were similar, and from this distance in the dark, even with the high-powered telescope she couldn’t tell. Just because she was missing one didn’t mean that Craig Alexander had it.

“What’re you doing?” she whispered as a light flicked on upstairs, in the room with the poster, the bedroom she assumed belonged to Max, Craig and Beth’s son. She even caught a glimpse of the top of Max’s head in the high windows. Curly blond hair flopped over a high forehead as he walked across the room, then disappeared as if he’d either sat down or flopped onto his bed.

Fascinated, though she couldn’t explain why, Harper swiveled the telescope.

Beth was still in the kitchen, chopping something on the kitchen counter and watching a nearby small black and white TV. She seemed oblivious to her husband’s surreptitious movements.

What does it matter? Why do you care?

She couldn’t explain why she was intrigued, but she couldn’t stop and turned her attention to the dock, but Craig had disappeared. She swung the lens to his office again, expecting he’d gone back inside, but no, he wasn’t visible and the slider was still closed, the room as he’d left it.

So?

Big deal.

But her stomach tightened as she searched the darkened dock and water.

“Where are you?” she whispered aloud and was about to turn away when she caught a small beam of light at the edge of the Alexanders’ dock. A flashlight? She couldn’t tell. As quickly as it appeared, it died.

Squinting at the area, she could barely make out a man—Craig, presumably—stepping into a canoe that was tied to his dock, then shoving off. For a second or two she had trouble following him in the night-shrouded lake, but in a heartbeat she caught sight of him again as he turned on the flashlight for a second before cutting the light once more.

“What the hell are you doing, Craig?”

As the canoe passed behind the houses, she caught sight of his silhouette, a dark image cast against the vaporous incandescence of the street lamp on the other side of the Hunts’ house. In the soft bluish glow, she watched him as he stepped lightly onto the Hunts’ dock. He looped the canoe’s mooring rope around a cleat, then hopped onto the wooden planks.

Silently, her Doritos forgotten, she followed his every movement.

Stopping at the edge of the back door to the house, he reached up along the sill and her heart nearly stopped. She knew he was searching for a key, the same key she had used decades ago when she and Chase had met in secret. Her stomach nose-dived at the memory. “Oh God,” she whispered as he let himself in and didn’t bother with lights.

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