Page 1 of Bait and Switch
ONE
Gabriel
Monday before noon, late November.
“Seriously?You have got to be kidding me.”
With a grunt, followed by an extra-long and extra-deep sigh, Gabe nudged the body in front of him with the toe of his hiking boot. Maybe he was wrong, maybe Peter was taking a power nap. He stared down and willed Peter to move, to sit up with a “Gotcha!” and a snap of his fingers. Maybe he’d even give himself away by laughing at Gabe’s reaction.
But he did none of those things. His ex stayed on his back, his arms all akimbo, angled awkwardly by his sides. His left hand was tucked underneath his back, the right almost touching his hip. There was no blood, no other signs of violence, just an obviously broken neck.
It was near freezing today and the filthy, bird poop-covered deck of theShangri-La, the only boat at the marina in worse shape thanThe Golden Ticket,was no place to take a breather.With his neck at an impossible angle—and in that getup—he was definitely not taking a catnap.
Wavelets rolled up and slapped against the side of the sailboat, emphasizing Gabe’s morbid thoughts. He didn’t laugh, but Peter had officially been caught dead in a hideous outfit.
He was deflecting. Even Gabe, notorious for avoiding the serious, could recognize a good deflection when it hit him in the face. In his defense, it was a hideous tracksuit, one Gabe had never seen Peter in—when he was alive anyway.
“Fuck.”
He and Peter may have been past tense, but he’d never wished him bodily harm. A parking ticket? An audit notice from the IRS? Maybe, but never this.
Never dead.
“A baby blue tracksuit, like some sort of common Jersey gangster?” He paused and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you been binge-watchingThe Sopranosagain? Tony is not the role model you think he is,” Gabe said to the dead man. There was no response from the corpse, for which he was eternally grateful.
But, just in case he was wrong about themy-ex-is-deadpart of the day, Gabe crouched next to Peter’s remains and tentatively reached out his hand, pressing his index and middle fingers against Peter’s neck. Nothing. He wasn’t even warm to the touch. How long had he been at the marina and on theShangri-La?
How long had he been lying there dead?
Out of the corner of one eye, Gabe spotted the errant tennis ball that had ultimately been responsible for the unpleasant discovery. Slowly, it began to move, the slight wind sending it rolling off the sailboat’s deck and onto the pier, where it bounced once and then dropped into the bay with a gentle bloop. Ranger Man’s dog, Bowie, trotted to the edge of the dock and peeredover the side, his tail slowly wagging back and forth. Even Gabe, who’d never owned a dog in his life, knew Bowie was considering a quick swim to retrieve his toy.
“Don’t you even fucking think about it,” Gabe said to the dog. “I do not have the bandwidth for this—this-ness.” He waved a hand in the corpse’s direction. “You jumping into the bay is the cherry on top that I don’t need. You and I both know your owner would pin the blame for your wet ass on me.”
Bowie side-eyed him, huffed, and plopped down on the dock to rest his head on his paws. Totally waiting for Gabe to turn his back again.
Gabe rose to his feet to stare out over the slate gray waters of Riddle Bay. Maybe a perfectly reasonable explanation forthiswould erupt from the surface of the water like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with a comic bubble declaring SOLUTION floating in the air above it. Maybe the monster would return Bowie’s ball too. Where was Swamp Thing when he needed him? He could exchange the ball for the body; it seemed like a reasonable trade.
Peter’s death was going to be trouble. No offense to his dead ex-boyfriend, but Gabe did not need the drama a corpse was going to bring him. He could feel a tension headache starting to form behind his eyes.
Surely it wasn’t grief. Surely he had no tears for him.
Since a week ago Sunday, when Casey Lundin had informed Gabe that someone had been by the marina asking about him, Gabe had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. From Lundin’s description, he had known the person who’d done the asking could only be Gabe’s ex, Peter Vale. A long seven-plus days of worrying had followed, but Peter himself had never returned—until today.
The shoe had dropped. Painfully.
Had Peter come to warn him that the Colavitos were planning to measure him up for special-edition cement loafers? That seemed fanciful. Peter was more likely to throw Gabe to the wolves than to save him from them.
No, what he was feeling wasn’t grief so much as disgust and anger. Who would do this?
Gabe had spent the last week pondering Peter-related questions and not coming up with any answers:Were Larry Colavito and his nephews planning to ambush him in the dark of night? Why had Peter ventured to Heartstone Island? How the fuck had he found Gabe anyway? And when was he coming back?
The answer to that last question was lying in front of him. There was no coming back from this.
He sighed—again—and stepped back. TheShangri-Lamoved slightly underneath him, bobbing up and down in the cold waters of Riddle Bay. Today he could see the rocky bottom and a school of tiny fish flashing through the water. Calling the Twana County Sheriff’s Office was the next order of business, but he resisted. He was already anticipating the questions they would ask that he did not have answers to.
Why had Elton chosen today to have a dental emergency?
Gabe had avoided interacting with Ranger Man all week until that morning. Considering they both lived on sailboats moored at the same dock, that was a feat in itself. Although for Gabe, theTicketwas less home sweet home and more of a rustic camping situation. But first thing that morning, before he’d even ventured to the grocery store across the street for a hot coffee, there’d been a knock on the hull. He’d immediately known it was Lundin; there was a certain exasperation to Lundin’s hammering. That and the fact that they were the only two who lived at the marina.
