My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(81)

“Jamie Lee Curtis.”

“Blue Steel, yeah. Don’t think Bogey’s in that one.”

Jade takes this, tries not to let it show.

“She’s kind of a final girl in that one too, you know?” she says, trying to keep it casual now. Just talking movies, not passing index card after index card of subtext back and forth, because pretty soon one of those index cards is going to have something to do with what she said to him the other day, about Melanie.

Hardy just watches her, probably waiting to see if she’s going to go on about JLC being forever the final girl.

That would be too easy, though. And she’s still got to pee.

“So that’s what you’re jamming me up for?” Jade says instead. “A weapon? Thought I was running away.”

“Not supposed to run with scissors,” Hardy says. “Think that goes double for machetes, don’t you?”

“You’ll be glad I gave it to her.”

“Because of… what were you saying?” Hardy asks back with a patronizing shrug. “Bear sketched it out for me a bit, yeah? Something about… Scooby-Doo?”

“It’s a Scooby-Doo build,” Jade spits back, disgusted.

“Someone in a mask. Probably her dad, okay?”

“Her being—”

“Letha.”

“ ‘Saturday,’ ” Hardy says, holding Jade’s eyes.

Jade spins away, stares out across the lake. Mr. Holmes is bucking the wind in his ultralight. “This is where I’m probably supposed to tell you to close the beaches,” she says.

“That’s from Jaws.”

“There’s gonna be kids in the water, I mean,” Jade goes on.

“They see worse on their videogames.”

“You know what I mean.”

“That they’re in danger.”

Jade comes back around to him about this but Hardy’s already staring into her soul.

“Bear also took me through what he says is probably your reasoning for… for Saturday.”

For the first time, Jade really hears that: “Bear.”

A bear was supposed to have killed Deacon Samuels.

“I know this is all very real to you,” Hardy says, standing, taking a step over to the window, to what she guesses is his usual place, like he’s standing sentry over all of Fremont County.

“It’s bigger than me,” Jade says. “There’s… those two kids in March—”

“Of which kids we have to take your word about the second.”

“There’s Deacon Samuels.”

“Animal attack.”

“Clate Rodgers.”

“Boating accident.”

“ ‘Boating accident,’ ” Jade repeats before she can stop herself.

Does Hardy’s back straighten a little, though? Has he drawn some breath in that he’s not releasing?

“But he had it coming,” Jade fumbles in, standing now as well. “He’s probably not even part of the cycle, actually. Just an add-on.”

“That a thing?” Hardy says without looking around. “Addons?”

“The slasher gets blamed for all of them, yeah,” Jade says.

“Winners write the history books, and the slasher’s never the winner.”

“Doesn’t do much writing,” Hardy adds.

“Signs all his kills in blood,” Jade says right back.

Far out over the lake, Mr. Holmes’s ultralight is nearly skimming the water now.

“That’s how he gets out of the wind,” Hardy says, chucking his chin to Mr. Holmes. “Wonder if the fish think his shadow is the mother of all eagles, that him swooping down like that is the end of the world?”

He turns to her then, his face easy, says, “Somebody threw a trashcan through the front door of the high school, hear about that?”

“School’s out for summer,” Jade singsongs.

“Thing is,” Hardy adds, “all the glass is out on the sidewalk.

Not in by the trophy case.”

“Not my concern,” Jade says. “I’m not the custodian anymore.”

“Just saying,” Hardy says.

“Just listening,” Jade says. “Not that I know why.”

Hardy shakes his head, impressed it seems.

“Your dad started out just like this, once upon a bad afternoon,” he says. “Sitting right in that chair when he was eighteen. I told him he could either—”

“I’m not my father,” Jade cuts in.

“You don’t have to be, no,” Hardy tells her. “You should have seen him when he was a yardegg, though. Always underfoot. Everybody wanted him to play cowboys and Indians with, you know that?”

Jade’s just staring out through the window, trying not to move even one single muscle on her face. On her whole body.

“Because he already was the skin,” she finally says, obviously.

“Because he was always carrying a shiner, a busted lip,”

Hardy says back—where he was leading her. “Thing is, it would look like the cowboys had beaten him up.”

“I supposed to care about this trip down memory lane?”