My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(82)

“Just saying,” Hardy says. “I told him before you were born, I told him he lays one hand on you, just passing down what he’d got, that I’d be all over his ass.”

Jade swallows, blinks, says, “I see Letha got to you too.

Good to know.”

“I—”

“He’s never hit me,” Jade says, “you saved me, Sheriff, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Hardy just stands there, lets Jade stew in her own juices.

“So when’s dinner around here?” she finally has to say just to move them ahead, out of this hole she’s dug. “And what is it? More of that hot bologna?”

Hardy doesn’t answer, is tracking Mr. Holmes now, it feels like. He’s buzzing Terra Nova. Just a small angry fly, banking high against a gust only he can feel.

“They hate it when he does that,” Hardy says, tossing his chin across the water. “Just wait, my phone’s about to ring.”

“And he hates them right back,” Jade says. “All balances out, doesn’t it?”

Hardy plunks down heavy in his seat, creaks it back again, regards Jade over his steepled fingers.

“So you hoping you’re right about all this, and a lot of people die, or is it better if you’re wrong?” he asks.

“People are already dying,” Jade tells him. “Doesn’t matter what I do and don’t hope. I’m not part of it, am just, like, calling it.”

“Good answer, good answer,” Hardy tells her. “But here’s mine. I’m concerned that if you’re not locked up in back, here, then you find a way to ruin Saturday for everybody. Or at least for me and my deputies.”

“Sheriff, you can’t—”

“I know, I know, charge you or set you free. Turn you over to Child Protective Services or… or don’t. But I’ve got forty-eight hours to decide, too, don’t I? Don’t answer that. I do have forty-eight hours where I can know exactly where you are the whole time. And, the way I tally that up, that clock started last night on the pier. So your forty-eight hours will be up about ten o’clock Friday night, which’ll be well after working hours. Meaning you spend the weekend here, Jade.

You miss all the festivities. Sorry.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Sir?”

“This is bullshit, sir. You can’t—”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Hardy says. “Your mom or dad comes down, sits where you are right now and pleads your case, I’ll probably have to listen, won’t I?”

Jade just stares out across the lake.

Mr. Holmes is barreling back to Proofrock now, is like a bobsled racer in the air, scraping down some frictionless channel, rocking back and forth from side to side, goggled eyes fixed on home.

“If I was eighteen—” she says, not sure where to go with that.

“This is for your own good,” Hardy tells her. “And for the good of the town.”

“I’m not the killer here, Sheriff. I’m no slasher.”

“But you do want him to ruin the big party, don’t you?”

Jade tries her best to make her eyes go dull, film over. It’s the only armor she has.

“Do I get a phone call at least?” she asks, starting to reach for her phone, but then something keeps her fixed on the…

lake?

Growing up, staring out over the water, what she’d always imagined was some monster of a fish spurting up through the glistening surface, snatching a bird or three, then splashing back down. Anything to break the boredom.

Not this, though.

“Sheriff! ” Jade doesn’t just say, but shrieks, just like the stupidest most bouncy cheerleader.

Hardy stands fast, his chair crashing back behind him, and he’s fast enough to see the very end of it: Mr. Holmes’s ultralight, not skimming the lake anymore, but skipping on it.

Once, twice, and on the third time it sticks, Mr. Holmes’s small body crashing through one purple wing and floating through the air, floating, then cartwheeling across the hard-hard water.

Hardy’s gone faster than a sixty-one-year-old man should be able to be gone, actual papers drifting in the air behind him.

Because that’s the last member of his old pirate band out there sinking in the lake, Jade knows.

“Go, sir,” she says, quietly pocketing her phone and the charger then touching the glass of the window with her fingertips, which is her version of a prayer for Mr. Holmes: the longer she keeps her fingers there and perfectly still, the better chance he has.

By degrees, then, she realizes she’s… alone? unmonitored?

She turns in wonder and Meg’s standing in the door, waiting to be seen.

“I’m to deposit you back in 1A,” she informs Jade.

“But Mr. Holmes—”

“The sheriff is on it, dear.”

“I can’t—”

“You have to, I’m sorry.”

Jade shakes her head in disappointment, regret, and sneaks one last look out the window on her way out of the office, for Hardy’s airboat, the throttle pulled back to 11.

Not yet.

“Can we just wait and see if he—?”

“I have to call emergency services, I have to call—”