The House Across the Lake(64)

I don’t tell him this because I don’t think he cares. If anything, it might make him less willing to talk.

“Is this about finding them?” he says. “Or finding out what happened to Katherine?”

“Both.”

“What if only one of those things is possible?”

I slide a hand across the mattress until I’m touching the handle of the knife. “I think everything’s on the table, don’t you?”

He responds with an eye roll and a sigh, as if bored by the idea of me actually using the knife.

“Look at you acting all tough,” he says. “I have to admit, even this weak attempt at threatening me is a surprise. I might have underestimated you a little.”

I wrap my fingers around the knife. “More than a little.”

“There’s just one problem,” he says. “Some unfinished business I’m not sure you’ve thought of yet.”

In all likelihood, he’s right. There’s a lot I haven’t thought of. None of this was planned. I’m working without a script now, improvising wildly and hoping I don’t fuck it all up.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He moves his arms as far as they can go, the ropes binding them to the bedposts stretched taut. “And you’re clearly staying. Which leaves me curious about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What you plan on doing with Tom Royce.”





BEFORE





I let the phone keep ringing, too stunned to end the call. For his part, Boone doesn’t bother to answer it. He knows who’s calling.

Me.

Trying to reach the same person who had called Katherine Royce.

“I can explain,” he says at the same time the call transfers to his voicemail recording, bringing two versions of Boone to my ears. They wind around each other, performing a surreal duet.

“Hi, I’m not available to take your call. Please—”

“—listen to me, Casey. I know what—”

“—your name and number, and I’ll—”

“—thinking, and I can assure—”

“—you back.”

I tap my phone, cutting off the recorded Boone as the real one gets up from the kitchen counter and takes a step toward me.

“Don’t,” I warn.

Boone raises his hands, palms up, in a gesture of innocence. “Please just hear me out.”

“Why were you calling her?”

“Because I was worried,” Boone says. “I’d called her the day before, not getting any answer. And when I saw you break into the house, I called one last time, hoping that we were wrong and she was there avoiding me and that you barging in like that would force her to answer the phone and tell me she was okay.”

“Avoiding you? You told me you barely knew her. That you’d only met once or twice. You said the same thing to Wilma. That seems like a lot of concern for someone you claimed not to know very well.”

Boone sits back down at the counter, a smug look on his face. “You have no right to judge. You hardly knew Katherine.”

I can’t argue with that. Katherine and I were barely past the acquaintance stage when she disappeared.

“At least I didn’t lie about it,” I say.

“You’re right. I lied. There, I admitted it. I did know Katherine. We were friends.”

“Then why didn’t you say that? Why lie to me? To Wilma?”

“Because it was complicated,” Boone says.

“Complicated how?”

I think back to the afternoon I spotted Katherine in the water. There was one thing about that moment that should have bothered me then but ended up getting lost in the shuffle of everything else that’s happened.

Why hadn’t I seen her earlier?

I was there all afternoon, sitting on the porch, facing her house and dock. Even though it was far away and I hadn’t yet hauled out the binoculars—and even though I wasn’t paying much attention to the water—I would have noticed someone on the other side of the lake coming outside, strolling down their dock, diving in, and starting to swim.

But I saw nothing. Not until Katherine was in the middle of the lake.

Which meant she’d been swimming not from her side of the lake, but from mine. Specifically, the area of the Mitchell house, where the lake bends inward, partially hiding the shore.

“She was with you, wasn’t she?” I say. “The day she almost drowned?”

Boone doesn’t blink. “Yes.”

“Why?” Jealousy seeps into my voice, unintended yet also unavoidable. “Were you two having an affair?”

“No,” Boone says. “It was all very innocent. We met the night I arrived in August. She and Tom came over to introduce themselves and told me they were here until Labor Day and that I shouldn’t be a stranger. The next day, Katherine swam across the lake to my dock and asked me if I wanted to join her.”

“Do you think she was trying to seduce you?”

“I think she was just lonely. If she did have sex in mind, I didn’t pick up on it. She’s a supermodel, for Christ’s sake. She could have any man she wanted. No way did I suspect she was interested in me.”