Stranger in the Lake(26)
“Okay, okay, I get it. ‘No comment’ to anyone and everyone.”
He nods, satisfied. “Where’s Paul?”
“He had a work thing. He left about an hour ago.” I reach for the electric grinder, pry open the plastic top. I can’t quite make myself look Micah in the eye.
“How?”
I frown, my fingers freezing on the cord. “How what?”
“How did he get to his work thing?” Micah clarifies. “I thought his car was in the shop.”
Shit. It’s a point Paul and I didn’t think through, how we’d explain his transportation. I can’t say he went bobbing up the driveway with a thirty-pound backpack on his shoulders. Micah knows Paul too well, and he’ll know if there’s something I’m not telling him.
Out on that hill, Paul and I made a decision, a silent pact. Our lie tipped over that first domino, setting off an avalanche that now there’s no stopping. The only way forward is to spout off another one, cloak it in an occasional truth to serve as a decoy, pile on the details to build a believable story. My pulse flickers under my skin, turning it hot and sticky—or maybe that’s the heat of Micah’s stare.
I clear my throat. “He didn’t say. I just assumed somebody was picking him up. There’s a replacement car waiting for him at the office.”
I busy myself with the coffee while Chet finishes up his omelet, sliding it onto a plate he carries in a wide arc around Micah, now tapping away at his cell phone screen. He presses the phone to his ear and I know who he’s calling. I also know there’s no way in hell Paul is going to pick up. Not after he made me swear not to tell Micah where he was going. Better to ignore the call and make up some excuse when he gets back.
Micah hangs up without leaving a voice mail, and I feel him in the room, taking up space, sucking up all the air. This is a man who knows how to dig up the truth, and from dangerous and watery depths. If he thought I was keeping something from him, he would poke poke poke at me until he cracked me like one of Chet’s eggs. That’s why he’s so good at finding things people want to stay hidden, he’s relentless, and why I clamp down on my expression.
Micah slips the phone back into his pocket. “When you see Paul, tell him to give me a call, will you? I need to talk to him about something. It’s pretty urgent.”
I smile. “Sure thing.”
He fetches his boots from the mudroom, puts them on by the back door. “I’ll check in before heading home tonight, see how y’all are doing.”
“Sounds good,” I say, even though it doesn’t sound good at all. I don’t want Micah swinging by, not without Paul here as a buffer. Every second I spend alone with that man is another chance for me to lie or worse—to talk myself into a corner. A flash of anger blooms in my chest at Paul for leaving me here, for trekking off into the woods for who knows where or how long. When he gets home, I’m going to kill him.
“Hey, Charlotte?”
I look to where Micah is standing, one foot in the mudroom.
“Keep the doors locked and the alarm on at all times, okay? And maybe have Chet check the windows. Until we figure out who put that woman in the lake and why, nobody’s safe.”
Nobody’s safe.
The words punch a panic button in my chest. Even with a backyard full of cops, even with big, badass Micah in the house next door, the murderer could show up here. My breath comes in a shallow spurt, hollowing out the room and my lungs and my stomach. But somehow I manage a nod.
As soon as Micah leaves, Chet turns to me. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”
“What was what all about?”
He reaches across the counter for the pot of jam. “Don’t you play coy with me, Charlie Delilah McCreedy. Where is Paul, really? And why did you just lie to the sheriff about it?”
I don’t correct Chet or ask what gave me away. It could be any one of a number of things—my shaky hands, my twitchy gaze, the unambiguous pauses while I thought through my string of lies. Chet knows all of my tells.
I pour the beans in the grinder and flip it on with a thumb. “No comment.”
12
June 12, 1999
7:07 p.m.
Jax didn’t want to be here. While Paul and Micah talked nonsense, sports and parties, and debated which was the superior food group, pizza or hamburgers, Jax leaned back on the lounger and stared out the window at the tops of the trees, wishing he was anywhere but here, at Paul’s house. The top of Leafy Knoll, maybe, or crawling through the caves on the western end of the lake. Paul was cool, but Mrs. K was right about there being something going on between Jax and Micah. For the past hour, Micah had worked Jax’s every last nerve.
He bragged about girls, the ones he’d slept with and the ones he planned to, and how the ones at Clemson, where Micah was starting as a freshman this coming fall, were supposed to be hot and rich and easy. He ticked off his accomplishments like they were nothing, the cliffs he’d climbed and the pounds he’d bench-pressed, boasting and blowing steam until Jax couldn’t take another second.
“I have a question,” Jax said, interrupting an endless soliloquy about the size of his trust fund. Micah stopped flipping through the CDs on the far shelf and swung his gaze around. “Have you always been this obnoxious, or am I just now picking up on it?”