Stranger in the Lake(82)

This is happening. This is really fucking happening. I think of the baby I will never see and the life she or he will never lead, and the hillside blurs with my tears.

He nudges me forward, and slowly, I turn for the dock. “When you flipped Sienna over, Paul knew who she was, and he lied about it to Sam. I saw him talking to her the day before.” Keep him talking. Drag this out and pray. It’s the only strategy I’ve got left.

“I know. Paul told me. He was pretty torn up about it, too.”

“But why would he lie about knowing her if he was innocent? He doesn’t have an alibi for the time she was killed. Maybe it was him.”

The lawn dumps us onto a patch of gravel and dirt, and wet mud squishes between my toes. By now my bare feet are so cold they’re going numb, a sharp mess of pins and needles that’s making it hard to walk.

“Because by the time I fished her out, all three of us knew what she was doing in town. She’d been talking it up in all the restaurants and bars, getting folks riled up about some big new development around Skeleton Bob. When I pulled her out of the lake, Paul and I both knew who put her there.”

“You.”

Micah sighs, long and loud. “You’re starting to wear on my nerves, Charlotte. It was Jax. Why else would Paul run off to Balsam Bluff if not to protect him?”

An excellent question. One I haven’t figured out the answer to yet.

“It wasn’t me.” Jax’s voice carries over the water from our left, and I almost collapse in relief. I whip around and so does Micah, aiming his gun into the darkness. He swivels from bush to tree to rocky patch, finally settling on a dark smudge behind a tuft of tall grass.

Batty Jax, and he’s holding a rifle.

“But I gotta say, man, bravo. Killing that girl, setting things up to make it look like me or Paul. Didn’t matter to you which one of us took the fall. So long as you and your dad could pretend you had nothing to do with any of it.”

Micah rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t lower his gun. “Oh, Jesus, not you, too. Why does everybody think that I killed her?”

“Process of elimination. If it wasn’t Paul or me, it had to have been you. You’re the only one left.”

In between the words, a distant and ghostly wail carries across the wind and water.

Sirens.

If Micah notices, he doesn’t let on. “Her coat was in your cabin, dumbass. Charlotte saw you wearing her scarf.”

“Yeah, because Sienna gave them to me. She didn’t want me to be cold.”

Micah laughs, a sharp, angry sound. “Right. Next you’re going to say that wasn’t your necklace she was waving around town. That she—”

“I told her the truth!” Jax stabs the rifle in Micah’s direction, his shout echoing over the water. “When she showed me that necklace, I confessed. I told her we were wasted. That for some reason I will never understand, we piled into Bobby’s car. That I was the idiot who drove us into the cove. She recorded the whole thing. I talked to her for hours and you know what? It was a goddamn relief to finally tell somebody.”

There’s a long, stunned silence. Jax’s face is a shadow, just two white eyes glaring down the barrel of his gun.

Micah sputters. “You stupid, demented, pathetic asshole. What the hell were you thinking? Do you know what the penalty is for manslaughter? There’s no statute of limitations on that shit.”

Jax spreads his free arm wide. “Look at me, man. I’ve already lost everything I ever cared about. I’m already living in hell. I’m pretty sure jail can’t be worse than this.” He drops his arm, his tone flat and final. “It’s over, Micah. I’m done.”

“No.” Micah’s voice rises in anger, in panic. “You idiots might be done but it is not over. We’ll say you traded your necklace for a joint. We’ll say Bobby stole it.”

In Micah’s desperation, he’s not thinking clearly. By now too many people know—Chet and me and Sienna’s friend Grant. Micah looks across the cove, to the swirling blue and red lights painting colors on the trees and lake surface. Two, maybe three minutes, tops.

Another voice floats down from the opposite side of the hill. “Micah. Put down the gun.”

Paul.

My heart alights, and I search the hill for his familiar form, finding it half-hidden behind a mountain laurel the size of a tree. I take in his stance, the glint of metal in his hand—his gun from the safe. Chet stands a pace or two behind, a ragged shadow in the darkness. There’s the flash of white teeth as he gives me a grin, and I can’t help it—I laugh with relief.

Micah’s gun is steady on Jax, but his gaze swivels back and forth between the two, from Paul to Jax and back again, at the two guns pointed at his head. “Gentlemen, I believe this is what’s called a Mexican standoff. You know the first one to pull the trigger wins, right? Who’s it gonna be?”

Silence. I hold my breath and wait for a shot.

Micah lowers his arm, the gun dangling from a fist. “Fine. Fine. But I would just like to reiterate for the record that we wouldn’t be standing here right now if you bastards had just followed the plan. Sit tight, act normal, say nothing. Isn’t that what we agreed to do? But Paul here couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut and Jax... Jax had to go and lose his marbles. Batty Jax. You can’t make this shit up.”