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His gaze roams the kitchen, landing on the cup of coffee in his hands. “Okay, but you gotta promise not to laugh.”
“I promise.”
“I’m serious, Charlie. Not so much as a snicker.”
“I promise, Chet. Now tell me.”
“Fine. Okay.” A pause, his gaze wandering away from mine, then sticking. “I think I want to be a chef.”
At the thought of food, my mouth waters, and a stab of hunger slices through the acid churning in my empty stomach. I think of last night’s dinner, shrimp stir-fry I was too excited to eat much of, and the oatmeal I just stuffed down the drain. I need food, and fast, and Chet’s taste buds are like mine. He likes things deep-fried and smothered in cheese.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? I like to cook.”
“I know you do.” I smile across the kitchen at my baby brother. “You can start by making me an omelet.”
11
I tear into the eggs like I haven’t eaten in days, gobbling half of them down before Chet has cracked his own into a bowl. The omelet is delicious, light and fluffy and perfectly salted, without even the tiniest touch of browning. And just like I knew it would be, it’s heavy on the cheese.
“You know, this chef thing isn’t such a bad idea,” I say, working off another bite with the side of my fork. Hot goo gushes out of the center, an avalanche of cheese and tomato and translucent onion. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
Chet shrugs. “TV. YouTube. It’s not that hard.”
The toaster pops, shooting up two slices of bread, and he cuts them into perfect triangles while rattling off his repertoire. Eggs and hash browns wrapped in bacon, anything that can be fried in a pan or grilled, fat cheese dogs smothered in chili. Behind him, onions sizzle in the pan.
I am digging out some organic jam from the top refrigerator shelf when the mudroom door opens, and Micah’s voice calls out, “Hey, Charlotte.”
“In the kitchen.”
A few seconds later he appears in the doorway in his socks, a thermos dangling from a finger. “Why does it smell so good in here? Hey, Chet. How’s it hanging?”
Chet eyes him from across the island. “Sheriff.”
Micah gives him a good-natured smile. “Better not let Chief Hunt hear you say that. He likes being the only sheriff in town. And you know neither of us are sheriffs, right? I’m not even officially a cop.”
Chet knows all this, of course, but he also knows that Micah’s father is scary as hell, and that at the first sign of trouble, he and his deputies will roll through the trailer parks on the other side of the mountain and whoop their sirens at anybody who happens to be sitting outside. He knows they’ll search the trunk of an old hooptie but let a BMW fly by without so much as a warning. He’s grown up fearing men like Chief Hunt with their guns and billy clubs and handcuffs chinking from their uniform belts. Micah may not be a cop, but he’s still connected to law enforcement, and not only because he’s the police chief’s son. He worked in search and rescue for years until founding his underwater criminal investigations training and consulting company, Lake Hunters.
Chet turns back to the stove with a shrug. “If you say so.”
Micah lets it go, lifting the thermos into the air. “Can I bother you for a refill?”
“Of course.” I motion him over, abandoning the rest of my breakfast. “You look like you’ve warmed up some.”
He’s no longer corpse-white but pink from the chill, his lips no longer a vibrating blue. If he was smart, he used one of the towels I laid out downstairs to soak up some of the lake water.
“The coffee helped some. Thanks.” He hands me the thermos and I settle it in the sink, rinsing it out along with the dripper cone. “Sam just called with a lead on the woman. She was staying at one of the B and Bs in town.”
“Oh. That’s good news, right?”
“Mostly, it is. It’s good news that they know her name and where she’s from, which means they can contact her next of kin. But word’s gonna get out soon, if it hasn’t already. Sam’s trying to get out in front of it. It’s better for everybody if her family doesn’t hear about it from the news.”
He’ll have to hurry. It doesn’t take much to ignite talk in this town, and a tourist found floating in the lake will be a fast flame. As soon as the cops show up at that B and B, as soon as they start slinging around the crime tape and interviewing witnesses, conjecture will spread through these hills like a late-summer forest fire. I give it until the end of the day before people start showing up here.
I look up, and Micah is watching me. “‘No comment.’ Dad asked me to impress upon you that those are the only two words he would like to hear coming out of your mouth—except he didn’t say it that nice and he didn’t ask. He wants you to say it to friends, to family, to whoever comes knocking on your door wanting to know what you saw down there at the lake. If somebody won’t take no for an answer, maybe don’t send them to Dad. Send them to Sam instead. Let him deal with them.”
I nod, settling the dripper on the thermos rim. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Don’t be so sure. Reporters are a persistent bunch, and they will go to all kinds of crazy lengths to make you think they’re not one. They’ll pretend to be a friend or a prospective client. They’ll ambush you in parking lots and at the grocery store. They will follow you around town like your shadow if they think they’re gonna get the first word out of you. Dad says his team is going to be strategic in which details of this investigation they release to the public, and he doesn’t want things getting out there he’s not ready to talk about, okay?”