Page 69

“What’s going on here, Micah? And tell me the truth, because I’ll know if you’re lying. I’m starting to piece things together.”
He squints at me behind his glasses. “What kind of things?”
“Nope, it doesn’t work that way. You tell me and I’ll know if I can trust you.”
“I understand that, but we’re in the middle of a police investigation. What I can tell you is that Jax has been a source of contention between me and Paul since the second he walked into the woods. Longer than that, actually. Paul was the reason Jax and I were friends. He was the glue.”
“Is Jax the reason Bobby was at the bottom of Pitts Cove?”
Micah nods. “There’s a piece of evidence putting him in the car, yeah. They’re still sorting out the rest.”
“That’s why Paul never talks about Jax, isn’t it? Why he bought up all of Pitts Cove. Paul knew what was down there, didn’t he?”
Micah watches me for a long time, the water dripping in streams off his chin. He sighs, his breath cutting a shaft in the foggy rain. “It sure as hell looks that way.”
His answer hits me square in the stomach because it makes a sick sort of sense. Paul knew. He knew, and then heleftBobby down there. For twenty years.
I look to the shoulder, a thin line of mud and puddles that ends in scraggly brush, searching for a good place to vomit. “I can’t go home, Micah. The Sterlings were just there. They told me about the necklace, which I’m guessing you’ve been looking for, haven’t you?”
He nods. “I couldn’t mention it. You understand that, right?”
“But...didn’t Bobby Holmes go missing around the same time Jax wandered into the woods? How is it possible nobody made the connection?”
“You didn’t.”
“I was a kid.” Six going on sixteen, thanks to my jailbird father and a mother who left me alone with a newborn baby for long stretches of time. Too busy caring for Chet to care why the trailer at the end of the park suddenly went dark and quiet. Of course I didn’t make the connection. But the police should have.
Micah lifts his hands, lets them fall back to his sides with a splat. “Selling drugs is a dangerous business. When Bobby disappeared, people assumed he skipped town or ended up at the wrong end of a drug deal gone bad. I heard a million scenarios, and not one of them involved Jax or the bottom of Pitts Cove. It wasn’t something people assumed because there was no reason to assume it.”
“And Katherine?” I say her name, and my voice wavers. “Is it true she and Paul were fighting before her death?”
Micah winces. “Everybody argues, even the perfect couple. And for what it’s worth, I regretted saying those words the second they came out of my mouth. Sam latched on to it like a bulldog, but he couldn’t prove anything. That’s got to count for something, right? Now can we please get out of the rain?”
I nod, and he grabs my arm and leads me to his truck. I’m numb, shaking from the cold and wet and shock. I let him pack me into the passenger’s seat of his truck, then sit there in the stuffy air while he jogs around the front to his side, his big body lighting up in the headlights like a firefly. The cab is thick with the smell of roasted chicken coming from the grocery bags by my feet, heavy brown paper with the gourmet market’s logo. It clings to my lungs and coats the windows in a milky fog, turning the woods and road hazy.
Or maybe that’s just my tears.
The cell phone buzzes in my hand. Paul, probably wondering where I am. I hit Ignore, and my cell goes dim, then black.
Micah climbs in, cleaning his glasses with a bandanna he pulls from the seat pocket. “Look, maybe you should...I don’t know...call him back and talk this out.”
“What’s there to talk about? Paul lied to me about Pitts Cove. He fed me some bullshit story about Walsh Capital and a plan he hatched with the mayor, but I’m no idiot. Swampland is not an investment.”
“No,” Micah murmurs. “It’s not.” He slides his glasses up his nose and cranks the engine. The radio kicks on, a country music station, as does the heat. He fiddles with the controls, flips on the defogger.
“And why is Paul always out for a run when women get sucked into the lake? What is up with that? It’s so awfully damn convenient, don’t you think? Especially since Billy Barnes doesn’t remember seeing him on Wednesday morning. Paul doesn’t have an alibi for the morning yet another woman washes up under his dock. Even Jax said as much. He said, ‘That’s two.’ He told me to watch my back, and I thought it was just Jax being batty.”
“Look, it might be nothing.”
“If you believed that, you would have just said it was nothing.”
Micah doesn’t respond, and his silence is answer enough. I turn to the window, feeling sick.
“What am I going to do? I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have a job. Knocked up with a baby I didn’t plan and don’t have the money to care for, not on my own.” I rake my fingers into the soaked hair at my temples, squeezing with the heels of my hands. “I am married to a criminal. I am having a criminal’s baby. Oh, God, I reallyammy mother.”
My cell lights up on my lap with another call from Paul. I hit Ignore, then pull up his contact card and tap Block. I don’t ever want to talk to him again.
Except I have to, don’t I, because of our baby. A baby attaches me to Paul until the end of time. It tangles us up in a bond so much more complicated than marriage. My throat goes thick, burning with coming tears.