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The store was busy when we returned, and Devon had abandoned his research and come out of my office to help Rita.

Jon called someone and arranged to have the contact information I’d requested forwarded to me via email.

He waited to make sure the email came through before leaving, saying that he’d be in touch.

His absence left me with an odd sense of emptiness, a feeling of loss that confused me because I wasn’t ready for a romantic relationship yet.

Not that I hadn’t had them before, or that I was naive or chaste.

In fact, during my post-high-school years while traveling the world with my parents, I’d undergone a sexual awakening at the hands of a couple of generous and talented lovers: first Roberto and later Alexi.

But because of those travels, followed by college and more travel, I never established a steady, committed relationship until two and a half years ago.

That was when David Johnson came into my life.

My parents and I first met him when we were on a trip to Scotland on one of our many explorations of Loch Ness.

David overheard our discussion while we were eating dinner in a pub one evening.

He came over and introduced himself, telling us that he was a graduate from the University of Wisconsin with an MFA in creative writing and that he was in Scotland to investigate the history and lore surrounding Nessie for a book he was writing.

Thanks to the shared interest and the gregarious nature of my parents, David became attached to us for the duration of our trip.

I fell fast and hard.

David was charming, quixotic, terribly handsome, and an unapologetic flirt.

Initially I saw him as an exciting fling for the two weeks I’d be in Scotland, but when I learned that he lived in Madison—only a four-hour drive away from home—I started thinking that fling could become something more permanent.

We spoke on the phone nearly every night, and David visited for long weekends whenever he could get time off from his part-time job at the university.

Though he often stayed at a motel in Sister Bay—it was wintertime and rooms were cheap in the off-season—he also spent many a night on our couch.

My parents were nearly as taken with him as I was.

Six months into our relationship, I rented a small house in Sister Bay for us, and David made plans to move to Door County.

I paid the rent and other costs because David would have to quit his part-time job when he moved.

He offered to help with the bills, saying that he had some money saved up and that his book had been picked up by a small press that was willing to buy more books from him once he finished the current one, but I refused, telling him I was happy to foot the bill for the time being so he could work on that book.

My father wasn’t crazy about our plan; he was convinced that every man I dated was interested only in my money.

In the past, he’d run background checks on anyone I saw more than twice.

Just weeks before the trip to Scotland where we met David, Dad had turned up a DUI on a fellow I was seeing and really liked, and he confronted the guy with it.

That invasion of my date’s privacy, and the implication that I was too stupid or naive to be able to pick a decent person to date, pissed me off, particularly when the guy broke things off with me.

I had a terrible fight with my father over it and I finally told him that if he was going to continue doing background checks on every guy I tried to date that I’d simply stop bringing the fellows home or sharing any information about them.

He relented then and said he wouldn’t do it again unless I asked him to.

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but it was a détente of sorts and we moved on.

In early April, days before David and I were to move in together, my parents decided to take a trip to New Jersey to check out two recent cryptid sightings.

They invited us along, and we flew there in my father’s private plane—he had a pilot’s license and often flew to places we visited in the US—and rented a car to take us to a motel at our first stop at the Jersey shore.

Some local fishermen there were claiming they’d caught a sea monster, but it took only a matter of hours for Dad to determine that the rumor was drunken hyperbole.

The “monster”

was nothing more than a very large fish with a genetic defect that caused it to have three eyes and a tumor that vaguely resembled a human foot.

We spent the night there, and the next morning David shocked me and my parents by proposing to me on the beach during a chilly but beautiful morning sunrise, giving me a modest diamond to mark the occasion.

Despite feeling it was too soon, I happily accepted, figuring we could simply make it a long engagement.

The fact that I’d recently turned thirty and was keenly aware of my biological clock might have played a role in my decision.

While David and I celebrated with romantic walks on the beach and talks about the future, my parents went out and rented a luxury RV to use for the next leg of our trip.

When they returned, my father called a guy and had him run a background check on David without telling me.

The report he got back that evening verified a lot of the things David had told us—his degree from the U of Dub, his part-time job at the university, and his basic stats, like his date of birth, the names of his parents (whom he said he was estranged from), and his Social Security number.

But it also revealed that David had a long-term online-gambling habit that had led to him declaring bankruptcy twice in the past ten years—the most recent time occurring not long before that fateful trip to Scotland.

How anyone that strapped financially could have afforded a trip to Scotland should have been a clue that something more was up, but neither Dad nor his guy picked up on that.

I think they felt that they had enough with what they’d found to that point and didn’t need to dig any deeper. Maybe if there had been more time, or if I hadn’t been so stubborn and impulsive, things would have been different.

We drove down to a campground in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey the next day—my parents in the RV, David and I following them in the car—to investigate reports of animals that had been found with their throats slashed, purportedly by a cryptid creature known as the Jersey Devil.

Shortly after we arrived, my father complained of a bad case of indigestion, and he asked David to drive the car back into the nearest town to buy some antacid.

I knew something was up when I offered to go with David, but my father asked me to stay and look at some of the reports about the dead animals to see what my take on them might be.

As soon as David drove off, Dad took me aside, told me what he’d found, and said he was concerned that David’s only interest in me was my money.

I was furious with him for reneging on his promise and potentially ruining yet another relationship for me.

Our discussion quickly deteriorated into a screaming and yelling match with lots of gesticulations and finger-pointing, some of which was, unfortunately, witnessed by a couple—the only other people at the campground at the time—as they were departing.

I didn’t want to believe what my father was telling me, and I tried to convince him that he’d made a mistake, arguing that David Johnson was a common name and that I’d never once seen David gamble on anything.

Despite my vociferous protests, I think I knew deep down that my father was right.

There’d been signs, like the way David locked his computer and wouldn’t ever let me see what he was doing on it, stating that he didn’t want anyone to read his book until he was done.

Or the way he paid cash for everything, and there was precious little of that.

Or the way he always changed the subject whenever I tried to get him talking about his past.

But I’d been too caught up in the powerful field of David’s extraordinary magnetism to care.

I’d had my rosy future all planned out and now my father was destroying it.

To placate me, Dad agreed to at least confront David with what he’d found and see what David had to say for himself.

We did that as soon as David returned with the antacid tablets, a couple of which I immediately took myself.

David stayed cool and calm through the whole thing, appearing puzzled and surprised by the accusations rather than angry or defensive.

Eventually he admitted to the gambling problem and bankruptcies with an embarrassed flush that turned his face beet red, but he swore he had it under control.

He insisted he loved me and wasn’t after my money.

I watched it all unfold through tear-filled eyes.

Despite his protestations, I knew that my relationship with David was over, and life would never be the same.

After an hour of soul-crushing, heart-wrenching arguments, I told everyone I needed some time to think.

I asked David for the car keys, said that I’d be back before dark and that I’d pick us all up some dinner.

I drove aimlessly for a while, sobbing at intervals, swearing at other times, even laughing hysterically at one point.

Eventually, my mind slipped into a protective task mode, shutting all the emotional stuff down for the time being.

I found a deli and bought a rotisserie chicken and some side salads for our dinner.

It was just after five when I returned to the campground.

The sun was low in the sky, the branches of the trees undulating in the wind, the long shadows they cast on the ground looking like giant menacing claws.

I parked behind the RV and, since no one was outside, entered the vehicle.

I smelled the blood first thing and dropped my bag of food.

One of the salad containers burst open, spilling its vinegary contents, and that smell combined with the raw, meaty scent of blood made me gag.

I found my parents in the back bedroom.

They were both dead, their throats slashed from ear to ear.

I made futile, sobbing attempts to resuscitate them, shifting from one to the other, my tears mixing with the blood that hadn’t yet soaked into the bed and carpeting around them.

David.

On weak, shaky legs, I searched the rest of the RV, leaving bloody handprints on the wall and some of the furnishings as I steadied myself.

There was no sign of David and I shoved down the chilling thoughts trying to force their way to the top of my mind.

I searched outside, calling to him, but my voice was swallowed up by the wind, carried off into the darkness of the surrounding woods.

Had David been kidnapped? Killed somewhere else? Or had he . . . ?

The ideas that I was as naive and stupid as my father had thought and that I might have brought a killer into our lives were simply too much for my panicked, reeling mind to handle.

One thought circled through my brain over and over, repeating like a stuck record and blocking out all other thought.

What have I done? What have I done?

Much of what followed was, and still is, a blur.

I managed to call 911.

There were police cars and ambulances, flashing red and blue lights, white searchlights and search parties.

Then came the interrogations, the pushy, unrelenting press people, and nearly two weeks spent in a New Jersey motel while a detective questioned and shocked me daily with revelations of just how gullible I’d been.

David Johnson was a ghost.

The fellow claiming to be him, the fellow I’d slept with (this still made me gag at times), the fellow I’d agreed to marry had stolen the identity of the real David Johnson, who did, indeed, have a bad gambling problem, two bankruptcies, and a job at the university that he’d lost right before he’d committed suicide seven months earlier.

If only Dad’s guy had found that obituary during his initial search, but the real David Johnson was from Florida and no obituary had appeared in any of the local papers.

I learned that there was no university press planning to publish David’s book; in fact, there was no book.

Not surprisingly, the diamond in my engagement ring turned out to be a fake.

To make matters worse, there was no real proof that David—or the person pretending to be David—had even been at the campground.

The couple who had left shortly after we arrived had been the only other people there.

When they heard about the murders on the news, they let the police know that they had witnessed me and my father in a loud, intense, and demonstrative argument on the day they departed the campground.

Unfortunately, they never saw David because he’d left to drive into town at my father’s direction right after we arrived.

The house I’d rented for David and me in Sister Bay was in my name only.

There were no fingerprints in the rental car except mine because David had worn gloves the entire time.

He wore gloves a lot, claiming he had Raynaud’s, a circulatory issue that caused chronically cold hands—oh, the power of hindsight.

And when the police tried to find out where David had purchased the antacid tablets, there was no receipt, no identifying sticker on the bottle, and no credit card trail because he’d paid cash.

Anything of David’s that had been brought along on the trip was gone, and when the cops later tried to verify the existence of someone purporting to be David Johnson, no one at the motel at the Jersey shore could remember seeing him.

It didn’t take long for the police to turn their attention to me, the bloodied sole survivor of the Carter family fortune and the only verifiable person there at the time of my parents’ deaths.

I had motive and opportunity, and when it was discovered that a knife was missing from the RV kitchen, a knife later found a few feet into the woods, covered with blood but no fingerprints, means were ascribed to me, as well.

It didn’t help that I could be heard muttering my mind mantra on the 911 call: “What have I done?”

Eventually I hired a lawyer and returned home to Door County, but the police in New Jersey let me know that I was still suspect number one.

It was only when an unidentifiable set of fingerprints turned up in the RV (which the police argued could have been from anyone who had previously rented it or the company who managed it), and Devon and Rita told the police that there had been a man in my life, that anyone gave me the benefit of the doubt.

The entire ordeal had left me devastated, confused, afraid, and angry.

I hired a private investigator to try to find David, but who he’d been in real life and where he was now remained a mystery.

In addition to mourning the loss of my parents and dealing with the immense guilt I felt, I had the full-time day-to-day management of the store suddenly heaped upon my shoulders.

In some ways, that was a blessing in disguise because it kept me busy and distracted, and Rita and Devon both did their best to help me get through it. But it wasn’t until Newt dropped into my life that the real healing began. It had been a long, slow, one-day-at-a-time recovery since, and my narrowed emotional bandwidth had left no room for romantic relationships.

I realized that might finally be changing, however, because I felt a tiny thrill of anticipation when Jon Flanders called me just before six that evening.

Unfortunately, my delight had a shorter life span than one of Newt’s drool strings.

“I just got word from the Coast Guard that they found Martin Showalter’s boat in the bay,”

Jon told me.

“It was empty and adrift, and there’s no sign of Martin anywhere.”

“Oh, no,”

I said.

“Do they think he fell overboard?”

“It isn’t clear.

They also found blood on the boat.”

“Blood?”

I echoed, hollow dread churning in my gut.

“How much blood?”

I braced for the answer.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jon said, “A worrisome amount.”

“Maybe he injured himself and someone picked him up and took him to get help,”

I suggested, desperate for a less devastating explanation.

“Did you check his boat to see if it would run? Maybe he tried to work on the engine and cut himself.”

“The engine turned over just fine.

Keys were in the ignition.

No one heard any Mayday calls and there were no reports of stranded or injured boaters from anyone else.”

“Damn,”

I muttered.

“We’ve got patrol boats out looking for him, but it’s going to be dark in an hour or so, and the chances of finding him tonight are slim.

We’ll keep a search going through the night, of course, but it’s not looking good.

I’m sorry, Morgan.”

“You’ll let me know if you find anything? No matter what it is? No matter when it is?”

My request was met with silence, and I quickly added, “I promise I can handle it.”

“I have no doubt of that based solely on the fact that you sleep above all that creepy stuff in your store every night.”

“There’s nothing here to be afraid of,”

I told him.

“Besides, I have Newt.”

“Good point.”

Silence stretched between us for several seconds and then he said, “Let me ask you something, Morgan.

What are the chances .

.

.

I mean .

. . is it possible . . . Do you think—”

“That a lake monster could have attacked Marty in his boat and that’s why he’s missing and there’s blood at the scene?”

“Yes,”

he said, sounding relieved that he hadn’t had to utter the words himself.

“No.”

“You sound mighty certain.”

“I am.

It just doesn’t fit with any type of aquatic animal behavior I know.

If he was in the water and got attacked, that would be one thing.

But this isn’t Jaws.

The idea of something coming up out of the water onto his boat and pulling him overboard? I’m not buying it.”

“Okay,”

he said.

“I’ll keep you posted.”

I thanked him and, once our call was over, found myself wishing he’d call back.

You know that adage about being careful what you wish for? Well, that thought would end up being proof of its veracity.

It was around nine thirty, we had just closed the store, Devon and Rita had gone home, and I was sitting in my office adding up the day’s receipts when Jon called me back.

“Morgan,”

he said, “This is going to sound a little, um, unfriendly, but it’s not meant to be that way.”

“O-kay,”

I said slowly, dread building.

I braced for news that they’d found Marty’s body.

“We have witnesses at the boat launch in Sister Bay who saw you and Marty getting on his boat and heading out yesterday, but we can’t find a single person who saw you return.”

“It was storming hard when we got back, raining sideways.

There weren’t any people out and about.”

“We also can’t find any witnesses who saw Marty go back out on the water today.

But I do have people who say his truck and trailer are parked in the same spot as yesterday.”

“Can’t you track him by using GPS on the sonar thing he had in the boat?”

“We didn’t find one,” Jon said.

“Well, that settles one question,”

I said.

“Lake monsters aren’t in the habit of stealing sonar devices.”

“What time did you get home yesterday?”

“It was at sunset, thereabouts.

We came in a couple hours before that, during the storm, like I said.

I had a flat on the way home and had to pull over and wait out the storm before changing it.

I dozed off in the car for a couple of hours.

Are you sure no one saw Marty go back out again this morning?”

“One of the folks who works in the restaurant down by the launch area said his truck and trailer never moved all night.”

I remembered the look on Marty’s face when he’d seen whatever it was that had appeared on his sonar screen.

Had he simply waited out the storm and gone back out that same night? Based on what I’d seen in the cuddy cabin, I knew Marty sometimes slept in his boat.

I was about to suggest this scenario when Jon said, “Do you know of anyone who might have seen you come back last night?”

Up to that point, I’d thought Jon and I were thinking aloud, trying to figure out what had happened to Marty.

But the emphasis he put on the word “anyone”

gave me a flashback and made me realize what these questions were really about.

“Do you think I might have done something to Marty?”

I said, appalled.

I didn’t wait for his answer.

“You think I hurt him while we were out on his boat and then somehow made it back to shore?”

I scoffed at the idea.

“I’m a good swimmer, Jon, but not that good.”

“The inflatable dinghy for his boat was missing.

We found it on shore half an hour ago, near the boat landing.

There was a rag in it with dried blood on it and dog hair stuck in the blood.”

Tense silence crackled in the air between our phones.

More flashbacks from two years ago washed over me as I tried to keep my response calm and reasoned.

“I hit my head on the ceiling of the cuddy cabin when we were out on the boat and got a cut.

It wasn’t bad enough to need stitches or anything like that, but it did bleed a decent amount.

You know how head wounds do that.”

“I don’t recall seeing a head wound on you earlier today.”

Had there been a hint of accusation in that comment? Anger flared white hot behind my eyes, but I snuffed it.

“It’s hard to see,”

I explained calmly.

“It’s hidden by my hair, and it wasn’t a big cut.

Marty gave me a rag to use to stem the flow of blood.

I don’t know how the rag ended up in the inflatable dinghy.

Or how the dinghy got inflated for that matter.”

Something occurred to me then.

“How do you know the dinghy belonged to Martin?”

“It had the name of his boat stenciled on it.

The Coast Guard said they found a bloody fingerprint on the underside of a seat storage area on the boat.

It won’t be yours?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed under my breath, feeling an all-too-familiar claustrophobic sense of dread.

It felt like the walls of my office were closing in on me and I struggled to keep my breathing at a normal pace.

“The print is probably mine,”

I said, pleased with the controlled sound of my voice.

“I had to open that storage area to get a vest and a flotation ring for Newt when the storm blew in.

The ring was beneath the dinghy.”

I paused, still mildly exasperated.

“Jon, why would I hurt Marty? What possible motive do I have?”

“You said Marty saw something in the water when you were out there.

Maybe you didn’t want to share the credit for a find if it turned out to be a lake monster.”

Cold suspicion washed over me.

“You’ve been talking to your uncle in New Jersey.”

He sighed.

“Not recently, but when I did talk to him, he told me about what happened to your parents.”

“You mean what he thinks happened,”

I snapped.

“Did he also tell you that he accused me of killing them? And that the real killer is still out there somewhere?”

Jon hesitated, taking his time before answering.

“He told me the case was never solved.”

Nice avoidance there, Jon. “Wow,”

I said, shaking my head, anger overpowering my rising panic.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Morgan, I have to consider all—”

“I think we’re done talking,”

I said, cutting him off.

“Good night, Chief Flanders.”

I enunciated the title and name slowly, emphasizing each word, letting it distance me from him.

Newt, sensing that I was upset, came over and put his big head in my lap, looking up at me with pure unconditional love.

I buried my face in the thick fur of his neck and let the tears I’d been holding back finally let go.