Page 23 of Hold Your Breath

“Hey, Jim.” Lou took a casual step back, as if to get a wide-angle look at the pickle selection.

His head whipped around, and he glared at her suspiciously for a long moment before his expression finally cleared. “Lou. Hey.”

“How’re things?” she asked.

He paused again, although not quite as long this time. “Bad.”

“Oh. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah.” Without saying anything else, he stalked to the end of the aisle and disappeared in the frozen-foods section. Unfortunately, his smell lingered.

Dropping the jar of pickles into her handbasket, she darted for the cashier and, hopefully, fresher air. But as she whipped around the hot-chocolate display at the end of the aisle, she almost ran headlong into someone.

“Rob!” She backpedaled a couple of steps and lowered her voice. “Sorry about that. Smelly Jim was just in that aisle, so a quick exit was necessary—for my lung health, I mean.”

A quick smile touched his mouth. “Understandable. You should smell the inside of his trailer home.”

“No. Thanks, but I’ll pass.” She glanced at the teenager leaning against the handle of Rob’s shopping cart. The kid was a shorter, skinnier carbon copy of the sheriff. “Hi.”

The boy flipped his bangs out of his eyes and gave her a grunt.

“Tyler.” The sheriff’s voice was quiet, but his son must have heard the warning, because he straightened from his slouch and even met her eyes.

“Hey.” It still sounded sulky, but at least it was an actual word.

“I’m Lou.” She grinned at him, amused by his angst. The poor sheriff had his hands full with this one. “Nice to meet you.”

“You just move here?”

With a shrug, she said, “Sort of. Depends how you define ‘just.’ It’s been about seven months, but some of the old-timers think people who moved here twenty years ago are newcomers.”

Rob gave a snort that Lou took as agreement.

“I’m on the rescue dive team,” she told Tyler. “That’s how I met your dad.”

“Oh!” Recognition made his face light. “You found that dead guy in the reservoir. The headless one.”

Rob gave his son a sharp look. “I didn’t tell you that.”

“School, Dad,” Tyler muttered. Lou had to hide a grin at how the kid patronized his intimidating father. “It’s, like, gossip central there. We probably hear stuff before you do.”

Lou’s ears perked up at that. “Anyone at school have a guess who it is?”

“Well, Braden Saltzman’s uncle is one of those militia guys, and Braden thinks it’s them. Because of the no-head thing. Like, he talked when he shouldn’t have, and so they cut his head off as a warning. Braden said that head is probably mounted on the wall in their compound—”

“I think that’s enough.” The sheriff didn’t raise his voice, but it still cut through Tyler’s macabre theory with the sharpness of a blade.

The kid dropped his head, glower firmly back in place.

“We’d better go. Good to see you, Lou.” He headed toward the dairy section, one hand pushing the cart and the other on his son’s shoulder.

“Bye,” Lou called after them, a little disappointed not to hear any more of the high school set’s theories. She could have used Tyler and his friends for a brainstorming session.

Swinging her almost-empty basket, she headed for the cashier, grabbing a couple of candy bars on the way. She had to make her trip to the store worth it, after all.

“Hey, Doris,” she greeted the cashier.

“Hi, Lou.” As she started scanning the items, Doris asked, “You hear about the dead guy in the reservoir?”