Page 253 of It Happened on the Lake

His feet landed with a quiet thud.

Craig.

The back of her neck tensed, and she stared in the direction of the bin that he landed in. Though her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, she could barely make out his dark form, felt his presence more than saw him.

She sensed he was on his feet. Straightened.

“Hold it right there,” she ordered.

“What—?”

She switched on her flashlight, aimed upward, right into his startled eyes.

Craig froze, his face a mask of confusion. He winced against the intense light and held up a hand to shield his eyes as he stepped backward.

“Don’t move!” She dropped the flashlight and hoisted the shotgun to her shoulder.

“What the fuck?” he said, regaining some composure as she slowly stood, leveling the gun at his chest while the flashlight shone from the floor, illuminating his feet and legs but now leaving his face in shadow.

She steadied the gun.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

“I live here.”

“But here, with the gun? Put it down. It’s me.”

“I know who you are. I saw you coming. What’reyoudoing here?” she countered. “Why the hell are you sneaking around in here?”

When he didn’t respond, she pretended surprise. “What? Cat got your tongue? Oh, I meandeadcat got your tongue?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Put the gun down, Harper. You’re not going to shoot it down here. Shit, there would be buckshot everywhere. You’d kill us both!”

“I asked you a question. Why are you here?”

She saw the lie forming in the shadows of his face. “I came to the door. No one answered and I knew—”

“Bullshit, Craig. I saw you leave. You came in your boat tonight. Like you have before.” She was watching him and in the feeble light noticed his face changing from surprise and thinking he could cajole her to a suppressed anger evident in the thin line of his lips, the way his eyes narrowed.

“Just give me the gun.”

“No way. You tell me why you’re trying to scare the living crap out of me! Ever since I got back here and maybe before, you’ve been sneaking into this house. Leaving me little surprises.” Her anger was getting the better of her now. “Dolls with sick messages moving around the house?ICU?What the hell was that all about? Meaning I see you, like you were watching me, right? Kind of a sick joke.” She could tell from his reaction, the blink, that she’d hit the nail on the head. Twisted bastard!

“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . .”

“You did! And you were! I caught you here tonight. For the love of God, Craig, do you think I’m a moron? Iknowyou moved the dolls around in my house while I was asleep! Iknowyou stole my cat and put his collar on one of the dolls. Iknowyou dug up poor Earline and left her body for me in the tower room hoping I’d find it and freak out. Well, it worked! Mission accomplished!” she said, her fury mounting. “But what I don’t know, what I can’t for the life of me understand, is why.”

“You’re a smart girl,” he said, and he was moving slightly, out of the flashlight’s glow. “You figure it out.”

“Stop!”

He didn’t. He kept inching to her right, trying to avoid the light.

“Smart enough to get into Stanford, right? And tuition wouldn’t be a problem because it would have been all paid for from this.” He motioned upward, to include the massive house above them, and for just a second Harper thought she heard the floorboards overhead squeak, as if the house was protesting. “You neverhadto work a day in your pampered life. Everything handed to you on a silver platter.” He snorted in disgust. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, Harper. If I’d wanted to do that, I could have.”

“You just wanted to terrorize me into selling. With your twisted, juvenile pranks. You thought you’d push me into moving out, hiring you to fix up the house, and then hiring your wife to list it and sell it.”

“Because you weren’t going to sell,” he surmised, and she turned, keeping the gun trained on him. He was unstable. Desperate. “You were hesitating. Beth said so.”