Page 37 of Silent Bones

Natalie leaned back, her legs folded to one side, watching the stars. “I’m not sure. I set it up with a new managing editor and some interns. That was my job. I never intended to be the one running the show. The place runs itself, more or less. I’m supposed to check in monthly but haven’t made it out there in a while.”

“You seen Carl McNeal?”

“No. You?”

“Not since my last run-in.”

He looked at her sideways. “Your father likes to think he controls everything, but you…”

“Walk to the beat of my own drum,” she finished for him, then gave a short laugh.

“Exactly.”

They reached the lake’s center. Noah rested the paddle inside the canoe and opened the basket. A few small containers, a thermos, some sandwiches, and a pair of reusable glasses that clinked faintly together. The smell of roasted garlic and rosemary drifted up.

He handed her a beer and nodded toward the far shore, the treeline softly silhouetted in the moonlight. “You see that house over there? The one on the corner with the big pines?”

She followed his gaze. “Yeah.”

“That was my childhood home.”

She looked back at him. “The one your father sold?”

“I tried to stop him, but he was done with it. Didn’t even tell me who bought it.”

“Were you close with your mother?”

“She passed before I turned eighteen. Brain aneurysm. One minute she was there, the next… gone.” He exhaled through hisnose. “My father blamed me. Or maybe not directly, but… it changed him. Changed us.”

Natalie rested her arm along the edge of the canoe, studying him. “Is that why you left High Peaks?”

He nodded. “Part of it.”

“And you came back because of your brother.”

It wasn’t a question.

“You’ve been digging,” he said, half a smile forming.

“I’ve done my research. Had to. You’re a bit of a closed book, Noah Sutherland.”

He gave a low chuckle. “As are you.”

She tilted her head. “How so?”

He watched her carefully. “How much do you really know about your father’s business activities?”

Something shifted in her face. Not surprise, just that slight tightening around the mouth, the evasive flick of the eyes. Noah had seen it before. In suspects. In survivors. In people who knew more than they wanted to admit.

“I thought we were out here to have dinner,” she said, voice cooler now, “not talk about my father.”

“We are. I just…”

“I like you, Noah. I really do. I like what we have going. But I don’t like feeling like I’m being used to extract information every time we get together. My father is off-limits.”

“And mine’s not?”

“I’ve told you why.” She turned her head away, toward the shoreline in the distance. “Look, maybe you should take me back.”