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CHAPTER TWO

CHARLOTTE

M y rental car sweeps down the highway, Louisiana unrolling out in front of me—golden-green grass and weepy-looking live oak trees trussed with Spanish moss. I flew into Houston and then rented a car and went east, leaving Houston’s glittering glass-and-steel civilization behind for this. Swamp land. Old trees. An enormous pressing sky.

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I saw the symbol on CrimeSolvers. In that time, I paid an exorbitant amount of money for a plane ticket, shoved my stuff haphazardly in a suitcase, and came here, to this place, with one $25,000-limit credit card, a printout of my favorite photograph of Edie—currently taped to the rental car’s dashboard—and no real plan.

I’m also starving. Food wasn’t exactly on my mind in the whirlwind of getting to the airport, and all I’ve eaten today was an overpriced croissant from the terminal before I flew out of San Jose. There doesn’t seem to be anything on the highway leading to Pellerin Parish, though. Just a few run-down gas stations that don’t even look open.

So when I see a tattered billboard for some place called Bandit’s Diner, I’m thrilled. The sign says it’s fifteen miles down the road, which should put me in Pellerin Parish. I press a little harder on the gas. I can get something to eat and maybe find out the best place to stay.

It takes about twenty minutes before I reach the diner, and I see it immediately: a big shiny chrome building glittering on the side of the road, a faded neon sign with a pink arrow pointing at the gravel parking lot, and another big white sign that reads, simply, Hamburgers.

I’d eat anything at this point. I certainly wouldn’t say no to a hamburger.

Still, when I park, I don’t get out right away. I catch sight of Edie’s picture, and then I can’t stop staring at it and thinking about her. Thinking about the picture itself. I took it about six months ago, so three months before Scott tried to kill her and she fled to her doom. We’d gone down to Twin Lakes to surf, and I brought my waterproof camera and snapped a bunch of shots while Edie and I were splashing around in the waves together. Edie didn’t know what I was doing; she never liked having her picture taken. But I managed to catch her gazing out over the waves, smiling like she was happy, and the way the sun caught on her hair that day turned it kind of coppery. After the shit happened with Scott, I used the picture as a reference for a painting that I was going to give her as a divorce gift.

Needless to say, I haven’t touched that painting in months.

“I’m going to find out what happened to you,” I tell the smiling, glowing Edie in the picture. Then I step out of the car.

It’s warm, like in California, but humid in a way California almost never is. I can feel the frizz forming in my wavy hair, currently dyed fire engine red over the bleach job I did right before Edie disappeared. My roots are showing, too, about a half-inch of dark brown. I like the contrast, though.

A bell rings over the door as I go into the diner. There aren’t many people there: an older Black couple drinking coffee at one of the booths, a row of cowboy-looking guys sitting at the bar. The cute, twenty-something waitress smiles at me when I come in and chirps out a charming, “Welcome to Bandit’s!” with the faintest hit of a Cajun accent. “Sit anywhere you like.”

I go for one of the booths, choosing one that’s near a guy about my age—maybe a little older. He’s cute, too. Well, maybe cute is the wrong word. He’s handsome in a severe kind of way. Long black hair pulled into a low ponytail, an aquiline nose, lips pursed in concentration. He’s drawing, sketchbook pages scattered around his table.

He glances at me when I walk over to the booth behind him. His eyes are strikingly blue. Not pale and icy but almost cerulean. Ocean water blue.

He scowls at me, then turns back to his drawings. I slide into the booth while the waitress brings over a menu.

“Don’t mind Jaxon,” she tells me. “He’s moody from being Pellerin’s resident artist.”

“You don’t have to tell everyone that,” Jaxon grumbles. I like his voice. It’s deep and velvety, with the same faint Cajun accent as the waitress.

“Why not? I think it’s cool.” The waitress grins at me. “What’ll you have to drink, hon?”

“Just water.” I look at the back of Jaxon’s head. “I’m an artist, too, actually. I’m visiting from California.”

“Well, how ‘bout that?” The waitress beams. “Jaxon, looks like you finally have someone to talk to.”

Jaxon makes a kind of scoffing sound, but I see those eerie blue eyes glance at me from over the top of the booth seat, drinking me in. The way he looks at me makes me feel kind of pinned in place, like I’m in an entomologist’s display.

I feel a brightness behind my right eye that means a migraine is on its way. Weird. And also annoying.

“What medium do you work in?” he asks.

This was not the conversation I expected to be having when I came into this diner. “Gouache, mostly. Oil if I’m feeling spicy.”

“You’re a painter.” He shifts in his seat, turning around to look at me head-on. “I do mixed media.”

“Cool. I’ve dabbled in that a bit.” I look down at my menu, although I don’t read it. I can feel Jaxon staring at me. It’s intense, bordering on creepy but never quite crossing the line. Which makes it hot.

This is not why you’re here, Charlotte .

“What brings you to the marsh?”

“The marsh?” I look up at him again, thrown off by his question. He gestures toward the big windows, although all I can see are the tangle of oak trees and pale grasses. “The marsh. The swamp. Where we are. This isn’t exactly on the road to New Orleans.”

I narrow my eyes at him, irritated. “I’m not going to New Orleans.”

He stares at me expectantly, but I just look down at my menu. Hamburgers, chicken finger baskets, fried shrimp. My stomach grumbles. My temple pulses.

And Jaxon’s still staring at me. I can feel it. I look back up at him, and he doesn’t even bother looking away. Although the way he’s staring at me isn’t bad, exactly. It’s not the stereotypical judgmental stares I might expect from being in a red state. His expression is more—curious. Interested. A little hungry.

“You’re making me uncomfortable,” I tell him, which isn’t exactly true but isn’t exactly a lie either.

To my annoyance, he grins. I’m sad to report that it is devastatingly handsome. “I do that,” he says. “Just ask Maggie.” He tilts his head toward the waitress.

“Well, could you stop?”

“Not until you answer my question.” His blue eyes bore into me. If we knew each other better, if he was a friend of a friend, or if this was some art gallery in California and not a redneck diner in Louisiana, I’d probably want to take him home with me. I’ve always had a taste for intense, socially maladjusted assholes of both the male and female variety.

“What question was that?” I look over at the waitress. Maggie. She’s flirting with the cowboys at the bar while she refills their coffees.

“Why are you in the marsh?”

I sigh and settle back in my booth. Jaxon just keeps watching me, waiting for my answer. And I realize—I should just tell him the truth. I might as well start my investigation now.

“My friend disappeared three months ago,” I tell him. “I’m trying to find her.”

Jaxon’s brow furrows. Then he turns around and drops back into his booth just as Maggie comes back over with my water.

“Really,” she says. “Don’t mind him. He’s like this with everyone.”

“Shut up, Maggie.” His voice drifts up from his booth, but Maggie just laughs.

“We’re all used to him,” she says. “Now, what can I get you?”

I order a hamburger since that’s what’s on the sign outside, and I figure it’s probably the best thing on the menu. Maggie talks me into some curly fries, too. As she leaves, she calls out to Jaxon, “You behave yourself.”

He doesn’t respond.

I slump down in my booth while I wait for my food. Jaxon doesn’t bother me anymore, and I’m not sure if I’m grateful for it or not. He’s strange. But I like strange.

I pull out my phone and go over to CrimeSolvers, skimming through the latest updates. There’s nothing interesting. Nothing new. I force myself to stop doomscrolling, only to pull up the screenshot of the symbol that I took when I was talking to Edie. I’ve stared at this picture hundreds of times, trying to figure out where Edie was when we were talking. Not the campgrounds—if there had been a huge occult-esque symbol painted on the walls of any of the buildings, the nerds at CrimeSolvers would have known about it. So she was somewhere else. Maybe she was in Roanoke and just came back to the camp to meet Scott. Or maybe she was somewhere nearby.

Somewhere with a killer.

“Here you are.” Maggie’s voice drags me away from my phone. I look up at her as she sets down my plate: a big, greasy burger and a mountain of crispy, golden, perfectly seasoned curly fries. “Everything look okay?”

“Everything looks amazing.” I move to set my phone down, but something stops me. Jaxon clearly wasn’t a good place to start my investigation, but maybe Maggie is. “Actually, can I ask you a question?”

Maggie gives me a smile. “Depends on what it is.”

I pull up the symbol again and show it to her. “Do you know what this means?”

Maggie frowns, then shakes her head. “No, I’ve never seen that before. You should ask Jaxon, though. He’s into all that creepy stuff.”

The top of Jaxon’s dark head pops up over the edge of the booth seat. “Stop volunteering me for shit.”

“Oh, you can’t take five seconds to look at a picture? It’s not like you’ve moved from that booth in about two hours.” Maggie winks at me like we’re in on some game together. That game being annoying the crap out of Pellerin Parish’s apparently only artist.

Jaxon gives an exasperated sigh but does, to my surprise, slide out of the booth. It’s my first time seeing him— really seeing him—and my dumbass pussy reacts in its usual dumbass way of wanting to jump his bones even though he’s a weird, somewhat creepy asshole.

He’s got that soft yet muscular body I’ve always liked, with strong artist’s arms and thick thighs and the faintest hint of a belly. He said he works in mixed media, but he looks like might do welding or metalwork—those types always have a particular type of strength to them. His hair really is gorgeous: black and straight and silky, a stunning contrast against his golden-brown skin. And, of course, the blue eyes, currently scowling at me and Maggie.

“What?” he says.

Maggie shows him my phone, completely unfazed by his attitude. Unfortunately, I am fazed by his attitude in that the bitchiness just makes him hotter to me.

See, this right here is why I never judged Edie for being married to Scott Hensner, the king of the douchebags.

Jaxon stares down at the picture for long enough that excitement sparks in my chest, because I’m certain he recognizes it. His expression doesn’t change, but he studies it like it’s a stolen answer key and he’s an eighth grader who’s about to fail algebra.

So when he says, “Never seen it before,” the disappointment feels like a gut punch.

“Really?” I ask before I can stop myself. Jaxon looks at me, his expression unreadable.

“Yeah,” he says. “Really.” Then, a beat later: “Sorry.”

He doesn’t sound like he means it.

Well, at least I tried. Maggie gives me an apologetic shrug and goes back to flirting with the cowboys. I drop my phone in my bag and dig into my burger, which is, in fact, fucking delicious. Or maybe I’m just hungry.

Halfway through my meal, Jaxon slides out of the booth again, this time with his stuff all stacked up against his chest. He’s clearly leaving, but he stops by my booth and stares down at me until I look up at him. I swallow my curly fry. “Yes?”

“What was that thing?” His eyes are blue laser beams burrowing into me. The bright spot flares behind my eye again. “In the picture?”

“I don’t know.” I sip my water. “My friend, the one who disappeared—the last time I talked to her, she was standing in front of it.”

It’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud to anyone. These past three months, I’ve kept everything with Edie close to my chest. My snotty artist friends never understood why I wanted to hang out with her, and, just like with the assholes on CrimeSolvers, Scott’s disappearance is more interesting to them anyway, although for different reasons.

This is something I have to do by myself, finding Edie. But still, it feels nice to say it to someone, even if that someone is a weird redneck asshole.

“I see.” He keeps staring at me in a way that feels like entrapment. I curl my fingers around my water cup. The hairs prickle on the back of my neck. A wave of vertigo washes over me, although it dissipates almost as fast as it comes on. “Well, I hope you find her.”

And then he’s gone.