Page 22 of Tourist Season

I lean close to where her fingers rest, and sure enough, there’s a small notch in the stone made by a human hand.

When I straighten, we both turn to evaluate the floodplain.

“But how do you know you’re going straight?

It could be there,” I say, pointing to a spot on the ground close to the shore, “or there.” I shift in an arc and point again.

“Or it could be somewhere in between. Unless you have a second point to anchor from, it could be anywhere around there.”

Harper’s focus tracks across the wide, slow-moving river, locking onto another set of boulders on the opposite shore. Her shoulders fall a fraction, enough for me to notice. “There is another anchor point. The rock closest to the water.”

“Okay … well … that’s helpful, I guess. Except for the fact that it’s on the other side of the river.”

“Yeah.” There’s a long, silent pause. I would have expected her to march right up to the riverbank and dive in with the tape measure and probably a knife between her teeth.

But she offers nothing. She just gnaws at her lip before lifting a shoulder as though she can hide her concerns beneath a nonplussed gesture.

“I think it will be fine if we just measure from this rock,” she says as she motions for me to hold the end of the tape against the notch in the boulder. “As long as I go straight-ish—”

I let out an audible sigh and stop her with a touch to her arm that makes her jolt.

“You said yourself, we don’t have much time.

We’d better save ourselves the trouble of digging all over the place.

Do you have another tape measure in here?

” I squat down to start rummaging through the contents of the bag, glancing up to catch Harper shaking her head.

She might not have more than one measuring tape, but she does have a brand-new, sixty-meter-long nylon cord rolled up in the bag, and I’m hoping that might do the trick.

“What’s the distance on your map from the boulder across the river to the first body? ”

“Forty-four meters.”

“Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” We measure out the length of cord to forty-four meters, tying a knot at that marker.

Then we measure out six meters on the tape, locking the position on the wheel.

When everything is ready to go, we head to the shore with the lantern and rope. There’s only one more thing to do.

I take a deep breath and reach behind my head to pull off my shirt.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Harper whisper-hisses, her eyes darting around us as though someone might be lurking.

I chuckle, unfastening my belt buckle next. “Going for a swim.”

I’m sure she’s blushing. I can almost hear the blood rushing to her cheeks.

Though she tries to look away, it’s as though she can’t help herself.

Her eyes keep returning, settling on my abs, or my pecs, or my shoulders, or on my hands as I take my time with the button at the top of my jeans.

Basically anywhere there’s exposed skin or the possibility of more.

What the fuck. I am not flirting with the woman I might kill.

Will kill. I will kill her.

Later.

“So I guess I get it now,” I say.

“Get what?”

“Why you’ve been hiding out for so long in Cape Carnage specifically.” I toe off my shoes and unzip my jeans. Harper’s eyes fuse to mine and her head tilts, and I swear I can feel the absence of her gaze on my skin, a chill that has more to do with her than the cooling night air.

“And why is that, oh wise one?”

“At first I thought you only liked it because it’s …

quirky .” I tug my jeans over my hips, and though I expected she’d look down, she doesn’t.

A twinge of disappointment stings in my throat when I swallow.

“But if you’re spending all your spare time looking out for La Plume and doing his murderous dirty work in exchange for room and board, that makes more sense. ”

If I had been flirting with her, which I wasn’t , my words would have killed my chances stone dead.

The look she gives me is more than lethal.

It’s incendiary. “I can’t believe you are the person trying to take me out.

A man who couldn’t be more ass-backwards if he tried.

Congratulations on getting literally none of your assumptions about me or anyone else right.

” Her eyes are knives of malice, but I think I see a flicker of hurt in their depths before she tosses the end of the rope to my feet.

“Don’t drown. It would be such a tragedy to lose your brilliant mind from this fucked-up world. ”

With a sneer, she turns her headlamp on in my face long enough to blind me and then pivots away, heading back toward the boulder.

Though I can’t see her clearly with the halo of the bright light burning in my eyes, I doubt she even gives me a backward glance.

If she feels the weight of my gaze on her shoulders, she doesn’t let on.

The halo slowly dissipates from my eyes, leaving only the pale blue of the lantern and the darkness of the forest on the opposite shore.

I tie the rope to my ankle and wade into the water that bites at my skin with bitter jaws.

The soft sand gives way beneath my toes as I move away from the shore and I’m enveloped by the current, slow enough to be easy to fight, fast enough to push me a little off my target.

The fragrance of fresh water mixes with the citronella oil still clinging to my body.

I push my way into the darkness, keeping that silver rock in sight.

I should be thinking about how the hell I’m going to get my book back or how to strategize my way out of this exhumation plan.

But I’m not. I’m thinking about Harper. I’m remembering that flash of hurt I just saw in her eyes.

It didn’t feel the way I thought it would knowing it came from me.

I close my eyes and dip my head beneath the surface, trying to force that image from my mind. But it’s stuck there. Unwilling to let go.

A shiver racks my body as I climb onto the narrow bank.

I tilt my neck from side to side, the negative pressure popping between vertebrae.

I stretch and flex my arm against the pain in my elbow.

My knee throbs from running too far to get to Harper the other day.

Scar tissue and broken pieces that never perfectly healed.

When I look back across the water, she’s watching, her headlamp off, just the gentle lantern light pooling at her feet.

I wonder what she thinks about the marks she saw in my skin when I undressed.

If she imagines the suffering it took to endure them or the grief that lies deep beneath their warped edges.

It’s too dark and distant for us to see each other clearly. But neither of us moves, not for a moment that seems to stretch as long as the river that snakes between us.

It’s Harper who breaks away first. Harper who bends to pick up the other end of the rope that’s still tethered to my ankle. “Are you ready?” she calls to me. And I still haven’t moved.

I finally lower to one knee to untie the cord and then bring it to the rock where a notch is carved into its surface.

Harper pulls it taut and lines it up with the other tape.

When she’s found the point where the two measurements coincide, she spears the shovel into the silt.

No words pass across the water. She starts digging. And I start swimming.

By the time I make it back to shore, she’s already made good progress in the soft soil.

I watch her fluid, metronomic movement as I get dressed, still soaking wet.

She stabs her shovel into the earth and shifts it next to the pit she’s creating.

She’s strong. Graceful. She doesn’t break her cadence, not even when I pick up a shovel and join her.

We don’t talk. I don’t think she really looks at me, at least not the way I do, sneaking the occasional glance like a thief.

It’s not until she strikes a foreign texture with the point of her shovel that her eyes meet mine.

“Guess your plan worked,” she whispers.

I nod. “One down.”

“Fifteen to go.”

With a single, grim look shared between us, we dig up the body, nothing left of it but bones in a decaying polypropylene sack with a faded black stamp that says RYE in large black letters.

When the hole is filled back in and our tools are packed up, we stand for a moment and survey the floodplain and all the work we still have left to do.

And she’s probably thinking the same thing as I am when we turn and start heading back toward the road.

I know I should not be looking forward to it, but some traitorous little voice in my brain claims otherwise.

It’s the anticipation of the hunt—that’s all it is.

I’m gathering evidence and learning the habits of my prey.

Tonight was just setting the stage for what I can learn about Harper that will take her down.

It was nothing more than an indulgence in my curiosity.

“Thanks,” Harper says, breaking the silence that I didn’t even notice in the riot of my own thoughts.

“Sure.”

“What’s wrong?”

I blink at her. “What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong?’”

Though she lifts a shoulder, I don’t miss the way her brow furrows as she assesses my face, as though she’s hunting for clues. “You’ve looked miserable all evening, but now you’re … extra miserable. I didn’t think that would be possible, and yet, here we are.”

“Maybe I’m just thinking about how fucked up this situation is.”

“Didn’t really take you as the type to be put off by a little body relocation, given your scrapbooking hobby.

But yeah,” she says, pausing to run her fingers along her jaw as she surveys the road ahead.

I want to remind her that she’s been handling a body sack and that human decay juices have definitely passed through those fibers.

But I don’t. “I guess it’s a little messed up. ”

“A bit. And now I’m helping a woman I want to kill to cover up murders committed by another serial killer. This is the most incestuous murder party I’ve ever heard of.”

“You have no idea,” Harper mutters as she tosses the sack of bones over her shoulder and walks away.

“Wait … what? What do you mean by that?” I jog a couple of steps after her before she tosses me a quizzical look in return. Inexplicably, my blood feels a hundred degrees too hot in my veins. “Do you and Arthur have some kind of … situationship … thing?”

“ The fuck? No. Oh my God. Do you get anything right ever ? Arthur has the hots for Irene.” She scoffs, and though she turns away before I can see it, I swear I hear her eyes roll. “Forget about it, Ballmeat guy.”

Harper walks out onto the shallow gravel pull-off where I’m parked. I follow her, but when she reaches my rental vehicle, she just keeps going, heading for a path that slices into the woods on the other side of the road.

“Where are you going? I’m your ride,” I say, walking to the middle of the unlit road.

“I’m good. See you tomorrow.”

Without another word, she disappears. And just like the first time we met, she leaves me alone.

In the dark.