Page 28 of Tourist Season
“It’s a simple question, Nolan. I could have it sent to the FBI if you prefer.”
There’s a measure of self-satisfaction in his voice, and I imagine he must be smirking as he says, “If it were that easy, you would have done it by now. But it’s not that easy, is it? You need my help.”
For the love of God. I truly despise this man. And not just because he’s right.
“Do you want your fucking book or not?”
There’s a long pause. For a moment, I think the line has disconnected, but the seconds tick away on the screen. The book by my side seems to whisper to me in the silence. There are too many names on the map of the Ballantyne River property. Too many bodies for me to unearth on my own in such a short time. Enemy or not, Nolan Rhodes is the only person I can rely on to help me protect Arthur’s secret, to keep Lukas and the rest of Cape Carnage safe. And I don’t know what I’ll do if he says no.
It’s just a single word, but in his rich tone I can hear both wariness and determination when he finally answers. “Yes.”
“Then we have some work to do.”
EXHUMENolan
“THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE DEALcloses.Three fucking weeks.”
Harper gives a single nod. “Three fucking weeks.”
“And how many bodies?” I ask, even though I heard Harper perfectly well the first time she told me. My hard stare drills into the side of her face, but she doesn’t look away from the silty floodplain stretched before us, dark water flowing just beyond the reach of her headlamp.
She swallows. Clears her throat. “Sixteen.”
“Sixteenfucking bodies. That’s almost a body per night, and it assumes we’ll have perfect conditions and zero mistakes.”
“Yes,” she says, her eyes glinting in the dim light as they roll. “Thank you for mansplaining math. Don’t know what I would have done without that groundbreaking contribution.”
I huff an irritated sigh. “I’m not trying to mansplain math to you.”
“How about you mansplain to me your surely elaborate plan of how you’re going to get Sam to leave instead? That would actually be useful.”
Right. That too. I’d already started keeping tabs on his whereabouts this morning so I could work out any behavioral patterns that I might be able to upend or exploit. So far, I haven’t come up with many grand solutions except for maybe sabotaging his equipment and his vehicle. “I’m working on that,” I grumble.
Harper huffs. “I’m sure. Well, you’d better work faster, Ballmeat,” she says, thrusting the handle of a shovel into my chest with precision, even though she doesn’t turn or even look my way. “We have a Sleuthseeker to drive out of town and exactly zero-point-seven-six bodies per day to exhume in the glorious three weeks we’ll be spending together, so we’d better get cracking.”
She marches away toward the shallow slope that drops onto the swath of silt by the river where vegetation is sparse and landmarks are few.
I could kill her. Bash her over the head with the shovel in my hands and take my chances that she wasn’t bluffing about my book. Disappear into the wilderness. Resign myself to never seeing my family again, further breaking the already shattered remains of their hearts. At least they would know I served justice to those who deserved it.
My grip on the handle loosens just a little as I watch Harper lay her duffel bag on the ground, setting her shovel next to it. She has her back to me, a pool of light tracking over the dirt as she surveys the space around her, as though she’s projecting her thoughts onto the ground. She’s scared, but not of me, and not for herself. She’s worried about the old man. So worried she’s willing to risk her life to wrangle me into her control. And I want to know why.
Though I hate the idea very much, I can understand why she might send her car off a cliff and fake her own death after a deadly hit-and-run. I get why she’d hide in a strange little town for fouryears. Self-preservation. But Idon’tunderstand why she’d risk everything for an elderly man who might have killed his own daughter. How could someone with no qualms about leaving me and my brother for dead be so loyal to him that she puts herself in harm’s way?
There’s something about Harper that pulls questions from the dark recesses of my thoughts, and they’re not the same ones I came to Cape Carnage to ask her.
Harper bends down and unzips the bag to rummage through the contents. The fantasy that I’ve been living for these last four years is only a few feet away. I’ve dreamt so many times about choking the confession free from her lips. I take a few steps closer. In only a handful of heartbeats, I could have her under my control. But instead, I lower the shovel, take a deep breath, and walk calmly toward her, making enough sound so as not to startle her.
I will get the answers I came for, I promise myself.I am here to deliver the consequences of the choices she made, ones that neither of us can escape. But I want to know all her secrets before I do.
“So,” I say as I draw to a halt next to her. “Where do we start?”
I squint against the light of her headlamp as she eyes me, her attention flicking to the shovel in my hand before returning to my face. I’m making her feel unsafe. I should probably be relishing the discomfort my presence is giving her. But I don’t.
I push the shovel into the dirt next to me and make a point to take a step away from it and fold my arms, and as though she’s giving me something in return, she turns off her headlamp, switching on a camping lantern instead.
“I figure we can start at the edge over there and work our way from left to right,” she says as she nods past me toward a cluster of granite boulders in the distance. She pulls a tape measure from thebag and tosses it at my feet before rising with a spray bottle in one hand, the lantern illuminating her from below in a way that would make most people look like shit. But not Harper. She’s hauntingly beautiful, ethereal in the bluish glow of the lantern and the moonlight. Even more so when she starts spraying a mist above the crown of her head, the droplets shimmering as they fall over her hair.
“What is that?”
