Page 30 of Tourist Season
“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 thewheel. 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 amnotflirting with the woman I might kill.
Willkill. Iwillkill 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 Iwasn’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 believeyouare the person trying to take me out. A man who couldn’t be more ass-backwards if he tried. Congratulations on getting literallynoneof 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 looksat 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 saysRYEin 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.”
