Page 36 of Tourist Season
Watching you, my very unhelpful internal monologue volunteers with cheerful enthusiasm.
“Right,” she says before I have a chance to cobble an answer together. “You’ve been doing sweet fuck all, which issuper surprising. I’m truly shocked. Andnow, since you haven’t been deflecting him like you promised, Sam is flying drones over Arthur’s fucking property, spying on us as we’re trying to have a cup of coffee. And what recourse do I have to stop him? It’s not like I really want to call Sheriff Yates, you know?”
“Why not? Does La Plume have bodies buried on the home estate too?”
Harper reaches the end of the aisle and turns on me, and though I expect the vicious look in her eyes from my needling remarks, that’s not all I see. There’s a glassy sheen over their gunmetal depths. She swallows, staring up at me in a challenge. “Believe whatever you want about me. I know what you think I’ve done, and I don’t fucking care about trying to change your mind. But you arewrong, Nolan. Arthur Lancaster is not La Plume.”
I could argue back. Say something about our nightly excursions that seem to prove otherwise. But the conviction in her eyes gives me pause. And Harper takes that beat of time to push past me, brushing the fingers of her bandaged hand beneath her lashes as she goes.
“Harper—”
“Leave me alone.”
I watch her walk to the counter and unload her basket, Maya’s obvious concern shifting between Harper and me. She whispers something to Harper, who only nods before paying for her goods in cash she pulls from the chest pocket of her faded plaid shirt, hastily packing her purchases into a backpack, then slinging it over her shoulder. When Harper stalks toward the door, she darts a brief glance in my direction. It’s only long enough to imprint the image of her pain and anger into my memory, and then she’s gone.
I move closer to the bay window, watching as she heads down the street. Her bandaged hand swings in the sun as she strides away from me as fast as she can without running. I contemplate exiting the store so I can track her from the sidewalk, but I linger there, watching through the window as though she might return.
With a deep sigh, I shift my attention across the street, my focus passing over the increasingly familiar shops. A Shipwrecked Bean. Craft-A-Corpse. Bhandari Law Offices. Disco Barber. A new office that just opened, Viceroy Properties.
And standing across the street at the entrance of Viceroy is Sam Porter. He’s got papers clutched in his hand. A camera bag slung over his shoulder. He’s facing the same direction where Harper just left. His eyes are fixed on something in the distance.
Or someone.
A breath later, I’m leaving Maya’s shop and striding toward him.
He catches sight of my brisk walk and gives me a brief flash of a smile and a wave with the papers in his hand before he opens the flap of his bag and slides them inside. I catch the pale greens and blues of a map before they slip into the shadows. My heart knocks against my ribs.
“Hey, Sam,” I say, trying to keep my voice light, though it’s more of a struggle than I thought it would be.
“Rhodes. Hey, man.” He extends a hand and I shake it, and he’s barely touched my palm before he’s nodding in the direction Harper just walked. “You know her?”
I follow his gesture and look down the street, spotting Harper’s dark hair blowing in the breeze. I keep scanning the sidewalk, not wanting to let my attention linger on her in case he notices. “Who?”
“The woman there,” he says, pointing to her. “The one with the plaid shirt. She was just in the same shop as you.”
I shake my head and shrug, not taking my eyes from Harper until she disappears around the bend of the road. “Nope. Sorry. Don’t know her.”
Sam gives only a thoughtful hum that’s colored with a note of disappointment. I offer him an untroubled smile, but the one he gives me in reply is only faint. I can tell his thoughts are elsewhere, and when his gaze darts to where Harper has faded from view, it’s not hard to track their whereabouts. “How’s the documentary going?” I ask, trying to swallow the sudden need to throw him off her scent. “Making progress?”
“Getting there.” He pats his camera bag with a little more enthusiasm than he had moments ago. “Finished a few interviews, waiting on a few more.”
“Need any help with the drone again? I’ve got free time. Happy to lend a hand if you need.”
“Thanks, man. My guy showed up, so I should be all set, but I’ll let you know.” Sam smiles, though his eyes slide back down the road, narrowing just long enough to betray his thoughts of pursuit. If he’s seen Harper sitting with Arthur outside the cottagethat once belonged to Poppy Lancaster, I’m sure Harper is a new target. Another layer in an already complicated history.
But the spark in his eyes makes me feel like there’s something more. His expression now is the antithesis of the one I saw painted on his face after the interviews, when it was obvious that there was something missing from the picture he was trying to pull together.
The man before me now is a hunter. He’s got the expression of a predator who has caught the scent of its prey on the wind. I know it, because I’ve seen that same look in my own eyes when I’ve stared in the mirror and imagined the blood I was about to spill. I’ve seen it when I told the mirror I was going to kill Harper Starling.
“Well,” Sam says, patting his bag where the papers are hidden, “I’d better run, got lots of work to do. I’ll see you around?”
“Sure will,” I reply.
Sam leaves me on the sidewalk, but the growing dread remains long after I watch him drive away.
DRIFTINGHarper
IT’S ABSOLUTELY PISSING IT DOWN.And it’s fucking cold. I’m used to being outside in miserable weather, but in the daytime. Being alone in the dark and the pelting rain is another matter entirely. It’s pushing me a little too close to thoughts of a past I try my best to forget. It reminds me of that first gasp of freedom after terror so consuming it had eaten everything good left in me, leaving only a raw alloy behind. Something that could be fashioned into a blade but was still too weak to be deadly. I had only seen the forge. I’d not yet been embraced by its flame.
