Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle

  “I thought you were different than her,” he says, and I’m guessing we’re back to Katherine. “The way you look. Where you come from, your white-trash upbringing. But the more I got to know you, the more it made sense. You and Katherine are a lot alike, you know. You’re both smart. Relentless. So goddamn righteous. You won’t be able to sit on this secret, will you?”

  “Katherine knew?”

  “Paul told her. That asshole broke the pact we made that night, that we’d take this secret to our graves. But Paul blabbed it to Katherine. She was trying to talk us into turning ourselves in. She gave us a motherfucking deadline. That’s what they were fighting about. What we all were fighting about.”

  On the other side of the glass, the woods light up with a streak of lightning, followed by a boom that shakes my bones with meaning.

  Fury flashes across Micah’s face, flaring his nostrils, pressing his mouth into a thin line. “I don’t take kindly to ultimatums. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends.”

  It’s not an admission but his words still wash over me like a wave. Could Sam have been right? Were those marks on Katherine’s ankle really fingerprints?

  I picture Micah swimming up underneath her with his flippers and a tank strapped to his back. Nobody would have looked twice when he walked into the water in his dive gear. He would have been invisible to everyone but Katherine. My cheeks tingle with shock, burning like they’ve been slapped, leaving me gasping.

  “You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”

  He pushes to a stand, and I think about Chet in his car, somewhere between here and town. How long ago did he leave? How long before he gets here? Micah is so big, so strong. Fast, too. There’s no way I could outrun him. My fingers creep across the cushion, but Micah gets there first. He grabs my phone and tosses it onto the opposite couch.

  When he turns back, everything about him is hard. His face. The set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. His voice when he glares down at me.

  “She didn’t give me a choice.”

  “Oh my God. Micah! Katherine was your friend. Your best friend’s wife. And you killed her for what—to save your own skin?”

  “Well...yeah. That’s exactly why I did it—that and because of her ultimatum. It was either that or go to jail, and I am not going to jail. Do you know what they’d do to the son of a police officer in there?” He shakes his head, a slow side to side. “No way. I am not going to jail for Jax’s mistake. Not happening.”

  How did Micah do it? How did he drink our beer and do flips off our dock and pose for pictures with his arm around Paul’s shoulders and a smile that said everything was just fine?

  “What kind of monster are you?”

  It’s probably stupid to say it out loud, but I’ve already tipped irreversibly off course here, soared well past the point of no return. If Micah has gone to all this trouble to conceal being in the car with Bobby, he’s not going to let me go. These truths, the worst ones, die here with me tonight.

  There’s only one way for this to end.

  I blink, and he’s yanking me up off the couch by my bicep, sloshing tea all over his designer mohair couch. I struggle to break free, but he’s like a brick wall, his grip hard and unyielding.

  “Charlotte, stop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  But I already know Micah Hunt is a liar.

  One chance, that’s all I get.

  I use the only weapon I have. I swing back an arm, send the mug thunking hard against his temple. The impact vibrates up my arm, douses us both in hot tea, but it was a direct hit. Micah growls in pain, in anger.

  The backhand to my jaw is both shocking and disorienting. The world goes upside down and I go flying. My foot catches on a leg of Micah’s coffee table, and I hurtle over it and crash to the floor, rolling across the carpet in a messy heap. My mouth fills with a warm gush of blood, and some of it trickles out of me and onto the carpet, bright red liquid soaking into his custom Berber carpet. Evidence, I think, right before my head connects with a wall. If nothing else, they’ll get him for me.

  And then...

  Nothing.

  35

  I come to on the floor, and for a moment I do nothing. I just lie there, trying to get my bearings, waiting until my head stops throbbing. The air is cool, and so is the ground under me, a smooth, hard concrete. I fill my lungs, catch a whiff of rain and petroleum.

  A garage. I’m in Micah’s garage.

  I crack an eye and there he is, gathering up equipment at a far wall of the garage. A mask, his flippers, a tank.

  I lurch to a sit, scooting backward on my ass across the concrete. I’m not fast. I’m nightmarishly slow, but there’s nowhere for me to go anyway, not in a room with four solid walls and Micah standing between me and the button to lift the garage door. My back hits a cold wall and that’s it, that’s as much air as I can put between us.

  “Ah, you’re awake. Sorry about the force of my backhand in there. I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

  I press a cheek to my jaw, still on fire where he hit me, the skin by my right ear tight and tingly like a sunburn. I scan the walls for an exit, but they’re solid sheets of drywall without a single window. There are only two doors—the double garage door to my left, and the door leading into the kitchen. The button that lifts and lowers the garage door is just inside.

  I’m trapped. There’s no other way out.

  He leans over and checks the gauge on the tank, and my pulse ignites. He’s going to drown me like he did Katherine.

  Full-beam headlights flash on the windows, a series of rectangular sheets of glass high across the top of the garage door. Micah scowls over his shoulder, taking in the car coming down the driveway and me, watching from the floor.

  “That’s Chet.” Micah stalks across the garage, stepping over the puddle his truck has dripped onto the ground. He reaches into his waistband, pulls out a gun and leans down, both hands propped on his knees. “Okay, so here’s the deal. You make any noise, I shoot your brother. You open that garage door or break out a window, I shoot your brother. You do anything that makes him even look at me funny, and I shoot your brother. Are we clear?”

  A car door slams, and footsteps sound on the concrete right outside. A swishing noise as my brother jogs up the steps.

  “I said, are we clear?”

  My gaze lands on the gun and I nod, my heart knocking against my ribs. Clear as crystal.

  The doorbell rings, and Micah presses a finger to his lips, then disappears inside the house. I hear the thwunk of the dead bolt sliding into place, then a big stretch of silence before his voice worms its way through the wall.

  No, not the wall, the pressed wood of the garage door. The voices are coming from right outside. I picture Micah’s front porch, the steps leading down the side to the patch of concrete. Fifteen feet at most, separated by a thin sheet of wood shavings and glass.

  “Hey, Chet, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m here for Charlie. I’ve been trying to call her, but she’s not picking up.”

  Too late I realize my mistake. I missed my chance to have said something, called for help and told Chet to play it cool in those precious seconds of dead air when Micah was in the house, but I wasn’t thinking. I run to the truck, clearing the wet glass with a hand. No key, of course there’s not. Micah took it with him when he went inside.

  Think, Charlie, think.

  “I took her home a half hour ago at least,” Micah is saying, and he’s good; I’ll give him that. His voice is relaxed and casual with only the slightest smidge of worry. And Chet’s always been too trusting. He’ll never know Micah’s playing him. “Did you try there?”

  I whirl around, spotting a toolbox on a bottom shelf, and I race over and root through it for the sharpest, most dangerous tool—a box cutter. One of the cheap, snap-off models, but there’s a few good inches of blade left
. I slide it into my waistband and listen.

  A pause. “I thought she was avoiding Paul.”

  I look at the glass panels across the top of the garage doors. Too high for me to look out, but if I jump up I can reach the bottom. Maybe I could wave my hands around, hope that Chet sees them when he’s driving away. Or no—maybe I can hang something in them, a sign. I look around for paper, for anything to write on.

  “I talked some sense into her,” Micah says. “Told her the only way to work things out is to communicate. She went home so they could talk through whatever it was they were fighting about.”

  “But my phone says she’s here. I just checked the app, and she’s here.”

  I freeze, my heart kicking against my ribs, and I don’t know whether to cheer or cry; I’m so scared he’ll hurt Chet. I hold my breath and listen for what comes next.

  “She must have forgotten her cell phone. Stay here, and I’ll run and grab it for you.”

  Micah’s footsteps fade into the house, and I know I don’t have much time. I run to the far end of the garage, press my mouth to the crack and shout-whisper as loud as I dare.

  “Chet, listen to me. I need you to leave right now. Call Sam, tell him to get over here and to hurry. But play it cool. Act normal, and don’t say anything that’ll tip Micah off.” I pause, waiting for a response or maybe the sound of his footsteps racing to the car, but all I hear is rain and a sudden gust of wind that shakes the trees. “Chet, did you hear me? Leave.”

  I leap backward at the sound of the door opening.

  “Here you go,” Micah says. “Tell those crazy lovebirds I said to kiss and make up, will you?”

  “Thanks, man. I sure will. See ya.”

  The front door closes with a thud, and I know I don’t have much time. I race to the window at the far right end, by the patch of empty driveway where guests are meant to park. I spit on my finger, blood and slobber and slime, and then I jump, tracing the letter H in the glass with my spit. It’s faint and it’s a Hail Mary pass, but if Chet hits it with his headlights, he might actually spot it. I lick my finger again and keep going.

  My writing is sloppy and my lungs and legs burning with effort, and I’m nowhere near finished by the time a car door slams. An H and E but only part of an L, a slimy but partial mirror image of my call for help. I press my palms to the door and pray Chet sees. Look up look up look up.

  Chet’s motor revs as he swings the car around, a four-point turn that flashes his headlights on the windows, shafts of light glowing against the glass. One window lights up, then the other, the letters pink and slimy and plain as day. I hold my breath. Come on, Chet. All you have to do is see.

  Chet guns the gas, and the headlights flit away. The garage goes dark. Chet winds the Jeep back down the drive. I collapse to the floor, the tears coming hot and heavy. Chet’s gone. He didn’t see.

  The door opens, silhouetting Micah in white light from the kitchen. He gathers his equipment from the floor and motions for me to follow. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He looks down at the tank in his hand, the mask dangling from a finger. “Please don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

  My wits and adrenaline, that’s all I’ve got left—that and a box cutter. I feel its sharp edges pressing into my waistline as I haul myself off the floor.

  * * *

  I drag my feet as much as I can on the hill, buying myself some time until we make it to the dock, though I can’t imagine what for. Micah is only a pace or two behind, too close to make a run for it, and I’d never make it very far, not with a gun pointed at my shoulder blades. The rain has mostly stopped, an intermittent patter interspersed with thunder rumbling in the distance, but the lawn is slippery and I’m still barefoot. I move in slow motion, feeling the outline of the box cutter against my skin. Sometime between moving from the garage and the back door, I’ve managed to slide it into my sleeve, but I’ll be dead before I can whip it out. I brought a knife to a gunfight, and a cheap-ass one at that. My only hope here is a miracle.

  Or Jax.

  I scan the hill for him, but if he’s here, he’s well hidden—and honestly, I’m not 100 percent sure it was really him I saw, standing on Micah’s back deck. The flash of lightning was so unexpected, so bright and sudden, my mind could have been playing tricks on me. Jax at the trailer park. Jax on the other side of the glass. It’s possible he was just part of the memories I was trying to conjure up at the time.

  “So how does this work?” I gesture to Micah’s dock, a light brown U floating on the glittering black lake. Thirty yards, maybe, but not more. “Do I jump? Do you push me in? And how are you going to explain me wearing your sweats and some random woman’s sweater?”

  “It’s Katherine’s.” I glance over my shoulder, and he laughs at the expression on my face. “She was always slinging her stuff around, leaving it everywhere. But to answer your question, they’ll probably assume you got it from Paul.”

  “But...won’t people be suspicious? When I wash up under Paul’s dock, I mean.” We both know that’s where I’ll end up.

  “Yeah, of Paul. Drowning women is his tactic. Not mine.”

  “Only it is yours. Because you pretty much admitted to killing Katherine that way, and I’m guessing Sienna, too, probably. It makes sense, especially now that I know you hid her stuff.”

  Silence Sienna, bury her electronics and jewelry somewhere it will never be found, let the currents sweep her to Paul’s dock. Like Jax said, that’s two. Problem solved.

  “No, Jax killed Sienna. And before you ask, I know it was him because Paul wouldn’t have had the stomach for it. I love the guy, but he’s always been kind of a pussy.”

  At the sound of his name, the reality that I’ll never see him again rises hot and urgent in my chest, but I swallow it down and keep moving. The low-hanging clouds above my head. The hill drenched in shadows and a sweet, drifting perfume. It feels like a dream. A nightmare. I focus on the light trickling from Paul’s house farther up the cove. On the piece of plastic and steel against my skin. I straighten my arm, and the box cutter slides out of my sleeve and into my hand.

  I whirl around, terror bubbling in my throat. “Micah, please. Please don’t do this. We can figure something out.”

  “I like you, Charlotte. You’re a lot of fun, and I meant it when I said Paul’s been his old self since he met you. I hate what this is going to do to him.”

  “Then don’t do it! I’ll go find Chet and we’ll leave town. I swear! I’ll never speak about this again.”

  I’m lying, of course—to him, to myself. There’s no way I could leave this place, no way if I did that I could ever live with that lie. It would be doing exactly what I’m accusing Paul of, sitting on an awful, unforgivable secret. If Micah knows me at all, he will see right through this lie. He’s already told me too much. He can’t afford to let me go.

  “I really wish you hadn’t remembered that night,” he says, reading my thoughts, and this is it, I tell myself. This is where you die.

  He’s urging me forward when I slide the box cutter into his side. It cuts through his skin like butter, just slips right in. He jerks in surprise, and the thin metal snaps in my hand. Three, maybe four sections of blade, stuck in his stomach—not deep enough to hit an important organ. Barely far enough to draw blood.

  “You stabbed me.” His voice is incredulous. His gaze falls to the bright orange handle in my hand, my thumb rolling out the last segment of blade. “With a Stanley knife.”

  “It’s a box cutter. And I wish I’d aimed for your neck.”

  Micah laughs. “You’re insane. You know that? I’m really going to miss hanging out with you.” He snatches the box cutter from my fingers and gestures to the dock with his gun. “Now go.”

  This is happening. This is really fucking happening. I think of the baby I will
never see and the life she or he will never lead, and the hillside blurs with my tears.

  He nudges me forward, and slowly, I turn for the dock. “When you flipped Sienna over, Paul knew who she was, and he lied about it to Sam. I saw him talking to her the day before.” Keep him talking. Drag this out and pray. It’s the only strategy I’ve got left.

  “I know. Paul told me. He was pretty torn up about it, too.”

  “But why would he lie about knowing her if he was innocent? He doesn’t have an alibi for the time she was killed. Maybe it was him.”

  The lawn dumps us onto a patch of gravel and dirt, and wet mud squishes between my toes. By now my bare feet are so cold they’re going numb, a sharp mess of pins and needles that’s making it hard to walk.

  “Because by the time I fished her out, all three of us knew what she was doing in town. She’d been talking it up in all the restaurants and bars, getting folks riled up about some big new development around Skeleton Bob. When I pulled her out of the lake, Paul and I both knew who put her there.”

  “You.”

  Micah sighs, long and loud. “You’re starting to wear on my nerves, Charlotte. It was Jax. Why else would Paul run off to Balsam Bluff if not to protect him?”

  An excellent question. One I haven’t figured out the answer to yet.

  “It wasn’t me.” Jax’s voice carries over the water from our left, and I almost collapse in relief. I whip around and so does Micah, aiming his gun into the darkness. He swivels from bush to tree to rocky patch, finally settling on a dark smudge behind a tuft of tall grass.

  Batty Jax, and he’s holding a rifle.

  “But I gotta say, man, bravo. Killing that girl, setting things up to make it look like me or Paul. Didn’t matter to you which one of us took the fall. So long as you and your dad could pretend you had nothing to do with any of it.”

  Micah rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t lower his gun. “Oh, Jesus, not you, too. Why does everybody think that I killed her?”

  “Process of elimination. If it wasn’t Paul or me, it had to have been you. You’re the only one left.”