Luke didn’t answer. He just stirred the rags around as the last of Jefferson’s old clothes burned. He was as easy to read as a billboard. Plain and simple. A loner who didn’t like people. Every inch of his body seemed to be telling me to leave.
“How far do you live from here?” I said, sounding more like an interrogator than a neighbor.
“Not far,” he answered, staring at me. “You finished growing?”
I hated comments about my height, or lack of it, but since I’d asked a personal question I guess he thought he had a right. I raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Which way?”
His blue eyes glanced down at my chest and I felt like I was back in junior high when I’d first developed. Then, I swear, he blushed when he finally met my gaze. A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Sorry, maybe I should have said, ‘How old are you?’ With those pigtails you could be fifteen.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
He nodded and moved away from the fire as if that was all he needed to know about me.
Feeling a chill, I watched the fire glowing in the night and tried to think of something to say. But I didn’t really want company and I guess he didn’t either. Every bone in my body hurt from cleaning, and a part of my mind was still mourning the “might have been” part of inheriting this place. I’d hoped for a cottage, not a big, old building that looked like it was put together with spare supplies. The store was empty, the cafe old and useless, and the apartment barely livable.
Trying to think positive, I listed as likes the big windows facing the lake and the huge rock wall that made the place seem like it had been part of this land forever. Also, if I was listing, I’d have to add Nana’s joy. She’d been humming gospel songs all day.
The moon came out and the air chilled, but I kept staring at the fire, forgetting Luke. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the lake. A bird called somewhere on the other side. Every few minutes the splash of a fish or frog rippled the water now black in the night. A low buzz of summer’s last surviving insects stuttered in the air like a faraway telegraph. I could feel my heart slow to the rhythm.
The creak of wood along the dock ten yards away sounded and I looked up. Luke was gone.
It took a few minutes for my eyes to focus enough to see his form moving slowly along the dock over the water. He walked, removing his clothes fluidly as if he’d done it a thousand times.
His last stitch of clothing fell just before he dove into the water, slicing through with barely a ripple.
I stood, making out powerful arms reflecting in moonlight as he swam in long strokes toward the center of the lake. I could still hear his movements even after I lost sight of him in the inky water.
If it had been a normal day, I might have reacted to a strange man stripping and diving off my dock, but I hadn’t had a normal day in so long I wouldn’t recognize one if it came along.
I walked back to the house, locked the doors, and went up to bed.
Chapter 6
Luke swam the lake trying to clear his mind. The strange woman unnerved him. She had an innocence about her, but at twenty-six, it had to be an act. He’d long ago given up taking people at face value. In his line of work everyone had secrets. Everyone had a past.
She was a rare mix though. A shy honesty about her blended with a body that would haunt his dreams. When he’d met her, he was sure he saw fear in her eyes, but tonight Allie had wandered out to the fire as if she trusted him. She hadn’t flirted at all, but she had to have known he was watching her. He decided the safest way to handle Allie Daniels was not to handle her at all…friendship, that’s what he’d offer, and nothing more until he knew who he was dealing with.
When he returned to the dock, she was gone. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or disappointed. The fire had died, leaving the dock so dark that he had to feel for his clothes.
He tugged on his jeans and carried the rest. Dropping off the side of the dock, he walked in the ankle-deep water until he circled onto his property, then crossed into the blackness of the trees. Scolding himself, he decided to be more withdrawn around her, telling her nothing. Despite her innocent act, if Jefferson’s death was not from natural causes, she was the most likely suspect.
Forcing his brain to look at only the facts, he reasoned: She had the most to gain from Jefferson’s death. For all he knew, the outdated tags on her van were stolen and she lived somewhere around here. Allie could have somehow worked her way into Jefferson’s good graces in the five years since Luke had visited the old man and talked him into leaving her the place. Then, she couldn’t wait for him to die naturally, so she helped him along. Even if she was small, how hard could it be to push an old man off the dock?
He laughed as he stepped onto the porch of his one-room log cabin. His theory didn’t hold water. Nana and Allie didn’t fit any profile of any kind of criminals. Allie didn’t seem the type to murder and he couldn’t imagine Nana driving the getaway van.
But that didn’t clear the fact that something was going on out here at the lake. Luke had seen signs. If someone had killed Jefferson, they might have done so because he noticed something he shouldn’t have seen. When he’d circled the lake on foot yesterday, Luke swore he smelled meth cooking, even if he couldn’t find it. Half the cabins out here, including his own, weren’t on any map anywhere.
A chilling thought crossed his mind. If someone killed Jefferson Platt, he might go after Allie and Nana next.
Luke locked his door, then walked past his couch and swung up to a tiny loft in the rafters of his cabin. He’d slept there as a kid and now the space barely accommodated his six-foot height, but if someone came through the door, he’d be wide awake before they could spot him.
In his line of work it paid to be where people did not expect him to be.
Chapter 7
Sometime after dawn, I smelled biscuits baking. Without bothering to open my eyes, I took a deep breath knowing the aroma was just a hangover from my dreams. I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. Last night I’d planned to stay awake and worry about which bed Uncle Jefferson spent his last night on, but I’d fallen asleep before I could get all my worries organized.
Between no job, little hope of money coming in, and a nude man jumping off my dock to chase the moon across the lake, I felt like I had my quota of problems. The lake house hadn’t been what I’d hoped for in Garrison D. Walker’s letter, but then nothing in my life ever measured up to the mountain of hope I always managed to come up with. If they gave awards for pointless dreaming, I’d have a room full of trophies.
Opening one eye, I noticed Nana had raised all the windows in our two-room apartment. The morning had a chill to it that the bright sunshine would burn away long before noon. The breeze smelled of the lake. Nothing bad. Just that earthy odor of fish and water.
I stood, pulled on my grandpa’s old flannel shirt I’d used as a robe since college, and headed downstairs following the hope of biscuits. The main room at the bottom of the steps smelled cellarlike with the windows still boarded up. To my left were the empty shelves that had once been a tiny store. To my right sat the little cafe with round tables, wire chairs, and a long bar. I’d passed the rooms too many times yesterday for them not to feel familiar to me.
Tiptoeing across the floor, I forced myself not to look at the dead animal heads on the wall, but their shadows crossed my path. Deer, antelope, wild sheep, and some kind of ugly pig I’d glanced at yesterday and been afraid to face again. When I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, I let out a breath as if I’d just run the gauntlet.
Nana swayed as she hummed “Amazing Grace.” I slipped into the sunny little room that already looked like it belonged to her. My grandmother must have been up for hours, for she’d removed the burlap curtains and polished