“Hey, Phil.”
Phil leaned around Jake as though peering through a nonexistent window into the building. “Is the autopsy happening right now?”
Jake’s mouth popped open, and he dropped Phil’s hand like it was white-hot. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, that poor girl up on Lewis Ridge. Becca told me about it this morning at the Sky High.”
“Becca?” Jake sputtered. “But… but I never said a word—”
“Course not,” Phil said jovially. “Becca’s niece is the same age as Layla Gannon, and Layla had a birthday party yesterday. The story made the rounds like chicken pox, and them kids carried it home to their parents. Was it true her head was twisted around backwards when you found her?”
“No!” Jake threw his hands in the air. “No, her head was not backwards, now get on out of here!” He pointed a stiff arm down the street, and Phil shrugged before ambling on.
A heavy sigh passed Jake’s lips as he shook his head at the ground.
“I better go,” he said. “If I don’t start damage control, this thing’s gonna get away from me. Now that the story’s out, I might as well give them the plain facts.”
Annie stood. “You want help?”
Jake smiled at her, but it was a sadder cousin of the happy gap-toothed grin she’d grown accustomed to.
“Honestly, Annie, you’ve been an angel. You’ve gone above and beyond to help me out with all of this, and if anyone deserves a day off, it’s you. Go explore, or go on a drive or a hike or something. I’ll see you at the station tomorrow, okay?”
She nodded gratefully and Jake gave her a half-hearted salute before turning on his heel and jogging down the sidewalk after Phil. Annie watched until he rounded the corner, then took a deep breath and looked around at the storefronts lining the street.
She hadn’t spent much time exploring the shops of downtown yet, and it was the perfect day for it, warm and pleasant, with downy clouds ringing the summit of the mountain like a cotton halo, inviting her to put the morning’s troubles behind her for a few hours.
First, she treated herself to a vanilla-bean latte and a marionberry-jam doughnut at Bigfoot’s, then she spent the next two hours wandering up and down the row of shops lining the main strip of town. She bought a wind chime with a delicate glass hummingbird perched atop the hollow silver pipes, and a small pencil sketch of the mountain, hanging for sale in a store window with a label that boastedLOCAL ARTIST!She played a round of minigolf by herself on the wooded course behind the Lake Lumin Zoomin’ Go-Kart Track and bought a black-cherry ice cream, throwing bits of the waffle cone to a pair of finches nosing around beneath the outdoor tables.
On her way back to the Jeep, she decided to make one last stop, ducking into the General Store for a bag of brown sugar. Laura liked to sprinkle it over their morning oatmeal and the bag was almost empty.
As she walked through the aisles of the store scanning the wares, Annie realized with a jolt of surprise that she was happy. Or, at least she wasn’t miserable anymore, and that was as close to actual happiness as she’d been in a long time. After what had happened with Brendan, she’d gotten used to moving through the world with a sort of numbness. Things that should have made her glad utterly failed to do so, as though she were standing outside in the sun, knowing that she should be able to feel the warmth of it on her skin, but was followed around by a personal cloud that kept her shadowed—a cloud that had dissipated now, without her realizing that it was gone.
Food tasted good again. There was real, honest joy in a marionberry doughnut, a lucky hole in one through the snapping mouth of a plastic alligator, and the sight of a finch with a bite of waffle cone in its beak. A scab had formed over the wound and there was, once again, pleasure in being alive.
Annie found the sugar and carried a bag up to the front of the store, stepping around three men gathered at the magazine rack. At the counter, she exchanged a few words with Phil, who recognized her from outside the mortuary and pressed her for details about the body and the crime, all of which Annie deflected, echoing Jake’s words and reminding Phil not to spread rumors.
She left the store and walked back up Main Street with her bags slung over her arms. She felt like whistling. Like humming. Like singing out loud. She felt somehow twenty pounds lighter than she had been when she woke up. And then, three blocks from the station, her heart stuttered in her chest.
She was being followed.
She could feel someone there, trailing her at the exact same speed at which she walked, but hanging far enough back to avoid notice.
Annie picked up her pace, using the stoplight to cross to the other side of the street, and in the reflection of a storefront window, she caught sight of them. Three men, crossing the street behind her. Thesame three men who had been clustered around the magazine rack in the General Store.
It could be a coincidence. It was entirely possible that they just happened to leave the store moments after she did and had intended to go this way all along, but when she picked up her pace again, moving at a brisk clip up the sidewalk, so did they.
Annie forced a deep breath. It was broad daylight. Other people were out on the sidewalk. Cars were driving by. Surely these men wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything out here in the open, but just as she was about to take the turn onto Hughes Street, one of them spoke.
“So,” came the tinny male voice behind her, “you’re the new officer in town, are you?”
Annie stopped walking and turned to find a thin man in his mid-thirties, flanked on both sides by younger men, each boasting tattoos on their necks, arms, and shoulders.
Heart thudding, she lifted her chin a fraction of an inch.
“That’s me.” She set the bags at her feet and stepped forward with her hand outstretched. “I’m Annie Heston, the new game warden.”
“Ian Ward.” He dropped his eyes briefly, distastefully, to her extended hand.
