“Who the fuck are you?” Marlowe’s hand tightened on the pan handle.
“Kenny.” The rest of the s’more sprinkled the patchwork quilt on the bed in front of him as he hastily wiped his hands on his pressed slacks. “Who the heck are you?”
Marlowe ran through a dozen different clips. Heather was here a moment ago, Heather went to find something, man in cabin, man with Heather, Jesus Christ, were they a thing?
Marlowe winced in sympathy once it sank in. The pan grew unbearably heavy and she adjusted her grip, fumbling for a moment before she glanced back at him.
The wrinkles in his forehead under his bowl cut fringe told her Kenny was registering, for the first time, how incredibly odd this was. He started to get up, gaze darting to the open door.
Marlowe’s half-smile slipped. “Sorry, Kenny.”
The pan found its mark with a meaty thud. His head snapped back.
Shit.
Kenny tipped back onto the bed in a limp pile, arms flopping to the side and rattling the nightstand.
Cast iron bruised Marlowe’s leg as she dropped it, and it bounced off the rag rug at her feet. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Lover Boy was supposed to be Heather. She should’ve been the one with a dainty goose egg on the back of her head, neatly bundled into Marlowe’s backseat. Instead, her man stained her floral sheets a muddy shade of red.
Heather’s Bible tilted at the edge of her nightstand. The book thudded to the floor.
Papers slipped from the gilt edges. Marlowe toed at them with the edge of her sandal as Kenny’s weakened breathing hissed through the cabin.
Heather’s neat writing tainted each one. Lists of Marlowe’s last three jobs, addresses from her last two apartment buildings, a blurry picture of her with a woman outside a bar, the circled phone number of her supervisor at the hospital.
Her scalp prickled.
“You don’t want this, Marlowe.”
Marlowe’s whole life had hung on unraveled threads, and she hadn’t even known. An anonymous tip to Mercy Hospital was damning, but the rest of it? Marlowe would’ve been on the streets. Heather had only been waiting for her shame to outweigh her desire, and she would have destroyed Marlowe with her hatred before ever trying to live in freedom.
Marlowe wouldn’t give her another chance.
Only one of them would leave Pike’s Lake tonight.
Two Fish, One Hook
Kenny wheezed through a caved-in mess of teeth and bone and Marlowe’s only relief came when his chest fell and didn’t rise again.
His headthunkedoff the porch onto the first step,thwackedonto the second. The sound dulled under the patterned sheet she had wrapped him in.
“I’m sorry,” Marlowe whispered again, and she meant it. She grimaced and crouched, digging her heels into the soggy path and hauling him over her shoulders to stagger in the direction of her truck. Her legs shook, but Kenny deserved better than being manhandled through the dirt. And she was running out of time.
Any minute Heather would come back to find Marlowe’s note scrawled on the back of the movie tickets meant for tonight.
“If you made it, come to the boat. I’m sorry.”
But Marlowe wasn’t sorry. She couldn’t be. Not for what she had planned for Heather.
A plan that, as she rattled through the dark woods toward Pike’s Lake, consisted only of baiting the creature with Kenny and hoping it would strike at the right time.
“Two fish, one hook,” Marlowe muttered to herself. “Hope you’re still hungry, Pike.”
Headlights blazed Marlowe’s path through the pines and branches scraped along the truck doors like overgrown teeth. The same cold, dead calmness she’d felt in the boat with Pike crept icy-fingered along her spine and she knew no one could stop what came next, not even her. Buzzing filled Marlowe’s head and she white-knuckled the steering wheel.
Forgiveness could never wash away the stain of Heather on Marlowe’s life. Forgiveness, the one conviction haunting Marlowe’s life, would finally drown along with Heather.
Marlowe had forgiven her parents for Camp Atonement and for going out drinking on July 4th when she still couldn’t stomach the stench of lake water, andshe’d forgiven classmates and coworkers, and that one lady who had kissed her and very politely said she wasn’t into women. She had tried to forgive Heather, but mercy always rotted.
