“Jack!”
A figure on a paddleboard was navigating the rotted piers of the public fishing dock, heading south into the slough across white peaks of foam.
“It’s her,” Beth breathed.
She gave Lana’s hand a squeeze.
“She looks okay. Does she look okay?”
Lana nodded. She glanced down at their interwoven hands and squeezed back. Beth stood and started waving, almost losing her balance in the motorboat as she swung both arms high above her head. Paul killed the engine.
“JACK!” Beth shouted. “ARE YOU OKAY?”
The girl looked up toward the skiff. Her backpack and her clothes were soaked and caked with mud. Her life jacket was nowhere to be seen. Jack gave her mom a limp thumbs-up, waggled her paddle in the direction of their house, and started heading across.
The motorboat pulled up to the narrow beach below the house and Beth hopped down into the knee-deep water, still waving to her daughter, watching her every stroke as Jack paddled toward them. The water was freezing, but Beth still felt the adrenaline, the afterburn of fear. It took everything she had not to charge deeper into the slough and drag her daughter to shore herself. Paul was helping Lana step down from the skiff when Jack jumped off her board at the edge of the gravel beach. Beth vaulted toward her and wrapped her in a firm hug.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I lost track of time and—”
“Did you flip your board?” Beth brushed the mud from Jack’s sleeves, checking anxiously for blood or broken bones.
“No, I just—I was up in the creeks, following this map I’d made, and I got lost. I screwed up, I know. I tried to call you, but there was this man and—”
“What? Who? Did he . . . hurt you?” Beth pulled back from Jack to study her. Jack looked wet and dirty, but otherwise unharmed. She searched her daughter’s eyes for what she couldn’t see.
“No. I’m okay, Mom. Really.” Jack swallowed, and her voice evened out. She pointed north across the slough. “There was a man back there, an hour ago, digging something up by one of the creeks. He was cursing and grunting, and I couldn’t see his face. But he sounded angry, and I didn’t want him to know I was there. I took off my life jacket and dropped down behind a bunch of reeds so he couldn’t see me.” She frowned. “At least I think he couldn’t see me. I was lying on my paddleboard, low in the water. That’s how I got soaked.”
Behind Jack, Beth saw Lana and Paul staring at Jack with questions in their eyes. Beth swallowed her in another hug that blocked out everyone else.
“Shhh,” Beth said, feeling her daughter’s heart thump through the soaked sweatshirt. “We’ll talk about it later.”
*
Paul lashed his boat to a half-dead oak tree and hoisted Jack’s paddleboard above his head. Lana watched as a small avalanche of silt poured off the board’s edges and into his coat sleeves. Paul ignored it. They picked their way up the hillside, Paul in front, then Jack, Beth a half step below Lana to make sure she didn’t stumble.
When they got to the house, Beth ushered Jack inside, urging her toward a hot shower and warm clothes.
Lana stayed outside with Paul, watching him shake out his jacket. Her nose caught a swirl of wet earth, musk, and motor oil rising off him. Was it the smell of his car? Or whatever he was protecting in that cooler?
“Well, uh, guess I better get back,” Paul said.
“To your kayak?” Lana said. “Looked like you had quite a lot to unpack.”
“It’s just . . . equipment. Kayak Shack stuff.”
Paul started half walking, half sliding down the hillside. Lana waited until he was twenty feet down the scree before she spoke again.
“Paul, you should know,” she said, “I’ve been looking into the murder in the mud flats. And the leaseholders near there.”
Paul kept moving, picking his way down to the bank.
“Anything you want to tell me, Paul? About Fruitful? Or Ricardo Cruz?”
Paul stopped in front of his motorboat. When he looked up at her, his eyes were cold.
“Lana, I run a kayak rental shop. With a bunch of teenagers. One of whom I just saved. My whole business relies on the slough being safe and open. Why the hell would I do anything to screw that up?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake.” Jack twisted toward Beth from the passenger seat, willing her mother to look at her.
Beth kept driving.
“I promise I’ll never do it again. I was just trying to—I want you to . . .”