Izzy scratched at the crook of her elbow and studied him before deciding brash was the way to go. It’s not like she had a lot of weapons in her personality arsenal, to be fair. Bold and unapologetic was pretty much it. “Um, your island is a tiny blip of land in the middle of Bumblefuck Bay, it’s so cold everyone’s balls have probably set up permanent residence in their bodies, and, oh yeah, even if anyone was crazy enough to actually want to visit, you can’t even get here because the ferry only runs once a month.”

She’d been counting on her fingers, but she let her hand drop to her side and leveled him with a glare backed by all the false bravado she could muster. “So how about you drop the act and stop being deliberately obtuse. Because there’s a dead guy with a gunshot wound through his head, and somehow he ended up in your bay.”

Fighting the urge to blink, Izzy held the doc’s stare. He looked away first, his brows raised in Mia’s direction.

Her partner had settled back against a counter, her arms crossed over her chest, her face impassive. But when the doc looked at her, Mia shrugged. “She has a point.”

The pause that followed was loaded, but then the doctor sighed, and when he spoke, the frostiness that had coated his every word to Izzy had thawed a tiny bit. “I don’t know what he was working on. Never talked to the guy.”

“But your impression?”

The doc glanced down at Twist. “He was squirrelly.”

“Care to define ‘squirrelly’ for us?” Izzy asked, getting the feeling that descriptor would apply to a broad range of behavior when it came to these people. “Not exactly a technical term.”

He lifted a hand in a vague gesture that she couldn’t interpret.

“He’d come into the bar most nights. Had a laptop and a bunch of journals, but he’d hide them real fast if anyone tried to sit with him.” He wiped his palms against the front of his jeans. “Was poking around the lighthouse a couple times.”

Mia coughed. “He was at the lighthouse?”

“Yup.”

“Did he . . . ?” Mia trailed off, a distinct crackle at the edge of her voice. “What was he doing there?”

Sammy chewed on his lower lip. “Don’t know. Jimmy chased him away.”

“Who’s that?” Izzy asked, and their gazes snapped to her, as if they’d forgotten she was there. The air was strange and charged, and Izzy was clearly at least three paces behind in the conversation.

“Jimmy Roarke,” Sammy said, turning toward her. “Our retired handyman slash contractor slash jack-of-all-trades.”