“Is it me,” Walker asked Lily, “or is your delightful cousin stealing my ride?”

“I’m not stealing it,” I corrected. “I’m taking it home. Not our lake house—yours. Two coves down, on the point across from King’s Island, right?”

Walker shook his head. “You are a strange girl, Sawyer Taft.”

“I prefer to think of myself as altruistic,” I countered. “This way, you and Lily get some privacy for the latest episode of Beautiful People in Semi-Functional Relationships, and I can have a word with your sister.”

CHAPTER 6

When I made it to the Ames family’s cove, I found Campbell lying out on the front of their dock, her skin glistening with some combination of sunscreen and sweat. She didn’t so much as raise her head or flip onto her side as I docked the Jet Ski.

“Not bad,” Campbell called out lazily. “For a rookie.”

I slid off the Jet Ski and hit a nearby button, which I assumed would either raise the watercraft out of the water or cause everything around us to self-destruct.

“If you’re going to stand there dripping wet, could you at least try to drip a little more quietly?” Campbell opened one green eye. “You’re spoiling the ambiance.”

That was more or less the Campbell Ames version of hello.

My version was: “Commit any felonies lately?”

Campbell rolled from her stomach to her back and popped one knee, her right hand taking up position behind her head. “You know what I love about you, Sawyer? You’re the only person in this whole state—maybe the entire country—who can say the word felony to me and be thinking of what I’m capable of and not that unfortunate mess with dear old Daddy.”

That “unfortunate mess” was something she’d masterminded and I’d helped with. Her father was in jail, having pled guilty to several crimes he had committed, because we’d framed him for several that he hadn’t. Campbell’s capabilities were, in a word, impressive.

I plopped down beside her, allowing my feet to dangle off the dock. “How are you holding up?”

Campbell had always intended for her father to go down, but I didn’t think she’d fully considered the collateral damage, the press coverage, the scandal.

“How am I holding up?” Campbell snorted. “My family has been exiled to the lake since the story broke. Mama’s decided that day-drunk is the new tipsy, Walker blames me because he’s trying not to blame Lily, and I am starved for civilization. And you?”

Campbell had a flair for the dramatic and a gift for holding people at arm’s length, but I could hear the vulnerability buried in her couldn’t-care-less tone.