“Oh.” She started to walk in toward the shore. “Well, I should get back.”

“Stay,” he ordered as he turned back toward the house. “And come back anytime.”

“All right, so what we have going for us is that it’s not a full moon.”

“Amen to that.” Olivia held up her coffee cup.

They were at the station, and Sawyer was briefing everyone on the day ahead. The Saturday of the long Labor Day weekend was by far the craziest day of the year in Moonflower Bay.

Also the anniversary of the worst day of his life.

“Hear, hear.” This came from Joel Pinter. Dominic Keyes raised his coffee cup. Dom and Joel made up the balance of “everyone” on their four-person force.

“And with the Mermaid Inn closed, we’ll have fewer overnight guests than usual,” Sawyer said.

“But if they’re staying outside of town, we’ll have a lot of drunks getting in their cars,” Patty, their dispatcher, pointed out.

“True.” Other than the Mermaid, and the handful of residents who Airbnb-ed their places, there was one motel on the edge of town. Beyond that was a strip of chain hotels out on the highway. “So let’s keep our wits about us.”

Two hours later, unable to heed his own advice, Sawyer almost crashed into the high school marching band while they were performing a lurching version of “Under the Sea,” because he had caught sight of Evie standing up ahead along the parade route.

“Chief!” Olivia shouted.

“Sorry, sorry.” He hit the brakes and slowed to a stop while the majorettes did their thing. It felt like the batons they threw high into the air were hurtling through his intestines.

Sawyer always drove a squad car in the Mermaid Parade. Olivia was riding shotgun, it being her first year on the force, and Joel and Dom were patrolling on foot. He’d thought about having Olivia drive today, as part of his quest to bolster her credibility in the eyes of the townspeople—and in Dom’s eyes, frankly, because he was being a dick about being passed over for deputy chief. But he always drove in the Mermaid Parade. He was the chief. It was tradition.

In truth, though, he made sure to be in the parade so he didn’t have to watch the parade.

He had bad associations with this parade and, this year even more than most, no desire to be here at all.

And now he was stopped twenty feet from Evie.