Thirty minutes later, Chet and I pull in to the gravel lot of Dominion Marine Salvage, otherwise known in these parts as the boat junkyard. Where boats go to get chopped into pieces and sold in repair shops and on eBay. Mostly legit, though Lake Crosby boats do tend to disappear and Donny Dominion spends his winters lounging on a beach in the Panhandle, so your guess is as good as mine. Either way, the place is dead this time of year, not to mention on a stretch of deserted road on the outskirts of town.

In other words, perfect.

“Up there,” Chet says, pointing to the far end of the lot, where I spot Sam leaning on the hood of his car, scrolling through something on his phone. The day has warmed up to somewhere in the low fifties, but Sam has always run hot. He’s soaking up the early-afternoon sunshine in short sleeves and no jacket, immune to the frigid breeze rustling in the trees. He hears the gravel crunching under my tires and pushes off the car.

“You’re late,” he says as we’re climbing out. His phone rings, but he silences it and slips it in his pocket. Chet’s the only one of us who gets a smile, and even then, it’s half-assed. Sam’s anger runs deep, and it spills over to all the McCreedys.

“Hello to you, too. You look like hell, by the way.” Even from here, parked a good fifteen feet away, I can see he looks exhausted, the lines around his eyes and mouth deeper than just yesterday. His scruff is two days old, maybe three. I close my door, and the clap echoes across the water. “Have you been getting any sleep?”

“Do catnaps at my desk count?”

So no, then. Not sleeping.

I slide my hands into my back pockets, stepping right up to Sam, staring up at him. It feels strange to be standing near enough to see the amber flecks in his eyes, the scar from a long-ago biking accident that slices his brow. The last time I was this close, I planted two hands on his chest and shoved, hard enough he fell backward over a chair. He looks skinnier, too.

“What about food? And before you crack some joke, I don’t mean coffee and sugar doughnuts. I’m talking about real food. Something with vitamins and protein.”