I reach for my phone, only to remember that it’s dead. My gaze tracks up the hill, searching for a light in a window, maybe, or the ones that flank the back door. But our house is dark, and so is Micah’s farther up the cove. Nothing but a big black blotch behind the trees.

With one last look at the dead woman, I climb out of the boat and shuffle carefully across the dock, then take off running up the hill.

There are seventy-six steps from the dock to the house, a steep hike of almost fifty vertical yards—half a football field. Paul chose the highest hill on purpose, and I’ll admit, the views are spectacular. Lake and forest and mountains rolling into a smoky blue sky that goes on forever.

The climb from the dock, on the other hand, is a real buzzkill. Seventy-six slogging steps of muscle-burning, lung-wheezing hell. By the time I make it to the back door, I can barely breathe.

It doesn’t help that the clouds are spitting snow again, or the whole time I was clambering up the slippery staircase, I was hollering for our neighbor Micah when I saw that the light above his back deck had popped on. I pictured him sipping a cup of coffee on the back deck, but then just as suddenly, the light faded and I realized it was a motion sensor. A bird, maybe, or an opossum scrounging for food set it off. I ducked my head and kept climbing.

I bust through the door and race into Paul’s study, the closest room with a landline.

I fall into the chair at his desk, a giant slab of walnut and brushed steel, with nothing on it but a lamp and a phone. Its surface is spotless, a gleaming example of Paul’s clean-desk policy that applies both at work and at home.

I pick up the receiver and dial with freezing, fumbling fingers. Micah’s cell rings four eternal times, then flips me to voice mail. At the end of the beep, I start talking.

“Micah, it’s Charlotte. I was just down at the dock, and there’s a body under it. A real body, a woman. I don’t know who she is or how she got there, but she’s clearly dead, so I didn’t dare touch her.” Saying the words out loud makes my stomach go eely with morning sickness, with shock. “Anyway, get over here as soon as you hear this, will you? I’m hanging up and calling 9-1-1 now. Bye.”

Micah is our neighbor and friend, but also son of the police chief and badass diver specializing in underwater investigations and evidence recovery. Whoever I talk to at emergency services will be calling him next anyway. I hang up and dial 9-1-1.