“It had to be you, huh?” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “Of all the people Chief Hunt could have sent over, I guess he couldn’t find anybody else?”

Sam slams the door with his hip, tugging a wool cap from his pocket against the cold. The Kincaid men are all bald as eagles, and whatever hair Sam has left he keeps shaved close to his head. This way, he once told me, he won’t have to know when it happens to him.

“Come on. You’re kidding me, right?” Sam says in his solid, mountain man accent, the kind that says he hasn’t ventured far outside these hills. “Another body washed up under the Keller dock. You better believe I volunteered.”

I clamp down on my poker face because the words sting. A year ago I would have called him on it. I would have punched him on the shoulder and told him to stop being such an ass. I sift through all the things I could say instead—that this is different and he knows it, that the first woman was an accident, a crazy, tragic fluke that despite Sam’s best efforts he couldn’t prove was a crime—but we’ve had this conversation before. Sam is a cop, which means he needs someone to vilify, to lock in a cell so Lake Crosby can feel safe again. He needs someone to play the part of the monster.

And he thinks that someone is Paul.

He steps away from his car, his big boots thumping on the drive. “You didn’t touch her, did you?”

“Come on, Sam. You know I didn’t.”

“I don’t know that. I used to think I knew you, but then...”

“But then what?” I know what, but I want to hear him say it. I want him to look me in the eye and say those ugly words again. I’ve had five months to prepare for this. This time I’m ready.

He holds my gaze for a second or two, then shakes his head and looks away.

In a flash, an image of Sam leaning an elbow on my counter at the gas station, back when we were best friends. Of him chugging cup after cup of stale coffee, using it to wash down enough powdered doughnuts to win a county fair contest. Of me teasing him about his hollow leg as I rang him up, wondering with the other customers where he put it all. He joked that he burned off the calories chasing bad guys.

And just like that, I feel it, that pang of missing him. Despite all the ugly words he said. Despite all the tears I cried. I still miss the guy, damn it. I do.

I shut the door in his face.