“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” I smile to let him know I understand he’s not just asking about me. He’s asking about the baby, too. I push up on my toes, leaning in for a better look at the cut, dirty and oozing fresh blood down his brow. “Honey, this looks bad. It’s deep, and it needs to be cleaned.”

“It’s nothing. It barely hurts.” He dabs a sleeve to his brow, winces when it comes away red.

Micah steps closer, squinting at Paul’s forehead. “Charlotte’s right. That looks like it could use some iodine and a stitch or two. What happened?”

“The trails were icy, and I slid straight down Fontana Ridge. Looks worse than it is. Somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Paul says, losing patience. “What’s the big emergency?”

“Charlotte found a body under your dock.”

It’s not how I would have delivered the news, so abrupt and matter-of-fact. Paul should be sitting down first. He should get a warning that what’s coming is bad, that it will reopen old and aching wounds. As Paul’s best friend, Micah should know this.

Paul doesn’t blink. He looks at me, then back to Micah. “Who?”

It’s the question all of Micah’s earlier ones were leading up to, the one he didn’t get to ask before Paul busted through the door. Who is the stranger in the lake?

“I don’t know,” I say, my gaze bouncing between the two men. “When I found her, she was facedown. All I could see was her back and hair. It’s long and blond.”

Which could describe half the women in this town. Fewer when you add in the dead woman’s build—thin, petite—but still. I can think of a dozen possible names, right off the top of my head, and that’s not even taking into account all the tourists who come through this place. It’s no longer high season, the summer and fall months so busy you can’t get a table at the restaurants in town, but the winter is still bustling. Floridians, mostly, traveling north in search of some snow. That woman down there could be anyone.

“Could it have been an accident?” I say, my mind scrambling for an explanation. “I mean, it’s too cold for her to have been swimming, but maybe she was boating and fell over the side. Maybe she just...I don’t know...hit her head or something and drowned.”

Micah’s eyes fix on mine, and they almost seem to glow. They probe into mine like searchlights, slamming me with the message he doesn’t say aloud.

Not an accident.

She didn’t drown.