Micah pushes to a stand, and he and Sam stand there for a minute, discussing the best way to proceed. Micah wants her out of the water, like yesterday, but I don’t see how. There are all sorts of obstacles in the way—the boat, the dock posts and floats, a patch of alligator weed Paul thought he got rid of last summer, spiky fingers reaching up from the water. There’s no direct way to get her on land without going around one of them. Micah eyes the distance to shore, a good twenty feet, debating the flattest, most gradual spot.

Finally, they come up with a plan.

Paul is to let the boat drift far enough away from the dock to not disturb her, then start the motor and steer over to Micah’s dock. Once the boat is gone, Micah will lower himself into the water, swim her as gently as possible to shore and slide her onto an awaiting tarp.

“That lake must be, what—fifty degrees?” I raised a wild-haired brother known up and down these hills for his talent for making dumbass decisions, but not even Chet would dip a toe in the lake this morning. Not in this weather, and not on purpose.

Micah shrugs. “More like forty, probably. And that’s what the wet suit and towels are for, so I can dry off as soon as I get out.”

“That’s crazy. You’re crazy. Even in a wet suit you’re going to freeze to death. You’re literally going to get hypothermia and die.” I look to Paul for support, but he lifts a shoulder. “Excellent. So you’re both completely out of your minds, and now we’re gonna have two dead bodies instead of one.”

“I’ll be fine,” Micah says.

Paul backs him up on it. “Seriously, Charlotte. He’ll be fine. In and out before you know it.”

I shake my head, roll my eyes. “What is it with you Southern men? Y’all aren’t made of rubber, you know. You don’t have nine lives.”

Something catches Micah’s attention at the top of the hill, and I turn to spot two more uniformed officers, new recruits the chief poached last month from the county sheriff’s office, hustling around the side of the house. They’re young, no older than me, which means they’re probably straight out of police academy. I wonder how many crime scenes they’ve worked. How many dead people they’ve seen. They’re about to get on-the-fly, on-the-job training.

Sam pulls a radio from a clip on his belt and calls up to them, rattling off a list of supplies they are to bring down from the cars.

He slides the radio back onto his belt. “Charlie, if you don’t mind, the towels?”