I should have insisted on going on that boat with him. I should have known the dead woman would be a trigger. There’s something distinctly different about being told there’s a body and seeing it for yourself, feeling the horror—especially for Paul. He tries very hard not to talk about Katherine with me, but there’s no way this isn’t digging up old wounds, pulling at painful threads. As awful as this is on me, for him this has to be a million times worse.

Micah gives the signal, and Paul starts the engine, swings the boat around, inches forward on the throttle and motors away, careful not to leave a wake.

Micah’s descent down the ladder is just as quick. Quiet, too, all but the sucking in of a hard breath before his head disappears below the dock.

I shiver and inch closer, stepping right up to the lake’s edge, doing the math. Fifteen seconds to swim under the dock to her, another fifteen to drag her out, maybe more. Behind me, the techs are antsy, too. They shift their boots in the dirt at the top of the tarp, their arms loose by their sides. The body bag is spread across the ground behind them. I stare at the empty water and hold my breath, the glare of snow and daylight rippling across the lake’s surface making my eyes burn. What’s taking him so long?

Micah’s head reappears from under the dock, his hair slicked back, his face fish-belly white. So is the hand he’s got hooked around the dead girl, who he carefully wrests from under the dock. He hasn’t flipped her over yet. She floats facedown beside him in steady dips and bobs, white hair skimming the water.

Thanks to the cold and the dead weight, it takes him way too long to drag her to shore. He frog-kicks and drags his free arm through the water, his breath wet and sharp with effort, but he’s still a good thirty feet from shore.

Hurry up hurry up hurry up.

The waiting tightens the back of my throat.

“Get back,” Chief Hunt snaps, and I look down to see one of my boots has landed inside the tape. “I don’t need you contaminating the crime scene.”

I move a few steps back up the hill.

Paul jogs up, panting lightly from his sprint back from Micah’s dock, right as Micah makes land. He plants his feet on the lake’s slippery bottom and shifts her so she’s in front of him, steering her carefully to shore. The techs run down the hill, wading a good couple of feet into the water.

“Grab her under the arms,” Micah says, his voice tight, his teeth chattering loud enough to be heard clear across the lake.

“Gently,” Chief Hunt yells. “Be careful with her, for crap’s sake.”