“I realize the timing’s not ideal. That I’m leaving you to deal with all this.” He swipes a hand in the general direction of the lake. “But I’ll only be gone a day, maybe two. Three at the most.” He closes the backpack with one smooth tug on the string, picks it up and slings it over a shoulder.

“Paul.” I pause, trying to pull my shit together. Failing. I press two fingers to my temples. “You have got to be kidding me. You’re leaving? Where are you going?”

“Walk with me, will you?” Paul brushes past me, moving in long strides through the bedroom and into the hall, so fast I have to jog to keep up. “With the storm blowing in, they’re going to have to push Pause on the investigation anyway. I probably won’t miss much. I’ll be back before they even notice I’m gone.”

Like hell. I rush down the stairs, picturing Paul in that hammock of his, a thin sheet of nylon wrapped around a Paul-sized chunk of ice. “Micah will notice, and you’re going to freeze to death out there. And how are you going to get anywhere? You don’t have a car, remember?”

I don’t offer up my old Honda, both because I don’t want him to go, and even if I did, he’d never get it out of the driveway. There are police cars parked every which way out there, ten tons of metal blocking the garage door. There’s no way he’d ever sneak past.

By the time I make it to the kitchen, Paul is already in the pantry, snatching items off the shelves and dropping them into his backpack in no apparent order. Granola, energy bars, some soups, an industrial-sized bag of beef jerky. Hiking food, enough to last him for days. This is a man who loads the dishwasher with mechanical precision, who after I put away the groceries rearranges the pantry so all labels are facing out. He doesn’t throw anything in anywhere willy-nilly.

A jackhammer starts up in my chest, rushing blood to my head so fast it makes me dizzy. “You know how this looks, right? What am I supposed to say? How do I explain you taking off as soon as a dead woman washes up?”

“I know how it looks, which is why I’m asking you—no, begging you—to just sit tight and not say anything. If Micah asks, which he will, make something up. Tell him I’m on a work trip or something.”

I trail Paul back into the kitchen, watching him rummage through a cabinet by the sink, pulling out a reusable bottle and clipping it to a hook on the backpack. “At least tell me where you’re going. What’s so urgent you have to leave right now?”