He’s no longer corpse-white but pink from the chill, his lips no longer a vibrating blue. If he was smart, he used one of the towels I laid out downstairs to soak up some of the lake water.

“The coffee helped some. Thanks.” He hands me the thermos and I settle it in the sink, rinsing it out along with the dripper cone. “Sam just called with a lead on the woman. She was staying at one of the B and Bs in town.”

“Oh. That’s good news, right?”

“Mostly, it is. It’s good news that they know her name and where she’s from, which means they can contact her next of kin. But word’s gonna get out soon, if it hasn’t already. Sam’s trying to get out in front of it. It’s better for everybody if her family doesn’t hear about it from the news.”

He’ll have to hurry. It doesn’t take much to ignite talk in this town, and a tourist found floating in the lake will be a fast flame. As soon as the cops show up at that B and B, as soon as they start slinging around the crime tape and interviewing witnesses, conjecture will spread through these hills like a late-summer forest fire. I give it until the end of the day before people start showing up here.

I look up, and Micah is watching me. “‘No comment.’ Dad asked me to impress upon you that those are the only two words he would like to hear coming out of your mouth—except he didn’t say it that nice and he didn’t ask. He wants you to say it to friends, to family, to whoever comes knocking on your door wanting to know what you saw down there at the lake. If somebody won’t take no for an answer, maybe don’t send them to Dad. Send them to Sam instead. Let him deal with them.”

I nod, settling the dripper on the thermos rim. “Sounds easy enough.”

“Don’t be so sure. Reporters are a persistent bunch, and they will go to all kinds of crazy lengths to make you think they’re not one. They’ll pretend to be a friend or a prospective client. They’ll ambush you in parking lots and at the grocery store. They will follow you around town like your shadow if they think they’re gonna get the first word out of you. Dad says his team is going to be strategic in which details of this investigation they release to the public, and he doesn’t want things getting out there he’s not ready to talk about, okay?”

“Okay, okay, I get it. ‘No comment’ to anyone and everyone.”

He nods, satisfied. “Where’s Paul?”