“Well, it’s not funny. I know I’m a little jumpy, but I’m still not used to the country. When we lived in Denver, everything was total suburbia. Malls and neighborhoods and Blockbusters and stuff. Dad said the area was losing its frontier charm. I’ve only been here a year, and the wilderness takes some getting used to. I really did see something. It’s . . . it’s probably nothing,” Ruthie said. “My mother accuses me of jumping at my own shadow.”
“Yeah, well, don’t worry about it.” Katrina tried to soothe her friend, tried to ignore the skin-crawling doubt, that little bit of subconscious anxiety suggesting that things weren’t as they appeared. A warning. She narrowed her eyes on the darkest spot in the surrounding trees, where the tree limbs nearly canopied over the narrowest point of the lake. A frog was croaking and mosquitos were buzzing, a fish jumping in the water and sending out ripples. But she saw no one lurking in the shadows.
The thought was ridiculous, wasn’t it? No one would be out here.
For a fleeting second, she thought of the two girls who had disappeared two years before on a summer night just like this. Not here at the lake, but at a brook where they had gone wading. Rachel and Erin, two teens from good families. Katrina’s father was still working on their missing persons cases. And then, just last month, Courtney Pearson had also gone missing one night after fighting with her boyfriend, Rafe. No one had been surprised about Courtney. She had been suspended from Prairie Creek High School numerous times because of her piercings and tube tops with jeans cut so low you could just about see her girl parts. Katrina and Courtney had been lab partners in earth science class, with Courtney repeating the class after failing it twice. Courtney Pearson had gained a reputation as the bad girl of Prairie Creek High School. Her image wasn’t helped by the fact that her boyfriend was Rafe Dillinger, a spoiled rich kid who’d gotten caught stealing a few times.
Three girls gone. Some people, like Shiloh, discounted them all as runaways, but Katrina wasn’t sure that was correct. Since the girls had vanished on Patrick Starr’s watch, she had overheard a lot of the details, and it sounded like none of the girls seemed eager to get out of town. Kat worried they’d been kidnapped, and her father seemed to agree. Dogged as he was, Detective Starr wasn’t giving up the investigation, not until he found them.
Katrina shook off her dark thoughts and lifted her arms to the humid velvet air. She was safe with her friends. “It’s a good night for this.” She glanced back at Ruthie. “Are you coming or not?”
“Sure.” Ruthie didn’t seem sure at all with her arms folded to cover her breasts.
“Then come on. We’ll ease in from the beach.”
Ruthie let out her breath. Stepped out of her panties. Hid them in her tidy stack of clothes. “Okay,” she said, tentatively following Katrina off the dock to the sandy shore. They waded into the lake, the water so cold it could steal your breath.
Katrina hissed, sucking in air through her teeth, her abdomen concaving.
“Wow,” Ruthie whispered as she checked to make sure the pins holding the knot atop her head were secure. “It’s freezing!”
“You just need to get used to it.” Katrina scanned the lake. Shiloh had submerged again. Insects buzzed over the surface, and she felt rather than saw a bat fly by, but she wasn’t going to say a word about it and spook Ruthie even further as they picked their way carefully over slick stones and sand.
Katrina loved coming here. To get away. Not only from her summer job as a waitress at the diner, but from other troubles—troubles related to her family. Her father was wrapped up in his work, a detective who worked overtime. Sometimes Katrina thought work was just a handy excuse for Patrick Starr to avoid facing what was happening at home. With Mom.
“She hasn’t come up.” Ruthie was eyeing the water, searching the depths.
“She will. It’s a game Shiloh plays, holding her breath for as long as she can. Ignore her.” She was done pandering to the anxious girl. In one quick movement, Kat dived in and knifed through the water.
Shiloh was untamed and tough, sixteen going on forty, or so Kat had overheard her father grumble once. As a lawman, Patrick Starr didn’t really approve of his daughter’s association with Shiloh and the troublesome Silva clan, but he tried to keep himself from nagging too much, she could tell. No doubt he would prefer to find out that Kat was hanging out with Reverend McFerron’s daughter, since Ruthie walked the straight and narrow as a rule, while Shiloh didn’t give a hot damn for convention of any kind.
“Hey, wait up!” Ruthie called, and Katrina saw that the timid girl had actually started dog-paddling after her.
Katrina began swimming again.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her leg.
Her heart leapt to her throat, and she yelped in shock.
The hand slid away, and Shiloh shot out of the water not a foot from her.
“Gotcha,” Shiloh said, grinning as she tossed her wet hair from her face.
“I knew you were there,” Kat lied, more than a little pissed. She was nervous enough as it was with all of Ruthie’s fears coming to the fore. She didn’t need Shiloh playing her stupid games.
“Nah. Ya didn’t. Race ya.”
“You’ll lose.”
“No way.” Shiloh grabbed Kat’s shoulder and pulled her back.
“Hey!” Kat sputtered, spitting water.
“That’s cheating,” Ruthie called from across the lake, but even she was laughing as Shiloh started swimming again and Katrina, still burned, her heart racing, took off after her, only to be beaten.
Shiloh heaved herself onto the shore, moonlight dappling her sleek skin. “You should have seen your face,” she said to Kat, who glowered at her from the water. “Looked like you saw a ghost.”
“More like the bogeyman,” Kat snapped back.
“Shhh. Don’t say that,” Ruthie said, slowly making her way across the lake, all the while careful to keep every strand of her red hair piled high and dry on her head. “You shouldn’t talk about the bogeyman,” Ruthie warned in a worried whisper as she reached the opposite bank. “That’s tempting fate.”
“Oh, it is not.” Kat kicked and splashed water at her. Ruthie pulled away fast. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”
“I’m not. Not really.” But the tremulous tone of her voice said differently.
Another splash.
“Stop it! You’ll get my hair wet! My dad will notice.”
“He already thinks you’re in bed, so he won’t see you when you sneak back in,” Kat assured her for the thousandth time. Maybe Shiloh was right; maybe she shouldn’t have let Ruthie come along. Even now, as if tired of Ruthie’s complaining, Shiloh had slipped back into the water and vanished without making a ripple.
“She’s a damn fish,” Kat said, half admiringly.
“A cold fish,” Ruthie agreed. “She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t like many people.” Why try to argue when it didn’t matter anyway? It wasn’t like Shiloh and Ruthie were going to start hanging out.