The Jealousy Game novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Second Night

The shed stayed quiet until Brett's engine faded up the marina road.

Dean stood up first, with his phone still in his fist.

"I've got it," he said. "All of it. His voice, the lake, the signing."

"Keep it somewhere that isn't your phone," I said.

"The sheriff could hear this tonight."

"The sheriff plays cards with Brett's father. He'd call it a man blowing off steam to a friend."

Dean looked at me.

"Saturday," I said. "In front of the town. Not a back room."

He nodded slowly, and put a hand on Casper's shoulder on his way out.

Casper took it without moving.

The door rolled down behind Dean, and then it was the two of us and the work light.

Casper set the blank notebook on the bench and kept his back to me.

"He's right," he said. "I did watch."

"Yes."

"I've been saying it for two days and it's still the thing I can't get around."

"Then don't get around it."

I crossed the floor and turned him by the elbow.

He had his jaw set so hard that the muscle jumped, and his eyes were red.

"You lied to him for twenty minutes with me hiding eight feet away," I said. "You stood there and let him call you guilty, and you said yes."

"It was true."

"It was, and you said it anyway."

I put my hands on his chest.

He looked down at them.

"Rule two," he said, and his voice cracked in the middle.

"Rule two is dead, Engstrom."

"I know. I'm just..."

"Casper."

He stopped.

"Take your jacket off," I said.

He did.

I took his sweatshirt by the hem and pulled it over his head, slowly, and let my fingernails drag down his ribs as it came away.

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