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“Whaaaa…?” She smiled so hard Misty could see all her braces. “This is good. This is so good for us!”
“Good for us, as long as we don’t piss the cops off too much,” Misty said. “We should probably try to make nice with the detective if we can. Maybe offer to share evidence."
“Or at least pretend to share evidence,” Zig agreed, nodding fast. “But right now, our priority is to get a look inside Paul Quaid’s cabin. And listen, if we’re doing this, we can’t get caught.”
“Damn right we can’t. My boyfriend’s a cop.”
Zig lowered her head and ran a hand over her braids, then looked up again. “You have to keep him from getting tangled up in our shit. You know that, right?” Zig said. “He’s a rookie. You could screw his career.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure.” And she was. She was surprised by just how sure she was. But she was also thinking about Jeremy. Zig was right. If she was going to push the boundaries of legality, she really had to keep him far away from it. At least until it was over. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We leave our cell phones behind, so there’s no sign we ever left Saratoga Springs. We’ll leave the car somewhere and hike in. That cabin is right at the edge of a state forest. We should bring camping gear in case we have to stay overnight.” She finally sat down. “We’ll stake the place out all weekend if we have to. We’ll stay until he leaves. Then we go inside and see if there’s evidence.”
Misty said, “We don’t take anything. We just photograph it.”
“Photograph, yes,” Zig said. “We won’t have phones, so we’ll pick up one of those throw-away cameras.”
Misty thought the whole thing through and nodded slowly. “It’s a good plan,” she said. “It’s also the worst possible weekend. There are shows, and it’s not like I can just get someone to fill in.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Zig lowered her glasses and looked at Misty over the tops of their red frames. "Isn’t it actually just like that?”
“You really think what I do is that easy?”
“No, I do not think it’s easy. What I do think is that an identical twin could fake her way through it for one freaking weekend.”
Misty pressed her lips. She and Zig had been working on this thing for weeks. They’d pored over every article written on the case in preparation for this. They’d filed a FOIA request for the police report. This case and their podcast meant a lot to her. But so did her job.
But it was that, a job. Being a mermaid in a fancy dinner club was not going to be her career.
“It’s okay if you can’t,” Zig said. “I know this isn’t as serious to you as it is to me, so?—”
“It’s serious enough to me that I added two electives to my already-packed summer session. Crime Scene Processing and Observational Skills for Investigators.”
Zig smiled wide, then bit it back, then gave up trying. “You did?”
“Revised schedule is on my desk. You can see for yourself when we head back.” Then she sighed, and her heart felt heavy as hell.
“I know it’s gotta be hard to ask your sister,” Zig said. “Especially when you can’t tell her why.”
“I can’t tell her why?”
Zig made her eyes wider and shook her head firmly left, then right. “Not cop-guy either. Nobody gets to know anything that hasn’t aired yet. Ever. That’s a deal breaker. Agree?”
Misty bit her lip, then nodded once, firmly. “I can do that. I can ask Christy to fill in for my shows this weekend, and I can keep my reasons to myself.” She closed her eyes. “It’s gonna be harder to deal with Jeremy. But I can’t risk his career for my… budding new passion.”
“Passion huh?”
“Yeah. I really love working on this thing with you, Zig. I like reading the reports and picking out clues and testing out theories. I love writing the scripts for the show.”
“Your scripts are fantastic,” Zig said. “You’re good at it. A natural. And your writing is way better than mine.”
“Runs in the family,” Misty said.
* * *
