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“Jesus Christ!” Cody shouted from a short distance away.
Demetrius didn’t look around as he heard Cody swimming toward him. All he could do was tread water and stare at the thing he’d bumped into as the realization of what it was hit him, and a shudder rattled through him. Cody came up behind and put an arm around Demetrius’s chest, startling a shout out of him even as Cody hauled him back through the water and away from the body floating face down in front of him.
And all Demetrius could think to do was scream.
CHAPTER FOUR
“You didn’t see anyone else?”
Cody shook his head without looking at Lucia. Instead, he watched a deputy use an oar to push the body closer to shore. She was in a rowboat they’d hauled over from a farm not far down the road. A tall, skinny male deputy crouched on the shore, arms extended over the water, latex-gloved hands stretching to grab it. Cody really hoped the skinny deputy toppled into the water. He could use a laugh.
“No one,” Demmy said.
Cody looked away from the comedy skit about to happen and saw Demmy staring at the body as well. Even after so many years of friendship and now marriage, he was having trouble getting a read on where Demmy’s head was at about all this. Freaked out, of course, but Cody wasn’t sure how deeply.
“Jugs left, and Cody and I went for a swim.”
“No engine sounds, no other sign of anyone else out here?” Lucia asked.
“Nope,” Cody said. “Which is why we went skinny-dipping.”
She made a face. “Don’t put that image in my head. Also, I could write you up for that.”
“Revealing a concealed weapon?” Cody fought back a grin, even as he kept a close eye on Demmy.
Lucia gave Cody a look he interpreted easily, even with half her face hidden behind her Ray Bans.
“I wonder who she is?” Demmy said, voice quiet, almost a little dreamy. Cody put an arm around his shoulders, gripping him tight.
“We’ll get the body to the ME.” Lucia let out a long, heavy sigh. “Do I have to say it?”
“Is this the part where you threaten us and accuse us of something we had nothing to do with, and we deny it all, and you tell us to show up at the station tomorrow morning to make our statements, and then point in our faces and tell us not to leave town?” Cody shrugged and looked down at Demmy who, he was glad to see, was trying to hide a smile. It was small and tired-looking, but it was a smile. He looked back at Lucia and shook his head. “Nope. I’d say we’re more than familiar.”
“Asshole,” Lucia muttered, then walked off to direct the medical examiner’s van just driving up.
“It’s taken more than ten years, but I think she’s really warming up to me,” Cody said.
“Oh yeah,” Demmy said, his gaze back on the body the deputies were still struggling to bring to shore. “It’s a regular brush fire of affection.” He paused, then asked in an even quieter voice, “Do you think we know her?”
“Want to hang around and see?”
Demmy looked up and scrunched his face. “Is that weird?”
“Not really.”
They waited a good distance away while the deputies wrangled the body out of the water and onto the shore. The deputy on the water, a pretty Black woman with short hair and amazing cheekbones, stepped from the dangerously rocking boat without falling in, then she helped her partner carefully turn the body onto its back.
The victim had dark blond hair long enough to cover her face, and she wore lightweight sleep pants and a thin t-shirt. The female deputy gently moved the hair from her face and Cody followed as Demmy stepped a little closer to see better.
“I don’t know her,” Demmy said, sounding relieved. He looked up at Cody. “Do you?”
“No, I don’t. But she was young. Way too young for something like this.”
“Not dressed for swimming,” the female deputy said, then looked up with a frown. “Should you two be this close?”
“We’re leaving,” Cody said, raising both his hands and giving her a disarming smile. She scowled and remained crouched beside the body. Apparently his disarming smile needed a tune up.
They turned away and started back through the woods.
