They stepped onto the porch as a light flicked on.Two metal folding chairs, the kind Tean remembered from overflow rooms in church meetings, were angled toward each other on the porch.A woman sat on one of them, her legs stretched out in front of her, one foot resting on the other.She had dark hair with a tint of red, fiercely plucked eyebrows, and a lot of make-up.She wasn’t dressed for the cold—a shirt that wasn’t much more than a bra and leggings that left nothing to the imagination.Green nail polish marked the tips of her toes.
“You’ve got to wait for Kai,” she said.“Kai!”
The door opened, and a man came out.He wore his dishwater-blond hair long and swept to one side, and he was stocky, like someone who did manual labor for a living rather than a bodybuilder.His long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and boots all suggested rancher to Tean.He took them in at a glance, seemed to come to some sort of judgment—Tean couldn’t tell if it was positive or negative—and said, “You want to camp?”
“This is a great place,” Jem said.“It’s beautiful out here.”
“Yep.You want one night or two?”
“Actually,” Tean said, “we wanted to talk to you.”
The man didn’t frown.His face didn’t even really change.But something about his expression—or the lack of expression—unsettled Tean, and Jem tensed next to him.“You want to talk to me?”
“Just a few questions,” Jem said in what Tean had come to recognize as one of the voices Jem used when he was working on someone.“Then we’ll get out of your hair.We’re investigating a death, and what I understand is that someone on this property found the victim.Found his body, I should say.Brennon Lee.”
The man didn’t say anything, but the woman said, “Kai!Oh my God, it’s that man.”She swatted his arm.“They’re talking about that man!”
“It wasn’t any of us,” Kai said.“It was a woman.A camper.”
Tean gave the lot and the RV hookups another glance; all empty.
“Did she leave any contact information?”Jem said.“We wanted to ask a few follow-up questions.”
“Who are you?”
“She’s still here,” the woman said.
“Be quiet, Tess,” Kai said.
“But she’s still here.We’ve got more hookups around the side of the mesa.You just keep going that way.”
Still nothing on Kai’s face.Not frustration.Not anger.Not annoyance.The eyes watched Tean with a cold, clear intensity that didn’t waver.
“We don’t like people wandering around—” Kai said.
“That’s great,” Jem said.“We won’t bother her for long.Just go that way, you said?”
“You can’t miss it,” Tess said.
Jem nudged Tean to go down the steps first.He followed, and Tean noticed he was careful not to turn his back entirely on the two on the porch.
They crunched over the gravel, following the lot around the rise of the land—which, Tean now understood, was part of a mesa that he hadn’t been able to identify in the dark.When they’d put the mesa between them and the little office, and the porch light was no longer visible, Tean said, “What was that?”
“Really fucking freaky,” Jem muttered with another look over his shoulder.“There is something seriously not right about that guy.”
“He did seem…” But words failed Tean, and he finally settled for “Strange.”
“Oh yeah,” Jem said, and then he spat, as though clearing a bad taste from his mouth.
True to Tess’s word, it was impossible to miss the RV.For one thing, it was the only one in the campground.For another, it was painted purple, with flying saucers and gray men and yellow cones of light that Tean thought were tractor beams.An awning stretched out over a rectangle of Astroturf, where camp chairs were arranged around an empty fire pit.The handle for the trailer’s door was engraved with a little alien head.
“Hello,” Jem called, and then he gave a light knock.“Sorry to bother you.”
The sounds of movement came from inside the RV, and then a woman said, “Just a minute.”Hurried steps went back and forth a few times, and then the door opened on a woman in sweats, brushing hair out of her eyes.
She was short, White, and in her late forties, with a smattering of freckles.The sweatshirt was neon pink.The sweatpants were lime green.Hazel eyes widened behind glasses.“Oh, I thought you were Zeb.”
“Sorry,” Jem said with one of those grins that came so easily to him.“Who’s Zeb?”