Murder at Sunrise Lake

Zahra looked mollified. “Well, I guess that’s all right, then.” She looked up as another woman joined them, pushing into Stella’s side of the table. “Raine. You found us.”

“Where else would you be? Best food. Best coffee. Makes sense.” Raine nudged Stella. “Camping tonight? After the Grill?”

Raine was petite, a blonde with sun-kissed hair that was usually left loose. She paid little attention to her appearance, which meant she didn’t really need to. Large slate-blue eyes framed with golden lashes and brows were the bane of her life, at least she always said they were. Stella thought her eyes were gorgeous.

Everything about Raine was a little on the wild side, as if she were untamable. Fiercely independent, no matter how much she feared something— or because of it— she worked at it until she was able to do it. She loved bouldering, and would spend hours happily working out problems on the rock. Trad climbing was her nemesis. She was actually afraid of heights and didn’t trust anyone on the end of her rope. Still, she was determined to climb. She parasailed even when that scared her and she had ended up loving it.

Raine had hiked the John Muir Trail by herself, taking several weeks in the wilderness to do so, summiting Mount Whitney several times. She had also hiked Mount Shasta and then gone to Europe and hiked the Alps alone. She’d gone to Iceland and climbed into a dormant volcano, and visited ice caves in Romania, hiking around the backcountry. She’d done the same in Thailand.

“You look tired, Raine. You don’t have to come camping with us tonight,” Stella said. “We’re close to the resort. You could stay in one of the cabins and get a good night’s sleep and then join us tomorrow night. We were thinking of camping for three nights.”

Stella felt guilty for not confiding in her friends, but what could she really say? There was no murder. There was no body. There was no explanation she could give them without turning her world upside down. Nothing made sense to her right now. It had to be an outsider, not someone who lived and worked in the town.

There were so many people with temporary jobs. She pressed her fingers to her temples. People came and went. Even at the resort she hired the same staff, but they didn’t all stay year-round. Still, she couldn’t imagine any of the people she knew— not even the ones she wasn’t particularly fond of— as a serial killer. But an outsider wouldn’t have knowledge of a fishing spot that only a very few locals used.

“Are you okay, Stella?” Raine asked.

“Yes, I was just thinking about the things Shabina was telling us. I know Zahra has run into prejudice occasionally because of where she comes from, but it’s always been from outsiders. They start asking about her accent and then get all weird with her. I never once considered that someone would be that way with Shabina.”

“Let me take a guess,” Raine said. “One of four. Bale Landry, Sean Watson, Jason Briggs or Edward Fenton. It’s one or all of them. College buddies. Very superior to women. They were mixed up in a fraternity that made lists of female students, particularly ones that appeared to be of different ethnicities. Those in the fraternity were to sleep with as many of the women as they could, any way they could. They would pretend to like them, date them, or they would simply get them drunk at a party. If the woman was innocent, they scored more points for that.”

“That’s disgusting,” Stella said. “There was an entire fraternity of male students at a college dedicated to hurting female students emotionally like that? That’s vile and sordid and so disgusting it turns my stomach.”

“It was a game to them. They had a point system,” Raine said. “If I gave you all the details, it would really turn your stomach. I’d like to say it was college shit, but as far as I’m concerned, by the time you’re in college, you’re responsible for what you do. Your moral code is developed, and clearly the four of them don’t have one when it comes to women. I’m fairly certain they’ll cheat on their wives if they get married. I was appalled when Harlow went out with Bale.”

“You told her.”

“I showed her the evidence. I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I wasn’t going to let one of my close friends fall into a trap like that. When she walked, he was really angry.”

“Do they know you had anything to do with her finding out about them?” Shabina asked.

“She didn’t tell him she knew about his stupid game or even that there was a tie between the four of them. She just ended their dating. Harlow has never really done relationships here so it wasn’t a huge leap for him to believe that she might get cold feet and run for it,” Raine said.