Chapter 22
The Blue Lagoon smells like minerals and sulfur and that particular brand of relaxation that only nature can provide.
Bess, Nettie, Wes, Ransom, and I stand at the edge of the milky turquoise water. And I mean milky, like someone dissolved the entire contents of a bath bomb factory into a volcanic crater. The steam rising off the surface makes everything look dreamlike and ethereal.
The water stretches out in every direction, dotted with floating bodies and punctuated by black lava rock formations that jut up because Iceland decided to accessorize.
Wooden bridges crisscross overhead. Somewhere to our left, a swim-up bar is doing brisk business in frozen cocktails.
The crowd is international and enthusiastic, their voices mixing with the gentle lap of water against rock.
The sky above is slate gray and moody, because this is Iceland, and sunshine is apparently rationed.
Bess dips a toe in and hisses. “Wow, that’s HOT.”
“It’s volcanic,” Nettie reminds her, then proceeds to wade in, howling at the top of her lungs while taking in a few quick breaths. “Sweet mercy and shirtless strangers! Oh. OH. This is H-O-T double hockey sticks hot!”
Bess follows, making sounds like she’s being slowly boiled alive. “This is INSANE.”
Ransom and Wes, meanwhile, submerge themselves to their necks in one smooth motion, completely unbothered by the temperature. Men. They acclimate like it’s a competitive sport.
I do my best to melt slowly into the water, inch by torturous inch. The heat is shocking at first, a full-body assault that makes every nerve ending scream, and then suddenly it’s not. It’s just perfect.
The minerals make the water feel silky against my skin, coating me in something that’s part hot tub, part science experiment, and all relaxation.
I sink down to my shoulders and my entire body sighs with relief I didn’t know I needed. My hair floats around me like tendrils as I dip lower, down to my neck.
“This,” I announce, “is worth the naked shower trauma.”
“Almost,” Bess says, but she’s smiling.
Nettie’s already floating on her back with her arms spread wide. “I’m never leaving. You’ll have to pry me out of here with heavy machinery.”
“They close at ten,” Wes says.
“Then I’m staying until ten o’one!”
We drift for a while, letting the heat work its magic on muscles I forgot I had.
The water holds you up without effort. Some combination of temperature and mineral content that makes floating feel like Iceland’s personal gift to tired humans.
Around us, people chat in a dozen languages, laugh, sip drinks from the swim-up bar, and generally look like they’ve figured out the meaning of life and it involves volcanic hot springs. And I think it very much does.
Ransom drifts closer, his hair slicked back, water droplets clinging to his shoulders. Even wet the man is unfairly attractive. Some things remain constant regardless of employment status.
Wes floats nearby, his captain face replaced by something more relaxed, more human. “So, Detective Troublefield Baxter,” he says. “How’s the case going?”
Ransom growls. An actual low rumble of disapproval.
Wes raises his hands in mock surrender, water sluicing off his arms. “What? We both know she’s investigating.”
“Darn right she is,” Bess says.
“And that means we get to case out the hot hunks, too,” Nettie adds with a grin.
Bess inches back, scandalized. “There are no hot hunks we’re looking into.”
Nettie grunts. “A girl can dream.”
I bite back a smile and float closer to the group. “Okay, fine. Let’s review.”
“Review what?” Wes asks.
“The suspects,” I say. “First, there’s Nicolette Devereaux. Hot divorce lawyer, sophisticated, clearly hiding something about her past. Gideon was planning to expose her in his documentary. Silas showed me a photo of her slapping Gideon the night he died.”
“Slapping him?” Wes straightens slightly.
I nod. “It looked like a violent assault. In the Opaline Royal Lounge during the bon voyage party. Timestamp was nine forty-seven.” I hold up a finger.
“Then there’s Holland Rowen. She participates in the Second Act Society with her husband, Silas.
She seems genuinely devastated by Gideon’s death.
And Celeste mentioned something about Gideon threatening Holland’s second act. ”
“The ghost mentioned it,” Ransom clarifies for Wes, his tone suggesting he’s still not entirely comfortable with my supernatural consultation services.
“Right. The ghost.” Wes doesn’t sound skeptical exactly. More like resigned. “Continue.”
“There’s Silas Rowen,” I continue indeed. “Holland’s husband. He’s extremely protective of her. And he was my source about Nicolette. Although he did throw her under the bus.”
“Maybe because she’s guilty,” Nettie offers.
“She could be,” I say. “And then there’s Marina.” I glance over at Wes and he glowers at the horizon.
The name hangs in the air between us like a ghost.
And speaking of ghosts, Celeste has been utterly useless to me and this case, especially for someone who claims to know who the killer is.
A spray of miniature hot pink stars catches my eye to the left and I spot the wily blonde wraith wrapped around a beefy hot hunk who looks as if he could bench press all of Iceland. She gives a little wave and blows a kiss my way.
It’s nice to know she’s easily entertained.
Wes sighs my way. “What about Marina?”
“She’s running from something. Financial troubles, for sure.
She threw her phone in the ocean in Isafjordur.
She was arguing with someone on a call right before.
She looked devastated in that bar in Copenhagen, and Gideon clearly knew her even though she claims they’d never met. ” I watch Wes carefully.
Ransom nods. “I have a gut feeling she’s hiding something big.”
“Everyone is hiding something,” Wes counters as if he’s defending her.
“True,” I say. “But not everyone is hiding something that may have got a man killed.”
Wes doesn’t respond. He just stares up at the gray sky with his jaw set tight.
“How do you feel?” I ask as gently as I can. “Knowing that Marina is essentially a suspect?”
He’s quiet for a long moment and I can tell he wishes he didn’t have to answer. “I’m not thrilled.”
“If she did it,” Ransom says, breaking his silence, “we know for a fact it wasn’t premeditated.”
“There’s a silver lining,” Wes growls at him for even suggesting it.
“She didn’t even know Gideon.” Bess nods, her practical side kicking in. “She wouldn’t have had time to plan anything.”
I give a little shrug, feeling the warm water lap at my shoulders. “But he sure seemed to think he knew her.”
Wes sighs, long and heavy, then flips onto his back, closing his eyes with his arms spread wide. Trying to float away from his troubles. Literally.
Bess and Nettie follow suit, drifting like starfish in the milky blue water.
Ransom glides up beside me and hooks an arm around my waist beneath the water, reeling me in like the day's catch. His chin finds my shoulder. “When in Rome?”
“When in Reykjavik,” I counter, but I lean back against him and we both tip onto our backs, staring up at the slate gray sky while floating in one of nature’s most invigorating hot tubs.
We float in blissful silence for a while, the heat seeping into places I didn’t realize were still cold from the investigation.
And for a few minutes there’s no murder, no suspects, not a single secret pressing in on me—just warm water and gray sky and the people I’d follow to the ends of the earth. Or Iceland, which is close enough.
Eventually, we all drift back toward each other, upright and pruning and significantly more relaxed than we arrived.
Wes pushes off toward the swim-up bar. “Drinks anyone?”
“Yes,” we all say in unison.
He swims away with smooth, efficient strokes, and Bess, Nettie, and I look at each other for the first time in proper light, and all at once, we belt out a sharp, shrill scream.
“What’s happening to your hair?” Bess shrieks, staring at Nettie.
“What’s happening to YOUR hair?” Nettie shoots back.
I pat at my own mane, and encounter something that feels less like hair and more like steel wool dipped in concrete. “Why does my hair feel like a loofah?” I howl.
Bess groans, running her fingers through her own strands, and meeting serious resistance. “We look like a trio of sea witches!”
“Norse sea witches,” Nettie corrects, examining a chunk of her hair with scientific interest. “There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t,” I say, trying and failing to smooth down what used to be relatively manageable waves, and is now something that could scrub pots.
“The silica,” Bess moans. “It coated everything.”
“I look like I stuck my finger in a socket,” Nettie says cheerfully.
“You look like you fought an electrical storm and lost,” I tell her.
“So do you!”
“I’m aware,” I cry out.
“Also, I’m pretty sure my hair just became load-bearing,” Nettie points out as if this were a positive.
“What does that even mean?” Bess cries out with frustration.
“It means if I leaned, it would hold me up.”
Mine could hold up a building.
Wes returns with five frozen cocktails balanced carefully in his arms, completely oblivious to our hair crisis. He distributes them, something pink and tropical that probably has an Icelandic name I can’t pronounce, and holds up his glass.
“To Iceland,” he says. “And to taking time away from reality, even when reality refuses to stay away.”
Bess raises her drink with water streaming down her arm. “And to catching a killer.”
Nettie shrugs, grinning. “To catching a hot stud and trapping him inside my cabin.”
“Nettie,” Bess says.
“What? I’m goal-oriented.”
“To gainful employment,” Ransom says quietly, and there’s hope and prayer woven through those three words.
I lift my glass a notch higher. “To new relationships.” I nod at Wes. “And to finding them in the most unexpected places.”
Like a bar in Copenhagen. Like a cruise ship in the middle of the North Atlantic. Like a volcanic hot spring in Iceland where we’re all floating around with catastrophic hair and frozen cocktails, trying to solve a murder while pretending we’re just tourists on vacation.
Here’s hoping Wes isn’t falling in love with a killer.
We clink our glasses together and the sound is bright and cheerful against the backdrop of steam and sulfur and slate gray sky, and we drink to possibilities we can’t control, and futures we can’t predict.
The cocktail is cold and sweet and absolutely perfect.
Just like this moment, sea witch hair and all.