Page 73 of Without a Clue

“Well, for starters, we share a room.”

“Subsistence reasons only,” I say (lie). “I had to go with my best odds of survival.”

“And you knit me a scarf when I went to Point Barrow for research.”

“The Arctic Coast gets chilly. It’s just common sense to keep your employers alive when they get stupid ideas.”

“It wasn’t a stupid idea.”

“YouTube exists. One need not camp alone in negative-thirty-degree weather with the polar bears just to see if”—insert air quotes—“‘my character can do it.’”

“And you wouldn’t have let me get this close.”

I look forward and realize everyone has turned a corner. It’s just us in the hall.

Alone.

And . . . okay, fine. I love it.

Somehow I’ve drawn myself toward him in the past five minutes.

I don’t know who is really in charge of my arm, because I don’t consciously recall setting it on his shoulder.

Heat immediately floods my cheeks.

He has a point.

Like a bunch of seagulls following a piece of shrimp dangling from a fisherman’s hand, the group seems to have noticed their shrimp (i.e., Nash) has disappeared from view and rushes back. Several heads peek around the corner, then nonchalantly-but-extremely-chalantly walk back to us, wait until we are right with them, and then start walking again.

A woman in a brown T-shirt of Nash’s head on a sandwich smiles at us.

I smile back politely and pretend not to notice.

“Right. Well, I know,” I whisper back. “But the fact is, I would’ve assumed none of The Seven were either. And it’s gotta be someone. Someone’s killed them.”

My arm, I’ve realized, has not moved off him. It’s still playfully hanging there, holding on to his bicep. Gripping the flannel.

His eyes crinkle as a smile plays on his lips.

He ducks his head a little as he tips himself closer.

“Interview me next then,” he says in a hush. “Cross me off your list. Then we’ll trade secrets.”

I raise a brow. “You have secrets you can share with me?”

“I have one.”

“Death secrets?”

“Not death secrets.”

“Secrets I’ll actually care about? Something worth trading will information for?”

“Something worth trading information about a will for. I hope.”

I take a breath.

Who are we kidding?