The beige sedan sits there, gleaming with the filtered grey light of day. "Get down," Lacey hisses. She drags Gideon behind a tree with her, and they crouch, watching and listening. The tail lights watch right back, and the seam of the trunk smiles at them. This bastard, she thinks. Then, with a shiver: This could be the person who killed Ro. They could have a gun. "We need to go before they come back."

Gideon's palms drift over the bark of the tree and he narrows his eyes at the back of the vehicle. "No," he whispers. "We need to see who they are."

Then, before she can do or say anything, he's sprinting forward to get a better vantage point, and she's whisper-yelling after him, Gideon, stop, idiot, until she's at his side again, crouched down beneath some half-dead, half-reborn shrubbery. His phone is on and he's squinting at the car, typing down a few different letters and numbers every time. The license plate. Once he's done, he stuffs the phone away.

Lacey forces him to look at her. "We don't need to see who they are. They nearly killed us in the middle of the road last time. Imagine what they'd do in the middle of the woods. We have to leave."

He considers this for a moment. He knows she's right, and she knows he knows because he's not stupid, and she is right. But as much as she throws reason and logic at him, Gideon will clearly always go with his gut. Unfortunately, his gut tells him to stand and get closer.

Unfortunately, Lacey's ears tell her that a twig snaps far too close and the ground rustles beneath someone's feet. Chest thick with panic, she lunges and yanks him back by the collar with both hands. She glimpses the inflamed scar on his shoulder in the process. He falls on his ass in the dirt and his hands push through the dead leaves and his lips part, no doubt to argue, but she claps a dirty hand over his mouth. His eyes widen. The owner of the vehicle comes into view.

He's lanky, and when he walks, it's at a shuffle, hardly picking up his feet. He wears a sweat-stained grey sweatshirt and a baseball cap, and he fidgets with his fingers as he walks, sometimes lifting them to scratch at the brown stubble on his chin. His skin shines with sweat or oil or both.

Gideon's fingers tighten around her wrist. They both recognize the man. It's Clint.

Lacey knows what's about to happen the moment she feels the teeth grinding behind Gideon's cheek. She turns to him, shakes her head vehemently, but it wouldn't matter if she wrote him a full-fledged essay on all the reasons why this is a terrible decision. There's no stopping him once he's on his feet, and there's certainly no stopping him once he starts marching straight for Clint.

"Stop!" Gideon booms.

Clint's head snaps to Gideon's direction. Those wide-eyed greys light with fear and no sooner do they make eye contact does the man lunge for his car door. Gideon is faster. He rushes forward and throws his entire body in front of the door just as Clint loops his fingers around the handle and pulls. Gideon rams his back against the door and it slams shut. He stands taller than Clint here, and the latter freezes, hunched and looking up into the blue eyes of a boy half his age. Neither blink.

Gideon is the first to swallow down his paralysis and speak. "Why are you here?"

Clint shakes his head. "C'mon, man-"

"Why," Gideon stresses, "are you here?"

Lacey nears, keeping a healthy distance of a few yards, but even from there she can she the blood in his eyes, swirling red, before it's even spilled. She sees his fist clenching and unclenching at his side. The rest of him is stiff, still, staring daggers into Clint. She doesn't want this to escalate, so she takes one more step forward.

Clint sputters and throws a glance Lacey's way. Recognition finally registers with him, and he leans back, straightens up, and takes a few steps away from the car. His gaze is shifty, darting from one to the other, like he doesn't know who he's supposed to look at. Then he grows some balls. "Who're you two kids to be askin' round about my business? I'm here to work. I'm here to do my job." His voice is caught in that same firm but trembly cadence as always. He jabs a finger to the earth. He's got conviction.

Well, so does Lacey. Her cheeks flush with heat. "Your job?" she asks. "What job is that? Hiding-"

"Lacey," Gideon says. She stops. "Hold on." She does.

There's a long pause. Clint processes their words carefully, and then a sly grin slips onto his thin lips, and he shakes a finger at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling with mirth. "Say, I only heard about one Lacey in this town and I don't think I put two and two together before but that's Jeremy's daughter. You Jeremy's daughter?"

That name shouldn't be in his mouth. She regards him with suspicion, crossing her arms over her chest. The words drip slow as honey. "How do you know my dad?"

Clint's whole face brightens at that, like he's lit onto something. "Yeah, yeah! He works with me."

"Bullshit," Lacey spits, already charging forward. One of Clint's eyes flinches and Gideon throws a hand out, pressing his fingers into her shoulder to keep her at bay. It's enough to make her stop and assess, and she begrudgingly halts. I wanna get this man behind bars. There's something wrong with him.

Gideon takes back control of the situation. "I'll ask this again and I'll ask it nice and clear and you'll answer, nice. Clear. Why are you here? What's your job got anything to do with being out here, in Carrick's flood waters?"

"Y'all really aren't gonna let me go 'til I entertain you enough?" Clint's gaze lands on them each, pointed, waiting. Lacey lifts her chin. Gideon gets comfortable against the driver side. Clint huffs. "Fuckin' ridiculous. Whatever. I'm part of a demolition team workin' on all kinds of projects I've been hired on for throughout town. I'm just here to report back to my boss with a status update on the flooding so they can get an idea for when some of these projects can resume."

"And who's your boss?" Gideon asks.

Hesitation. He clacks his teeth together. "Boone. Isaac Boone."

The pair run their hands over their faces in unison, Lacey tugging at the locks shrouding her cheeks, Gideon rubbing his eyebrows. It was clear before, so clear, and yet, they both missed this blaring detail. Could they be any more dense?

The self-pity ends when Lacey's fingers crawl down her face and she splays them out in front of her, wild and groping at air. "Why would you try and frame your boss, Clint? It doesn't make any fucking sense!"

"Dolly told me she told you why!" he shouts back, defensive. "I was lookin' out for a friend. My friends are good people, all of 'em, and I wouldn't've done any of this if it weren't for that. You know how Isaac is? He's a snake. He's got people. He can make your life a livin' hell if you so much as look at him wrong, y'hear me? I did what was right. For my friend."

This is killing me and my brain is gonna combust, she thinks, pacing back and forth now, hands to her temples.

Thank goodness for Gideon; the old sport never stops. "Okay," he starts, "let's say that's not a complete horseshit lie. That car? That car nearly got us killed." Clint's brow lifts questioningly, like he's unsure what he's hearing. "You nearly drove a car off the bridge the other day. Don't act like you didn't know it was us."

It dawns on him. Clint's mouth falls open. "I didn't, swears!" He holds up his hands in surrender. She stops her pacing for just a moment, waiting to see him bring his hands back down. Are there scratches? He stuffs them under his armpits. Fuck. Clint carries on meekly, his head ducked. "Listen, I'm not proud to admit it. But I'd gotten behind the wheel uh...under the influence of...somethin' I shouldn't've been takin' that time of day knowin' I needed to get places. I know I swerved a bit and I saw someone skid off the side of the road but y'see I just had to keep going. If I'd known it was a couple of kids, well, shit, I don't think I would've kept goin' like I did."

Gideon's gaze washes over the man, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. "You'd just keep going if it was some other unfortunate soul that got hurt, right?"

Clint somehow buries his head closer to his chest. As much as she likes to see an asshat get scolded, they need to stay on topic. She whirls on him, fast. "How does my dad - Jeremy - how does he fit into your line of work? He's an electrician."

"Yes, ma'am, he's an electrician. Y'need an electrician to take out the old wiring and put new in. He's already gone and refitted a renovated barn, it's pretty damn cool, actually, Isaac takes some of these old barns out here and refashions 'em into homes-"

"Clint, I don't care," Lacey says.

He shuts up.

"This doesn't look good for you," Gideon says simply, glaring at him from under harshly set brows. It's a strange look on him, but she lets him be - if they're lucky, he'll scare the truth of the guy.

Clint groans and wipes the sweat from his brow with melodrama. "Listen, I told y'all everything. I just came out to report back on what I saw here for Isaac, like I said."

"And let me guess," Lacey adds. Don't do it. Don't. "You're not here to report back about the body of the little girl you dumped in that house back there, right?"

Gideon turns on her, eyes wide and mouth parted like he can't believe she said that (or maybe just that it was her who said it first). She sticks to her guns, and her eyes drill into Clint's. C'mon. Snap. Let me know it was you.

Instead, he scoffs. "Excuse me? What kind of wild accusation is that? Are you kidding me?" Then, "You found a body out there?"

"So you're saying you didn't do that?"

"No! I didn't do that!"

Lacey grinds her teeth together, thinking. She decides to test him. "All right. You're not to blame. You came to check up on the house, like you said. When you did, you found the body of Ro-Anne Foster. So this is how this is gonna play out. You will call the police. You will tell them you found this body and you'll explain how you came upon it and surely your boss will back you up on this claim, yeah, because he sent you out here to report back. Simply business."

Clint opens his mouth and tries to interrupt, but he only gets a noise at the back of his throat out because Lacey raises her voice and keeps going: "And if you don't do this, we'll call the cops back and tell them the exact man who nearly ran us off the road and that he admitted to having been under the influence of an uncontrolled substance. I'd say this is the worst situation for you to put yourself in. After all, you were just doing your job. You've got nothing to worry about, so long as you weren't the one who did it. Am I clear?"

"I-"

"Am I clear?"

The man sets his face into a soul-killing scowl. "Yes, Miss Waits. You are crystal."

She nods, curt, winning. "Good. Let's go, Gideon. We need to talk."

Gideon straightens his posture and clears his throat, glancing from Lacey to Clint and back again. "Is it really a good idea to just leave him here like this? How do we know he'll actually do what you said?"

"Oh, we'll wait until he dials. Just get on the damn bike and be ready."

Lacey returns to the dirt shore and lifts their bikes from the ground. Her muscles are sore and she's soaked to the core but she carries on, leading both bikes by the handles. It makes her feel powerful, knowing that she's set Clint up perfectly for this. If he doesn't dial, they've got a true suspect and they can take his name to the station. If he dials, the police get to have a word with him regardless, and they'll get to have the pleasure of punching holes in his story, his timeline, his alibis. It almost makes her smirk. Almost.

She steps up to Gideon, who still hasn't left his spot next to the driver's side door. With some degree of reluctance, he accepts the handles, and without letting his eyes leave Clint, he mounts the seat. Lacey follows suite. They both sit and wait for Clint, sighing with exasperation, to pull the phone from his pocket and dial. "This is bullshit," he mutters.

His fingers on the screen illicit a beep, beep. Before the third, Lacey holds out a hand. Through the corner of his eye, he sees, and lifts his head, attentive.

"Just one more thing," she asks. "Do you own a gun?"

"No? Why, you got plans to hunt it down and shoot me point blank? Seems like somethin' you two'd do at this point."

Lacey shrugs. She can't believe him anyways. "Just asking."

With eyes of grey steel, Clint hammers out a final beep, maintaining eye contact with Lacey as it rings once and the loud voice of the 9-1-1 operator fills this empty void that Carrick has become. "9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

That's their cue. As Clint begins to explain the situation just as she'd told him to, she kicks off, struggling to bike up the hill. His voice draws faint as they get further and further, but Gideon's wheels continue to clank and turn behind her, and that's enough. They ride and they ride and they ride, but still, the stiff tension in her muscles doesn't ease.

Eventually, Gideon settles into a nice riding pace beside her. He clears his throat. "Do you think he's telling the truth? About any of it?"

Lacey shrugs, lips downturned. "Not really. Doesn't matter. If he did it, the cops'll get him. If he didn't, well, the evidence will say so." Talking gets too difficult, so she keeps the rest of it short. Once she's done huffing around the strain, of course. "What now?"

Silence while he thinks. After a minute or so, he says, "I think we should tell Nefyn. My murder board needs drastic updating anyways."

It's the last place she wants to be, but if he thinks that's what they should do, she'll follow. So once they meet the bottom of the incline where the two roads meet - the path headed back towards the flood, which they're on now, and the more defined road leading up towards the warehouses and the diner and what have you - they take the latter, and start for Lore's Hill.