Chapter 12

"Who did you say you are?"

Hawthorne's security badge and uniform apparently weren't enough to make Jaden Cobb comfortable talking about the morning he'd found a dead body.

"Hawthorne Emerson. I'm security, and I'm also a thriller writer doing research while I'm working here."

A grin split the ride operator's mouth, and he shook his head. "I thought you said Hawthorne Emerson. But I thought there might be more than one of you. Wow. So you're really the guy who writes the Carson Steele books?"

The kid who looked to be about twenty was too young to be in Hawthorne's typical demographic. But if he was a fan, that could help. "Guilty as charged."

"Cool. My mom loves you."

Ah. That explained it.

"She got me started on Carson Steele. I don't read much, but they're really good."

Hawthorne smiled at that. Always great to know his books had turned someone into a reader.

"So you want to know about the kid who died for your books? Are you going to write about that?"

"Possibly."

"They said it was an accident."

"That's what I heard."

Jaden shifted a lever at the control box for the Logboat Adventure ride.

A boat slid into the loading dock where Jaden and Hawthorne stood outside the ride in the humid morning air.

"I don't think I can tell you anything you wouldn't already know." Jaden bent to look inside the boat, then gripped its edge and tipped it toward one side, then the other.

The boat immediately righted itself. To be expected since it was attached to a stabilizing frame and track under the water.

"Did everything look normal when you came to open the ride that morning?"

Jaden straightened and glanced at Hawthorne. "Sure." He shifted the lever to bring up another boat. "Just like this morning."

"Was the staff door unlocked?"

"Nope." Jaden went through the same motions of checking the next boat.

"Did you inspect the boats first, like you're doing now?"

Jaden nodded as he dismissed that boat for the next one. "I always check the boats, then do a quick walk-through inside before we open."

"And that's when you found Sam Ackerman?"

Jaden looked up at Hawthorne, his vanilla skin paling slightly. "Yeah. Laying by that rock. At first, I thought it might be one of the operators. We prank each other sometimes. But when I got close…I knew it was real."

"How did you know?"

Jaden swallowed visibly. "All that blood. And the way his eyes were open. Staring nowhere." Jaden gave his head a hard shake. "Freaked me out."

"I can understand that. I'm sorry you had to find him."

"Better me than a paying customer, right?" He gave Hawthorne a shaky grin.

"Good point." Hawthorne smiled. "So you called it in?"

Jaden nodded. "I told security, and they came right away with one of the onsite cops. Then more cops came from outside pretty soon."

"Were you surprised when they said it was an accident?"

Jaden lifted his shoulders and let them drop as he moved another boat into place. "Not really. Seemed pretty obvious to me. The kid must've been messing around and fell."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Oh, yeah. We tell people every ride to stay seated, but there's always some joker who thinks it's funny."

"To stand up during the ride?"

"Uh-huh."

"How do you see when they do that if you're only here, outside?"

Jaden met Hawthorne's gaze. "If they do it at the start or the end, we can see. Sometimes people complain after the ride that somebody was standing, or somebody brags about it."

"I see. Have you ever had anyone slip and fall?"

"Yeah, Christy—she's a nighttime operator, been here for like three years—she's seen it all. She said somebody got their pants totally wet because they were messing around and fell in the water."

"Interesting." So Sam standing up wouldn't be implausible. Sounded pretty common.

Jaden bent over a boat and pulled something out. A beer can?

"Are there often things left in the boats?"

"Oh, sure."

"Anything left in the boats that night?"

Jaden plunked the can into a trash bag, then glanced up. "Probably." He operated the lever again. "Oh, I remember."

Hawthorne tried to see the kid's eyes, but Jaden watched the next boat slide into place.

"I found four beer cans in one boat that morning."

"Is that unusual?"

"There's a max of three people allowed in each boat, so yeah. It was weird."

"Did you tell the police?"

"Yeah." Jaden straightened from testing the boat. "But I'd already cleaned all the boats out before I found the…" He stepped back to the controls to cycle the next boat through. "You know. And they couldn't tell which boat the guy had fallen out of, so it didn't really matter."

Unless the four cans meant four people had crammed into one boat? Or three had gone in and somehow moved Sam—maybe already dead—into the ride from a side door? But they wouldn't have staff access. The staff doors were locked from the inside, too.

And that would mean three killers instead of one. If there'd even been a killing at all.

"Thanks, Jaden. You've been a big help."

"Enough to get me into one of your books? Maybe a character with my name?" He grinned at Hawthorne.

"I'll see what I can do." Hawthorne smiled back, but the expression faded quickly as he left Jaden and headed to the Safety Center to get his assignment for the morning. From Jaden's information, it wasn't a stretch for Sam's death to have been an accident. Sounded like plenty of people stood up when they shouldn't and disobeyed ride rules. The beer cans meant people also consumed alcohol while on the ride. That was consistent with the alcohol content in Sam's blood and the theory he was tipsy from its effects.

Maybe Sam was merely a victim of bad choices and foolish behavior.

But Hawthorne wouldn't want to tell Rebekah that conclusion.

And then there was the odd finding of the superfluous number of beer cans in one boat. Maybe meant nothing. And Hawthorne didn't know what it meant if anything at all. But any anomaly was reason to keep digging.

Hawthorne's feet seemed to pick up speed of their own accord as he neared the Safety Center. He wasn't late—his shift didn't start for another ten minutes—but he didn't have to solve the mystery of the eagerness speeding his pulse. He'd seen Jazz listed on the duty roster for this morning.

Hopefully, he could finally ask her to be the model for the heroine of his new series. He felt a little odd already writing about her without her permission. But it was fiction. And he was having so much fun with her character that he didn't want to consider what he'd do if she said no.

He'd simply have to turn on the charm or try bribery or something—because he needed Jazz Lamont in his next series.