“I did.”

“But I led her just right, didn’t I? About four feet. And high. Didn’t think she’d go out of control.”

“Who’d guess that?”

A moment or two passed. Lewis said, “Hey, Hart?”

Looking at the woods around him. “Yeah?”

“Okay, what it is…I shouldn’t’ve said anything. About the keys.”

“Keys?”

“In the house. With the woman cop. I gave it away…you were right. I got excited. My brother always said I do things or say something before I think. I gotta watch that.”

“Who’d’ve thought, a cop?” Hart nodded at him. “Can’t stay on top of everything. But you did some fine shooting.”

The car was filled with the smell of hot rubber and metal from the self-destructing tire.

It was then that Hart glanced back. “Shit!” he whispered.

“What? Whatta you see?”

“I think it’s her. Yeah, it is! The cop.”

“What? She got out of the water? Fuck. Where is she?”

“In that other house. The one we just passed. Number Two. The cop.”

“No shit. You’re sure?”

“In the window. Yeah. I saw her plain as day.”

“I can’t even see the house.”

“Was a break in the trees. She probably saw us go past and stood up. Thinking we were gone. Man, that was stupid of her.”

“They both there?”

“I don’t know. All I saw was the cop.” Hart was silent a moment. Lewis kept driving. Hart continued, “I don’t know what to do. We’re doing pretty good with the tire.”

“She’s holding up,” Lewis agreed.

“And we’ll be at the highway in ten minutes. I’d love to get the fuck out of here.”

“Amen.”

“’Course, then we miss the chance for some payback. Jesus, that woman’s slugs came six inches away from my head. I don’t dodge lead the way you do.”

“True too,” Lewis said, thinking things over and laughing about the bullet dodging.

“And wouldn’t be a bad idea to get things finished up now so we don’t have to worry. Especially since she knows my name.” Hart shrugged. “But I don’t know. Whatever you’re up for. Get her or not.”

A pause. Then Lewis lifted his foot off the accelerator, considering this. “Sure. And Michelle, maybe she’s there too…. Fuck her up bad is what I really want, my friend.”

“Okay, I say let’s do it,” Hart said. He looked around again and then pointed ahead to the driveway at 1 Lake View. “Shut the lights off and head up there. We’ll move around behind. She’ll never guess.”

Lewis grinned. “Payback. You son of a bitch, Hart. I knew you’d be up for it.”

Hart gave a short laugh and pulled his pistol from his belt.

In fact, Hart hadn’t seen anything in the window at Number 2. Like Lewis, he couldn’t even see the place. But instinct had told him that the cop was there. He knew she’d survived the crash; he’d seen footprints leading from the lake. She’d have gone toward the closest shelter she could find: the second house on Lake View, he’d concluded. None of this he’d shared with Lewis, though. Hart had been taking soundings for the past couple of hours and knew his partner definitely didn’t want to stay here. He wanted to head back to Milwaukee. He talked big about tracking down the two women and taking care of them. But Hart knew it was just that: talk. The man’d get lazy and forget about it—until somebody came for him in the middle of the night. But if Hart had insisted they remain here to hunt the women down, Lewis’d dig his heels in and there’d be a fight.

Hart did not need any more enemies tonight.

But seeing Lewis wipe the lip of the bottle, back at the Feldmans’ house, Hart had sized up the younger man and decided he could get Lewis to stay here if he played on the man’s insecurities: complimenting his shooting and making it seem like staying to get the cop was Lewis’s idea.

Hart was sometimes called “the Craftsman,” a reference to his hobby of furniture making and woodworking, though the term was usually used by people in his profession, the one that had brought him here to Lake Mondac tonight. And the number one rule of craftsmanship is knowing your tools: the animate ones, like Lewis, in addition to those made from steel.

No, Hart never intended to return to the city without killing these two women, even if it took all night. Or all the next day, for that matter, even if the place was swarming with cops and rescue workers.

Yes, he wanted to kill Michelle, though that was a lower priority than getting the policewoman. She was the one he absolutely had to kill. She was the threat. Hart couldn’t forget her. Standing by her car. Just standing tall and waiting for him. The look on her face, a flash of gotcha, which might’ve been his imagination, though he didn’t think so. Like a hunter, waiting for just the right moment to take the shot. Like Hart himself.

Only his instant reflex, diving to the ground, had saved him. That, and the fact that she’d fired one-handed, wisely not letting go of her car keys. He actually heard a bullet near his ear, a pop, not a phushhhh, like in the movies. Hart knew he was closer to death at that moment than when Michelle had snuck up behind him and taken her shot.

Lewis now continued up the drive of 1 Lake View. At Hart’s direction, he beached the Ford in a stand of brush behind the house. It was well hidden in the tall grass and shrubs. They climbed out and moved west, into the woods about thirty feet, and then started going north, parallel to the private road, moving as quickly as they could toward Number 2.

Hart led Lewis around a pile of noisy leaves and they picked up the pace, staying in the thick of the forest for as long as they could.

A snap of branches behind them.

Both men spun around. Lewis readied the shotgun nervously. The visitor wasn’t human, though. It was that animal again, the one nosing in the grass earlier, or a similar one. A dog or coyote, he supposed. Or maybe a wolf. Did they have wolves in Wisconsin?

It kept its distance. Hart sensed no threat other than the risk of noise that might alert someone in the house. This time Lewis paid it no mind.

The creature vanished.

Hart and Lewis paused and studied the house for a long moment. There was no motion from inside. Hart thought he heard someone talking but decided it was the wind, which brushed over leaves and made the sound of a mournful human voice.

No light, no movement inside.

Had he been wrong in his guess that the cop had come here?

Then he squinted and tapped Lewis on the arm. A thin trail rose from the heating system exhaust duct next to the chimney. Lewis smiled. They eased closer to the house, under cover of thorny berry bushes that stretched from the woods nearly to the back porch. Hart carried his pistol with his trigger finger pointed forward, outside the guard. He held the gun casually, at his side. Lewis’s grip on the shotgun was tense.

At the back door, they stopped, noting the broken glass in the window. Hart pointed to the porch, at their feet. Two fragments of differing footprints, both women’s sizes.

Lewis gave a thumbs-up. He hooked the gun through his left arm and reached in through the broken pane, unlatched the lock. He swung the door open.

Hart held up a hand, whispered as low as he could, “Assume one of ’em has a weapon. And they’re waiting for us.”

Lewis gave another of his patented sneers, evidencing his low opinion of their enemy. But Hart lifted an impatient eyebrow and the man mouthed “Okay.”

“And no flashlights.”

Another nod.

Then, their gun muzzles pointed forward, they moved into the house.

Moonlight slanted through the large windows and gave some illumination throughout the first floor. They searched quickly. In the kitchen, Hart pointed to the drawers. A half dozen were open. He tapped the knife block. Several slots were empty.

Hart heard something. He held up a hand, frowning. Tilted his head.

Yes, it was voices. Women’s voices, very faint.

Hart pointed up the stairs, noting that his pulse, which had been a little elevated by the trek through the forest, was now back to normal.

 

STANLEY MANKEWITZ WAS

eating dinner with his wife in an Italian restaurant in Milwaukee, a place that claimed to serve the best veal in the city. That was a meat that troubled both Mankewitz and his wife but they were guests of the businessman making up the threesome and so they’d agreed to come here.

The waiter recommended the veal saltimbocca, the veal Marsala and the fettuccine with veal Bolognese.

Mankewitz ordered a steak. His wife picked the salmon. Their host had the chopped-up calf.

As they waited for their appetizers they toasted with glasses poured from a bottle of Barbaresco, a spicy wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. The bruschetta and salads came. The host tucked his napkin into his collar, which seemed tacky but was efficient, and Mankewitz never put down whatever was efficient.

Mankewitz was hungry, but he was tired too. He was head of a local union—maybe the most important on the western shore of Lake Michigan. It was made up of tough, demanding workers, employed at companies owned by men who were also tough and demanding.

Which words also described Mankewitz’s life pretty well.

Their host, one of the heads of the national union, had flown in from New Jersey to talk to Mankewitz. He’d offered Mankewitz a cigar as they sat in a conference room in the union headquarters—where no-smoking ordinances weren’t taken seriously—and proceeded to tell him that the joint federal and state investigation had better be concluded, favorably, pretty soon.

“It will be,” Mankewitz had assured. “Guaranteed.”

“Guaranteed,” the man from New Jersey had said, in the same abrupt way he’d bitten the tip off his cigar.

Hiding his fury that this prick had flown from Newark to deliver his warning like a prissy schoolteacher, Mankewitz had smiled, conveying a confidence he absolutely didn’t feel.

He began spearing his romaine lettuce from the Caesar salad, dressing on the side but anchovies present and accounted for.

The dinner was purely social and the conversation meandered as they ate. The men talked about the Packers and the Bears and the Giants but delivered mere sound bites, aware that a lady was at the table, and everyone found the subject of vacationing in Door County or the Caribbean a more palatable topic. The New Jersey man offered his anchovies to Mankewitz, who declined but with a smile, as a wave of absolute fury passed through him. Hatred too. He’d decided that if their host ever ran for head of the national union Mankewitz would make sure his campaign sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald.

As the salad plates were noisily whisked away, Mankewitz noticed a man enter the restaurant by himself and shake his head curtly to the hostess. He was in his late thirties, with short, curly hair and an easy face and looked like a good-natured Hobbit. The man oriented himself, looking around the underlit and over-Italianized place, which was owned by Ukrainians and staffed by Eastern Europeans and Arabs. He finally spotted Mankewitz, who was hard to miss, being 230 pounds, with an enviable shock of silver hair.

They made eye contact. The man stepped back, into the corridor. Mankewitz took a slug of wine and wiped his mouth. He stood up. “Be right back.”

The labor boss joined the Hobbit and they walked toward the banquet rooms, tonight empty, down a long corridor, where the only other presences were effigies: pictures of people like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and James Gandolfino, all of whose signatures and endorsements of the restaurant in bold marker looked suspiciously similar.

Eventually Mankewitz got tired of walking and stopped. He said, “What is it, Detective?”

The man hesitated, as if he didn’t want his job title used under these circumstances. And Mankewitz decided that of course he didn’t.

“There’s a situation.”

“What does that mean? ‘Situation’? That’s a Washington word, a corporate word.” Mankewitz had been in a bad mood lately, unsurprisingly, which prompted the retort, but there wasn’t much edge to it.

The Hobbit said, without a fleck of emotion, “Up in Kennesha County.”

“The hell is that?”

“About two hours northwest of here.” The cop lowered his voice even more. “It’s where the lawyer in the case has a summer house.”

The Case. Capital C.

“The lawyer from—”

“Got it.” Now Mankewitz was concerned about indiscretion and cut the cop off with a wave before he mentioned Hartigan, Reed, Soames & Carson. “What’s the story?” Mankewitz had dropped the irritated act, which was replaced by a concern that was no act at all.

“Apparently what happened was there was a nine-one-one call from her husband’s phone. Went to the county. We’re monitoring all communication involving the players.”

The Players. In the Case…

“You told me that. I didn’t know they were checking all the way out there.”

“The systems’re all consolidated.”

How did they do that? Mankewitz wondered. Computers, of course. Privacy was fucked. As well he knew. “A call. A nine-one-one call. Go on.” Mankewitz looked at a smiling Dean Martin.

“Nobody seems to know what was said. It was really brief. And then it seemed to get rescinded.”

That’s a word cops don’t use very often. “Whatta you mean?”

“The husband, he called back and said it was a mistake.”

Mankewitz looked along the dark corridor to where his wife was chatting happily with a tall, balding man standing at the table. He wondered if the man only stopped by because he’d seen Mankewitz wasn’t at the table.

Determined, slick, tough pricks…

He focused on the Hobbit. “So it was an emergency and then it wasn’t.”

“Right. That’s why it didn’t go to anybody on the task force. I’m the only one who knows. The record’s there but it’s buried…. I have to ask, Stan, what should I know about?”

Mankewitz held his eyes. “There’s nothing you should know about, Pat. Maybe it was a fire. Nine-one-one—who knows? A fender-bender. A break-in. A raccoon in the basement.”

“I’ll go out on a limb for you but not walk the plank.”

For what he was slipping into the cop’s anonymous account, the man should’ve been willing to jump off the fucking plank and kill sharks with his bare hands.

Mankewitz happened to notice his wife glancing his way. The entrées had arrived. He looked back at the cop and said, “I told you from the beginning there’s nothing you have to worry about. That was our deal. You’re completely protected.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Stan.”

“Like what, eat here?”

The detective gave a halfhearted grin. He nodded at a photo next to them. “Can’t be that bad. It was Sinatra’s favorite restaurant.”

Mankewitz grunted and left the man in the corridor, heading for the men’s room and fishing a prepaid cell phone out of his pocket.

 

ON THE SECOND

floor of the house at 2 Lake View were five doors, all closed. The carpet was Home Depot Oriental and on the walls were posters from an art gallery that was thirty feet of aisle in Target or Wal-Mart.

Hart and Lewis moved with infinite care, slowly, pausing at each door. They finally found the one the women’s voices were coming from. Lewis was staying focused. And, thank God, quiet.

The words the women were speaking were impossible to make out but it was clear that they didn’t seem at all suspicious the men were nearby.

What the hell were those gals talking about?

Strange allies on a strange night.

Hart wasn’t thinking much about that, though. He was feeling keen satisfaction in the success of the car trick. That he was about to kill two human beings meant nothing to him, nor did the fact there’d be some pleasure in the death of Michelle, who’d shot him, or of the policewoman, who’d tried to. No, this nearly sexual pleasure he felt was due only to the approaching conclusion of a job he’d begun. The bloody deaths of two women happened to be that resolution but, to him, it was no different from that glow he felt when he gave the last fine-steel-wool buff to the lacquer on a cabinet he’d built or dusted herbs on an omelet he’d fixed for a woman who’d spent the night.

Of course, there’d be consequences from the deaths. His life was about to change and he understood that. For instance, the cop’s colleagues would go all out to find her killer. He even wondered whether her kin—husband, brother or father—might take the law into their own hands, if the local investigators didn’t do a very good job finding Hart, which he suspected they wouldn’t.

But if and when the cop’s husband, say, came after him, Hart would create a plan to deal with that. He’d execute it and eliminate the problem. And feel just as satisfied with the symmetry of conclusion as he was about to now, when he fired the fatal bullet into her body.

Hart gingerly tried the knob. Locked. The voices continued, unalarmed. Hart pointed to himself and his good shoulder.

Lewis lowered his mouth to Hart’s ear and whispered, “Your arm?”

“I’ll live with it. When I’m through I’ll drop down on the floor and give covering fire. You come in over me and take them out.”

“They have guns, you think?” Glancing toward the door.

“Why take knives if you’ve got guns? But we oughta count on one of them having a piece.”

Lewis nodded and gripped the shotgun, eyed the safety. The red button showed.

Inside, the talking continued, casual as could be.

Hart stepped back, glanced at Lewis, who held the muzzle of the Winchester skyward and nodded. Then, hunched down like a tackle, Hart sped forward and flinched as his right shoulder connected with wood. With a loud crack the lock popped and the door flew inward, but stopped only a few inches inside. Hart gasped as his head slammed into the oak and he stumbled back, stunned.

The door had hit some barricade.

Inside the bedroom the voices stopped instantly.

Hart shoved the door again—it moved no farther—and then snapped to Lewis, “Push, help me. Push! It’s blocked.”

The younger man dug his feet into the carpet but the door wouldn’t budge. “No way. It’s blocked solid.”

Hart looked around the hall. He ran to the bedroom next door, to the right, and pushed his way inside. He searched the room fast. It had a French door leading to a deck outside. He kicked this open and looked out, to the left. The deck was thirty feet long and the bedroom where the women hid opened onto it as well, via a similar French door. There were no stairs off the deck. They hadn’t escaped this way; they were still inside.

Hart called for Lewis to join him. Together they stepped out onto the deck. They moved to the first bedroom, stopping just short of the windows, which were closed, shades pulled or curtains drawn, and it seemed that other pieces of furniture had been pushed against the windows as barricades. The French door, beyond the end of the windows, was curtained as well.

Considering how best to approach the assault, whether the woman would be holding her Glock toward the hall or window, barricades, escape routes—for the women and for Hart and Lewis…

Lewis was eager to move but Hart took his time. Finally he decided. “You go down to that door. I’ll stay here and kick this window out and try to push that dresser or table, whatever it is, out of the way. I’ll fire. They’ll focus on that. Then you let go with a couple rounds.”

“Crossfire.”

Hart nodded. “We got ammo. We can afford to use it. Then we’ll go in through the door. Okay?”

Lewis, crouching, covered the distance to the door, staying low. He took a deep breath and glanced back. Hart nodded, kicked in the window, with a huge crash, and pushed over a small dresser. He dodged back as Lewis broke out a pane in the door and fired three shotgun rounds into the room, shaking the curtains and rattling the glass, while Hart fired his Glock four times in a random pattern. He didn’t expect to hit anything but he knew it would keep their prey down, give him and Lewis time to get inside.

“Go!”

The men ran through the doorway, guns ready.

They found a room filled with mismatched antiques, rustic prints, books and magazines stacked on dressers and in baskets. But no human beings.

Hart thought for a moment that the women had used the delay to escape by the door to the hallway but it was still blocked—by a big dresser, it turned out. He gestured to the closet. Lewis pulled the door open and fired a shotgun round inside.

The noise was deafening. Wished the man had held back. The sudden deafness was freaking Hart out; he couldn’t have heard anybody sneaking up behind him.

Looking around again. Where? The bathroom, Hart supposed. Had to be.

The door was closed.

Lewis stood in front of it. Hart pointed at Lewis’s fatigue-jacket pocket. The man nodded and set down the shotgun and pulled out his silver SIG-Sauer pistol, still loud but less deafening than the Winchester scattergun. He chambered a round and flicked off the safety.

Hart started forward. Just as he was about to kick in the bathroom door, though, he paused, cocking his head. He gestured Lewis back. “Wait,” he mouthed. He pulled a drawer out of a dresser and tossed it into the door, which snapped open.

Fumes poured from it. Their eyes stung fiercely and both men began to cough.

“Jesus, what is that?”

“Ammonia,” Hart answered.

“Like fucking teargas.”

Holding his breath, Hart flicked on the bathroom light.

Well, look at this.

The women had propped a bucket of ammonia on the top of the door so that whoever walked through would get drenched—and possibly blinded. Luckily the door eased shut by itself and tipped the bucket to the floor before the men arrived.

“A fucking trap.”

He imagined what it would’ve been like to get soaked with the chemical. The pain, unbearable.

Wiping his eyes, Hart slammed the door shut and scanned the bedroom. “Look.” He sighed. “It wasn’t them at all. That’s what we heard.” He pointed to a TV. The electric cord of the Sony was tied around the leg of the dresser and then plugged into the wall outlet. When Hart had tried to break in the door, he’d pushed the dresser inward about three inches, which had unplugged the TV—making it seem that the women had stopped talking and presumably were hiding in the room.

He plugged the cord in again. The Shopping Channel came on. “Women talking,” Hart whispered, shaking his head. “No music. Just voices. They set it up and went out the patio door and through the other bedroom. To keep us busy and give ’em time to get away.”

“So they waited in the woods, saw us go past and’re halfway to the county road.”

“Maybe.” But Hart wondered too if they’d made it seem like they were escaping to the highway when in fact they were hiding somewhere else in the house. He’d glanced downstairs earlier; the place seemed to have a large basement.

Yes or no? He finally decided: “I think we’ll have to search.”

Lewis replaced his pistol in his jacket and picked up the shotgun. “Okay. But let’s get the fuck out of here.” He was coughing. They pulled the dresser away from the door. But Hart paused, noticed something stuffed under a table. It was a pile of wet clothes. Of course, the cop would have changed after her swim in the freezing lake. Hart looked through the clothes. The pockets were empty. He examined the front of the shirt, the name tag, black and etched with white lettering. Dep. Brynn McKenzie.

She’d tricked him, sure, but Hart was pleased. For some reason he always found knowing the name of his enemy comforting.

 

MUTED GUNSHOTS FROM

inside 2 Lake View Drive snapped like impatient fingers. There was a pause and then more shots followed.

Brynn and Michelle were approaching the Feldmans’ house, which was now completely dark. The air was thick with the smell of fireplace flames and loam and rotting leaves. The young woman had shut down again, sullen and resentful. She limped along more slowly, using a pool cue as a cane.

Brynn squeezed her arm.

No response.

“Come on, Michelle, we have to move faster.”

The young woman complied but was obviously distraught. She seemed put out. As if she were the only victim here. It reminded her of Joey’s attitude when Brynn insisted he do homework before playing computer games or text-messaging his friends.

As they neared the house Brynn was reflecting on the dispute she’d had with Michelle back at 2 Lake View after agreeing to put the furnace on.

But she’d done that simply to trick the men into believing they were hiding out in the house. She’d said to the young woman, “Come on. We’re going back to the Feldmans’ place.”

“What?”

“Hurry.”

Michelle, with her injured ankle and in shock from losing her friends, had begged to stay in the house at Number 2, hiding, even in the spider-filled basement, and waiting for the police. Acting like a bit of a princess, she’d resisted heading outside. She couldn’t understand why Brynn felt certain the men would circle back, rather than go on to Route 682.

But Brynn was convinced they would do just that. The drive to the highway was just a trick.

“But why?” the young woman had argued adamantly. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Brynn explained her logic. “From what you told me, I don’t think this was just a random break-in. They’re professional killers. That means they’re going to come after us. They have to. We can identify them. And that means we’re a link to whoever hired them. So they’re doubly desperate to find us. If they don’t, their boss is going to come after them.”

Brynn didn’t, however, tell her that there was another basis for her conclusion: the man named Hart. He wasn’t going away. She’d recalled how confident he’d sounded talking to her in the house. Unemotional and fully prepared to kill her without a second’s hesitation when she showed herself.

Hart reminded her of the surgeon who, in a perfectly even voice, explained how her father had died during exploratory surgery.

More chillingly, though, he reminded Brynn of her ex-husband. Hart’s look was the same as in Keith’s face once when she found him slipping a pistol she didn’t recognize into the lockbox in the bedroom. She’d asked about it and the state trooper had hesitated but confessed to her that fellow officers would sometimes pocket a weapon found at crime scenes, if it wasn’t necessary evidence. They’d collect them. “Just to have,” Keith had explained.

“You mean…you mean, to plant them on a perp—so you can say you shot him in self-defense?”

Her husband hadn’t answered. But he’d glanced at her with a look that was identical to Hart’s in that instant he rose from the foliage, holding his pistol and looking for a target.

There was something else in the glance too, Brynn decided. Admiration?

Maybe.

And a challenge too.

May the best person win….

Assuming the men would return to the house where she and Michelle were hiding, Brynn had set the TV to a shopping network, blocked the door with a dresser and rigged the power cord around the leg. Then she’d found a bottle of ammonia and poured it on the floor, alongside a bucket, to make it look as though she’d set a trap. That would make Hart and his partner wary, thinking she was willing to blind her pursuers—though in reality she would not risk hurting the homeowners or rescue workers later.

They’d grabbed a few other things, which they now carried: weapons. Each woman had a sock containing a billiard ball—like a South American bolo throwing weapon, which Brynn had learned about helping Joey with a project on Argentina for school. They also had Chicago Cutlery knives in their pockets, wrapped in sock scabbards, and Brynn carried a pool cue at the end of which was taped a ten-inch-long Chicago Cutlery carving knife.

Michelle had taken the weapons reluctantly. But Brynn had insisted. And the young woman had grudgingly agreed.

Then they’d slipped into the woods behind the house and turned north, back toward the Feldmans’ place, picking their way carefully through the boggy ground and using logs and rocks as stepping-stones to climb over the streams that ran to the lake.

Now, keeping under cover in the yard of her friends’ house, Michelle was staring south toward the gunshots. She muttered to Brynn, “Why did you want to come back here? We should’ve gone the other way. To the county road. Now we’ve got to go past them to get there.”

“We’re not going that way.”

“What do you mean? It’s the only way to the county road.”

Brynn shook her head. “I was on Six Eighty-two for nearly a half hour and I saw three cars. And that was at rush hour. We’d have to risk walking on the shoulder in the open for who knows how long. They’d find us there for sure.”

“But weren’t there some houses on the highway? We’ll go there. Call nine-one-one.”

“We can’t go to any of them,” Brynn said. “I won’t lead those men to somebody else’s place. I don’t want anybody else hurt.”

Michelle was silent, staring at the Feldmans’ house. “That’s crazy. We have to get out of here.”

“We’re going to get out. Just not the way we came in.”

“Well, why aren’t there more police here?” she snapped. “Why’d you just come here by yourself? The police wouldn’t do it that way in Chicago.” The young woman’s voice was positively surly. Brynn tamped down her irritation. She squinted as she looked past her and pointed.

In the house at 2 Lake View, she could make out two flashlight beams, one upstairs, one on the ground floor. Scanning eerily. The men were both in the house, searching for them.

“Keep an eye on the flashlights. I’m going to look inside. Did Steven have a gun?”

“I have no idea,” Michelle scoffed. “They really weren’t the gun type.”

“Where’s your cell phone?” Brynn asked.

“In my purse, in the kitchen.”

As Brynn sprinted for the porch she glanced back and could see the young woman’s eyes, just visible in the moonlight. Yes, there was a measure of sorrow—that her friends had died. But it was the put-upon expression Brynn sometimes recognized in her son during one of his irritated moments. The expression that asked, Why me? Life just isn’t fair.

 

“NOTHING.”

Spoken in a whisper.

In the basement of the house at 2 Lake View Drive, Hart nodded, acknowledging the comment by Lewis, who was sweeping his flashlight around a dark storage area, which would have been perfect for hiding in.

And had been pretty much their last hope of finding the women in the house.

Hart was feeling more confident. It was likely that the women were no longer armed, a conclusion he’d come to by default: otherwise they would have lain in wait and shot the men. Still, he’d insisted they use flashlights and not put on the overhead lights.

Once, Hart had seen a movement, spun around and fired. But the target turned out to be just a fleeing rat, its shadow magnified a dozen times. The creature scurried away. Hart was angry with himself for the panicked shot. He’d hurt his injured arm in the maneuver and they’d been temporarily deafened again. Angry too for the loss of control. Sure, it was logical. The sudden motion, jumping toward him, it seemed…. Naturally he’d fired.

But excuses always tasted bad in Hart’s mouth. You had nobody to blame but yourself if you cut the plank wrong or planed a bow into a chair leg meant to be straight, or split a dovetail joint.

“Measure twice, cut once,” his father used to say.

They trooped upstairs into the dark kitchen. Hart was looking out the back windows and into the forest, wondering if he was staring right at the women. “Wasted some good minutes searching. That’s why they set up that little scene in the bedroom. Buy time.”

And to blind us. He could smell the ammonia all the way down here, even with the upstairs bedroom door closed.

Then Hart mused, “But where are they? Where would I go, if I was them?”

“The woods? Snuck past us and’re making for the highway?”

Hart agreed. “Yep. That’s what I’d guess. There’s no other way out. They’ll be thinking they can hail a car but there won’t be much traffic this time of night. Hell, there wasn’t much on the way up here. And they’ll have to stick close to the shoulder, out in the open. And that blood on Brynn’s uniform? She’s hurt. Be moving slowly. We’ll spot ’em easy.”

 

BRYNN MCKENZIE WAS

making a fast sweep through the Feldmans’ house. She left the lights out, of course, and searched by feel for weapons and cell phones. She found none.

Michelle’s purse was gone, which meant the killers had it—and that they’d now know her name and where she lived.

Brynn walked into the kitchen, where the bodies lay in their death poses, the blood making a paisley pattern next to the husband and a near-perfect circle around the wife. Brynn hesitated briefly and then knelt and searched their pockets for cell phones. None. She tried the jackets. Similarly empty. She then stood and looked down at them. Wished there were time to say some words, though she had no idea what.

Did the couple have laptop computers? She looked at the briefcase on the floor—it was the woman’s—and at the pile of file folders all stamped with the word CONFIDENTIAL. But no electronics. The husband apparently used a backpack for his briefcase but that had contained only a few magazines, a paperback novel and a bottle of wine.

Brynn’s feet were beginning to sting again from chafing; the lake water had soaked through the dry socks. She looked in the laundry room and found two pairs of hiking boots. She pulled on dry socks and the larger of the boots. She took the second pair for Michelle. She also found a candle lighter and slipped that in her pocket.

Was there anything—?

She gasped in shock. Outside, the croak of frogs and the whisper of wind vanished in the insistent blare of a car alarm.

Then Michelle’s desperate voice calling, “Brynn! Come here! Help me!”

Brynn ran outside, gripping her makeshift spear, blade forward.

Michelle was standing beside the Mercedes, the window shattered. The young woman was frantic, wide-eyed. And paralyzed.

Brynn ran to the car, glancing at the house at Number 2. The flashlights went out.

They’re on their way. Great.

“I’m sorry!” Michelle cried. “I didn’t think, I didn’t think…”

Brynn ripped the passenger door open, popped the hood and ran to the front of the car. She’d made a point to learn all she could about cars and trucks—vehicles make up the majority of police work in a county like Kennesha—and her studies included mechanics as well as driving. Brynn struggled to work the cable off the positive terminal of the battery with the Chicago Cutlery knife. The piercing sound stopped.

“What happened?”

“I just…” Michelle moaned angrily. “It’s not my fault!”

No? Whose was it?

She continued, “I have low blood sugar. I was feeling funny. I brought some crackers with me.” She pointed to a bag of Whole Foods–brand snacks in the backseat. She said defensively, “If I don’t get food, sometimes I faint.”

“Okay,” said Brynn, who’d avoided breaking into and searching the Mercedes specifically because she’d known it would be alarmed. She now climbed in fast, grabbed the crackers and handed them to Michelle, then rifled through the glove compartment. “Nothing helpful,” she muttered.

“You’re mad,” she said, her voice an irritating whine. “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry.”

“It’s okay. But we have to move. Fast. They’re on their way.” She handed Michelle the boots she’d found inside, the smaller pair, which should fit fine. Michelle’s own boots were chic and stylish, with spiky three-inch heels—just the sort for a young professional. But useless footgear for fleeing from killers.

Michelle stared at the fleece boots. She didn’t move.

“Hurry.”

“Mine are fine.”

“No, they’re not. You can’t wear those.” A nod at the designer footwear.

Michelle said, “I don’t like to wear other people’s clothes. It’s…gross.” Her voice was a hollow whisper.

Maybe she meant dead people’s clothes.

A glance toward Number 2. No sign of the men. Not yet.

“I’m sorry, Michelle. I know it’s upsetting. But you have to. And now.”

“I’m fine with these.”

“No. You can’t. Especially with a hurt ankle.”

Another hesitation. It was as if the woman were a pouty eight-year-old. Brynn took her firmly by the shoulders. “Michelle. They could be here any minute. We don’t have any choice.” Her voice was harsh. “Put the goddamn boots on. Now!”

A long moment. Michelle’s jaw trembling, eyes red, she snatched away the hiking boots and leaned against the Mercedes to put them on. Brynn jogged to the garage and found beside it what she’d seen when she’d arrived: a canoe under a tarp. She hefted it. The fiberglass boat wasn’t more than forty or fifty pounds.

Although Yahoo’s estimate was accurate and two hundred yards separated them from the shoreline, a stream was only about thirty feet from the house and it ran pretty much straight to the lake.

In the garage she found life preservers and paddles.

Michelle was staring down at her friend’s boots, grimacing. She looked like a rich customer who’d been sold inferior footwear and was about to complain to the store manager.

Brynn snapped, “Come on. Help me.”

Michelle glanced back toward the house at 2 Lake View and, her face troubled, shoved the crackers in her pocket, then hurried to the canoe. The two women dragged it to the stream. Michelle climbed in with her pool cue walking stick and Brynn handed her the spear, paddles and life vests.

With a look back at the morass of forest, through which the killers were surely sprinting right now, the deputy climbed in and shoved off into the stream, a dark artery seeping toward a dark heart.

 

THE MEN RAN

through the night, sucking in cold, damp air rich with the smell of rotting leaves.

At the sound of the horn, Hart had realized that rather than head for the county road, like he’d thought, the women had snuck back to the Feldman house. They’d probably broken into the Mercedes hoping to fix the tire, not thinking the car was alarmed. He and Lewis had started running directly for the place but immediately encountered bogs and some wide streams. Hart started to ford one but Lewis said, “No, your feet’ll chafe bad. Gotta keep ’em dry.”

Hart, never an outdoorsman, hadn’t thought about that. The men returned to the driveway and jogged to Lake View Drive and then north toward number 2.

“We go…up careful,” Hart said, out of breath, when they were halfway to the Feldmans’ driveway. “Still…could be a trap.” The jogging was hell on his wounded arm. He winced and tried moving it into different positions. Nothing helped.

“A trap?”

“Still…worried about a gun.”

Lewis seemed a lot less obnoxious now. “Sure.”

They slowed at the mailbox, then started up the drive, Hart first, both of them sticking to the shadows. Lewis was silent, thank God. The kid was catching on, if you could call a thirty-five-year-old a kid. Hart thought again of his brother.

About fifty feet up the driveway they paused.

Hart scanned what they could see, which wasn’t much because of the dusk. Bats swooped nearby. And some other creature zipped past his head, floating down to a scampering landing.

Hell, a flying squirrel. Hart’d never seen one.

He was squinting at the Mercedes, noting the broken window. He saw no signs of the women.

It was Lewis who spotted them. He happened to look back down the driveway toward the private road. “Hart. Look. What’s that?”

He turned, half expecting to see Brynn rising from the bushes about to fire that black service piece of hers. But he saw nothing.

“What?”

“There they are! On the lake.”

Hart turned to look. About two hundred feet into the lake was a low boat, a skiff or canoe. It was moving toward the opposite shore but very slowly. It was hard to see for certain but he thought there were two people in it. Brynn and Michelle had seen the men, stopped paddling and hunched down, keeping a low profile. The momentum was carrying them toward the opposite shore.

Lewis said, “That alarm, it wasn’t a mistake. It was to distract us. So they could get away in the fucking boat.”

The man had made a good catch. Hart hadn’t even been looking at the lake. He bridled once again at being outguessed—and he decided it was probably Brynn who’d tried to trick them.

The men ran down to the shore.

“Too far for the scattergun,” Lewis said, grimacing, disappointed. “And I’m not much of a pistol shot.”

But Hart was. He went to a range at least once a week. Now, holding his gun in one hand, he began firing, slowly, adjusting the elevation of the barrel as he did so. The sharp detonation rolled across the lake with each shot and returned as a pale echo. The first and second kicked up water in front of the boat; the rest did not. They were right on target. One shot every few seconds, the bullets pelted the canoe, sending fragments of wood or fiberglass into the air. He must’ve hit at least one of them—he saw her slump forward and heard a woman’s panicked scream filling the damp air.

More shots. The wailing stopped abruptly. The canoe capsized and sank.

Hart reloaded.

“Nothing’s moving,” Lewis said, shouting because of their numb ears. “You got ’em, Hart.”

“Well, we gotta make sure.” Hart nodded at a small skiff nearby. “Can you row?”

“Sure,” Lewis answered.

“Bring some rocks. To weigh the bodies down.”

“That was some fine shooting, Hart. I mean, really.” Lewis muscled the small boat upright.

But Hart wasn’t thinking about marksmanship. Shooting was just a skill and in this business you had to be good at it, just like you couldn’t be a carpenter without knowing how to plane or lathe. No, he was recalling his earlier thoughts. Now that the evening’s mission was finished he had to turn his attention to what came next: how to anticipate and prepare for the hard consequences that would flow from these women’s deaths.

Because, Hart knew, they surely would.

 

GRAHAM BOYD SAT

forward on the green couch, frowning, looking not at the TV screen but at an antiqued table nearby, splotched in white and gold, under which sat a box containing the only knitting project he’d ever known Brynn to tackle—a sweater for a niece. She’d given it up years ago, after six inches of uneven sleeve.

Anna looked up from her own knitting. “I let it go for a while.”

Her son-in-law lifted an eyebrow.

She traded the big blue needles for a remote control, turned down the volume. Once again, Graham caught a glimpse of a tougher core within her than the spun hair and faint smile in her powdered face suggested.

“You might as well tell me. I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.”

What the hell was she talking about? He looked away, at some nonsense on the flat screen.

Her eyes didn’t leave him. “That call, right? The one from the school?”

He started to say something, then paused. But he went ahead finally. “Was a little worse than I let on.”

“Thought so.”

He explained what Joey’s section advisor had said—about the boy’s cutting school, the forgery, the ’phalting and even the suspension last fall. “And there were some other fights he got into too. I didn’t have the heart to ask his advisor about it.”

Well, which one?…

“Ah.” Anna nodded. “I had a feeling.”

“You did?”

She retrieved the knitting project. “What’re you going to do about it?”

Graham shrugged. He sat back. “Had an idea to talk to him. But I’ll leave that for Brynn. Let her handle it.”

“Been eating at you, I could see. You didn’t laugh once at Drew Carey.”

“If this’s happened once, it’s happened before. Cutting class? Don’t you think?”

“Most likely. My experience with children.” Anna was speaking from knowledge. Brynn had an older brother and a younger sister, a teacher and computer salesperson, respectively. Pleasant, kind people, fun people. Conventional. Brynn tended to swim upstream more than her siblings.

Anna McKenzie now dropped the Hallmark-Channel demeanor, which she donned like camouflage when needed. The tone in her voice changed, day to night. “What I want to say: You never discipline him, Graham.”

“After Keith, I never knew whether to do this or that.”

“You’re not Keith. Thank God. Don’t worry.”

“Brynn doesn’t let me. Or that’s the message I get. And I never pushed. I don’t want to undermine her. He’s her son.”

“Not just,” she reminded quickly. “He’s your boy too now. You get the whole package—even came with an ornery old lady you hadn’t bargained for.”

He gave a laugh. “But I want to be careful. Joey…I know he had a tough time with the divorce.”

“Who doesn’t? That’s life. No reason for you to be a shrinking violet when it comes to him.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I am. Go up and see him. Now.” She added, “Maybe it’s the best thing in the world Brynn went out on that call tonight. Give you two a chance to talk.”

“What do I say? I tried coming up with something. It was stupid.”

“Go with your instincts. If it feels right it probably is. That’s what I did with my children. Got some things right. And some things wrong. Obviously.”

The last word was heavily seasoned.

“You think?”

“I think. Somebody’s got to be in charge. He can’t be. And Brynn…” The woman said nothing more.

“Any advice?”

Anna laughed. “He’s the child. You’re the adult.”

Graham supposed that was a brilliant insight but it didn’t seem to help.

Evidently she could see he was confused. “Play it by ear.”

Graham exhaled and walked upstairs, the steps creaking under his big frame. He knocked on the boy’s door and entered without waiting for a response, which he’d never done before.

Joey’s round, freckled face looked up from his desk, dominated by a large flat-screen monitor. He’d put his knit hat back on, like a rapper. He was apparently instant-messaging with a friend. A webcam was involved. Graham didn’t like it that the friend could see him, see the room.

“How’s the homework coming?”

“Finished.” He typed away, not looking at the keyboard. Or at Graham.

On the wall was a series of still pictures from the Gus Van Sant movie Paranoid Park, about skateboarders in Portland. Joey must have printed them out. It was a good movie—for adults. Graham had protested about their taking the boy. But Joey had become obsessed with the movie and sulked until Brynn had acquiesced. As it turned out, though, they’d fled the theater after one particularly horrific scene. Graham had dodged the incident that a told-you-so would have bought, though he came real close to telling his wife that next time she should listen to him.

“Who’s that?” Graham asked, glancing at the screen.

“Who?”

“You’re IM’ing?”

“Just some guy.”

“Joey.”

“Tony.” The boy continued to stare at the screen. Graham’s secretary could type 120 words a minute. Joey seemed to be going faster.

Worried it might be an adult, Graham asked, “Tony who?”

“In my, you know, class. Tony Metzer.” His tone suggested that Graham had met him, though he knew he hadn’t. “We’re, like, into Turbo Planet. He can’t get past level six. I can get to eight. I’m helping him.”

“Well, it’s late. That’s enough IM’ing for tonight.”

Joey continued typing and Graham wondered if he was being defiant or just saying good-bye. Would this become a fight? The man’s palms sweated. He’d fired employees for theft, he’d faced down a burglar who’d broken into the office, he’d stopped knife fights among his workers. None of those incidents had made him as nervous as this.

After some fast keystrokes the computer screen went back to the desktop. The boy looked up pleasantly. Asking, What now?

“How’s the arm?”

“Good.”

The boy picked up his game controller. Pushed buttons so fast his fingers were a blur. Joey had dozens of electronic gadgets—MP3 players, iPod, cell phone, computer. He seemed to have plenty of friends but he communicated more with his fingers than with words spoken face-to-face.

“You want some aspirin?”

“Naw, it’s okay.”

The boy concentrated on the game but his stepfather could see he’d grown wary.

Graham’s first thought was to trick the boy into confessing about the ’phalting but that seemed to go against the instinct that Anna had told him to rely on. He thought back to his dishpan reflections: dialogue, not confrontation.

The boy was silent. The only noise was the click of the controller and the electronic bass beat of the sound track of the game, as a cartoon character strolled along a fantastical road.

Okay, get to it.

“Joey, can I ask you why you skip school?”

“Skip school?”

“Why? Are there problems with teachers? Maybe with some other students?”

“I don’t skip.”

“I heard from the school. You skipped today.”

“No, I didn’t.” He kept playing on the computer.

“I think you did.”

“No,” the boy said credibly. “I didn’t.”

Graham saw a major flaw with the dialogue approach. “You’ve never skipped?”

“I don’t know. Like, once I got sick on the way to school and I came home. Mom was at work and I couldn’t get her.”

“You can always call me. My company’s five minutes from here and fifteen minutes from school. I can be there in no time.”

“But you can’t sign me out.”

“Yes, I can. I’m on the list. Your mother put me on the list.” Didn’t the boy know that? “Tell you what, Joey, shut that off.”

“Shut it off?”

“Yeah. Shut it off.”

“I’m nearly to—”

“No. Come on. Shut it off.”

He continued to play.

“Or I’ll unplug it.” Graham rose and reached for the cord.

Joey stared at him. “No! That’ll dump the memory. Don’t. I’ll save it.”

He continued to play for a moment—a dense twenty seconds—and then hit some buttons, and with a deflating computer-generated sound the screen froze.

Graham sat down on the bed, near the boy.

“I know you and your mother talked about your accident today. Did you tell her you skipped school?” Graham was wondering if Brynn knew and hadn’t told him.

“I didn’t skip school.”

“I talked to Mr. Raditzky. He says you forged the note from your mother.”

“He’s lying.” Eyes evasive.

“Why would he lie?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He sounded pretty concerned about you.”

“You just don’t get it.” Apparently thinking that this was irrefutable proof of his innocence, he turned back to the frozen screen. A creature of some sort bounced up and down. Running in place. The boy eyed the game controller. He didn’t go for it.

“Joey, somebody from school saw you ’phalting on Elden Street.”

The boy’s eyes flickered. “They’re lying too. It was Rad, right? He’s making that up.”

“I don’t think they were, Joey. I think they saw you on your board, going forty miles an hour down Elden Street when you wiped out.”

He bounced onto his bed, past Graham, and pulled a book off the shelf.

“So you didn’t tell your mother you cut and you didn’t tell her you were ’phalting, did you?”

“I wasn’t ’phalting. I was just boarding. I went off the parking lot steps.”

“Is that where you had the accident today?”

A pause. “Not really. But I don’t ’phalt.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

Graham was at a complete loss. This was going nowhere.

Instinct…

“Where’s your board?”

Joey glanced at Graham and said nothing. Turned back to the book.

“Where?” his stepfather asked adamantly.

“I don’t know.”

Graham opened the closet, where the boy’s skateboard was sitting on a pile of athletic shoes.

“No more boarding this month.”

“Mom said two days!”

Graham thought Brynn had said three. “One month. And you have to promise that you’re never going to ’phalt again.”

“I don’t ’phalt!”

“Joey.”

“This’s such bullshit!”

“Don’t say that to me.”

“Mom doesn’t mind.”

Was that true? “Well, I do.”

“You can’t stop me. You’re not my father!”

Graham felt an urge to argue. To explain about authority and hierarchy and family units, his and the boy’s respective roles in the household. An argument on the merits, though, seemed like an automatic loss.

Instinct, he reminded himself.

Okay. Let’s see what happens.

“Are you going to tell me the truth?”

“I am telling the truth,” the boy raged and started to cry.

Graham’s heart was pounding furiously. Was he being honest? This was so hard. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Joey, your mother and I love you very much. We were both worried sick about you when we heard you’d been hurt.”

“You don’t love me. Nobody does.” The tears stopped as quickly as they’d started and he slouched back, reading his book.

“Joey…” Graham leaned forward. “I’m doing this because I care about you.” He smiled. “Come on. Brush your teeth, put on your PJs. Time for bed.”

The boy didn’t move. His eyes were frantically scanning words he wasn’t even seeing.

Graham rose and left the room, carrying the skateboard. He headed downstairs, fighting the urge with every step to go back and apologize and beg the boy to be happy and forgive him.

But instinct won. Graham continued to the ground floor, put the skateboard on the top shelf of the closet.

Anna watched him. She seemed amused. Graham didn’t think anything was funny.

“When’ll Brynn be home?” his mother-in-law asked.

He looked at his watch. “Soon, I’d guess. She’ll probably get dinner but she’ll eat in the car.”

“She shouldn’t do that. Not on those roads at night. You look down for one minute, pick up your sandwich and there’s a deer in front of you. Or a bear. Jamie Henderson nearly hit one. It was just there.”

“I heard that, I think. Big one?”

“Big enough.” A nod toward the ceiling. “How’d it go?”

“Not good.”

She continued to give him a half-smile.

“What?” he asked, irritated.

“It’s a start.”

Graham rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“Trust me. Sometimes just delivering a message is the important thing. Whatever that message is. Remember that.”

He picked up the phone and dialed Brynn again. It went right to voice mail. He tossed the phone on the table and stared absently at the TV screen. Thinking again about the yellow jackets. How he’d been going about his business, wheeling a big shaggy plant, enjoying the day, never realizing that he’d trod on the nest ten feet back.

Never realizing it until the hard little dots, with their fiery stingers, were all over him.

He thought now: And why does it even matter?

Just let it go.

Graham reached for the remote control. Upstairs, a door slammed.

 

BRYNN AND MICHELLE

were making their way through scruffy tangled forest about three hundred yards north of the Feldmans’ house. Here the trees were denser, mostly lush pine, spruce and fir. The view of the lake was cut off.

The car alarm had been an unfortunate mistake. But, since it had happened, Brynn hoped that she’d turned it around to work to their advantage, making the men think that it was an intentional distraction and that the women were escaping by canoe to the far shore of the lake. In fact, though, they’d used the boat only to paddle downstream a short distance and cross to the opposite shore of the creek. They’d propped up life preservers to look like two huddling passengers and then shoved the canoe into the speedy current, which propelled the vessel into the lake.

They’d then hurried as best they could, given Michelle’s ankle, away from the lake house enclave, north toward Marquette State Park.

When the gunfire came, as Brynn expected, she was ready and let go a fierce, harrowing scream. Then abruptly stopped as if shot. She’d known the men would be half deafened and, with the confusing echoes from the hills, couldn’t tell that the scream had come from someplace else entirely. The trick might not fool them for long but she was sure she’d bought some time.

“Can we stop now?” Michelle asked.

“Why, does your ankle hurt?”

“Well, sure it does. But I mean, let’s just wait here. They’ll be gone soon.” She was eating her snack crackers. Brynn looked at them. Michelle, reluctantly, it seemed, offered her some. She ate a handful hungrily.

“We can’t stop. We have to keep going.”

“Where?”

“North.”

“What does ‘north’ mean? Is there a cabin that way or something, or a phone?”

“We’re getting as far away from them as we can. Into the park.”

Michelle slowed. “Look at this place. It’s all a mess, it’s tangled and…well, a mess. There aren’t any paths. It’s freezing.”

And you in that two-thousand-dollar coat…complaining, Brynn reflected.

“There’s a ranger station maybe four, five miles from here.”

“Five miles!”

“Shhh.”

“That’s bullshit. We can’t walk five miles through this.”

“You’re in good shape. You run, right?”

“On a treadmill at my health club. Not in places like this. And which way do we go? I’m already lost.”

“I know the general direction.”

“The woods? I can’t!”

“We don’t have any choice.”

“You don’t understand…. I’m afraid of snakes.”

“They’re more afraid of you, believe me.”

Michelle displayed the crackers. “This isn’t going to be enough food. Do you know about hypoglycemia? Everyone thinks it’s nothing. But I could faint.”

Brynn said firmly, “Michelle, there are men out there who want to kill us. Snakes and your blood sugar really come pretty low on the scale of problems here.”

“I can’t do it.” The woman reminded Brynn of Joey’s first day at elementary school: he’d planted his feet and refused to go. It took two days for her to persuade him to attend. In fact, Brynn now recognized similar signs of hysteria in Michelle’s face. The young woman stopped walking altogether. Her eyes were wide and she gestured broadly with twitchy hands. “I shop at Whole Foods. I buy coffee at Starbucks. This isn’t me, this isn’t my world. I can’t do it!”

“Michelle,” Brynn said gently, “it’ll be okay. It’s only a state park. Thousands of people come through here every summer.”

“On the paths, the trails.”

“And we’re going to find one.”

“But people get lost. I saw this thing on TV. This couple got lost and they froze to death and the animals ate their bodies.”

“Michelle—”

“No, I don’t want to go! Let’s hide here. We’ll find a place. Please.” She looked as if she was going to cry.

Brynn remembered that the poor woman had seen her friends shot down—and had nearly been killed herself. She tried to be patient. “No. That one man, at least, Hart, he’ll come after us as soon as he finds we tricked ’em with the boat. He won’t know for sure we came this way but he might guess.”

Michelle looked back, her eyes zipping around in panic, her breath fast.

“Okay?”

Michelle ate another handful of crackers, not offering any to Brynn, and then shoved them back into her pocket. She gave a disgusted grimace. “All right. You win.”

With one more glance back, the women started their trek, moving as fast as they could, picking their way around the tangles, many of which would be impossible to get through even with machetes. There were plenty of conifer woods, though, and it was possible to find flat routes unobstructed by steel-wool underbrush.

They continued on, away from the houses, Michelle doing a fair job of keeping up the pace despite the limp. Brynn gripped her spear firmly, feeling both confident and ridiculous because of the weapon.

Soon they’d covered another quarter mile, then a half.

Brynn started and spun around. She’d heard a voice.

But it was only Michelle, muttering to herself, her face ghostly in the blue moonlight. Brynn too had the habit of self-dialog. She’d lost her father to disease and a dear friend in the department to a drunk driver. And she’d lost a husband too. She had talked to herself during those times of sorrow, praying for strength or just plain rambling. For some reason, she’d found, words made pain less painful. She’d done the same just that afternoon, with Joey in the X-ray unit at the hospital. She couldn’t remember what she’d said then.

They skirted scummy ponds choked with bog bean and cranberry. She was surprised to see a swath of moonlight illuminate a cluster of pitcher plants—a carnivore Brynn had learned about when helping Joey with a report for school. Frogs screeched urgently and birds gave mournful calls. It was too early in the season for mosquitoes, thank the Lord. Brynn was a magnet and in the summer wore citronella like perfume.

Reassuring herself now as much as Michelle, Brynn whispered, “I’ve been to the park on two search-and-rescues here.” She’d volunteered for the assignments to put to use some of the expertise she’d picked up at the State Police tactical training seminars, which included an optional—and extremely exhausting and painful—mini–survival course.

One of the two search-and-rescues here had actually become a very unpleasant body-recovery operation. But Brynn didn’t mention that.

“I don’t know the place real well but I have a rough idea of the layout. The Joliet Trail’s near here someplace, no more than a mile or two. You know it?”

Michelle shook her head, eyes on the bed of pine needles in front of her feet. She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“The trail’ll take us to that ranger station. It’ll be closed now but we could find a phone or a gun there.”

The station was Brynn’s first choice. But, she went on to explain, if they missed the building or couldn’t break into it they could continue on the Joliet, which angled northeast till it crossed the Snake River. “We can follow the river east to Point of Rocks. That’s a good-sized town on the other side of the park. They’ll have stores—for a phone—and a public safety office of some kind. Probably part-time but we can wake ’em up. It’s a ways, six or seven miles, but we can follow the river and it’s pretty flat walking. The other option when we hit the Snake is to turn west. And climb the rocks along the Snake River Gorge. That’ll take us to the interstate by the bridge. There’s traffic all the time there. A trucker or somebody’ll stop for us.”

“Climb the rocks,” Michelle muttered. “I’m afraid of heights.”

So was Brynn (though that hadn’t stopped her rappelling down a sheer cliff face to a waiting keg of Old Milwaukee—the traditional graduation exercise in the State Police course). And the climb at the gorge would be steep and dangerous. The bridge was nearly one hundred feet above the river and the rocks were often nearly vertical faces. It was in that part of the park where the body the law officers had been searching for had been recovered. A young man had lost his footing. The fall was only twenty feet but he’d been impaled on a sharp tree limb. The coroner said it probably took him twenty minutes to die.

To this day Brynn McKenzie was haunted by the image.

As they moved from the pine into ancient forest—denser and slathered in darkness—Brynn tried to pick out the route that would be easiest on Michelle’s ankle. But the way was often impacted with rooty brush, tangles of saplings and vines, forcing them around. Some they just had to fight their way through.

And some routes were so dim they avoided them completely for fear of missing a steep drop-off or deep bog.

And always, reminders that they weren’t really alone. Bats zipped by, owls hooted. Brynn gasped when she trod on the end of a deer rib rack, which swung up and clapped her in the knee. She danced away from the bleached, chewed bone. The scarred skull of the animal was nearby.

Michelle stared at the skeletal remains, eyes wide, without response.

“Let’s go. It’s just bones.”

They pushed through the tangled wilderness for another hundred yards. Suddenly Michelle stumbled, grabbed a branch to support herself and winced.

“What’s the matter?”

She ripped off her thin glove, staring at her hand. Two thorns from the branch had punctured her palm and broken off into her skin. Her eyes flushed with horror.

“No! no, it’s just blackberry. You’re fine. Here. Let me look.”

“No! Don’t touch it.”

But Brynn took the woman’s hand and flicked the candle lighter over the skin, examining the tiny wounds. “We just want to get them out so it doesn’t get infected. In five minutes you won’t feel a thing.”

Brynn eased the thorns out of her skin and the woman winced, whimpering and staring at the growing dots of blood. Brynn pulled out the bottle of alcohol, dampened the edge of a sock with it and started to bathe the wounds. She couldn’t help notice the dark, artistic nails.

“Let me do it,” Michelle said and dabbed at the skin. She handed back the sock and found a tissue in her pocket, pressed it onto the wound. By the time she lifted it away the bleeding had almost stopped.

“How is it?”

“It’s okay,” Michelle said. “You’re right. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

They continued on their route, heading in the direction that Brynn pointed.

Sure, she thought, Hart would pursue them and they’d have to remain vigilant. But he’d have no idea where they were headed. The women could have gone in any direction except south to the county road—since they’d have to sneak around the killers to get there.

With every passing yard, Brynn grew more confident. At least she knew something about the forest and where the trail ahead of them lay. The men did not. And even if Hart and his partner happened to choose this direction, the men would surely find themselves lost in ten minutes.

 

BACK ON THE

shore near the Feldman house Hart was looking over the GPS function on his BlackBerry. Then he consulted the map of the area they’d brought with them.

“The Joliet Trail,” he announced.

“What’s that?”

“Where they’re headed.”

“Ah,” Lewis said. “You think?”

“Yep.” He held up the map. “We’re here.” He tapped a spot then moved his finger north. “That brown line’s the trail. It’ll take ’em right to that ranger station there.”

Lewis was distracted. He was looking over the lake. “That was smart, I gotta say. What they did.”

Hart didn’t disagree. Their short row into the lake had revealed that the women had propped up life vests to resemble bodies hunched down in the canoe and then shoved the boat into the water. The scream—at the sound of the shots—was ingenious. Had Brynn or Michelle uttered the sound? Brynn, he bet.

Hart wasn’t used to having to out-think his opponents. Part of him liked the challenge but a bigger part liked being in control. The contests he preferred were those in which he had a pretty good idea that the outcome would be in his favor. Like working with ebony: the wood was temperamental—hard and brittle—and could split easily, wasting hundreds of dollars. But if you took your time, you were careful, you foresaw any potential problems, the end result was beautiful.

What kind of challenge was Brynn McKenzie?

Smelling the ammonia.

Hearing the crack, crack, crack of her gun.

Ebony, of course.

His aching arm prodded him to think too: And what kind was Michelle?

That would remain to be seen.

“So you’re thinking of going after them?” Lewis asked. He opened his mouth and puffed out a bit of steam.

“Yep.”

“I gotta say, Hart. This isn’t what I planned on.”

Putting it mildly.

Lewis continued, “Everything’s changed. That bitch shooting you, trying to shoot me. The cop…You or me, in that bathroom, the ammonia trap. If it’d worked, one of us’d be blinded. And that shot in the house, the cop? Missed me by inches.”

I can dodge bullets…

Hart said nothing. He wasn’t riled up the way Lewis was. The women were just being true to their nature. Like that animal he’d seen. Of course they’d fight back.

“So that’s what I’m thinking,” Lewis said. “I just want to get the hell out of here. She’s a cop, Hart. Lives ’round here. She knows this place. She’s halfway to that ranger station or something right now. They’ll have phones in the park…. So we’ve gotta get outa here now. Back to Milwaukee. Whoever that girl is, Michelle, she’s sure as hell not going to ID us. She’s not stupid.” He tapped his pocket, where her purse, containing her name and address, rested. “And the cop didn’t really get a good look at us. So, back to Plan A. Get to the highway, ’jack a car. Whatta you say?”

Hart grimaced. “Well, Lewis, I am tempted. Yes, I am. But we can’t.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m inclined to think otherwise.” Lewis was speaking softly now, more reasonable, less surly.

“We have to get them.”

“‘Have to’? Why? Where’s that written down? Look, you’re thinking I’m scared. Well, I’m not. Tonight, against two women? This’s nothing. Let me tell you a story. I did a bank job in Madison? Last year?”

“Banks? Never done a bank.”

“We got fifty thousand.”

“That’s pretty good.” The average bank robbery take nationwide was $3,800. Another stat Hart knew: 97 percent of the perps were arrested within one week.

“Yep, was. So. This guard wanted to be a hero. Had a backup gun on his ankle.”

“He’d been a cop.”

“What I figured. Exactly. Came out shooting. I covered the other guys. Right out in the open. Kept him down. I didn’t even crouch.” He laughed, shaking his head. “One of my crew, the driver, was so freaked he dropped the keys in the snow, took a couple minutes to find them. But I held that guard off. Even stayed upright while I reloaded, and we could hear sirens in the distance. But we got away.” He fell silent to let Hart digest this. Then: “I’m talking about what makes sense…. You stand your ground when you need to. You get the hell out when you need to. And then take care of ’em later.” Another tap of Michelle’s purse. “Nothing good’s going to come of this.” He repeated, “Everything’s changed.”

A mournful call filled the moist air, a bird of some sort, Hart guessed. Waterfowl or owl or hawk, he couldn’t tell them apart. He squatted down, pushed his hair off his forehead. “Lewis, I’m thinking that nothing has changed, not really.”

“Sure it has. The minute she tried to cap you, it all went to shit in there.” A nod back at the house and a skeptical glance.

“But it’s shit we could’ve foreseen. We should’ve foreseen. Look, when you make a choice—signing on for this job, for instance—there’s a whole slew of consequences that can follow. Things could go left, they could go right. Or, what happened tonight, they could turn around and slug you in the gut….”

Or shoot you in the arm.

“Nobody forced me to live this kind of life. Or you either. But we chose it and that makes it our job to think everything through, figure out what could happen and plan for it. Every time I do a job I plan everything out, I mean every detail. I’m never surprised. Doing the job itself’s usually boring, I’ve been through it so often in my mind.”

Measure twice, cut once.

“Tonight? I figured out ninety-five percent of what could happen and planned for that. But what I didn’t bother to think about was the last five percent—that that Michelle was going to use me for target practice. But I should’ve.”

The slim man, rocking on his haunches, said, “The Trickster.”

“The what?” Hart asked.

“My grandmother said when something went wrong, something you didn’t think could happen, it was the Trickster’s fault. She got it out of a kid’s book or something. I don’t remember. The Trickster was always hanging around looking for ways to make things go wrong. Like Fate or God or whatever. Except Fate could do you good things too. Like give you a winning lotto ticket. Or could make you stop for a yellow light, even if you would’ve gone through, and save you from getting T-boned by a garbage truck. And God would do things that were right, so you’d get what you deserved. But the Trickster? He was just there to mess you up.” He nodded again at the house. “Trickster paid us a visit in there.”

“Trickster.” Hart liked that.

“But that’s life sometimes, ain’t it, Hart? You miss that five percent. But so what? Best thing still might be to get the hell out of here, put it all behind us.”

Hart rose. He winced as he accidentally reached his shot arm out to steady himself. He looked out at the lake. “Let me tell you a story, Lewis. My brother…younger’n me.”

“You have a brother?” Lewis’s attention had turned from the house. “I’ve got two.”

“Our parents both died about the same time. When I was twenty-five, my brother was twenty-two. I was kind of like a father figure. Well, even back then we were into this kind of stuff, you know. And my brother got this job one time, easy, just numbers. He was a runner mostly. He had to pick up some money and deliver it. Typical job. I mean, thousands of people do that shit every day, right? All over the world.”

“They do.” Lewis was listening.

“So I didn’t have anything going on at the moment and was helping him out. We picked up the money—”

“This was Milwaukee?”

“No. We grew up in Boston. We pick up the money and’re about to deliver it. But turns out we were going to be set up. The guy ran the numbers operation was going to clip us and let the cops find the bodies and some of the books and some of the money. The detectives’d think they closed up the operation.”

“You two were fall guys.”

“Yep. I had this sense something was wrong and we went around back of the pickup location and saw the muscle there. My brother and me, we took off. A few days later I found the guys hired to do the clip and took care of them. But the main guy just vanished. Word was he’d moved to Mexico.”

Lewis grinned. “Scared of your bad ass.”

“After six months or so I stopped looking for him. But it turns out he never went to Mexico at all. He’d been tracking us the whole time. One day he walks up to my brother and blows his head off.”

“Oh, shit.”

Hart didn’t speak for a moment. “But see, Lewis, he didn’t kill my brother. I did. My laziness killed my brother.”

“Your laziness?”

“Yep. Because I stopped looking for that son of a bitch.”

“But six months, Hart. That’s a long time.”

“Didn’t matter if it was six years. Either you’re in all the way, a hundred and ten percent. Or don’t bother.” Hart shook his head. “Hell, Lewis, forget it. This’s my problem. I was the one hired on. It’s not your issue. Now, I’d consider it a privilege if you came with me. But if you want to head back to Milwaukee, you go right ahead. No hard feelings at all.”

Lewis rocked. Back and forth, back and forth. “Ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What happened to the prick killed your brother?”

“He enjoyed life for three more days.”

Lewis debated a long time. Then he gave a what-the-fuck laugh. “Call me crazy, Hart. But I’m with you.”

“Yeah?”

“You bet I am.”

“Thanks, man. Means a lot to me.” They shook hands. Then Hart turned back to his BlackBerry, moved the bull’s-eye to the closest part of the Joliet Trail and hit the START GUIDANCE command. The instructions came up almost immediately.

“Let’s go hunting.”

 

A SLIGHT MAN

in his thirties, James Jasons sat in his Lexus, the gray car slightly nicked, a few years old. He was parked in the lot of Great Lakes Intermodal Container Services, Inc., on the Milwaukee lakefront. Jasons was watching the cranes offload the containers from ships. Incredible. The operators lifted the big metal boxes as if they were toys, swung them from the ships and set them down perfectly, every time, on the flatbed of a truck. The containers must’ve weighed twenty tons, maybe more.

Jasons was always impressed by anybody with skill, whatever their profession.

A rumble filled the night. A horn blared and a Canadian Pacific freight train ambled past.

The door of the old brick building opened. A brawny man in wrinkled gray slacks, a sports coat, blue shirt, no tie, climbed down the stairs and crossed the parking lot. Jasons had learned that the head of the legal department of the company—Paul Morgan—regularly worked late.

Morgan continued through the lot to his Mercedes. Jasons got out of his car, which was parked two slots down. He approached the man, arms at his side.

“Mr. Morgan?”

The man turned and looked over Jasons, who was nearly a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than the lawyer.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve never met, sir. I work with Stanley Mankewitz. My name’s James Jasons.” He offered a card, which Morgan glanced at and put into a pocket where it could be easily retrieved when Morgan found himself near a trash can. “I know it’s late. I’d just like a minute of your time.”

Morgan’s eyes swept around the parking lot. Meaning, Here, now? Friday night? He hit the key fob and with a click the Mercedes unlocked.

“Stanley Mankewitz didn’t have the balls to come himself? Doesn’t surprise me.” Morgan sat down in the front seat, the car sagging, but he left the door open. He looked Jasons up and down, from the delicate shoes to the size-36 suit to the rock-hard knot in the striped tie. “You’re a lawyer?”

“I’m in the legal department.”

“Ah. There’s a distinction for you,” Morgan said. “You go to law school?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Yale.”

Morgan grimaced. He wore a pinky ring that probably had a DePaul crest on it. Well, Jasons hadn’t brought up the alma mater issue. “Tell me what your noble leader wants and then scoot off.”

“Sure,” Jasons said agreeably. “We’re aware that your company hasn’t been particularly supportive of Mr. Mankewitz and the union during this difficult time.”

“It’s a federal investigation, for Christ’s sake. Why the fuck would I want to support him?”

“Your employees are members of his union.”

“That’s their choice.”

“About the investigation—you know that no charges have been filed.” A good-natured smile on Jasons’s face. “There are a few officials looking into some allegations.”

“Officials? It’s the fucking FBI. Look, I don’t know what you’re after here. But we’re a legitimate business. Look out there.” He waved toward the brilliantly lit cranes. “Our customers know we’re a union shop and that the head of that union, Stanley Mankewitz, is under investigation. They’re worried that we’re involved in something illegal.”

“You can tell them the truth. That Mr. Mankewitz hasn’t been indicted for anything. Every union in the history of the country has been investigated at one point or another.”

“Which tells you something about unions,” Morgan muttered.

“Or about people who don’t like the common folk standing up for their right to fair pay for hard work,” Jasons replied evenly, remaining close to the man despite the odor of garlic rising on Morgan’s breath. “Besides, even if Mr. Mankewitz was found guilty of something, which is highly unlikely, I’m sure your customers would be able to draw the distinction between a man and his organization. Enron, after all, was ninety-nine percent hardworking people and a few bad apples.”

“Again, ‘hardworking.’ Mr. Jason…Jasons? With an s? Mr. Jasons, you don’t understand. You ever hear of Homeland Security?…We’re in the business of moving shipping containers. Any hint of something wrong with the people we’re connected to and everybody goes right to anthrax in our warehouses or a nuclear bomb or something. Customers’re going to go elsewhere. And your hardworking common folk’ll lose their fucking jobs. I repeat my question. What the hell do you want?”

“Just some information. Nothing illegal, nothing classified, nothing sensitive. A few technical things. I’ve written them down.” A slip of paper appeared in Jasons’s gloved hand and he gave it to Morgan.

“If it’s nothing classified or sensitive, look it up yourself.” Morgan let the slip float to the damp asphalt.

“Ah.”

Morgan studied the thin, smiling face closely. He laughed hard and ran his hand through his thinning black hair. “So, what’s this, like, The Sopranos? Only, instead of sending Paulie or Chris to extort me, Mankewitz picks a scrawny little asshole like you. That the plan? You whine at me until I cave?” He leaned forward and laughed. “I could fuck you up with one hand. I’ve got half a mind to do it. Send you back to your boss with a broken nose.”

Again, a good-natured grimace. “You look like you could, Mr. Morgan. I haven’t been in a fight in probably twenty years. School yard. And I got whipped pretty bad.”

“You’re not worth the sweat,” the man snapped. “So what’s next? The big boys come back with lead pipes? You think that scares me?”

“No, no, there’s nobody else coming. It’s only me here and now, this one time. Asking if you’ll help us out. Just this once. Nobody’ll bother you again.”

“Well, I’m not helping you out. Now get the fuck off our property.”

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Morgan.” Jasons started to walk away. Then he frowned, as if he’d remembered something, and lifted an index finger just as the lawyer was about to close the car door. “Oh, one thing. Just to be helpful. You hear about tomorrow morning?”

Paul Morgan gave an exaggerated grimace and said, “What about tomorrow morning?”

“Public Works is starting some construction on Hanover Street. On Saturday, can you believe it? And at eight-thirty. You might want to check out a different route if you want to get to the school by ten.”

“What?” Hand on the half-open door, Morgan was frozen, staring at Jasons. The word was a whisper.

“For the concert.” The slim man nodded pleasantly. “I think it’s great when parents take an interest in their children’s activities. A lot of them don’t. And I’m sure Paul Junior and Alicia appreciate it too. I know they’ve been practicing hard. Alicia especially. Every day after school in that rehearsal room, three to four-thirty…Impressive. Just thought you might want to know about the roadwork. Okay, you have a good evening, Mr. Morgan.”

Jasons turned and walked to his Lexus, thinking that the odds of getting rushed were about 10 percent. But he got inside safely and started the car.

When he looked out the rearview mirror, there was no sign of Morgan’s Mercedes.

The slip of paper was gone too.

The first of this evening’s tasks was finished. Now for the second. His stomach rumbled again but he decided he’d better get on the road right away. The directions told him it would take more than two hours to get to Lake Mondac.

 

THE GROUND AROUND

Brynn and Michelle was swampy and they had to be careful not to step on what seemed to be solid leaves but which was only a thin facade covering a deep bog. The frogs’ calls were insistent, piercing and they irritated Brynn because the creek-crack could obscure the sound of anyone approaching.

They walked for twenty minutes in tense silence—following the least choked route they could, sucked farther into the forest’s discouraging labyrinth. Brynn and Michelle descended into a gully that was matted with blackberry, trillium, wood leek and a dozen plants Brynn didn’t recognize. With considerable effort they climbed to the top of the other side.

Where Brynn realized suddenly that she was lost. Completely lost.

On higher ground they’d had more of a sense of the correct direction—due north to the Joliet Trail. Brynn had used certain landmarks to guide them: peaks, a stream, unusual patterns of tall oak trees. But they’d been forced farther and farther downward into the low ground by rocky cliffs and the compacted mass of brush and thorny bushes. All of her navigation beacons had vanished. She recalled the instructor at the State Police tactical procedures course saying that if you put somebody in unfamiliar territory without recognizable landmarks, they’d be completely disoriented within thirty-five minutes. Brynn had certainly believed him but hadn’t realized that too many landmarks could be as much of a problem as too few.

“Did you and your friends ever hike this way?”

“I don’t hike,” Michelle said petulantly. “And I’ve only been to their place once or twice.”

Brynn looked around slowly.

“I thought you knew where we were,” Michelle muttered.

“I thought so too,” she said with more than a little exasperation.

“Well, find some moss. It grows on the north side of trees. We learned that in grade school.”

“Not really,” Brynn replied, looking around. “It grows where there’s the most moisture, which is usually on the north side of trees and rocks. But only if there’s enough sun to dry out the south side. In deep forest, it’ll grow everywhere.” Brynn pointed. “Let’s try that way.” Wondering if she was taking that route simply because it seemed less daunting, the vegetation less tangled. Michelle followed numbly, limping along with her polished rosewood crutch.

A short time later Brynn stopped again. If it was possible, she was even more lost than ten minutes earlier.

Can’t keep going on like this.

She had a thought, asked Michelle, “Do you have a needle?”

“A what?”

“A needle, or a pin, maybe a safety pin.”

“Why would I have a needle?”

“Just, do you have one?”

The woman patted her jacket. “No. What for?”

Her badge! Brynn pulled it out of her pocket. Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department. Chrome. Ridges radiating like sun rays out of the county seal.

She turned it over and looked at the clasp pin on the back.

Could this actually work?

“Come on.” She led Michelle to a nearby stream and dropped to her knees. She began to clear away a thick pelt of leaves, saying, “Find me some rocks. About the size of a grapefruit.”

“Rocks?”

“Hurry.”

The young woman grimaced but began walking up and down the bank, picking over stones, while Brynn cleared a space on the bank. The ground was cold; she could feel the chill through her knees. They began to ache. From her pocket she took the clear bottle of rubbing alcohol, the Chicago Cutlery knife and the candle lighter. Set them on the ground in front of her, next to her badge.

Michelle returned, limping along with five large rocks. Brynn needed only two. Forgot to mention that.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a compass.” This had been in the survival manual issued by the State Police, though the team Brynn was on had not actually made one. But she’d read the material and thought she remembered enough to craft the instrument.

“How can you do that?”

“I’m not sure I can. But I know the theory.”

The idea was simple. You pounded a needle or pin with a hammer, which magnetized it. Then you rested it on a piece of cork floating in a dish of water. The needle aligned itself north and south. Simple. No hammer now. She’d have to use the back of the knife blade, the only metal object they had.

On her knees, Brynn set a rock in front of her. She tried to break the pin off her badge by bending it. The metal would not fatigue, though. It was too thick.

“Shit.”

“Try to cut through it with the knife,” Michelle suggested. “Hit it with a rock.”

Brynn opened the pin as far as she could, laid it on the rock and set the blade against the base of the needle. Holding the Chicago Cutlery in her left hand, she tapped the back with another rock. It didn’t even make a mark.

“You’ll have to hit it hard,” Michelle said, now intrigued with the project.

She slammed the rock into the pin once more. The blade made a slight scratch on the needle but danced along the chrome metal. She couldn’t hold both blade and badge down on the rock in one hand.

Handing the rock to Michelle, she said, “Here. You do it. Use both hands.”

The younger woman took the second rock, the “hammer,” which weighed about fifteen pounds.

In her left hand Brynn continued to hold the wooden knife handle. She cupped her palm around the badge and, with her fingers, gripped the end of the blade, near the point.

Michelle looked at her. “I can’t. Not with your hands there.” Michelle had about an eight-inch target on the back edge of the knife. A miss could crush one of Brynn’s hands. Or flip the blade sideways and slice the pads off her fingers.

“We don’t have any choice.”

“I could break your fingers.”

“Go ahead. Don’t tap. Hit hard. Come on, do it!”

The young woman took a deep breath. She lifted the rock. Then grimaced, exhaled and swung the stone in a blur.

Whether it was headed for Brynn’s fingers or for the knife was impossible to tell but Brynn didn’t move a muscle.

Snap.

Michelle hit the blade clean, driving it through the metal and cutting off a two-inch bit of needle.

Which spiraled through the air and disappeared in a shadowy sea of leaves near the stream.

“No!” Michelle cried, starting forward.

“Don’t move,” Brynn whispered. Presumably their prize had landed on top of the pile, though it wouldn’t take more than a footstep to send it slipping into the leaves, lost forever. “It couldn’t have gone very far.”

“It’s too dark. I can’t see anything. Damnit.”

“Shhhh,” Brynn reminded. They had to assume that Hart and his friend were still after them.

“We need the lighter.”

Brynn leaned toward the leaves. The young woman was right. In this dense grove, with the light of a half moon, sliced to pieces by a thousand branches and stubborn leaves still clinging to them, it was impossible to see the metal. But the candle lighter would shine like a warning beacon atop a skyscraper for Hart to see.

Again, the bywords for the evening came to mind: no choice.

“Here.” Brynn gave her the lighter. “Go around there.” She pointed to the far side of the pile. “Keep it low and wave it over the ground.”

Michelle hobbled off. “Ready?” she whispered.

“Go.”

A click and the flame blossomed. It was far brighter than she’d expected. Anybody within a hundred yards could have seen.

Brynn leaned forward and scanned the ground, crawling forward carefully.

There! Something was shiny. Was that it? Brynn reached out carefully and picked up a tiny twig covered in bird shit.

A second possibility turned out to be a streak of mica in a rock.

But finally Brynn spotted a silver flare in the night, sitting on top of a curl of oak leaf. She picked up the needle carefully. “Shut it out,” she said to Michelle, nodding at the candle lighter.

The area went soot black—even darker now because the light had numbed their eyes. Brynn’s sense of vulnerability soared. The two men could be walking directly toward them and she’d never see them. Only a cracking branch or crunch of leaves would give away their approach.

Michelle crouched. “Can I help?”

“Not yet.”

The young woman sat down, crossed her legs and fished the crackers out. She offered them to Brynn, who ate several. Then Brynn began tapping the needle with the back of the knife. Twice she struck a finger hard and winced. But she never let go and never paused in the pounding—like the flare of the lighter, the sound of the tink tink tink seemed to broadcast their position for miles.

After an eternal five minutes she said, “Let’s try it. I need some thread. Something thin.” They unraveled a strand from Brynn’s ski jacket and used it to tie the needle to a bit of twig.

Brynn dumped out the alcohol from the bottle and refilled it halfway with water, slipped the twig and pin inside and set the bottle on its side. Brynn hit the candle lighter trigger. They stared at the bottle. The bit of wood slowly revolved to the left and stopped.

“It works!” Michelle blurted, giving her first true smile of the night.

Brynn glanced at her and smiled back. Damn, she thought, it does. It surely does.

“But which end’s north and which’s south?”

“Around here the high ground’s generally west. That’d be to the left.” They shut the lighter out and after their eyes were accustomed to the dark Brynn pointed out a distant hilltop. “That’s north. Let’s head for it.”

Brynn screwed the lid on the bottle and slipped it into her pocket, picked up her spear. They started walking again. They’d pause every so often to take another reading. As long as they continued north they would have to cross the Joliet Trail sooner or later.

Curious, she thought, how much reassurance she’d gotten by making this little toy. Kristen Brynn McKenzie was a woman whose worst enemy, worst fear, was the lack of control. She’d begun this night without any—no phone or weapon—crawling cold, drenched and helpless out of a black lake. But now, with a crude spear in hand and a compass in her pocket she felt as confident as that character out of one of Joey’s comic books.

Queen of the Jungle.

 

THE DANCE.

What Hart called it.

This was a part of the business and Hart was not only used to dancing, he was good at it. Being a craftsman, after all.

A month ago. Sitting in a coffee shop—never a bar; keep your head about you—he’d looked up at the voice.

“So, Hart. How you doing?”

A firm handshake.

“Good. You?”

“I’m okay. Listen, I’m interested in hiring somebody. You interested in some work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. So how do you know Gordon Potts? You go back a long ways?”

“Not so long.”

“How’d you meet him?” Hart had asked.

“A mutual friend.”

“Who’d that be?”

“Freddy Lancaster.”

“Freddy, sure. How’s his wife doing?”

“That’d be tough to find out, Hart. She died two years ago.”

“Oh, that’s right. Bad memory. How does Freddy like St. Paul?”

“St. Paul? He lives in Milwaukee.”

“This memory of mine.”

The Dance. It went on and on. As it has to.

Then two meetings later, credentials finally established, the risk of entrapment minimal, the dancing was over and they got down to details.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, it is, Hart. So you’re interested?”

“Keep going.”

“Here’s a map of the area. That’s a private road. Lake View Drive. And there? That’s a state park, all of it. Hardly any people around. Here’s a diagram of the house.”

“Okay…This a dirt road or paved?”

“Dirt…Hart, they tell me you’re good. Are you good? I hear you’re a craftsman. That’s what they say.”

“Who’s they?”

“People.”

“Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m curious. Why’re you in this line of work?”

“It suits me,” he’d said simply.

“It looks like it does.”

“Okay. What’s the threat situation?”

“The what?”

“How risky’s the job going to be? How many people up there, weapons, police nearby? It’s a lake house—are the other houses on Lake View occupied?”

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there, the Feldmans. And no rangers in the park or cops around for miles.”

“They have weapons?”

“Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

“Just the Feldmans, nobody else? It’ll make a big difference.”

“That’s my information. And it’s solid. Just the two of them.”

Now, in the middle of Marquette State Park, Hart and Lewis circled around a dangerous stand of thorny brush. Like a plant out of a science fiction movie.

Hart reflected sourly, Yeah, right, just the two of them. Feeling the ache in his arm.

Angry with himself.

He’d done 95 percent.

It should’ve been 110.

At least they knew they were on the right path. A half mile back they’d found a scrap of tissue with blood on it. The Kleenex couldn’t’ve been there for more than a half hour. Hart now paused and gazed around them, noted some peaks and a small creek. “We’re doing fine. Be a lot tougher without the moonlight. But we’ve caught a break. Somebody’s looking out for us.”

The Trickster…

“Somebody…You believe that?” Lewis said this as if he did.

Hart didn’t. But no time for theology now. “I’d like to move a little faster. When they hit the trail they might start running. We’ll have to too.”

“Run?”

“Right. Smooth ground’ll give us the advantage. We can move faster.”

“Them being women, you mean?”

“Yep. Well, and one of them being hurt. Pain slows people down.” He paused and stared to their right. Then hunched over the map and examined it closely with the flashlight, its lens muted by his undershirt.

He pointed. “That a smoke tower?”

“What’s that?”

“Rangers look for forest fires from them. It’s one of the places I thought she might go for.”

“Where?”

“On that ridge.”

They were looking at a structure about a half mile away. It was a tower of some sort but through the trees they couldn’t tell if it was a radio or microwave antenna or a structure with a small enclosure on top.

“Maybe,” Lewis said.

“You see any sign of them?”

Now that their eyes were used to the dark, the half-moon provided fair illumination but the ravine separating the men from the ranger tower was shadowy, and in the bottom a canopy of trees provided perfect cover.

The women heading for the tower made some sense, rather than the Joliet Trail or the ranger station. The place might have a radio, or even a weapon. He debated for a moment and risked scanning the ground with the flashlight. If the women were near, at least they’d be moving away and might not see the light.

Then they heard a rustle of leaves, and turned fast toward the sound.

Six glowing red eyes were staring at them.

Lewis laughed. “Raccoons.”

Three big ones were pawing at something on the ground. It glistened and crackled.

“What’s that?”

Lewis found a rock and pitched it toward them.

With a mean-sounding hiss, they ran off.

Hart and Lewis approached and found what they’d been doing—fighting over some food. It looked like bits of crackers.

“Theirs?”

Hart picked one up, broke it in half with a snap. Fresh. He studied the ground. The women had stopped here apparently—he could make out prints of knees and feet. And then they had continued north.

“Women. Stopping for a fucking picnic.”

Hart doubted, though, it was to rest. That wasn’t Brynn. Maybe somebody needed first aid; he believed he smelled rubbing alcohol. But, whatever the reason, the important thing to Hart was that they hadn’t made for the fire tower; they were headed right for the trail.

He consulted the GPS and pointed ahead. “That way.”

“Mind that patch there,” Lewis said.

Hart squinted. When the moon was obscured by branches or a wisp of cloud, the forest around them turned black as a cave. He finally saw what Lewis was pointing at. “What’s that?”

“Poison ivy. Bad stuff. Not everybody’s allergic. Indians aren’t.”

“Doesn’t affect them?”

“Nope. Not a bit. You might not be allergic but you don’t want to take a chance.”

Hart hadn’t known that. “What were you, a Boy Scout?”

Lewis laughed. “Funny, hadn’t thought about that for years. But, yeah, I was. Well, not really in them. I went on a couple camping trips then kind of dropped out. But I know that’s poison ivy ’cause my brother threw me in a patch once. And that fucked me up good. I never forgot what it looked like.”

“You were saying you have two? Brothers?”

“He was the older one, what else? I’m in the middle.”

“He know it was poison ivy?”

“I don’t think so. But something I always wondered about.”

“Must’ve sucked, Lewis,” Hart said.

“Yup…Oh, ’bout that. My friends call me Comp. You can use that.”

“Okay, Comp. Where’s that come from?”

“Town where my parents lived when I was born. Compton. Minnesota. My parents thought it sounded, you know, distinguished.” He snickered. “Like anybody in our family was ever distinguished. What a joke. But Daddy tried. Give him that. And yours’re both dead? Your folks?”

“That’s right.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Was a while ago.”

“Still.”

They continued on through the tangled brush in silence for what seemed like two miles though it was probably a quarter of that. Hart checked his watch. Okay, he decided. It’s time.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone he’d been carrying. He pushed the ON button, and it went through that electronic ritual they all did nowadays. He figured out the settings and put the ringer on vibrate. Then scrolled through recent calls. The one on top was “Home.” He noted that the call had lasted eighteen seconds. Long enough for a message was all.

He wondered how long it would take before—

A light flashed and the phone buzzed.

Hart touched Lewis’s arm and motioned for him to wait, then lifted his fingers to his lips.

Lewis nodded.

Hart answered the call.

 

GRAHAM FELT HIS

scalp crawl when Brynn’s mobile actually began to ring, rather than go right to voice mail.

It clicked. He heard the rustle of wind and his scalp stopped tensing but his heart took over, thumping hard. “Brynn?”

“This’s Officer Billings,” said the low voice.

Graham frowned and glanced at Anna.

The voice asked, “Hello?”

“Well, this is Graham Boyd, Brynn McKenzie’s husband.”

“Oh, sure, sir. Deputy McKenzie.”

“Is she all right?” Graham asked fast, chest throbbing.

“Yessir. She’s fine. She gave me her phone to hold.”

Relief flooded through him. “I’ve been trying all night.”

“Reception’s terrible up here. Comes and goes. Surprised when it rang just now, to be honest.”

“She was due home a while ago.”

“Oh.” The man sounded confused. “She said she called you.”

“She did. But her message said she was coming right home. It was a false alarm or something.”

“Oh, she was going to call again. Probably couldn’t get through. About the case, turned out it wasn’t a false alarm, after all. Was a domestic dispute, pretty ugly. Husband tried to downplay it. Lot of times that happens. Deputy McKenzie’s talking to the wife right now, getting the facts sorted out.”

The relief was so thick Graham could taste it. He smiled and nodded to Anna.

Billings continued, “She left her phone with me, didn’t want any distractions. She’s calming the situation down. She’s good at that. That’s why the captain wanted her to stay. Oh, hold on a minute, sir…Hey, sergeant?…Where’s Ralph?…Oh, okay…” The trooper came back on the line. “Sorry, sir.”

“Do you know how long she’ll be?”

“We’ve got to get Child Protective Services up here.”

“Lake Mondac?”

“Near there. Could be a few hours. Bad situation with the kid. Husband’s going to spend the night in jail. At least the night.”

“Few hours?”

“Yessir. I’ll have her call you when she’s free.”

“Okay. Well, thanks.”

“You bet.”

“’Night.” Graham hung up.

“What?” Anna asked and he explained what was going on.

“Domestic situation?”

“Sounded pretty bad. Husband’s going to jail.” Graham sat on the couch, staring at the TV screen. “Why’d she have to handle it, though?”

Not expecting an answer. But he was aware that the knitting needles had stopped and Anna was looking up from the scarf she was knitting. The colors were three shades of blue. It was pretty.

“Graham, you know Brynn had some trouble with her face.”

“Her jaw? Sure, the car accident.”

He had no idea where she was going with this.

The woman’s gray eyes were on his. That was one thing about Anna McKenzie. As demure as she could be, as polite and proper, she always looked you right in the eye.

“Accident,” she repeated slowly. “So you don’t know.”

More yellow jackets, Graham was beginning to sense.

“Go on.”

“I just assumed she’d told you.”

He was alarmed and hurt at the lie, whatever it might be. Yet he wasn’t very surprised. “Go on.”

“Keith hit her, broke her jaw.”

“What?”

“Wired shut for three weeks.”

“God, it was that serious?”

“He was a big man…. Don’t feel too bad she kept it from you, Graham. She was embarrassed, ashamed. She didn’t tell hardly anybody.”

“She said he was moody. I didn’t know he hurt her.”

“Moody? True. But mostly it was his temper problem. Like some people drink and some people gamble. He’d lose control. It was scary. I saw it happen a few times.”

“Rage-aholic. What happened?”

“The night he hit her? I’m sure it wasn’t anything big that set him off. It never was. That was the scariest. It could be the power went out before a game, the store was out of his brand of beer, Brynn telling him she was going back to work part-time when Joey got a little older. Whatever it was, he’d just snap.”

“I never knew.”

“So domestic problems—they mean a lot to her.”

“She does run those a lot,” Graham agreed. “I always thought it was Tom Dahl. You know, wanting a woman there.”

“No. She’d volunteer.”

“What did she do? After Keith hit her?”

“She didn’t have him arrested if that’s what you mean. I think she was worried about Joey.”

“He ever do it again?”

“No. Not that she ever told me.”

Hitting someone you were married to. He couldn’t imagine it. Hell, hitting anyone, unless it was self-defense, was almost impossible to picture.

Graham was matching this information against other incidents in their past, against his wife’s words, her behavior. Dozens of times she’d touch her jaw in the morning. Even her waking, sweaty and groaning, from dreams. Her moodiness, her defensiveness.

Her control…

He pictured her hand, coasting along the uneven line of her jaw as they sat at the dinner table or watching TV on the green couch.

Still, sitting back, he said, “She didn’t know what was going on at Lake Mondac until she got there. Domestic may’ve been why she stayed tonight. It’s not why she volunteered to go in the first place. That’s what I want to know.”

“I think the answers’re pretty much the same, Graham.” The needle clicks resumed as Anna cranked up the assembly line of yarn once again.