Chapter 11

ELEVEN

“Help me understand why we’re tracking down your old hockey coach?”

They had driven out of Duck Lake, twenty miles east to the town of Chester, taking the county road south and then back west toward the Marshall Fields Winery.

“Because there was a sticker for North Star Arena on the bumper of the car in the video.”

“The ice arena?”

“Where all the county hockey teams practice, and Garrett Marshall still runs the arena, I think. Or he might know who does now.” Jack turned onto the long, snowy road that led to the river valley winery. The red barn rose from the snowy white fields, the immense farmhouse seated beside it, having been added on to over the years. A pavilion, probably for weddings and tastings, sat snow-covered, huddled in the yard. The fields lay barren and snow-cast, row upon row of frigid, gnarled vine.

He pulled in, then got out and went to the door under the covered porch. Knocked.

It opened, and a man stood in the doorway, salt-and-pepper hair, muscular upper body, wearing a black pullover with a Vikings emblem.

Instinct had Jack standing up straight. “Coach.”

A blink and then, “Jack Kingston?”

“Sir.” He held out his hand. Garrett met it, grip firm.

“It’s been, what, maybe fifteen years? What brings you to my doorstep?”

“I’m back for my sister’s wedding, and . . . well, I’m trying to track down someone who might have done a little damage to my wheels.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Steinbeck had walked up behind Jack. Garrett looked at him. “Steinbeck, right?”

“Sir. Good to see you. I served with your son, Fraser.” He held out his hand.

“I heard that, I think. He’s separated from the Navy.”

“Me too.” Steinbeck didn’t add on anything, so maybe he wanted that part of his life locked down.

Garrett Marshall glanced at Jack. “Jack, I’m going to need your promise that when you find these guys, you’ll call the cops, not try and take anything into your own hands.”

Right. “I’ve grown up a little bit since my hockey days.”

Garrett said nothing.

Jack held up a hand. “I just want to see if he might have any insurance information for me. He drove away before we could exchange information.”

Steinbeck gave him a look, but he didn’t meet it.

“Come in, boys.” Garrett opened the door, and Jack stepped in, followed by Stein. The smell of something baking filled the house, grabbed Jack’s stomach.

“How can I help?” Garrett said.

“He had a North Star Arena sticker on his car, and I wasn’t sure if you were still coaching?—”

“Not anymore.” Garrett sighed. “These bones are too old. But . . . I do run the Zamboni, and I’m familiar with the teams and the rosters.”

“His name is Elton. But he also had a buddy with him named Job. We’re not sure whose car it might be.”

“Elton Bridges and Job Ramsey.”

Just like that .

“Elton played until he was a senior. Defenseman. Job was a winger. If I remember right, Job got hurt, dropped out his sophomore year. Elton was hoping for a scholarship to the U, but I don’t think he made it.”

“Thanks, Coach.” Jack was turning to go when Garrett put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you back here. Let me know if you ever want to slap around a puck.”

He laughed. “Yeah, Doyle was talking about clearing the ice back home, maybe having a game of broomball.”

“How is he?” Garrett’s voice softened.

“He’s . . . I think he’s better.” But he wouldn’t really know, would he? A hand reached in, clenched his gut.

He really didn’t know any of his siblings. Not anymore.

I work alone. He pushed the rule from his head and met Garrett’s outstretched hand.

“Not everyone is raised a Boy Scout, Jack. Go easy.” He winked at Jack, then shook Stein’s hand.

“What did he mean by that?” Jack said as they walked out, got into Harper’s car. Sheesh, he was a jerk for stealing it. He’d have to go home, trade it out for the Geo.

“I think he means exactly that—you were raised to be the kind of person people can count on.”

Jack looked at Stein. “Right. Hardly.” He pulled out.

“Are you kidding me? Until you walked out of our lives after Sabrina’s death, I thought you might be up there with . . . I don’t know. A superhero?”

He gave a laugh.

Stein didn’t. “Dude. You were my big brother. You were larger than life. Even before you saved that Cubby. I mean—you found Boo. That sort of cemented it for me. You were?—”

“I lost Boo. You know the truth.”

Stein frowned.

Jack glanced at him. “I was the reason Boo went missing. Because I was angry that I was assigned to babysit her. And I was carrying a canoe, so, hello, I might have been in pain and impatient. I told her to go ahead without me. Just in case you have any lingering ideas of me and my awesomeness.”

A beat. Then, “But you fixed it.”

He glanced at Stein.

“And you learned from it.” Stein sat with his hands in his lap.

“Oh, please, now you’re going to do some SEAL speak, like fall seven times, get up eight.”

“I think that’s some Japanese proverb or something, but yes, I’ve heard it. Here’s the one you should hear—God has a plan for your life, and even you can’t screw it up.”

Oh .

“I don’t know, Stein. Feels like I’ve been living in the alternate plan, the one I did screw up.”

“The one where you don’t become a lawyer?”

Jack shrugged.

“What if that is the plan? What if you’re really good at this gig, and this is what you’re supposed to do. What if this isn’t the mistake?”

They’d left the county roads, back on the highway toward Duck Lake.

“I hate you all.”

No, he couldn’t live with that.

He handed Stein his phone. “Speed dial number one.”

Steinbeck pressed it, and then put the phone on speaker.

“Please tell me you’re at a wedding and not tracking down a missing person.” Nat, and in the background, crying lifted.

“Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem. West! Come and get your child!”

Muffles, and then Nat came back on the line. “’Sup?”

“I need an address for an Elton Bridges and a Job Ramsey.”

“Who are they?”

“The people who torched Aggie.”

Silence. Then, “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. They threw a rock into her back window, followed by a firecracker. Boom . She died a valiant death.”

“Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll figure it out.” He refused to go there. The feelings could wait.

“Okay, I have addresses, but be careful.”

“Don’t worry, Stein is with me.”

“Oh, great. Nothing like a couple tough guys to keep the tensions low.”

“Hey. We come in peace.”

“You’d better. I’ve texted you the addresses. Stay frosty.”

“Frosty?”

“Just don’t end up in jail.” She hung up.

“Jail?” Steinbeck raised an eyebrow.

“Long story. Get me directions to Elton’s place.”

Ten minutes later, they’d pulled up to a gray two-story bungalow with a small white front porch and a maroon Caravan in the driveway. They got out, crunched through a half-shoveled walkway trampled by an army of boots, and Jack rang the doorbell. Shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

The door opened—a woman in her early forties, holding a toddler. The kid sucked on two fingers, and a little girl in a yellow princess dress hid behind the woman’s legs. “Listen,” the woman said, “I already love Jesus, so you don’t have to sell me.”

Stein smirked.

Jack shook his head. “I’m looking for Elton, if he’s here.”

She rolled her eyes. “What’s he done this time?”

“He . . . um . . . I just need to talk to him about a little fire incident down at the market.”

“Fire. Ho- ly cow. That kid. Ever since he lost his hockey hopes, he’s been fooling around town—” She put up her hand as if to stop herself. “Nope. I have lunch burning. He’s probably with his friend Job. Now, he’s a real catch.” She shut the door.

Ho-kay .

“Job lives on the other side of town,” Stein said, already pulling up his phone, where he’d forwarded the directions. “In the Eagle Lake gated community.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m thinking graffiti car belongs to Elton here.” He got into Harper’s car.

“Job probably drives a Porsche, got his keys taken away.” Jack said as he pulled out.

Stein smirked.

“You laugh, but I dated a girl from the Eagle Ridge gated community. She was . . . high maintenance.”

“I remember. What was her name?”

“Gemini. Ashton.”

“Oh yeah. Redhead. Hot.”

“Yeah, and I was broke after our first date. We went to the state fair.”

Stein laughed. “That’s what happens when you’re captain of everything. You had the ladies snowed.”

“Hey—is it my fault that Dad paid us minimum wage?”

“What are you talking about? You got use of the boat and his truck, and I know you got out of at least two speeding tickets.”

“One. The other ticket was for making out with Clarissa Fairmont.”

Stein grinned. “She was a year older than you.”

“I know.” Jack laughed. “That relationship lasted one date too. I was so mortified about being found out that I drove her home and never called her again.”

“You let your mistakes have too much power over you.” He shook his head.

But the words found Jack, burrowed in.

He glanced at Stein as they left Duck Lake and headed south for the gated community. “I thought you said that maybe my mistakes can be God’s plan.”

Stein lifted a shoulder. “Sure. But only if they don’t turn into a bullet that sits inside you, infecting your insides.”

A gate cordoned off the entrance to Eagle Lake as if it were a high-security compound. Never mind that the fencing ended at the forest, some fifty yards on either side of the stone pillars and wrought-iron gate.

A coded box sat at the entrance, which meant . . .

“We need an inside man,” Stein said. “Keep driving and drop me off.”

“Are you going to do some super sneaky SEAL stuff?”

“Something like that.” He winked. “Circle back around and wait down the street until you get my text.”

“Please don’t break any laws.”

Stein grinned, slid out, and disappeared into the woods.

Jack kept moving, parking down the road on a semi-cleared forested road. From here, the stately houses that lined Eagle River rose, many of them made of brick, all of them with three-car garages, basketball courts, and theater rooms, and there was a pavilion in the center of the neighborhood for picnics.

A bedroom community for the wealthy who worked in Minneapolis. Or now, remotely.

Ten minutes . C’mon, Stein, don’t do something stupid ?—

Jack’s phone buzzed and he picked it up.

Stein

Now. Hurry.

Jack pulled out and spotted the gate opening as he drew near. He rolled through, kept going, and then spied Steinbeck emerging from the booth. He slowed, and Stein slid into the passenger seat.

“Go, go.”

He hit the gas—not hard, but enough to keep them winding into the community. Maybe thirty homes, but he lost himself in one of the streets, per Stein’s direction.

“How did you do that?”

“These places have no security, although they promise it. I walked up from the inside and told the attendant that I was a resident and I saw a couple kids setting a fire down at the pavilion.”

He pointed to a line of smoke, now dying.

“Did you start a fire?”

“In one of the grills.”

“With what?”

“You didn’t see the pile of old Christmas trees? That’s the house.” He pointed to a house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Beautiful white-brick house, with columns flanking the front door, a basketball hoop in the drive. It overlooked the lake in the back and what looked like a swimming pool to the side. Two stories, with a long room over the garage, it had the space of the third-floor ballroom of the King’s Inn.

Jack parked in the drive and got out.

“Here goes nothing.” He knocked at the door. Glanced at Stein.

Knocked again.

Footsteps, and then the door opened.

Job Ramsey stood in the opening. Or at least a man Jack thought might be Job. Tall, wiry, with the build of a former athlete, maybe, but a guy fighting to sprout into a man, with a scant array of whiskers, long blond hair, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a black hoodie that said Hang on, let me overthink this .

“What’s goin’ on?” he said.

Jack put a foot in the door. “Is your buddy Elton here too?”

Job took a step back, and Jack walked all the way into the house. Put up his hands. “I’m not looking for trouble. I just want to talk.”

“Get out of my house!”

Stein had entered also and now put a finger to his mouth. “Calm down. We just want to talk.”

Job had backed up and leaned against the counter.

“Nice house,” Jack said. He put his hands in his pockets. He hadn’t wanted to do this outside. Now that he was in, he kept his distance, his voice easy. “Mom and Dad home?”

Job’s mouth tightened.

A two-story ledge-rock fireplace soared to the roof in the great room, surrounded by black leather furniture, white carpet. Job leaned against a massive onyx island surrounded by white cabinetry. A giant chandelier the size of a buffalo dripped from the ceiling.

Money .

“I just need to know why you threw a firebomb into my school bus.”

Job’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Yeah, we got you on camera,” Stein said. “Torching the bus.”

“That was an accident. We were supposed to get the Taurus, but Elton missed?—”

A word sounded from behind Jack, an opinion about Job’s accusation, and Jack spun just in time to turn his shoulder into a blow that might have broken his spine.

So Elton still knew how to handle a hockey stick.

Jack staggered to one side but rounded and caught the next blow mid strike.

He’d had a few turns at goalie over the years.

He jerked the stick forward, wrenched it from Elton’s hand, and Elton shouted, falling.

Jack didn’t hit him. He was a kid—a gnarly, angry kid, but still—so Jack pushed him down to the wood floor, landed next to him, grabbed his hand, and twisted it into a submission hold.

Elton howled.

“Calm down. You’re not hurt—yet.”

Scuffling. Jack looked over to find Job fleeing through the side door.

Steinbeck took off behind him.

That would be a race he’d like to watch. Instead, Jack looked down at Elton. “Let’s do this again. You torched my schoolie today. Why?”

“It was an accident!”

Elton was struggling, so Jack pressed his knee against his lower back. “Calm down and I’ll let you go.”

Elton had an opinion on that that Jack suspected his mother might not like.

“Fine—it was an accident. What do you mean?”

“We were hired to fire the other car. We missed.”

“You missed?—”

“Yeah, okay. We threw a rock—it bounced off the car and hit your window. It broke. We blew up the other car—but then Job said that we needed to cover up our fingerprints, so he threw in the firecracker. It was a junker, dude. Seriously—we thought it was abandoned.”

No comment . “Who hired you?”

“This guy—I don’t know his name. We met him at Echoes.”

“When?”

“Thursday morning. He gave us each five hundred bucks to torch the car. That’s all I know.”

“Thursday.” Jack sighed, rolled off him, let him go.

Elton scrambled away rubbing his arm. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is that I’m homeless, thanks to you.”

And right then, the front door banged open. “Down, get down!”

Jack turned, his hands up, and Jenna came in, followed by a cadre of local deputies. She held a gun. “Jack. What are you doing here?”

“I’m having a chat with?—”

“He assaulted me!” Elton pointed at him. “He hurt my arm!”

Jenna lowered her gun. Sighed. Then looked at Elton. “Yeah, well, you’re both under arrest.”

“What?” Jack practically shouted.

“Elton Bridges, you’re under arrest for arson. And you”—she turned to Jack—“are under arrest for obstruction of justice.”

“I haven’t obstructed anything.” He turned as Jenna pushed him to the island. “We were just chatting.”

“How about trespassing?” she said.

“I didn’t?—”

“We received a panic-button alert,” said someone behind him. He glanced over—Eagle River security.

“Obstruction, trespassing, and given the complaint of the suspect, assault.”

“He hit me with a hockey stick!”

She grabbed one wrist, then the other, cuffed him. “Tell it to your lawyer.”

Aw .

* * *

“You don’t have to be a child to get in over your head.”

For a long second there, Harper had thought— yep, in over my head . “You’re lucky I didn’t use my ninja moves on you.”

Next to her, in the passenger seat, Tommy laughed. A low rumble that even now sounded a little menacing, but she kept trying to see past the burliness and tattoos to the teddy bear inside.

The guy who’d started to tear up with worry in his expression when he’d told her that she couldn’t leave—not when she might be the only connection to Penelope and, most of all, to answers to Sarah’s murder.

“Sorry to scare you. You’re just the only one who knows how to find Penelope. Her listeners—which include me—know something is wrong.”

And that had had her sticking around because—how did he know that Penelope was missing?

He’d unhanded her nearly immediately, hands up, as if realizing his own actions. And then he’d made her coffee and spent the last hour scrolling through the fan comments on the Penny for Your Thoughts forum.

“She usually posts every day, and especially on Fridays, before her podcast drops, but we haven’t heard a thing on her forum since Tuesday. And there is a lot of speculation. Some think it’s a publicity stunt. Others are sure she got grabbed.”

“She has a lot of fans.” Harper had been on the forum before with Jack and now searched for any posts that might look threatening.

Which of course allowed Jack to walk into her head. “I don’t like letting people down.”

She’d shaken him away and asked Tommy again about Turbo. He’d pulled up the nightclub’s website on his laptop and checked the hours.

“I need to be back at the rehearsal long before this opens,” she’d said to his suggestion that they go there and ask about the security team.

“Turbo is owned by Holden Walsh’s management company. What if we talk to him, ask him if anyone on his staff matches the description of the intruder?”

She’d given him a look that made him raise his hands in defense.

“I’m not suggesting we accuse him of anything. Maybe we’re searching for a guy that Sarah saw at Turbo. Walsh was her ex—certainly he wants her murder solved.”

“Unless he did it,” she said. “We could be setting ourselves up for trouble.”

“Then,” Tommy said, “he gets nervous and sloppy and next thing we know, he leads us to our masked man.”

“Zorro.”

He’d smiled at that. At least someone thought she was being cute.

You’re brilliant.

Nope. Not brilliant. A dreamer .

And maybe foolish as she drove with Tommy, an hour later, through the tangle of traffic leading to the S & W Development office in St. Paul. She still had over an hour before her dance lesson with Jack.

But finding Penelope took priority. Jack probably wouldn’t want to dance with her anyway.

“You know, I would never hurt Sarah.” She glanced at Tommy now as he looked out the window, away from her. “She didn’t see the guy I’d been. Just the guy I wanted to be. We were friends, and yes, I hated that she was with Walsh, but . . . she’d never go for a guy like me anyway.”

Traffic had slowed to a standstill on 94, but they’d nearly reached the Wall Street exit.

“What do you mean?”

“She was educated. Beautiful. And I’m an ex-con who works in a bar.” He lifted a shoulder.

“I think that there are no rules in love.” She turned onto the exit.

“What are you talking about? There are all sorts of rules—especially the ones a guy makes in his head. And they don’t come down without a fight. Take a right on Kellogg.”

“Maybe nothing we believe about ourselves comes down without a fight, even if it’s a lie.” She turned right, and he pointed to a three-story building. A sign to the parking ramp led under the building.

No ticket at entry meant a public lot, so she descended and found a space in the darkness of the lower level. She unhooked her belt, turned to him. “But some wars are worth the fight.”

Her own words tunneled back through her as they took the elevator to the lobby. Again, Jack’s words. “I very much, clearly know that you’re not . . . a high-schooler.”

He was built to protect, so maybe she could take a breath, give him some grace.

Maybe.

They walked out into the sleek vintage lobby of what looked like a former bank or post office. Polished oak flooring, open ceilings with painted black industrial piping, and the logo for S & W Development on a wall leading back to some offices. A few potted plants, pictures of local developments along the walls of the waiting area, some blueprints, some aerial shots. She perused them as Tommy walked to a long mahogany counter topped with white marble. A receptionist sat behind it, and he asked if Holden Walsh was in.

But Harper’s gaze had caught on a development called Loon Lake Estates. A blueprint of lots with a gated entrance connected to a yacht club and a fenced-in boatyard seated on the south shore of Loon Lake.

Just a few miles up the road from Duck Lake.

A couple of model homes surrounded the blueprint, expensive, lavish.

Other property projects also hung on the wall—Turbo nightclub among them, along with a few multifamily properties and apartment complexes, another office building, as well as retail spaces.

“I got his card,” Tommy said, coming up to her. “He’s not in. Neither is his partner, Derek Swindle.” He handed her the card.

“Of course not.” She sighed, looked at her watch. “I have to get back to Duck Lake. I need to be at a dance and wedding rehearsal in less than an hour.”

“Sorry. I thought this would be something.” He pushed the elevator call button.

“He does tenant services as well as property development,” she said, looking at the card.

“Sarah was one of his real estate agents.”

The door opened, and they got in, rode down.

“Why the laptop, I wonder?” Their feet echoed in the dim parking garage. A couple of lights were out, something she hadn’t noticed before, and for the first time, maybe, she didn’t hate that Tommy looked like a guy you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Or parking garage.

“She reported it missing, but she said that she had everything backed up to the cloud, so . . . ”

Harper unlocked the car. She slid into the driver’s seat as Tommy belted himself in.

Movement behind her caused her to jerk, scream as a man sat up. He wore dark glasses and a stocking hat, and he shoved a gun against the side of Tommy’s head.

“Everybody stay calm.”

Tommy put his hands up. Glanced at Harper, his mouth pinched.

“Take the car,” she said and reached for the handle?—

“Who are you ?”

She jerked and glanced at the man. “Who did you expect?”

“Stay put. We’re going for a drive.”

Tommy rounded in his seat, lunging for the gun.

“No!” Harper shouted.

A shot. It exploded through the car, and Harper put her hands over her ears, screaming.

“Shut up!” the man said, but Tommy was shouting too—more of a keening as he doubled over.

“Tommy?” She turned to him, and Tommy leaned back, his hands to his stomach, breathing hard.

“You shot him?” She turned to the man. “You shot him!”

He’d shot Tommy through the seat and now sat back and leveled the gun at her. A big man dressed in a black turtleneck, suit pants, a wool coat, gloves. “Drive.”

“To the hospital .”

“Nope. Just drive.” His voice emerged low, unshaken.

Her hands shook so much that she barely gripped the wheel as she pulled out, grinding the gears as she fumbled with the stick shift.

“Calm down. You follow my instructions and no one dies.”

“Tommy’s going to die!” She glanced at the man in the rearview mirror as she stopped at the exit.

He lifted his shoulder. “But you might live.”

Her eyes burned as she pulled out into traffic, her heart choking her. Next to her, Tommy groaned, his hands bloody. They stopped at the light, and she unbuckled and pulled off her puffer jacket. Shoved it at him. “Use this.”

He had closed his eyes, and now took the jacket, slumping back.

It wouldn’t absorb anything, but it might add pressure to the wound. Please, God—if you’re watching ? —

“Drive!” The light had turned green, and she took a left on Mounds Boulevard.

“Get on 94 going west.”

So, back toward Duck Lake.

The man sat in the middle, the gun on her as she pulled out onto the highway and merged into traffic.

Think. Her phone was in her parka, so that hadn’t been a bright move. If she could pull up beside a cop?—

“Just drive, Harper,” Tommy said quietly, barely breathing.

Her vision glazed as she nodded, tried to keep them between the yellow lines.

Talk about over her head. And Clarice, of course, wormed her way in. “One of these days you’re going to go too far, dig too far, and I’m not going to be able to rescue you.”

Tommy had gone quiet beside her, his eyes closed. She put her hand on his chest. Still breathing, but barely. “Please let me drop him off at a hospital.”

“Take the Highway 7 exit.”

She got off, her gut tight. The sun had settled low in the west, a simmer of fire along the horizon, red bleeding out through the birch and evergreen trees, then over the whitened landscape. She passed Excelsior, then Victoria, and finally headed toward Carver.

“Where are we going?” Her voice had lost its gusto.

“You should have left it alone.”

“Left what alone?”

He drew in a breath. “The podcast case.”

She couldn’t stop herself. “Did you kidnap Penelope?”

He made a noise she couldn’t decipher, so?—

“Did you kill Penelope?”

He met her eyes in the rearview mirror, dark and fierce in the fading light. “No.”

She wanted to believe him.

Farmland, vast fields of white, peeled out around them, the light fading fast. A few miles out of Duck Lake, he directed her north on a county road toward Loon Lake, and her brain went to the blueprint she’d seen in S & W Development.

She glanced again in the mirror. Could he be Holden Walsh himself?

They cut south, around Loon Lake Drive, and she passed a boatyard full of motorboats, and yachts on stands, many covered in canvas.. Small fishing boats were stacked three high, all dark outlines against the gray sky, the rising moonlight. A fence cordoned out would-be vandals.

Farther, a snowy construction street veered off the main road, and of course—she just knew it—they drove past a sign for Loon Lake Estates.

A few skeletal homes, draped in winter, stood half-completed along the shoreline. A lonely excavator rose, cold and abandoned, against the night.

He directed them toward one of the houses, the basement dug but not poured, and suddenly old mafia stories thudded into her mind.

“Stop here.”

In the drive, by the open grave.

“Get out.”

He slid toward her side, got out, holding the gun on her. The light of the open door illuminated Tommy, gray and maybe not breathing.

Oh. She fought her rising scream.

“Get him out of the car.” He motioned with his gun.

“So, we’re upgrading from when you shot Ty, huh? No more just leaving a dead guy in the car—he might live.”

She glanced over. Not a flicker of a response, but then again, darkness hid his face. Opening the door, she crouched next to Tommy. He still clutched the parka to himself, but as she drew it away— find the phone! —his hand fell.

“Pull him out!”

She stood up, gripping his jacket. “He’s too heavy.”

The man cursed, then walked over, and before she could brace herself— totally didn’t see that coming —he pushed her. Hard. She flew away from the car, landed with a splash of pain on the frozen, rumpled ground.

He reached in and grabbed Tommy. Yanked him out.

Tommy fell like a sack of sand onto the snow.

Harper rolled, found her feet, and took off.

Run! A shot destroyed snow just ahead of her, so she aimed for the excavator, took cover behind it.

She wished she’d scooped up her parka. But she wore a blue sweater and black pants, and maybe they would hide her.

Another shot. It pinged against the metal, so she scrambled to the far side. Tripped. Her hand caught the grimy, frozen wheel before she went down.

“You can’t get away. There is nothing out here. You’ll freeze to death?—”

Her wrist caught on the tread of the wheel, and she wrenched it free, then crouched and took off toward the shell of a nearby house.

Another shot—wide—and she dove over a snowbank, then into the garage of a house, feeling along the edge before she came out the back and took off again.

Her feet crunched, her breaths puffing out in the cold, but she kept low and kept running.

Along the block foundation of a third house, and then up the shoreline, she spotted the clutter of the boatyard.

She kept to the debris of the worksite, hiding behind dumpsters and half-built stacked-block walls, and then finally broke out into a run toward the fence.

Scale the fence. Hide in the boatyard ?—

A shot, this time just ahead of her, and she yelped and dove onto the ground.

Her black attire against white snow—in the moonlight, he’d see her.

So, not over the fence .

She spotted a long building, probably the administrative offices. Shadows on the far side might hide her?—

Scampering into the shadows, she leaped up the fence. A drainpipe helped her climb. She spidered up, threw a leg over—her sweater caught, ripped, but she clambered over the other side, slid along the building all the way to the front.

Maybe if she got inside she could call?—

“You can’t hide from me!”

She pressed herself against the building, his voice way too close—maybe on the other side of the fence?—

Why hadn’t she listened to Jack and stayed put?

Pushing herself away from the building, she sprinted toward the racks of boats, then dove between them, ducking, then sliding under their elevated keels, working her way deeper into the yard. She emerged between a couple of boats, one of them a motor yacht rising high on a lift above her. A swim platform jutted from the back.

Hide.

Here went nothing. She loosened the bottom strap, then pulled herself up onto the swim platform. Ducking under the canvas, she crawled into the back of the yacht, along the deck, and then— there . The cabin.

She opened the door and climbed down the stairs. Then she slid onto a bench, her back to the wall, pulled her knees up against herself, held her breath, and hoped very, very hard that Jack would miraculously come and find her.