turning the air rank. It was so sudden and overwhelming that she could barely breathe, and she wanted to bend over and vomit. She clapped her hand over her entire face, trying to keep out the smell, but it wormed inside her anyway.
'Oh my God,' she screamed. 'Turn on your flashlight!'
Nieman didn't answer. Maggie reached out in the dark to make sure he was there, and as she did, she heard her phone ringing in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw on the caller ID that it was Troy Grange.
'Troy—' she began, but then someone slapped the phone from her hand, and she heard it shatter on the concrete floor.
When she tried to shout, the words died in her throat as a steel wire encircled her neck.
Chapter Fifty
Stride and Serena barely spoke on the drive across the empty night highways. He drove fast. They both felt the urgency of time and of not knowing what they would find when they arrived. He concentrated on the road, which was slick with snow, but every now and then he stole a glance across the front seat at Serena. He knew she felt his eyes, but she never looked back. Her face was in dark profile beside him.
'Watch out for deer,' she warned when they entered a long stretch of highway bordered on both sides by thick forest. 'They come out when you least expect it.'
'I know.'
He thought about the advice that Minnesota drivers learned in school. Don't steer for deer. Drive right over them. Kill them. Better them than you, because you're more likely to kill yourself trying to avoid them. He'd hit deer a few times over the years. Each time, he told himself it would be different if he slowed down, if he kept his eyes on the road, if he used his high beams. But it didn't matter. You couldn't stop deer from running, and if they crossed the road at the moment you were there, you were going to have a collision. The best thing to do was come out of it alive.
Serena wasn't talking about deer. She was talking about the two of them. Or maybe the three of them. Their collision.
He knew that, at the end of the day, she didn't care about Maggie. Serena had known all along about Maggie's feelings for him, and she had dealt with them for better or worse. What mattered was whether he could walk away from the accident alive. Whether he could walk away and leave Maggie behind. That was what she was waiting for him to say. He didn't know if she could live with the idea of him working side by side with Maggie every day, but the first step was his. He had to tell her.
He thought about Maggie. He could still feel her in his arms. After all their years together, it had been strangely easy to glide across a line from friends to lovers. His feelings for her had become entangled with their history. That was why he couldn't say what Serena wanted. He couldn't lie to her when he didn't know what he felt. By not saying anything, he knew he had told her something she didn't want to hear.
They didn't speak for the rest of the trip. They crossed back into Duluth, and then into the north farmlands, in silence.
Stride parked on the shoulder of the highway, and they both got out of the car. Guppo was parked in a pickup truck on the other side of the road, and he squeezed out of his truck when he saw them. The highway was deserted. Snow whisked across the pavement.
'Do you have the warrant?' Stride asked.
Guppo yanked a folded white paper out of his back pocket. 'Judge Kassel isn't too happy with you. I interrupted her beauty sleep.'
'She's never very happy with me,' Stride said. He looked at the two Duluth patrol cars parked behind Guppo's pickup. 'These guys didn't use sirens on the way in, right?'
'Silent running,' Guppo said.
Stride saw Serena staring at the farmhouse. She was unusually tense, and he didn't know if it was caused by the stress between the two of them or her anxiety over the investigation. He knew without her saying a word that she had become emotionally engaged with Valerie and Callie. It was one more thing they hadn't talked about.
Serena turned to Guppo and asked, 'Have you been up to the house yet?'
'No, I was waiting for the two of you.' He shoved his hands in his pockets and added, 'So how do you guys want to play it?'
'I'm hoping we can do this the easy way,' Stride said. 'Whatever the hell is going on, I don't think anybody wants to get hurt. The biggest risk is someone bolting. Have one of the squad cars block the driveway, and keep your motors running.'
'You want me to go with you?' Guppo asked.
'We'll call you up when we're ready to do the search. But Serena and I want to go first and have a chat. I don't want anyone getting spooked, OK? The key is to do this calm and steady.'
'You got it.'
Guppo sloughed his body toward the patrol cars to give them instructions. Stride and Serena continued across the highway and stood at the base of the driveway. The farmhouse was fifty yards away, sheltered by trees. They could see lights inside.
'Did you call Valerie?' Stride asked.
Serena shook her head. 'We don't know what we're going to find up there. We could be wrong about this.'
'I said we want to do this the easy way, but do you have your gun with you?' he asked.
She looked at him. 'I have it, but do you really think that's necessary?'
'I don't know. I hope not, but they could be desperate.' He added, 'I didn't want to say anything, not until we knew, but this whole thing raises a lot of questions.'
'You mean Regan,' Serena said.
'Not just her.'
Serena thought about it and cursed under her breath. 'My God. Do you really think that's possible?'
'Right now, anything's possible,' Stride said. He heard his phone ringing, and he pulled it out of his pocket. He held it closely against his ear to hear the call over the roaring of the wind. 'This is Stride.'
'Lieutenant, it's Troy Grange calling.'
Stride was surprised. 'Troy, what's going on?'
'I'm sorry to call you so late, but this has been bothering me, and I couldn't sleep.'
'What is it?'
'Maggie stopped by my house earlier this evening. While she was here, she got a call from a security guard who keeps an eye on the Buckthorn School property. You know, it's that ruined building out on Township Road.'
'I know it,' Stride said. 'Was this about Nick Garaldo?'
'Yeah, exactly. The guard told Maggie he found something out there, and he wanted a police escort before he went inside the school. The old building's not too far from me, so Maggie told him she'd meet him there herself.' 'OK.'
'The thing is, I thought about it afterward, and I realized that the guard at the school was the same guy who did the security installation on my house. That was right after the killings began up here.'
'Is that a problem?'
Troy hesitated. 'Oh, hell, I don't know. I just don't like coincidences, you know. And to tell you the truth, I
