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rattling. The silence erupted into snowflakes.

Gator seized Shank’s shoulder and pointed with his other hand. “Check it out.”

A woman dressed in an oatmeal gray sweat suit appeared on the driveway beyond the house, walking toward the road. She tucked a red ponytail into her cap, paused to look up at the sky, then up and down the road. Then she pulled on gloves and started running. At the end of the drive, she turned right and ran down the road, in the same direction the truck had taken. Shank followed her with the binoculars.

“Bitch can run. She’s really moving,” he said, lowering the binocs. He turned to Gator. “Whattaya think?”

Gator looked up at the thickening snow. “This looks like the real thing. You up for hiking back to Sheryl, then coming back in while she takes me home?”

Shank glanced back toward the trail in the woods, then at the house.

Gator said, “You could go in the house, be waiting for them.”

Shank shook his head. “Nah, too messy, people showing up piecemeal. I want them all together when I go in. But let’s go have a look at the house, want an idea of the floor plan, the doors.” He took out his cell, removed his glove, and made a call. When it connected, he said, “You hear me all right?”

“Yeah, it’s starting to snow like hell, what’s up?” Sheryl said.

“We’re going to check around a few minutes here, then Gator’s coming back to the car. You run him home and get right back. Call me the minute you get back.”

“How much time are we talking?” Sheryl said.

“Nobody’s home. We’re all waiting. Maybe an hour and a half, tops.”

“Okay,” Sheryl said.

Shank ended the call, stood up, took out his pistol, and said, “Okay, this is it. Once you take off, I won’t see you for a while. Then in a month or so, we’ll get together in the Cities and talk some business.”

“I’m for that,” Gator said.

“But first, let’s go have a quick look before the bitch gets back.” Gator rose to his feet and removed the Luger from his fanny pack. Then he pulled his ski mask down, covering his face. Shank grinned and did the same. Guns at the ready, they jogged toward the house.

Chapter Forty-five

Five minutes into her run, Nina was having doubts about being out in this weather. The wind doubled in velocity and tore through her cotton running suit and the flimsy silk-weight underlayer. The first tiny ice worms were forming in her eyebrow sweat. She could do ten miles in this stuff if she had to. Do it easily. But this was not a survival endurance test. She needed to unkink after cleaning the goddamn bathroom.

Then, as if she needed more convincing this was not a good idea, she slightly turned her right ankle on a rock under the snow. She slowed and tested her weight. Not that bad, not even a strain. But she’d make it worse if she continued.

I give. Time out. The new sensible Nina.

She turned, pulled up her hood, plunged her gloved hands under her jacket, and walked back down the road toward the house. A few minutes later she was rounding a slight rising turn, about two hundred yards to go, thinking about her running course in Stillwater, up Myrtle Hill, out toward Matomedi. This time next week she’d be running up that hill. By then she’d have had her talk with Broker…

A different kind of cold gripped her chest. A twinge of panic anticipating the conversation, telling him what he wanted to hear, after all these years. Admitting to the way she’d compromised her shoulder with the steroids. Jeez, thinking it was one thing. Actually doing it was-

She took a deep freezing breath and constructed a box around the panic, tucked it away. Suddenly the box flew open…

Holy shit!

A decade of conditioning and experience flung her off the road, rolling through the snow, scrambling in a fast low crawl to the cover of the trees.

Two of them. At the house?

As her mind protested the image, her reflexes pushed her forward, hugging the tree line; fifty, sixty yards to see better.

She rubbed her hand at the fine white squall, like she was trying to clear a windshield heaped with salt. Nothing out there now but the snow. House going in and out. Thought she saw one of them flattened against the side of the garage, like a lookout; the other testing the garage door. Black ski masks, winter camouflage tunics. She had 20/10 vision in both eyes. Those were pistols in their hands.

Gone now in the storm.

The image in her mind was absurd but compelling. She was staring at a blur of green cabin in northern Minnesota and she was seeing familiar spectral figures; Arkan’s fuckin’ Tigers, the Serb paramilitary she’d stalked in Bosnia and Kosovo…same camo, same masks…

Don’t think. Gain position.

Need a weapon.

She pictured the gun cabinet in the living room behind the wall hanging. And the key to it on the thong around Broker’s neck.

Running now along the ragged edge of the trees, instinctively knowing the blowing snow and the color of her clothes gave her cover. The two figures had vanished from the side of the house; around the back, maybe.

She paused at the edge of the trees. Not dressed for this, getting disoriented by the cold and wind. How far? Maybe eighty yards to the house. She’d locked the doors, had the keys in her pocket.

Do it.

She burst from cover and crossed the open space; her lung-burning sprint turned into a slip-and-slide, batting her hands at the stinging white. Shuddering, she piled into the angle formed where the garage and house met. The snow was a froth at her ankles; dry, fine, in furious motion. No tracks. Where are the tracks? Can’t tell. They were right here? She whipped out the garage door key and opened the door. Slipped inside. Now a second key to get into the kitchen.

She froze when she heard the faint scrape on the back deck, then the rear garage door rattled. Were they testing the door? Or was it the wind?

But did I lock the patio door in the kitchen?

She looked around. Saw the ski poles stacked along the wall. Started to go for one of them. Mid-step, she changed her mind and grabbed the heavy splitting maul in her left hand. Twenty pounds of steel; didn’t trust her right arm.

Very slowly she eased open the kitchen door and edged up to the side of the cabinets that blocked her from the end of the room and the patio door, thankful she had turned out the lights. The room was limbo-lit by the flurry moth light of the snow. Moving in fractions, she peeked around the end of the cabinet, thought she made out this grainy figure, pressed against the patio door’s glass panel, peering into the darkened room. Looked like a German Luger in his hand.

Darted her head back.

A German Luger, c’mon. Are we spiraling out here or what? She blinked icy sweat to clear her eyes. Couldn’t blink away the crazy swerve in her head. It occurred to her she could take one step forward and five steps back.

Warily, she peeked again. Nothing but the churning snow and dim twisting shadows, the trees tossing in the wind.

A line from one of the books: “There are infrequent but documented cases where persons suffering from depression can hallucinate…see things that are not there…”

Suddenly she couldn’t move. Stuck. I’m stuck. Not her body. She slowly bent her knees and lowered her back down the side of the cabinet and squatted on the floor. She removed her cold wet gloves and pressed her icy palms on either side of her face.