“I’m not wandering. I know where I’m going.” Again, he looked at his dog, and this time Bear followed him.

Maura watched the boy walk out the back door, the dog at his heels. Through the broken kitchen window, she saw them trudge across the snow toward the woods. The wild child and his companion, returning to the mountains. A moment later they vanished among the trees, and she wondered if they had existed at all. If, in her fear and isolation, she had conjured up imaginary saviors. But no, she could see their prints tracking through the snow. The boy was real.

Just as real as Jane’s voice had been on the phone. The outside world had not vanished after all. Beyond those mountains, there were still cities, still people going about their normal business. People who did not skulk in the woods like hunted animals. For too long, she’d been trapped in the boy’s company, had almost started to believe, as he did, that the wilderness was the only safe place.

It was time to go back to that real world. Her world.

She examined the telephone and saw that the cord was too badly damaged to reconnect, but she had no doubt that Jane would nevertheless be able to track her location. Now all I have to do is wait, she thought. Jane knows I’m alive. Someone will come for me.

She went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The cabin was unheated, and wind blew in through the broken kitchen window, so she kept her jacket zipped. She felt guilty about that window, which Rat had smashed so they could get into the house. Then there was the ruined phone cord and the ransacked pantry, all damage that she would pay for, of course. She’d mail a check with a sincere apology. Sitting in this stranger’s house, a house in which she was trespassing, she stared at the photos on the bookshelves. She saw pictures of three young children in various settings, and a gray-haired woman, proudly holding up an impressive trout. The books in the library were summer entertainment fare. Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel, the collection of a woman with traditional tastes, who liked romance novels and ceramic kittens. A woman she would probably never meet face-to-face, but to whom she’d always be grateful. Your telephone saved my life.

Someone pounded on the front door.

She jolted to her feet. She had not heard the vehicle pull up to the house, but through the living room window, she saw a Sublette County Sheriff’s Department SUV. At last my nightmare is over, she thought as she opened the front door. I’m going home.

A young deputy with the name tag MARTINEAU stood on the porch. He had close-cropped hair and the stern bearing of a man who took his job seriously. “Ma’am?” he said. “Are you the one who made the phone call?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes.” Maura wanted to throw her arms around him, but he did not look like a cop who welcomed hugs. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

“Can I have your name, please?”

“I’m Dr. Maura Isles. I believe there’ve been premature rumors of my death.” Her laugh sounded wild, almost unhinged. “Obviously, it’s not true!”

He peered past her, into the house. “How did you get into this residence? Did someone let you in?”

She felt her face flush with guilt. “I’m afraid we had to break a window to get in. And there’s some other damage. But I promise, I’ll pay for it.”

“We?”

She paused, suddenly afraid that she’d get the boy into trouble. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I needed to get to a telephone. So I broke into the house. I hope that’s not a hanging offense around here.”

At last he smiled, but something was wrong about that smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s get you back to town,” he said. “You can tell us all about it.”

Even as she climbed into his backseat, even as he swung the door shut, she was trying to understand what bothered her about this young deputy. The SUV was a sheriff’s department vehicle, and a metal grate isolated her in the backseat, trapping her in a cage meant to hold prisoners.

As the deputy slid in behind the steering wheel, his radio crackled to life. “Bobby, this is Dispatch,” a woman’s voice said. “You make it up to Doyle Mountain yet?”

“Ten four, Jan. Just checked out the whole house,” Deputy Martineau answered.

“You find her there? ’Cause this Boston cop’s on our backs.”

“Sorry, I didn’t.”

“Anyone there at all?”

“Must’ve been a hoax, ’cause no one’s here. Leaving the scene now, ten seventeen.”

Maura stared through the grate and suddenly met the deputy’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The look he gave her froze her blood. I saw it in his smile. I knew there was something wrong.

“I’m here!” Maura screamed. “Help me! I’m here!”

Deputy Martineau had already switched off the radio.

She reached for the door handle, but there was nothing to grab. Cop car. No way out. Frantically she pounded on the windows, shrieking, oblivious to the pain of her fists slamming against the glass. He started the engine. What came next, a drive to a lonely spot and an execution? Her body left to the mercy of scavengers? Panic made her claw at the prisoner grate, but flesh and bone were no match for steel.

He turned the SUV around in the driveway, and abruptly slammed on the brake. “Shit,” he muttered. “Where did you come from?”

The dog stood in the road, blocking the vehicle.

Deputy Martineau leaned on his horn. “Get the fuck out of the way!” he yelled.

Instead of retreating, Bear rose up on his hind legs, planted two paws on the hood, and began barking.

For a moment the deputy stared at the animal, debating whether to simply hit the accelerator and run over him. “Shit. No point getting blood all over the bumper,” he muttered, and stepped out of the SUV.

Bear dropped to all fours and inched toward him, growling.

The deputy raised his weapon and took aim. So intent was he on hitting his target, he didn’t notice the shovel swinging at the back of his head. It slammed into his skull and he staggered against the vehicle, his weapon flying into the snow.

“Nobody shoots my dog,” said Rat. He yanked open Maura’s door. “Time to go, lady.”

“Wait, the radio! Let me call for help!”

“Are you ever going to listen to me?”

As she scrambled out of the SUV, she saw that the deputy was on his knees and had retrieved his weapon. Just as he lifted it, the boy flew at him. The two went sprawling. Rolled over and over in the snow, wrestling for the gun.

The explosion seemed to freeze time.

In the sudden silence, even the dog went completely still. Slowly Rat rolled away and staggered to his feet. The front of his jacket was splattered with red. But it was not his blood.

Maura dropped to her knees beside the deputy. He was still alive, his eyes open and wild with panic, blood fountaining from his neck. She pressed against the wound to stop the arterial gush, but already his blood soaked the snow. Already, the light was fading from his eyes.

“Get on the radio,” she yelled at the boy. “Call for help.”

“Didn’t mean to,” the boy whispered. “It went off by itself…”

Gurgling sounds came from the deputy’s throat. As his last breath fled his body, so, too, did his soul. She watched his eyes darken, saw the muscles in his neck go slack. The blood that had been surging from the wound slowed to a trickle. Too stunned to move, she knelt in the trampled snow and did not hear the approaching vehicle.

But Rat did. He yanked her up by the arm with such force that she was wrenched straight to her feet. Only then did she glimpse the pickup truck turning into the driveway.

Rat snatched up the deputy’s weapon, just as the rifle blast slammed into the SUV.

A second rifle blast blew out the SUV’s window, and pellets of glass stung Maura’s scalp.

Those aren’t warning shots; he’s aiming to kill.

Rat took off for the trees, and she was right behind him. By the time the pickup pulled up behind the deputy’s vehicle, they were already scrambling into the woods. Maura heard a third blast of the rifle, but she did not look back. She kept her focus on Rat, who was leading them deeper into cover, loaded down with the ungainly backpack. He paused only to hand her the snowshoes. In seconds she had them strapped on.