“Quayle pulled the trigger. I survived him. I plan to keep surviving whatever you throw at me.”

He got up and this time I let him. We’d said enough. And maybe he was right; maybe it was time to simply let things happen.

I had no idea what he would bring back, but I didn’t expect a lone piece of folded paper, edges frayed where it had been ripped from a spiral notepad. I doubted we’d had to jog all this way for a sheet of paper that would have fit in his pocket.

He held it out. “I still have friends in the sheriff’s office.”

“Yeah, I met one of them.”

“I figured I could do this much.”

I unfolded the paper and stared at three names and a few scrawled sentences to go with them. Then I looked up. Nearly two weeks had passed since my life-altering phone call with Wendy. While most days I felt like I wasn’t making any progress toward helping her, these three names could be a huge breakthrough.

“I have a feeling this isn’t the way your friend should be spending his time,” I said.

“For the most part arrest records are public.”

Records might be public, but even though Sophie had amazing snooping skills, she didn’t have access to all the resources that the sheriff’s office did.

Each of the three names were some variation of Milton Kerns. Someone named Milten Cairns, a man in his seventies, had been arrested for breaking into a Philadelphia ATM, but never charged. I realized Wendy hadn’t said how old the man she’d met in New Mexico was, but this didn’t feel right.

The second name was Milton Kernbauer, eighteen, who’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly at a fraternity party in South Carolina.

The third was a man named Alexander Milton Kearns—I noted the a in the middle—called Alex or sometimes “Ex” on the street, who had been arrested for assault after a confrontation at a ski resort in Vermont. There were other minor offenses.

I stared at the name of the resort. It was all too familiar. The Autumn Mountain Club belonged to Gracey Group, or at least it had years before. I rarely kept up with my father’s business dealings, but I remembered this one because we’d traveled there when I was a teenager. I’d had my first skiing lesson with an instructor who’d been a hunk to boot.

At the time of his arrest, I noted that Kearns had been an employee at the club. There wasn’t a lot more information, except his birth date—he was forty-six—and birthplace.

“Costa Rica.” I looked at Teo. “This third name just might be the guy. In our first phone call Wendy said he was from Costa Rica.” I didn’t mention Kearns’s connection to Gracey Group, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just needed to process the possibilities and do that alone.

“So there you go.”

“I really appreciate this. I can do some targeted sleuthing now.”