“OK, I’m talking. Meanwhile, Heidi, we’re having a weird string of break-ins that I don’t think we can keep ignoring. Alarm calls first at Liquor City, five minutes later at the Dollar Heaven, eight minutes after that the Supercuts went off. Someone saw two kids on a horse. By the time I sent Schwem over to Supercuts, the alarm at Bad Axe Bowl was going off, so Schwem is headed over—”

“Denise!”

“Right here.”

“The pattern. All Rickreiner properties, inbound from the northeast.”

“You’re right.”

Neither spoke for a moment.

“Never mind the bowling alley, Denise. Redirect Schwem to the newspaper office.”

“Ten-four.”

She tried to reach Harley, who didn’t answer, and then she was trying to text him without entering a soybean field at lethal speed when Denise called right back.

“He’s there.”

“Who’s where?”

“I’m getting calls. At the Happy Valley Shopper. The white truck is there. Somebody saw a man in a robe smash the door. Now he’s inside the building with Taylor.”

When after a sickening blur of time she at last cornered onto Second Street, the white truck was parked crookedly over the curb with Deputy Schwem’s Tahoe behind it, red-and-blue lights sparking. Both the building’s door and front window had been smashed. The alarm shrieked over Schwem’s strained voice as he wrangled with Barry and Babette Rickreiner on the opposite curb.

The instant she saw Taylor’s brown cap with gold letters move across the shadows inside, she felt herself enter sow-bear mode. She blocked the street with Luck’s Tahoe and leapt out with her duty weapon drawn. She ripped open the door of Derp Hubbard’s truck and saw her little boy’s unzipped backpack. No hammer. Extra underwear. An apple. A Ziploc bag of crackers. His favorite Matchbox car, the Torino. Oh, Taylor…

“Golly!” she bawled from her guts, looking for something to shoot at. “Let him go!”

Taylor’s cap had disappeared. Nothing else happened. Thank God. She had yelled and waved a gun. Stupid. Starting now, she had to act like the sheriff.

Trying to hide her shakes, she turned to assess the periphery. A few old-timers had shuffled over from Norse Nook with coffee cups in hand. The custodian and manager of Farmers Bank watched beneath their sign: 6:21A.M. and 94 degrees. A few cars had pulled over on Main Street, drivers stepping out to watch. Jaywalking across the Main Street–Second Street intersection came a slender barefoot kid in a filthy shirt and filthier cargo shorts, carrying a worn black backpack against his or her chest. The kid’s face looked vaguely familiar. But now Schwem was barking back and forth with the Rickreiners.

“Put that away,” he ordered BARRY HER. The deputy dripped sweat, in octopus mode trying to restrain the on-charging mother and son. The candidate had liberated his sidearm from its thigh holster, a heavy semiautomatic.