He hauled in a deep breath and, bracing for the worst, peered into the opening.

A woman was lying on the floor of the cooler, but it wasn’t Evelyn.

“Call an ambulance,” he barked out.

“What do you see?” Ada’s voice rose with the level of her panic.

“I think it’s your mother.”

“No!” she wailed, and came rushing in behind him.

He tried to catch her. He saw a trickle of blood rolling from Edna’s head toward the drain in the center of the room and thought it was too late. He didn’t want this to be the last memory Ada had of her mother. But she refused to be denied. Ripping herself out of his arms, she immediately dropped down beside Edna.

“Mom?” she cried, bursting into tears. “Mom?”

Amarok called the ambulance himself. He thought he should be contacting the medical examiner, but he wasn’t a doctor, so he wasn’t going to make that decision. He was holding out hope and, a moment later, he was relieved he hadn’t fully accepted Edna’s death because everything changed when she moaned.

Between Anchorage and Fairbanks, AK—Thursday, 1:30 a.m. AKDT

Lyman Bishop told himself that what’d happened in Anchorage didn’t matter. He refused to even think about it. Put the past behind him, and everything upsetting, too—that was his motto. He was better off leaving the ranch and cutting ties with anything associated with Emmett Virtanen, anyway. Now that he was out and away from the corpse decomposing in the chicken coop, the dogs, which he had no idea how to take care of beyond giving them food and water, and he no longer had to worry about a nosey landlady, her daughter or the police circling like vultures, he was happier than he’d been in several days.

He was free! And even though he’d had to spend three hours and a significant chunk of money visiting the worst part of Anchorage in order to get an unregistered semiautomatic handgun before he left, it was worth it. Now he’d be able to control Evelyn even if she woke up earlier than expected.

He glanced at the pistol sitting on the passenger seat, where he could easily grab it. He had plenty of reason to feel hopeful and relieved. But he wasn’t quite sure where he was going. He didn’t have the house in Fairbanks yet. The property management company had told him earlier that they were processing his paperwork, but perhaps going there would speed things up. If he appeared at the office tomorrow morning and showed them how well-mannered, educated and trustworthy he was, maybe it would make all the difference.

That kind of approach had worked before. He’d had a great deal of success with it in the past—one of the benefits of looking absolutely average, harmless and nondescript—so that was his new plan. The only problem was that he didn’t quite know what he’d do with Evelyn while he was in their office and running other errands, making sure they’d have what they needed. He couldn’t drug her again. She’d be wise to that now, would probably refuse to eat, even for the sake of her unborn baby.