A cold hollowness filled my gut. I leaned into the seat back and closed my eyes. Why such apprehension? Fear for Ruben’s safety? In all likelihood, the woman had killed her own babies. Abandoned their bodies without a backward glance.

Or had she? Had it been Ruben’s choice? Had someone else done it or forced her hand? It could not have been Scar in Montreal. Then who? Was that person helping her now?

Nothing made sense.

Forex and Scar both said Ruben wasn’t very smart. Yet she’d gotten herself to Quebec and lived incognito for three years. She’d concealed her pregnancies, delivered and murdered at least four infants. She’d eluded the Project KARE task force. She’d eluded and continued to elude both the RCMP and the QPP.

How? A complex support network? A single partner? Street smarts? Blind luck?

I turned to Ollie. “Scar said you were clueless. What did he mean by that?”

“Braggadocio.”

“Good word.”

“I downloaded an app that pops you a new one every day.”

“They ever send ‘clueless’?” I hooked quote marks. I wasn’t amused.

“It’s just trash talk. The last thing Scar wants is me shining a light up his ass.”

“He used the word twice.”

“Maybe I’ll send him a link for the app.”

Our flight finally took off at ten-fifteen. We never learned the nature of the plane’s mysterious ailment.

All I remember about the Yellowknife airport is a stuffed polar bear presiding over the baggage claim area. And a whole lot of empty. Outside the terminal, a mix of rain and snow was blowing diagonally. And it was colder than crap.

A Sergeant Rainwater drove us the short distance into town. Ryan and I sat in back. From overheard snatches of the front-seat conversation, I gathered that Rainwater had been doing some investigative work for Ollie, the sort of thing we’d tried in Edmonton, showing the mug shot, asking about Ruben. With essentially the same result.

We hit the Explorer Hotel just past midnight. I noted a hilltop location, a long sweeping drive, and an eight-foot inuksuk guarding the main entrance.

Check-in was mercifully quick. Also mercifully, Ollie was uninterested in providing escort service.

My room was on the fourth floor. It had a king bed, a minibar with microwave, a flat-screen TV, and a view of some body of water the name of which I resolved to query in the morning.

I docked my iPhone in the clock-radio and dialed up the sound of crashing waves. Sleep took me down in under five minutes.

Chapter 17

THE BABY REACHED OUT, FINGERS SPLAYED, LITTLE LIMBS trembling, begging for help. My help.

I tried running, but my feet dug deeper and deeper into the sand.

The scene zoomed in.

The baby was sitting in the shallows on a long black beach. Behind it, over choppy waves, purple storm clouds darkened a menacing sky.