I had to remind myself that expressions are notoriously easy to misread. When I was younger, I’d thought I had a rare gift for interpreting people’s emotions. Then I had discovered all the scientific studies proving how bad we are sizing each other up at a glance. I still fell into error more often than not—but I was trying to avoid making snap judgments.

Burch sure looked alarmed, though.

“Did your grandmother say what kind of information it is?” I asked.

“That’s for her to explain” said Tori. “Don’t expect her to rat out anyone, though. And mind your manners if you know what’s good for you.”

“I always do.”

“She lives at the cul de sac. Number nineteen.”

“I take it your niece texted her to tell her I was here.”

“Didn’t need to. Our grandmother can smell a game warden like a skunk, a mile away.”

“What’s her name? Her real name. If I can’t address her as Grambo.”

“Lynda,” said Tori with a smile. “Lynda Lynch.”

Tiff kept her poker face, but Burch turned to Tori with a look of childlike befuddlement.

I pretended not to notice.

25

Tori Dillon takes full advantage of my surprise.

She snatches up the snowmobile helmet and lets it fly at my head. Her accuracy is impressive. Out of reflex I bring up the shotgun to deflect the thrown object. The projectile knocks the barrel aside and before I can retrain the sights on Tori, she’s up and running. I have a shot, square between her shoulder blades as she vaults over a deadfall, but my finger doesn’t move. Maybe she judged my character and concluded that I was not the type of person who would shoot an unarmed person—even one who’s tried to murder me—in the back. She gambles with her life that I am a man of honor. And she wins her bet.

My finger is so stiff from frostbite I probably couldn’t have pulled the trigger even if I were feeling homicidal.

I have a harder time regaining my feet than she did, and by then, she’s disappeared into the balsams, leaving waving boughs and puffs of powdery snow like confectioner’s sugar in the flashlight beam.

“Come out, Tori! I know you’re wounded.”

My voice is so hoarse, from cold and general lack of use, I sound like I’m a hundred years old.

There is no answer, of course.

If I blasted wildly at the firs, a shotgun pellet might catch up with her. But even now, as mad as I am, I can’t bring myself to fire.

Besides, she has left a trail for me to follow: boot prints in the snow, some speckled red. She’s losing blood from the cut I made into the meat of her outer thigh.

As am I from the gunshot wound.