A steep bank, lined with gnarled oaks, rises above me. It is undercut from frequent floods, but if I can get a grip on one of the exposed roots, I can pull myself to safety. Carefully, I put away my knife. My hands are quickly becoming bear paws, but I clench them to force blood into my fingers. The hard, smooth lattice of tree roots provides the handholds I need.

When I reach the top, I press my body face-first onto the powdery ground, like a child attempting a snow angel.

Then the joy of having escaped the river gives way to brutal reason.

Ten minutes. That is all the time I have before hypothermia sets in. From my training, I know the process is inexorable; if I can’t rewarm my core, my heartbeat will slow, my brain will cloud, and I will die.

Ten minutes to get warm.

With no means of making a fire, nothing to use for a shelter, no way to signal for help.

All I have is a knife.

4

The road west of Ducktrap took me through a landscape of leafless forests and hayfields that had been mowed to a hard stubble after the harvest. The last time I’d come through, this countryside had been white with snow. Now it was tundra again, hoary brown in color and patched with ice, with ridges of rotting snowbanks along the roadsides.

I glanced at the thermometer in the dash. Nineteen degrees, cold enough for snow, but the barometer was rising. The online forecast had said there was only a sliver of a possibility the Midcoast would receive any precipitation before Christmas. It would take some powerful magic to change the weather.

Emma Cronk was a sweet, strange child. No wonder Billy doted on her. And with four older brothers and the most dangerous man in Maine for a father, I feared for the first boy who asked her on a date.

I felt again the longing I’d experienced watching Billy wrap his arm around his beloved child.

Then in my head I heard Dani say: “I don’t know how anyone can decide to bring children into this world, as fucked up as it is.”

To drive out the thought I turned my attention to the bleak land whipping past. The snow that hadn’t melted before the latest cold snap had a dingy, aged appearance. But I knew there would be fresh, clean snow the farther I got from the coast. Up north, the ski mountains were doing a booming business, and it was to the mountain foothills that I was now headed. To Dani Tate’s hometown of Pennacook.