Jewett caught sight of the wolf in his scope. The second shot sounded fast, unaimed. Both misses, I hope and pray.

As racked with pain as I am, as hard as it is to think straight, I need to put myself in my enemy’s head. Jewett is a careful man. He will wait patiently for me to crawl into view, hoping for a clean shot. But he won’t wait long. He can’t chance me slithering away into the woods.

Sooner or later, the son of a bitch is going to have to cross the river and come looking for me. What other choice does he have? He needs to be sure I’m dead. He needs time to hide my body where it can’t be found. Because, as far as Bruce Jewett knows, game wardens will be swarming all over this river come dawn, and when they find my bloodless corpse, they will be lining up outside his door with tac gear and Windham Weaponry AR-15 rifles, fighting one another to be the first through the breech to exact revenge.

If I am going to see the sunrise, I have no choice but to go.

I need to run until I can run no more.

And then I have to find the strength in myself to keep running.

16

When Jewett reappeared, he was wearing a U.S. Navy command cap and a nylon windbreaker over his button-down shirt. The front of the hat bore the name of a ship, the USS Thresher, above an insignia of two fish, facing each other, above the hull classification: SSN-593.

His boxer’s face had the pugnaciousness of a fighter climbing into the ring. “I bet you enjoyed that pathetic, pitiable tableau.”

“Your mother has Alzheimer’s?”

“No, I’m actually imprisoning her downstairs. Of course she has Alzheimer’s. She’s ninety-four.”

“Who’s Tom, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“I do mind. I mind everything about your being here. Did you have enough time to snoop around my house while I locked my mother in the dungeon? Did you find the bags of nitrogen fertilizer I’m using to build my truck bomb?”

“Mr. Jewett—”

“Are we going shooting or not?”

From the start, I had misgivings about being in the same room with this high-strung man while he engaged in active-fire target practice. His heightened agitation now had me on the verge of bowing out altogether. But he barged out of the room so fast that I found myself pulled along, like a needle after a magnet.

The general sense of emptiness was pervasive throughout the house. Every footstep echoed. There was not a single Christmas decoration to be seen. It was worse than my home in its utter lack of cheer.

As we passed through the kitchen again, we came upon a tomcat.