“Get out of here. Get out of here now, or so help me—” With his left hand he pointed at a door. It was not the one through which we’d entered. I presumed it led outside.

“I’m sorry if what I said upset you.”

“Like hell you are. I can see through you, Bowditch. You put up a good front. But I know you’re a fraud.”

I felt for the doorknob behind me, gave it a twist, and felt it open outward. Cold air rushed in around my shoulders, making the hood of my parka flap. Keeping my gaze on the armed and angry man, I stepped backward.

“Ivy League fraud!” he said.

I closed the door.

Years earlier, I had watched Charley Stevens goad a dangerous man to anger. He claimed it was a strategy he used to trick information out of stonewalling suspects. I’d never seen anything more reckless.

“Do you deliberately provoke everyone you meet?” I’d asked him.

To which he’d answered, “Everyone? No, not everyone. Just 90 percent or so.”

It had taken years, but I’d finally come to appreciate the method behind Charley’s madness.

I had seen the truth in Jewett’s face, heard it in his voice. He and Eben Chamberlain had been lovers, as Mariëtte suspected.

17

I stagger through the trees, holding my left hand tight against my weeping leg. The makeshift bandage is already soaked through. In subzero temperatures blood flow can go from a flood to a trickle—it’s why you should ice a cut—but the process is insufficient to form a protective clot over a gunshot wound.

I’m making no effort to cover my tracks because I don’t have the energy or the time. No doubt I’m leaving drops of blood, too. A blind man could follow my trail.

The way through the woods is an obstacle course. Ice jams are annual occurrences along the Androscoggin. As the snow melts, freshets course down from the White Mountains and the river begins to rise against its banks, five feet, ten feet, sometimes higher. On occasion it overflows the entire floodplain, clearing out shrubs and saplings but leaving behind a tangle of deadwood through which I must now pass.

The concealable ballistic vest I wear under my clothes these days weighs only a fraction of the heavy-duty body armor I used to use as a patrol warden. But it feels as heavy now as a coat of chainmail.

After a few minutes, I take cover behind a boulder the size of a Volkswagen van. A glacier left the giant stone behind on its retreat north when the last Ice Age ended.

The silence worries me. I haven’t heard a gunshot since the two I believe were aimed at Shadow.

What if he was hit?