Lester found his partner blending into the shadows. Together, they entered the narrow back street in pitch darkness, at a snail’s pace, watching for movement.

“There,” Willy said unnecessarily as twin taillights came on ahead of them. He snapped a shot of the registration.

Lester slowed. The pickup’s headlights came on, allowing the two cops to see silhouettes of two men in the cab.

“What do you think?” Lester asked.

Willy understood. “Depends. If Seamus is after a lot, they’ll probably head out. If he’s just scoring, they could do the deal right here.”

“Want me to pull back?”

“Nah. Why did he turn on his headlights?”

True enough, the truck began moving, with Lester not far behind.

Reflective of the region, the trip did not proceed to an even worse neighborhood. It took them out of town instead. The northern New England world of drugs, guns, and illicit behavior was just as likely to occur in the country as a metropolis. Policing was a thinly populated profession up here, its officers more concentrated in urban areas. It made sense, assuming any degree of self-preservation, for crooks to practice their dark arts far from the glow of streetlamps.

Fortunately for Lester, the moon was near full and the cloud cover scant, because the farther this two-car caravan proceeded into the surrounding woods nearby, the more he had to drop back, his headlights still off, so as not to be spotted.

Some five miles outside of Keene, the pickup’s brake lights burned brightly before veering left off the road, indicating either a side road or a driveway.

Tucking into a shallow pull-off, Lester killed the engine and pointed through the undergrowth to where they could just see the twin red dots—like a fantasy animal’s glowing eyes—abruptly wink off. “Time for a little recon?” he asked his partner.

Willy had already opened his door. “Absolutely.”

Unlike Lester, who’d been trained by the state police to function in an overt capacity, Willy was back in his element, at night, undercover, proceeding stealthily. Lester honored the man’s comfort level and quietly slipped in behind him, working hard to emulate his way forward.

It was easy enough at first, walking down the road to the cutoff. But there, after cautioning, “They might have video,” Willy headed not up the drive, but in among the spectral trees alongside, right beside a clearly posted No Trespassing sign.

It was a black-and-white world, the moon robbing everything it touched of color. Traveling through an old photograph, the two men slid forward, placing their feet gingerly, their toes reaching for the soil beneath any fallen branches or brush, to avoid the telltale snap of a twig. Ahead, emerging with gradual clarity, a small hunting cabin distinguished itself beyond the pickup and a second vehicle beyond it. The building’s two windows were illuminated, and, helping the two cops, the steady throbbing of a muted generator filled the silence.

Lester’s heart was pounding, his eyes so wide he had to remind himself to blink. Had the roles been reversed, wouldn’t he have put out a dog? Or rigged an alarm system? Or motion-detecting lights?