“Okay,” Lyle said. “It’s turning on. What’s going on?”

“I’m going to try to plant my phone on this Molinar guy, use it as a tracker.”

“Now we’re cooking with gas. What can I do?”

“Go to Google and type in find my phone.”

Max went to the settings of his phone to make sure that the location-services setting was enabled. He gave Lyle the email account information tied to his phone. “Did it bring up a map?”

“Just a second… yeah. I see a blue dot on Holly Avenue in St. Paul.”

“That’s me. I need you to watch that dot.”

A noise—a gnarling hum—shook Max from his thoughts. Furnace? Pipes? No, the garage door!

“I gotta go!” Max ran to the window and looked out to see a car paused in the alley waiting to enter the garage. Dammit!

He went back to the closet, grabbed the box with the toy car, and sliced open the tape that sealed the box shut, using his thumbnail as a blade. He slid his phone inside the compartment where the remote control and battery pack were stored. It would be discovered as soon as the boy opened the gift, but by then Max and Lyle would be closing in.

Downstairs, a key rattled in the door to the garage. He put the car back into the shopping bag and was about to shut the closet door when he realized his mistake. He pulled the box back out of the bag, slid his phone out, and muted it. All he needed was for Niki or Lyle to call him and have the phone buzz. He slid the box back into the shopping bag and returned it to the closet.

He could hear Peter’s heavy footsteps crossing to the kitchen downstairs. Max stayed in the bedroom, but closed the door to the hallway, leaving the upstairs just as he had found it. Then he crept to the bedroom window and eased it open, popping the screen out as quietly as he could, then hiding it between the mattress and box spring of the bed.

The creak of the stairs told Max that Peter was getting closer.

Max slipped onto the windowsill and slid down until he held himself up with a forearm on the sill, his legs dangling about three feet above the roof of the garage. Whatever atrophy he had experienced at the cabin over the past few years hadn’t affected his arms, which he had built up through wood chopping. He strained to hold on to the sill as he closed the window, the act almost nudging him from his perch; then he lowered his body down until his toe touched the roof.

He let go. Two quick steps and he was at the edge of the garage, where he slid off and dropped to the ground, walking casually back out into the alley.

The two boys in the park, maybe ten or eleven years old, had paused their game to watch Max. He gave them a salute—two fingers to the forehead. If they were Cub Scouts, they would recognize that salute. He smiled at them and walked to his car as though climbing out of that window was no big deal—nothing to tell their mothers about.