CHAPTER 45

Max drove three blocks away from Peter’s house, turned, and parked beyond Peter’s view, walking back to the alley to take up a position behind a tree. From there he could see the garage door. He waited nearly an hour before Peter’s silver car backed out.

Max called Lyle. “He’s on the move. Do you have him?”

“I have the blue dot, but it hasn’t moved.”

“Give it a minute.”

Tracking a phone online had its drawbacks. Unlike the professional tracking equipment that police forces used, the Find My Phone app could be spotty. It had to refresh the position of the phone every minute or two, moving the blue dot in fits and starts. But none of that would matter if Peter hadn’t taken the toy with him. It killed Max to watch Peter disappear around the block. His impulse to follow nearly overwhelmed him, but he stayed put.

“Is the dot moving?” Max asked.

“Not yet. I don’t think—Wait! I have him heading west on Holly Avenue.”

Max smiled. Peter took the toy. He got back into his car and drove toward home.

Lyle called every ten minutes at first, giving Max updates. Peter had headed north on Interstate 35. That would take him as far as Moose Lake, where he would need to cut through the backroads to get to Grand Rapids—in total a three-hour trek from St. Paul. The blue dot stopped on the outskirts of the Cities, and Max saw Peter as he passed by a convenience store where Peter was filling his tank with gas. Max would be in front of him now, but Max decided that that was a good thing. He would get to his cabin in time to see where the dot came to rest.

As he drove north, Max’s mind drifted back to something that Niki had said. If you trusted me, you’d be honest about what happened three years ago and why you disappeared. Did she suspect that he had killed Mikhail? All those years ago, she had known that he was looking for the man who killed Jenni, but did she think that he might have killed that man?

She had invited him into her home. They’d joked the way they had in the old days. She had helped him track down Peter Molinar. She would not have done those things if she saw him as a murderer, would she? Still, she knew he wasn’t being honest. How could she not suspect the truth?

The thought of her seeing him as vicious sent a flush of cold racing through his veins. The more time he spent with Niki, the more she would see through his thin and tattered façade. But as long as he never confirmed her suspicions, there was hope she’d remember him as the man that he had once been—the good man.

“The good man.” Max muttered the words, and they tasted bitter in his mouth. “What bullshit.”

Did he really have no choice but to kill Mikhail? He had been convinced of that at the time. Mikhail would have walked free, his confession inadmissible in court. There would have been no retribution for what he had done. But if Max were a good man, shouldn’t he at least feel remorse? Where was the crippling guilt? Shouldn’t he be rending his clothing and lashing his skin with knotted ropes by now? Lord knew he’d tried to get there over the past three years.