“I wanted Bolger to be right,” Lyle whispered as he held the pillow tightly to his chest. “If he was right, my daughter was still alive. But she’s not here. Her stuff’s not here. She would never leave Pip.” Lyle drew in a shaky breath to hold back his cry. “She’s not alive… she can’t be. And that son of a bitch has my grandson.”

On the floor just under the edge of the bed, Max found the toy car and the box. He picked it up. “They found my phone,” Max said. “They knew we were coming.”

“Goddammit!” Lyle stood up and squeezed the pillow in his fists.

“We came up from the south,” Max said. “We’d have seen them if they were heading south. Maybe they have another cabin farther north?”

Max walked to the kitchen to look for anything that might tell them where to go. On the table lay a pair of wool socks and a packet of water purification tablets. On the floor, next to the refrigerator he found his phone, smashed, the battery pulled out. Nearby he saw a piece of cardboard, a sales tag for a child’s sleeping bag.

Lyle came out of the bedroom and Max held up the tag. “They’re heading for the woods.”

“The Boundary Waters,” Lyle said. “That’s where Reed went last time, after he beat my daughter. He’s the kind of guy who will seek familiar ground.”

“The Boundary Waters is a lot of ground.”

Lyle held up a finger to stop the conversation. He closed his eyes as though trying to remember something. “When he was in jail back then, he told my jailer the trail he took. It was… the Sioux Hustler Trail—that’s it. He took that as far as he could and cut through the woods up into Canada. Or tried to, at least.”

Max bent down and picked up a nine-millimeter bullet that had fallen under the table. “They’re armed. We need to get Bolger in.”

Lyle looked at Max as though he wanted to punch him.

“Bolger has resources. He can call in the state police. We can maybe cut Reed off before he gets to the trailhead.”

“Okay,” Lyle said, “but that’s not gonna stop me from going after that bastard myself. If Bolger wants to finally do his job… well, I ain’t gonna stop him.” Lyle walked out the front door, talking to Max over his shoulder. “I’ll call him—you drive.”

“Drive where?”

“My place in Ely. You don’t go into the Boundary Waters half cocked. I’ll need my gear.”

“What about me?” Max said.

“What about you?”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone.”

Lyle stopped walking and turned to face Max. “Listen, I appreciate all you’ve done, but this ain’t your fight. Reed’s a desperate man with a gun. Chasing him is a fool’s errand, but I got no choice. You do.”

“The hell I do,” Max said. He thought about the unborn child he had failed to save. He thought about the three years he had wasted waiting for a reckoning. And he thought about Pip, and Lyle, and the promise Max had made to Meredith.