“I’m not a cop, Lyle. You need someone with a badge.”

“But you were a cop, and a damned good one.”

“How would you know?”

“When you first moved up here, I made a call. Couldn’t figure out why a young fella like you—a detective and all—would quit the force and move to the woods. Your chief couldn’t figure it out either. Said you were the best he had.”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The world was supposed to leave Max alone—no favors, no friendships. Lyle had no right to ask this of him. Max sipped his coffee again and stared at the ashes in the fire pit. He finally said, “I’m just not the guy you need.”

“What I need is someone to tell me the truth. I need someone with the eye of a cop. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a badge. I don’t care about any of that.”

Max thought about Mikhail and that day on the lake. He thought about the deal he’d made as he slid Mikhail through the hole. He wasn’t part of that world—not anymore. That part of Max died on that lake and he couldn’t let anyone or anything pull him back there. “I’m sorry, Lyle. I can’t.”

Lyle seemed to deflate, his head sinking into his chest, his hands on his knees, fingers drained of blood. Max hated to see Lyle that broken, so he looked back to the woods, where the eagle had taken to the air. Lyle pushed himself up to his feet and walked slowly back toward his pickup.

“They’ll turn up soon enough,” Max offered, a clumsy gesture of hope.

Lyle stopped at the front of his truck and slowly turned to Max. The look of recrimination in his eyes was just about enough to blacken out the sun. “I don’t know what you have going on that’s more important, but right now you’re turning your back on my daughter—on my grandson. You’ve met them. I don’t understand how you can…” Lyle took a breath as if fighting off a well of emotion, then he said, “He’s just a child, for God’s sake.”

Max dropped his gaze as Lyle’s words hung in the air. Eventually Max heard the engine of the pickup start, and the crunch of dead pine needles as it pulled away.

Long after the truck had receded, Max could still hear Lyle’s parting words: He’s just a child, for God’s sake.

CHAPTER 11

By the fourth day at the cabin, Spud was wondering just how well he knew his partner. Had Reed always been this way, or had something changed? The day began as had the last three, with Spud waking up on the floor of the room where Pip slept. That hadn’t been the plan.

The cabin—little more than a rickety old hunting shack—had two bedrooms, one for Spud and one for the boy. Reed still slept at his place in town just in case the sheriff dropped by. The shack had a tin roof, slate siding the color of rotted teeth, and a wooden porch that dipped to one side, the wood soft and wet even on dry days. The interior walls were pine boards painted the color of creamed corn, and it had linoleum floors. There were rust stains in the sinks and gaps around the windows, and doors barely sealed with tacky foam insulation. The shack was squalid, sure, but it was tucked in the woods and would keep them hidden until the heat died down. When the time was right, Reed would take Pip far away, and Spud would return to St. Paul a wealthy man.