The outbursts did little to clear the maelstrom of thoughts that swirled around in his head all day. Two men in a maroon SUV had followed Reed. What if he hadn’t been paying attention? What if he hadn’t pulled onto that trail to hide? What if Bolger had men watching his house? Or maybe they were using surveillance cameras. His enemies were closing in. It was time to get the backup plan ready, just in case.

Reed had a thousand things to do before the sun came up. And because he knew that he might not make it back to the shack before Pip woke, he had locked Pip in his bedroom, propping a broom handle across the door frame and tying the doorknob to the stick. Pip would probably cry once he discovered that he’d been locked in, but even that couldn’t hold a candle to what Reed had endured as a child—sitting for hours in the chill of a dark root cellar for not eating all the food on his plate. Pip never had a belt taken to his skin for misbehaving or felt the blow of a steel-toe boot in his back. It was high time that Pip learned that the world was a hard place.

Reed drove slowly down the river road to his house, searching the trees for any sign of a spy. He parked in the driveway and went around the side of the house to watch the road for a few minutes. No movement.

Once inside, he moved with efficiency, gathering the gear he and Pip would need to survive in the woods. Reed had been strategic in how he had stored it, keeping his stuff inside, scattered throughout various closets, but storing Pip’s gear under a concrete slab in the backyard. Had Bolger found a child’s camping equipment when he searched the house, it would have been hard to explain.

Reed had purchased expensive sleeping bags for him and the boy—rated for twenty below zero—but far less expensive gear for Spud. If Spud managed to still be around for this part of the plan, he would have to make do. It pained Reed to think of dragging Spud along, but the man was strong; if he carried the boy they could move faster.

Reed brought Pip’s sleeping bag and clothing from the concrete slab into the house and laid the items on the table next to his own gear. He had made a mental inventory of what they would need, and as he worked through his checklist, something caught his eye.

A week earlier, Reed had laid a stack of bills and receipts in the middle of his dining room table, the kind of papers that might attract the attention of an officer conducting a search. Buried in the stack was a photo of him and Tate, a picture he had taken on the morning authorities found Tracy Progaski’s body in the Tioga Mine Pit. He had left the picture there for Tate to find.