Lyle Voight? That crazy old man? Reed walked around and saw other things that had been moved: the mouse for his computer, a folder where he kept his tax documents. One of the drawers of his desk was ajar, and while he couldn’t swear to it, he was pretty sure he had closed all of his drawers before he left.

It had to be Lyle.

The son of a bitch was hunting him.

CHAPTER 38

Niki’s guest room had a bed, and that was about all that separated it from a storage room. She had moved some of the furniture from the living room in to prepare for repainting, and there were boxes and books spread all around. But Max didn’t mind the clutter. The bed was comfortable and warm—yet he struggled to fall asleep.

Light from the streetlamps escaped past the edge of a curtain, crossing the ceiling above him, thin and long like the blade of a sword. But that wasn’t what kept him awake. It was Niki’s words. They hung in the air above him as he lay staring at the ceiling and echoed in his head when he closed his eyes.

Was he hiding? From whom? That wasn’t why he’d gone to the cabin—was it? As he tried to understand what she meant, he was reminded of the old Wolf Man movies with Lon Chaney, Jr., the way Chaney hid from the moon to keep the monster inside him from coming out. The Wolf Man wanted to believe that he was protecting the world from who he could become, but in truth, he was trying to avoid his darkest nature.

That couldn’t be him, could it? The man who stood on that frozen lake was an aberration. Max wasn’t the Wolf Man. He was a man who’d temporarily lost his way, a runner who stumbled. His absolution would come in time, he was sure of it.

He tried to silence his thoughts by remembering the man he had been before Mikhail, the man he had been with Niki. He thought about the happiness he felt working with her, the thrust and parry of their conversations as they waded through those serious cases. It was the kind of job that could take a toll on a person’s psyche, but Niki had somehow made it the best part of his day—of his life. There had been a connection between them that went beyond partnership. He had always known that, but like a disciplined penitent, he’d denied himself that happiness.

But as he lay there, trying to find sleep, he couldn’t help but mourn the loss of what might have been.

In the morning, Max found it strange, waking up to the sound of Niki showering. He made the bed and went to the kitchen to start the coffee, nervous about how things would feel after what had been shared the night before. But when Niki padded to the kitchen in bare feet and her bathrobe, she greeted Max as though the night before hadn’t happened.