She hadn’t passed any police cars on the way here. Or had she? The rain was thick. Easily one could have been going the other way, its lights off. Yes, Margot could’ve passed ten feet from her, mother and daughter side by side for a blink in time, then gone again to…wherever they were going.

Shelly started to cry. Not the type of tears that stopped her from moving, though.

She searched some of the fallen objects, broken shards, the man’s life in slices.

When she found a visitors’ log on the ground, the tears came a little harder. The last name listed was written in a handwriting she knew very well.

MARGOT

And then, next to it,

The girl who will solve your Hedges.

Shelly smiled despite the tears. Despite the fear. Kneeling now amid Wayne Sherman’s life, she brought the log close to her face and yelped when she saw a note addressed to herself.

Mommy…we’re going to the North Woods.

It was written fast. A desperate little scratch. Shelly could tell. Shelly knew. Like her little girl was in all the trouble Shelly feared she might be.

The North Woods?

Why did her daughter have to sneak a note to her?

But she knew why.

Margot was a smart girl—thank God Margot was a smart girl. She knew Mommy would figure out to come here, and so she left a note because she was smart and could recognize when she might be in trouble.

Margot was in trouble.

Shelly ran from the house and got back in her car. She tore out of the gravel lot.

The North Woods.

They had a head start on her. But how much? And there was no way the police were going to take Margot into the woods. That was as silly as suggesting, say, that the key to the city was found.

Nobody went into the North Woods. Nobody. And if someone was planning on dragging a little girl into those woods, why…why…

“Why, she’d have to sneak a note to Mom to tell her.”

Margot!

17

Wayne was heading to the North Woods. The officer with the glass in his putty face radioed it in. Margot heard the call. The wounded officer had been following Sherman through town. Thought he might be heading to the woods. Something about Sherman and mazes.

He said that Sherman was in serious…fucking…trouble.

Margot heard that, too.

The other officers, gathered in the living room of the little yellow house, moved fast to the door.

“I have to use the bathroom,” Margot said.

She couldn’t shake the image of the officer’s eyes when he’d taken off his glasses in The Hedges. They looked like cartoon eyes to her. As if they’d been drawn on his putty flesh. Like there was no way they could blink. Big with black irises. Staring down at her like a drawing hanging in a bad place.