“Turn right up ahead,” I murmured.

“Right?” D.D. braked hard, made the turn.

“Quarter mile up, next left, onto a rural road.…”

“Three pumpkins?” Brian shaking his head at me. “Softy.”

“You bought her the donuts to go with the cider.”

“So three donuts equals three pumpkins?”

“Apparently.”

“Okay, but dibs on carving the daddy pumpkin …”

“The tree! Turn here. Left, left. Now, thirty yards, road on the right.”

“Sure you couldn’t have drawn a map?” D.D. scowled at me.

“I’m sure.”

D.D. turned right onto the smaller, rural road, tires spinning on the hardpacked snow. Behind us, one, two, three, four cars labored to follow suit, then a couple of white SUVs, then the line of police cruisers.

Definitely going to snow, I decided.

But I didn’t mind anymore. Civilization was long gone. This was the land of skeletal trees, frozen ponds, and white barren fields. The kind of place lots of things could happen before the general population noticed. The kind of place a desperate woman might use for her last stand.

Bad Tessa, rising.

“We’re here,” I said.

And Detective D. D. Warren, heaven help her, pulled over.

“Get out,” she said crossly.

I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. I looked the fine detective in the eye and I said, “Words I’ve been waiting to hear all day.”

Chapter 29

29

I don’t want her walking the woods!” D.D. was arguing with Bobby ten minutes later, off to one side of the stacked-up vehicles. “Her job was to get us here. Now her job is done, and our job is beginning.”

“The canine team wants her help,” Bobby countered. “There’s no wind, meaning it’ll be hard for the dogs to catch the open cone of the scent.”

D.D. stared at him blankly.

“Scent,” he tried again, forming a triangular shape with his hands, “radiates from the target in the shape of an expanding cone. For the dog to catch the scent, it has to be downwind, in the opening of the cone, or the dog can be two feet from the target and still miss it.”

“When did you learn about dogs?” D.D. demanded.

“Thirty seconds ago, when I asked Nelson and Cassondra what they needed us to do. They’re concerned about the conditions. Terrain’s flat, which I guess is good, but it’s open, which is more complicated—”

“Why?”

“Scent pools when it hits a barrier. So if this were a fenced-in field or brush-lined canyon, they’d start at the edges. But no fence or brush. Just big open … this …”

Bobby waved his hand around them. D.D. sighed heavily.