Looking at the food she’d already made that morning, Monty figured she’d been up since the wee hours, cleaning up the glass and sealing up the broken window. And then cooking, baking, doing whatever she could with her hands, to ease the hurt in her heart.

“I wasn’t the only one who was targeted last night,” Nadine said as she boxed up the food. “Why do those people think anything will be better if we start fighting among ourselves?”

“I don’t know,” Monty said gently. Then he looked around. “Where is Chris?”

“He’s been trying to find some glass to replace the window. If we can’t get new glass, he’s going to the hardware store to figure out a way to seal up that opening a little better than just using plywood.”

After receiving Nadine’s assurances that she and Chris had things under control, Monty and Kowalski loaded the food in the back of the patrol car and drove away.

“We’re not a delivery service, and we shouldn’t be doing this,” Monty said since Karl wasn’t saying anything quite loudly.

“I don’t think she’s expecting many customers today,” Kowalski said. “She unloaded a lot of what she’d made.”

“I know.”

Kowalski glanced at him. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”

Monty sighed. “If things are starting to unravel like this in Lakeside, how bad is it in other parts of Thaisia?”

•••

The computer finished downloading the first picture from Jackson. Simon put two sheets of the special glossy paper into the office printer and printed two copies. Then he went on to the next e-mail from Jackson and gave the commands to download the second picture.

He took a copy of the first picture out of the printer as Vlad, Blair, Henry, and Tess walked into the office. He held up the picture for all of them to see as the printer spit out the second copy.

“A mound of bison,” Henry said grimly.

“Hope is good,” Vlad said. “I’ve never seen a real bison, but part of me believes that if I touched the paper, I could feel the shaggy fur, the horns.”

“Smell the blood,” Simon said. “Well, Jackson certainly smells blood on the original drawing.”

Tess stared at the picture. “Bloody footprints—Wolf prints—all over the bodies piled up. Why?”

“We wouldn’t hunt that way,” Simon said. “We don’t hunt that way.”

Vlad shook his head. “We’re missing something—or misunderstanding something. Are you going to show this to Meg?”

A terrible picture. Wanton killing. Not for food or defense.

“Is that a huge paw print?” Vlad pointed at the bottom of the picture, at a shape that looked like it had been created in blood and absorbed until it was a faint impression in the grass near the bison mound.

“Could be a print in the foreground,” Tess said.