“Mhmm.”

Ilse sighed in frustration, and he could feel her staring at the side of his face.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ilse refused to call a law enforcement agent a jackass. But she certainly might think it. She muttered beneath her breath as she pulled back into her driveway, piloting the Boat off the old forest road, toward the lake house. She put the vehicle in park and, still muttering darkly to herself, hopped out of the car. Now, the exhaustion was wearing not just on her mind, but also her emotions. Her eyes were heavy, hooded, and she felt them drooping every couple of steps, only for her to blink rapidly, opening them wide.

Ilse double-, then triple-checked the locks, before turning and moving toward the front of the house. The mist had cleared beneath the cresting sun, and the lake seemed more blue than gray. The trees surrounding the lake rustled, and pine needles trembled and plummeted, gathering on the ground or pattering to the surface of the water, where spreading ripples sent the detritus toward the embankment, wreathing the water in a halo of orange and green.

“Thank you, Dr. Beck,” she muttered to herself, wrinkling her nose. “Thank you? Hmm. Thank you? Don’t thank me. Not if you’re going to…” She trailed off, marching up the steps and pausing next to her mailbox.

For a moment, she simply paused, rubbing the back of her head, and looking off across the lake. As she did, she heard rustling above, and glanced up, watching a squirrel dart from one branch to another. She heard a flutter—wings, perhaps? She watching as the squirrel pause, sniffing at something.

The brownish whiskers and swishing tail went still all of a sudden, frozen against the backdrop of dappled brown and green, stiff on the branch.

Ilse looked up, watching the squirrel, watching as it stared at something edged against the tree itself, braced between branch and bough.

A nest.

She stared at the nest, curious, watching the squirrel sniff at the gathering of twigs and leaves and old sticks. She swallowed, wondering if there were eggs in the nest. Wondering if perhaps the squirrel would try and steal one. Did they even do that?

It was hard to know, unless one paid attention, what sorts of predators existed in the wild. One always had to pay attention.

“Ridgway, Utah, forty-eight victims,” she murmured softly to herself, barely voicing the words. Her eyes fixed on the squirrel, willing it to leave, willing it to dart away.

She heard the sound of fluttering wings again, from somewhere higher in the canopy, and this seemed to spook the whiskered woodland creature. The squirrel darted through the branches and disappeared, a trail of rattling leaves and shifting boughs the only clue to its presence.

The nest left undisturbed.

Not all nests fared so well.

A flash of memory, a jolt of fear. Ilse gasped as images swam across her vision. The struggling pigeon in her fingers. The fingers against her hand, rough and strong. The crunch. The tears slipping down Hilda Mueller’s cheeks. The soft sobbing.