She looked off the road into the snowbound fields, into the swirled trick of hills where she could sink to her thighs in a drift. She decided she wouldn’t run from Harvey Stoner. She was smarter than him. She would not run from anybody. It was dark on the road, though in some places she walked through the spare breath of clouds as if she were hidden in a strange light. Harvey Stoner might not see her. She could be a ghost in the murky light. But as his car entered the road mist she lit up, glowed like an apparition. She could see the light her hands gave off. She echoed with light, and Stoner slowed his car and turned out on the shoulder. She would not give herself away. He would never know he frightened her.

“You owe me,” she said. She tried to smile at him. The corner of her mouth twitched. She held her hands cupped over her ribs to steady her quaking stomach and bent down just enough to see him. She did not walk over to him. She stayed to her side of the road. In the sifting haze of his car lights she saw the rainbow skim of ice on the highway. No one else was on the road. She knew Baptiste was dead or he would save her from Harvey Stoner. She was on her own.

She squinted into the light. Harvey looked down as if he was ashamed to be seen. She saw the thin fringe of his eyebrows frowning. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

The passenger door opened and she saw Jules Bart grinning. He couldn’t have jumped out at her and made her heart pound any faster. Jules Bart and Harvey Stoner together was a wrong sight from the start. She felt it before she could reason it, knew that they had plans for her. She didn’t believe Jules Bart would harm her on his own, or he would have acted by now. But Jules Bart and Harvey Stoner together bred a different man. Stoner had the money to manipulate a man in Jules Bart’s situation.

Harvey Stoner had his own reasons for desiring her silence. She used to think Harvey wanted to make sure at any cost that Emma Stoner never found out about their affair, but Louise had begun to see that everything Harvey Stoner needed had suddenly become invested in her. His desire endangered her. There was something these two men wanted from her. She would run. She imagined long-legged Jules Bart running over the top of her like a horse over a bunny. Her only defense was ignorance. Ignorance would save her.

“Two handsome men,” she said. “I must have died.”