Whatever had happened to Kane, it somehow connected him to Maxine Osman. This meant he needed to learn everything he could about her. Already he had some details. He wrote down her name. Dr. Poesy had said she was born in 1946, which made her seventy-four. Kane didn’t add when she died, because he refused to know that. Not yet. Poesy had also said she’d always lived in East Amity, but where? And she did paintings for the tourism board, a series for the town’s calendar. One such calendar was hanging in Kane’s kitchen right now, had hung there every year since Kane was little. In a way, he’d known Maxine Osman all his life.

Now what?

Kane thought of the frustration that boiled through him—fine and corrosive, like soda bubbles—when he stepped into the water near the mill and felt nothing. He thought of watercolors, and of what Sophia had said about how someone must have dragged him from the fire. He didn’t think an old lady had rescued him, which meant someone else had to have been involved.

But who?

Hunched on the bench, Kane penned in a version of what had happened that afternoon at the mill, sanitizing it for Dr. Poesy. When he got to the part where they were running, specifically when he looked back to see what chased them, he stopped. He still didn’t know what he’d seen. The more he imagined it, the more he remembered. It had not moved like a person, one leg at a time. It moved like a spider, every leg at once.

Chills spread over his body, the night turning cold on his thighs. He tapped his boots against the pavement, eight taps each side then eight taps together. He should go home. Get inside. Dr. Poesy had warned Kane about those that wanted to keep him silent. What did that mean?

And then it hit. Dr. Poesy believed Kane had been with Maxine Osman when she died but had not killed her. That meant two things: someone else had murdered Maxine Osman, and that someone knew who Kane was.

Why hadn’t Dr. Poesy pointed this out? Kane’s hand tightened around the pen. He was about to stand when a gleam like moonlight on a blade drew his eye across the creek. He squinted into the flat darkness.

There it was again: an edge of light floating above the creek’s other bank. His heart raced as a portion of shadow shifted, and the glare vanished. Was it a wolf or maybe a bobcat? East Amity was nestled in rolling forests and sometimes the animals got curious, but something about the shadow seemed unnatural in a familiar way.