Mac paced his cabin. When had it seemed so small and isolated? Never. Before this week, he’d craved solitude like a drug. Now, the silence around him sounded dead. He pivoted, took three strides, and crossed the living room again.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t get Stella out of his head. The defeated look in her eyes at the crime scene was permanently etched in his brain. He viewed Dena Miller’s death as a personal failure, and he knew that Stella did, too. But unlike him, Stella couldn’t escape the sight. She’d spend the afternoon studying the body and the scene. Even from a distance, the sight of Dena Miller posed on that bench had brought back images of Cheryl that left him shaken. Close up, the sight must’ve been horrifying, and Stella would see it for the rest of her life.

Enough.

Mac strode for the front door. Grabbing his sunglasses and helmet from the counter, he retrieved his bike from the shed. The throaty rumble of the engine drowned out the quiet. He navigated the rutted lane that led to the main road. As soon as his tires hit blacktop, he opened up the throttle. The wind whipped at his clothes, and the vibrations under his body hummed in his bones, mirroring the fury coursing through his veins.

A prickly sensation drew his gaze to the mirror. He wasn’t surprised to see a black SUV hovering ten car lengths behind him.

He was being followed.

Son-of-a . . . He was not in the mood for this. Or maybe he was.

He turned off onto a narrow road that snaked through the woods to the Scarlet River. Two wooden tables occupied a picnic area near the water. A trail opened off the clearing. Mac parked his bike in plain sight and jogged twenty feet down the trail. Then he looped around through the underbrush and picked a spot at the bend in the road, right where a driver would see his parked Harley.

Mac waited behind the fat trunk of an oak tree.

The SUV came around the bend and slowed to a crawl, as if the driver was deciding whether or not to follow. If he was smart, he’d turn around.

The vehicle stopped exactly where Mac predicted. Only one figure was visible through the windshield. The man got out. As soon as he closed the vehicle door, Mac launched himself at his midsection and tackled him. They rolled in the damp earth. The man was thin and wiry and squirmed out from under Mac. Jumping to his feet with the speed of youth, the man whipped out a switchblade.