More like seven or eight. Maybe longer, depending on if he’s made it across Knob Hill or not, and assuming his truck can make it back over. At the first spit of snow, even four-wheel drives like Micah’s have trouble keeping their tires between the lines of Lake Crosby’s winding roads, and not even a tank could make it down our driveway. He’ll have to park at the top and walk down—another solid minute.

“Is the alarm on?”

“Yes. You told me yesterday to set it.” I glance at the alarm pad to be sure. A red light tells me it’s armed. “Alarm’s on,” I tell Micah, jiggling the mudroom door handle for a second time, “and the back door’s locked.”

“Check the other doors. Windows, too. I’ll stay on the line. If you see anything, somebody in the yard or more footprints, I want to know about it.”

The urgency in Micah’s tone burns like ulcers in my belly. I order Chet to check the doors and windows downstairs, then race from doors to windows back to doors, rattling knobs and inspecting locks. By the time I return to the kitchen, Chet is coming up from the lower level. He gives me a sarcastic thumbs-up on his way to the espresso machine.

“Okay, we’re locked up tight.”

“Good. I’m on Pine Creek Road.” On a normal day, in normal conditions, a two-minute drive. “Put Paul on.”

“Paul’s not here. It’s just me and Chet.”

A pause. “Can you get to Paul’s gun?”

“His gun, seriously?”

Chet turns around, his brows disappearing into his shaggy hair, but I shake my head. Like every good country boy, Chet knows how to handle a gun, but only in theory. He’s too clumsy, much too unpredictable. I can see him now, trudging through the snow in his cutoff sweatpants and a pair of Paul’s snow boots. It would be like handing a butcher knife to a toddler.

I shake my head again. “No. No guns.”

Chet rolls his eyes and turns back to his coffee.

“Put on some clothes,” I whisper, frowning.

He ignores me, digging through the cabinet for a mug.

“You live in the middle of nowhere,” Micah says. “You should know how to use a gun.”

“I know how to use a gun, Micah. I just don’t want to.”

“Because she was at the receiving end of one once,” Chet hollers toward the phone, not helpfully. He knows I don’t like to talk about it, and it was twice, actually. The first by some scumbag who thought our father owed him money, and the second time at the gas station, a meth head who cleaned out the register.

“Stay in the house,” Micah says. “I’m coming down.”