“Be careful” was all she would say.

“Did you know Gerald Bull?” Gamache asked. “Did CSIS kill him?”

There was silence. He leaned forward and looked into the bland, unremarkable face.

“Did you?” he asked.

“You have not been careful, Monsieur Gamache.”

He got up and bowed slightly. She remained where she was. But as he leaned toward her she whispered, “Don’t think it’s escaped our notice how strange it is that a senior officer would take early retirement in the middle of nowhere, and shortly afterward Project Babylon is found.”

Gamache straightened up, genuinely surprised. But the real surprise came next. Standing up and facing him, Mary Fraser’s soft face became rigid.

“And don’t think it’s escaped our notice that a grown man claims to have been friends with a nine-year-old boy. You are either a pervert or you wanted something from that poor child. And I will find out which. I have my eye on you.”

Gamache knew his mouth had just opened slightly, but he couldn’t help it.

Was she really threatening him? Was this more artifice? A posture? Or did this woman genuinely believe he might be mixed up in this?

Were they on the same side? He knew what his role was, and wasn’t, in this. But he could not figure her out. Mary Fraser appeared socially inept, a little bumbling, maladroit. Soft-spoken and bookish. But she was also fiercely intelligent, and strong.

Armand Gamache never, ever, made the mistake of demonizing strong women. Indeed, he’d been raised by one, married one, promoted one. But he was far from certain he trusted this one.

He took a few steps back and examined her, trying to figure out if she was sincere in her suspicions of him or just trying to toss the rock back.

“What’s at Highwater?” he asked.

“Are you threatening me?” she asked. And she looked genuinely alarmed.

It was not the reaction he’d expected.

He’d hoped to speak to Lacoste and Beauvoir first, but when he saw them leaving Three Pines that morning, he’d made the call himself to Agent Yvette Nichol, a former colleague in the Sûreté. He asked her to track the movements of the CSIS investigators the day before through their cell phones. She reported back half an hour ago.

Instead of spending the day examining Gerald Bull’s Supergun, or searching for the plans, the pings from their cell phones indicated Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme had driven twenty miles away, to the village of Highwater, right on the Vermont border.

“Is what I said threatening?” Gamache asked. “I had no idea. My apologies.”

He left, feeling her eyes on his back until he was out the door of the small library.

He knew where he was going next.

*   *   *

He didn’t get there.