Five minutes passed. Lightning lit up the trees, and thunder followed, reverberating under the ground. Frost didn’t come back. The backup he’d requested didn’t arrive.

Sitting alone in the car, she heard a distant noise. It was almost part of the air. Moments later, she heard it a second time. She opened the door, letting in the rain, and leaned out to listen. Whatever the noise was, it was gone now, and it didn’t happen again. She pulled the door shut. Her impatience grew. She called Frost’s phone number, but there was no answer.

Ten minutes passed.

He should have been back by now.

Frankie climbed out of the truck into the driving rain. The street was empty. Trees bent, waving their branches at her. She continued past the bend in the road and saw that Darren Newman’s Lexus was gone. It had left recently; there was still a dry patch where the car had been parked. She squinted into the storm but couldn’t see taillights.

“Frost!” she shouted. Her voice sounded muffled, and she shouted again, as loud as she could. “Frost!”

She hiked up the shoulder to the gravel trail beside Stow Lake. The first thing she saw, sopping wet and lying in the mud, was a wool cap.

It was Todd’s.

Six feet away, in the middle of the path, was a gun.

“Frost!” she screamed again, but he didn’t answer. A finger of worry crept up her spine.

She started running into the wind. At the stone arch bridge, she crossed over the water to Strawberry Hill. Her hair was plastered to her skin, and she wiped rain from her eyes. The mud grabbed at her shoes. She followed overlapping footprints next to the lake, with leaves and pine needles blowing into her face. Where the path curved, she found a cross trail leading sharply uphill.

There she saw a ghost.

It wasn’t the White Lady. A man rose in darkness from the ground, barely visible against the forest. It was Frost. His skin was pale. Dirt matted his hair and clothes. He moved slowly, cupping the back of his skull with one hand. His other hand was striped with blood. He navigated one step downward, and Frankie rushed to his side and let him ease his weight against her with an arm around his waist. They struggled to the lakeside trail.

“Did you see them?” he asked.

Frankie shook her head. “No. Darren’s car is gone. I think he has Todd Ferris with him. I saw a gun on the trail.”

“One of them jumped me,” Frost said. “I don’t know which one. He hit me from behind. Did the backup get here?”

“Not yet.”

She checked the back of his head. Rain had washed away most of the blood, but she found swelling near the back of his ear, and when she grazed the area with her fingers, he winced with pain.