As Evan turned back, something caught his eye on the distant treetops. A large bird perched in the upper reaches of a pine tree, its white head as pronounced as a golf ball against the dark tones of the forest. He did a double take, focusing his gaze.

A noise from the tower carried to him on the breeze, the guard talking into a radio. A moment later a hidden rifle cracked and the bird disappeared, a few feathers floating in the space where it had been.

Evan’s brain was still working on what his eyes had just seen, the imprint of that bird floating in the white space, a visual memory.

A bald eagle.

In Switzerland.

Not likely.

He understood now why the tower guard had relayed word to the sniper to remove it from the picture. René could control a lot, certainly. But not nature.

Not wanting to give away what he’d seen, Evan didn’t dwell. Continuing quickly up through the trees, he berated himself for forgetting the First Commandment—Assume nothing.

He was in North America somewhere. Vermont, maybe. Alaska or Canada. René wanted him to believe he was halfway around the world on the desolate edge of the Alps, a further disincentive to escape.

But he was closer to home than that.

He remembered hearing that whip-poor-will last night, annoyed that he didn’t know what region the damn bird was indigenous to. Jack would’ve chided him for not paying better attention during wilderness-survival skills.

Really, Evan? It took a bald friggin’ eagle to pin you down on a continent?

But this was good news, too. Closer to home meant he was closer to Alison Siegler. And closer to the kid who had called.

Evan hiked to the clearing he’d made it to last time. There was no buck at the water’s edge, no loon in the half-frozen puddle. Just a porcupine feeding in a treetop, sprinkling down needles, forty pounds of quilled bowling ball.

Evan looked up the ridgeline, hoping to catch a glint from a scope to place the sniper. No such luck. Wind whipped his cheeks raw.

He thought about the perfect shot placement that had dropped the buck, two inches behind the shoulder, slightly below the midline of the body, straight through the lung to the upper heart. The tournament-worthy round to knock the bald eagle from the treetop. Even more impressively, both shots had been made from a cold bore.

He searched the ground, spotting a pinecone. He retrieved it, placed it on the flat of his palm, held out his hand, and faced upslope.

A challenge.

He waited. Waited some more.

A muzzle flashed high on the slope, and the pinecone exploded, seemingly at the same instant. Shrapnel flecked his cheeks as the supersonic crack echoed around the bowl of the valley.