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“What do we do?” Trevor asks. He looks at me helplessly. “What do we do?”

You would think that I was utterly calm, to look at me. “Stay here,” I tell him, firm and assured. “I’ll get help.”

I walk away before he can object. My mind charts the path back to White Pine. To the keys, to the car, down the mountain through drifts of snow. I might make it.

Not without Connor.

I follow my own footprints. Back up the steps of the lodge, inside, not bothering to remove my shoes. I’ll track snow all over the gleaming hardwoods, but so what? Let it seep in. Let it warp the wood and let the Daltons tear it all up and start over again.

Connor’s voice floats toward me. He’s in the living room. I follow the sound, that calm that is not calm at all keeping me steady. I expect to find him with Louise, but it’s Rose in there with him, the two of them standing close together. Her arms are crossed lightly, her head bent, everything about her pose emanating discomfort and defeat. Connor has one hand on his hip, the other at the back of his neck, no happier than she is. My winter boots thump gracelessly as I enter, and he turns.

“Theo?” he says, brow creasing. “Where did you go?”

“I need to talk to you.”

The line between his eyebrows deepens. He touches his mother’s shoulder once, a just a moment gesture, and then hurries over to me, dropping his voice. “What is it? You look—”

“We need to leave,” I say under my breath, quietly enough Rose won’t hear. “Now.”

“We will,” Connor says. “We need to talk to Mr. Vance and then—”

“Not Vance. Just the two of us, and we need to do it right away,” I say. “Listen to me carefully and do not make a scene. Olena is dead.”

His face goes blank with shock. I take hold of his hand, squeeze hard. He can’t freak out.

“Connor, we need to leave now ,” I say again, but at that moment the front door slams. Heavy footsteps stagger into the foyer, and I curse under my breath as a voice calls out.

“Mom? Mom!”

“Trevor?” Rose calls back, startled, and glances at me with a frightened expression, and then Trevor is staggering into the room. His face is bloodless, eyes wild.

“Mom, she’s—Olena—she’s dead,” he says.

Rose gives a cry, her hand going to her mouth and her eyes still flicking from Trevor to me, back to Trevor, trying to fit the pieces together. I’m still holding Connor’s hand. We could go. Walk out the door and leave. But it’s already too late. Louise appears at the other doorway—“What is going on?”—and then more footsteps, people flocking to the sound, and there’s no escape now.

“Olena’s dead,” Trevor says again, his voice a wreck. “She’s just—she was just lying there, and—” He chokes, gestures desperately in the general direction of the woods. “I don’t know what happened. She was with me, and then…”

“Oh god,” Rose says softly, but she isn’t looking at Trevor, she’s looking past him, and all of us turn.

Irina stands in the hall. Her hands are in front of her face, as if she is trying to hide, to cover her eyes, to blot it all out. Her whole body trembles. And then she begins to scream.

Louise is the first to move. She covers the distance with surprising speed and gathers Irina against her. Irina’s cries draw anyone who wasn’t already here. Confusion and fear thicken the air. Alexis grabs Paloma’s hand; Paloma lifts Sebastian up as if getting ready to flee, and Nick looms behind them.

Irina’s screams taper off. She sags against Louise, murmuring something raggedly. “It isn’t true,” I hear. “It isn’t true.”

“What is going on?” Magnus asks. He stands in the hallway that leads to the bathroom and the study.

“It seems there was some kind of accident. Olena is dead,” Louise says. Every time the words are spoken out loud, it somehow seems less real.

Trevor, haltingly, explains. Alexis and Paloma draw together, hands interlaced. Irina weeps quietly in Louise’s arms.

When Trevor is done, Magnus looks at the ground for three solid seconds. And then he nods. “Louise, take Irina upstairs.”

Louise nods. Gently, with an expression of practicality and focus, she guides the other woman to the stairs. Magnus waits until the sound of a door closing on the second floor before he continues.

“Trevor, take Connor and Nick to Olena. We’ll be told not to move anything, but find something to cover her with, at least. I’ll call the sheriff and the coroner and see what they want us to do. Alexis, Paloma—you should take Sebastian back to Red Fox. Rose, see Theo to the study; she can rest there.”

“I can go back to White Pine,” I say immediately.

“You’ve had a shock. You shouldn’t be off on your own,” Magnus says briskly, not inviting disagreement. “And as you were with Trevor when Olena was discovered, the sheriff may have questions.”

The sheriff—if the sheriff is coming here, surely that will be its own form of protection. And a possible ride out of this place.

Rose takes my arm, her grip kind and unyielding. I glance at Connor; he looks helpless. There’s no reasonable way to object. Nowhere to go, if I did. And so I surrender.

The seconds tick by on the clock above Magnus’s desk. It’s been an hour since Rose left me here. I have no idea what’s going on. No one has come to get me. No one has spoken to me at all. I stare at the door and wonder if it’s locked. I don’t see a reason yet to try, but I take a mental catalog of the objects in the room that are heavy enough to serve as a weapon.

Olena is dead. Someone killed her. Because they thought she was me.

It isn’t the only explanation. But the way I figure it, it’s the only one that matters. Because if it is true, then I cannot afford to disbelieve it. It explains Nick’s shock at seeing me in the foyer.

There’s a polite knock on the door, and it opens before I can respond. Rose again. She has a mug in her hands. “I thought you could probably use some tea,” she says. Her eyes have that shiny, trying-not-to-cry look.

“Thank you,” I manage. Everyone has been speaking to me like I’m made of spun sugar. Maybe it’s useful, to let them think that my silence is me falling apart, instead of trying to make a plan.

I accept the mug and take a sip. It’s overly sweetened, but I bend my lips in a grateful smile. The heat, at least, is welcome.

“I thought about bringing you something stronger,” Rose says. Instead of leaving, she moves farther into the room. She half sits against the desk, hands cupping her elbows. “I’m sorry that we sort of forgot you in here. We’re all in shock, obviously.”

I wet my lips, trying to think of how to respond. “You shouldn’t be worried about me. Irina must be an absolute wreck.”

“She’s being taken care of. Louise gave her some kind of sedative, to help her calm down,” Rose says. “I can’t imagine.”

“You don’t have to imagine, though,” I reflect. Slowly I sip the tea. The sweetness is growing on me.

She frowns, as if she hadn’t thought of this. “Because of Liam? I suppose. Though at the time I was so angry with him, it was… complicated.”

“You were filing for divorce,” I say.

Her lips thin. “Trevor,” she begins, and stops. “But yes. I had the papers drawn up a few days before he died. I had discovered he was cheating on me, which I think you know.” She says it matter-of-factly, folding her hands. I flush.

“I’d heard.”

“He’d been distant for a while. Going off on trips. The thing that I was angriest about, though, is that he involved Connor. He brought him up here. It’s how I found out. Seven-year-olds aren’t famous for being able to keep secrets,” she says dryly, and my heart gives a squeeze. She’s spent all these years thinking her husband had betrayed her. “You don’t involve your kids in that kind of thing. When I say that I can’t imagine what Irina is going through—it’s hard to understand until you actually have them that it isn’t just… Oh, love plus. Like it’s better or more than. It isn’t that. It’s animal. Feral. The need to protect them… You’d do anything.”

I take another sip, rather than tell her that in my experience, the instinct she describes is faulty in a distressingly high portion of the population.

“But sometimes…” Rose sighs. “I don’t know. I think the flaw of the Daltons is being too protective. I know that I was with Trevor.”

I think of Nick, saying how he tried to get through to him. The scars on his arms. How tired he is of keeping quiet about things. “I don’t think Trevor was protected when he actually needed it,” I say.

“What are you talking about?” Rose asks.

“Rose,” I say carefully. “When Connor told you about Mallory Cahill, did you tell anyone else?”

“I—well, yes, I suppose. I told Nick.” She laughs grimly. “And then I told Liam. Told him that I was filing for divorce. And you know, that’s the first thing he asked me, too. Who else knows. Like the biggest worry was people knowing what he’d been up to. He asked who I’d told and then he took off. He went straight to her, and—” She stops. She takes a sharp breath, realizing how much she’s said. “I’m sorry, I think I’m not thinking straight, with everything.”

“He came to Idlewood after you told him,” I say. He must have gotten word to Mallory, warned her that Nick knew where she was. Then he headed up himself, not stopping to explain things to Rose. “And that’s when he died, wasn’t it?”

“Why are you asking about all of this?” Rose says, suddenly defensive. “It was years ago.”

The dregs swirl in the bottom of my tea. “Has the sheriff come?” I ask, avoiding the question.

Rose frowns at me. “No. He can’t make it out today,” Rose says. “But Connor and Mr. Vance went to fetch the coroner.”

“What?” I say, alarmed.

“His vehicle can’t make it up the mountain, so they’ll have to bring him,” Rose says.

My pulse thuds in my temples. Connor left? He can’t have. Not without telling me. He wouldn’t leave me up here. He wouldn’t leave me with them.

“When did he leave?” I demand.

“Only a few minutes ago, I think,” she says, brow furrowing. “I’m sorry, I thought he would have stopped by to tell you.”

“I have to go,” I say. She isn’t sorry to let me go; she’s uncomfortable, embarrassed by what she’s shared. I walk out the door, a buzzing in my ears, and she doesn’t stop me. I have to get out of here. I have to catch up with Connor. I can’t do it on foot, but the UTVs—there’s one parked out back, by the shed. I can take that.

My boots are in the hall. I don’t know where my coat is, but the thought of putting it on makes me shudder. I can’t stop picturing that moment. The red at the edge of my vision. That keening cry— a rabbit, it was only a rabbit —echoes in my ears. She wasn’t supposed to die.

It takes my eyes a moment to focus on the laces of my boots as I do them up. The lights of the Christmas tree stretch into long-pointed stars.

I walk around the side of the lodge. My steps feel heavy. I jump at every noise. Wind dumping snow from a branch; the flurry of a bird’s wings. I feel a hand wrapped around my wrist, dragging me forward.

Hurry , Liam tells me.

Hurry, because he’s coming. Because he’s here.

I weave past the trash cans, hoping the concrete wall will help block me from view if anyone glances out a window. The trees provide another screen. I hold my breath until the shed comes into view—the shed, and the four-wheeler parked outside.

I check the UTV. No key. I vaguely remember Magnus hanging them on a hook inside the shed—which is, luckily, unlocked. I haul open the door.

A corpse greets me. The deer carcass hangs, skinned and gutted, aging in the cold air. A few white strips of fat marble the deep pink flesh. The chest cavity gapes. The head has been removed. The air in here feels thick, faintly scented with blood. This deer isn’t the one that I helped dress days ago. Magnus must have stayed out, the day Connor almost killed me. He must have caught his quarry after all.

I cross to the workbench. The keys are there, dangling on a hook in a pegboard. I pocket them—and then look down. Sitting on the table is the knife Magnus handed me earlier: handle hand-carved from an antler, the blade folded neatly within it. I pocket that, too, and I’ve begun to turn when the slash of light coming through the door vanishes.

Nick Dalton is standing in the doorway. His hands are relaxed, loose at his sides. There is no malice at all in his expression. My stomach tightens with dread, but he only sighs.

“Hello, Teddy.”