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My heart hurtled into the ground. Kingi. Dead.

The man’s shoulders started rumbling. His eyebrows flicked up again. It is Kingi. His silent amusement burst into loud laughter. I yelped and gave him a playful slap on the arm.

“You bloody stink bum,” I cried. His answer was more laughter. “Well, sir, you must help me cross the river.” I leaped on his back, acting out the next line in our books.

He roared like a giant and danced around, trying to shake me off, but I clung to his wool shirt.

Eventually, I jumped off, and we hugged for real.

“Sorry to scare you, Lizzie Firkin.” He patted my shoulder. “Thought for sure you’d remember how we always ended chapter three.” He adopted a theatrical pose, fist on heart. “You scaled the most perilous snow mountains in the world and fought the Dragon King—”

“—for naught. The man you are looking for, the holder of all secrets, is dead,” I finished for him. “Yeah, nah, yeah. Can’t believe I fell for it.”

“But seriously,” he ground his teeth. “I’m freaking out, man. What the hell are you doing here? And how the hell did you find me? I haven’t seen you in years. I sent you that note, yeah.”

I guessed it was because Snow told him I was back.

“But I never expected you to turn up here. And I’m supposed to be hiding somewhere where no one knew where I was.”

I broke the bad news about the DOC email. I told him I’d worked out where he might be because of the few things Kui knew.

He stopped short. “Fuck,” he growled. Grabbing a nearby broom, he whacked it into the scrub.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He flung the broom away and dropped to the ground, swiping at his dripping face.

He tried to wrestle off his wool shirt, but, frustrated, he got lost in the fabric, like when he was a boy.

I helped him pull it off.

“Sorry. It sucks.” I sat beside him, aching for him. “It’s not fair.” None of it—what happened when he was a kid that sent him spiraling into drugs, jail, then isolation, forced to live up here away from friends and family. Now he’d even lost this place.

I looked more closely at the home he’d spent four years creating. The log furniture was burnished to look inviting; the stone fireplace for cooking was lovingly formed into a circle. The garden was high and happy, laden with summer berries, tomatoes, veggies, and trailing vines.

Kingi wasn’t sad because a move was inconvenient. This place wasn’t a hideout—he’d made a home and a life here.

He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Why can’t the gods, Atua, whoever the fuck runs this world, let me have this?”

Darkness threatened the grove. I couldn’t put it off any longer .

“Kingi, we have to talk about the heroin. It’s important for your brother, your mother, my parents, and me.”

Kingi rested his hands on my shoulders. “We’ll get to that, no worries.

No offense, but you stink worse than I do.

You take first shower. I’ll grab some sleep stuff for you inside.

We’ll have dinner, then talk.” He paused, looking into my eyes, and smiled.

“I can’t believe you’re here, Isla. It’s… surreal.”

My whole body tensed. I needed to get answers.

From my view on the steps outside the hut’s front door—I didn’t want to drop dirt inside or smell it up—the inside was all one room, with four unused bunks pushed against the wall.

A double bed of two singles pushed together was covered with duvets and pillows.

Books crowded the shelves. The kitchen was orderly and well stocked, which might mean Snow flew up here often.

“I’ll leave your leisure wear outside the shower,” Kingi called to me.

I smiled at his description, but my insides were twitchy. He was holding me off on this hard conversation. Why?

A studied casualness in his tone made me peek through the window from outside.

The room was already tidy, but Kingi kicked something under the double bed.

He grabbed a magazine off his bed and slung it into a kitchen drawer.

He plucked one of the toothbrushes from a glass at the sink and threw that in the drawer too.

In the shower, I saw a razor propped up in a glass.

Kingi had a full beard. Maybe Snow stayed over when he dropped off supplies.

Or it could belong to a girlfriend or even a hunter who passed this way.

Hmm. Makes me wonder if CeeCee and Kingi are the couple and not Snow and CeeCee.

It would explain how Snow treats her, at least. Maybe Snow sleeps in the spare room, but no one understands the ruse.

It doesn’t explain CeeCee’s fear of Snow, though.

I filled a bucket with my shower water, scrubbed my filthy clothes, and changed into the giant-size long johns, T-shirt, and camo fleece that Kingi had left on the stool outside, with a wrapped toothbrush. Inside, I draped my wet things around the potbelly stove while Kingi took his shower.

After checking the door, I opened the kitchen drawer.

A used toothbrush and a surf magazine were thrown on top of the cutlery.

Easing the drawer shut, a memory flashed of a surf magazine lying on the bed in the spare room in Snow and CeeCee’s cottage.

Quickly, because I felt disloyal checking up on Kingi, I shot a look under the bed and found a pair of UGGs.

Smaller than Kingi’s, which were still lying at the bottom of his bed, but measuring my foot against them, they were way too big for me, and maybe for any woman.

What did this mean, if anything? I sat outside and waited for Kingi.

Within minutes of emerging from the shower, he had the fire lit, and the smell of garlic and oil scented the air.

By the light of solar lamps, Kingi pan-fried the trout he’d cleaned while I was in the shower.

In another pan, he fried kūmara, sweet potatoes that he’d grown—which he’d boiled the night before—and pūhā, sow thistle, that grew wild along the river.

He served us both. As we ate, I kept asking, and he kept shaking his head.

Finally, I put down my knife and fork.

“Kingi, I’m sorry—I want to spend the evening catching up.

But we have to talk now. Can you think of anything else?

Something Snow’s told you when he comes up here?

” He winced when Snow’s name was mentioned, but I had to keep pushing.

I thought about a list of things for him to consider.

“Something about his day, his wine-making process, some phrase he uses that might indicate he’s connecting with someone new, a trip he’s planned, any changes in his life? Even if it seems trivial or unrelated?”

He got to his feet, paced, then wheeled around to face me, arms crossed, knuckles white. Our eyes met, and I stiffened, scared he’d turned against me.

“I brought you in because I knew for sure Snow wasn’t involved,” he said.

“And I wanted to make sure he and Rangi weren’t wrongly accused.

” He took a few craggy breaths and slowed down.

“I know Snow better than anyone, and I can say this for certain—he wouldn’t go near something like this.

For a start, he’s content with his life and has no interest in money.

But most important, he hates all those hard drugs, saw what P did to me all those years—it bloody near killed me.

But it also nearly killed him, watching. ”

I dragged my damp hands down my pant legs. “I’m sorry. It must be rough to think about.” I tried to hold his stare. “But there’s no other explanation.”

He flung his arms to the sky. “You have something against the guy, and you’re warping this whole thing to blame him.”

“Kingi, that’s not fair.” I pressed a hand to my throat.

“You’re the one who got me in; you trusted me to find the truth.

These are the facts. Snow’s the owner of the winery.

His name’s on all the documents. It’s hard to fathom how he doesn’t know about this, that he’s not in charge.

I know he’s your friend. That’s incredibly tough, especially as he’s been there for you all these years. ”

Kingi slung our plates, cutlery, and pans in a bucket of soapy water and kicked at the embers, biting the inside of his mouth.

“Your facts, your truth,” he spat out. “Like your Fontaine story. You were so sure the poor guy was the hero, and the titled guy was the bad guy.”

My heart snagged. I clutched at my elbows, curling in on myself. Ah, of course. He’d kept track of me. Kui had sent him all my articles through the years, so it made sense that she’d also sent the damning pieces about me.

He went on. “You’ve always had some grudge against Snow, and I thought you’d outgrown it. Now he says you’re jealous of his relationship with your parents. Yeah, that’s bloody hard, but this is vindictive. You’re making a case against him.”

Tears threatened, but I swallowed them back.

“You talk about a grudge like it’s completely irrational, like he didn’t bully me mercilessly for a year before he left school. And the bullying continued for three more years. He even warned me that he was going to make me pay for telling Sarge about Janey’s note.”

Kingi glared into the bush, then back at me, his eyes now empty. “We’re done. I took a chance giving you the tip-off, but it was a mistake.”

Distressed, I tried to pull us out of this. But I knew what I had to say next would be even more painful for him.

“Kingi, please—let’s think about this. You contacted me instead of going straight to Snow. Doesn’t that mean that, deep down, a small part of you is worried Snow might be involved?”

He jerked back, shocked, then angry, like I’d thrown a barbed ball at his face. An invisible wall slammed between us.

“Look, I’m grateful you came up here to warn me about DOC.” His voice was empty. “But as soon as it’s light, you need to go.”

His words rang in my ears, stealing my last scrap of hope .

That night, I lay awake in bed, my brain buzzing. Kingi had his back turned to me. His pained sigh filled me with a knife-edged heartache. Outside, the bush quivered with animals on the move, as though something threatening had been released into the air.

My eyes laser-beamed around the room, trying to figure out why Kingi had such a total block when it came to Snow.

I flashed back to CeeCee and Snow’s cottage.

The surf magazine in the spare bedroom. Clothes in the closet, too many for a visitor.

The main bedroom, decorated in peach and three different kinds of vintage floral wallpaper.

However much I tried to resist gender stereotypes, I couldn’t help but wonder if Snow was part of that decision.

Maybe Snow did sleep in that spare room. But why?

In this room. The razor, the matching pairs of UGG boots, two toothbrushes, the surf magazine. Not the things per se, but that Kingi tried to hide them. He was close to Snow, so close, blindly loyal. As if…

Oh God.

I’d been thinking about this all wrong.