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For several long seconds, Tripple didn’t move. And neither did I.

“I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Tripple said. His voice barely carried, even though the night was still. “Do exactly what I say, and Bobby won’t get hurt.”

My mind, which had been blank with shock, now lurched into motion. Bobby. Bobby had gone to get—

Where was Bobby?

I couldn’t stop a glance in the direction of the gate. It was still open. We’d parked the Pilot on the other side. It should have taken Bobby a minute, less, to get whatever he’d said he was going to get. A jacket, I thought with rising panic. He was going to get a jacket for me because I hadn’t listened the first time he’d told me. This was my fault. He’d walked through that gate, and Tripple had been on the other side, and—this was all my fault.

“Are you listening?” Tripple asked.

Something blunt and ugly wedged itself under my breastbone. I couldn’t seem to draw a full breath.

“Hey!” Tripple snapped.

“I’m listening. I’m listening!”

“Get out of the car. Slowly.”

I hadn’t really been in the car—I’d had my head and shoulders inside as I peered around with the flashlight. But it didn’t seem like a time to quibble. As slowly as I could, I eased myself out of the cruiser. I brought my hands up. The flashlight weighed a ton now; at the same time, I felt like someone had attached a hook to my back and hoisted me a couple of feet off the ground, like every part of me had turned to air.

“Where’s Bobby?” I said. Will Gower would have been cool and self-possessed. Will Gower would have made a joke, or he would have turned the tables on the bad guy somehow. But I felt like every atom of me was vibrating, and my voice pitched as I asked, “Is he okay? Bobby? Bobby!”

“Be quiet!” Tripple moved the pistol like he wanted me to see it again, and I swallowed Bobby’s name. Tripple waited. He cocked his head as though listening. Then he said, “Rule number one: Be. Quiet.”

“I want to know if he’s okay—”

“He’s fine. He’ll be fine as long as you do what I tell you.”

I barely heard him. My brain was still running laps. I hadn’t heard a gunshot; that was good, right? It didn’t look like Tripple’s pistol had a suppressor, but even if he’d used one, I still would have heard something . Suppressors weren’t totally silent, and if he’d fired the gun, with the rest of the world so quiet, I would have heard it.

On the other hand, if I knew one thing about Bobby, it was that there wasn’t much short of death itself that could stop him when he set his mind to something. If he knew I was in danger, he’d be here—if he could be here.

So, where was he?

Maybe Tripple had distracted him. Maybe he’d lured him away. Maybe I just needed to buy Bobby some time.

That ugly, heavy thing was still lodged behind my breastbone, but somehow, I made myself say, “You killed—”

“JT,” Tripple said. “Yeah, I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did. He put me in a bad spot. Let’s not have it happen again.”

“Were we right? Was it an argument?”

Tripple looked like he might not answer, but then the words came as though slipping out of him. “He kept getting in my face. I told him to calm down. I told him to take a step back. He shoved me. He said I was a fool. He said she—”

Whatever JT had said, Tripple didn’t seem to be able to say it.

“It was an accident,” I said, casting another glance at the gate. Still nothing.

“I didn’t mean to. I grabbed…something. I just wanted him to stop talking.” The light dusted the all-black outfit, resting fuzzily on his shoulders and hood. “A hammer. I hit him once. That was all. I didn’t mean it. Once in the head with a hammer. And that was it. My life was over.”

“It didn’t have to be, though. Isn’t that what—”

“Channelle told me. Yes.”

Yes, I was panicked. Yes, I was terrified for Bobby—and, admittedly, for myself. But I couldn’t help a flash of annoyance. Once, one time, I’d like to be the one who—

“I felt it the very first time I saw her,” Tripple said. “It was a call-out. A domestic. I worked a lot of the calls at the RV park. I knew people there. And the first time I saw her—” He stopped and swallowed. “I thought falling in love would feel like something else. I don’t know. But I knew she was hurting. I knew she needed someone to protect her. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. After that, every time I went to the Gull’s Nest, I saw her. And then there was another call-out. She couldn’t stop shaking. I was only going to put my arm around her, and all of a sudden, she was pressed against me. And that was it. That was when I knew she felt it too.”

Another piece of the puzzle clicked. “She told you she was going to leave JT.”

“She had some money she’d saved up. She was waiting for the right time.”

I wasn’t sure about the saved up part; my guess was that Channelle had stolen the money from JT and from the tenants at the park. But all I said was “And then Woody showed up. He said something to JT that made JT suspicious—Channelle had stolen money from Woody, too, when she left him.” Tripple didn’t say anything, so I continued, “JT found the money, didn’t he? And that’s why he and Channelle fought. And that’s when you got the call-out. You argued, and—”

“I was going to retire,” Tripple said, and he sounded weary—worn to the bone. “We were going to leave. I had my pension; that would have been enough. It had been an argument. I’d been defending myself. Why should I have to lose everything because I’d been defending myself?” Tripple’s gaze sharpened on me. “I should have realized, when I thought of using that boy’s clothes, that you’d get involved. At the time, though—let’s just say I wasn’t thinking too clearly. All I knew was that Channelle was right: it had to be someone else. I knew that boy had gotten into it with JT earlier that day. His clothes were right there, boxed up in the garage. Everybody in town knew he was trouble. Aggressive, violent, strange. I waited until it was late and went in through the back, and then I made the call to the station and pretended I was JT. Had a phone call with myself to push back the time of death. I called the motel and bothered May until she got the idea that JT was trying to get in touch with Channelle. And it all went the way I thought it would until I saw you at the station. You had to stick your nose in.”

“What happened with Channelle?”

His gaze sharpened as though he’d only now remembered me. He cleared his throat. “Story time is over.”

My arms were beginning to ache from holding them in the air. The flashlight’s weight seemed to have doubled. But I said, “You’ll never get to tell anyone else. I know you cared about her. I know you didn’t want to hurt her.”

“I never would have hurt her.” The words were so vehement that they verged on a shout. In what sounded like a strained attempt to control his volume, Tripple continued, “I loved her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I didn’t know she was—”

But he stopped.

And I said, “You didn’t know she was fooling around with Foster.”

A tiny laugh escaped Tripple, and there was so much hurt in the sound that, for a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. “She kept telling me she wanted to wait until she was divorced. She said she loved me, but she wanted to wait because it was the decent thing to do.” His hand holding the gun dipped slightly, and his voice softened. “I had a key to her room; I thought I was going to surprise her. I went inside and smelled her perfume. She’d been trying on dresses. I’d brought roses, and I just stood there, holding them. I heard her coming back. Heard her with…him. Heard her give him that necklace and tell him to pawn it. The necklace I’d given her. After he left…”

“You confronted her.”

“I told her I was done. We were done. I said I was going to tell the sheriff what had happened. I’d parked behind the motel because of the cameras, and she followed me. She kept trying to tell me I’d misunderstood. She kept trying to explain. But now that I’d seen, I knew.” That hurt, disbelieving laugh trickled out of him again. “I knew how JT felt. Only I hadn’t spent years believing the act, which I guess was a mercy. She got in the car. She checked her hair in the mirror. Wanted to touch up her lips. Then she tried—” His voice buckled, and under it was a silence that went down for miles.

I was the one who broke it, because now I knew. “You didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“She wouldn’t stop, so I hauled her out of the car. I was done talking. I started the engine.” He faltered again. “She was crazy . She threw herself right in front of me. I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.”

Out on the water, what had to be at least a mile away, the blat of an old boat horn sounded like something from another world.

“There wasn’t anything I could do for her,” Tripple said softly. “I was going to leave, but then I remembered the hammer. She was supposed to get rid of it, but what if she hadn’t? I’d left my key in the room, so I had to force the door. I didn’t have much time. I tore that place apart as quickly as I could. And there it was. She’d kept it. She told me she was going to get rid of it, and she kept it.” He fell silent once more. “I took the hammer, and I left.”

“But it wasn’t over,” I said.

“No.” His voice was rough, but an edge came into it. “Because you couldn’t leave things alone.”

“That’s why you came to the house. The night I followed Keme out into the woods, the night you tried to kill me—you were waiting for me. You wanted to make sure I didn’t figure out the truth.”

He laughed again, and it sounded harsher this time. “I was there because I was going to take the tracker off Bobby’s SUV. I thought, with the kid off the hook, you might give it a rest. Then I saw you two run out of the house, and I thought maybe I’d make sure you gave it a rest, just in case.”

The casual way he said it, the tone that bordered on amused disappointment that he hadn’t quite managed to kill me, left me without words for several seconds. Finally, I managed to say, “That’s how you found us tonight.”

“Geofencing is a nifty thing, isn’t it? Anytime the Pilot left Hemlock House, I got a little ping. Of course, that meant I spent a lot of time following Bobby around the other night instead of you. But nothing’s perfect.”

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “We’re standing in the secure lot of the sheriff’s station. There are cameras. There’s somebody inside on dispatch. People here know you; you won’t get away with this. Things are going to go better for you if you turn yourself in. You can call the sheriff right now and tell her you need to talk.”

He stared back at me. From somewhere beyond the fenced lot came the sound of an animal moving in the brush. It made me think of the strawberry tree and the squirrels, when Bobby and I had stood out here after my pathetic attempt at interviewing Keme. That felt like years ago. And it made me unexpectedly relieved, loosening the tightness across my shoulders, in my chest, down my back. Keme was safe now. And Millie and Indira and Fox. And maybe, I could hope, Bobby too. That was all that mattered. If there was a way to keep Bobby safe. I remembered the peeling bark. I could still see the bright red berries, and feel the weight of the sunlight. It was strange to look back fondly on a time when I’d been hurt so badly. But I remembered it. And it had been beautiful.

“You know, I never understood how you did it,” Tripple said with a little bark of a laugh. “All these people spilling their guts. I mean, my God, some of them even turned themselves in. But you’re good. You’re real good. You had me going there for a second. But it’s not going to work, smart guy. I turned the cameras off when I was cleaning the cruiser earlier today. So, we’re all alone. Nobody’s going to bother us. Nobody’ll ever know we were here.”

“That doesn’t change anything. The sheriff will—”

“Here’s what we’re going to do.” Tripple’s voice was a cop’s voice: flat, sure, squashing my words without even trying. “We’re going to go for a ride.”

I knew what that meant. We’d drive somewhere, and he’d shoot me. Or he’d push me off a cliff. Or he’d find a way to run the car off the road with me in it. If anyone ever found me, it’d look like a terrible accident.

My tongue was numb, and it didn’t seem to work right as I said, “What about Bobby?”

“Bobby’ll be fine.”

But I knew what that meant, too. I knew it in a way that was like ice in the marrow of my bones. He couldn’t leave Bobby alive. Bobby would look for me. Bobby would want to know what happened. If I thought there was a chance—

There wasn’t, though.

There hadn’t been, not from the moment Tripple got the drop on us.

He was waiting for me. His expression was as close to friendly as it ever got. What went on inside someone’s head, I wanted to know, when they could hold a gun on you, plan to kill you, and still look like that weird uncle who’s trying a little too hard to be social?

Think, I told myself. Use your brain and think. For Bobby.

The lights and siren. But the car was off.

The shotgun. No, it was locked in its mount.

If he got close enough, I could club him with the flashlight. It was heavy enough that my muscles burned from holding it over my head throughout this conversation. But he wouldn’t make a mistake like that—

The flashlight.

Something gave me away. My face. Or a change in my body language. Blankness came down on Tripple’s face like a visor, and his gun hand steadied.

I flipped the flashlight toward him and blasted him in the face with the beam. Then I threw myself down.

Tripple shouted. Then the clap of gunfire ripped open the night. Distantly, I was aware of the sound of glass shattering, and I felt shards rain down on me, plinking against my back as I scrambled away from Tripple.

My plan was simple: put as many cars, trucks, and SUVs as possible between me and Tripple, and hope whoever was on dispatch called a deputy back here before he flushed me out and killed me.

It wasn’t a great plan.

I made my way to the back of the cruiser, crawled around the sheriff’s office SUV parked next to it, and got to my feet. Tripple was still screaming, and a lot of the words were ones you won’t find in the deputy’s handbook, but he hadn’t fired again—Bobby hadn’t been joking about the flashlight. I risked a glance at the gate, but there was no way I’d make it. I’d have to run right past Tripple and then across twenty feet of open ground. Tripple’s sight might be impaired from the flashlight, but he only had to hit me once.

Pressing my back to the wall of the sheriff’s station, I moved in a shuffling crouch, trying to stay low and keep behind the vehicles. The concrete wall scraped my back. Pebbles skittered underfoot. I caught the first whiff of gun smoke, and it made the hair on my arms bristle.

“That was stupid,” Tripple shouted. His voice sounded unhinged—manic, and then I realized: excited. “That was really stupid!”

I didn’t say anything back. Believe it or not, sometimes I can keep my mouth shut. I continued shuffling along the wall, aware, at the back of my head, that I was doing Tripple’s work for him, because I only had another fifteen feet before I cornered myself. Yes, it was possible I could try the flashlight trick again, or I could jink or juke or deke or dive my way to safety and sprint out of the parking enclosure. But the most likely outcome was that Tripple would pin me down and put a bullet in me.

It didn’t matter. Every second I was alive, every second I slowed him down, was time for someone to come. Someone who might not get here in time to save me, but who would save Bobby.

“I can see you,” Tripple sang out.

The flashlight, my brain said.

It was still on, and I was shining it right at my feet, creating an ultrabright puddle. I snapped it off, but it was too late.

Tripple’s laughter was even worse than his voice. Like this was a game. Like he was having fun. And then he fired.

The sound of the gunshot made me jump. Concrete cracked, and something stung the back of my neck. The old, animal part of me took over, and I ran. Sheriff’s office vehicles blurred. The fence loomed up in front of me. At the top, the razor wire glinted in the security lights.

Tripple appeared in the corner of my vision, stepping out from behind one of the SUVs. He fired again.

I dropped, and it saved my life. The bullet shattered concrete again. Old asphalt tore up my joggers as I crouched behind the last cruiser in the row.

Despair made me heavy. My knees, lacerated from my fall, stung. My head pounded with blood and adrenaline. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep. I wanted Bobby. But most of all, I wanted him to be safe.

“You should have gone for a ride,” Tripple said. He was breathing faster than usual, but he didn’t sound winded. “This all could have been a lot easier.”

“I hate this part,” I said. The words escaped me before I could stop them. “I hate every stupid bad guy who thinks he’s the one exception to murder, that he was justified, that he didn’t do anything wrong, and that somehow I’m the problem, I’m the idiot, I’m the one who messed everything up. You messed everything up, you—you jackanapes!”

(It was one of Fox’s favorite words; it just slipped out.)

Tripple’s silence suggested he was on unfamiliar ground. For that matter, so was I—I hadn’t done a lot of yelling-at-murderers in my life, so I figured we were both figuring this out as we went along.

“And for that matter—” I said.

And then a loudspeaker boomed: “HEY! OVER HERE!”

My horrified realization came a heartbeat behind: it wasn’t a loudspeaker.

It was Millie.

I opened my mouth, but when I tried to simultaneously scream “What are you doing?” and “Get out of here!”, it all got caught in my throat.

Tripple started to turn in the direction of Millie’s voice.

I mean, you can’t really blame him, can you?

And then Keme launched himself out of the dark. Somehow, he’d circled behind Tripple, and now he sprinted toward him and jumped on his back. Tripple shouted and staggered under the impact. Keme rained down blows on Tripple’s head, and Tripple stumbled, rocking under the unfamiliar weight of a second body. The gun went off. Muzzle flash lit up the night in a single stroke of flame, and then the dark descended again. Keme did something—I didn’t see what—and Tripple screamed . He tried to run, lost his balance, and fell. And Keme stayed with him, clobbering him as he rolled with him.

My feral wolf-child. My beautiful, brave, tremendously stupid feral wolf-child. Who was also, if you asked anybody else, apparently my big brother.

I ran. I didn’t even think about it. Tripple had dropped his gun when he’d fallen, and I scooped it up. He was still trying to roll away from Keme, and Keme was still beating the stuffing out of him. I wasn’t even sure Keme was seeing him—the boy’s eyes were huge, his pupils dilated, and he was screaming—which hadn’t registered until now. The little armchair psychologist inside my head suggested maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t entirely about Tripple for Keme. Maybe Keme had a lot of feelings he was getting out. Maybe this was catharsis.

It also looked like if I let it go on for too much longer, it might end in a very cathartic manslaughter. (Not to mention, Millie had appeared, and she was carrying a paving stone almost as big as her head, and it looked like she might want some catharsis too.)

“Keme, that’s enough.”

Apparently, it wasn’t.

“Keme! Hey! Get off him! Millie, put that thing down.”

Keme just kept punching.

Genius struck. “Keme, stop it right now, or I’m telling Indira!”

Mid-slam, Keme froze. He looked over at me, eyes wide and unseeing, his thin chest rising and falling frantically. One hand was still tangled in Tripple’s hair.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re all okay. You can stop now.”

A second passed. And then another. A hint of awareness flickered deep in his eyes, and with what looked like a surprising amount of effort, he released Tripple’s hair and flexed his fingers stiffly. Tripple’s head fell to the pavement; if the deputy was still conscious, there was no sign of it. Hey, at least he was alive.

Millie took Keme by the arm and helped him up, and I reached them a moment later. I didn’t even know I was going to do it until it happened and I pulled both of them into a hug. After a heartbeat, Millie started to cry—not exactly a surprise. What was a surprise, though, was that Keme did too.

“Everybody’s okay,” I said. “You guys did so good. You’re idiots, and I’m going to yell at you later, but you did a fantastic job, and I love you so much.” Pushing back from them, I said, “Millie, scream if Tripple moves. I’ve got to find Bobby.”

Keme was still sobbing, and I wasn’t sure he heard me. Millie, though, for all her tears, had a look of grim resolve. I figured if Tripple moved, he might get the paving stone first—and then she’d scream.

I raced through the gate. On my way, I passed Dahlberg, who was standing by her car, hand on her holstered service weapon.

“Tripple,” I said. “You’ve got to arrest Tripple, he’s—”

And then I saw Bobby. He lay on the ground in a crumpled heap next to the Pilot.

That blunt, ugly thing in my chest doubled in size. It was too big for my lungs to expand. Too big for my heart to beat.

I might have stayed like that forever if Bobby hadn’t moaned and rolled onto his back.

My legs herky-jerked me over to him before I could even think about it. I dropped onto my knees as he propped himself on one elbow. It was a strangely sleepy movement, the way he roused himself in bed sometimes, when I came in late and he wanted to say goodnight. It was hard to see him all of a sudden. My eyes were hot.

“What’s wrong?” he mumbled. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? Bobby, are you okay?”

He gave an almost imperceptible nod. But he didn’t say anything, and the tightness around his eyes told me he wasn’t okay, not entirely.

“DEPUTY DAHLBERG IS ARRESTING DEPUTY TRIPPLE!”

She was standing right behind me, and I almost shot out of my shoes.

Bobby murmured, “Who’s that?”

I stared at him. And then I caught the shadow of that ridiculously goofy grin. I slapped his shoulder. “Don’t do that!”

He let out a wounded cry, which of course made me feel terrible, and then he grinned about that too. I thought about beating him up some more, but instead, somehow, I ended up sitting on the asphalt, Bobby’s head pillowed in my lap, insisting he not move until the ambulance got there. Keme and Millie sat with us as cruisers began to arrive, lights and sirens blazing.

And we were still sitting there, our shadows shifting in the spinning lights of the deputies’ cars, when Keme held out his hand.

It took me a moment.

And then, with a tired smile, I slapped him five.