Page 117 of Jack

“Why the stolen key?”

Silence. They wove into the countryside with the moonlight glinting on rumpled pewter fields of snow. Here and there, lights shone from farmhouses, all the way until the land turned forested.

“Turn here,” Jack said.

“I know the road to Loon Lake,” Conrad said. “Some developer is building houses out here. He had a reception for the team about a year ago to try to sell lots. A few of the guys bought.”

“Not you?”

Conrad lifted a shoulder, no comment.Interesting.

“They’re up here if I remember the presentation correctly.”

Jack sat up as they drove past the Loon Lake Boat Works. But according to his app, the Geo sat farther up the road.

Just beyond the boatyard sat an unfinished housing development—half-framed houses, piles of dirt, a mutilated shoreline for future million-dollar lake homes.

Conrad’s lights scraped across the little green Geo.

Jack pointed.

“I see it,” Conrad said and pulled up.

Their headlights illuminated a body lying in the snow, and even though Jack’s brain screamedtoo big, not her, he scrambled out, running toward the body.

Blood saturated the ground. He knelt next to the man—a big man, clutching a bloody white puffer jacket.

He rolled the man over, leaned in. “He’s still breathing. Call 911!” He grabbed the jacket and recognized it immediately.

Harper.

He stood. “Harper!”

“He’s been shot,” Steinbeck said, coming up on the other side. He’d moved the man’s jacket aside. “Kidney shot. He’s lost a lot of blood.” He put a finger to the man’s carotid. “Still pumping, but barely. The nearest life flight is Waconia—they’re at least thirty minutes out.”

Conrad had stepped in front of the headlights, a phone to his ear.

“Call Boo. See if her SAR team can get here.”

Stein had also stood up. “Boo’s a field medic. Getherhere.” He turned to examine the car. “The gunman shot through the seat.” He turned to Jack. “Which means whoever shot them rode here with them.”

Jack froze.

“You don’t happen to carry a gun?”

“Trunk. Lockbox.”

Stein had retrieved the keys, but Jack had already started to study the ground. He opened his glove box, grabbed a Maglite and twisted it on.

Bloody shoeprints in the snow, about Harper’s size. Running, given the lengths of the stride. Right toward—there.An excavator. He tromped over the frozen ground, found a trampled area, and his light pinged off something.

Gold, in the snow. He picked it up, and while he knew in his head that she was out there, seeing her bracelet put a fist through his heart.

Harper.But he didn’t yell, because what if she yelled back and got shot for her efforts?

More shoeprints leading away, and this time trampled by bigger shoeprints. He tracked hers to the boatyard fence, the end of the building. Shone his light on it.

A piece of black yarn flapped, caught by the wind. Until now he hadn’t even noticed the breath off the lake, brutal against his skin. But with the temperature falling . . .

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