"How's her throat?"

Strangulation. Right. I checked.

"No marks, which doesn't completely rule it out, but…"

My gaze kept sliding back to her broken nose. Something wasn't right. Yes, it was definitely broken, but the angle was wrong. It was almost as if -

Using a tissue from my pocket and dew from the grass, I cleaned the strip of skin between Sammi's nose and her gag. There it was, an undeniable bullet hole, complete with muzzle burns. A gun pressed to her upper lip, trigger pulled.

"CNS shot," Jack grunted.

A bullet through the central nervous system. "But that's – That's not a thrill kill. That's… a professional hit."

A line of sweat dribbled down the side of my face. I swiped at it.

Why would anyone want Sammi dead?

In a passionless, efficient murder like this, the reason had to be equally cold and calculated. A professional hit is done for two reasons. First, you've wronged some very powerful people. But Sammi was just a kid living in small-town Ontario. She couldn't possibly have pissed off anyone with the clout to order a hit.

The second most common reason for hiring a professional killer is more common, and the one I won't deal with. Murder for personal gain. Have your wife killed for the insurance money. Your business partner for his shares. Your parents for your inheritance. Your romantic rival for a woman. But Sammi had nothing. The killer hadn't even emptied her wallet. Then, the truth hit me so hard I gasped.

Something was missing.

"The baby," I whispered.

After we reburied Sammi the same way the killer had left her, Jack drove us back to the lodge. If I thought there was any chance he'd let me walk, I would have tried. Riding with him might mean having to talk about what we'd found, and I couldn't bear that.

I didn't need to worry. He never opened his mouth. Yet somehow that silence was worse. It sat, between us, a vacuum of words unsaid, sucking up the air in the cab. I inched as close to the door panel as I could get, staring out the side window, ticking off the seconds until the drive ended.

The landscape flew past so fast I wasn't even sure what road we were on. The truck jerked and swayed, struggling to keep a grip in the dirt. My head slammed into the seat as the tires found every rut. I knew if I looked over at Jack, I'd see him clutching the wheel, praying he could get us back before I broke down into tears, wondering how in God's name he'd been stupid enough to get mixed up with me again.

When we reached the lodge parking lot, he slammed on the brakes so hard, I'd have a seat belt bruise come morning. Then he just sat there, the engine idling, making no move to turn it off.

I reached for the door handle.

"You're not gonna call the cops," he said.

A statement, not a question. Informing the police was a perfectly logical next step, but my chest tightened at the very thought. Excuses rose to my lips. Maybe I'd left some trace evidence. An anonymous call was too risky – they'd figure the killer had an attack of conscience. And it'd fall under the White Rock OPP jurisdiction. Those guys couldn't find a killer if he left a blood trail to his house.

Excuses, and poor ones. Jack had made sure I'd left nothing. As for the call, he could make it, using any accent from a pay phone in Peterborough. And whatever I thought of the White Rock OPP, they wouldn't ignore a body.

What stopped me from making that call was the memory of Amy's death. My father and the other police thought they had an airtight case. They'd arrived on the scene moments after Amy died, before Drew Aldrich had a chance to run or hide evidence. And they had me, an eyewitness. They'd been so confident of a guilty verdict that they hadn't allowed me to testify in court, saving me from the hell of cross-examination.

Aldrich's defense had ripped their airtight case to shreds. My father and Amy's had rushed to the scene not as cops, but as grief-crazed relatives of the victim. They'd tried to follow procedure, but emotions had been running high and mistakes were made. What really happened, the attorney had argued, was kinky teen sex turned tragic.

Amy and Drew had sex. She'd wanted him to choke her – the jury got a lesson on breath control sex play. The innocent younger cousin looked in, saw what looked like her cousin being strangled and raped, and ran for help. Amy realized she'd been seen and, fearing punishment, lashed out, explaining cuts on Aldrich. He'd instinctively tightened his grip and accidentally killed her. Then her father and uncle, believing the younger cousin's story, fabricated evidence to support it.

Years later, examining the evidence, I couldn't believe the jury bought it. But they had. It fit their view of the world. Drew Aldrich was a decent young man who'd gotten mixed up with a wild teen seductress and let his hormones override his common sense. If he'd been the sadistic rapist killer the crown portrayed, surely he'd have done something to me. They just weren't buying the argument that he'd been planning to rape me, too, and I escaped before he could.

I'd watched Drew Aldrich walk away. I'd seen Amy denied justice. I wasn't letting that happen with Sammi. I didn't trust the White Rock police not to let their views of Sammi color their investigation. I would turn over this case, just as soon as I had the evidence needed to point them in the right direction and give them no excuse to shelve it.

I told Jack that – about needing evidence, not about Amy. He listened, then nodded, "Yeah. Probably a good idea."

I went for the door handle again.

"Wanna walk?" he said. "To the lake? Sit? Talk?"

"I've made up my mind, Jack – "

"Not about the cops. Just… talk. About what happened."

My shoulders tightened. The obligatory offer, made at the last possible moment so, if I hesitated, he could escape before I said "actually, that sounds good…"

"No, thank you," I said.

I opened the door.

"Nadia…"

I stopped.

"Think you should. We should. Take a walk. Talk or don't. Just… do something."

I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see him gripping the door handle, ready to make his escape. But he was turned my way, one hand on the wheel, the other a few inches from my leg. The offer sounded genuine and his eyes said it was. Hope fluttered.

"How about shooting? Grab a bottle. Make some bets." A crooked half-smile. "Chance to win back your fifty bucks?"

That flicker of hope folded in on itself and curled up in the pit of my stomach. Last fall, after a hellish night when Wilkes had escaped us – only to kill another victim – Jack had taken me shooting at night, some anonymous strip of forest in Illinois, just the two of us, skeet-shooting beer cans as we chugged whiskey. Supposedly he'd been teaching me how to compensate for being intoxicated. An excuse – one that had fallen through quickly the drunker we got, goofing around, joking and betting, blowing off steam.

No one had ever done something like that for me before. No one had ever known me well enough to know it was exactly what I'd needed. Over the next few days, Jack had let down his guard enough to give me glimpses into his past, and I realized he'd already seen beyond my barriers, looked at that part of myself I kept so carefully hidden.

He'd seen the worst in me, and it didn't change anything. Or so it seemed at the time. Later I realized he'd only tried to help me that night because he'd needed me focused and on track, watching his back. The minute the job was over, he couldn't get away fast enough.

Now, here again was that same Jack, considerate and understanding, ready to do whatever it took to snap me out of this. But this time, I knew it wasn't because he gave a rat's ass how Sammi's death affected me, but because he was trapped. He was hiding out at the lodge, and he needed me focused and on track, watching his back.