Quinn called late the next morning. He said he would send his results through the anonymous e-mail accounts we used, then call Jack's cell and tell him the message was there, to keep me from racing off to check my e-mail every five minutes.

His timing was perfect. One couple had already checked out, and the other had left for lunch reservations in Bancroft.

Quinn had found another case similar to Sammi's and Deanna's. Two months ago, in Michigan, another pretty teen had disappeared with her infant son. Like Deanna, she'd been in a group home.

"It seems the killer started with group homes," I said to Jack as I read. "But he ran into a problem with this second one. The girl was the grand-niece of a city alderman, who insisted on a police investigation. A cursory investigation, Quinn says, and already shelved, but I bet it gave our guy a scare. He realized that living in a group home doesn't necessarily mean you don't have any family, so he started being more careful. And he decided to cross the border.

"A week before Sammi disappeared, a girl in Barrie complained about a guy matching our description wanting pictures of her and her baby. The police fluffed it off as a random pervert. Barrie 's an hour north of Toronto. He switched to Ontario. Maybe he thinks our law enforcement isn't as sophisticated. Or he's afraid of the cases being linked."

"Could be."

Jack's tone was no more laconic than usual, but it was like a spritz of ice water, reminding me to slow down.

"No bodies have been found yet," I said. "The second girl disappeared on a walk, like Sammi. He seems to prefer quiet, private kill sites. But that could just be a response to circumstances. After he kills the girl, he's stuck with a crying baby. As great as it is to have similar cases, I'm not sure how much they'll help in narrowing down who's doing the killing."

"Got some ideas. Run past Evelyn."

Jack consulted Evelyn. I wasn't thrilled with that, but it was the fastest way to narrow down the list. From her, he got the names of two hitmen possibilities, with the more likely one having moved to Toronto recently.

"Great," I said as I cleaned up after the sunset canoe ride. "This week looks slow for guests, so I can take off and – "

"I'll do it."

My hands tightened around the paddle I was lifting into its berth. Something pricked my hand. I stared at the welling blood.

"Nadia?"

"Hmm?"

"I'll go after him."

"N-no." I fumbled the paddle into place and swiped my hand across my jeans. "You can't, not with your foot. I'll – "

"No, Nadia."

"I can – "

"Shouldn't."

I swiped my fingers again, harder, wincing. Jack caught my hand and lifted it into the dim light of the boathouse.

"Got a sliver."

I balled my fist. "I'll be careful. I'll do proper reconnaissance work and make absolutely certain this is the guy. You can come if you want, and I'll let you make the decisions. I just need to see this through."

"You will. It's him? I'll call. Bring you in. He's all yours."

I opened my fist and stared at the blood, my heart hammering. As much as I wanted to find Sammi's killer myself, he was right. Scouting didn't require my personal touch, and it was better if I stayed put for a little while.

When my hand started curling again, he pulled my fingers flat.

"Only making it worse. Come on. Get it fixed up."

Jack went to Toronto alone. When the guests opted out of the bonfire, I drove him to Peterborough and let him take my work car from there. He promised he'd check in with updates a few times a day. He called the next morning, then afternoon, then evening. He didn't have much to say, just, "I'm looking," "Found him," "Following him," "Cased his place." The calls were a waste of his time, and I knew he was only doing them for my sake, but I wasn't sure what would be more frustrating: his single-sentence updates or none at all.

As for the person he was following, I knew only that he was male. Before he'd left, Jack had sidestepped my questions with "tell you later."

Finally, Thursday afternoon, I heard the words I'd been waiting for: "It's him." Then, "Need you here."

"In Toronto? Sure, I can be there in – "

"No. On the move. Heading your way. Can you meet up?"

"You're coming back?"

"He is."

It took me a minute to decipher his shorthand: Sammi's killer was heading out of Toronto, coming this way. On the move. After another girl.

For a moment, words wouldn't come. All I could see was Sammi's corpse, streaked with dirt, staring up in outrage.

"You there?" Jack said.

"He's on the trail, you mean. Of another – "

"Maybe just hunting."

Hunting…

I took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Um, so where -?"

"On the 401. Heading east. Just passing – " A pause, as if looking for signs. " – Oshawa."

"So should I -?"

"Get ready. Tell Emma you're leaving. Wait for my call."

The next ninety minutes seemed like nine hundred. Finally Jack called again. He was outside a restaurant in Kingston. His target was inside.

"Might be nothing," Jack said. "Different job. Meeting a client. Still… Thought you'd want to head out. Catch up."

"I do."

Two hours later, after quickly assembling a disguise, I was there. For the last thirty minutes, the target had been parked outside a community center, reading a news paper.

I'd left my truck in a grocery store lot a block away, and joined Jack in my work car parked beside a church. From there, we watched the target as he waited in his compact car, tucked between a minivan and an SUV.

Even with the binoculars I'd lent Jack, I couldn't see the man. He had a newspaper stretched across the steering wheel, either reading as he waited or just wanting to look as if he was.

"Work name, Rainman," Jack said. "Real name, Ron Fenniger."

"You know him?"

"Not personally. Evelyn checked him out years back. Possible protégé. Seemed promising. Didn't last."

"Where was he putting his money?"

"Up his nose."

An old story, and a common trajectory for professional killers. They start as garden-variety criminals, then discover they have a knack for killing – good reflexes, steady nerves, and the ability to blend. They realize how much money there is to be made in contract hits… but it's like a lounge singer suddenly pulling in twenty grand a gig with no idea how to spend it. They find places – women, booze, dope, gambling, all the usual vices.

That's when it falls apart. The reflexes, the nerves, the ordinariness that made them a good hitman disappear. So they have two choices – retire fast, or find themselves on the other end of a gun, facing an associate hired by someone who deems them a liability.

As Jack explained, Fenniger had begun his crash-and-burn, then leveled out, learning to keep his drugs and work separate. But someone like that would never be top-tier again. He'd made a couple of small mistakes, enough to keep a middleman from recommending him to a big client. He could only pull in top-tier money if he didn't mind taking risky jobs with subpar clients who'd turn him in at the first sign of trouble.

According to Evelyn, though, Fenniger had withdrawn his name from the pool with one middleman, who figured he'd retired. But it seemed he'd just found a way to bypass the middleman, going into business for himself, with clients who wouldn't care how good a hitman he was, because as far as they knew, they were hiring a baby broker.

"Do you think he's meeting with one of those clients now?" I asked.