Admittedly, she wouldn’t be likely to be receptive if he had been arrested for her brother’s death in the interim. But he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

Meanwhile, his thoughts circled around to tonight’s ceremony. To Millie van der Hoeven. The person who had walked into the tower, the man who hadn’t ever caused anyone’s death, was horrified. What are you thinking of? Just keeping her?

The old nursery rhyme sang in his head. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell. He looked up at the tower. And there he kept her very well.

He was thinking what to do with the body as he walked around the tower. He wasn’t cocky, but he was rather pleased by his composure and rationality-until he stepped around a birch tree and finally saw Eugene van der Hoeven up close. There was something wrong about the way Eugene’s limbs lay. As if he were a mannequin put together in a hurry. Or a marionette doll flung aside by a careless child. Shaun started shaking. His breath sawed in and out, too fast, until black spots swam in front of his eyes. Eugene wasn’t a person anymore; he was a broken thing. And Shaun had done it to him.

He bent over and lost his lunch.

He staggered back around the base of the tower until the corpse was out of sight. He bent over, breathing deeply, willing the light-headed, spots-in-front-of-his-eyes feeling to go away. Okay, he thought. Okay. Eugene is dead. He was not going to touch Eugene. But he had Millie. He had to see the opportunity in it. Everything was an opportunity, if you were gutsy enough to take it. He would get Millie out of the tower, take her… someplace. A motel. The van der Hoevens don’t show at the signing ceremony tonight. Haudenosaunee keeps producing cheap pulpwood for Reid-Gruyn.

And what do you do with her after? the old Shaun asked. But the new Shaun, the one who was going to come out a winner in this debacle, was already figuring how he could get a vengeful, uncooperative Rapunzel out of her tower.

He would need something to carry her in. He flashed back to the garage, talking with Eugene, the garden cart in the third bay. Perfect.

The walk back to the drive passed in a blur. There were the trees, the still-green grass, the dead hydrangeas, and then he was standing in front of the garage, thankful, now, for van der Hoeven’s out-of-date, manually opened doors. He hauled up the far door. There it was, the garden cart, stored against the coming winter. Rectangular, with metal-bound wooden sides, it was big enough to hold a grown woman, if she curled up.

He rolled it over the gravel, past the edge of the house, along the broad part of the trail. He could see the stone wall enclosing the back lawn and the mellow, peeled logs of the house’s rear facade. He was just swinging the cart onto the edge of the trail to the old camp when he heard it. The crunch of tires on gravel. He shoved the cart ahead hurriedly, only to stumble in its wake and nearly fall.

A door slammed. He froze in place. He heard the sound of footsteps, gritting over the gravel, thumping on the wooden porch. There was a pause, as if the unseen visitor had rung the bell and was waiting.

Shaun took a deep, silent breath.

“Hello!” a voice called. “Anyone home?”

Randy had his excuse for being on Fire Road 52 all ready. The Haudenosaunee entrance was marked only by stone pillars and was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. He was on his way to pick up his wife. He was absentminded. He thought this was the road. Who could argue with that?

Of course, he hoped there wouldn’t be anyone to argue with at all. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the logging road. No sign of any activity. He signaled, then turned in. Was she there? Undiscovered? Should he risk going on? He accelerated gently, rolling uphill. Just a guy out to pick up his wife. That’s all. He rounded a bend.

He almost hit the red pickup parked in the middle of the road. He jammed on his brakes, the slight shuddering stop making his stomach swoop as if he were on a roller coaster. Past the truck, he could see-oh, shit-a cop car. No ambulance, no hearse, no sign of her. He didn’t see anybody. He worried his lip. Should he back out? Would that look more or less suspicious than getting out and taking a look-see? He sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his options, until a man in hunter’s camos and a blaze-orange vest wrenched through the thicket of brush lining the road and walked toward him.

A hunter. He started to smile in relief, until the man looked at Mike’s license plate. Looked at the tires. As he approached Randy, the man ambled wide of the car, in a path that might have been dictated by a rut in the dirt road but that also placed him in a position where he could see what was coming at him if Randy opened the door. He took off his cap, and that was when Randy saw it was the chief of police.

Russ Van Alstyne smiled and motioned for him to crank down his window. The handle stuck at each rotation, and the resulting squeak of glass on rubber sounded like a chorus in Randy’s ears: You’re screwed, you’re screwed, you’re screwed.

“Hey, son,” the chief said. “What’re you doing out here?”

Randy blanked. What was he doing out here? He was… he was… “Looking for my wife,” he said.

Van Alstyne’s blue eyes sharpened. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Oh, shit. The chief thought he meant Becky Castle. Probably had him tagged as a wife beater. Randy shook his head. “She works up to Haudenosaunee. Cleans house for them. Our car’s in the shop, so I had to come get her.”

“Cleans house for Eugene van der Hoeven? I think I met her this morning.” Van Alstyne stepped closer and peered into the window. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Mark Durkee’s brother-in-law, right? Schoof? Randy Schoof?”

Randy nodded. If being Mark’s relation by marriage saved him, he would hug the self-righteous prick the next time he saw him.

“So you’re looking for your wife, Randy?” The chief’s voice was relaxed, friendly. His eyes, however, were as bright as ever, his glance flickering from the backseat to the passenger side to the well beside the door to Randy’s clothes. “What’s that on your pants, there?”

Randy looked at his lap. To his horror, a smear of blood stained his jeans. His mouth worked soundlessly, searching for some explanation. Why was there blood on his pants? He cut himself shaving? Jesus, that was ridiculous. He looked up at the chief, caught like a deer in the headlights. A deer. Mike’s deer. “I went hunting this morning. My friend took a buck. I helped him with it.” His relief at coming up with a good answer made his smile genuine. He gestured toward the chief’s hunting gear. “How did you do? Got yours yet?”

Van Alstyne shook his head. “I have lousy luck.” He grinned. “But I’m persistent. So, you’re out here looking for your wife?”

“At Haudenosaunee,” Randy repeated. “Isn’t this the road to the house?” He slapped at his jacket pockets, as if searching for a telltale crinkle of paper. “I have the directions written down here somewhere.”

“Have you been out here before?”

Randy froze. “Before?” Shit. If he told the chief he’d never been here before, he could easily get caught in the lie. His brother-in-law could tell them Randy used to work for Ed Castle.

“Yeah. Were you and your friend hunting out here or anything?”

Randy tried to sound relaxed. “Nope. Why?”

“A couple hunters found a young woman on the road here. She’d been hurt real bad.”

Hurt? Hurt? What did that mean? Randy stopped himself from blurting out You mean she isn’t dead? Instead, he pursed his lips in a look of concern and said, “I hope she’s all right.”