“If you see anyone outside, you run downstairs and crawl in here,” she told him. “I’ll be back real soon.”
“Okay.”
She felt a twinge of concern at leaving him behind, but she knew he would be safer at home than with her. She grabbed her mother’s old winter coat from the hall closet, and she ventured out into a white world. The snow continued to fall, with the wind swirling it into a tornado. The blizzard was blinding, but that helped her stay concealed. If she couldn’t see ten feet in front of her, then neither could anyone else. Including the people who were looking for her.
The weather was keeping most of the town inside. She didn’t see anyone as she hurried into the wind toward the end of the street, where the Camaro was hidden in her neighbor’s yard. Before she took the car out, she wandered across the grass to the railroad tracks and stared as far as she could in both directions, which was like staring into a dense fog. If she followed those tracks for several miles, she would pass east of the airport, which was where Purdue told her he’d gotten off the train.
Under her feet, she could still feel the vibration of the train that had passed a few minutes earlier. Like a restless teenager, she stood in the middle of the tracks and then walked south, all alone in the storm’s cocoon. She knew that one of the town’s many cemeteries was to her right, but she couldn’t see it. On the left were trees and open land, all invisible. It was easy to let her imagination run wild, and that was what it did.
She heard a voice in her head. Noah’s voice.
Lis, what happened? Tell me what’s wrong.
She almost turned around to see if he was behind her, but she knew he wasn’t. He was two hours away in Fargo, if Laurel had been telling her the truth. But it didn’t matter where he was. The only reason he was here in her head was because she’d spent the last two hours in the house where they’d grown up together. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have a brother anymore.
Lisa kept walking. She wasn’t sure how far she went, not with the snow playing tricks on her eyes. When the wind briefly subsided, she could see a trailer park on the other side of a dirt road, but then swirls of snow rose up again and scrubbed it away. The real world only seemed to exist for a few seconds before she lost track of it again. It was time to go back. She turned around, but she realized she’d lost all sense of direction. She started walking again and stopped. She could feel the railroad ties under her feet; she was still on the tracks. But she had no sense of whether she was going north or south.
White, white, white. Everything was white. It had felt that way in her head for more than a day, but now it was getting worse. Thief River Falls felt like a frozen alien planet. The snow clung to her eyelids and made her blink and squint. Wind howled, throwing an icy mist in her face and cold razor blades through her clothes. A finger of panic crept up her spine.
An unwelcome thought sprang of its own accord into her mind: Noah, I need help.
Then she shoved that thought away before it was even fully formed. She didn’t need him or anyone. Alone was fine. She could do this alone. As if to prove she was right, the wind offered up a last whistling gust and then took a break. The snow kept on, but she could see the corner of Annie Street not far away and the neighbor’s yard where the Camaro was hidden. With a little laugh at herself, she headed that way.
When she reached the Camaro, she didn’t get into the car immediately. Instead, she opened the trunk and stared down at Shyla’s guns inside. Part of her wanted to remove them. Get rid of them. But she couldn’t do that, not now, not yet. She didn’t know how any of this would end and what would be required of her before it did.
Staring at the weapons in the Camaro, it occurred to Lisa for the first time that all of this might end badly.
That sometimes in a thriller, the hero died.
She’d written about death, she’d felt the grief of death, but she’d never faced the idea of dying herself. And yet it didn’t scare her. If she had to give up her own life to save Purdue, that was a sacrifice she would willingly make. If she and a gun were the only things standing between that boy and safety, then she would do what she had to do to protect him.
Lisa slammed the trunk shut, got in the car, and backed out into the whiteness of the town.
If there was one person in Thief River Falls who had an ear for the town’s secrets, it was Judith Reichl. She was the senior librarian, a job she had held for nearly all Lisa’s life. Lisa had known her since she was five years old and got her first library card, which to a bookish little girl was like a religious experience. All these years later, she was still Mrs. Reichl to Lisa, never Judith.
The library building was located on the west side of the Red Lake River, which meant Lisa needed to cross one of the handful of town bridges to get there. It was a choke point for traffic that left her feeling exposed in the Camaro, but she didn’t spot anyone watching the bridge. She crossed to the other side of town and parked in the library parking lot, and then she got out and walked beside the one-story redbrick building, with an eye on the cars that came and went.
She was in the belly of the beast here, but it couldn’t be helped. The headquarters of the county sheriff’s department was immediately across the street. If anyone took a close look out the side window, they’d see her.
No one did. She made it inside the library without being spotted.
This place was like a second home to Lisa. She’d done the very first reading from her first book in this library, with Mrs. Reichl beaming proudly from the back of the meeting room. She’d done similar events here with every other book, except for Thief River Falls, where the size of the hometown crowd forced them to reserve the auditorium space at the high school. She still remembered the joyful, terrifying experience of speaking to that crowd, with her entire family cheering for her in the front row.
Lisa knew she had no hope of remaining anonymous here at the library. Every person on the staff knew her. Nearly all the patrons did, too. There was a huge display case near the checkout desk dedicated to her and her books, again thanks to Mrs. Reichl. When the people in the library spotted her, they immediately rushed over to greet her. She was never sure how to extricate herself politely, but Mrs. Reichl spotted her from her office and provided a smooth rescue. The librarian steered her away with an arm around her waist. Lisa breathed a little sigh of thanks into her ear.
The two of them went into her modest office. With a single glance at Lisa’s face, Mrs. Reichl obviously spotted that something was wrong, and she closed the door to give them privacy. She pulled two chairs together where they could sit next to each other.
“Well, well, Lisa Power. How are you?”
“I’m all right, Mrs. Reichl.”
“Are you really? You don’t look so good. You don’t need to sugarcoat anything with me.”
“Let’s just say I’m as good as I can be.”
“Of course. Can I get you anything? Some coffee?”
Lisa shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“How long has it been? A year? I can’t remember the last time you’ve been in here. Your absence has been duly noted. I know you moved to Lake Bronson, and I’m sure writing has been keeping you busy, but it also left me wondering if you were okay. When I don’t see one of my favorite people for so long, I get concerned.”
Mrs. Reichl had a honey-sweet voice that never let you realize you were being interrogated. She was slim and small, always neatly put together in a dark wool suit, with her gray hair in a stylish bob. She wore glasses (every librarian Lisa had ever met wore glasses), and she purchased a new style of frame every year. It was one of Mrs. Reichl’s few vanities. This year, the glasses had a retro cat’s-eye look, with a brown tortoiseshell color. Behind her glasses, she had smart, twinkling eyes, with eyebrows that could arch like the gables of a house when she suspected you were fibbing. Teenagers sneaking books into their backpacks didn’t last ten seconds before confessing.