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In the bedroom.

Was Tracey lying on the bed, on top of that comforter with its bright pink and green flowers that Vivienne’s mother had left her in her will?

Was he drinking himself stupid?

Stupider.

Was that even a word?

Or was he packing? Planning to run away.

Cameron hoped so. That’s what he’d been waiting for. Hoping for.

Expecting.

Come on. Come on, you shit. Get in that truck of yours and just try it.

Cameron had been reassigned from the effort to find Vivienne Godin to setting up emergency shelters. Sent home to rest, he’d come here instead.

Tracey was a weak man, Cameron knew. The sort who’d try to run.

And then what would I do?

But he knew the answer to that. He’d pull Tracey over. Tell him to get out of the vehicle.

And he’d do what he should have done weeks ago.

He looked at his watch. It was almost 1:00 a.m. He should go home. His wife might be wondering. But he couldn’t. Not quite yet.

Come on, you dumb-ass. Come on out. Come to me.

Billy Williams stood on the road out of town. He held a long, gnarled stick, and as Reine-Marie and Armand watched, he drove it into the mud. As he’d done every twenty minutes for the past couple of hours.

He was testing to see how far the stick would sink in, but also, it seemed by his cocked head, listening for some sound from the earth. Some permission.

The sleet had stopped an hour earlier, and the temperature had plummeted. Exactly what they needed.

Maybe now …

“Well?” asked Reine-Marie, just as Armand noticed a glow on the hill above them.

Headlights. That could be only one person. Jean-Guy had arrived.

Billy spoke.

“Thank the Lord,” said Reine-Marie, turning to Armand. “Billy says it’s frozen.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They stood on the frozen field, a few kilometers upriver of Three Pines, and watched as Billy’s backhoe dug into the banks of the Bella Bella.

The strong beam from the light on the front of his cab illuminated the ice and muck and stones as the shovel dug in.

Reine-Marie held her phone in her mittened hand. They had, away from the forests and on the clear, crisp night, a fragile signal. That came and went. But was at least there. For now.

Jean-Guy was beside the river, and Armand stood on the running board, guiding the digging of the trench. While Reine-Marie listened for reports back from Three Pines.

They’d left Clara and Myrna on the bridge. The river was now up to the second sandbag.