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Armand threw out his arm, as a father did to instinctively protect a child in the passenger seat, when something unexpected happened.

They froze.

Vincent Gilbert stepped onto the small porch and looked around. He held something in his hands. Something long and metallic.

At the small sound of a pocket beginning to unzip, his eyes swung around and landed on Gamache.

Armand stood up and faced Gilbert.

“What’re you doing in there, Vincent?” he asked.

“What’re you doing out there, Armand?”

The Sûreté officers followed Vincent Gilbert into the cabin.

Gamache saw Jean-Guy’s hand on his still sealed pocket and made a small gesture.

Not yet.

Isabelle was the only one who hadn’t been in the Asshole Saint’s home before. She quickly took in the single room.

A brass bed, separated from the rest of the cabin by bookcases, was at one end. A small kitchen with worn wooden counters and an old pine table was at the other. And in between was a sitting area around a woodstove, which Gilbert was now tending with the poker he’d been carrying.

The cabin was warm and smelled of sweet pine and herbs. It smelled of the forest. As though the log walls were an illusion. Like so much else about this case.

Propane lanterns had been lit, and a coffeepot was perking on the woodstove.

It would have been a perfect domestic scene, if not for the rifle on the coffee table among the mugs, the cream jug, and the sugar bowl. Like a still life in Appalachia.

Two oversized armchairs were in front of the fire. One for solitude. Two for friendship.

Neither Henry David Thoreau nor Vincent Gilbert had anticipated so much society. Nor could the two people who’d been in the chairs be considered friends.

“May I?” Gamache asked, stepping forward and pointing to the rifle.

“Perhaps not,” said Gilbert, sitting back down, still holding the poker. “As you know, I have a license for it.”

“True, but you’re not licensed to point it at people.”

“It’s just sitting on the table, Armand. Not doing any harm.”

Not yet.

“Are you all right?” Lacoste asked Abigail.

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?” asked Gilbert.

Isabelle looked from Gilbert to Abigail. She couldn’t make out who was the hostage and who was the taker. And she could see that Gamache and Beauvoir were having the same difficulty.

While Gilbert held, gripped really, the poker, the rifle was actually closer to Abigail.

“We were just talking,” said Abigail. “Two scientists comparing notes. But looks like the time has come for some sort of conclusion, don’t you think, Dr. Gilbert?”

“I do, Professor Robinson. Armand, you look worried.”

In fact, he was hyper-alert. Trying to fathom what was going on.