"You think it's Hollis?"
"She dates him."
"But would she be that reckless?"
"With all the attention Bridger's gotten, people are looking everywhere but at her. Eventually Hollis had to put his head up for air. Maybe she's supplying him with food." Noah was already moving toward the door. "Let's go."
"But what about Seraphine?"
“That will have to wait," Noah said, pushing through the door. The bell chimed behind them and the studio was empty again.
The property satat the end of a dirt road north of Jay where the forest thickened and the houses thinned to nothing. A plainclothes officer was parked in an unmarked sedan at the junction where the dirt road met the county route, his window down, a coffee balanced on the dashboard.
Noah pulled alongside him. "What have we got?"
"Her vehicle's up there." The officer pointed along the dirt road. "Quarter mile in. She arrived around eleven last night and hasn't left. There's a structure up there, some kind of cabin and outbuilding."
"Anyone else?"
"I saw a second vehicle through the trees when I did a drive-by this morning. Couldn't make out the plate."
"All right," Noah said. "We'll take it from here."
They drove in slowly. The dirt road was rutted and narrow, branches scraping both sides of the Bronco. The trees were dense enough that the afternoon light came through in fragments. After two hundred yards the road opened into a clearing. A cabin sat at the center, a single-story, log-sided, seasonal structure that hunting clubs built in the sixties, now settling into the ground. Tabitha's car was parked to the left. A dark pickup sat beside it, mud on the wheel wells, a tarp thrown over the bed.
Noah killed the engine. They got out. The clearing was quiet except for birds and the distant sound of water moving somewhere through the trees. No movement from the cabin. Curtains were drawn across the two front windows. A thin line of smoke rose from a stovepipe at the rear.
Noah drew his weapon and approached the door. Callie moved to the right side, covering the corner. He knocked hard.
"Tabitha. State Police. Open up. We know you're here."
Silence. Then footsteps. The door opened and Tabitha stepped out onto the narrow porch, pulling the door closed behind her. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt and her hair was down, the headscarf absent for the first time Noah had seen. She folded her arms and looked at them with the same composed patience she'd carried through every encounter. She had decided long ago that authority was something to be endured, not obeyed.
"Whose place is this?" Noah asked.
"It's one of our Three Pillar properties."
"You in the habit of coming here?"
"Often."
"See, that's odd. Because this is the first time you've been here since we started watching."
Something changed behind her eyes. A calculation. Noah saw it happen and then he heard it. From inside the cabin, a sound. Something dropped. A thud against the floor, followed by the scrape of furniture being moved.
Tabitha heard it too. She knew he heard it.
"Who's in there with you?"
"No one. I'm alone."
"Bullshit," Noah said, and shoved past her through the door.
The cabin was a single room. There was a woodstove, a cot against the far wall, a table with food on it, cans and bread and a water jug. The back window was open. The curtains blowing inward. And beyond it, a figure was running, moving fast, heading for the pickup.
"He's gone out the back!" Noah shouted. He climbed through the back window and hit the ground running. Behind him he heard a scuffle on the porch and then footsteps coming fastaround the side of the cabin. Derek Hollis had fifty yards on him and was cutting left toward the pickup, which was parked at the far side of the cabin near the tree line.
Noah angled to cut him off but the ground was soft and uneven and his boot caught a root and he stumbled, losing three steps.
