Then he looked away. Then he looked back.
Noah started moving. He kept his pace steady, threading through the crowd, angling toward the boat launch. He stepped around a woman holding a sleeping child. Sidestepped a cluster of teenagers. Kept his eyes on the hood.
The man turned and walked away. Not toward the tree line. Toward the street. He moved through the thinning edge of the crowd and onto the sidewalk that ran along Lakeview Drive, heading away from the park toward the residential blocks south of the lake. His pace was unhurried.
Noah pushed through the last of the crowd and hit the sidewalk. The man was fifty yards ahead, passing under a streetlight, the hood still up. Then the streetlight ended and he was in shadow between two houses.
Noah broke into a jog.
The man heard it. His head turned. For one second he was a silhouette against the glow of a porch light.
Then he ran. Fast. Faster than Noah expected.
The man cut between two houses, vanishing off the sidewalk into a side yard. Noah followed, his shoes hitting grass, then gravel, then grass again. A motion-sensor floodlight exploded to life on the side of a garage, blinding him for a half second. He shielded his eyes and kept moving through the gap between the garage and a wooden fence. Somewhere ahead he could hear footsteps on hard ground, quick and steady.
He came out into a backyard. It was dark. Before him was a swing set. A garden shed. There was no movement. He drew his Glock and held it low, scanning left and right. His breathing was loud. He forced it down.
A dog started barking from inside the house to his left. Deep, aggressive, throwing itself against the door. The sound split the quiet and a light came on upstairs. Noah moved past the swing set toward the back fence. The yard was deep, maybe sixty feet, bordered by a six-foot privacy fence with forest pressing up against the other side.
He stopped and listened.
He could hear nothing but the dog and the wind and his own pulse.
Noah moved along the fence line, Glock up, checking corners. The floodlight from the garage didn't reach back here. The only light was a neighbor's porch lamp filtered through the trees, throwing long shadows across the grass. The swing set chain clinked in the breeze.
The dog was barking at something to his right. A thick maple stood at the corner of the yard where the fence met the tree line. Noah turned toward it, moving slowly, his eyes on the base of the trunk, the fence, the ground.
And then it happened.
The impact came from above.
The guy dropped out of the branches and slammed into him with enough force to drive him into the ground. His firearm flew from his hand. His chin hit the grass and his vision blurred. Hands grabbed the back of his jacket and shoved him flat.
Noah twisted, throwing an elbow. It connected with something solid. The weight shifted. He rolled and got a hand on the man's collar. Close enough to smell earth and sweat and cold air. Close enough to feel the hood brush against his face. The man wrenched free, tearing fabric, and scrambled to his feet.
Noah lunged from the ground and grabbed an ankle. The man kicked, hard, connecting with Noah's shoulder, and broke away.
"Police! Stop!"
The man was already at the fence. He hit it at full stride, hands on the top rail, and vaulted over in one fluid motion. He’d done it before. He dropped to the other side and Noah heard his feet hit dirt, then the crack of branches as he pushed into the forest.
Noah grabbed his gun from the grass and ran to the fence. He pulled himself up and looked over. The tree line was dark. Dense. The sound of the guy moving was already fading, heading deeper into the woods as if he knew exactly where he was going.
Noah dropped back into the yard. The dog was still barking. The upstairs light was still on. A face appeared at a window, a woman in a bathrobe, looking down at a man standing in her backyard with a gun.
Noah holstered his weapon and held up his badge. “State Police. Everything's under control, ma'am."
She disappeared. The dog kept barking.
He stood in the yard and listened to the forest. The footsteps were gone. The trees were silent. Whoever had been in that maple had waited there while Noah walked directly beneath him, choosing the exact moment to strike.
He showed no signs of panic—only training.
Noah walked back through the yards and the side streets to the lakefront. He ran a hand around his neck. His shoulder ached where the kick had landed. His chin was raw from the grass. His Glock had dirt in the grip texture. The collar of his jacket was torn where the man had grabbed it.
By now the vigil was winding down. Candles were being extinguished. Families were loading into cars. The photographs of Maggie and Burt were still illuminated on the platform.
Callie found him at the edge of the parking area. She took one look at the grass stains on his shirt and the raw skin on his chin.
