"Not that I can think of. But I'll tell you something, Noah. If the man you're looking for is smart enough to shoot two people from a distance and disappear, he's not walking into a gun shop and buying the murder weapon over the counter. He's got it already. Probably had it for years. Something he knows inside and out. Something he trusts."
Noah nodded. Gus was right. The shooter's weapon wasn't new. It was personal. A rifle he had fired thousands of times, maintained with care, and carried into the mountains like an extension of himself.
"Keep your ears open for me," Noah said.
"Always do. And Noah?" Gus straightened up behind the counter. "Be careful out there. Whoever this is, he's not the kind of man who makes mistakes. That makes him the kind of man you don't want to underestimate."
Noah thanked him and walked out into the late afternoon. The parking lot was empty except for the Bronco and a pickup with a dog crate in the bed. Across the road, the mountains were losing their color as the light dropped.
His phone buzzed. It was Callie.
"Anything gained from the military records?" Noah asked.
“Still processing. McKenzie and Declan are working through hundreds of names in the region over the last fifteen years. We've started narrowing by proximity and firearms ownership but it's slow."
"Any of them stand out?"
"Not yet. Most are clean. A few have hunting violations or minor charges but nothing that ties to the profile. It's going to take time."
Time. The word had become the currency of this investigation. Every conversation ended with it. Every update was measured against it. The town was buying guns and locking doors and looking at ridgelines while the task force processed lists of names that might or might not include the man who had already killed twice.
"How's the cross-reference going?" he asked.
"I'm down to eleven overlapping cases. Eliminated nine more today. Most are dead ends. A few I need to dig deeper on."
"Anything interesting?"
She paused. "Not yet. I'll let you know."
They hung up.
Noah drove home through the early dusk, the mountains darkening against a sky that held the last amber light.
He passed a house on Route 86 with a fresh FOR SALE sign staked into the ground. Another two doors down had one too. A third had a moving truck backed into the driveway, a man hauling boxes like he didn't plan on coming back.
Noah slowed. Panic hadn’t set in. Not yet. But the town was reacting before they had answers.
Gus was right. The shooter already had the rifle. Ed was right too. He wasn't done using it. Noah tightened his grip on the wheel.
16
The fishing line went slack.
Michael Torres had been watching it for twenty minutes, the thin monofilament cutting across the surface of Hollow Pond in a gentle arc, catching the late-afternoon light. The water was still. The dock was warm beneath his chair. His tackle box sat open beside him, lures arranged by size the way he always arranged them, and a thermos of coffee steamed near his feet. He came here most Tuesdays. The property belonged to a client who traveled in the fall and didn't mind if Torres used the dock as long as he locked the gate behind him.
It was the kind of afternoon that made you forget things. The sky was clear, the mountains were reflected in the lake, and the only sound was the occasional slap of a fish breaking the surface thirty yards out. Torres leaned back in his chair and let the rod rest against his knee.
His phone sat on the armrest beside him. He had been scrolling through the news earlier, between casts, reading about the sniper investigation the way everyone in the county had beenreading about it. Both names he knew. Both names had crossed his desk at one point or another during his years as a deputy.
He picked up the phone. He wasn't sure who he was going to call. Maybe the Sheriff's Office. Maybe nobody. The thought was still forming, still taking shape, still half a feeling and half a?—
The fishing rod jerked out of his hands.
He didn't hear the shot. He didn't feel himself fall forward. The thermos tipped and rolled off the dock into the water. The tackle box stayed open, lures glinting in the sun. The phone landed face down on the wood, the screen still lit.
The lake settled.
The rod floated for a moment, then sank.
