“You were meant to be here, so here you are.”

“Sure feels like it.” He kissed the top of her head. “I guess I’m going to have to get serious about furniture. Nothing down here’s worthy of the painting.”

“You’re right. Start by getting rid of that ugly couch.”

He felt a little pang for the memories made on that ugly couch. The naps taken, the sports watched, the girls he’d gotten naked.

Then he looked up at the painting, and thought of memories yet to come.

*

The island didn’t have an actual furniture store, but it did offer a kind of flea market antiquey sort of place. He found some things there, and at the single year-round gift shop he liked, used the Internet for more.

He tried not to think too much about the seeping wounds on his credit card.

Still, the island shopping served the dual purpose of public relations. And trading a six-pack for help hauling, assembling, placing the furniture with Cecil gave him the opportunity to get to know the deputy better.

For instance, he learned Cecil had a more experienced hand with tools. The man wasn’t fast, but he was tireless.

Together, they stood back and studied the bed—Reed’s first purchase, because he definitely wanted the girl of his dreams in it. He’d even gone for a new mattress set.

“That’s a nice bed, Chief.”

“You think? Yeah, it works.”

Simple, he thought, but not so basic it looked like he didn’t give a damn. He liked the vertical slats, the low footboard that wouldn’t get in his way, the faded charcoal color.

“You wanna put the sheets and stuff on it?”

“I’ll deal with that later. Let’s get the rest loaded in. I appreciate it, Cecil.”

“Hell, I don’t mind. I like putting things together. And it’s a cool house.”

By the time he passed Cecil the beer, he had a furnished bedroom, a new couch, a second bed—queen-size, as ordered—set up in the guest room along with nightstands and lamps. Not too matchy, he hoped.

Exhausted, he flopped down on his new bed, sans sheets. Considered, bounced a little.

How the hell had he slept on that old piece of shit mattress all this time? He thought about reaching for the beer on his new nightstand—on a coaster, he wasn’t a fool. Thought about it again.

And drifted right off.

He dreamed of drills and hammers, screws and screwdrivers. Not so surprisingly, that slid into a rather stupendous sex dream starring Simone.

In the dream, his new headboard banged against the wall as Simone locked her legs around his waist.

He woke hard as iron, a little breathless. And realized the banging didn’t stop.

“Shit, fuck, damn.” He shoved up, did his best to adjust himself. “Down, boy,” he muttered and started downstairs.

The burly deliveryman had been there before.

“Sorry, I was upstairs.”

“You got another one.” The driver held out his tablet for Reed to sign.

“You know, if I don’t answer or I’m not here, you can just leave stuff.”

“You gotta say so, in writing.”

“Okay. I’ll do that.”

The driver hulked back to his truck, leaving Reed with a big, ridiculously heavy box on his doorstep.

He hauled it in, pulled out his pocketknife to cut the seal.

“Dishes. Oh yeah, I bought dishes.”

White, he remembered, because once he’d started looking, all the colors and patterns made his head hurt. White was easy.

Except now he had to unload them, and he probably had to wash them, which meant loading the dishwasher, then unloading it again, then putting them away.

The idea made him long for another nap.

Plus he still had to put sheets on the bed, and he hadn’t unpacked the new towels. Did he have to wash those, too?

How the hell was he supposed to know?

No point calling to ask his mother because she’d just say yes right straight off. He just knew it.

“It can wait,” he decided, going back up for his beer. Not altogether warm, he told himself, taking it into the shower.

But the dishes, and towels, the every damn thing nagged at him until he gave up.

He dressed, loaded dishes in the dishwasher, towels in the washing machine. He reminded himself he had a flat-screen coming. Two, in fact, as he’d ordered one for the master. The one downstairs wouldn’t go above the fireplace as he’d imagined because he had the magic painting. But he had other walls.

And he had a full week before he took over as chief.

He’d get it done.

He went up to put sheets on the bed—also new (had he lost his mind?). His mother would, undoubtedly, claim they needed washing first, but to hell with it. He couldn’t do everything.

He’d gotten a duvet in a color called indigo—mainly because that’s what they’d shown on the bed in the picture, and it seemed good enough. It came with shams, which seemed like a lot of fuss and bother, but he finished it up.

He didn’t have it in him to go out for food, so went with the reliable frozen pizza.

He switched beer for Coke, carted his dinner up to his office.

He sat, eating pizza, studying his boards.

“Where are you, Patricia, you murdering bitch? I bet it’s warm where you are.”

He shifted his gaze to his targets board, to the group he’d separated out. One in Savannah, another in Atlanta, one in Fort Lauderdale, another in Coral Gables.

Add the kid who’d joined the navy and was currently stationed in San Diego, and the woman who’d moved to Phoenix with her husband and daughter.

“Which one? Where are you hiding now?”

*

Patricia, currently Ellyn Bostwick, had a pretty little vacation bungalow in Coral Gables.

Every day she went out with a camera, a wide-brimmed hat, and a backpack. She put on her disguise, had friendly conversations with the neighbors. She was, she told them, a freelance photographer taking three months to do her own photography book of the area.

She cheerfully took shots of the brats next door for their idiot mother. She printed them out, even framed them.

Recently divorced, she told her neighbors, she’d wanted to take some time on her own, and time away from the cold and crowds of Chicago.

Emily Devlon (née Frank) had been eighteen on the night of the DownEast Mall massacre. She’d been coming back from her break from her summer job at Orange Julius when the war broke out.

She knew gunfire when she heard it—her father was a cop—and started to sprint away from the sound. But then it came from both directions.

She knew what to do, even as panic spun through her. You find a hole, and you hide. She aimed for the closest store, ramming through the rush of people. A woman fell in front of her; she nearly tripped over her. Moving fast, Emily had grabbed the woman under the arms—old, frail, moaning—and dragged her into the store.

Glass exploded; they both suffered cuts, but Emily managed to pull the woman behind an entry display of summer tops and sweaters.

A clerk ran by her, eyes wheeling. In her head Emily screamed: Don’t, don’t.

She closed her eyes at the sound of the scream, the thud of a body.

She held on to the old woman, who’d live another eight years before she died of natural causes. She left Emily a hundred thousand dollars in her will.

Emily, now a wife and mother, used part of her inheritance to buy a house in a pretty community far away from Maine winters and bad memories.

She would live longer than the woman she’d saved, but her clock was ticking down.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Reed dressed for his first day as chief. He had a uniform—khaki shirt and pants, even a billed hat—but chose jeans and a light blue shirt. He’d pull out the uniform for special occasions, but—snagging one of his grandmother’s sayings—he’d begin as he meant to go on.

He pulled on boots—not new, not too beat-up—and, since March blew brisk, a leather jacket he’d had for about a decade.

He clipped his service weapon to his belt.

He opted to walk the three-quarters of a mile to the village. Reduce the carbon footprint, he thought, and as chief he had a car available at the station.

The walk gave him time to take some stock. He wasn’t nervous. He’d lived on the island for nearly three months now, had felt its pulse. Plenty of the 1,863 islanders—ages from seven months to eighty-eight—hadn’t figured he’d last the winter.

But he had.

Some of them calculated he wouldn’t finish out the summer as chief.

But he would.

He didn’t just like his life here, it was his life.

He had a separate mission, and he’d work the Hobart case until the crazy bitch heard the door slam on her cell; but his priority now, from today on, had to be the island.

He spotted a couple of deer in what he thought of as his woods, took that as a positive sign. Snowmelt made the ground soft under his feet, and the white stuff lay in pools and patches. They weren’t done with it, at least according to the old guys who hung out at the Sunrise, drinking coffee, playing cards, and bullshitting in the afternoons.

Their consensus called for one more good nor’easter to blow winter out into spring.