She clings to the tree, her eyes tight shut, her face wet with tears. It no longer matters if anyone heard her strangled scream. In her mind’s eye, she sees him jump from the end of the dock to the boat, sees the boat shoot out onto the water to the end of its rope. The end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat, the end of the dock, the boat. He escapes and doesn’t escape. He is gone forever and never leaves. He only passes from one state of being to another. A floating brother in a dark floating world.

The ATV returns, and the noise passing under her perch brings Kitty back. Shakily, she wipes her face, slick with tears and snot. She sniffs and raises herself to a sitting position, straddling the branch. What now?

She shinnies down the tree, scraping her arms and legs, liking the pain of it — good, clean pain. Distracting her from the pain inside. So much for her brand-new threads, her cute little gaucho jacket.

There is a window of opportunity here that might not come again. She races up the road, now deep in shadows. She reaches the Jeep and curses the beep it makes when she unlocks it. She climbs in and sits behind the wheel out of breath.

But what is she to do?

The police? After she and Blink left Sharbot Lake, they passed through nothing but a village or two. Settlements. Sharbot Lake itself wasn’t all that large. The man at the Petro-Can had been friendly; she could ask him where the nearest police station is.

And yet. . .

There is something wrong with the idea. And foremost of what is wrong is the idea of the police. She has spent the last seven months on the other side of the law. She has become the kind of person who crosses the road to avoid passing a cop on the beat. She has been a person whose eccentric pink Little Mermaid backpack has often contained restricted substances. The police, she has come to think, are not her friends.

She shakes this off. She is not on the wrong side of the law right now. She has nothing on her and nothing to hide. She has no record. And she has witnessed a crime — seen it with her own eyes. Those men did not give Blink a talking-to for trespassing. She could convince the cops of what she had seen, she’s sure of it.

But. . .

Even if they came, even if they took her seriously, it would be hours before they got back to this place, and what would they find? A trio of guys at a hunting lodge. That’s what. There would be no trace of Blink. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, there would be time enough to stuff him in some closet somewhere once they saw the cruiser entering the clearing. Or stuff him in a grave, for that matter.

No. It wouldn’t be a trio of hunters the cops would find. The businessman . . . what was his name? Niven, Jack Niven would make himself scarce, since his face would be too well known. So he would hide, and no matter what she tried to tell the cops, they’d look at her as if she was delusional or a troublemaker or some hopeless freak trying to get her face in the newspapers.

As she sits there in the Jeep, her thoughts become clearer and clearer, and she realizes that even if she were able to convince the cops to come, there would be no one here by the time they arrived. They would find a boarded-up lodge, with no recent signs of habitation. Jack and his men would have split. They’d have had all the time in the world.

And finally Kitty realizes that at this very minute, those men may be torturing Blink to find out where the key to the Jeep got to. They could be screaming up that road anytime now — and not in an ATV, but in the van she saw parked behind the outbuildings. She could take off now, but they could be on her tail in minutes, and there was nowhere to go on 509 but south again — not if she was trying to go for help. She has no idea where the two-lane goes as it meanders north. Somewhere called Ompah. And beyond that? It is essentially a deserted road. They passed little more than a handful of vehicles in the forty-five minutes they drove after leaving Highway 7. Two of those were logging trucks. And there she would be tootling along in a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler — not exactly camouflaged.

So she will stay.

She sniffs, wipes her face again, pinches her cheeks. Of course she has to stay. Burned into her brain is that image of Blink jumping from the dock to the boat. Blink, not Spencer. She cannot rescue Spencer. But she can rescue Blink. If it’s the last thing she ever does.

So she must watch and wait. She climbs out of the car into the coolness of the evening. Somewhere far off she hears the drone of a truck changing gears on a long hill. All around her are the sounds of the bush at night. These are not alien sounds to her. She has no fear of this. She locks the car, pockets the key.

She heads back down the road. It is just light enough that she would see someone approaching. She will need all her hunting smarts. What was it Spence had taught her about moose hunting? You don’t look for moose; you look for something that doesn’t look right.

She must keep her eyes and, more important, her ears alert for something that doesn’t seem right.

None of it seems right, really. She thinks back to the discussion she’d had with Blink about purgatory. Not just a place but a state of mind. And as she walks down the road toward where it ends at the lake, she realizes that this is purgatory’s end.

There is a low rumble of thunder.