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By 12:30, the parking lot at the House of Pancakes was almost full. One more vehicle wouldn’t be noticed. He moved his car from the side street, found an inconspicuous spot that gave him a good view of the post office, and settled in to wait. Periodically, he turned on the engine to get warm. A little after two, he went in for lunch. Snow started falling again. While he stalled over a hamburger, fries, and coleslaw, he prayed the weather wouldn’t become so bad that he couldn’t see the parking lot. Unable to put off going to the rest room, he did so as quickly as possible, afraid that Tash would pick up her mail while he was away. Returning to his table, he was tortured by the misgiving that he had failed to see her. At ten after four, standing to pay his bill, he needed all his self-control not to reveal his excitement when he saw Walt getting out of his Mountaineer over there.

“This ought to cover it,” he told his waitress. “Keep the change.”

“That’s very generous.”

“I guess I’m still in the Christmas spirit.”

Outside, seeing Walt go into the post office, Coltrane raced through flurries to get to his car before Walt came out and drove away. He slipped on a patch of ice, struggled to keep his balance, and barely avoided a pickup truck that drove from the restaurant. Breathing rapidly, the cold air burning his throat, he unlocked his car, hurried in, and started it. He was troubled by how much his hands were shaking. Then he concentrated on Walt coming out of the post office, his mustached square face sullen, his gloved hands empty, his trip apparently fruitless.

But not mine, Coltrane thought. He let Walt get a half-block lead, three vehicles between them, before he pulled out to follow. Does Walt know my car? He saw it the night I first met Tash, but in the dark, he didn’t get a good look at it, and anyway, it’s different now — it’s covered with snow.

Two of the cars took side streets. Then Big Bear’s outskirts merged into postcard scenery, Walt’s car, the car in the middle, and Coltrane’s car proceeding along a partially cleared road that paralleled, on the left, the ice-rimmed, pine tree–bordered lake. Making Coltrane nervous, the flurries thickened. Dark clouds hung lower, obscuring the peaks. Ahead, Walt switched on his lights. So did the driver in the middle. Wanting to be invisible, Coltrane resisted. Then, slowing, its signal light flashing, the middle car turned to the right onto a plowed driveway that led to a cabin, and Coltrane found himself fifty yards behind Walt’s Mountaineer.

He dropped back farther, hoping that the increasingly difficult driving conditions would make his sluggish pace seem appropriate. But Walt slowed also. Don’t tell me he figured out who’s behind him, Coltrane thought in alarm. Walt slowed more. Jesus. Then Walt’s right signal light flashed, and the Mountaineer headed up a road. At first there were cottages, then only snow-laden pine trees. After a quarter mile, Walt steered to the left up a lane. By the time Coltrane reached the turnoff, the Mountaineer had disappeared.

He eased to a stop and stared out his driver’s window toward the tracks leading up the lane, toward the curtain of snowflakes that prevented him from seeing past the trees. Is this where Walt was headed, or did he notice me and he’s trying to lead me where there’ll be only the two of us?

The falling snow made a hissing sound, beginning to fill the tracks. So what’s it going to be? Coltrane brooded. If I wait too long, there won’t be any tracks to follow. He shut off the car, put on his hat, gloves, and scarf, adjusted the neck strap on his camera so that the camera was under his ski jacket, then zipped up the jacket and got out of the car.

The cold had deepened. It didn’t matter. Finding Tash mattered. Getting answers mattered. He followed the tracks along the tree-flanked road. The snow came up to his ankles, an inch away from the top of his thick leather hiking boots. The increasingly heavy flakes brushed against his eyelids, making him blink repeatedly. Wary, he studied the drift-covered undergrowth on each side in case Walt might be hiding there. Then the road reached a Y; the tracks headed to the right, and Coltrane followed them nervously.

Except for the hiss of the snow and the muffled tread of his footsteps, the late afternoon was totally silent. Dusk thickened. He went another fifty paces before he lurched to a stop, a huge shadow towering over him, lights punctuating it. This isn’t a road, he realized with a start. I’m on a driveway. I’ve reached a house.

A CABIN, he corrected himself, although it certainly looked as sizable as a house: two stories, a roofed porch, a massive chimney. He barely took in these details before he ducked off the driveway into the cover of the pine trees and waited uneasily for any indication that he had been spotted. After a minute passed and the only sound was the intensifying hiss of the falling snow, he slowly rose and took a harder look at the cabin, or as much of it as he could see through the snowfall. The cabin’s base was built from huge rocks held together by concrete. Mortared logs formed the rest of the structure, except for the chimney, and two others that now became apparent, all made from the same huge stones along the cabin’s base. Solid, substantial.

Keeping to the trees, he eased along the edge of the clearing, all the while studying the cabin. The porch continued along the right side. A small balcony projected from the second story. The roof was sharply peaked. A small structure to the side had tire tracks leading into it.

I’m still too exposed, he thought. Even with the snow falling, if I can see the cabin, someone inside can see
me
.

So what? Now that you’ve found Tash, what difference does it make if you’re seen? Go up on the porch and pound on the front door. Demand to know what’s going on.

But I don’t know for certain Tash is in there. Just because I saw Walt go into the post office, that doesn’t mean he has the same PO box she does. She might be staying in town or at another cabin. If I barge in on Walt and he’s all by himself, what’s
that
going to look like?

A shadow moved beyond a window, prompting Coltrane to tense. He backed deeper into the forest and relaxed only when the falling snow prevented him from seeing the cabin. The time was a little before five. Dusk, intensified by the weather, became more pronounced. It would soon be dark. The thing to do is find a place to hole up and wait, he thought. It’s not like I haven’t been in snow in the mountains before.

Sure, in Bosnia.

The thought startled him. Where the hell did
that
come from? Pushing it away, he glanced around and saw a wooded slope behind him. From its top, he would have a vantage point on the cabin as soon as the weather lifted. A drift spilled over the tops of his hiking boots, but his wool socks kept most of it from chilling his ankles. Breathing rapidly from the unaccustomed altitude, he arrived on the bluff, assumed he was in line with the unseen cabin, and took shelter beneath the snow-laden boughs of a fir tree. Its limbs were bent over him in a tent shape.

Again, he had the feeling that he’d done this before.

In Bosnia.

I haven’t come far, he dismally thought.

AT SIX, the weather moved on. Stars glistened. Moonlight sparkled off drifts, as did lights from the cabin, now visible below him. His cold-pinched nostrils were pinched even more by the smell of smoke that drifted from the biggest chimney. It was the only imperfection in the Norman Rockwell homeyness of what he saw.

Muscles compacting, he noticed someone move beyond the lamp glow in a window down there. Even though he was confident that the illumination in the house would make the windows like mirrors and prevent anyone from seeing him in the night-cloaked forest, he reflexively crouched behind a fir-tree branch, peering cautiously over its snow-covered needles. At a distance of what he judged to be a hundred yards, he couldn’t make out who was at the window, so he hurriedly unzipped his ski jacket, pulled out his camera, and rezipped the jacket against the cold that attacked his chest. He fumbled with a gloved hand to remove the camera’s lens cap, pocketing it. He peered through the viewfinder and simultaneously held his breath so that frost from his mouth wouldn’t waft up and cloud his vision. Then he zoomed in on the window, adjusted the focus, and felt his chest turn cold again when he saw Walt facing the window, looking down at something, making a stirring motion.

Walt wore a red checked shirt. The magnification of the camera wasn’t strong enough to reveal the slight scar above his right eyebrow, but the sand color of his mustache was readily discernible. Walt turned to his right, Coltrane’s left, and spoke to someone. With the zoom lens at its maximum, Coltrane concentrated on Walt’s lips but couldn’t read them. Someone came into view at a sliding glass door farther to the left. Coltrane aimed the camera in that direction, and if he hadn’t already held his breath to avoid clouding the viewfinder, he would have done so now, for what he saw made his soul ache.

Wearing jeans and a gray rag-wool sweater that accentuated her lush hair hanging loosely, framing her heartbreakingly beautiful features, Tash had both hands gripped around a coffee mug. Coltrane so projected himself within her that his hands could feel the heat from the mug. She looked out at the snow-covered porch, then turned to speak to Walt, who moved toward her, his imposing body close to her. She was tall, but he was taller. He placed his large hands on her shoulders in a gesture of domination. She returned his stare.

He kissed her.

Coltrane flinched, almost charged from cover, almost raced toward the porch. But shock overwhelmed him. He heard a click and whir, and discovered that he had taken a photograph. What am I seeing? he thought. Walt’s hands remained on her shoulders. She made no effort to set down the coffee cup and embrace him. She didn’t move her head to avoid his kiss, but she didn’t accept it, either.

Walt studied her. He asked her a question. Whether Tash’s response was one of rejection or affection, Coltrane couldn’t tell.

I need to get closer. Not caring whether his tracks would be seen in the morning, Coltrane responded to his sense of urgency and headed down the slope. Failing to look down, he stumbled over a snow-covered log and barely managed not to fall. With a lurch that jarred him, he came to the bottom half-running and strained to avoid tree limbs he scraped past. Frantic, he took slower steps and at last came to a stop, alarmed by how forceful his breathing was, how fierce his heartbeat.

In the trees at the edge of the clearing, he was only a hundred feet from the cabin. He didn’t need his zoom lens to see Tash and Walt beyond the sliding glass door. Walt continued to grip her shoulders. Tash continued to stare up at him.

Then Walt kissed her again, and this time, Tash set the mug on a table, raised both hands, and kissed him back. She held him tightly, receiving, giving, and Coltrane heard another click and whir as he took a second photograph. Then he heard something else — an unwilled sound that came from his throat, as if he was being choked.

STUNNED, he sank into a drift. With his back against the rough bark of a pine tree, he hugged himself but couldn’t subdue the spasms shaking him. This can’t be happening, he thought. He shook his head insistently from side to side. From where he was slumped, he could still see the sliding glass door, see them kissing. Walt’s hands were under Tash’s sweater. Her mouth was pressed against his. She fumbled at his belt, and Coltrane screamed.

Before he knew it, he was on his feet, surging from the trees. He raced across the clearing and charged onto the hollow-sounding wooden porch, seeing the startled look on their faces when he yanked at the sliding glass door. His shoulder felt a shock of pain as the door held firm.

“I want to talk to you!”

Tash stumbled back.

Walt lunged toward something on the right.

“You told me I meant something to you!” Coltrane yelled.

His belt still dangling, Walt reappeared, jabbed at the lock, and shoved the door open.

Coltrane tried to veer past him. “
Why did you lie to me
?”

Walt struck him.

Coltrane lurched back. Ignoring his bleeding mouth, the same spot where Nolan had struck him in Mexico, he again tried to get to Tash. “
Why did you make me think you loved me
?”

Walt knocked him off the porch. But the moment Coltrane landed in a drift, he scurried to try to stand, only to lose all power of movement when he saw the revolver six inches from his face, aimed between his eyes.

“I could blow your head off.” Walt’s breathing was hoarse.

“
Why did you lead me on
?” Coltrane screamed at Tash.

“With your history. With the two men you’ve already killed,” Walt said.

“What?”

“Peeking through windows, taking pictures. Stalking a law-enforcement officer, trying to break into my home. There isn’t a grand jury anywhere that would blame me for defending myself.”

Tash backed away in fright.

“Especially if I put an unregistered pistol in your hand,” Walt said, “and squeezed a shot through that glass door, so you’d have powder residue on your glove and there’d be no doubt about your intentions. So go ahead. Try to get past me. Give me a reason to pull this trigger.”

“
Why did you lie to me
?”

“You just don’t pay attention,” Walt said.

The gunshot was deafening. The heat of the bullet sped past the left side of Coltrane’s head, singeing his hair. He didn’t hear the impact of the bullet behind him. Couldn’t. Could hardly hear Walt shout in his face, “Get out of here! Before I think twice and aim where I should have! If I ever see you around here again, if I ever see you
anywhere
—”

Walt fired again, this time to the right side of Coltrane’s head, and the agony of the assault on Coltrane’s ears made him clutch them and fall back, writhing in the snow. Walt pulled Coltrane’s hands away and grabbed his camera strap, yanking the camera over Coltrane’s head, hurling it against the side of the cabin, smashing it. He dragged Coltrane to his feet and shoved him across the clearing, thrusting him out of the driveway and onto the road, where Coltrane fell in a daze, gripping his ears again, unable to stop the torturous disabling roar in them.