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picking at the ground beside a wood lily.
    “I know, I know.”
    “I’m practically there. I can see the house.”
    “You moved fast.”
    “Well, it was a nine-one-one, remember.”
    “I’m giving you a whole day off.”
    And when would she have time for that? She exhaled long. “At least you’re buying me dinner out tonight. And not Burger King. I want Chili’s or Bennigan’s.”
    “Not a single bit of problem. Enjoy it.”
    “’Night, Tom.”
    Brynn called Graham but got his voice mail. It rang four times before it switched over. She left a message saying the call was a false alarm. She hung up. Tried again. This time it went right to voice mail. She didn’t leave another message. Was he out?
    Your poker game?
    It’ll keep….
    Thinking of the false alarm, though, Brynn wasn’t wholly upset. She was going to take an advanced course next week in domestic violence negotiations and could use her dinner break tonight to make some headway in the course manual she’d just received. If she’d been home she wouldn’t have been able to crack the book until bedtime.
    She also had to admit that she wouldn’t mind a bit of a break from evenings with Anna, especially if a run to Rita’s was scheduled. It was odd having Anna back in the house after so many years of mutual independence. Emotions from years past surfaced. Like that night last week when her mother had shot a look her way after Brynn returned late from a shift; the tension was identical to that when, as a teenager, she’d lost herself in steeple-jumping and had come home hours after she’d promised. No fight, no lectures. Just a simple, burdened look beneath an unflappable smile.
    They’d never fought. Anna wasn’t temperamental or moody. She was a perfect grandmother, which counted for a lot to Brynn. But mother and daughter had never been chummy, and during Brynn’s first marriage Anna largely faded from her life, emerging only after Joey was born.
    Now divorced and with a man whom Brynn believed Anna approved of, they’d reconnected. At one point, a year ago, Brynn had wondered if mother and daughter would finally grow close. But that hadn’t happened. They were, after all, the same people they’d been twenty years ago, and, unlike her siblings, Brynn had never had much in common with her mother. Brynn had always spent her life riding, pushing, looking for something outside Eau Claire. Anna’s had been spent working unchallenging jobs—mostly four hours a day as a real estate office manager—and raising her three children. Evenings were invariably knitting, chatting and TV.
    Perfectly fine for relations living apart. But when Anna moved in, after her surgery, it was like Brynn had been transported back to those days of her youth.
    Oh, yes, she was looking forward to a few hours of evening time to herself.
    And a free dinner at Bennigan’s. Hell, she’d even order a glass of wine.
    Brynn flipped the car lights on and put the car in reverse to turn around. Then she paused. The nearest gas station was back in Clausen, a good twenty minutes.
    The Feldmans were behind this mixup; the least they could do was let her use their bathroom. Brynn put the car in gear and headed for their driveway, curious to see just how far Yahoo thought two football fields was.
     

    SQUATTING NEXT TO

the stolen Ford they’d driven here from Milwaukee, Lewis sucked blood off the knuckle he’d gigged on the sheet metal trying to repair one or both of the flats. He examined the wound and spat.
    Great, Hart thought. Fingerprints and DNA.
    And here I’m the one picked this guy to tag along tonight.
    “Any sign of her?” the skinny man asked, crouched over one of the wheels.
    Hart crunched over leaves, returning from making a circuit of the property. As he’d searched for Michelle, being as quiet as he could, he’d had the queasy sense of being targeted. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she wasn’t.
    “Ground’s plenty muddy. I found some footprints, probably hers,