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at. It was an image of a cross surrounded by two interlocking circles of what looked like barbed wire.
    Exactly the same image painted on the box that was currently sitting on his desk.
    Colin felt a jolt of adrenaline. He was suddenly breathing in short gasps. Whatever this meant, he wasn’t going to figure it out standing in the middle of the forest. Without another thought, he turned and ran at full speed back to the arts building.
    By the time he reached the newsroom on the third floor, he was breathing so hard that he thought he might pass out.
    I really need to get more exercise
, he thought.
Or any exercise at all.
    The package was still sitting on the desk where he had left it. He hadn’t been imagining things, either. The image on the top was the same as the one painted on the tree.
    He took a step towards the package and then stopped. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what to do. What he probably should do was not touch the thing, head straight back down the stairs and inform the cops that there was something up here they should probably take a look at. This was, after all, evidence. If he opened it, he could get himself into serious trouble.
    Except they can’t prove that I know it’s evidence
, he thought. They had blocked off the scene. Officially, he had no way of knowing what had been painted on the tree. As far as they knew, this was just another weird package sent to the editor of a college newspaper. If he called them in now and handed it over, he’d probably never find out what was inside. It would disappear from view like every other part of the investigation. This would be their only chance to get the inside track on the case.
    He took a cautious step forward. The image of the cross and wire was the only thing he could see on the outside of the package. There was no address and no postage. That meant it had been hand delivered. Colin felt a cold shiver. Whoever had done whatever it was that had cops combing through the woods in hazmat suits had also coolly strolled into the continuing ed office on the first floor and dropped this package in the newspaper’s internal mailbox.
    Maybe I shouldn’t open it
, he thought.
This was sent here by somebody who is probably dangerously unhinged and apparently able to stroll these very hallways in total anonymity.
    Exactly
, piped another voice.
And who are you going to rely on to track that person down? The cops? In this town? Now who’s the unhinged one? Most of the cops in this city can’t find their own cars in the police parking lot.
    Colin vacillated back and forth for almost a minute before his natural curiosity got the better of him.
    “Fuck it,” he said, reaching into the top drawer of the editor’s desk and pulling out an X-Acto knife. He picked up the box and examined it carefully. He didn’t see any wires or any white powder leaking out of it, so it probably wasn’t anthrax or a bomb. Besides, who would go to the trouble of a biological or explosive attack on a college newspaper? Especially
this
college newspaper. The fact that anyone would be angry enough with the
Westhill Sentinel
to attack it was so laughable that Colin couldn’t even bring himself to consider it. The only person he knew of who felt that way didn’t have to bomb the place—he had the authority to shut it down. Which he was already planning to do.
    Holding the box in place with the knuckle of his left index finger, Colin cut an opening along three sides of the lid and then used the tip of the knife to flip it open.
    Inside was a human hand that had been severed neatly at the wrist. It was ghostly white, which only made the tattoo on the back of the wrist stand out more sharply: a flaming eagle with a red star in the middle of its chest.
    Colin staggered back and sat down heavily in a chair.
Oh my God
, he thought. He had seen that tattoo before. He knew who the hand belonged to.

-11-
    S halene Nakogee had come to Westhill from the Attawapiskat First Nation because