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disagreement?”
    â€œI don’t suppose we’ll ever know, Lieutenant.”
    â€œYou said three, sir? Possibly three sets of murders.”
    â€œThat old man. Him, there. City dweller.” Reinhardt chewed his lower lip, then stroked that gap in his teeth with his tongue. “What’s his story . . . ?”
    Although the woods stood on the cusp of spring, the winter had been harsh. The ground and trunks were slimed with mud and damp, and though the trees stood thick, the pillared spaces between them were sheeted with darkness more than new growth, and that was how the boy came so close with no one to spot him.
    One of the sergeants did, though. He clicked his fingers with quiet insistence, and when Reinhardt and Benfeld looked at him, he motioned their eyes over to the boy who stood partially hidden at the clearing’s edge, staring blankly across to the huts and what lay around them. A quick motion to the soldiers to act normally and Reinhardt was moving before he thought of it, long strides across the hard ground, into a position where he was hidden from the boy. Then he was running, pushing past the pain in his knee, and still the boy had not moved until suddenly he leaned around the tree and saw Reinhardt, and his eyes widened. One, two steps backward, and he was turning back into the darkness of the woods, but Reinhardt was almost on him, even if the boy ran with a terrified desperation.
    Hard on the boy’s heels, Reinhardt followed a lurching line through the scissored prospect afforded him by the lean and slant of the trees, pinpricks of white stabbing down through the green darkness. He caught the boy quickly, as he knew he had to. There was no way otherwise, not with this knee, and this gloom. The boy’s arms flailed wide as he found his way blocked. He dodged back around Reinhardt, wriggled past one hand but not the other, stumbled and fell in a tangle of limbs. Reinhardt gripped him by the neck, pushed him down, breathing heavily as the boy writhed against the wet ground, a thin keening all the sound he made as his little fingers made fists of the earth.
    â€œIt’s all right,” gasped Reinhardt, swallowing, chasing the right words across the edges of his memory. “
U redu. Sve je u redu.
It’s all right.”
    Reinhardt knelt by the boy, pulled him up to his knees. He was caked with grime, and his eyes rolled left and right. “Hey, hey,” said Reinhardt, taking the boy by the shoulders, feeling how desperately thin he was beneath the clothes he wore, tattered and torn to worse than rags. A hard edge showed through the back of his coat and, lifting the fabric away, Reinhardt found something long and thin wrapped in leather and thrust down the back of the boy’s trousers. “What is happening?
Å ta se
?
” he asked, the Serbo-Croat coming slowly. “
Zašto se bojiš?
Why are you scared?” He unwrapped the leather, revealing a long, heavy-bladed knife, like a butcher would use. The boy’s eyes fastened on it hungrily. The blade was clean, and even in the dim light beneath the trees the edge glimmered sharp.
    There was a confusion of voices, angry words, and Benfeld came through the trees with a pair of Feldjaeger behind him as Reinhardt wrapped the knife back up and pushed it through his belt.
    â€œThere’s two more,” Benfeld said, looking blankly at the boy.
    â€œTwo what?” Something in Benfeld’s flat gaze made Reinhardt draw the boy closer.
    â€œSurvivors. An elderly couple. They must have been with the boy. When he ran, they came out of the woods. Maybe his grandparents?”
    Reinhardt stood, picking the boy up in his arms. He weighed nothing, just a tight bundle of skin and bones, and began to walk back through the trees. By the huts, an old lady cried out as they came out into the clearing, her arms outstretched to the boy. Reinhardt put him down, watched as she gathered him into her