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of one to ten, ten being psychopathic killer—”
    “She’s a fifteen. I know, Henry. I’m just scared enough to be smart about this.”
    Tyler nodded thoughtfully.
    “Don’t get me wrong. You had me at ‘Morales.’ I’m just saying I don’t want to be delivering your eulogy, you understand, Cindy?”
    Cindy smiled. “This willmake you feel better. I have a carry permit. I have a gun.”
    Clearly impressed, Tyler said, “You’re a surprise a minute, Cindy. And you’ve been practicing?”
    “You bet. Target practice every weekend for two years. I was living with a cop, you know.”
    Tyler pushed his chair away from the desk, swiveled it, and looked out the window.
    “How long do you need?”
    “I’ll keep you posted on that.”
    At nine,Cindy went to Human Resources, signed a release, and arranged for a cash advance. Her overnight bag was in her office and her small but efficient gun was in its case in an inside pocket.
    Three hours later, Cindy flew out of SFO—destination, the city of Cleveland, Wisconsin.

CHAPTER 11
    THE NEXT MORNING , having spent a restless night on a sprung motel mattress, Cindy dressed in brown trousers, a Fair Isle sweater with pastel colors around the neck, and brown leather boots with flat heels. She pulled her blond curls into a ponytail with bangs, put on her camel hair coat, and tucked her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special into the pocket.
    She checked out of the RedMoon Motel using her corporate card and headed due west in her rented Ford Focus. Her computer bag was on the seat next to her, milky coffee was in the cup holder, and she had programmed the GPS with the address of William Fish’s lake house in the woods.
    She couldn’t know for sure if Mackie Morales had been staying at the Fish house, but it was a good bet. Moraleshad been seen in a town onlythirty minutes from this lightly populated area on the ragged fringe of nowhere.
    Cindy’s instincts rarely let her down, and right now they were swearing that she was on the right track.
    Driving north, Cindy easily found Lakeshore Drive, which hugged Lake Michigan’s shoreline. She passed blocks of nice older homes on wooded lots on her left, the lake just visible through thinner clumps of treeson her right.
    She continued on, and as she drove farther away from the town, the homes became more spaced out, then sparse, sunlight flashing through gaps in the woodland like strobe lights.
    Ten miles out, the GPS spoke and Cindy took the car right onto a dirt road toward the lake. The road was more like a rut, bumpy and potholed, winding between walls of trees crowding in on both sides.
    Theroad branched into a narrower dirt rut, and as the GPS announced, “You have reached your destination,” Cindy saw a green chalet-style house at the edge of a clearing. The white trim and the lines of the house were crisp against the dark woods behind it, making the house look almost like a paper cutout. The lake wasn’t visible from here.
    Cindy drove past the house and stopped her car on the roadto the lake. From where she had parked, she could see the house through a break in the woods.
    Cindy cut her engine and took her binoculars from her bag. From what she could see, the house was in good repair. There was no mailbox and no car, and the only signthat the house was occupied was a small tricycle on the sun-deprived patch of grass that served as a lawn.
    Was someone living here?
    Orwas the place abandoned?
    Cindy thought about getting out of the car and approaching the house with a story of being lost, in case someone was there. She wanted to take a look through the windows, listen, and maybe even ring the bell.
    But since her cloak of invisibility was at the dry cleaners, she couldn’t take the chance that Morales might open the door with a loaded gun in hand.
    The tricyclewasn’t proof, but it was a definite maybe that Morales was here, seeing her boy.
    Cindy had done what she’d come to do. She’d checked out her lead, and