It’s hard to make out the addresses, but we don’t need to—the red lights flashing in the treetops tell us where the Knutsons’ home is.
Emergency vehicles. It’s a bad sign.
Aleksio slams a sideways fist into the door. Viktor slows the car.
The blue and cherry lights intensify as we near; there’s a fire truck, an ambulance, and three marked police cars in the Knutsons’ long driveway. Two empty stretchers are lined up near the door. Personnel all around.
“Bloody Lazarus.” Viktor pulls the flask from his pocket and drinks, angrily wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
Aleksio’s face is bathed in red from the lights, steely gaze fixed on the house. “Fuck that. Kiro is not dead.”
I’m blown away by Aleksio’s faith in his own gut, his own heart, whatever you want to call it. Aleksio sees himself as such a twisted person, but he’s not. He has heart like I’ve never seen, and he has no idea how beautiful this quality of his is.
We pass by. A cop eyes us from afar, but we probably aren’t the first to have driven by. There’s a light on at the next-door neighbor’s place.
“Pull in here,” Aleksio says. “Into this drive, and right into the garage.”
“Seriously?”
Aleksio texts, face lit underneath by the garish phone light. Probably telling the guys up on the road what’s up. “Small-town neighbors, they know each other’s business. Konstantin and I learned that pretty fast when we were on the run. Pull it in. Now.”
Viktor shuts off the headlights and heads into the yawning mouth of a garage.
We get out quietly. It smells like lawnmower and turpentine. A door on the side leads into the main house. Viktor strolls up, shoves something into it, and pulls it open. Aleksio signals the rest of us to wait in the cool, dank garage. Moments later there’s a scream.
“Damn,” Tito says, heading in after him.
Aleksio tightens his grip on my arm.
Tito comes to the door. “Mira. You keep these oldsters feeling calm, okay?”
“They better not be hurt.” I wrench my arm from Aleksio’s. And I’m thinking I could find my chance to escape soon.
We enter a cozy little kitchen. Viktor leans on a counter holding a revolver on a couple sitting at the kitchen table. The man wears a dark blue Atari T-shirt; he’s bald on top, with strands of longish gray hair in a ponytail. You can tell from his skin he used to be a redhead. The woman is slim, with bright white hair—very short, very beautiful—contrasting with her turquoise robe.
A mug lies broken on the floor in a puddle of coffee. A tray of muffins is cooling on the electric burners of the goldenrod-toned oven.
“They don’t know what happened,” Viktor says.
Aleksio and Tito go upstairs, probably to see what kind of a view they can get of the Knutsons’.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” I say, eyeing Viktor.
Aleksio comes down. “Can’t see shit. Who was home over there?”
“Donald and Shauna Knutson.”
“How old is Donald?”
The woman holds a napkin in her trembling hands. “Maybe sixty-five?”
Aleksio and Viktor exchange glances. Aleksio sends Tito and Yuri upstairs to monitor the scene.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” I say. “We think somebody attacked your neighbors and that they’re really after one of their kids. We need you to help us find him first. What’s your name?”
“Ronson,” he says. “This is Lila. You’re not the ones—” He nods at the Knutsons’ home.
“No, no, I swear,” I say.
“Which kid are they after?” Ronson asks.
“An adopted son. He’d be around twenty now.”
“No son like that,” Ronson says. “Mike’s twenty-eight, and Glenda is nineteen.”
“Kids are grown and gone,” Lila says.
“No. That doesn’t work.” Aleksio’s on edge. Desperate. “You’re lying.”
I give Aleksio a hard look. He takes a seat at the far side of the table and sets his gun in front of him, right out where they can see it but not close enough for them to take it. I take the chair between Aleksio and Ronson.
“You close to them?” I ask.
“Our dearest family friends,” Lila says. “A good family.”
Aleksio scrubs his face. I put my hand on his arm and give him a meaningful look. Then I stand up. “Where’re you going?” he asks.
I head to the bookshelf lined with floral photo albums, each with a date on the spine. I pick out a selection—the year the Knutsons would’ve gotten Kiro, and some of the years after. It’s possible they’re lying. Lazarus could’ve gotten here first. But if they’re dearest family friends, there will be photos. River photos, picnic photos. I bring the stack to the table over the protests of Ronson and Lila.
“You can’t go through our things,” Lila says.
“Shut up,” Aleksio says, grabbing one of the albums.
I take another and page through. There are lots of shots of Lila and Ronson’s family, but eventually I get to the multifamily photo. I spot a baby that looks like Kiro.
“That’s him,” Aleksio says, pulling it toward himself greedily. “That’s him.” Aleksio slides the photo out of the sleeve and pushes it across the table. “You fucking lied!”
“No, we didn’t,” Ronson says.
“A name,” Aleksio growls. “Now.”
“Keith Knutson,” Lila says. “But that boy died.”
Everything seems to still.
I press my hand to my mouth.
Aleksio’s eyes glaze over. Refusing to believe it. “No,” he says.
Lila takes a deep, ragged breath.
“That boy, he died camping up in the Boundary Waters. He drowned in a spring torrent up there, camping with his father and his brother. Age eight or…” He turns to Lila.
Lila’s napkin is pretty much shreds. So frightened. “Eight,” she says.
“It’s okay,” I say to her. I feel like I’m connecting with her, like she gets I’m okay. “You’re okay,” I say aloud.
“He drowned…” Ronson says.
Lila grabs one of the albums and takes a folded newspaper article from a pocket in the back. My heart is breaking for Aleksio and Viktor. I look around at exits. My heart is breaking, but I can’t be stupid now.
Aleksio takes it, reads. “It says they never found the body.” His voice sounds so far away. “Maybe he survived. You can’t be sure—”
“It’s sure,” Ronson says. “It was the dead of night. Donald heard the shouts. They think Keith stole a blowup floating toy, a sort of inner tube, while the rest of the group slept. He was like that.”
“He was like that,” Lila says.
“They searched for him for days. Cops, volunteers. You think they wouldn’t have found him if he’d survived? They even had the copters out. But the spring torrents up there, with the snowmelt out of Canada, it’s dangerous on those rivers,” Ronson says. “The inner tube was found downstream caught in some roots, but Keith was never found.”
Aleksio sucks a breath in through his nose.