The house was farther than he'd thought. As he drove deeper into the trees, Nathan wished he'd waited until the snow stopped falling. If there was a place to turn, he might have done that and returned to town but the road was narrow with trees either side.

His nerves relaxed when he saw the house up ahead. It was closed up, shutters fastened over the downstairs windows. No smoke from the chimney. He turned the car in the yard so it faced the way he'd come and decided he wouldn't risk turning off the engine or the wipers. He lifted his gray jacket from the back seat and put it on. It wasn't going to be much help against this sort of weather, but it was better than nothing. He stepped out into the snow in his even more unsuitable leather shoes.

Snow painted everything, smudging angles, disguising nature, transforming ugly to beautiful with sweeping strokes of nature's brush. On the white carpet under his feet, Nathan saw no footprints, no sign of life. He heard only his car engine, no voices. He turned up his collar and stuck his hands in his pockets. His feet were soaked after a few steps, but he did a slippery circuit of the house and even checked the garbage can. The lid was off and it was filling with snow.

The broken deck furniture had already morphed into an abstract work of art.

The falling snow all but obliterated the view of the lake, now hiding behind a thick white veil. Nathan would have liked to walk down, but he was already cold and wet, water dripping down his back. He returned to the car and kicked the snow from his shoes and brushed down his jacket before he got in, then cranked the heater as high as it would go.

Ten years ago his mother had been brutally murdered a few feet from where he sat and he'd expected to feel something, a tug at his heart, but there was nothing.

While he was a cop, he'd had access to more details of the case than he'd been able to get before. The killer had taken away some of her organs. Nathan wondered if Don could have killed her but it seemed inconceivable a man could do that to his wife. And if Don had killed her, and Steven too, why not Jack as well? In any case, Don had an alibi. He was in town when it happened. It would have been impossible for him to have killed his wife and driven away. But to have left his sons? That didn't make sense. No bloodstained clothes were found. No forensic evidence linked Don to the murder. Things were different now, and CSIs could work miracles with DNA, but too much time had passed.

If Steven killed her, what happened to him? Nathan felt frozen after a walk around the house. The police had searched and found nothing. Because Jack had been stabbed in the back and almost died, Nathan had always considered him a victim, but now he wanted Jack to be guilty. Maybe he'd stabbed himself and pretended to be traumatized. How many experts had he fooled? Could a kid do that? Nathan sighed. He knew he wasn't being objective.

With a final glance at the house, he set off back to the town, creeping toward the main road along the tracks he'd made. The wheels lost their grip several times sending the car skidding toward the trees. He breathed an audible sigh when he saw the paved road ahead, now plowed, leaving miniature mountain ranges on each side of the highway. Fortunately the incline wasn't too steep to cross, though the back of the car fishtailed as Nathan pulled onto the road.

He'd definitely stay the night in Echo Lake. He'd done what he wanted, seen where his mother died and Jack wasn't there. Time to move on, only not today.

Maybe he could rent some equipment and try skiing. Do something different with his life.

Nathan decided to stop at the first decent looking place. Within a few minutes he decided the first place would do fine. He needed chains or a tank to drive in this stuff. Absolutely everything was covered in snow, it had even piled up on the power lines. He understood what they meant by a whiteout now. There was no color outside the car and he saw only one other vehicle on the road, going the other way. Nathan wished he had a SUV and regretted not having brought the charger for his cell.

He slithered to a halt at the curb and made a quick dash to the only place open.

Nathan closed the door on the blizzard and stamped his feet on the mat.

"Any chance of something to eat?" he asked the guy behind the counter.

"Absolutely. So long as it's baked potato and chili."

"Sounds good." Nathan picked a chair close to a heater and sat down with his back pressed against it.

"Coffee?" the old guy asked.

"You read my mind."

He walked over with a mug and the cream. "You picked a hell of a day to come out for lunch. You're not dressed for this sort of weather, son." He looked at Nathan's soaked shoes and thin jacket.

"Is this going to last long?"

"Forecast says snow all day, clear overnight and more snow tomorrow afternoon."

"Maybe you can point me in the direction of a store for idiots." Nathan took off his wet jacket. "I'm also looking for a place to stay."

"Sure. We're only too glad to take your money in the winter." He brought over Nathan's lunch and went back to the counter, starting on a bowl of his own.

"Why don't you join me?" Nathan asked.

"I don't mind if I do." He offered his hand. "Ben Harper, owner, waiter, dishwasher and today, cook."

"Nathan Beranson."

"Sorry this was all there was," Ben said. "I called my girl and told her not to come in. You got business in town?"

"Just outside. Echo Lake. Do you know it?" Ben paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "Oh, yeah, I know Echo Lake." Nathan heard more than the answer in his voice. "You had this place a long while?"

"Long enough," Ben said.

"So you knew the Thompson family?"

"Ah." Ben dug into his chili.

"I'm interested in what happened here ten years ago." Nathan watched the guy's reactions.

"Why's that?"

"Elizabeth Thompson was my mother."

Ben's mouth fell open. "You're Jack's brother? Steven?"

"No, I'm his half-brother. Elizabeth was married before."

"I didn't know that." Ben shook his head and resumed eating, dipping a chunk of bread into the steaming chili.

"Do you mind talking about it?" Nathan asked.

"Not much to say. They never got the guy who did it. They closed everywhere off, set up road blocks, used Winston's tracker dogs, there was even a helicopter searching-came up with zip."

Ben's eyes met his square on. Old eyes, but clear and bright. Nathan felt his pulse speed up. He laid down his fork and pushed his bowl away.

"I always figured a few things didn't add up. Jack's mother-your mother-got sliced up pretty bad. Jack had one wound that was serious, but not fatal. Makes you wonder how he got away."

The cop in Nathan told him that if Jack hadn't been the target, he wouldn't necessarily have been subjected to the same violence.

"You and Jack close?"

Nathan's mouth twitched. "No."

"The sheriff at the time was a friend of mine, Al Rider, knew him most of his life. Died of cancer last year, God rest his soul. We used to talk about the Echo Lake case. He never found the missing hunter but Al reckoned that was a red herring." Ben pushed away his bowl. "The guy had a wife and two kids. Al thought he'd probably had an accident, shot himself. Right from the outset, the local view was Jack did it, even allowing for the difficulty of stabbing yourself in the back.

He was clean as a whistle when the police got there. His father said he'd been thrown on the ice, but had somehow managed to crawl out. Amazing achievement in those temperatures, particularly for someone who'd been stabbed."

"Did the sheriff talk to Don about his suspicions?"

"Of course, but you can imagine the conversation. Jack was thirteen, fourteen years old, something like that. He wasn't interviewed at the start because he was catatonic. I remember Al telling me that after the kid recovered from the stab wound, he'd been spirited away to a private clinic in Texas. By the time the police were able to talk to him, he claimed not to remember a thing. Hysterical amnesia, I think Al called it." Ben paused. "Maybe I'm being unkind. Maybe he couldn't remember. Who knows? Maybe Steven did it. It's not easy for a teenage kid to completely disappear unless he had help. Even if he could drive, he had no car.

Where was he going to go? Or maybe you're here to prove me wrong?"

"I'm not Steven," Nathan said.

"So why are you here?"

"Looking for the truth, for Jack, maybe Steven, too." Ben tipped his head on one side. "Why don't you get on with Jack?" Nathan hesitated. "We fell out about a woman."

"Well, I think you might be too late, son."

"What do you mean?"

"He's married with a child." Ben got up and began to clear the table.

Nathan stared at him in disbelief.

"He came in with the boy less than an hour ago. Tommy, his name was. Nice kid. Cheeky face. Three years old. Said his wife was back at the house." Nathan opened his mouth and then closed it. An electric shock couldn't have had more impact. He and Jack had just missed each other. Had he been in that car he passed? But the house was closed up. Why would Jack have done that if his wife was inside?

"Are you sure it was Jack?"

"He was a kid last time I served him in here. He said he was Jack, I suppose it could have been Steven. I hadn't thought of that." Ben gave a short laugh.

"How long have they been living here?"

"Not long. I don't know what sort of state the house would have been in. As far as I know, no one's been there since Don paid a couple of locals to clean the place after the murder. They had to scrub and bleach the boards. Hey, I'm sorry." Ben winced. "I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay. It was a long time ago."

Nathan wasn't sure why the thought occurred to him at that moment, but he realized he'd missed something important at the house. The chimneystack was clean. There was no snow on it, which meant it had to have been warm.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Kate tensed when she heard the generator. He was back. She listened for Tommy's voice and when she heard him laughing, relief washed over her. As Jack's heavy tread pounded up the stairs, Kate tensed. She'd filled the bath with warm water until she'd used it all up and now she shivered in an empty tub under towels she'd snagged from a rail.

"Poor baby."

His syrupy voice meant nothing. She blinked as the towels came off her head.

Things were a little fuzzy without her glasses.

"Oh sweetheart, what have you done to yourself?" He unfastened the cuff and held her hand in his. "Look at your poor wrist." It looked like she wore a wide red bracelet. He put a mug of hot chocolate in her hand and she almost dropped it. Jack wrapped his fingers around hers and held the drink to her lips. When it had all gone, he picked her up, carried her to the bed and wrapped her in the blankets.

"Sleep now and when you wake, I want a different person for a wife."

When Kate opened her eyes, the room was dark. She ached all over. Still alive but she'd nearly died. She wriggled her fingers and toes, relieved they moved.

She'd been an idiot to go in the water. If Jack hadn't dragged her back to the house, she'd have died.

She pushed herself up and pain flared all over her body. She couldn't cope with getting dressed and instead pulled on her robe. The weight of the material on her back made her flinch. Her chest hurt when she breathed.

Kate gasped when she saw the living room. A Christmas tree stood by the fireplace, a real fir, shimmering with tiny white lights. Red and silver balls hung on the branches and white ribbon twirled in circles from the bottom up.

"We did it, we did it." Tommy bounced with excitement.

"It's beautiful," Kate said.

"We cut the tree together. Daddy let me chop, too. He said we had to check there was nothing in the branches because there might be something sleeping there and we shouldn't bring it into the house." He clung to Jack's hand and a dark, heavy feeling weighed inside her gut.

"Time for bed, Tommy," Jack said.

"Nooooo."

"I told you, bed once Mommy had seen our tree. I'll read you a story."

"O...kay."

Jack's eyes met Kate's. "I fed Tommy. You feed me." As Kate worked at snail speed in the kitchen, she listened to Jack read a story about a rusty robot. He did a funny voice for the robot and made Tommy chortle.

Kate's head felt so heavy she could barely keep upright. As she reached inside the fridge her gaze dropped to the back of her hands. They were covered with bruises.

Her wrist looked like she'd been sawing at it with a blunt knife. Kate wasn't sure how much more she could take.

She worked slowly, cutting steak into strips, slicing and frying onions and peppers. The smell of the food made her feel sick.

Once the door of Tommy's room was closed, Jack set the table. He opened a bottle of red wine, filled a glass for Kate and put it on the counter. She gulped it down. He hummed some Christmas tune while he worked, as if everything was fine. Kate looked at the knife lying next to the chopping board. She picked it up, wrapped her fingers around the handle and imagined plunging it into Jack's heart.

It fell from her hand into the sink.

Jack moved behind her and slid his hands over her hips. Kate was uncomfortably aware she was naked under the robe.

"Do you think you could get Tommy to make a Christmas card for my father?

Could he draw pictures of us?"

"We might not look like people."

Jack snorted. "I thought you were under the impression I wasn't human."

Kate carried the food to the table and sat down. Jack helped himself to a tortilla, filled it with meat and fried vegetables. Kate made one of her own and everything fell out as she lifted it, her fingers stiff and swollen. Jack rolled it up again for her and held it to her mouth. Kate forced herself to take a bite. She couldn't taste a thing and struggled to swallow.

He tipped the remains of the wine into her empty glass. "For someone who's too young to be drinking, you seem to have taken to it like a fish." The alcohol swirled around her system and the room swirled with it. Kate was drunk. She ate almost nothing. Jack finished up what was left. He cleared the table, washed and dried the dishes. Kate sat watching the room dance around a man she had no hope of understanding. Her back burned. She'd be scarred for life by his name.