"There could've been a stable." Gillman gave him that but only grudgingly.

"Stable works for me," Izzy said. "Okay. I'm picturing it. I'm good. He sees her with the gardener in the stable. Go on, M."

Jenk sighed. "Aren't we tired of this yet?"

"No," was chorused back to him.

"Right. A piece of jewelry-a necklace-goes missing from this rich family's suite, and the gardener's accused of taking it. He swears he's innocent, that the son set him up, but no one believes him and they haul him off to jail."

"Time-out," Izzy proclaimed. "Can we not give these people names? The rich family is Horace and Prudence Peckerfart and their son Dick. No relation to Gillman-or is there? Say this for us, Daniel: Zounds! That scoundrel stole Mumsy's necklace!"

Lindsey laughed again, and Jenk glanced in the rearview to see Gillman covering her eyes while he silently mouthed a completely different and far more concise collection of words to Zanella.

"Not going to say it?" Izzy said. "Understandable. You don't want to incriminate yourself. But we still need a name for the gardener. How about Bill Jones, all-American boy, former GI, nephew to his Uncle Sam. And his fiancee, Lydia McDoomed. You'd think she'd change her name. So okay, Bill is in jail for stealing Dick's mumsy's necklace, which creates anxiety for fair Lydia. Take it away, Marky-Mark."

Jenk rolled his eyes. "Dick goes to see Lydia, and promises her he'll 'look for' the necklace if she sleeps with him, so she does. Why? Who knows. She's an idiot to trust him."

"She's a McDoomed," Izzy pointed out. "Bad choices run in the family."

"Of course, when the gardener-Bill-goes to trial, Dick never steps forward to clear him. Bill's about to be sentenced to twenty years in prison, so Lydia goes all the way to Boston to see this son of a bitch, who just laughs at her. He looked for the necklace, but he didn't find it. What can he do?

"Several months later, Lydia dies, pregnant and alone in the snow."

"Man, I hate when that happens," Izzy said.

"No one hears from the gardener again," Jenk continued, "except twenty years later, the same family-"

"The Peckerfarts," Izzy interjected.

Right. "They come back to the lodge-"

"Except for Horace, whose heart exploded years ago," Izzy said.

Jenk didn't stop the SUV, pull Izzy out into the cold, and beat him senseless. Instead, he very calmly asked, "Do you want me to tell the story, or do you want to?"

"Well, I would, but I don't know it. It amazes me how you always seem to know everything," Izzy said. "Isn't Mark amazing, Linds?"

Jenk focused on the road, forcing himself not to glance into the mirror and see her embarrassment. "Dick's got his own family now-a whole pack of daughters," he said loudly, just plowing over any hemming and hawing she might have started. "I think Stella said there were five of them."

"My Stella?" Izzy was delighted, completely clueless to the fact that even if he survived this day, he was going to be murdered in his sleep. And not by the ghost of the hunting lodge, either.

"Her kids used to camp up here."

"They probably came on a dare," Gillman said. "We used to do that-me and my brothers. Up by Bloody Creek. Scared ourselves to death. My mom was always, like, It's two A.M., what are you doing back home? Is it raining? And we were like, Yeah, Mom, uh, yeah, it's, uh, raining, yeah."

"My older brothers once ditched me in a graveyard," Izzy contributed to the discussion. "I got the last laugh-when they came back, looking for me, I pretended I turned into a zombie. I scared the bejeezus out of them. Of course they retaliated by beating the living Christ out of me. Broke my collarbone and two ribs."

There was silence for a moment, which Lindsey broke by saying, "Suddenly being an only child doesn't seem so bad."

Lopez turned to look back at her. "You too, huh?"

And now she was bonding with freaking Lopez, smiling into his eyes. Jenk smacked the map. "I need you looking at this."

Lopez faced forward. "Sorry, man. I'm on it-we're moving pretty slowly." He must've noticed the steam coming out of Jenk's ears, and he lowered his voice to ask, "You okay?"

But he didn't have to answer because Gillman spoke over him. "Dick and his daughters are at the lodge. Come on, Jenkins. Don't leave us hanging."

"Not just his daughters, but his wife and mother are there, too," Jenk continued the story. "The men all go out hunting, and it's the first cold day of the season, so the women stay inside. They're all in the lodge when the generator explodes. Everything's so dry, the place goes up like a torch.

"Dick's family is trapped-they're all killed in the fire. Except, mysteriously of course, their bodies were never recovered. No bones, no teeth, no wedding rings, no jewelry-except...The necklace that was missing all those years is discovered in the search through the rubble. It was hidden under a floorboard in the room where Dick had stayed, twenty years earlier.

"Dick vanishes, mad with grief, into the mountains," Jenk told them. "Or so everyone thinks. What really happens-yeah, right-is that the gardener, Bill, came back and kidnapped Dick's entire family, using the fire as a diversion. He lured Dick into the woods with a note, promising to free his wife and children, but of course, he breaks that promise, the same way Dick had broken his promise to Lydia, years before.

"So Bill the crazy gardener keeps Dick locked up, torturing him for the same number of years that Bill spent in prison, killing Dick's mother and wife and daughters slowly in front of him, carving them up, before finally slashing and hacking them into a hundred pieces, all in retribution for Lydia's death. By the time he lets him go, Dick's completely insane. He still wanders this area at night. You know, cannibalizing little children who don't brush their teeth before going to bed."

"You suck at telling ghost stories, dude," Izzy complained. "Couldn't you, like, throw in a part right before the fire, where all those women at the hunting lodge hear this scary voice going, Give me back my leg."

Jenk looked at Izzy in the rearview. Of course that meant he looked at Lindsey, too. She was laughing again.

"Whose leg and what does it have to do with anything?" Lindsey asked.

"I don't know," Iz said. "It's just creepy. Like this leg is somewhere in the lodge."

"Hopping around by itself?" Lindsey asked. She met Jenk's eyes in the mirror, a big smile on her face, but then quickly looked away, her smile instantly dimmed.

"Another skeptic." Izzy turned to the backseat. "How about you, Sophia? Ghost stories-thumbs-up or thumbs-down?"

"Down," Sophia said. "I'm not a fan of stories that include carving and slashing and hacking innocent people into a hundred pieces."

"But they're not innocent," Izzy pointed out. "They're Peckerfarts."

"So what are you saying?" Lopez asked. "That children are responsible for the sins of their fathers? No one subscribes to that anymore."

"My father does," Lindsey said, as Jenk focused on the road ahead. It looked blocked.

"Really?" Again, Lopez found Lindsey more fascinating than his map.

It was blocked. Jenk turned the headlights on a tree that had fallen across the road, illuminating it in the afternoon gloom as he braked to a stop.

Before Jenk put the SUV in park, Izzy was already out of the vehicle, examining the barrier. "We're not going to be able to move this," he reported. "You know, by dragging it. It's huge."

"Maybe if we bring in some chain saws." Jenk joined him in the freezing afternoon. The air was unbelievably cold. Frozen-nose-hair cold.

"Maybe if we bring in a Caterpillar," Dave had left the comfort of the car, too. "Not in our budget, huh?" he added, as Jenk and Izzy just looked at him.

There was another tree across the road, just a short distance away. It was even bigger than this one.

Lopez and Gillman followed Lindsey and Sophia out of the vehicle. The two SEALs were quite a pair. Gillman wore his jacket unzipped, no hat, no gloves. Lopez, on the other hand, had winter gear that was practically outer-space ready. Hood up over a ski mask, he looked like Kenny from South Park.

"What?" he said, as Izzy laughed at him. "I don't like the cold. Is that all right with you?"

He was carrying the map, but how he could read it was anyone's guess. Lindsey gently took it from him. "Where are we?"

He pointed with one overstuffed-glove finger. "About a mile from the lodge."

Lindsey looked at Jenk. "We don't all have to go."

He nodded. "Good idea. Izzy and I'll-"

"Tom asked me to check the place out," Lindsey interrupted him.

He tried to explain. "But it'll take less time if-"

"Do you want to stay behind?" she asked him.

"I don't want to stay behind," Gillman said. "To come all this way, and then not see, you know, the scene of the crime?"

Jenk turned to him. "There was no crime. It's a story, a myth, an urban legend."

"Urban?" Izzy asked, looking around at all the trees.

"A mile's not that far," Sophia said. "I'd like to go."

"Me, too," Dave chimed in.

Jenk looked at Lopez. "You could stay with the car."

"All by yourself," Izzy pointed out. He made his voice quaver. "Give me back my leg!"

"Now that I'm out here, it's not really that cold," Lopez said, hurrying to catch up with the others, who'd already humped it over the fallen tree.

"Wow," Izzy said. "He's either a chicken, or he thinks he's got a chance with Sophia. Or Lindsey. He's actually doing better with Linds-" He realized what he was saying and who he was saying it to. "Sorry, dude."

Jenk turned off the car, grabbing both the bag with the MREs as well as the pack that traveled with the SUV. It contained a flashlight, a compass, and a hunting knife, along with other essentials like a first-aid kit and a rope. He locked the vehicle and pocketed the keys.

"This'll be over in three hours," Izzy said, taking the pack from him and shouldering it. "Tops." It was clearly meant to be encouragement, but he ruined it by snickering. "Three hours. That always makes me think, a three-hour tour." He sang the phrase from the Gilligan's Island theme song, and then made the sound of thunder crashing. "We'd make great castaways. You could be the skipper. He was kind of short, too. Sophia and Lindsey are both a little bit Mary Ann, a little bit Ginger. And Dave is so obviously the professor. Gillman's got the idiot thing down, and his nickname is even Gilligan, I mean, along with Fishboy and Fuckhead and-"

"Not helping," Jenk informed him as he circumnavigated the second fallen tree.

"Not even the thought of Lopez cross-dressing and playing Mrs. Howell?" Izzy tried.

"Silence would be nice right now."

They walked for a moment with only the sound of their feet crunching leaves and fallen branches and frozen mud. The sky was a uniform white, and the bare trees stood out stark and black against it. Even the evergreens seemed gray. It was beautiful in a bleak way, as if the world had become a subtly lit black-and-white art film, filled with angst and despair.

But the sound of laughter carried back from up the trail, and as Jenk rounded a curve he saw Lindsey's red hat, her blue jacket.

Izzy ran to catch up with the others, leaving Jenk with more silence and frozen mud than he could ever possibly want in an entire lifetime.

CHAPTER.

ELEVEN.

The view from the ruins of the hunting lodge was incredible.

Sophia picked her way down what had once been a broad, sloping expanse of lawn, toward the two outbuildings. Danny Gillman came out of the more squat of the two.

"I think this was probably some kind of smokehouse," he said. "And see, look, over here. I'm pretty sure this is where the lodge owners set up their summer kitchen. The tables for the guests probably went here."

He'd moved to a patch of ground that was relatively flat. And, sure enough, there looked to be the remains of a grill made from stones and bricks. It was reminiscent of the ones used by refugees in Kazbekistan in their summer kitchens, which were also usually their winter kitchens, considering their homes were tents.

"I'm pretty sure we can modify the smokehouse so the smoke actually exits the structure." Danny started for the second building. "This other one looks a little too big to be an icehouse," he said, "although it would make sense for them to keep it tucked back in the woods, in the shade."

Sophia hesitated before following him, glancing back toward the ruins of the lodge. Izzy and Jay Lopez were racing each other up to the rise of the hill, where Tom Paoletti would no doubt want to put his communications tower-if he decided he wanted one. She spotted Dave near the last remaining walls of the burned-out main building, deep in discussion with Jenk and Lindsey. He was making good on the promise he'd made to Lindsey before they'd left the motel. Please, please, please don't let me be alone with Mark Jenkins.

Something had happened between Jenk and Lindsey over the past few days, something that put them at odds, which was a real shame. Sophia had thought that the spark she'd noticed whenever they were together was mutual, despite the SEAL's silly infatuation with Tracy Shapiro. She'd felt glad for Lindsey, who spent far too much of her off time at home watching television and pretending her life was peachy keen just the way it was, thanks.

Sophia could relate.

And watching Lindsey with Jenk, she'd even felt a little envious.

But now, for the first time, she could finally appreciate the noninclusiveness of the SEALs, with their men-only teams. There would be no unhappy romantic entanglements there.

At least none to which anyone would admit.

"Still, the smokehouse is a little small," Danny was saying. "As of right now, if this one's in the same condition...Of course, we could always use tents, but..." He realized Sophia wasn't right behind him and waited for her to catch up.

"An icehouse wouldn't have a fireplace," she pointed toward the chimney. That roof had definitely seen better days. There were saplings growing on it, like it was some kind of living fairyland cottage.

Danny laughed. "Yeah, that's kind of oxymoronic, huh? Maybe this was a servant's cottage. Maybe the gardener lived here. Maybe his spirit lives here still." He shot her a look filled with such little boy pleasure and anticipation, she had to laugh.

The ancient, rusting padlock didn't stop him. He had a picklock that he put to good use, and soon pushed the door open with a squeak of rusty hinges that was pure B-grade horror movie. And again, she laughed. Instead of going inside, he turned to face her.

"Hey, you know, I just wanted to tell you that Zanella's totally wrong about me," he said earnestly. "Yeah, I'm the third Dan Gillman, but there's no trust fund or...I mean, I heard your ex-husband was some kind of millionaire so..."

He seemed to want some kind of response-a confirmation or maybe encouragement of some kind. But Sophia wasn't sure where to start, with the fact checking-her husband Dimitri was dead, not an ex, and he had only played at being a millionaire-or some sort of personal mission statement to stem the tide, which was roaring to a place she didn't want to go. A place where his next words would be, How about we get together for dinner after we get back to California? I know this great little Thai restaurant...