He knew her. In her uniform, she could have passed for a beat cop, but Denise Sheridan was the Deputy Sheriff for Itasca County. She was as close as Stride had to a counterpart in the sprawling, sparsely populated countryside northwest of Duluth. He opened the door. It was a freezing night, and the wind scattered oak leaves on the hardwood floor as he waited.

'Hello, Stride,' Denise said, marching past him into the great space of the cabin without an invitation.

'Hello, Denise.'

She smelled of sweat and smoke. The knees of her trousers were wet, and her boots tracked mud across the floor. Denise did a quick survey of the cabin as he shut the door.

'What are you doing out here?' she asked, chewing on the stump of a fingernail. 'It took me twenty minutes to find you on these back roads.'

'Recovering,' he said.

'Yeah, I heard about your fall. Nice to see you're not dead.'

Denise didn't waste time on sympathy. For as long as he'd known her, she had been a no-nonsense cop, full of rough edges and discipline. She had recently turned forty, and her face had the spider's web of wrinkles at her eyes and lips to prove it. She was tall, only a couple of inches shorter than Stride, who reached six feet one in his bare feet. She wasn't heavy, but her muscular arms and legs stretched out the fabric of her uniform. Her brunette hair fell to the middle of her neck, and she kept it parted in the middle and shoved back behind her ears. She wasn't wearing make-up. Dark crescents sagged under both eyes.

'It's three in the morning,' Stride said.

Denise shrugged, as if the time didn't need any explanation or apology. 'Maggie told me where you were hiding.'

'Did she send you here to hijack me back to Duluth?' he replied. 'The guy struck on another farm tonight. He left a body this time.'