Looking at the woman (girl?), Luke feels a strange tingle, a buzz behind his eyes. His pulse picks up with something almost like-recognition. I know you, he thinks. Not her name, perhaps, but something more fundamental. What is it? Luke squints, studying her more closely. Have I seen her somewhere before? No, he realizes he’s mistaken.

As Duchesne pulls the woman along by the elbow, her hands tied together with a flexicuff, a second police vehicle pulls up and a deputy, Clay Henderson, gets out and takes over escorting the prisoner into the emergency ward. As they pass, Luke sees the prisoner’s shirt is wet, stained black, and she smells of a familiar blend of iron and salt, the smell of blood.

Duchesne steps close to Luke, nodding in the pair’s direction. “We found her like that walking along the logging road to Fort Kent.”

“No coat?” Coatless in this weather? She couldn’t have been out for long.

“Nope. Listen, I need you to tell me if she’s hurt, or if I can take her back to the station and lock her up.”

As far as law enforcement officers went, Luke’s always suspected Duchesne of being heavy-handed; he’s seen too many drunks brought in with lumps on their skulls or facial bruising. This girl, she’s only a kid-what in the world could she have done? “Why is she in custody? For not wearing a coat in this weather?”

Duchesne gives Luke a sharp look, unaccustomed to being mocked. “That girl is a killer. She told us she stabbed a man to death and left his body out in the woods.”

Luke goes through the motions of examining the prisoner, but he can barely think for the strange pulsing in his head. He shines a penlight into her eyes-they are the palest blue eyes he’s ever seen, like two shards of compressed ice-to see if her pupils are dilated. Her skin is clammy to the touch, her pulse low and her breathing ragged.