The lights were on at the Glasgow Inn, but I passed it by. I don’t have to stop in there every single night, after all. After eighty or ninety nights in a row, a man is entitled to a night off.

A mile north of the intersection, there’s an old logging road that heads west into the forest. The first cabin on the left is Vinnie’s. I knew he wouldn’t be home yet-he was doing his designated driver routine for his teammates, dropping them off at the Bay Mills Reservation, and probably having to talk to a hundred tribal relatives who still didn’t understand why he moved away. He’d be lucky to make it home by daybreak.

The next six cabins were mine. My father built them in the sixties and seventies, one per summer until he got too sick to build them anymore. When I left the police force, I came up here figuring I’d stay a little while and then sell them. That was fourteen and a half years ago.

Maybe Sylvia was right. Maybe I was hiding from the world.

I didn’t want to think about it. I was tired. My muscles were already starting to stiffen up in the cold. For that night I wanted only a warm bed. Beyond that simple desire, there were only two other things I could ask for. My first wish was not to wake up the next morning feeling terrible. A little soreness I could take. Just let me get up and walk without screaming. My second wish was not to have to deal with that Bruckman clown ever again. Guys like that bring out the worst in me. Just don’t let me run into him again.

Just those two tiny requests. Surely that’s not too much to ask for in a man’s life.

Is it?

CHAPTER THREE

I woke up the next morning. I tried to lift my head. Bad idea. I winced, held my breath, regrouped, tried to push myself up to a sitting position. Another bad idea.

Good Almighty God in Heaven, I thought. I’ve really done it this time.