Chapter 6: The Lock Was Already Broken

My grandfather's lake house sits at the end of a gravel road on Detroit Lake, with a dock, a woodstove and a porch that leans.

It was never in the trust.

It was mine outright, and Nolan had never liked it.

I drove out on Tuesday after my last client, with a duffel bag and a bag of groceries.

The porch light was off.

The front door stood a few inches open.

I did not go in.

I stood on the gravel with my keys in my hand and my pulse in my ears and looked at the splintered wood around the lock.

Somebody had put a pry bar through it.

I called nobody.

I pushed the door with my foot.

The living room was a mess.

Every drawer in my grandfather's rolltop desk hung open, and his old tax boxes lay on the floor with the lids off.

The photo albums had been pulled from the shelf.

On the rug in front of the woodstove, one of the glass-doored cabinets had been knocked down, and the glass lay in pieces across the floor.

Nobody was inside.

I knelt to pick up the nearest frame.

It was my grandfather and me on the dock when I was ten, both of us holding the same fish.

The glass cut my palm open before I knew I'd closed my hand.

I made a sound.

"Don't move," a voice said behind me.

I spun.

Russ stood in the doorway with a toolbox in one hand and his other hand out flat.

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