Page 185 of The Woman By the Lake

It took him a beat to see it, but he saw it.

A soft glow in the trees. And there was another light, bobbing, like someone was holding a flashlight and walking.

He moved immediately to the chair, turning his back to his kid to pull off his pajama bottoms, and he grabbed his jeans, ordering Nadia, “Call the station.”

After he had his pants up, he turned back to see she was standing at the window with Ledger.

But her eyes were on him.

“Are you going out?” she asked.

He was buttoning his jeans. “Fuck yes, I’m going out.”

“Riggs.”

“Call the station, honey,” he repeated, pulling on a shirt.

“Take Gia,” she demanded, dashing to her nightstand for her phone.

“She stays with you two.”

“Take Gia,” she reiterated.

He sat on the bundle of clothes on his chair to put on his running shoes.

“Dad, take Gia,” Ledger urged.

Fuck.

He should have borrowed Hannibal.

“Yes, hi. Sorry. This is Nadia Williams out at Doc Riggs’s house on Coun—” Pause then, “Yes, hi, Karen.”

Fuck, his woman hadn’t been there a month and she knew every deputy in the department by their first names.

So, oh fuck to the yeah.

He was going out.

He went to his boy, wrapped his hand around his head and kissed the top of it. Went to Nadia, did the same but kissed her forehead. Went to his side of the bed and snatched up his phone and army knife. Then he raced out, calling, “Gia! Here!”

She took off with him.

He found his Maglite in the kitchen junk drawer, tested it, went to the laundry room and grabbed his stash of digital cable, drawing the ring of it up his arm to hang from his shoulder. He then clipped on Gia’s leash.

And they headed out.

He found the trail and didn’t use his Maglite because he didn’t want them to see him coming. He used the moonlight as he tore down it, Gia running at his side.

When he suspected he was getting closer, he slowed, she did the same the instant he did, and when he saw the lights in the distance, he whispered, “Gia, quiet. Heel.”

She crept beside him as he moved as carefully as he could, but without light to show him where he was walking, and with a dog, it’d be impossible not to step on a branch. He’d be lucky he didn’t stumble over a fallen log.

But by some miracle, they managed to make the high ground without them noticing he and Gia were there, and he stopped to look down at them.

Two of them, a man he’d peg at about Jess and Jace’s ages, that being around thirty, and an attractive woman in her fifties.

They had a few camp lanterns lighting what looked to be a makeshift center of operations, which consisted of a shovel, two thermoses and a backpack. And both of them had flashlights and metal detectors and were sweeping the ground several yards from the lanterns.

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