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that were cloudy at best—and at their worst must have burdened him with at least some measure of guilt, as they did Zak. Several years earlier at a large, family Christmas party where he’d had too much to drink, Kasey cornered Zak and went off about how the biggest injustice of the last century was that Zak and the others hadn’t done prison time over what had taken place that weekend. When Nadine asked why, if Zak had been intent on killing him and the others, Zak had returned to save his life, Kasey reacted as if the thought had never occurred to him. Or as if Zak hadn’t returned.

Other than that single drunken holiday rant, Kasey was always polite to Zak in the way that only a man who thinks you’re capable of murder can be. Once Kasey made the move to the East Coast, Zak and Nadine received most of their information about him through Nadine’s parents. His return visits to the West Coast were brief and infrequent. He died at thirty-one, ironically in an accident similar to the one that had killed Zak’s sister.

In recent years at weddings and funerals and birthdays, Kasey, who’d once relentlessly avoided Zak, sought him out, looking him in the eye as if the two of them knew something wicked nobody else in the room could ever realize. Zak couldn’t tell if Kasey’s stare was meant to be a challenge or if he was attempting to forge some sort of blood bond. Either way, Zak didn’t take the bait and now would never know what Kasey had meant by it. Because Kasey had been cremated, there was no procession. Outside the church, people commiserated with the family. Zak and Nadine had two girls they both adored, six and seven, and except for sporting Zak’s jug-handle ears, they were otherwise near clones of their mother. After most of the mourners had gone, the girls played on the grass in the sunshine with the children of Nadine’s cousins. Zak found himself alone with Nadine, who turned to him and said, “I loved him so much.”

“I know you did.”

“After we became adults, we were just never as close as when we were growing up. When we were little he used to protect me at school.”

“Big brothers are good for that,” Zak said, surveying the snow-covered Cascades in the distance and thinking that at this time of year biking up there would be impossible.

Zak put his arm around his wife and pulled her close. He’d been lucky in life. He’d fought hard for that luck and knew the fighting was the single biggest factor in it. He knew whatever luck Kasey had been born with had run out at Panther Creek; the material fortune Kasey enjoyed for the rest of his life had been tainted with what he’d done or not done back there on the mountain.

Forty feet away Zak and Nadine’s daughters shrieked and turned cartwheels on the grass, the long funeral pushed out of their minds by the reunion with second cousins. The afternoon sunlight shone through Nadine’s dress, silhouetting her legs, still strong from tennis and from jogging in the park while the girls rode bikes.

Zak couldn’t help thinking about how Nadine’s tearful mother had wrapped her arm around his waist an hour ago and said, “Well, at least we still have one son left.” He knew she didn’t really mean it, but was grateful for the gesture. Nadine, sensing he was lost in his own thoughts, gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EARL EMERSON is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award–winning author of Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, Pyro, The Smoke Room, and Firetrap; as well as the Thomas Black Detective series, which includes The Rainy City, Poverty Bay, Nervous Laughter, Fat Tuesday, Deviant Behavior, Yellow Dog Party, The Portland Laugher, The Vanishing Smile, The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass, and Catfish Café. He lives in North Bend, Washington.

ALSO BY EARL EMERSON

Vertical Burn

Into the Inferno

Pyro

The Smoke Room

Firetrap

THE THOMAS BLACK NOVELS

The Rainy City

Poverty Bay

Nervous Laughter

Fat Tuesday

Deviant Behavior

Yellow Dog Party

The Portland Laugher

The Vanishing Smile

The Million-Dollar Tattoo

Deception Pass

Catfish