Blue

Chapter 1

Brady Halverson stood barefoot on the pale hardwood of his office floor. Anxious whining seeped through the Bluetooth in his ear. He held onto a sigh over the replay of a conversation he had at least once a month. Myron was a great dermatologist and a lousy investor.

"You know how the market works," Brady said. "Stock values drop. That doesn't mean they'll stay down."

"It doesn't mean they won't." Myron launched into a string of hypothetical financial catastrophes.

He didn't like risk, which made Myron the wrong guy to have an investment account. Unfortunately, investing was as much a part of a doctor's image as golf.

Brady turned his back on the muted flat-screen TV across the room and wandered to the picture window near his desk. Proof of last night's storm huddled in small, white patches in his backyard. A hint of snow dusted the wilderness beyond with the blatant warning of an impending ski season. The resorts would be thrilled.

He stood with arms folded across his chest, thinking about snow while Myron complained. He leaned closer to the window when he saw something move in the trees. He picked up the binoculars he kept on the windowsill and inspected his visitor from a distance. Judging by the size, it was either a deer or a mountain lion. One would nibble a few patches out of his yard. The other meant trouble.

Curiosity turned to suspicion when he realized it was neither of those. A person trudged out of the trees, stumbling every few steps. A kid. Teenage at best. He was dressed only in jeans, trainers, and a long-sleeve T-shirt despite the frigid beauty the clouds had left behind.

"Have you heard anything about a missing hiker?" he asked Myron.

"No, but then I don't have your current-events addiction. Why?"

The kid stumbled across the half-meter barrier of stone and gravel marking the line between government land and his property. The change from solid ground to shifting bits of stone tripped him, and the kid went down on his knees. He hung there, kneeling in gravel, arms dead at his sides before gravity pulled him face first into the manicured lawn.

Brady snatched the binoculars away, and the scene leaped further back. Anxiety clamped onto his chest, squeezing the breath out of him when the kid stayed down, face buried in the grass.

"I need to go," he told Myron. "A kid collapsed in my yard." He strode across the room and into the hall.

"Whose kid?"

"I don't know. Skinny. Black hair. He doesn't look familiar."

"In your yard?" He heard the raised eyebrows. "Where? I don't see him," Myron said, no doubt peering through his own windows next door.

"In the back. He came out of the trees."

He flew down three flights of stairs to the lower level of his house.

"Want me to phone the police?" Myron asked. "He could be an addict. You shouldn't mess with those kids when they're high. They're too unpredictable."

"Why would an addict be in the woods? There's nothing back there but a hundred kilometers of trees."

He paused to tug on a warmup jacket, shoved his feet into his running shoes, and strode outside. Winter bit into him with icy fangs.

"It's a freezer out here." His words floated smoke signals into the air.

"Is the kid breathing?" Myron asked.

"I can't tell yet."

He strode across the yard to the boy still face down in the sod.