For the first three decades of my life, I didn’t understand the concept of home. I had one growing up, and outwardly, it was perfect. My parents were very successful physicians, and my sister and I lived a life of privilege. We just weren’t a close-knit family. That may be an understatement. Before I left for Rockton, I told my sister that it might be a few years before she heard from me again, she acted as if I’d interrupted an important meeting to say I’d be out shopping for the day.

I don’t know if my early life would have doomed me to an equally cold and comfortless adult one. Maybe I would have married and had children and formed a family there. But my future didn’t proceed in a direction that allowed me to find that out.

When I was nineteen, my boyfriend and I were waylaid in an alley by thugs who took exception to him selling drugs on their turf. I fought back enough to allow Blaine to grab a weapon so we could escape. Instead, he ran. I was beaten and left for dead, and he never even bothered calling 911.

I spent months in the hospital recuperating, post-coma. Then I went to confront Blaine. Shot him. Killed him. I didn’t intend to, but if you take a gun to a fight, you need to be prepared for that conclusion, and at nineteen, I was not.

I spent the next twelve years waiting for the knock on the door. The one that would lead me down a path ending in a prison cell. I deserved that cell. I never pretended otherwise. But nor did I turn myself in.

Instead, I punished myself with a lifetime of self-imposed isolation, during which I threw myself into my job as a homicide detective, hoping to make amends that way. Create a home, though? A family? No. I gave up any hope of that life when I pulled the trigger.

Then I came to Rockton. I arrived in a place I did not want to be . . . and I woke up. Snapped awake after twelve years in what had been just another type of coma. I came here, and I found purpose and a home.

Yet my life in Rockton is an illusion. I know that. Our amazing little town exists inside a snow globe, and all the council has to do is give it a shake and that illusion of control shatters.

We do have options. We can refuse to accept Brady. And the council will send someone to escort Dalton to Dawson City. Ship him back “down south”—our term for any place that isn’t here. Any place that Dalton doesn’t belong.

You’re on your own now, Sheriff. It might be hard to go anywhere when you don’t legally exist. Might be hard to get a job when you’ve never spent a day in school. Might be hard to do anything when you don’t have more than the allowance we paid. Oh, and don’t expect to take your girlfriend with you—Detective Butler can’t leave for another year. But go on. Enjoy your new life.

I’m sure Dalton’s adoptive parents would help him. I could give him money—it’s not like I’ve ever touched my seven-figure inheritance. The problem is that Dalton cannot imagine life anywhere else. Rockton is his purpose. His home.

We have a backup plan. If he’s ever exiled, I will leave, also, whether the council allows it or not. So will Anders. Others, too, loyal to Dalton and to what this town represents. We’ll build a new Rockton, a true refuge.

Is that laughable idealism? Maybe, which is why we don’t just go ahead and do it. For now, we work within the system. And under these particular circumstances, walking out is not an option.

These particular circumstances.

Oliver Brady.

Twenty-seven years old. American. Harvard educated. His father runs a huge tech firm. I don’t recognize the family name, but I’d presume “Brady” is as fake as “Butler” is for me. Also, his father is actually his stepfather.

What does that stepfather hope to accomplish with this scheme? I don’t know. Maybe saving his wife from the pain of an incarcerated son. Or maybe saving his corporation from the scandal of a murderous one.

“Murderous” doesn’t begin to describe Oliver Brady. I told Val there were five victims, but in cases like this, five is just how many bodies they’ve found.

During that interview with Phil, I made him give me details.

The police believe Oliver Brady took his first victim at the age of twenty. I’m sure there were other victims, animals at least. There are patterns for this sort of thing, and Oliver Brady did not burst from a chrysalis at twenty, a fully formed psychopath.

Five victims over seven years. No connection between them or to himself. Just people he could grab and take to his hiding spots, where he spent weeks torturing them.

I’m not sure “torture” is the right word. That implies your tormenter wants something, and the only thing Brady wanted was whatever pleasure he derived from it. The detectives speculated that he never delivered what we might call a killing blow. He simply kept torturing his victims until they died.

This is the man the council wants us to guard for half a year. A man who likes to play games. A man who likes to inflict pain. A man who likes to cause death. A man who will not cool his heels for six months in a secure cabin. The first chance Brady gets, he’ll show us how much he doesn’t want to be here.

* * *

After we leave Val’s, Dalton takes off to update Anders. I go in search of another person that needs to be told: the local brothel owner.

Yes, Isabel Radcliffe is more than the local brothel owner. I just like to call her that, a not-so-subtle dig at my least favorite of her positions. She owns the Roc, one of two bars in town. The Roc doubles as a brothel, and she and I are still debating that. I say it sets up dangerous and insulting expectations of the majority of women who don’t moonlight in her establishment. She says it allows women to explore and control their sexuality and provides safe access to sex in a town that’s three-quarters male. I’d be more inclined to consider her argument if “brothel owner” were a volunteer position. I mentioned that once. She nearly laughed herself into a hernia.

I find Isabel upstairs at the Roc, walking out of one of the three bedrooms that serve as the brothel—for safety, paid sex must take place on the premises. She’s wearing a kerchief over her silver-streaked dark hair, and it may be the first time I’ve seen her in jeans. Her only “makeup” is a smudge of dirt on one cheek. We can’t find room for makeup and hair dye on supply runs, which is a relief, actually, when that becomes the standard. With Isabel, it doesn’t matter. She still looks like she should be lounging in a cocktail dress, smoking a cigarette in a holder, with hot young guys fetching her drinks.

She’s carrying an armload of wood, and I look into the room she’s exiting and see a bed in pieces.

“Whoa,” I say. “I hope you charged extra for that.”

“I would skin a client alive if he did that.” She hefts the wood. “Well, no, if he could do that, I’d want a demonstration. I’m repurposing the room, so I deconstructed the bed.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes, Casey. By myself. With that thing . . . what do you call it? Knocks in nails and pulls them out again? Ah, yes, a hammer. Kenny was busy, and I didn’t want to disturb him when he was getting ready to leave.”

“You mean he was going to charge you double for a last-minute job, and you decided to do it yourself.”

“Same thing. Make yourself useful and grab some wood.”

I do, and as I follow her down the stairs, I say, “You said you’re repurposing the room?”

“It will now be for private parties.”

“Kinky.”

She glances over her shoulder. “Not that kind. However, if you’re interested in that kind, I can certainly arrange them. I’m sure we’d find no shortage of buyers. Though I also suspect our good sheriff would snatch all the invitations up.”

“Nah, he’d just glower at anyone who tried to buy one. That’d make them change their minds. Fast.”

“True.”

“And, just for the record, I’m not interested in private sex parties.”

She stacks the wood onto a pile. “As I said, it’s not that kind of room. We very rarely have three clients requiring rooms simultaneously, which makes it an inefficient use of space. Instead, this one will host private parties. Drink and food provided, along with a dedicated server . . . who will offer nothing more than drink and food. You may feel perfectly comfortable holding your poker games up here.”

“With people banging in the next room for ambience?”

“I’m installing soundproofing. Now, what was a plane doing landing on our strip?”

“You saw it?”

“I see everything.”

Her network of paid informants makes sure of that. Isabel not only runs the Roc, but controls the town’s alcohol, which makes her—after Dalton—the most powerful person in Rockton. She’s also the longest resident after him. She’s passed her five years but has made an arrangement with the council to stay on. I suspect that “arrangement” involves blackmailing them with information gathered by her network.

In a small northern town, I’m not sure which is more valuable: booze or secrets. Sex comes next. Isabel owns all three, while holding no official position in local government. Kind of like the Monopoly player who buys only Park Place and Boardwalk and then sits back to enjoy the profits while others scrabble to control the remainder of the board.

I hand Isabel the letter that came with Brady. As she reads it, her lips tighten almost imperceptibly. Then she folds it and runs a perfect fingernail along the crease.

“This is one time when I really wish you were given to practical jokes,” she says.

“Sorry.”

She shakes the letter. “This is inappropriate.”

I choke on a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“No, it is the best way of putting it. Springing this on Eric is inappropriate. It is also inappropriate to ask the town to accept it.”

“They’re paying us. A million dollars for Rockton.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Did you actually say money doesn’t matter?”

She fixes me with a look and heads back upstairs for more wood.

“We don’t need a million dollars,” she says as I follow. “People didn’t come here for luxury accommodations. They came for safety. This trades one for the other. Unacceptable.”

“That’s what Eric said. So they promised him twenty percent.”

“Imbeciles. Did he tell them where to stick it?”

“Of course. Doesn’t change anything, though. We are stuck with Mr. Brady for six months.”

“And you want my advice on how to deal with it?”

“If you have advice, I’ll listen, but I’m here for your expertise on Brady himself. Use your shrink skills and tell me what we’re dealing with.”

She picks up the headboard and motions for me to grab the other end. “I was a counseling psychologist. I had zero experience with homicidal maniacs. Fortunately, you have someone in town who is an expert.”

“I know. But he’s going to be a pain in the ass about it.”

“And I’m not?”

“You’re a whole different kind of pain in the ass.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. He is your expert with Oliver Brady. You need me for another sort of advice: how and what to tell the general population. That is going to be the truly tricky part.”