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  Jack eased the car from the middle to the right, as far as he dared. His hands were going white with the tightness of his grip on the leathered wheel. He fought the urge to slow down and even stop. His father would die if he did. There was no time, so he pressed the accelerator. The sooner they would pass this oncoming obstacle, the sooner he could move back into the middle of the road, the safe spot. But it seemed an impossible fit. The oncoming pick-up truck grew exponentially larger as it came. Jack could barely breathe. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and brow. The wheel slipped in doing so. He swerved the Audi into the path of the truck, then fought to regain his alignment with the road, repositioned his hands quickly on the wheel and turned back, not too much, but just enough. The truck was just about there. Jack felt a pulling sensation toward it, like vertigo from a high-up location. The truck was loud and kicking up dust. It raced by like a locomotive, sucking energy from the Audi and blanketing the windshield with fine particles. The road and the night were suddenly gone. Jack thought it was over. They would certainly crash.

  Noah’s hand reached forward, so fast it didn’t leave a chance for Jack to be surprised or even react. Noah, saying nothing, activated the windshield spray. Jack kept both his hands on the wheel, his world appearing before him again as the wiper arms cleared the glass. Noah leaped back onto his father, to press his wound, saying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” over and over again. Jack moved the car perfectly straight, on the right-hand side of the road but not so close to the right edge that it scared him and not so far out in the middle that they wouldn’t have a chance if another vehicle came at them.

  Jack handled the Audi well through the curves that came next, mainly banked by the Sinclair lands, the sprawling estate of a wealthy American family. Jack knew that after that there’d be a straight stretch, flat out for at least three or four kilometres. That would be easier to handle than in these up-and-down curves.

  A flash of light, red and blue, caught his eye. He realized it was in the rear-view mirror. He juggled his attention forward and to the rear just enough to confirm what he saw. It was a police pick-up truck, chasing behind them. The siren was off. Just its roof lights swirled. Jack’s foot slipped off the gas pedal, hitting the brake. The Audi jerked. Noah and his father were shaken. Jack steadied his foot again on the gas. The police truck quickly gained on them. Jack had no intention of stopping or even slowing down. Making it to the hospital fast was the only option.

  The police truck moved into the other lane, potentially into oncoming traffic, and edged alongside the Audi. Jack kept his arms straight and eyes fixed on the road ahead. But his attention was caught when the shaded window on the passenger side of the police truck went down quickly, and a voice from inside the truck shouted at Jack. The Audi windows were closed. Jack wouldn’t dare fiddle with the window buttons now. His entire body and especially his arms were locked in driving position. But the muffled sounds of someone shouting were hard to ignore. The police truck and the lights were hard to ignore. But Jack ignored them and focused on his goal.

  The police truck shifted onto the right-hand side of the road and sped on. Jack thought this was a good thing for an instant, relieved of the stressful presence near the Audi as he continued to press forward. The police truck created a dusty veil ahead, but this time Jack knew exactly what to do, activating the wiper arms and spray, and leaving them on. As the wipers pushed dirt and liquid from left to right, Jack saw the police truck far ahead, parked directly across both lanes. There was no room, or only very little, to get around the truck.

  A perfect blockade.

  The driver’s door of the truck was wide open, and there, in the road, stood Tom ‘Brooder’ Doran, hands on his hips, calm and resilient.

  Jack slowed the Audi and stopped it just feet from the truck. Tom opened the door and yanked Jack out onto the road, tossing him three metres away, faster than Jack could say anything. Jack tumbled in the dust.

  “My dad!” he screamed.

  “What’re you doing, kid?” shouted Tom, fiercely.

  “It’s my dad!”

  Tom wasn’t listening. He scanned the inside of the car. Saw Noah cradling his father, both full of blood. Paul’s abdomen had swelled. He looked back at Jack and saw the blood there too. He snapped into emergency mode, went quickly to Jack, lifting him like he weighed nothing, and pushed him toward the Audi.

  “Get in!”

  Tom threw Jack into the driver’s side, pushing him in the same motion into the passenger side. Tom took the driving position then adjusted the seat position quickly for his long legs.

  He revved the Audi engine. The tires spun on the dirt. The car shot away, its driver’s door slamming shut from the force. Tom took the car around the truck as easily as if there were no obstacle.

  “Where’re you taking us?” shouted Jack, getting in Tom’s face.

  Tom slammed his right arm into Jack’s chest, only hard enough to fix him deep into the passenger seat.

  “Sit there!” said Tom with finality. “Buckle up!”

  “You,” he shouted to Noah, “hold your father! Press on his wound if you can!”

  Tom sped the Audi away down Chemin Van Kleet, leaving the police truck, lights flashing, behind them. Jack held his face in his hands, relieved, but traumatized by his father’s condition.

  “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

  “Too far,” is all Jack answered.

  “You should’ve called. What the hell happened?”

  “He’s shot! I think he’s shot,” said Jack.

  Jack, overwhelmed, looked at Tom blankly.

  “Let’s get to the hospital,” said Tom, focusing on driving. “We’ll talk after!”

  Jack climbed into the back seat to help Noah, who had been doing his best to hold their father.

  The woods raced by, not fast enough.

  PART 1

  A GOOD KILL

  CHAPTER 1

  VALHALLA

  A soft breeze rolled over the low hills and shallow valleys, cradling Beaufort County as the September sun rose to warm the autumn foliage, delicate, coloured in yellow, orange and crimson. The crisp air seized all that might have otherwise blown free, from dried leaves fallen from clusters of thick maple and oak, to the dust of agricultural soil, cold-hardened, lined by jagged-edged cracks, rippled by farmers’ tools, to fields of wild grass and broken weeds, all held perfectly still. The pale frost crackled and melted under the hooves of whitetail deer, migrating southwest through the main valley, and of the many resident cows, sheep and horses sustained by the dairy farms and ranches of this pastoral land.

  Nature’s simplicity and grace. The soft sun dancing through.

  Beautiful.

  It was September 23rd, 2012, and Catherine Martelle-Carignan was racing her Audi on Highway 39 to Chemin Van Kleet and her sweet Valhalla, for one remaining day, one last visit. It would then belong entirely to Paul, her soon-to-be ex.

  It was hard to accept.

  The curving roads, the slopes and straightaways, coloured barns, shiny grain towers, the blue pick-up truck rusting in a farm’s front yard, even the empty distances were all intimately familiar to Catherine. She had driven this route so many times, in all weather conditions, at all times of day and night, in all states of mind. Never, though, with heaviness in her heart like this. The closer she got, the more her melancholy grew.

  She turned the Audi hard into the gravel drive, and its tires slid on the small stones. From her angle of approach, the house was backlit by the rising sun. She parked where she had always done, next to an ancient oak, its bulbous trunk leaning dramatically westward. The old tree leaned an inch more every year, she figured, maybe an inch-and-a-half. She’d never measured it, just relied on the sense of space and distance she’d developed in her work as an architect and engineer.

  Catherine admired the old tree, stoic for all that it had weathered
over the years. It was a reminder to be strong and stand her ground no matter what.

  She turned off the ignition and waited. No sound penetrated the thick, smooth shell of her car. Outside, nothing moved other than the tips of leaves trembling in the light breeze. Not a soul around—she’d have gone by the time Paul got here—and no other car in the driveway. If Paul were here, his car would be parked near the old oak. Like Catherine, he preferred to park next to the tree, even though the home itself, which she had designed a decade ago, had a massive interior garage. During construction, they’d made certain to spare the oak, shifting plans for the parking area away from it.

  The tree had definitely been more vertical then.

  Arriving at Valhalla, which she considered her best design, was making Catherine unusually reflective. Though the events in her life scared her on some level—her growing role at the firm, her pending divorce, shared custody of two teenage boys, complete responsibility for her own finances, the very idea of being a single woman again after ten years of marriage—she knew she had it in her to keep moving forward. She would make it all work. Somehow.

  Catherine turned down the sun visor to check herself in its narrow mirror, a knee-jerk thing to do since there was nobody at the house, and wouldn’t be for many hours. Catherine had had an awful night and it showed. Up since 3:30, wary of the day ahead.

  She had arranged with Paul for this last day to say goodbye to the place and pick up a few belongings still in the house. The Beaufort house would belong to Paul, under the terms of their divorce, and the Kirkland house would be hers, since it was closer to the Mulroy Arsenault office and the boys’ school. It made sense. As for Valhalla, Paul had offered her access anytime she might ask, but this was the formal, agreed-upon date, and she wanted to respect that. That was her rule, professionally and personally. Always follow the plan.

  Besides how tired and stressed she looked, something else was off. The strained blue eyes that stared back at her in the mirror didn’t feel like her eyes. She took a few deep breaths, and then a few more, letting her mind explore what was facing her. She pledged to stay strong, to stay the course, and ward off that gnawing sense that she, more than Paul, was responsible for the way their relationship had fizzled out like a satellite falling back from the skies, a ball of fire hitting a wide ocean of reasons why.

  She felt the need for to accept the current state of affairs. Her state of affairs. She had loved Paul and she had hated Paul. It was all mixed up now, and there was nothing to be gained from draining her energy going over all those betrayals, lies, and misgivings again. Their memories trailed far behind each of them. The page could now be turned. They just had to will it that way.

  Catherine’s plans for herself were clear. Focus on the well-being of her kids and raise her reputation as one of Montreal’s best building professionals. Nothing else mattered, certainly not the past. Relationships could wait. In fact, the mere thought of sitting across from a new man, who would ask intimate questions and have expectations, made her feel ill. There were more important things to do, things that helped her feel better.

  There were no words for this, just a simple clearing of her thoughts of the kind she imagined competitive athletes or dramatic actors might exercise before their big moment. Yet this was no act, no race, nothing that was going to win her a medal, just a woman caught in the turmoil of divorce, returning to her cherished country home for one last goodbye.

  She tried to tell herself it was just a house, an inanimate object that couldn’t answer back, but part of her knew that it could do exactly that. It could communicate everything that had been significant. It was an old shoe, with a story behind every scuff on every wall. The architect in her, the lover of buildings, and the mother who had watched her children play and grow in and around this house knew the place had much to say.

  She pushed the sun visor back up, taking in the full breadth of the house. Valhalla. The name had been her younger son’s idea, if she remembered correctly, inspired by something he had been reading. Noah always had a book in his hands.

  They had made it their home. From its first months of use, Valhalla had not only been a country home, but the family’s principal residence, at least as much as the weather and Catherine’s work allowed. Their spirits had thrived there in the early years. When Paul or one of the kids had said, “Let’s go to Valhalla,” it had meant hours spent outdoors, fresh air, the smell of pine, early morning coffee and hot chocolate along with sunrise and spectacular sunsets. A sense of safety and comfort had been palpable.

  As Catherine sat in her car, memories came to mind, all of them special, almost incredible, worth all the energy and emotion invested in them in the past and in the uncertainty biting at her heels today. The bottom line for her was that Valhalla, and all that it had stood for, was coming to an end.

  This was it, a few hours alone at the property to say goodbye.

  Catherine got out of the Audi and shivered in her leather jacket. Tiredness didn’t help. She’d left Montreal before sunrise, and the drive to Beaufort had seemed longer than usual. She stretched her legs, arched her back, and reached her arms up to the sky. The smell of evergreens and wild flowers, though pleasant and sweet, pricked her nose. She sneezed, and when Catherine sneezed, it usually took her four or five bellowing takes to get clear, something her boys enjoyed making fun of. This time was no different, five whopping sneezes, but her sons were not there to rib her about it. She walked toward the house, her eyes watering, fitted the key in the lock to the large metal door, froze and considered her options.

  There really weren’t any.

  By mid-afternoon, without breaking for lunch, Catherine had accomplished most of what she had wanted to get done. She had cleaned out two tall bookcases and a filing cabinet from the upstairs office, packed their contents into boxes and loaded them in the car. The boxes were heavy and filled the Audi. She had also gathered bags of winter clothes, several smaller boxes of miscellaneous office items, including a stack of computer discs and a pile of notebooks. The notebooks, filled with her sketches, were the only things of true value in everything she had packed. With that, Catherine was pretty much done. She had crammed the last bags into the passenger seat and was now heading back in for a final sweep.

  It was an impressive house by any standards. The vestibule and mudroom opened onto a foyer so large and well furnished that first-time guests presumed it was the living room, but it only preceded the grand living room, true heart of the house. Functional spaces—kitchen, washrooms, closets, storage rooms—were grouped in a central core, adjacent to the massive wooden stairway to the mezzanine level. The remainder of the ground floor was open plan with high ceilings. The mezzanine level had five bedrooms, including a master suite with a deck to the outdoors and an open loft area meant for office use, at one time shared by Paul and Catherine. Several families could have lived happily in Valhalla without ever bothering one another.

  Much of the house sat on the crest of a wide hill, so that there was a jaw-dropping panoramic view over the southwest valley and distant hills. On one side, toward the road and gardens, the house looked like a fortress of stone and, on the other, toward the open valley it was end-to-end glass, with a high exterior wall exposed to the land and sky. A system of massive vertical louvers controlled the wall’s opacity. Catherine knew she’d got it right, without compromising her design intent. She’d learned from it, too. All her subsequent designs stood on the shoulders of Valhalla, which was everything she had envisioned.

  Catherine halted halfway through the kitchen, spotting a coffee-table book on the counter, an unusual find because Paul was meticulous with his books and never left them out of place. This one was an illustrated history of Canada’s native peoples, that he had undoubtedly left out for her. She opened it and fell on Paul’s inscription, from years back. She was of no mind to read his sugary sentiment from the past and quickly closed it. The book had been a gi
ft from Paul on her twenty-seventh birthday, but its subject was closer to his heart than hers. At the time, she was fascinated with Paul and took any of his interests to heart. It was one of the ways she had grown closer to him then, and she’d enjoyed exploring his passion for First Nations culture and the history of Quebec and Canada.

  Stumbling on the book was not helping her focus on her objective of letting go. Perhaps Paul had meant for her to keep the book. She wasn’t sure, but she would leave it behind. She pushed it to the back of the countertop.

  Feeling hungry, she swung open the refrigerator. She was struck by the quantity of healthy greens, bean mixes, and even tofu—none of it Paul’s style. evidence of a new influence in Paul’s life, which had to be that of his girlfriend. It was no secret that Paul was seeing someone new, but Catherine had not met Anne yet, had only heard her name through her sons, and it felt weird coming face-to-face with the reality of this woman in the refrigerator. She closed the door and prepared to resist her hunger and the light-headedness that would likely accompany it. She wouldn’t feel right preparing food here, anyway. This was no longer her kitchen. She allowed herself a banana from a bowl on the counter. Food out in the open, she reasoned, was fair game.