“Bufflehead?” I noted that he had binos slung around his neck, too. “Yeah. What are you doing here, Stan?” “Birding.” “No. I mean, yeah, obviously, I can see that. But what are you doing right here, right now, while I’m here, right now?” He looked at me with flat eyes like I was babbling. Which I kind of was doing, because I had convinced myself that Stan was not stalking me, and here he was, at Park Point, three hours north of where we both lived, alone with me on an empty shore in the middle of a Thursday morning. Not to mention that he had once again appeared soundlessly behind me, which was really starting to unnerve me. Knott couldn’t get a bead on this guy to save his soul, but all I had to do was turn around and there he was. “Who are you?” I finally spit out. “Stan Miller.” “No! Stan!” I was almost shouting at him. “Who are you? I mean, really? You show up right after I find a body, you scare off a bear—maybe saving my life—you don’t exist according to the police who want to talk to you about the scene of a crime, you move like a ghost, and everyone in the MOU thinks you’re either in the witness protection program or some kind of hired gun.
