The drive gave me something to do, something to occupy the nervous energy that had been crawling through me. It hadn’t been easy to leave Tina back at the house, but I didn’t second-guess myself. Whoever had done this was acting rationally—they wanted the pictures back. Either to destroy them or to blackmail the mayor and the others. They had put Daniel at risk to get the pictures—and maybe they would pay for it somehow—but they were doing it for a reason, not because they were crazy, and they had no motive to hurt him. That’s what I kept telling myself. The hollow quiet of the golf course stilled my mind. I drove the thin road along the resort property, windows down, watching for the fence that would take me to Daniel. The fairways sat empty, strangely peaceful, spotted with curved pockets of sand. I passed one of the putting greens, where the yellow flag hung limp on the pole like a nightcap. Then a stand of bushes that obscured my view for hundreds of yards. They stopped abruptly, and I saw a long, metallic flash running away from me.
