The Winter Watch

Bryn Halloran runs the only hardware store in Vermilion, Minnesota, and has not left the county since her father's funeral. In November a man moves into the lake house on the north shore and buys six hundred dollars of supplies and a snow shovel from her, cash, no account. For three weeks she drives past his truck. Then she notices it has been outside her shop four times. She calls the sheriff. The sheriff knows his attorney. He is Ivo Koskinen, who owns a logistics company on three continents and spent eleven years in a service with no name. He came here because a man named Halloran was in his unit and did not come home, and the file on that day went missing in 2003. He thinks Bryn has it. He watches her for a month before he knocks. What she actually has is a notebook behind the furnace in her basement, and a name written on the last page. It takes one blizzard, one drive to Duluth, and nine more winters for either of them to put it down.