ORNING MIST THICK AS GRAN’S FATBACK GRAVY SWIRLED IN the glow of the hotel sign. Though the sun had never totally yielded the night sky, it had yet to get organized for another dawn.

In other words, visibility sucked.

But the advantage in elevation worked in my favor. While Nellie’s torso was shrouded in a puffy gray jacket that blended with the fog, her bright red skirt was easy to spot. As I left the cover of the portico, the scarlet beacon was disappearing around the curve of the drive.

I hurried down the walk. Though I doubted Nellie would notice a tail, I kept to the inside of the arc for cover. I’d descended halfway when my quarry vanished. I kicked up the pace. At the bottom of the hill, I looked left and then right. The red skirt was swishing along Veterans Memorial Drive, which, at this hour, was largely deserted.

I made the turn, already regretting my decision to sally forth sans outerwear. Vapor puffed from my lips each time I exhaled.

Downtown Yellowknife has the look and feel of a movie set trucked in and assembled quickly. Think Northern Exposure, but ramp up the number of bars, eateries, shops, and nondescript office and government buildings.

I followed Nellie to Fiftieth Street, moving as fast as possible to generate body heat but slowly enough to keep some distance between us. Which wasn’t hard. Despite her short legs and considerable bulk, the woman was booking.

Yellowknife is similar to Charlotte with regard to street names. Shortly, Fiftieth Street met Fiftieth Avenue. Very creative.

Nellie trundled through the intersection without waiting for a green. To avoid detection, I hung back a few moments, then crossed and ducked into a recess at the front of a souvenir shop.

A half block below Fiftieth Street, I could make out a long orange awning spanning the front of a three-story building that had seen better days. A lot of them. Lettering on the awning and the second-floor stucco identified the place as the Gold Range Hotel. Without hesitating, Nellie pulled open the front door and slipped inside.

I yanked my iPhone from my jeans and tapped Ryan’s number. My hands shook so badly from the cold I missed and had to try again.

Voice mail.

I left a message. Call me. Now.

Eyes darting between the Gold Range and my cell, I tried Ollie. Same result. I left the same message. Both text and voice.

Were the dolts still sleeping? Had they turned off their ringers? Were they already up and gone? Unlikely after less than six hours sleep.

Arm-wrapping my torso for warmth, I studied the Gold Range. With the garish awning, carved shutters, faux Tudor trim on the upper floors, and dark wood paneling at street level, the place looked like a cross between a Swiss chalet and a Super 8.

Did Nellie live at the Gold Range? Did Ruben? Might she be there now?

I considered my options. Go inside and try to locate one or the other? Wait? For how long? Screw the whole caper and head back to the Explorer?

Under my hoodie and thin cotton tee, an army of goose bumps puckered my skin. I pistoned my palms up and down my arms. Hopped from foot to foot.

Where the hell were Ryan and Ollie?

I stole a quick glance at the shop behind me. Through the plate-glass window, I could see posters, plastic polar bears, and other tourist kitsch. And something else: sweatshirts and jackets saying I Love Yellowknife.

Business hours were posted on the door. Monday through Friday, nine A.M. to eight P.M. Industrious. But useless to me. Besides, I hadn’t brought cash or a credit card with me to breakfast.

I glanced at my watch. Seven-ten.

I stared at the Gold Range. The hotel stared back, windows silent and dark in the predawn fog.

Seven-fourteen.

Shivering hard, I tried Ryan and Ollie again. Neither answered.

Decision. I’d wait until seven-thirty, then storm the hotel.

If I hadn’t died of hypothermia.

I resumed hopping and arm-rubbing.

Gradually, the refrigerated mist changed hue. Uphill, behind the Explorer, pink and yellow backlit long pewter clouds paralleling the earth’s rim.

Seven-seventeen.

All quiet at the Gold Range. In the growing light, I could see twisted fabric looping hammock-style behind one window. Nice touch.

After what seemed an hour, I checked my watch.

Seven-twenty.

A stakeout was definitely not the heart-racing excitement it was cracked up to be.

I was about to alter my plan and move on to phase two when the hotel’s front door swung outward. Head down, Nellie stepped onto the walk and chugged straight toward me.

I admit: the old cardiac muscles did a bit of high-stepping at that.

Before reaching the corner, Nellie diagonaled across Fiftieth Street and turned right onto Fiftieth Avenue.

Exhaling a cone of breathy relief, I hurried in her wake.

Yellowknife was now bustling with activity. Meaning I could see three people on the main drag.

At the A&W, two men stopped their conversation to track my movement, faces barely visible under raised parka hoods. At the Kentucky Fried, I passed a kid in a red tracksuit, black fleece vest, and orange tuque carrying a yellow skateboard under one arm. Both times I smiled and said good morning. Both times I got only unfriendly stares.

All righty, then.

Somewhere beyond Forty-fourth Street, Fiftieth Avenue became Franklin. Charlotte-style all the way. Hustling along, I memorized street names and the turns I was making.

Several blocks past School Draw Avenue, Nellie hooked a right onto Hamilton, then another onto an unpaved lane. A sign on a rock said Ragged Ass Road. That’s one you’d never see on the Queen City map.

Nellie barreled up Ragged Ass, still oblivious to my presence. I held back at the turn, fearful that my footsteps on the gravel would give me away. Flicking glances left and right, I took in my surroundings. The sun was higher now, burning off the mist. Detail was clearer.

The neighborhood was residential, with browned-out grass hugging up to the road and utility wires hanging low overhead. I smelled fishy water and bracken mud and sensed a lake nearby.

The ’hood’s architectural theme was northern hodgepodge. The newer homes looked like they’d been assembled from mail-order kits. Aluminum siding. Prefab windows. Faux-colonial shutters and doors.

The older homes resembled cottages at a hippie summer camp. Unstained frame exteriors painted with murals or images taken from nature. Metal downspouts and smokestacks. Whirligigs, plastic animals, and ceramic gnomes in the yards or topping the fences.

Every house had at least one outbuilding, a rusted tank, and a mound of firewood. And, I suspected, occupants hostile to uninvited strangers.

Dogs? I put that alarming image aside.

As roads go, Ragged Ass wasn’t much. Just two blocks long. Never casting a backward glance, Nellie beelined toward the far end, up a dirt drive, and into a structure whose owners were firmly grounded in the summer-camp school.

Oblivious or indifferent to the early-morning intruder, Ragged Ass dozed on.

Skin tingling with cold and apprehension, I crept forward.

No Rottweiler barked. No pit bull lunged.

There you go. I was surveilling.

The house Nellie had entered was little more than a shack, wood-frame, maybe nine hundred square feet of interior. Reflective numbers nailed to the street-facing wall said 7243.

A jerry-rigged plastic and wood greenhouse clung to one side of the house, and a tattered brown awning jutted from the other. Beneath the awning sat a vinyl table-and-chair set and a rusted charcoal grill.

No vehicle was parked in the short dirt drive or under the carport.

Now what?

So far, waiting had served me well. I decided to do it some more.

Using a small shed for cover, I watched from the opposite side of the road.

As on Fiftieth, time moved at the pace of a glacier.

I thumbed on my phone.

Seven-fifty. No voice mail or text.

I dialed Ryan and left an update on my whereabouts.

Thermally, the new location was a trade-off. Though sunrise had atomized the mist and kicked the temperature up a notch, a steady breeze pumped moisture off the unseen water.

I crossed my arms and tucked my hands under my pits. My breath was no longer forming cones, but it was close.

For an eon the only action on Ragged Ass involved ravens jockeying for position on the overhead wires. Then a door slammed and an engine fired to life.

My head whipped left. Thirty yards north, a red pickup was backing down a drive. I watched the truck wheel out, stop, then head toward Hamilton.

By eight-fifteen my enthusiasm for surveillance had dropped lower than my core body temperature. A million arguments for leaving swirled in my brain.

This house might have nothing to do with Ruben. Maybe it was Nellie’s home and she was inside, warm in her bed, with Ruben back at the Gold Range. Maybe Nellie had stopped by the hotel to tip Ruben about our presence in Yellowknife. Maybe Ruben had already gone underground and I’d blown it again.

What the hell? I knew the address. We could return later to see if Ruben was here.

Occasionally, I give myself good advice. In rare instances I take it. Unfortunately, this was not one of them.

Before bailing, I decided on one quick peek. No, that’s not quite accurate. There was no conscious decision. My semi-numb feet just started moving toward the house.

Quick scan left and right, then I scuttled across Ragged Ass, up the drive, and around the awning side of the house. Circling the barbecue with what I hoped was stealth, I flattened my back to the wall beside a pair of sliding glass doors.

Breath frozen, I listened.

From inside came the muted cadence of a radio or television talk show. Outside, around me, nothing but stillness.

Ever so gently, I disengaged my right shoulder and rolled left.

Pointless. A set of thin metal blinds covered the inside of each glass door. Both sets were fully extended with the slats firmly shut.

I slid to my right and tried the same maneuver on a window whose sill was at shoulder height. More closed blinds.

I was about to give up when I heard what sounded like yapping coming through the wall. Ruben’s dog?

Totally amped, I stole toward the rear of the house.

On the right of the backyard, a clothesline ran from the house’s rear wall to a stunted birch maybe twenty feet back. Opposite the birch, across mostly dirt, was an aluminum storage shed. Beside the shed was a weathered wooden Dumpster with an angled flip lid.

A set of sagging wooden steps descended three treads from a door at the house’s rear center. On their far side sat a cracked ceramic planter. Beyond the planter was a rickety wooden table. A stained surface and rusty gutting knife suggested it was used for cleaning fish.

Between the house’s left corner where I stood and the steps was another, slightly higher window. Though I couldn’t be certain from my angle, shadowing hinted that the blinds stopped six inches short of the sill.

Senses on high alert, I rounded the corner and began inching along the rear wall. A raven cawed and took flight from the birch.

I froze.

Nothing.

More inching.

Eight steps brought me to the window and the edge of a shallow pit centered in the ground below it. The pit appeared to have been dug by hand, then lined with black plastic and surrounded by stones. A garden hose snaked from the stones to a faucet on the house. Surrounded by muck and holding four inches of opaquely iridescent green water, the thing looked like the koi pond from hell.

I tried peering into the house from the far side of the pond. From that angle, I could see zilch through the gap below the blinds.

I gauged the distance between the pond’s front edge and the house’s rear wall. Two feet. Tricky but enough for footing.

Palm-bracing against the wood, I sidestepped slowly along the wall. The mud felt slick and gushy below the soles of my sneakers.

Two steps and I’d cleared the window frame. The sill jutted just above nose-level. Gripping it with icy fingers, I raised up on my toes.

Though the lights were off, some objects stood out in the house’s dim interior. The top of a refrigerator. A wall clock shaped like a fish. A very successful strip of flypaper.

I was about to take one more step to my left when something hard cracked my shin. Fire shot up my leg. I smothered a cry.

Had I been bitten? Struck?

Before I could look down, tentacles wrapped my ankles. Squeezed.

My feet flew from under me.

Black and iridescent green raced up toward my face.