Chapter Thirty-Five
Hailey
Dawn. The storm is gone, the sky a hard blue, everything buried under fresh powder.
We made it through the night.
I open my eyes between Knox and Liam, every muscle in my body screaming as I shift. The fire burned down to coals hours ago,
and the cold has crept back in.
“Hey.” Knox’s voice is rough. “You okay?”
“I’m alive. I have all my fingers and toes.” I force myself to sit up. “That’s the bar we’re working with.”
Liam stirs beside me, his face still too pale but his eyes clear. “Storm’s passed.”
“Gold star for observation.”
I push to my feet and stumble toward what’s left of the doorway. The wilderness stretches out before us—mountains in the distance,
trees heavy with white, everything pristine and deadly.
Knox appears at my shoulder. “How much daylight?”
Liam checks his watch. “Six hours. Maybe seven.”
“And the ranger station?”
“Maybe six miles. If the snowmobiles work. If the fuel held.”
A lot of ifs.
Knox moves first, wading through knee-deep powder toward where we parked the machines. They’re half-buried now. He starts
clearing snow while Liam works on the second one.
I watch them move in tandem. Something shifted between them during those long hours pressed together for warmth. I caught fragments of low conversations while drifting in and out of sleep. Walls coming down somewhere.
When they come back, Knox’s hand lands on Liam’s shoulder for a moment before dropping away.
“Both operational?” I ask.
“Both operational. Fuel’s lower than I’d like, but we should make it.”
We strip the cabin of anything useful, which amounts to almost nothing. Liam pockets his compass and maps, and we mount up—me
behind Knox, Liam on the second machine.
The terrain has transformed overnight. What was rough before is now smoothed over, dangerous edges hidden under white. We
move carefully, Liam in the lead, neither of us willing to rush when one wrong move could send us into something we can’t
see.
About an hour in, Liam signals and pulls over.
“What?” Knox cuts his engine.
Liam unfolds the map. “Lake ahead. Massive. We can go around—adds four hours we don’t have with these fuel levels.” He looks
up. “Or we cross and cut our time in half. I’m pretty sure the ice is solid, but it is a large body of water so . . .”
Knox looks at me. “Your call.”
“Why is it my call?”
“Because you’re the one sitting on the back if we fall through.”
Fair point. Four extra hours means running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. Crossing means gambling on ice that might
crack. Both options end in potential death.
“Cross,” I say. “Fast.”
The lake appears twenty minutes later—a frozen plain stretching to the horizon. Liam tests the edge first, walking out ten
feet, stomping hard, listening. The ice groans but holds.
“Stay spread out,” he says. “If one of us goes through, the other needs to be far enough away not to follow.”
“Cheerful.”
“I try.”
We start across. The engines seem too loud against all that emptiness. I hold my breath without meaning to, ears straining for any sound of cracking. The ice pops and settles beneath us—natural, but every noise makes my stomach drop.
Halfway. Three-quarters.
I let myself start to believe we’re going to make it.
That’s when I look back.
Shapes in the distance. A lot of them. Following the tracks we left in the fresh powder.
“Company,” I say, tapping Knox’s shoulder.
He looks. Goes rigid.
Liam’s already noticed. I count the snowmobiles as they emerge from the tree line. Five. Six. Seven. All of them moving fast,
fanning out in pursuit formation.
She brought everyone. Whatever forces she had left after the avalanche, she pulled them all together for this.
“How the hell did she find us?” Knox asks.
Liam doesn’t answer. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the emergency beacon he grabbed yesterday. A small red light
blinks on it. Steady. Persistent.
His face goes white. “It’s been transmitting. The whole time. I didn’t check if it was already activated.”
“You’ve been leading them right to us?”
“I didn’t know.”
No time to fight about it. Seven snowmobiles are closing the gap, and Marlena’s people have fresh machines with full fuel
tanks.
“Move.” Knox guns the engine.
We race across the ice. The machines scream beneath us. Wind tears at my face. The pursuit is closing—I can hear their engines
now, a swarm of angry hornets getting louder.
Three hundred yards from shore. Two hundred.
The ice cracks.
The sound is massive, a splintering that comes from everywhere at once. I feel the snowmobile drop, the surface sagging, and
Knox swerves hard.
We hit solid ground as a section behind us collapses into dark water. Two of the pursuing snowmobiles veer wildly, one of them skidding sideways before the rider regains control. We don’t stop to watch—we plunge into the forest, branches whipping past.
We slow down once I can’t hear them anymore. Liam pulls up beside us, face ashen.
“How far?” Knox asks.
“Two miles. Maybe three.” Liam looks back. “The ice bought us time, but not much. They’ll find a way around.”
“How many did we lose?”
“Maybe one went in. The rest will make it.”
Six against three. And that’s assuming Marlena doesn’t have more people waiting somewhere.
“We need to be ready,” Knox says.
The ranger station appears through the trees. Small building, Canadian flag, smoke from the chimney.
We skid to a stop and stumble off the machines.
The woman who opens the door stops me mid-panic.
She’s not what I expected. Brown hair spills out from under a wool beanie in wild curls, framing a sun-freckled face with
deep brown eyes. Late twenties, maybe, with the lean build of someone who spends her life outdoors. No makeup, no pretense—just
clean skin and an easy confidence that makes me trust her immediately. The rifle in her hands looks as natural as an extension
of her arm.
“Who the hell are you people?” Her voice is calm, curious even, like we’re an interesting problem that wandered onto her doorstep.
We explain in fragments—kidnapped, hunted, armed people coming. She listens without interrupting, her head tilted slightly,
those dark eyes moving between the three of us like she’s cataloging everything we’re not saying along with everything we
are.
Halfway through, she holds up a hand. “Wait. Three people, held in a cabin, armed guards.” She looks at Knox. “Did you rig
something to send a signal? Some kind of W-Fi broadcast, maybe a week ago?”
The three of us go still.
“I picked up a ping on my equipment. Garbled, no coordinates, but it was repeating on a loop for about fifteen minutes before
it cut out. Couldn’t trace the source, but I flagged it with RCMP dispatch and started keeping an eye out.” She looks us over.
“That was you.”
“That was us,” Liam says. “We pulled a Wi-Fi module out of a surveillance camera and jury-rigged it to broadcast.”
“Well, it worked. Sort of. Not enough to find you, but enough that when three people show up at my door looking like they
crawled out of a war zone, I’m not starting from zero.
“How many?” she asks. “Coming after you.”
“Six that we saw. Maybe more.”
“Armed?”
“Serious hardware. Tactical weapons, body armor.”
She nods slowly, like we just told her a storm was coming and she’s calculating how much firewood she’ll need. “Well. That’s
not ideal.” She steps back from the door. “Get inside. I’ll make coffee and call for extraction. Not necessarily in that order.”
The station is warm. She moves through the small space with easy efficiency, one hand on the radio while the other sets a
kettle on the stove. Her voice is steady as she coordinates with RCMP dispatch, rattling off coordinates and situation details
like she’s ordering supplies.
“Four to six hours,” she says when she hangs up. “Nearest helicopter. Protocols and paperwork.” She pulls three mugs down
from a shelf. “Bureaucracy doesn’t move fast even when people are trying to kill you. Cream and sugar?”
“Black,” Knox says.
“Same,” from Liam.
“Whatever you’re having,” I manage.
She pours with a steady hand, then doctors her own mug with enough honey to make my teeth ache just watching. “I’m Michelle,
by the way. Since we’re apparently going to be under siege together, seems like we should be on a first-name basis.”
“Hailey. That’s Knox, and Liam.”
She looks the three of us over. “And there’s more to this than you’re telling me, but that’s fine. People end up out here for all kinds of reasons. Most of them don’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to ask questions.”
“You’re taking this very calmly,” Knox says.
Michelle shrugs, those curls bouncing. “I’ve been doing this job for almost ten years. Started right out of high school—only
thing I ever wanted to do. Three weeks ago I had to chase a wolverine out of my storage shed with a broom. Last summer a guy
showed up convinced he was being hunted by the CIA. Turned out he’d eaten some bad mushrooms, but I didn’t know that for the
first six hours.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Armed mercenaries are new, I’ll admit. But panicking never helped anyone.”
Something about her steadiness is infectious. I feel my shoulders drop slightly, the tension easing just a fraction.
“The station,” Knox says. “How defensible is it?”
“Built to handle the worst this territory can throw at it. Walls are reinforced—we get grizzlies up here, and they’re persistent
when they’re hungry. Windows are small, good sight lines. I’ve got ammunition, supplies, and a backup generator.” She meets
his eyes. “I’m not saying we can hold off an army. But six people? We can make them work for it.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Liam says. “We can lead them away from here, draw them off—”
“Stop.” Michelle holds up a hand. “You showed up at my station asking for help. That means you’re under my protection until
the RCMP gets here. That’s how this works.” Her jaw sets. “I don’t hand people over to be killed. Not ever. So drink your
coffee and let’s figure out how we’re going to keep everyone alive.”
I decide I like her.