Chapter 15 #3
"That was a confirmation visit," I say. "First pass.
They'll drive back to wherever they're staying and write up everything they saw.
The trucks, the sign, the man who answered the door late at night and didn't blink.
They'll report to Gary that the lodge exists, that someone's living here, that you didn't react to the description.
" I set the card on the table between us.
"Gary will send the photo next time. Or he'll come himself. "
He reaches for the rifle beside the wall the way another man would reach for a coat.
"Let him," Alex says. "There are lots of ways to dispose of a body out here."
The words are quiet. The certainty in them is not. He means it the way other men mean their wedding vows, and the dark promise in that sentence should scare me more than it does.
The satellite phone buzzes in the kitchen. It's Bryan. Alex crosses to the counter and picks it up.
"They're heading south," Bryan says. "Plates are rental, Anchorage. I got the numbers."
"Good. Stay on the overlook until they clear the junction. Then come in."
He ends the call and tries Cameron. The phone rings and rings out. Alex tries again. Nothing comes back.
His jaw sets. Cameron was on the road. The SUV came up the road. Cameron didn't call, and now Cameron isn't answering. The math on that is simple, and none of the answers are good.
"He could be out of range."
"He could be." Alex sets the phone on the counter.
His voice doesn't waver but the hand he rests beside it does.
I've watched this man hold a rifle steady and lie to armed strangers without blinking, and the only thing that puts a tremor in his hands is the silence where his brother's voice should be.
Silence settles over the lodge. The hearth glows. Alex shifts the rifle against his shoulder; the stock balanced like it weighs nothing.
I take the card from the side table where Alex left it. The white cardstock is smooth, the embossing raised under my thumb. Whatever name is printed here won't be one I recognize. Gary uses intermediaries, layers between himself and the search.
He's learning from my escape, adjusting his methods. That sends a cold line down my spine because Gary's intelligence was always the thing that scared me more than his hands.
I turn the card over in my fingers. "The number on this won't trace back to Gary. He wouldn't give out a line connected to his name."
"No. He wouldn't."
"You're going to call it."
He looks at me. I can't read his face in this light, but when he speaks, his voice carries a note I haven't heard from him before. He's talking to me like I got to the answer before he did.
"Not tonight," he says. "Tomorrow. After I reach Cameron and confirm they've left the area."
"And if they haven't left?"
"Then tomorrow gets more interesting."
I cross my arms against the cold. The adrenaline is burning off, and my hands are starting to shake with the delayed tremor that comes after years of training yourself to be steady when it counts.
My body knows the drill. Hold until the threat passes, then fall apart in private.
Except this isn't private. Alex is right here, and if he notices the shaking, he doesn't comment on it.
He moves to the fireplace, leans the rifle beside the hearth, and kneels to start building the fire back up. He lays kindling first, then two logs from the stack. The motions are practiced and unhurried. The flames catch and climb, throwing warm light across the room for the first time in hours.
He stands and looks at me across the main room.
"You should sleep," he says.
"You first."
"I'm not going to sleep tonight."
"Then you're going to have company, because neither am I." I take the chair. "Thanks for rebuilding the fire."
"It's my fire."
"It's my chair."
He doesn't argue. He refills both mugs, carries them to the main room, and sets mine on the side table beside the chair I've started thinking of as mine.
The other he keeps. The coffee is fresh this time, hot enough that the first sip burns, and I wrap both hands around the mug and let the heat push back against the cold that settled into my bones while I stood against that wall and listened to two men describe me to the man who had me underneath him three hours ago.
He takes the couch where he had me earlier tonight.
The rifle goes against the wall where he can reach it without standing up.
When he stretches his arm across the back of the cushions, I remember exactly how that arm felt pinning me to the leather, and from the way his eyes find mine, he's remembering the same thing.
The fire builds. I retrieve my notepad from the kitchen table, settle back into the chair, and flip to a blank page.
Gary will escalate. The card on the table is a courtesy wrapped around a promise, and the promise is that this isn't over. I write until the fire burns low again. Alex watches the door. Neither of us sleeps.
Somewhere on the road below, those men are composing a report. What the lodge looked like, how many vehicles were parked outside, how the man at the door carried himself. They'll think they covered everything.
Gary will find what they missed. Gary always does.
I flip the notepad to a new page and write three words at the top.
What Comes Next.