Chapter 17
Steph
Brush bit into Steph’s left shoulder as she lay prone in the snow, Jack by her side, as the snow began to fall. She ignored the discomfort. Repositioning could get them killed.
The spotlight swept the tree line again, slower this time, and she tracked it through the tangle of branches without moving anything but her eyes.
Beside her, Jack was a controlled stillness she was grateful for.
Whatever noise he’d made getting here, and there was plenty, he’d found his discipline now.
The beam held on a section of snow twenty feet to their right. Steph kept her eyes on the man holding it—not the one who had insisted their tracks belonged to elk and simply wanted to get back to work, and not the flat-voiced one either.
The man operating the spotlight was the one she considered the wildcard, the same one who stood at the edge of the firelight with his arms crossed and his eyes on the trees.
Instinctively, Steph knew he was the dangerous one.
He was the type who would act first and worry about the consequences later.
Exactly as she knew Spotlight Guy was going to be trouble, she also knew the one whose voice carried little emotion was the leader of their group.
The leader wasn’t moving or talking. He simply stood next to the man working the spotlight. Watching.
The other one, who Steph categorized in her mind as “the worker”, said something too low to hear before turning back toward the hanging animals.
She kept her eyes on the leader.
He was the one who mattered. She understood that with the certainty of someone who had spent years reading groups of people, knowing which voice carried the most importance. He’d given one order, and the spotlight came out. He hadn’t raised his voice once. He hadn’t needed to.
The beam swept back toward the camp, and the dark returned to their section of brush.
She reached slowly into her jacket and found the personal beacon. Her fingers worked the buttons by feel, not looking down, keeping her eyes on the camp.
As she completed the SOS sequence, the device vibrated once against her palm—confirmation sent, their coordinates transmitted.
Now, no matter what happened, they’d be found.
Even if the poachers caught them and took her device, they couldn’t turn it off or disable the automatic tracking.
Steph knew that since the beacon was satellite based, it was unlikely the SOS went out instantaneously, but things would happen soon.
She turned her head toward Jack and held the device up just enough for him to see it in the dark. He gave a single nod.
Help was coming. Eventually. The Basin County Search and Rescue operated out of Irma, an hour away under good conditions. Two, maybe three, considering the condition of the road and the need to organize. Maybe longer, even.
Park rangers probably weren’t any closer; their headquarters were nowhere near this section of the park. Whoever responded, they weren’t going to be fast about it, and fast was what the situation required.
The spotlight swept again.
It came out from the camp in a wide arc, patient and thorough, and this time it held longer on the area near their tracks.
The man working the spotlight said something, but the leader held up his hand, shushing him.
He took several steps away from the spotlight and farther away from where she and Jack hid, then stopped and tilted his head.
He was listening.
Steph, Jocelyn, and Brooke all knew she was out there. They knew her route. The personal beacon SOS was transmitted. Gina might even be part of the team that was sent out. She and the rest of the SARs team would target their GPS location, thanks to the device.
Those were the things she’d done right.
What she’d done wrong, what she’d been incredibly stupid about, was to follow snowmobile tracks into the trees and search out a camp that held dangerous criminals.
She knew better, of course she did. Jack knew better too. He hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d wanted to head back and call someone else to investigate, but she’d convinced him that they should check it out, thinking it might have been nothing.
Wrong. It was definitely something.
Jack had been there, and she’d made a different choice than she would’ve made alone. She wasn’t going to spend time thinking about that right now, but she would spend time on it later. She knew herself well enough to know she’d be replaying her decisions over and over for some time to come.
The snowmobiles were the problem she kept returning to. Three men on machines could cover ground fast, and two people on foot in deep snow . . . if they ran and the poachers followed, the outcome didn’t work in their favor.
But staying where they were wasn’t smart either. The leader was still listening, and the spotlight was still moving, and their tracks were in the snow.
Jack’s pistol was a good thing to have, but it wouldn’t do much against three rifles, and she knew it. She didn’t doubt he knew it too.
The spotlight swept toward them.
She put her mouth against Jack’s ear. “When it passes us, we move. In the direction of the meadow. Stay in the trees. Try to be silent.”
The beam crossed their position, and she felt the light against the brush, diffused and broken by the branches but present. She held herself flat and still and watched it go.
The moment the beam angled away, she was on her knees, then her feet, and then she was moving.
She came out of the brush low and fast, angling back through the trees, away from their original tracks, choosing her footing by instinct rather than sight. Behind her, Jack’s footsteps were right there, close, matching her pace, surprisingly quiet this time.
The voices from the camp rose briefly. She didn’t catch the words and didn’t slow down to try.
The trees were dense in this section, and the snow was unpredictable, crusted in some places and knee-deep in others. She punched through twice and pulled free without breaking stride.
Their sleds were at the edge of the meadow where they’d hidden them, nearly half a mile away. They’d need to weave around the meadow, staying in the trees to reach the sleds.
Leaving the sleds wasn’t an option—at least, leaving hers wasn’t. She kept her name and address on a card inside the individual packs in case something fell out, so she could have it returned to her. What had always seemed a smart idea could now end up putting her in danger.
The spotlight swept again behind them. She could tell by the way the light changed through the canopy—there one moment and gone the next—that the men had heard them. Whether they’d decided it was worth pursuing was something she wouldn’t know until they either heard the snowmobiles or they didn’t.
Jack caught her hand, glove against mitten. The warmth of him pushed through the wool. In the middle of danger closing in around them, that small touch gave her confidence.
The snowmobile engines roared to life behind them.
Her confidence drained away.
“Run!”