Chapter 26
Jack
“Hold it.”
The barrel pressed against the back of Jack’s neck.
The voice was much too loud. Much too dangerous.
Jack moved his hands out to his sides, pistol still held in his right hand. The man kept the barrel pressed against his neck as he took Jack’s gun.
Where did this guy even come from?
He had been tracking the machine at the tree line, watching it idle, calculating distance and the angle of cover between himself and the next stand of timber, and he hadn’t heard the man come in on foot.
No breaking branches. No crunch of snow.
Nothing. He’d let the machine hold all his attention and paid the price for it.
The man took the pistol. “You got any other weapons?”
“A multi-tool in my front pocket.” He forced his voice to remain calm—not an easy task with his heart running much too fast and his thinking all over the place.
Slow down. Be deliberate. He’d spent years training his mind and body to perform when stressed. It was the only useful thing he could do right now.
The barrel pressed harder. “Take it out. Toss it on the ground.”
With the multi-tool on the ground, the man told Jack to take off his backpack. “No funny business.” He stepped back enough to remove the muzzle from Jack’s neck.
Jack didn’t turn around as he peeled off the pack and dropped it on the ground, each movement careful and deliberate.
“Hands out to your sides. Spread your legs.”
Jack complied, and the man patted him down. He reached around from the back and felt his chest. “What do you have under your jacket?”
“A water flask, mostly empty, and a couple of protein bars.”
“Throw ’em on the ground. I want everything out of every pocket. Take the watch off too. Toss it.”
When that was done, the man patted him down again. Seemingly satisfied, he came around to his right side, staying at a distance, rifle on a sling and a revolver in his hands. A walkie-talkie stuck out of his breast pocket. Jack’s pistol was tucked into the front of his belt.
Jack recognized him as the tall, skinny one with the flat voice. The one the others seemed to defer to when they were in the camp. Most likely, he was the man in charge of the operation.
An engine revved, and Jack caught a glimpse of a snowmobile through the trees. He pulled to a stop, and the engine died.
“Rick?” a voice called out.
“C’mon over.”
Within a minute, not one but two men appeared, each coming from a different direction.
They’d planned the approach. Jack understood now that the machine idling at the tree line had been the distraction, giving the first man time to come in behind him on foot while the other two held their positions and waited.
He’d walked right into it. They’d communicated by radio and knew exactly where he was and how to trap him.
“On your knees,” Rick said.
Jack went to his knees in the snow. The cold quickly bit through his insulated pants.
One of the men circled around to his left, rifle at the ready, his eyes moving between Jack and the trees behind him, a smirk on his face.
He was the man who had been most insistent there was someone in the woods.
He’d convinced the other guy, Rick, to use the searchlight.
That choice had set off the entire chain of events that led to this moment.
Jack knew this guy could be trouble.
“Where’s your partner?” he asked, a slow drawl to his tone.
Jack shook his head. “What do you mean?”
He lifted the muzzle of his rifle. “The person you are out here with.”
Rick lifted his hand, signaling the man to stand down as he kept his eyes on Jack. “My friend asked, where’s your partner?” The words came in a monotone.
“I’m alone.”
The man with the slow drawl looked at him for a long moment, without any reaction at all.
“You’re not alone,” Rick said.
“Maybe he is.” The third guy spoke for the first time. Jack spared him a glance. He was younger than the others. At the camp, he’d been intent on getting the skinning done.
Jack caught his expression clearly, even in the dark. He’d seen that look before, on athletes who’d pushed past what they’d actually prepared for. The face of a man who had signed up for something specific and was only now understanding what else it included.
“Oh, yeah?” Slow Drawl said. “You wanna explain why there are two sets of tracks?” He took a step closer to Jack. “Two.”
“That was me,” Jack said with a nod. “I circled back to break the trail. To make it harder to follow.”
Slow Drawl looked at him. “Circled back.” His voice went flat in a different way than Rick’s monotone. Not controlled. Contemptuous. “One person made side-by-side tracks? Don’t make much sense.”
“Maybe it does,” The Kid said, bobbing his head. “If he was trying to confuse us.”
Slow Drawl snapped his head toward The Kid. “Zip it.”
The Kid raised his hands and took a step back.
“So, you’re alone?” Rick asked, tilting his head to the side.
“Alone. Yep,” Jack agreed.
Slow Drawl crossed the snow in three strides and hit Jack across the face with his open hand. Hard. Jack’s head snapped right, and he tasted blood where his cheek had caught his teeth.
“C’mon, man,” The Kid said. “There’s no need for that.”
“I shot at two people,” Slow Drawl said. “Two. They were running across the open, and I know what I saw. Tell us where your partner is, and we’ll go easy on you.”
Jack met his eyes, his mouth still stinging. “I’ve been out here alone all night.”
Slow Drawl hit him again. Same hand, same side. Jack’s ear rang, and the cold night air felt sharp against the welt already rising along his cheekbone. He kept his hands where they were and didn’t give the man the satisfaction of looking away.
“Have it your way,” Slow Drawl said and stepped back.
Rick had watched all of this without moving. Jack looked at The Kid. He was staring at Jack with the expression of a man watching something he couldn’t stop and wasn’t sure he wanted to be a witness to.
“He’s by himself,” The Kid said. His voice had none of the dismissiveness it carried earlier when they’d been standing at the edge of the camp, and he had insisted their tracks belonged to elk. “Maybe we were wrong about two people. Could be he did circle back.”
Slow Drawl turned on The Kid, moving fast and getting in his face. “You calling me a liar?”
The Kid held his ground. “You know better than that, Todd. I’m saying it was dark. The dark plays tricks on the mind. We’ve had plenty of weird stuff happen while we’ve been working out here. Stuff that’s hard to explain.”
Todd spat on the ground, the wad landing only inches from The Kid’s boot. “You’d better watch your attitude.”
The Kid gave a nod and took a step back.
Through it all, Rick said nothing as he kept his eyes on Jack.
“What do we do with him?” Todd asked. “He’s a loose end, and we can’t leave a loose end.”
Rick shrugged.
“Think about it,” Todd continued. He stepped to the side, moving his hands as he spoke, his voice taking on the tone of a man laying out something he’d already decided.
“He’s seen the camp. Seen the operation.
Seen our faces. He knows what we’ve been running out here.
Did you search him? Check and see if he has one of those satellite doohickeys on him? ”
“I searched him.” Rick pointed to the ground, where Jack’s stuff lay in the snow. “He’s clean.”
“Fine, then,” Todd said. “I say we put him down right now. We spent too much time looking for them. We need to pack up and get out of here. Set up a new camp.” He jutted a thumb in The Kid’s direction. “Graham got the product loaded. We’ve got the machines. We cut our losses, and we leave clean.”
Jack kept his face neutral. He kept his eyes on the leader.
Graham, The Kid, stepped forward. “We’re not doing that.”
“You got a better option?”
“I didn’t sign up for this.” Graham’s voice had changed completely, taking on a tight note that bordered on hysterics. “Poaching, yes. The money, yes. That is what I signed up for. Not this.” He gestured toward Jack. “Not this.”
“You’re already in it,” Todd said. He turned to Graham full on. “The second this dude saw your face, you were in it. There’s no version of this where you walk away clean by leaving him alive.”
Graham looked at Rick. “Talk to him, would you? Tell him he’s overreacting.”
“Todd’s right. We need to move,” Rick said, eyes still on Jack. “Where’s your partner.”
Not a question. Jack registered that.
“Told you,” Jack said. “I’m alone.”
Rick looked at him for a long time. The wind moved through the timber above them, and snow came down through the branches in thin curtains, settling onto the ground and onto Jack’s shoulders and into the blood on his lip.
Rick was very good at silence, at fixing Jack with a look that seemed to see right through him. These were tools he used deliberately. Jack understood what he was doing.
Todd had no patience for it. “We are wasting time.”
“Go check the snowmobile,” Rick said.
Todd looked at him. Something moved across his face, quick and unhappy. Then he turned and walked toward the tree line without another word.
Graham stayed where he was, his rifle still in his hands, looking uncertain. He wasn’t pointing it at Jack. He wasn’t pointing it anywhere. He was holding it the way a man holds something he doesn’t know what to do with.
Jack kept his eyes on Rick.
He thought about Steph, about the time he’d bought her to get some place safe. All three of the poachers were here, which meant they weren’t bothering her, weren’t searching for her.
She had the beacon, and the GPS would pinpoint her location. The sheriff and his deputies were coming, prepared to take down the poachers. The snow was easing, too—they might finally make better time.
Steph was smart. She’d wait. She’d stay hidden. She’d stay safe.