Chapter 119
She woke Mason with a touch on his shoulder. He came alert at once, his eyes finding hers in the dark with the focused readiness of a child who had learned that sleep was an interruption rather than a refuge.
“We’re taking one of the vehicles,” Charlotte said. “The SUV. It’ll get us to the cabin in hours instead of days.”
“Jack is coming with us,” Mason said.
“He is, but he needs to stay quiet, completely quiet. Can you keep him that way?”
They moved through the trees toward the maintenance yard.
The guard’s pattern was consistent. He made a slow circuit of the perimeter, paused at each vehicle, then returned to a metal shed near the yard’s entrance where a light glowed beneath the door.
He carried a rifle slung across his back and moved at the pace of someone performing a duty he found neither interesting nor necessary.
Charlotte watched him complete two circuits.
The third time he entered the shed, she motioned for Mason to come forward.
The SUV waited, parked between the Humvees, with its driver’s door facing the tree line.
It was older than she had judged, a Chevrolet Blazer with a boxy profile and round headlights.
Military stenciling marked the doors and hood, but the Colorado plates were still visible beneath a layer of road dust.
The keys were in the ignition. Charlotte had expected resistance or some complication that would force her to hot-wire the vehicle with tools she didn’t have.
The keys felt like a gift. She turned the key, and the engine caught with a rumble that sounded thunderous in the quiet yard.
She let it idle and listened for the guard’s response, but the shed door remained closed, and the light didn’t change.
Mason climbed into the passenger seat, with Jack following.
The dog settled on the floorboards at Mason’s feet, and Mason’s hand found his head, holding him there with steady pressure.
They backed slowly from the space between the Humvees, tires crunching on gravel, then turned onto the maintenance road that connected the yard to the main route.
She drove without headlights until they had put two hundred yards between themselves and the yard.
Then she switched on the headlights, and the world ahead resolved into gravel, pine, and the dark ribbon of road.
The vehicle changed everything. Charlotte felt it first in the absence of walking, in the relief of seated weight after days of carrying herself uphill on failing strength.
The Blazer’s suspension absorbed terrain her feet would have felt, and the heater pushed warm air through vents that smelled of motor oil and old upholstery.
Mason fell asleep within twenty minutes.
His head tipped against the passenger window, and his breathing deepened into the rhythm of exhaustion, finally claiming him.
Jack remained awake, but he had moved to the backseat, ears alert, watching the road through the windshield.
Charlotte drove through the night. The road climbed steadily through stands of aspen where leaves caught the headlights in flashes of pale gold, then into higher conifers where the air thinned and the engine’s note changed against the grade.
She kept their speed moderate. It couldn’t be fast enough to draw attention or slow enough to suggest hesitation. The altered uniform jacket lay across the seat between her and Mason, and the identification card was in her pocket if another checkpoint appeared.
By dawn, they had covered the distance that would have taken three days on foot.
The landscape had transformed. The lower forest gave way to rockier slopes and the granite formations her father had described as landmarks on the approach to the cabin.
She knew the road would end soon, and the final miles would be on the trail her father had cut through the property decades earlier.
She pulled over at a wide spot in the road where the trees opened onto a view of the valley below.
Mist hung in the lower elevations, and the morning light turned it amber where it caught the sun.
Somewhere beyond the visible ridge, the cabin waited with its south-facing windows and the stone-built wood stove.
Mason woke when the engine stopped. He blinked at the light, then at the landscape, and something in his expression softened.
“We’re close,” Charlotte said.
Mason reached for Jack, who pressed against his palm.
Charlotte checked the fuel gauge; the needle quivered just above the red line, fluctuating slightly with every minor adjustment of the vehicle.
They had only about twenty miles of range left.
According to Thomas’s directions and her father’s descriptions, the cabin was fifteen miles ahead.
She pulled the Blazer back onto the road, and the cabin awaited them in the countryside her father had chosen because he believed the mountains kept their promises when people did not.
Charlotte drove toward it, with Mason awake beside her and Jack alert behind them, while the fuel gauge lingered on the edge of what was possible.