Chapter 13 #2
The silence in the cabin has a physical weight to it, a heavy pressure against my eardrums that makes it impossible to sit still.
So I don’t.
I shove the satellite phone into my pocket—a heavy, plastic anchor—and pull on my coat. My hands are shaking too much for the buttons. I leave the gun on the table, grab my gloves, and crack the door.
"Silas?"
The wind rips the name from my mouth. No answer. Only the white static of the storm.
I step out, the cold biting through my layers like a physical snap. His tracks are already half-filled, ghost-shadows leading toward the shed. I follow them, my breath coming in ragged, shallow bursts that vanish before I can see them.
The shed looms out of the gray, dark and dead. The door is hanging open.
I move closer, every instinct screaming at me to run back to the cabin.
"Silas?" My voice cracks, thin and pathetic.
I nudge the door wider with my boot, heart hammering against my ribs. The interior is a hollow shell of rusted tools and cold iron. The generator sits in the corner, silent. He isn't here.
I back out into the snow, a sick wave of heat washing through my chest despite the freeze. I’ve broken his one rule: Stay put.
I reach for the phone in my pocket, my fingers clumsy and numb.
Out of the corner of my eye, movement makes me freeze.
Thirty yards out, deep in the gray meat of the timber. A dark vertical line that doesn't match the trees. It’s a silhouette, perfectly still, watching me through the veil of falling white.
I stop breathing. The world narrows down to that shape. It doesn't move. It doesn't step forward. It just is.
Please, God. Let it be a shadow. Just a shadow.
I blink, snow clinging to my glasses as I squint. A gust of wind drives a sheet of white between us, and when it clears, the space between the trunks is empty.
A metallic clank shatters the quiet behind me. I spin, my heart leaping into my throat.
Silas is stepping out of the garage, a battery-powered heat gun gripped in his hand. He looks like a ghost in the snow, his face set in a hard, jagged line when he spots me.
"What are you doing outside?" The heat in his voice is a warning.
"You were gone too long," I snap back, the indignation a shield against the terror vibrating in my limbs. "I thought you were hurt."
He doesn't apologize. He doesn't even soften. He just hitches an eyebrow and plants a hand on the small of my back, the pressure firm enough to propel me toward the shed.
"The carburetor was iced," he says, his tone clipped. "I needed this."
He crouches by the machine, the heat gun whining to life. I watch the frost turn to water, dripping off the metal like tears, but I can’t stop looking back at the tree line.
He gives the cord a brutal yank. The generator coughs, a plume of exhaust stinging the air, and then settles into a deafening, steady roar. The overhead bulb flickers, then bleeds a sickly yellow light across the floor.
He’s back. The power is on. But I can't shake the feeling that the thing in the trees is still counting my breaths.
Silas straightens, wiping his hands on his jeans. "I need to put this back and check on the Ski-Doo."
Eyes flicking to the trees again, I shadow him to the garage, staying tight to his back. The generator’s rumble dies away, replaced by the sound of our boots crunching through the deepening snow.
He heaves the door open and slips inside. I stay on the threshold, just inside the door.
The snow is falling more heavily now, thick flakes that blur everything beyond a few yards. Out of the corner of my eye, something pulls my attention to the left—a small splash of color against the white. Without thinking, I take a step toward it.
The snow is deceptive; a hidden drift gives way, turning into a slick, angled shelf of ice beneath the powder. My foot finds nothing but air, and my center of gravity vanishes. I pitch forward, hands shooting out instinctively, but the ground meets me before I can brace.
Pain explodes through my ankle as it rolls violently under my weight. I slam into the frozen earth on my knees, the breath knocked clean out of me.
For a second, I just kneel there, snow soaking through my jeans, my ankle throbbing. I look back, brushing snow away from whatever caught my foot. A fallen log, probably. Or a branch brought down by the storm.
I clear the drifts, expecting bark or wood, but my glove sinks into something soft, matted, and unnervingly rigid.
I pull back the snow to reveal a flank of coarse, brown hair. A head emerges, frozen in place. It’s the fawn, its body half-submerged in the drift. Its eyes are wide and glassy, fixed in a stare that doesn’t blink, the pupils blown out into hollow, milky voids.
There’s no movement, no rise and fall of breath, only the absolute, terrifying stillness of something that was running seconds before the world stopped for it.
Bile creeps upwards as I scramble away, the cold soaking through my leather gloves. Behind me, the garage door closes, and I try to stand, but pain shoots through my foot, sharp enough to make me gasp.
Instantly, Silas is supporting my weight, his hands firm and heavy through my coat.
“What happened?”
I jerk my chin toward the fawn. “I saw something.”
His eyes shift to the deer, half-buried. "Can you walk?"
I try again. The pain makes my vision blur. "I’ve twisted it. I’ll need to ice and elevate it."
He doesn't hesitate. He just scoops me up like I weigh nothing, one arm under my knees, the other around my back. "Hold on to me."
I wrap my arms around his neck as he starts back toward the cabin, moving fast despite my weight and the deepening snow. Snow falls on both of us, catching in his hair, melting against the skin of his neck where my face is tucked. He doesn't slow down until we reach the porch.
There’s genuine anger in his voice as he carries me into the kitchen, grabs a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, and slams them down beside me. “Ice it. I’ll be back after I check it out. Do not go outside again.”
The door slams with a finality that leaves no room for disagreement.
Silas
I stand on the porch for a heartbeat staring at the scarred wood as if I can see through it—through the grain and the layers of paint—to make sure she's actually staying put this time.
Mad doesn't even cover it. My chest feels tight, constricted like someone's wrapped steel bands around my ribs.
Carrying her just now was a catastrophic tactical error. If someone were positioned in those trees with even basic marksmanship skills, we would have been the easiest target in the state. Two lives taken with one round because she couldn't stay behind a locked door.
The thought makes my jaw clench hard enough that my teeth ache.
I turn back toward the tree line, my hand hovering near the grip of my sidearm as I crunch back to the spot where she fell.
I kneel beside the fawn, my movements methodical despite the anger simmering in my gut.
Pinned beneath the deer's body is a scrap of high-visibility orange fabric fluttering in the breeze. I yank it free. It isn't just debris. It's heavy-duty nylon, the kind used for hunting vests.
Could've been caught under the deer when it fell. Could've blown here in the storm. Or someone put it there.
A message. Or a marker. Or nothing.
I scan the trees again, my vision tunneling.
I need to sweep the perimeter, but I can't leave Ava alone with an injured ankle and a door that won't hold against a determined breach.
Gut in knots, I check the surrounding snow for tracks, boot prints, disturbances. The wind's already filling in anything that might've been there. Fresh snow falls steadily, covering whatever evidence there might be. No clear signs either way.
I bag the fabric in my pocket and stand, scanning the tree line in quadrants. Left to right. High to low. Looking for movement, broken branches, anything out of place in the natural pattern of the woods. Snow stings my face, limits visibility to maybe thirty yards.
Nothing.
I move in a perimeter sweep, keeping the cabin in sight, checking sight lines, and approach vectors. The snow's too disturbed here from our movement to read anything useful. It's already filling in my boot prints from minutes ago.
I move to the first tree, keeping low. My back's to the cabin, and I don't like it, but I need to clear this section.
The wind cuts through the pines, branches creaking overhead. Snow falls in thick curtains, clinging to my eyelashes.
I stop. Listen.
Nothing but the storm.
I push forward to the next tree, boots breaking through the crust with sharp cracks. Too loud. Way too loud.
A shadow shifts in my peripheral.
I spin, hand on my weapon, pulse spiking hard.
It moves again. Dark shape against the white, maybe thirty yards out.
I drop behind the nearest trunk, bark biting into my shoulder. My breath comes out in visible puffs.
The shape moves through the trees ahead, and everything in me goes still.
Upright. The right height. Moving between the pines with purpose.
My weapon clears the holster before I consciously decide to draw it. My pulse hammers in my ears, drowning out the wind.
It’s visible through the falling snow, weaving between trunks. Moving slow but steady, and the direction is what’s making my pulse speed. It's angling toward the cabin.
Toward her.
I bring the weapon up, sighting down the barrel. My hands are rock steady, even as my heart tries to punch through my chest. Twenty yards out, maybe less in this white. The snow makes everything blur together, but the shape is there. Real. Moving.
It pauses, and I can't make out any details through the curtain of white. Just the silhouette. Just the movement.
He found us.
The shot cracks through the air. My finger squeezed the trigger, and I didn't even feel it.
The figure drops hard into the snow.
My boots break through drifts, snow flying up around my knees. My breath tears from my lungs in white bursts. Fifteen yards. Ten.
Get to him before he gets up. Before he moves. Before—
The shape doesn't move.
Five yards now, and I can see the sprawl of limbs, the dark stain spreading across white.
My brain catches up too slow. Eyes processing what doesn’t make sense.
Antlers.
Attached to a bull elk twisted on its side. Steam rises from the bullet wound in its neck. Dark eyes, wide and vacant, tongue lolling.
Not a man.
I stand there, weapon still raised, snow falling on my shoulders.
The elk was browsing, moving tree to tree, and through the blizzard it looked—
I lower my weapon. Every breath feels like a jagged tear, my lungs burning as if the air itself is too thin to hold.
I fired without confirming my target. Without proper identification. Training I've had drilled into my skull for over two decades, and I threw it away in half a second.
Because I thought he was here. Thought he'd found her.
The tightness in my chest doesn't ease. If anything, it gets worse.
I holster my weapon with hands that won't stop trembling. The cold has nothing to do with it.
I've taken shots in combat. Made split-second decisions that meant life or death. Never lost sleep over any of them because they were clean. Justified. By the book.
This wasn't.
I look back toward the cabin. I can barely see it through the snow, just the dark outline of the structure and the faint glow of firelight in the window.
She's in there. Safe. Warm.
And I just killed an animal because for half a second, I thought someone was coming for her.
I run a hand over my face, snow melting against my skin. My heart rate's finally starting to slow, but the adrenaline dump leaves me shaky.
I force myself to move away from the elk, to keep checking the tree line. My legs are heavy, like I'm wading through water instead of snow.
Numb, I scan the woods in sections, methodically, trying to fall back into the rhythm of proper procedure.
Nothing moves except the trees and the falling snow.
I complete the circuit in another ten minutes, though it feels longer. Every shadow makes my pulse jump. Every sound pulls my hand toward my weapon.
By the time I circle back to the cabin, my face feels like raw meat from the wind.
I pause at the porch steps, looking back one more time at the tree line. The elk's already disappearing under fresh snow. In an hour, there'll be nothing but a dark lump. By morning, it'll be buried completely.
Like it never happened.
I climb the steps and reach for the door handle, then stop. My hand hovers there for a moment.
She's going to ask what the shot was. She's going to see it in my face.
And I'm going to have to tell her why she can’t trust me anymore.