Chapter 15
Steph
Steph touched his arm and motioned to a clump of trees.
Jack shook his head and gestured back toward the meadow.
She knew he was right. They should get out of there. But she needed to see them. See who was doing this and try to get a description to Sheriff Hepner. Even better, maybe she would recognize them. The population of Basin County wasn’t huge, so chances were in her favor.
Steph didn’t wait for Jack. She crouched down and moved toward the trees. When she reached them, she moved behind one of the larger evergreens.
Three men were behind the tarp, working on skinning out a pair of animals that hung from crossbars.
She couldn’t make out the conversation, just the occasional low exchange that didn’t carry to where she hid.
One of the men wore a rifle across his back.
The view of the other two didn’t show rifles, but she suspected they, too, were armed.
She couldn’t make out their faces from her angle.
Jack was behind a tree about a foot away, trying to get her attention. She ignored him.
She identified the elk first—the shape of it was unmistakable even in the firelight. The bear took her a moment longer, the mass without fur difficult to make out.
On some sort of wooden rack, pelts were hanging neatly, fur from what she thought might be wolf, more elk or deer, and the bulk of what had to be bison hide.
Professional. Organized. These were the words that kept surfacing in her mind. This wasn’t someone who’d driven out from Irma on a weekend with a rifle and bad judgment. This was organized. Systematic. They were killing whatever carried value and processing it in the field and moving it out.
Jack moved beside her, his mouth by her ear. “We need to leave.”
Steph turned her head slightly toward him, her mouth close to his. He was right. She’d hoped to recognize the men, but every second they remained here, the more risk they took.
One of the men stopped working and moved to the edge of the fire, hands on his hips and head tilted to the side, his face in profile as he checked the pelt rack. No . . . that wasn’t right. He wasn’t looking at the pelts. He was looking at something beyond the rack.
At the snow. At the place where they had first been standing.
Their tracks.
The understanding of that landed in her stomach. They’d walked in using the snowmobile tracks. Their footprints were there, over the top. Clear and readable. Two sets of prints coming out of the meadow and stopping right about where they were standing.
She put her hand on Jack’s arm. A slow, deliberate pressure.
The man said something that caused the other two to stop what they were doing.
Her heart was loud in her ears. She focused on keeping her breathing slow and even, the way she did at mile sixty when everything wanted to spiral and the only thing that helped was controlling her breathing. In. Out. Slow.
The man who had spoken took a step toward the edge of the firelight, away from the pelts. Toward their prints. His rifle was still slung across his back, eyes on the snow.
She looked at the trees to their left. The dark between them was deep enough.
Maybe, if they moved right now, low and slow, angling away from their own tracks rather than back along them, they could get away.
It’d leave more tracks, but tracks that went somewhere other than directly to where they were standing.
It was the only thing she had.
She leaned toward Jack, her mouth close to his ear. “Left,” she breathed. “Now. Low.”