Chapter 23
Steph
The man had gone quiet.
That didn’t make Steph feel any better. She stayed pressed against the gulley wall, her shoulder against Jack’s arm, and listened. The poacher knew they were in the gulley.
She touched Jack’s arm and tilted her head to the right, toward where the gulley narrowed and curved. He caught her eye as she gave a single nod.
They kept their backs tight against the wall, sidestepping while praying the way the snow curved into a drift above them would keep them hidden and the man wouldn’t start slinging bullets on a whim.
Where was he? After telling them he knew they were there, he’d gone silent.
The machine idled but hadn’t moved. From the tone of his voice, Steph knew it was the leader.
He scared her. They all scared her, but him especially.
And quiet meant she didn’t know where he was.
Quiet meant he could be planning anything. Doing anything.
She placed each foot with care, testing the snow before committing weight. The gulley floor was uneven, deep in some places and wind-scoured to near bare ground in others.
She kept her steps deliberate, her breathing controlled, and her eyes on what was ahead of them. Beside her, Jack matched her pace, pistol still in his hand, his body close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through both their layers.
Steph kept moving and kept listening, trying to stay ahead of the fear that threatened to overwhelm her.
The wet snow had drenched her pant legs up to her knees.
The cold made everything ache. But now was not the time to think about it.
The pain cave was real, and she’d been here before.
Pain was temporary. Of course, she’d never been in the pain cave while being chased by maniacs with guns, but that was beside the point.
Jack was managing something similar. She could see it in the deliberate way he placed each step, the slight compensation in his movement that hadn’t been there hours ago when this was a simple training session to learn how to work the sleds.
This was entirely different.
They had been pushing hard through cold and dark and fear for hours.
Her fitness had carried her through hard things before.
It was carrying her now. But underneath the part that kept moving, there was another part that was very tired and very aware of how long they’d been out there and that the people trying to find them had machines and rifles and the patience of men who killed for money.
The idling engine revved. He was moving now, tracking along the top of the gulley—the same direction they were heading. She picked up her speed, being a little less careful about noise with the sound of the engine vibrating through the air. Jack matched her.
“Why didn’t he come after us?” she asked, barely above a breath. “He knew we were in here. He said so. Why stay on the machine?”
Jack shook his head without breaking stride. “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She kept moving and tried to push it to the back of her mind.
He easily could’ve jumped in the gulley just like they had.
Jumped down and started shooting. Instead, he’d stayed above and fired up the machine.
Why? What was he up to? She didn’t know but did understand they needed to find a way out of where they were.
She pushed harder. Jack matched her.
As they moved, she thought about this gulley and what she knew.
Not enough. Truth was, this might not even be the same gulley she’d explored before.
It was narrower than she remembered. Much narrower in this area.
Which was good in some ways. She was concerned the other machine was going to the mouth of the gulley and would drive straight up the middle.
As narrow as it was getting, that would be a challenge.
Rock outcroppings and gulleys were common in this area. She’d led them to the crevice in the dark more on instinct than anything. She could make out the rocks and believed there was an opening in the formation they could hide in.
But what if that crevice wasn’t the crevice she’d explored in the past? What if she’d become turned around running in the dark and trying to evade the poachers? Now this gulley might not even be the same gulley. She could be leading them into a trap, and maybe the poachers knew it.
The gulley curved gently, and the walls narrowed even more.
The trees overhead grew denser, their branches reaching toward each other above the cut, blocking what little light the night sky offered.
They had enough light to move, but only barely.
She kept her eyes on the ground and her feet moving and her breathing steady, the way she’d trained herself to do when everything else wanted to come apart.
The gulley split.
She stopped. Jack stopped beside her.
Two directions. The left branch continued west, deeper into the forest. The right branch angled back north. She didn’t remember this. Either she hadn’t gone this far before, or they really weren’t where she believed them to be.
Jack looked at both branches. Then at her. “We split up.”
“No.”
“Steph— ”
“No.” Splitting up was not an option. Surely he understood that. “We stay together.”
“Two of us moving together, we’re one target.” His voice was low and certain, and she recognized the thinking behind it, but that didn’t mean it was the right choice. “If we split up, they have to choose. Better odds that one of us makes it out and gets to the rescuers.”
“Splitting up in the wilderness is how people die.” She met his eyes and didn’t look away. “That is not my opinion. That is every survival course I’ve ever taught and every piece of wilderness training I’ve completed. You stay together. You stay on the plan. You do not separate. Ever.”
“This isn’t a survival-course situation.”
“The principle doesn’t change because the danger is different.”
“The principle absolutely changes.” The edge in his voice was real now.
Controlled but present and not backing down.
“We have armed men coming from more than one direction. One pistol. Staying together makes us easier to track, not harder. Two targets moving separately is a harder problem for them to solve.”
“If we separate and something happens to you, I’ll have no way of knowing.
” She kept her voice steady and her eyes on his.
“I can’t help you. I can’t find you. I don’t know where you’ve gone.
The personal beacon is tracking one position.
My position. The rescuers are coming to one location, and if we’re in two different locations when they arrive, we’ve made everything worse. ”
“You update the position when you get clear.”
“With what? I don’t know that branch.” She gestured to where the gulley branched off to the right. “I don’t know the conditions in there. You don’t either. We’d both be moving blind in terrain neither of us knows.”
“That’s the point. Maybe they don’t know it either. Maybe our splitting up confuses them enough that they don’t know exactly what to do.”
“Jack.” She held his gaze. “We are not splitting up.”
He looked at the new branches, then back down the gulley toward the way they had come. The sound of one of the machines still carried from that direction, and Steph knew she had been right. The operator was in the gulley and heading toward them.
Jack knew it, too, and surely he understood they had no choice but to stay together.
She watched him work through it and could almost see his mind turning, the need to be right written across his face.
He had spent years making decisions under pressure and trusting his instincts, and she understood that.
She also understood that what he knew about pressure and tactics and splitting up resources, didn’t account for what happened to people alone in winter wilderness when things went wrong.
“I’ve seen what happens when groups separate,” she said. “More often than not, the results are deadly. I’m not doing that.”
“Your wilderness survival training didn’t include men with rifles trying to kill you.”
“My wilderness survival training covers every kind of danger. The answer is always the same. Stay together.”
“And if staying together gets us both killed?”
“And if splitting up gets you killed and leaves me alone out here with three armed men and no backup?”
He had no answer for that. She could see it across his face.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Left. It’s wider and might put this branch of the gulley— ” she gestured toward the one that went to the right “ —between us and the snowmobilers.”
“It’s wider, which means the snowmobile coming up the gulley can follow.”
“I don’t think so. It was too narrow back there. He’ll need to stop soon.”
“He could come on foot. Especially if he sees our tracks.” He pointed down to the obviously compacted snow against the wall where they’d been walking.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“How far?”
“I’m not certain. But it takes us away from them.”
Jack looked at the right branch one more time. Steph waited. She’d said everything she had to say, and adding more wasn’t going to help either of them.
He wasn’t done with the argument. She saw it in the tightness of his jaw and the way he studied the route she wanted to take, as if he were calculating every variable.
He believed splitting up gave them a real chance, and in another context, he might have been right.
Out here, though, he was wrong, and she needed him to accept that and move.
“Let’s go.” He lifted his chin toward the wider branch.
Steph held her smile.
They moved together, pushing forward, the engine sounds still present. She kept her eyes ahead and her breathing controlled and her hand close to Jack’s arm in case the footing changed without warning.
The sound reached them before she had time to react to it.
Not from above. Not the mouth of the gulley on the far end.
From the branch they had taken. The low growl of an engine, inside the cut with them, was heading straight for them and gaining fast.