Once we hit the trees, we both slid to a stop on our knees, our chests heaving, our breath hissing through our lips. I held up a hand, and Henry grew as quiet as he could as I listened intently to the sounds of the camp. We were closer, now, though not by much, and I could hear the murmur of men speaking in the distance, along with hammering and sawing.
No guns. No shouts of alarm. No running feet.
“My God, I don’t think they saw us,” I breathed. “I think we actually did it.”
I looked up and met Henry’s eyes, and could see that he was wearing the same expression as me: somewhat shocked and somewhat relieved, but already planning for the next step in our mission. Because we weren’t there, yet. We weren’t even close.
Now we had to get to their camp—and we had to get close enough to hear what the hell they were planning.
6
We were on our feet and moving again within minutes, heading for the camp. Although we were hidden now, courtesy of the forest, it was also midday, and we both knew that we had to get to that camp, listen for however long it took to get some information, and then get back to the warmth and safety of Town Hall before night fell.
Henry and I were both outdoorsmen, but neither of us wanted to get caught outside after darkness fell. I’d never had any wish to freeze to death, and the last couple days—the journey through the wilderness with an injured Angie—had made me even more jumpy than usual at the idea of being trapped outside in the snow at night.
It was also going to take us quite some time to get to the camp, as it was a mile north of the bridge, more or less. And if we got away from the camp—if we weren’t discovered—it was going to take us the same amount of time to get back down here. Unless we were in such a bad way that we decided to risk crossing the river itself. Risking the ice.
I put that on the list of things that I wasn’t going to think about right now and pushed forward, counting on Henry to keep up. The sooner we got to that camp, the sooner we should be able to get some information and get the hell out of there.
As we ran, I started to plan for the next steps. Marlon and I hadn’t come up with anything before Henry and I left town, partially because we didn’t know what the situation was in camp, and partially because we weren’t certain whether Henry and I would make it across the bridge or not. There were other factors, of course, like that I had plenty of specialized training when it came to planning and running missions in short order.
Hell, sometimes I’d run them without even knowing that I was going to have to. I was an expert at making shit up on the fly—and making sure it worked.
But mostly, we hadn’t known what we were going to face once we got to the camp, and a whole lot could change based on what we found. Best case scenario, Randall would still be giving his lecture to the entire group of men. When we’d looked at the camp before we left, we’d seen him still standing in front of his men, screaming at them about who knew what.
If he was still doing that pep talking, it would be the easiest possible thing to get as close as possible, listen for as long as I needed to, and then get the hell out of there.
If he wasn’t, things were going to get a little bit hairier. We were going to have to find someone who was talking about it casually in the camp—maybe updating someone who hadn’t been in on the pep talk, for one reason or another—and find a way to listen to them as they talked to their buddy. I wouldn’t be able to control where anyone else in the camp was, if we did that. I wouldn’t even know what they were doing.
In short, the chances of being discovered while we were busy listening to some random conversation were very, very good. And I didn’t really want to think about what would happen if we were captured.
So I’d just have to hope Randall was still camped out in front of his men, bragging about what they were about to do. Given what I knew about the guy, I thought there was a pretty good chance that he was doing exactly that.
By the time I came to that conclusion, we’d been running for at least ten minutes, and I glanced down at my watch, which I’d set to track our mileage once we got over the bridge. We’d gone three-quarters of a mile already.
We were nearly there.
I skidded to a stop and propped my hands on my knees, breathing heavily. When I felt like I could speak again, I glanced up at Henry. He looked like he was in even worse condition than I was, and I spared a quick thought to appreciate that he must have been working his ass off to keep up with me as we ran through the forest.
Whatever else he was, he wasn’t a quitter. If he had been, I reasoned, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to come with me in the first place.
“How you doing?” I gasped out.
“I think I might have had a heart attack about five minutes ago,” he noted casually. “But I was too busy running to really pay attention to it.”
I grinned at that. I couldn’t help it.
“It couldn’t have been a big one,” I said, “since it didn’t take you down.”
Henry grinned back. “My mama always said I wasn’t a quitter.”
I gave him a brisk nod. “Good. We’re about one-quarter of a mile from the camp, so we need to go more slowly from here on out. I don’t think they’re listening for us—don’t even think they know we’re on the way, honestly—but I don’t want to take the chance of them hearing anything. We need the element of surprise, here.”
“We’re going to hunt them,” Henry noted.
Well I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that about covered it. “Right, exactly. Only we don’t have to worry about the wind. They aren’t going to be able to smell us coming. But hear us and see us, yes. Especially if they have lookouts around the camp.”
“And I’m thinking they’d be foolish not to,” he pointed out. Then he tipped his head. “Then again, Randall has never been the smartest man. Not the one you went to if you needed anything fancy or complicated. I wouldn’t put it past him to have… overlooked that part. Seems to me like he might be thinking he’s too scary for anyone to come after, you know?”
I laughed at the statement. It echoed my opinion of Randall almost exactly, that not smart part. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that he might actually be too arrogant to think that lookouts were a good idea.
I clapped Henry on the shoulder. “That’s exactly why I brought you with me, Henry. You know that sort of thing about him. I would never have thought of it.”
Henry’s face started to glow with pride, and I squeezed his shoulder in thanks.
“You ready?” I asked.
“No,” he answered—just as he had on the other side of the river. “But let’s get it over with. The sooner we’re done with this, the sooner we can get back to Town Hall, where it’s warm. And where they have beer.”
This man was quickly becoming one of the most amusing people I knew.
I turned and started walking quietly forward, keeping an eye out for loose sticks or leaves on the snow. The good thing about the snow was that it was a natural silencer. We were avoiding all the dry detritus that you usually found on the floor of a forest.
The bad thing was that it slowed us down until we were only moving about half as quickly as I wanted to move. I wanted to get to that camp, figure out whatever we could figure out—even if it was that we weren’t going to get any information—and then get back to town. Trudging through knee-deep snow in this forest was keeping us from that goal.
And the more time we spent in that forest, the more time they had to randomly decide to send out scouts. The more time they had to potentially find us.