Twice he skied off the trail, letting other skiers pass. This time of year they’d be local people, and he didn’t want to be spotted out here. Allowing for the detours, it took just fifteen leisurely minutes to come to the yellow No Hunting sign that posted the back end of Griffin’s land. Could see the green cabin peeking through the trees, the lake beyond it. He saw they’d been skiing, probably last night just after it snowed. They had worked a connecting trail. He scouted in closer down the connecting trail and settled on a slight rise that overlooked the backyard. He got out of his skis, hid them in some thick spruce, strapped on the paws, and went to the knoll, where he made a place to sit against a tree. Then he tested the wind, which was gusting from the northeast, and figured he could get away with a smoke. So he lit a Camel and settled in to watch the house. First off, he spotted a snow-covered doghouse in back of the garage. Uh-huh. Okay. Keep an eye out for the dog. Then he saw a pile of kindling next to a chopping block. Oak, from the bark and grain. Must be three cords stacked up in the long shed along the garage. Then he remembered that Griffin trucked in oak, used it to heat sand and water to mix his mortar. On that winter job at the lodge.
Then he noticed two sets of skis and poles set out against the garage. One set shorter, for a kid. He finished his smoke and stuffed the butt deep out of sight into a crevice of pine bark, wiggled his toes in his boots, drank some water, ate half an energy bar. A dedicated bow hunter, he was stoic about the cold. He figured he had about half an hour of cooldown before the sweat he’d worked up on the trail started to freeze.
Another half hour passed. Still no sign of a dog. Then he heard voices and saw a man and a kid come out the back door in skiing duds. Where’s Mom? Now that he’d come this far, he was getting curious; just who were they? What was it like inside that house? How come nobody had seen the woman? What did Cassie mean? He didn’t fit.
Now they were putting on their skis.
Okay. He was up fast, made his way back to his own skis. So which way are they going to go? Assume they’re good citizens and will follow the arrows posted on the trail. Go the direction he’d come in. He lashed the bear paws to his pack, got back into his skis, and worked hard, backtracking up the trail. When he’d poled up the approach to the first big downhill, he paused and peered back through the trees. He’d been right. Eagle Scouts, following the rules. Coming this way. The kid wore green and was on the skating path, the guy was in red and stayed in the Nordic tracks.
He pulled up his ski mask and adjusted it. Okay. Time it so you meet them at max speed when you rocket back down the hill. Get a feel for this guy.
Chapter Eight
Ten minutes into the trail Broker caught a blur of movement up ahead through the trees, shooting over the top of the first big hill. A skier coming down the tracks in a downhill tuck, poles back, hands braced on his bent knees. Some daredevil cowboy. Really pushing it.
“Watch yourself, Kit. That guy up there. He’s coming pretty fast,” Broker called out. Kit slowed her stride, reacting to the alarm in Broker’s voice. She swung her head, her eyes flashing, uncertain.
“Don’t look at me, Look at him!” Broker yelled at her.
She glowered at the anger in his voice, wasting seconds she needed to react. And all he could do was watch. He was helpless because the guy was coming so fast, and he was hard to see in gray-and-white hunting camo and a black face mask. Onrushing like a puzzle piece catapulted out of the winter pattern of the forest. Jesus. Too fast.
“Kit, goddammit! Get off the trail!” Broker shouted.
“You don’t have to yell,” she shouted back.
Time and distance. Broker did the quick gut math and realized he could not reach her, thirty yards ahead of him, before the oncoming skier…
“GET OFF THE TRAIL!” he shouted again, waving his poles.
The guy came out of his tuck nearing the bottom of the hill and executed a snappy sidestep, and now he was ripping down the skating path, straight at Kit.
Kit was stepping to the right as fast as she could, but the guy was on top of her.
“Watch it, asshole!” Broker shouted as he struggled on the skis to gain the distance. Wasn’t going to happen. He did his best to step out into the skating path, instinctively gripping one of his poles with both hands like a pugil stick and menacing it forward in an attempt to warn the guy away.
The guy came straight ahead, streaked past with a swish and clatter as one of his poles banged on Kit’s poles. Not even seeing them, it seemed, his hooded eyes fixed ahead on the trail. Kit was flung in his wake and fell sideways into the parallel tracks ahead of Broker. In seconds he was bending over her. She sat up, removed her glove, and put her fingers to her cheek.
A thin red stripe started next to her nose and went across her cheek almost to her ear. Gingerly she touched it, and her finger came away with a tiny dot of blood.
“He must have raked you with his pole as he went by,” Broker said, helping her to her feet and inspecting her face. “Just a scratch.”
With an exaggerated indignant expression and in a very dramatic voice, Kit protested, “You didn’t have to yell at me.”
“Hey, he almost squashed you flat.”
“Did not. He missed.”
Broker stared, perplexed at the touchy coiled springs of mood sprouting out of her. “I’m sorry for yelling, but I was scared for you,” he said.
She thought about it and said, “I was scared, too. Just a little.” She furrowing her brow and stated, “He was going the wrong way, Dad,”
“I know, honey. Some people are like that. And they just don’t see kids. You all right?”
“No problem,” she said deadpan, delivering the line with a nonchalance she’d overheard hanging out with Nina’s Army crowd in Italy. Seeing him a make a face at her language, she grinned. Perhaps encouraged by the encounter with the speed demon, she said, “Let’s go. Race you down the first hill.”
Broker looked off through the silent trees in the direction of the asshole skier. The guy had vanished. The small crisis passed. “You’re on,” he said.
Kit took the lead, and he made a production of staying just behind her, goading her faster, as they herringboned up the incline. He watched her breath surge in tight white bursts next to her green cap as she half ran the hill. Broker was reminded of something he’d learned long ago; how the Vietnamese wrote their prayers on slips of paper and burned them. Because the ghosts of their ancestors could only read smoke.
They reached the top, and a minute later the trail forked; beginners to the left, advanced to the right. Without hesitation Kit dug in her poles and plunged toward the steep downhill they’d nicknamed Suicide One. Broker double-poled to catch up, tucked into the slope, and heard Kit’s exhilarated squeal echo in the trees. Her breath streamed over her shoulder, and in that exuberant white cloud Broker, giddy with the rush downhill, read a happy answer to a long prayer.
The journey that had brought them here was terrible, but finally the long separation had ended and they were together, living under one roof. Then Kit came down too fast on the steep bend at the bottom of the run and misjudged shifting into her step turn. Her left ski wobbled out of control, and she lurched in front of Broker, who was on her too fast. He tried an impossible hockey stop. No way. They tumbled together into a snowbank in a tangle of poles, skis, and laughter.
Chapter Nine
Gator put a few hundred yards of twisting trail between him and the man and the kid and then slowed, stopped, and leaned on his poles. He panted, catching his breath after the near collision at the bottom of the hill. That was fun, but now he was more than a little intrigued. Not so much the way the guy called him an asshole like that. He could let that pass under the circumstances. He’d gone by too fast and nearly creamed the kid. But he managed to get a good look at the guy. And there was something about the way his hard eyes peeped out from his gaunt face and thick Ernie Kovacs eyebrows. Suspicious, judgmental, a little too in charge. Cop’s eyes, his gut told him.