Jack looked up. His burns glistened under the light. Ethan had grown used to seeing him in darkness, had forgotten the power of his hard blue eyes.
“Well, the job is yours if you want it. If not…”
“We can’t find them standing here,” Ethan said.
“No, I would think not. But before we head off into the night, Ethan, I’d like to hear your ideas. They’ve left the safety of the tower, which would suggest they feared our arrival. Where do you think they’re going?”
“Republic Peak.”
Jack looked at him for a long time. He did not speak. When the silence was broken, it was broken by Patrick, standing at the door with his rifle raised.
“They’re going to climb?”
Ethan nodded. “It’s the highest point they can reach. There, in the morning, they can do two things: see if anyone is pursuing them, and get the clearest possible location to signal for help.”
Jack waved a hand at the radio. “Signaling doesn’t seem to be a desire.”
“She might be able to change his mind. Another night alone in the woods might change it too. But regardless, he’ll want to get high, not low. He’s already proven that, coming up here. He wants to be able to see where the threat is.”
Republic Peak did not hold the appeal it once had, as a kill site. But going there still accomplished a few things. It would surely take him away from the boy. Connor wanted out of the mountains. The woman from this lookout wanted out of the mountains. You didn’t get out of them by going higher. So they’d go low, and if Ethan could keep these bastards going high, the odds of intersection were nonexistent. After that, it wasn’t a matter of killing anyone, though he’d certainly enjoy it. It was a matter of killing time. The burned man had used Ethan’s knowledge of his brother to convince Ethan to bring him to the boy, selling a story that the other man waited inside the hospital, a killer poised for action at Allison’s door. Now they were all together, which meant that no one waited outside Allison’s door. The ticking clock was a ruse, a con. There were only two brothers, and they were both with Ethan now. He didn’t have to kill them, just outlast them. Back in Billings, things had to be happening. New search parties gathering, new information being collected. Jamie Bennett would be involved by now. Facts would be replacing fiction. The ticking clock was for these men, not Ethan.
“How far to Republic?” Jack asked.
“A couple miles. It won’t be an easy walk, though.”
“It hasn’t been so far.”
“That’s where they’ll go,” Ethan insisted. “And not just because it makes sense. Because it’s what he’s been taught. Him coming here today, finding elevation, checking his back trail, and then adjusting to his pursuers? He’s listening to my advice. And from Republic? He knows how to get down without using a trail.”
“How?”
“The way we planned it. That was our escape route. Getting to Republic one way, and getting down another. He knew what he was supposed to do. Now that you’ve passed him by once and given him the chance to do it, he’ll take that chance.”
This was more of the truth than Ethan wanted to tell them, but it would put him exactly where he wanted to be when the sun rose. Lost-Person Behavior 101: Those in need of rescue in the mountains tend to walk down even though they should walk up. Why walk up? Because you were far more visible to searchers.
These two men had been invisible for too long.
Jack Blackwell swiveled to look at his brother. The burned side of his face was exposed to Ethan, who took a strange satisfaction in the deepening color of the blistered flesh.
“Well, Patrick?”
“Two of them walking in the dark will certainly leave a trail. I could find it. But let’s see if Ethan can, and faster. If he’s right, then he should have no trouble with that. Otherwise…”
“He’s of little use.”
“Substantially less valuable, yes.”
“The crucible looms, then.”
“So it does.”
Patrick stepped away from the door and motioned to Ethan, who walked back out into the night wind and toward a second chance. It was the old test, his favorite training exercise, and his most familiar role: he was the wilder again.
It was no longer a killer’s game. It was a survivor’s game.
33
It took Ethan nine minutes to find their trail.
He knew, because the Blackwell brothers timed him. Patrick had suggested Ethan should be able to find it in five, Jack had countered with fifteen, and they had settled on ten. All of this covered in one of their standard conversations, washing over Ethan. In truth, he believed he had the trail located within those first five minutes, but he didn’t want to look too good, too fast.
It was not a hard trail to find, though it would be tough to follow soon. The plateau was rimmed by tall grasses that fell away to a tree line and then to rock, and each stage would increase the difficulty. Grass was one of Ethan’s favorite tracking terrains. You might not be able to find the distinct prints that mud or even dry soil offered, but you could move fast, because grass held the evidence of disturbance longer. It bent, broke, and flattened. The stories it could tell you, it told you quickly. The taller the grass, the quicker the read.
There were two paths into the grass from the lookout, and Ethan used the flashlight to determine which one was the right one. In so doing, he learned a great deal about Patrick Blackwell. The man had some level of training, certainly; he was better than his brother, but he wasn’t elite. Either he’d not received first-rate tracking instruction or he’d forgotten it swiftly, in the way that someone did if not called upon to practice the art.
In the first of the two impressions leading away from the lookout and into the tall grass, the track appeared lighter than the surrounding, undamaged vegetation, a pale beam headed west. The second was reversed: the pale grass on the outside, the beam of the path a shade darker. Subtle shifts, the sort that the untrained eye wouldn’t pause at but that a tracker’s eye had to pause at.
Patrick Blackwell studied each of them, gave each of them the same scrutiny.
That was all Ethan needed to know. Anyone who gave that darker path any kind of inspection was not capable of understanding a track. Finding it, maybe. Understanding it, no. The dark path had been left by someone walking toward the lookout. This was a fundamental rule and the simplest of tricks, one Ethan had learned from a British SAS member. It was a matter of reflected light, easily understood by anyone who observed the lines left behind a lawn mower from different angles. It was also the sort of fundamental rule that you forgot under pressure unless you practiced under pressure.
“They went this way,” Ethan said when the clock was at nine minutes, and he indicated the light path. “I’m sure of it.”
“Sure of it,” Jack said. “Ah, the confidence. Encouraging, isn’t it, Patrick?”
“Immensely,” Patrick said. He was looking at the trail with distaste, though, and Ethan understood why-he wasn’t convinced that it was the right one.
“It leads southwest,” Ethan said. “It leads toward Republic. Just as I told you. The other is older, probably left by some backpackers a few days ago. You see that, right?”
Patrick nodded.
Excellent, you prick, Ethan thought. You have no idea what you’ve missed. You might be able to see that it’s an older trail, but you had to examine it far too long to get that, if you even did.
“Onward, then,” Jack said.
They crossed through the grass and on toward lightning that was becoming more frequent. The wind that had been blowing steadily during the day was now only sputtering in uneven gusts, like an engine running out of gas. This was good for tracking, since strong, steady winds could quickly return the grass to its natural position, but bad for their destination. There were storms coming. The fast-and-hard breed. Unlikely to do much to help the early-summer drought conditions and guaranteed to be treacherous up on the peaks. On any other day, Ethan would be taking precautions now, looking to get lower and get a shelter built. Today, he hiked on and up.