The fugitive was breathing hard now. “More lies.”
“I’m just telling you how it is,” Gus said. “And no matter what you do-leave me, take me with you-you’ll still be wet and cold. It’ll be dark soon. Do you know how to protect yourself from the cold overnight?”
“Stop talking.”
Gus pretended to stumble slightly on the trail and deliberately ran into a half-dead spruce tree. A sharp sticklike lower branch dug into his cheek and drew blood. He gave an exaggerated yelp of pain and let a few drops of the blood drip onto the gray granite at his feet.
“Hold up.” The fugitive shoved his gun into Gus’s back and sniffled, but he didn’t stop shivering. “The blood. Clean it up. Use your glove. Do a good job.”
Squatting down on one knee, Gus used the thumb of his black, windproof glove to wipe up the blood, which was already mixing with the rain water.
The fugitive stood over him. “Think I’m stupid? I know what you’re doing. You’re leaving a trail for your marshal friends.” He squinted down at the cleaned-up blood spot. “Back on your feet. Don’t try that again.”
Gus shrugged as he rose up straight. “No one would notice a few drops of blood in this wilderness.”
“A search dog would.”
Gus pressed a gloved finger to the cut on his cheek, as if he didn’t dare let more blood fall onto the trail, but as he started back up the trail, he noted the snapped branch on the spruce with satisfaction. A search-and-rescue team wouldn’t miss it. Just as they wouldn’t miss the other clues he’d left during the past three hours.
His bread-crumb trail.
He’d participated in enough mountain rescues over the years to know how they operated. By now, Nate and his wife and his two sisters and their husbands-all gathered in Cold Ridge for a long weekend-would have realized Gus’s quick walk up the trail had gone bad. They’d do a fast-and-easy search for him before notifying the authorities, who’d launch an official search.
Were they thinking, even now, that he’d simply gone off trail and fallen? Or were they aware that an armed-and-dangerous fugitive was in the area?
Did they know his name, what he wanted?
The fugitive coughed, his shivering constant now. “All right, stop,” he said abruptly. “Take off your pack and set it on that rock there. Nice and slow.”
Gus complied, aware of the Smith & Wesson pointed at him. The fugitive’s hands had to be stiff from the cold, his fingers wet and slippery. If he just dropped the gun, fine. But Gus didn’t want him accidentally firing off a round.
“Unzip the main compartment and dump out the contents,” the fugitive said. “Again, nice and slow. Don’t do anything stupid. I want to see what you’ve got in there.”
Gus did as instructed, shaking out three energy bars, a water bottle, an emergency whistle, waterproof matches, dry clothes, a compass, trash bags that could be used as an emergency shelter.
The fugitive toed a trash bag with his wet sneaker. “That’s a lot to carry for a day hike, isn’t it?”
Gus shook his head. “I always pack more than I think I’ll need. If I use everything, I know I didn’t pack enough.”
“Where’s your gun?”
“Not here.”
“You’re a federal agent. You go armed 24/7. You’re supposed to have a gun.”
Gus didn’t know if that was true or not. He and Nate had never discussed those kinds of details. The fugitive had frisked him for weapons in the first minutes after he’d jumped out from behind the boulder, but Gus hadn’t realized it was, at least in part, due to mistaken identity. “Why didn’t you check my pack for a gun sooner?” he asked.
“I didn’t need to. Touch it, and you were dead, anyway. Let you carry the extra weight of a gun.”
His logic made sense. “Do you want to change into dry socks at least?”
“No. Give me your water.”
Before Gus could comply, the fugitive reached down with his free hand and grabbed the plastic bottle from among the dumped-out contents. He used his teeth to open the flip-top and drank deeply, even with his chattering teeth.
He shoved the bottle at Gus. “Close it. Don’t drink any.”
Once again, Gus did as requested.
“You’re older than I thought you’d be,” the fugitive said. “What’s with the white hair?”
“Hard life.”
“I hate marshals.”
Gus said nothing.
“How much farther now?” the fugitive asked.
“To-”
“To where your mummy and daddy froze to death.”
Gus pushed back a surge of anger and gazed down toward the village nestled in the valley below Cold Ridge, lost now in the gray clouds and fog. He could see his nephew and nieces on that cold, awful night thirty years ago.
Nate, seven. Antonia, five. Carine, three.
Waiting.
“They got caught in an unexpected ice storm. It was all over the papers.” The fugitive sounded amused now. “Can you imagine? A young couple with three little kids, freezing to death up here.”
Gus rose up straight. He’d been twenty and newly home from war. He’d looked at the faces of his young nephew and nieces and wished he could have died up on the ridge in the place of his brother and his wife. Instead, he’d become the guardian to their three orphans.
They were all married now. Antonia and Carine had little ones of their own. Nate and his wife, Sarah, were expecting their first child in a few weeks. A boy.
If he died up here today, Gus thought, the little ones-like grandchildren to him-wouldn’t remember him. They weren’t old enough.
There was some consolation in that.
The wind picked up and swirled the gray horizon, creating a wavelike effect that had a tendency to disorient, even nauseate, novice hikers. As an outfitter and guide, Gus had encountered hikers of all descriptions in the mountains. Most were eager and well-meaning, determined to enjoy their experience while taking proper precautions.
The fugitive poked his gun into Gus’s back. “Well? Answer me. How much farther?”
“Fifty yards. Maybe a little more. We need to be careful in the fog. We don’t want to walk off the edge of a cliff.” He glanced back, slowing his pace. “You don’t need your gun. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I won’t run or mislead you. I don’t want you to hurt anyone else.”
“I want your coat,” the fugitive said suddenly. “Get it off.”
Gus paused and shrugged off his pack and coat. The fugitive took it with one hand and put it on over his wet sweater, taking care to keep his gun at the ready.
He zipped up the coat and gave a shudder of obvious relief. “I don’t know why I waited this long.”
“Because you underestimated how cold you’d get. It happens all the time.” Gus noticed raindrops already collecting on his navy sweater, but its thick wool was a better insulator when wet than the fugitive’s cotton. “What’s your name?”
“Fred.”
It wasn’t his name. “What are you looking for up here, Fred?”
The fugitive didn’t answer. His shivering had lessened, but it wasn’t necessarily a good sign. He motioned with his gun, still clenched in his half-frozen hand, and Gus started back along the trail.
The fog wasn’t going to lift. The wind wasn’t going to let up.
The rain wasn’t going to stop.
“Let’s get to where you want to go,” he said wearily.
They came to the spot where his brother and sister-in-law had died. He’d been a firefighter. She’d been a biology teacher. These days, weather reports were more accurate, but even so, people died on Cold Ridge.
“There’s a rock formation just past where your folks died. It looks like a toaster.”
The fugitive’s words were slightly slurred, but he continued. “Do you know it?”
“I do.”
Gus stared into the shifting fog and clouds. He could walk right past the toaster-shaped rock formation, and the fugitive would probably never know it. Then what? Shoot Gus in the back? Drop dead from the cold? But as he continued along the trail, his legs heavier now, the pack grinding into the small of his back, Gus knew he wouldn’t mislead his captor. He’d just take him where he wanted to go.