“You bastards!” Dakota screamed, spinning around and firing two shots from her Glock into each of the dead men’s bodies.
“Easy, girl,” Nate said, pushing the pistol down and pulling her into a hug. “They already got what they deserved. Let’s save the ammo. We’re likely to cross paths with many others just as deserving.”
Dakota glared down at the pistol in her hand, grimacing. “One of them said something right before you shot them. Do you remember?”
Nate did. “Yeah, that they’d been tracking us. I heard it, but I wasn’t sure if he meant it literally or to mess with our heads.”
She knelt down and collected one of the men’s pistols from the snowpack and held it up to the firelight. She spun the weapon around to show Nate, creases of fear forming at the corners of her hazel eyes. Scratched into the slide was the same symbol as the Glock Dakota had taken from the thug in Byron. “What do you make of it?” she asked.
Nate studied it long and hard before answering. “Hard to say, but whatever it means, it can’t be good.”
Chapter 31
Day 5
Nate awoke early the next morning to soft whispers of light streaming in through the snow hut’s narrow entrance. It had taken him a few hours before he felt comfortable enough to drift off. Dakota had faded almost at once, her nighttime breathing settling into the faintest hint of a snore. Had it been any louder, Nate would have recorded it, if for no other reason than to show her he wasn’t the only one who could saw some zees.
He lay there for a while, zipped up in his compact winter sleeping bag, slowly digesting everything that had happened over the past few days. Recent as his memories were, many of his experiences since the blackout had somehow taken on the consistency of a fine mist. The more you tried to close your hand around it, the quicker it evaded your grasp. The sight of his wife’s face, that was always what helped to center him.
Rolling slightly to one side, Nate fished his cellphone from his pocket and called up his pictures. A notice in the screen’s top right corner let him know his battery was down to thirty percent. Funny to think that without internet or cell reception, these devices were nothing more than expensive flashlights and photo albums. But there was a magic to looking at images of loved ones during good times. Focus hard enough and you could transport yourself back to that very moment, much like the picture he was looking at now—him and Amy standing on a sunny beach in Koh Samui, Thailand. They had gone there for their fifth anniversary, traveling from the mountains of Chiang Mai in the north to the tropical paradises down south. The next image was a selfie she had taken with his phone—the two of them having dinner on the beach, waves lapping mere feet from where they sat, giggling and enjoying pad thai and chicken green curry. He could smell it wafting up at them just as it had back then. Their smiles were a combination of love mixed with blissful ignorance of the future that awaited them.
And with that the cold swept back in. The number in the top right of his screen now read twenty-nine percent and he put his phone back to sleep. These images were his lifeline, the invisible cord linking him to his family, waiting for him in Rockford.
Nate glanced over at Dakota. She was awake now too and also looking at her phone, except she wasn’t looking at pictures. She was reading something.
“What’ve you got there?”
She tilted her head, her eyes sleepy, her hair more disheveled than usual. “Just re-reading an old email.”
Nate frowned. “How do you have reception?”
“Nah, I saved a copy of it in notes. Wanted to be able to read it whenever I could. It’s the last message I got from Uncle Roger, about a week before the lights went out. He wasn’t a softie by any stretch of the imagination, but it showed a side of him I’d never seen before. He’d even mentioned he was about to send me a special heartfelt message and not to worry, that his phone hadn’t been hacked.” She laughed at that.
“Emotions weren’t Roger’s strong point, I take it,” Nate observed.
“I guess you could say that. It’s true of most men, wouldn’t you say?”
Nate’s head bobbed up and down. “It’s the way we were raised. And rightfully so. I can’t remember the last time I cried and I’m not the least bit poorer for it.” He reached out a hand, indicating her phone, grinning slyly. “You mind if I read what happens when uncles go soft?”
“Be my guest.” She handed it over.
Nate went over it with great interest. “In case this here letter didn’t make it obvious,” Nate said when he was done, “the guy loved you like a daughter.”
“Not more than his booze, he didn’t.”
Nate’s face squished up with disapproval. “That’s not very fair. Your uncle was an alcoholic, an addiction that’s often more physical than it is mental. I’m guessing you’ve never seen what happens to a person who quits cold turkey? Their hands start to shake. They get hit with cold sweats. It ain’t pretty. So you can stop beating him up over it. His struggle has nothing to do with you or how much he loved you.”
Dakota became quiet for a moment. Then she said. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
“I am,” he said, winking. “We better get a move on before a fresh batch of Dylan’s buddies shows up.”
They exited the snow hut and both of them saw the dead hare at the same time.
“It’s a snowshoe,” Dakota observed. It lay next to the fire pit. A frozen smear of blood stained the white fur around its neck.
“A warning?” Nate wondered out loud. Although he knew the chances of anyone sneaking up on them in the middle of the night were slim.
“No, I think it’s a gift,” Dakota said. “From Shadow.”
Grinning, he scooped the dead animal up off the ground. Its body was still soft, which meant the wolf had killed and left it there fairly recently. Removing her knife, Dakota began to skin the animal while Nate stepped away in search of a thick branch they could use to cook it with.
Along the way, Nate’s mind traced over the events from last night. It seemed hard to fathom that a group of thugs would track them down in the midst of such chaos for revenge. There had to be something else going on. He thought back to Evan’s work at the plant or any recent cases he’d taken on as a PI. Could any of those things have played a role?
After finding a branch that was just right, he returned to a fresh fire and a skinned hare. Dakota speared the animal and held it over the fire. The smell made Nate’s mouth water. When it was done, both of them took turns eating. Nate let the girl go first. After all, she had done most of the work. Once she had eaten her fill, he did the same. Rabbit grease ran down his fingers and he licked it greedily. Without a doubt this was the best meal he’d ever eaten. What remained, they would keep for Shadow, a small reward for a much-needed gift.
When they were all done, Dakota fed Wayne some hay before they transferred whatever they could from Sundae’s saddle bags. Seeing the dead horse, frozen nearly solid and covered by a few inches of snowfall, only served to reignite the anger Nate felt over the creature’s senseless death.
With that done, Nate climbed onto Wayne’s back and then helped Dakota do the same. The horse grunted under the extra weight. Nate rubbed the long, muscular side of the animal’s neck. “Good job, buddy. You got this.” One part wishful thinking and nine parts prayer, as his mother used to say.
Stepping out from the forest and onto the highway was like entering an Air Force wind tunnel. The blowing snow was coming directly at them, a sky swarming with tiny heat-seeking ice missiles. Nate bore the brunt of it, doing what he could to shield his face. Thankfully, Dakota had Nate to block most of the onslaught.