The roving guard completed another circuit and disappeared into the bunkhouse for a few minutes of warmth.
The compound sat quiet.
Mave relaxed her shoulders. Checked her sight picture. Let her breathing settle into the rhythm she'd need when the moment came.
Sooner or later, Reacher would move.
And then she would stop him.
Permanently.
30
Joe studied his approach.
The obvious route was toward the collapsed barn, then across a short section of open ground to reach the nearest building.
He knew he could make it. But leaving himself exposed was not a good plan.
There had to be another way, and eventually he found it.
Higher up the hillside, maybe forty yards to his left, he could make out the remains of an old logging chute. A long wooden trough, maybe three feet wide, that had once been used to slide cut timber down from the upper slopes.
Most of it had collapsed or rotted away, but sections remained. By now, it was mostly a skeletal framework of weathered planks and rusted metal brackets, overgrown with brush and half-buried in decades of leaf litter.
He traced its path with his eyes. It ran diagonally down the hillside, angling toward the compound from the north side. The end was hard to see in the darkness, but it looked like it terminated somewhere near the equipment sheds, well inside the fence line.
More importantly, the angle of approach would put buildings between him and the sawmill.
The chute was tight. Maybe two and a half feet across at most, partially collapsed in places, filled with debris. With his broken ribs, crawling through it would be agony.
But it would get him inside without crossing open ground, and while he was inside the chute, for all intents and purposes, he would be invisible.
Out of sight.
Joe waited until the roving guard disappeared into the bunkhouse, then moved.
He stayed low, using the rocks and trees for cover, working his way up and left along the hillside. The snow had stopped but the wind still cut through the trees, masking the sound of his movement.
The entrance to the chute was partially hidden by a fallen pine. He had to push through dead branches to reach it, moving slowly to avoid noise. Up close, the structure looked even worse. The planks were rotted, sections sagged and the inside looked like hell.
Joe crouched at the opening and looked in. Darkness. A tunnel of splintered wood and rusted metal disappearing down the slope. The smell of rot and dead animals drifted up from inside.
He got down on his belly and crawled in.
The space was tighter than it had looked. His shoulders barely fit. The wooden sides pressed in on both sides, rough and splintered. He had to keep his arms extended in front of him, pulling himself forward with his forearms and pushing with his toes.
Every movement sent fire through his left side. The broken ribs ground together, sharp and insistent. He clenched his jaw and kept moving.
The chute angled downward, steep enough that he had to brace himself to keep from sliding. Old debris littered the bottom—chunks of rotted wood, frozen leaves, something that might have been a dead animal once. His hands found ice, then splinters, then more ice. The cold bit through his gloves.
He moved six inches. Then another six. Then another.
The wind howled outside, shaking the framework.
He kept going.
The darkness was absolute. He couldn't see his hands in front of his face. He moved by feel, testing each section before committing his weight to it. Some of the planks were solid. Others felt soft, ready to give way. He distributed his weight carefully, moving like a snake, slow and deliberate.
