The last I see of him is his dark hair disappearing into the shadows below.
Chapter 4
Makari
Six Years Later
The road winds through the mountains like a silver ribbon under the bruised glow of dawn. Mist clings low to the trees, blurring their outlines into ghosts. Every few miles, the SUV cuts through a pocket of fog, and for a moment it feels like we’re driving through another world entirely—quiet, suspended, untouched. When I was a child, this was my favorite drive: going home.
I’ve always liked this hour, though I’ll never admit it aloud. The world feels newly made, stripped of noise and sin. Even the ache in my chest eases just a little when I see the light spreading over the peaks. A new day.
Paul sits across from me, his lined face lit faintly by the rising sun. He’s been watching me instead of the scenery, the way he always has. Guarding, measuring. After all this time, he still hasn’t learned that I’m not the sort of man anyone can save. That I don’twantto be saved.
“This is the first sunrise I’ve seen you sober,” he says finally, his tone soft, but not surprised. “I almost didn’t believe it.”
I roll the unlit cigar between my fingers, resisting the urge to light it. “You think I can’t do it?”
“I think it’s been a long time since you wanted to.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’ll admit it. “It was time,” I say simply, looking back at the glass. “The drugs, the drinking—they didn’t bring him back. They only made the ghosts louder.”
Paul leans back, nodding slowly. “Seven years is a long time to keep punishing yourself. And you’re not getting any younger, Makari; if you didn’t stop now, the drugs and drink would have destroyed you.”
Seven years. The number echoes in my skull, cold, and absolute.
Seven years since Pavel Medvedev went over a cliff in the North Woods, chasing a goddamn moose through fog so thick you couldn’t see your own hands. The story’s been told a hundred ways since then—some call it an accident, others whisper sabotage. All I know is that one moment he was the Bear of Bar Harbor, and the next, I was standing in his office trying to fill the space he’d left behind.
The truth? I haven’t filled it. Not yet.
“Did you ever believe it was an accident?” Paul asks carefully, reading my face the way only he can.
“I believe my father was too proud to die any other way,” I answered. “He spent his life hunting. I suppose it’s poetic that something wild took him in the end.”
Paul hums, not convinced. “Poetic,” he echoes. “Or convenient.”
My jaw tightens. “We went over this, Paul. If someone pushed him, they’d be dead by now.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t have to. We both know I searched for answers for months after Pavel’s death. I threatened, bribed, and bled half the underworld for a whisper of truth. But every lead turned to smoke. I buried the man who raised me without knowing whom to blame. And maybe that’s why I still drink in his memory, even when I swear I won’t.
Until today.
“After tomorrow,” I say, glancing at him, “you’ll be gone.”
He smiles faintly. “Retired, yes. Not gone.”
I snort. “You’ll vanish into some suburb with your wife, spoil your grandchildren, and pretend you didn’t spend thirty years watching men die for secrets. That’s gone enough.”
Paul shrugs, an easy smile on his face. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is,” I reply evenly. “You were the last one who knew him. Knew me before.”
“Before what?”
Before everything. Before losing my father, yes, but also before I started waking in the middle of the night, haunted by a memory that shouldn’t mean a thing—a girl in white, trembling beneath my hands. Before I decided that maybe the only way to kill grief is to become it.
But I don’t say any of that. I just look out the window and let the silence fill the car.
I’m forty-two. It’s terrifying to think that someday, I’ll be older than he ever was—if I’m lucky. I didn’t let myself be put down by an exhausted liver or dirty needles. If I go out, it’ll be on my terms, and in a way that he wouldn’t be embarrassed of.
