“Forty minutes ago, they were God’sextremelyaccurate gift to lost hikers!”
Gideon ignores me and keeps frowning at his GPS. Then he frowns at the trees. It’s not making me feel any better.
“We’re at least close, right?” I say. I’m not about to panic so much as I’m about to sit down in the deepest snowbank I can find and cry, because I’m hungry and exhausted and I fucked everything up. “Maybe if we walk in a spiral pattern or something?”
“Hard to do with this many trees,” he says, still not really paying attention. “I think the clouds messed with the signal a little.”
“I thought the weather didn’t affect these because they’re satellite.”
“Well,” Gideon says, and does not elaborate. He seems tense, looking at the GPS and then up at the sky, around at the forest, peering back at the trail of our footsteps. I have no idea if we’re on a road, or a trail, or if we just picked a direction and walked. Gideon was all,trust me I’m a professional, so I did, and now I’m ready to sob into some snow like a hapless maiden in a Scandinavian fairy tale.
I don’t. I remain upright and merely think about how nice snow sobbing might feel right now.
“Turn off your headlamp, I can’t see,” Gideon says, a few seconds later, which makes no sense but I don’t argue. Once our eyes adjust he circles around a little bit, looks at the paper map, and then shoves it back into his pocket.
“Sorry about that,” he says, and starts walking in another direction. “We overshot a little.”
I follow him because what the hell else am I going to do?
* * *
“Ah,”he says, five minutes later, and comes to a complete stop so sudden I almost plow into his back.
“We’re there?” I ask, praying that this particular Gideon Noise meanshere is the promised shelter, notlook at that interesting lizard.Are lizards even out in the winter? Probably not. I duck my head around him and see nothing in the beam of the headlamp.
“This is the bear tree,” he says, pointing at a tree trunk that looks… oily, and like it’s seen better days. “Almost there.”
I simply accept this without question, but Gideon is right this time: thirty seconds later we come into a clearing with a building in the center.
More specifically, a murder cabin.
It’s small, dark, and quiet, and has a forbidding front porch and a forbidding front door and, somehow, forbidding curtains hanging in every forbidding window. It’s a full-on murder-ass murder cabin, and I’ve never been happier to see a building in my entire life.
“Thankfuck,” is all I manage to say. Gideon makes a noise between a mutter and a grumble.
Inside, the cabin is… let’s go withcozy. It’s got a covered wooden porch across the front, two curtained windows looking out onto it, and boards underfoot that bounce more than I’m strictly comfortable with. The door isn’t locked. Inside is dark but warmer than outside, a faint orange light coming from a closed wood stove in one corner. The room is split into flickering darkness and deep black shadow.
None of that makes it feel like anything but a murder-ass murder cabin, but right now I’d face down any number of Satanic cultists in need of a human sacrifice if it means I can sit and eat some soup.
“See,” Gideon says, slinging my pack off his back. “Told you.”
CHAPTERFIVE
GIDEON
By the timewe get into the cabin, Andi is exhausted, cold, nervous, hungry, grumpy, and not particularly cooperative. Luckily for her, I’ve got eleven younger siblings, so I’m an expert in getting tired, hungry, grumpy people to eat dinner and go to bed. I put more wood into the stove. I order her to sit right next to it, remove her shoes and outer layers, and stay there while she warms up. She doesn’t seem thrilled at taking orders, but she also seems happy to be sitting somewhere warm, so she does it.
While I heat up soup, I call dispatch again and tell them I found the girl and she’s fine. I don’t mention the truck, because there’s nothing anyone can do about it tonight, no point in worrying anyone, and I can take care of it. Idomention Chloe Fucking Barnes, and tell Dale that the next time I see her anywhere near a tree I swear to God I’m issuing every citation I can think of, inventing a few more, and possibly calling in the FBI to investigate an attempted murder for leaving Andi like she did. I can’t stop thinking about how hard she was shaking.
When I finish that, all Dale says is, “And you’re all right?”
I frown at the soup heating on the stove.
“Fine,” I say, because I’m obviously calling him and having a normal conversation, how else would I be?
“Good to hear, Gideon,” he says, and I think he’s laughing at me. “Take care of yourself. Merry Christmas.”
“Right,” I say, which is impolite, so I fix it with, “Thanks. Merry Christmas to you too,” and hang up.
