That's what wakes me. Not the sound of a vehicle. The sound of a vehicle that doesn't belong to anyone who drives this road. The locals all have diesels or beaters that rattle at specific RPMs I've memorized in the three months I've been up here helping the owner patch the roof. This is a gas engine. Smooth. Tuned. Running slow because someone's coasting to keep noise down.
I'm already dressed. Never really went to bed. Just sat in the leather chair downstairs with the shotgun across my knees and let my body do the twenty-minute thing it does when my brain won't shut off.
I get up the stairs in six silent strides and push her door open.
She's already sitting up. Eyes wide. Hair a mess of braids and sleep.
"Up."
She moves. Good girl, my brain says, and I shove that sentence into a box and weld the lid shut.
"Boots. Hoodie. Grab whatever's essential. Sixty seconds."
She's out of the bed before I finish the sentence.
I cross the hall to my room, grab the go bag I packed the first hour I got here because old habits don't die, they just wait for a reason. Sat phone. Spare mag. Med kit. A second sidearm I tuck into the back waistband of my jeans.
When I come back she's at the top of the stairs with a hoodie over her tee and her boots in her hand. Phone. Wallet. A small leather notebook I'd bet my truck is her source list.
"Downstairs. Back of the cabin. Wait on me at the mudroom door."
She goes.
I do a last pass of the upstairs. Kill the lamp in the office. Close the laptop. Pull the hard drive on the way out because if anyone gets inside this cabin I'd rather they find a paperweight.
Down the stairs.
She's at the mudroom door pulling her boots on, one hand braced on the wall. No shaking. No questions.
"Car's still on the road," she says quiet.
"Yeah."
"Moving?"
"Sitting. About three hundred yards down. Killed the engine a minute ago."
"So he's on foot."
"Probably."
Her breath comes out slow.
"What's the plan."
"We go out the back. Down the slope. There's a hunting shack about half a mile northeast through the trees. Not on any map. Owner uses it for elk season."
"Half a mile in what."
"Terrain."
She looks down at her boots. Back up at me.
"I can do half a mile."
"I know you can. But if I say move, you move. If I say down, you're already down. If I say run and I don't follow, you don't stop for me."
"Gray."
