She needed a plan.
Charging in blind was not an option. She needed to move carefully, use the terrain, stay in the trees, and see what she was dealing with first. Steph had the bear spray. It might help up close. Her backpack held a pocketknife and a multi-tool, standard gear she never went without.
The phrase “don’t bring a knife to a gunfight” came to mind and brought a small smile to her lips.How about bear spray?Is there a phrase for using that against a rifle?
Bear spray had a range of about thirty feet if the wind was right. Against a man who wasn’t expecting it, she might stand a chance. At the very least, it’d blind him and buy her enough time to get Jack out.
He might already be dead. The unwanted thought floated to the surface.No, he’s fine. We’ll both be fine.
Now was the time for action, not fear. Stay low. Stay quiet. Use what she had and find Jack. That was the plan.
Not a very good plan, but it was better than nothing.
Steph closed her eyes and tried to visualize the area. She knew where the camp was and where the meadow was.Is there anything in the sled I can use?Each of the individual bags was carefully packed to mimic what she would need to complete The Frozen Divide, not to fight back against poachers who were holding her boyfriend hostage.
Boyfriend?She shook her head.Where did that come from?
Back to the bags. What could she use that she had in her sled?
Mostly comfort items. Nothing that would change their situation. Still, her mind kept circling back to the spare pair of wool socks tucked in her bag. They would feel amazing, enough to make everything seem a little better, but the crusty ones she had on would have to suffice.
She had meant to change them after their break, before heading back to the lodge. That plan vanished when they heard the snowmobile and decided to investigate.
Wrong. They didn’t decide. Jack wanted to head back and let someone know about it once they were safe. Steph had insisted they check it out. She had been the one to put them in danger.
Steph tucked the beacon back in her breast pocket and pulled her mittens on. She flexed her hands twice, working circulation back into her fingers. Her hips ached, and her legs were stiff from the cold. She moved each joint through its range deliberately, the way she did before a race startedwhen the temperature was low and the body needed convincing.
Her students came to mind. Every class, the lesson was the same, varied so they would learn it. Clear thinking under pressure was a skill, not a personality trait. Something built through practice until it appears when needed. That belief had been forged over years of hard miles and even harder conditions.
She was going to need all of it.
Chapter 28
Jack
The twine was not going to cooperate.
Jack had been working at it since they tied his hands behind him, small, deliberate rotations of the wrist he hoped looked like nothing from the outside. The cord was thin but tight, the kind of tight that came from someone who’d done this before.
Every movement pressed it deeper into the skin above his wrists. Hot wetness told him the bite into his skin was drawing blood, and his fingers had gone beyond numb.
Todd stood twenty feet away, rifle slung, watching the tree line with the restlessness of a man who had been told to stand still and didn’t like it. Rick and Graham had gone back toward the open area ten minutes ago. Maybe fifteen. Without his watch, which they’d stripped him of when they captured him, along with his gloves, shoes, and heavy jacket, time was harder to track.
The cold was not harder to track.
The base layer was doing its job, but the frozen ground had worked through his insulated pants. He was grateful they hadn’t taken his pants and his fleece vest, along with his stocking cap and neck gaiter, but it wasn’t enough to actually keep him warm, especially not with the way the wind was blowing. The wind made everything worse.
Jack shifted his weight often, trying to give his knees something other than frozen earth, and Todd told him to stop moving almost every time. Jack complied. Todd wasthe kind of man who looked for reasons, and Jack wasn’t in a position to give him one.
One thing he knew: Todd was not happy. He wanted to be out there searching and not here babysitting Jack. Todd didn’t think anyone should babysit Jack. More than once, he said they should put a bullet in him and be done.
Rick and Graham’s voices carried through the trees. Jack couldn’t make out the words, only the shape of the conversation. Graham’s tone held the quality of a man repeating an argument he’d already lost.Pack up and go. We’re wasting time.
Jack heard enough of Graham to understand how he thought. He wasn’t cruel. The poaching didn’t bother him. It was a way to make easy money. More money than someone his age was likely to earn legitimately. But he wasn’t made for what Rick and Todd had turned this into.
He wanted out.
Rick wouldn’t be moved by that. And Rick certainly didn’t buy Jack’s insistence he was out there alone. He’d stood at the edge of the timber and looked at the tracks. Jack had watched him do it. Rick crouched in the snow, glancing between the two sets of prints, and Jack had understood what he was reading.
