Whoever this was, they weren't stumbling around like a concussed lawyer from the Upper East Side.
They moved withpurpose.
After about eighty yards, I find exactly what I was hoping I wouldn't.
My trail camera is mounted on a pine trunk at roughly head height, angled to cover the northwest approach to the cabin. It's a Stealth Cam, motion-activated, nothing fancy. I put it there in my first week. It captures ten-second clips of whatever triggers it.
For the most part, that's been deer. The occasional coyote. Once, memorably, a black bear.
Now, though, all it's capturing is the canopy and the sky.
Someone has turned it.
They did it as carefully as they walked, because the housing isn't damaged. Nor is the mount broken. The camera has simply been rotated on its bracket, roughly ninety degrees skyward, so that the lens is now caked with fallen snow.
Deliberate.That's what this is. No animal was here. This was the work of a man—or several—with a goal in mind.
I stare at the camera for a long time. Then I rotate it back into position, wipe the snow off the lens with my sleeve, and follow the boot prints another thirty yards until they meet a set of snowmobile tracks that head north and disappear into the deeper forest.
Gone.
I stand there in the silence between the trees and let the facts settle.
Someone found me. Someone with the skill to approach the cabin without tripping Wolf's instincts until they were already leaving. They knew I had cameras, too.
The list of people with that particular combination of knowledge and competence is very short.
None of the names on it are friendly.
I turn around and walk back. The snow is already beginning to soften my tracks. By tomorrow morning, the boot prints along the tree line will be gone, filled in and smoothed over as if they never existed.
But I'll know they were there.
When I reach the cabin, I climb the porch steps and stamp the snow off my boots. I can hear Wolf whining softly behind the door, and Caroline's voice murmuring reassurances, though she hardly sounds any more confident than he does.
I open the door and step inside. The warmth of the cabin wraps around me immediately. It's almost suffocating after the clean bite of the November cold.
Wolf rushes to me, sniffing my boots, my hands, my jacket. He can smell my unease. Dogs always can.
"Hey, buddy." I let him sniff his fill, then give him a firm pat on the ribs.
Caroline is standing by the window, arms crossed, weight on her good ankle. "Well?"
"Branch," I lie. "Big one. Came down on the far side of the clearing."
She narrows her eyes at me. I hold her gaze and give her nothing. I've been lying to better interrogators than her for thirty years. I don't enjoy it, not least because she squints at me the exact same way Bill used to.
But enjoyment has never been the prerequisite for the things I do.
Ultimately, she seems to accept it, or at least to shelve her doubts. "You were out there for a while."
"Wanted to check the perimeter, make sure no trees are leaning on the roof."
"And?"
"There's one, but if it falls, it'll only crush you, not me."
"Is that supposed to be funny?" she snaps, unamused. "It's not very reassuring."
