Afon stands in the center of the bunkhouse, breathing hard, surrounded by three unconscious men, steam rising off his shoulders in the cold air. The Remington is back in his hands. His eyes sweep the room once in a systematic grid pattern, checking for any other threats.
Then they land on me.
"Caroline."
I try to answer but all that comes out is a wordless whimper. My mouth is open and my lungs are working, but somewhere between my brain and my vocal cords, the signal has degraded into static.
Afon slings the Remington over his shoulder, pulls a folding knife from his jacket, and slices the zip tie off my wrists with a single flick. The blood rushes back into my fingers. The pain is extraordinary—white-hot needles threading through every nerve ending from my elbows to my fingertips.
"Are you hurt?" he asks.
I shake my head. Then nod. Then shake it again. I don't know what I am anymore.
"Did they?—"
"No." That word, at least, I can produce. "No. You— Well, you cut it kind of close there, actually."
I feel like that's pretty funny, but he doesn't crack a smile. "Can you walk?"
"I… I'm not sure. My ankle?—"
"Right."
He scoops me up, one arm under my knees and the other around my back, and carries me through the kicked-in doorway and into the dusk.
The logging camp looks a bit different now than it did earlier. The generator sits silent with its panel ripped open. One of the men who'd been smoking outside is facedown in the mud near the trucks, motionless, with a nasty-looking patch of red snow covering his head. I don't see the others and I don't ask. I kinda get the feeling they're all lying unmoving in red snow patches of their own.
The tarp-covered snowmobile is where it was before, but the two trucks now have their hoods up, wires hanging loose like disemboweled intestines. Afon has been thorough.
The Bronco is parked about fifty yards from the bunkhouse, right where the logging road widens out. Afon carries me toward it without breaking stride, his boots crunching over the frozen mud. My arms are around his neck, so I'm sure he can feel me shaking.
"Almost there," Afon says.
We're maybe twenty yards from the Bronco when the shot cracks through the air.
It's a sharp whiplash noise, followed by the metallicpingof something hitting the Bronco's fender. Afon pivots instantly, dropping into a crouch behind a stack of cut timber so fast thatI barely register the change in altitude before my back is against the silvered logs and his body is between me and the direction the shot came from.
A second shot follows. This one thuds into the timber six inches above our heads, sending a spray of splinters into the cold air.
"Stay down," Afon orders as he unslings the Remington. He peers around the edge of the log pile toward the logging road, where a pair of headlights has appeared, bouncing through the trees. A truck. Someone returning to camp who wasn't here when Afon dismantled the welcoming committee.
A third shot punches through the Bronco's windshield. The glass shatters and collapses inward in a web of cracks. Afon's scowl deepens.
"Motherfucker," he snarls. "I just replaced that glass."
"What now?" I ask in a panic.
He thumbs off the safety on the gun. "Change of plans."
He fires the Remington once toward the approaching headlights, and then he's lifting me again and running, not toward the Bronco but back toward the bunkhouse—a.k.a., the last place on earth I want to go back to right now.
Another shot cracks behind us. This one goes wide, smacking into a tree trunk somewhere to our left. "Afon!" I scream. "Where are we?—"
Then he veers around the corner of the bunkhouse and back to the tarp canopy serving as a carport for the guys that call this place home. He deposits me on the snowmobile's seat, yanks the tarp the rest of the way off, and swings a leg over in front of me.
"Hold on."
"Huh?"
