six
Hazel
Weleavebeforethesun clears the ridge.
I come downstairs to find him at the kitchen table with the drybag already sealed and a coffee waiting for me that I don't have the stomach for but drink anyway because he made it and it might be the last one we share for a while, and I am going to drink every drop.
He goes through the plan while I drink it. Not reading from notes, just talking, low and even, his eyes moving between me and the window the way they've moved between me and every window for five days. There's a forestry office forty minutes down the mountain. That's the waypoint. Beauchamp will be there with two plainclothes officers and a paramedic. We pull in slow, he gets out first, I stay in the truck until I see the signal from Beauchamp and then I come out on Rafe's side.
"Why your side?"
"Because I'll be between you and the road."
I drink my coffee.
He tells me that inside, I ask for Michel Beauchamp first and I hand over the laptop and the written statement and I answer everything they ask for as long as I want to answer it.
"I want to do all of it today," I tell him.
"I know." No argument, no qualification. Just: I know.
"The Belize shell, the Liechtenstein intermediary, the placement dates, It's all in the statement but I can walk them through it myself."
"Then walk them through it."
I look at my coffee. "And after that. Where do I go?"
"Safe house first, RCMP-managed. Beauchamp will have more detail than I can give you. Could be a week, could be a bit longer, depends how fast the Crown moves on the arrest." He pauses. "It won't be long. Once Voclain is in custody the threat is gone. You won't need to hide."
"You actually believe that?"
"I believe what's on that laptop ends him. Yeah."
I nod. The logic is sound and the logic does nothing for the thing that's been sitting behind my sternum since I woke at four and found him already dressed, already at the window, the rifle leaned against the wall beside him. The truck already facing the gate.
Today the world that had been waiting outside the gate was going to come through it one way or another.
He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his, thumb pressing against the gauze on mine the same way he did five days ago at my grandmother's table. Just for a moment. Then he stands and picks up the drybag.
"Tell me the signal," he says.
"Palm up, then dropped."
"And if something feels wrong before we get there?"
"I drop. You deal with it."
He nods, but his smile is grim. "Let's go."
We don't talk much on the drive down. The road is gravel and shadow and thin mist, spruces pressing in on both sides, and Rafe drives with one hand easy on the wheel and his eyes moving in that rotation I've memorized and I watch him do it and try to hold onto the feeling from yesterday afternoon. I want to stay inside that feeling for as long as I can before the day takes over.
I press my bandaged thumb into the strap of the canvas pack and watch the road and breathe.
A kilometer from the gate Rafe slows the truck without saying anything, his eyes going to the left shoulder of the road, a turnout in the alders, staying there a half-second too long. Then back to the road, face giving nothing, and my stomach drops through the floor.
He's seen something. Or the absence of something. Either way it's wrong.
A hundred meters later he eases off the gas and coasts and pulls right through a gap in the alders, the truck nosing into the bush, and stops.
