three
Rafe
Thegateisasteel pipe welded to a post. Chain, padlock, a sign that saysPRIVATE KEEP OUTin weathered red. I unlock it. Drive through. Lock it behind us.
She watches from the passenger seat and says nothing. The Subaru is behind us, backed into an abandoned cut-block two ridges east. I pulled it off the gravel, drove it in through the alders, walked back out the way I came. If somebody pulls satellite on her plate, they'll see a vehicle heading northeast. Wrong direction. Bought me time.
The spur road climbs fifteen hundred feet in just under four kilometers. My cabin is at the top. Not a nice cabin. My father and I built the shell when I was seventeen. I finished it alone after he died. Woodstove, propane range, cold running water off a gravity tank I fill from a spring. A generator in the shed for the nights I want to charge a laptop. Two rooms, a porch on the south side, a woodshed against the north wall.
I pull up beside the porch. Kill the engine. The silence up here makes your ears feel like something's missing.
She gets out. She has a canvas duffel, the laptop in the cooler bag.
"This is it?"
"This is it."
"It's..." She looks at the porch, the shed, the tree line. "Okay."
"I'm giving you the bedroom. I'll take the couch."
"You don't have to."
"I do."
"Rafe."
"I do."
I take the duffel from her because she's still weak and I'm not. Start the fire. Walk the perimeter, a slow loop, eyes up, because that is who I am.
When I come back she is standing in the main room with her arms crossed, not going anywhere.
I take her phone and kill it on the porch step with a framing hammer. Pull the SIM. Assemble the burner, put in the battery, make the call to Beauchamp. Sergeant, RCMP Major Crimes, Prince George. I served with him a lifetime ago. He picks up on the second ring.
"Dannick."
"Michel. Need forty-eight hours."
I give it to him straight. The contract. The paper. Voclain Holdings. The subject and the laptop at a private location. Coordinates by text. Saturday noon, he comes up if I don't call.
"Stay dark," he says, and hangs up.
I take the battery out. I put it on the porch rail. I turn around. She is standing in the doorway of the cabin. She is bleeding.
"When did you do that?"
She looks down at her hand. The left one. A cut across the pad of her thumb deep enough to have been bleeding through hersleeve for a while. "The woodpile. Your woodpile. I wanted to help. There was a nail."
"You didn't say anything."
"I wasn't sure if I was allowed to."
"Hazel."
"I'm sorry."
"Sit down."
