He snapped a twig.
The sound cracked through the silence like a gunshot. He winced and stopped moving. Steph stopped, too, both of them still, not breathing.
The voices from the camp shifted.
He heard the change before he could make out the words. The tone of it, the way the conversation moved to something with an edge to it. Then the words started carrying.
“—somebody out there. I’m telling you.”
The second voice, still dismissive but the teasing tone now gone, said, “You’re hearing things. There’s nothing out there.”
“I heard something.”
“It’s the wind. It’s the trees. Pick up the other end of this.”
A pause. Then there was a third voice, flat and certain. “Turn on the spotlight. See what you see.”
A spotlight.
Jack understood immediately how bad this was. Depending on the type of light and how powerful it was, the entire place could be lit up like a city. There were trees between them and the camp, but they were still too close. And their tracks were back there in the snow, two sets of prints coming out of the meadow and cutting left into the trees, legible as a map to anyone with enough light to read them.
Steph grabbed his arm.
He felt her shift before he understood what she was doing, and then she was moving left again, faster now, no longer careful about sound, and he went with her because he didn’t have a better idea.
She was angling toward a dense tangle of low-growth brush and deadfall where the trees crowded close and the canopy came down nearly to the snow.
Steph pushed through the outer edge of it and pulled him in behind her. They went down, both of themdropping low without discussion, pressing into the brush and the snow and the cold dark of it.
The area lit up.
It happened fast. A beam of white light swept out from the camp, wide and powerful, the kind of light that didn’t leave shadows where shadows ought to be. It crossed the tree line and moved through the trees and swept the open snow between the timber and the camp.
He could see their tracks from here. He could see them clearly in the light, the two sets of prints coming out of the meadow, the point where they’d stopped, the place where they’d moved left into the trees.
The light swept across them, and he held completely still, keeping his breathing controlled by sheer effort of will.
Beside him, Steph was motionless. He couldn’t hear her breathing at all.
The light moved. It tracked along the tree line, slow and methodical, the kind of search pattern used by someone who knew what they were doing. It was going to hit the brush. He could see the angle of it and where it was going, and there was nothing to do but stay down and stay still and hope the brush was enough.
“Nothing,” the dismissive voice said again, closer now.
“Keep it on the trees,” the flat voice said.
The beam swept back. It crossed the snow again, slower this time, and Jack watched it move across the footprints and stop.
His chest tightened.
The beam held on the prints as Jack counted the seconds.
“Could be deer. Elk,” the dismissive voice said, but with less certainty in it now.
“It’s not elk.”
“Sure, it is. We’ve got work to do. Let’s get back at it.”
Jack was well aware of the pistol against his chest but also understood he couldn’t risk the noise his zipper would make to get to it. He was even more aware that three men with rifles and a spotlight against two people hiding in brush was not a problem his pistol could solve. He kept his hands where they were and watched the beam through the tangle of branches.
