“Wind and animals,” the dismissive voice said. “We’re burning time.”
The light held on the prints.
He thought about Steph. About the fact that she was here because he’d driven out from Irma and staged a coincidence and walked her into the wilderness for reasons that had nothing to do with training.
He believed deep down that if she were alone, she never would’ve taken a chance like this. She would’ve seen the lights and known she needed to get back to the lodge.
The beam moved.
It swept back toward the camp slowly, dragging across the snow and the tree line, and he tracked it until it was pointed away from them and the dark came back.
The voices dropped again, too low to carry.
He let out a slow breath and looked at Steph in the dark beside him.
She was looking back at him. Her face was unreadable in the darkness, but she was steady. Whatever she was feeling, she had it controlled.
Pure Steph.
Chapter 17
Steph
Brush bit into Steph’s left shoulder as she lay prone in the snow, Jack by her side, as the snow began to fall. She ignored the discomfort. Repositioning could get them killed.
The spotlight swept the tree line again, slower this time, and she tracked it through the tangle of branches without moving anything but her eyes. Beside her, Jack was a controlled stillness she was grateful for. Whatever noise he’d made getting here, and there was plenty, he’d found his discipline now.
The beam held on a section of snow twenty feet to their right. Steph kept her eyes on the man holding it—not the one who had insisted their tracks belonged to elk and simply wanted to get back to work, and not the flat-voiced one either.
The man operating the spotlight was the one she considered the wildcard, the same one who stood at the edge of the firelight with his arms crossed and his eyes on the trees. Instinctively, Steph knew he was the dangerous one. He was the type who would act first and worry about the consequences later.
Exactly as she knew Spotlight Guy was going to be trouble, she also knew the one whose voice carried little emotion was the leader of their group.
The leader wasn’t moving or talking. He simply stood next to the man working the spotlight. Watching.
The other one, who Steph categorized in her mind as “the worker”, said something too low to hear before turning back toward the hanging animals.
She kept her eyes on the leader.
He was the one who mattered. She understood that with the certainty of someone who had spent years reading groups of people, knowing which voice carried the most importance. He’d given one order, and the spotlight came out. He hadn’t raised his voice once. He hadn’t needed to.
The beam swept back toward the camp, and the dark returned to their section of brush.
She reached slowly into her jacket and found the personal beacon. Her fingers worked the buttons by feel, not looking down, keeping her eyes on the camp.
As she completed the SOS sequence, the device vibrated once against her palm—confirmation sent, their coordinates transmitted. Now, no matter what happened, they’d be found. Even if the poachers caught them and took her device, they couldn’t turn it off or disable the automatic tracking. Steph knew that since the beacon was satellite based, it was unlikely the SOS went out instantaneously, but things would happen soon.
She turned her head toward Jack and held the device up just enough for him to see it in the dark. He gave a single nod.
Help was coming. Eventually. The Basin County Search and Rescue operated out of Irma, an hour away under good conditions. Two, maybe three, considering the condition of the road and the need to organize. Maybe longer, even.
Park rangers probably weren’t any closer; their headquarters were nowhere near this section of the park.Whoever responded, they weren’t going to be fast about it, and fast was what the situation required.
The spotlight swept again.
It came out from the camp in a wide arc, patient and thorough, and this time it held longer on the area near their tracks. The man working the spotlight said something, but the leader held up his hand, shushing him. He took several steps away from the spotlight and farther away from where she and Jack hid, then stopped and tilted his head.
He was listening.
