The Ka-Bar lies in the drift, half-buried. A black steel tombstone marks the spot where my promise broke.
I stare at it. The metal sits dull and lifeless.
The cold shuts down the peripheral systems. My fingers run numb. The tips of my ears burn, then go dead. The shivering starts, violent, racking convulsions shaking my entire frame in the body’s last-ditch attempt to generate heat, a frantic expenditure of energy I don’t possess.
Lie down.
The voice in my head turns seductive. Soft.
Just lie down. The snow is insulating. You can sleep. You can stop hurting.
It would be easy. The easiest thing I’ve ever done. Just tip over. Let the whiteout cover me. Let hypothermia stop the heart currently breaking against my ribs.
I lean forward. My hands sink into the powder.
Iris.
The name forms a jagged edge in my mind.
If I die here, she dies there.
They will torture her. They’ll strip the information from her, and when she’s empty, they’ll jettison her like a spent casing.
The rage flares.
It starts in the gut as a small, hot coal of pure spite. It pushes back against the ice. It pushes back against the despair.
I grab the knife.
I have clumsy, numb claws refusing to obey neural commands. I force them. I look at my hand, watching the tendons strain, willing them to close around the handle until the checkered grip bites into my palm.
I pull it from the snow.
Using it as an anchor, I stab the blade into the frozen earth beneath the drift and haul myself up.
My legs tremble. The left one, the one I’ve been dragging, screams. The pain hits blinding, white-hot, and clarifying. It shoots from my hip to my heel in a lightning bolt of agony.
I welcome it. Pain equals data. Pain means the nerves are still firing. Pain means I’m not dead yet.
I turn back toward the ridge.
The truck sits down there. The wreckage. The lifeline.
It’s a mile back. Maybe less. But in this storm, in this condition, it might as well be the summit of Everest.
I take a step.
The wind slams into me, trying to knock me over. I stagger, catching myself on a pine trunk. The bark scrapes rough and frozen, biting into my palm.
I take another step.
I’m no longer a US Marshal or a protector. I’m a dead man walking, fueled by nothing but hate.
Gravity acts as an enemy. The slope slicks with ice hidden beneath the powder, requiring a calculation of balance and force for every step.
I slip.
My bad leg gives out. I slide down ten feet, scraping my face on the crust, losing ground I just fought for.
