That night, the forest felt closer than usual, the darkness pressing in against the cabin walls like a physical weight. The wind had died down, leaving a silence that was heavy and watchful. Cade waited until well past midnight, sitting in the dark, letting his eyes adjust until the room was a landscape of gray shapes.
When he finally moved, it was with the muscle memory of a man who had done this a thousand times in worse places. Bishop followed him without a single command, responding instead to the subtle cues of preparation: the tightening of boot laces, the zip of the heavy jacket, the quiet, rhythmic check of the radio frequency. They moved out the back door, slipping into the night like shadows detaching from a wall.
They moved down the slope and along the frozen creek bed, the ice thick enough to hold their weight but treacherous in the dark. Bishop had reacted here two days earlier—the specific spot that cut through the alder thicket and disappeared into the protected state land.
As they approached the boundary, Bishop’s behavior shifted. His pace slowed, his nose dropped low to the snow, and his body angled into the wind to catch the scent stream. He avoided the open ground instinctively, choosing the narrow, difficult paths where the sound of their movement died quickly in the dense brush.
They found it just beyond a sharp bend in the creek, where the trees grew thick and the snow lay uneven and deep.
A log deck stood half-hidden beneath heavy tarps the color of dead leaves and mud. Stacks of fresh-cut timber were arranged with brutal efficiency, waiting for transport. The air here was different—the scent of raw sap was sharp, almost sweet, but it was layered with the cloying, chemical stench of oil and diesel exhaust.
Nearby, crude trail cameras had been wired to tree trunks, their lenses aimed outward like unblinking, mechanical eyes. And on the ground, a widening ring of steel traps lay set in the snow. Their jaws were taped—likely to dampen the metallic snap of a misfire or to muffle the sound of a catch—but the intent was clear.
Cade’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. This wasn’t opportunism. This was industrial-scale theft, protected by industrial-scale cruelty. It was planning.
They documented the scene quickly: photos of the VIN numbers on the equipment, the GPS coordinates, the angles of the cameras. Bishop stayed close, alert but controlled. When Cade neared one of the hidden traps, Bishop nudged his leg sharply, guiding him around the danger with a soft grunt.
Then, without warning, the world fractured.
Bishop froze, his head snapping up, his ears pinned flat against his skull. Cade felt it a split-second later—the low, vibrating thrum of a heavy engine traveling through the frozen ground.
Headlights flared to life through the trees, blindingly bright, sweeping across the tarps and catching them in the open.
A truck surged forward from a hidden access road, accelerating too fast for caution, the engine roaring as the driver floored it. A horn blared, a raw, aggressive sound that shattered the night. Someone shouted, a voice distorted by panic and rage.
Cade moved on instinct. He shoved Bishop hard toward the cover of the tree line and threw himself in the opposite direction, rolling across the ice as the truck’s chrome grill tore past the empty air where he had been standing a second before. He hit the snow hard, the breath knocked out of him, ribs groaning under the impact.
The truck skidded, tires chewing through the ice and spraying slush as the driver fought for control.
Bishop did not bark. He did not run away. Instead, he broke from cover and sprinted directly across the path of the headlights—a dark, fast streak against the white snow. He moved with a calculated unpredictability, forcing the driver to jerk the wheel to avoid hitting him, or perhaps to try and hit him.
It was a trained move: draw the fire, create chaos, buy time.
Cade saw it with a clarity that hurt. This dog had done this before. The truck fishtailed violently, clipped a pine tree with a sickening crunch of metal, and stalled just long enough for Cade to scramble to his feet.
He seized the second Bishop had bought him. “Go!” he hissed, retreating into the dense tree line, moving low and fast, counting his breaths to keep his heart rate manageable.
Shots cracked the air behind them—two, then three. They were wild, panicked shots, the sound flat and ugly in the cold air, punching useless holes into the snow and stripping bark from the trees. Bishop stayed just ahead of him, glancing back once to confirm Cade was still moving, his eyes reflecting the moonlight.
Then they were gone, swallowed by the darkness and the rough terrain where a truck couldn’t follow. They didn’t stop running until the forest thinned and the creek reappeared, a ribbon of black ice under the safety of the moon.