Part 7
Ethan read the note twice, then put it in an evidence bag without letting Ruth touch it.
“Inside,” he said.
This time, Ruth did not argue.
He checked the porch, the tire tracks, the side of the cabin where someone could have stood without being seen from the kitchen. Snow was already softening the edges of everything. Whoever had thrown the canister had done it recently, maybe while they sat in the truck, maybe from the trees while Ruth and Ethan talked about Sam’s notebooks.
The thought made Ruth’s skin tighten under her coat.
Ethan called Sheriff Brooks. Ruth heard pieces from the kitchen while she wrapped both hands around a mug of tea she did not drink. Threat. Evidence. Coyle. No, I don’t think she should be alone tonight.
When he hung up, Ruth said, “I’m not leaving my house.”
“I didn’t ask yet.”
“I’m saving you time.”
“Ruth.”
“No.” She set the mug down carefully. “I left once after Sam died. Maggie took me to her sister’s in Billings because everybody thought I shouldn’t be alone. I lasted four days. Every night I dreamed the cabin was calling and I was too far away to answer.”
“This isn’t grief. This is a threat.”
“It can be both.”
Ethan exhaled and rubbed one hand over his face. He looked older than he had that morning. “Then I’m staying until Dana gets here.”
“You’ll freeze in your truck.”
“I’ve been colder.”
Ruth almost smiled. “Men do love saying that.”
He did not smile back. “Get the notebooks.”
She brought them from the flour bin and laid them on the table. Ethan opened the one from Sam’s final winter and began photographing pages. Ruth watched him read her husband’s handwriting. There was an intimacy in it that surprised her, like seeing someone touch Sam’s coat.
Ethan stopped at the entry dated eleven days before Sam died.
His eyes lifted. “Ruth.”
“I know.”
“He named Wade here.”
“He used initials.”
“He used enough.” Ethan turned the page. “There’s a location marked past Devil’s Notch. Old survey road. Do you know it?”
“Sam called it the north cut.”
“That area burned five years ago. It’s mostly deadfall now.” He took another photo, then paused at the next entry. “Sam wrote that he planned to check it after the Richardson rescue.”
Ruth’s breath caught.
The Richardson rescue. That was the call that had taken him out in the blizzard: two out-of-state snowmobilers lost above the drainage. Sam had gone with two volunteers. The snowmobilers survived. One volunteer lost toes to frostbite. Sam disappeared in whiteout and was found three days later under a wind slab, half a mile from the search grid.
Ruth had never known he planned to check anything afterward.
Ethan read the line again, quieter. “If weather holds, photograph Coyle cache before he moves it.”
The kitchen seemed to shrink around those words.
A cache.
Not a single snare. Not one illegal trap. A place where evidence had been hidden, maybe for years. Sam had known, or suspected, and Wade had known Sam suspected.
Ruth sat down.
Ethan closed the notebook gently. “I’m going to call this in.”
The lights went out before he reached the phone.
The cabin dropped into darkness so complete that the windows vanished. The refrigerator clicked once and died. Outside, the wind slammed against the north wall, hard enough to rattle the stovepipe. Ruth heard Ethan move, then the beam of his flashlight cut across the kitchen.
“Generator?” he asked.
“Shed.”
“I’ll check it.”
“No, you won’t. The shed door sticks. You’ll break the latch.”
He looked at her.
She took the flashlight from the hook by the stove. “I’ve been keeping this place alive longer than you’ve been shaving.”
The generator shed stood thirty yards behind the cabin, past the woodpile and the old chicken coop. Ethan went with her because arguing would have taken longer. The snow had thickened into a white churn that swallowed the flashlight beam after a few feet. Ruth kept one hand on the guide rope Sam had strung years ago between the porch and the shed for storms exactly like this.
Halfway there, she stopped.
Ethan stopped with her. “What?”
Ruth listened.
Under the wind, something whimpered.
It came from beyond the coop, near the dark line of the trees. Not a lion. Smaller. Hurt and frantic.
Ethan swept the flashlight across the yard. The beam caught the old fence, the woodpile, the buried wheelbarrow. Then two green eyes flashed near the ground and vanished.
“A dog,” Ethan said.
The whimper came again.
Ruth moved toward it.
“Ruth, wait.”
“It’s caught.”
“Or it’s bait.”
That stopped her.
The word hung between them, ugly because it made sense. Wade had used dogs that afternoon. Wade used fear. Wade used whatever made people step where he wanted them to step.
The flashlight beam trembled over the snow.
Then the dog screamed.
Ruth forgot caution.
She lunged toward the sound, Ethan swearing behind her. Near the tree line, a young hound lay tangled in cable, the loop caught around its body and one back leg. It wore the same kind of orange collar as the dog from the ridge. Its eyes rolled white when Ruth knelt, but it was too exhausted to bite.
“Hold the light,” she said.
Ethan dropped beside her. “Don’t touch the cable bare-handed.”
“I know.”
The snare was fresh. Ruth could see where the snow had been brushed over the anchor point. Whoever set it had placed it just beyond her yard, close enough that any animal—or person—following the cries would find it.
Ethan cut the cable with a tool from his belt while Ruth kept her coat over the dog’s head to calm it. The hound shook under her hands. She murmured nonsense to it, the way Sam used to murmur to injured deer before a ranger had to do the merciful thing.
When the cable snapped, the dog tried to stand and collapsed.
That was when the growl came from the dark.
Not from the dog.
From the trees.
Ethan lifted the flashlight.
Several pairs of eyes reflected back.
Low. Steady. Waiting.
Wolves.
Ruth had seen them before, but never like this. Not close to the cabin, not in a group fanned out along her fence line, not with hunger making them bold enough to hold the light. There were four, maybe five. The lead wolf stood slightly apart, gray shoulders high, muzzle lowered.
Ethan reached for his sidearm and eased Ruth behind him. “Back to the cabin. Slowly.”
The hound whimpered.
The lead wolf stepped forward.
Behind them, the porch was thirty yards away, the cabin door a pale rectangle through the blowing snow. Thirty yards could be nothing. Thirty yards could be the rest of a life. Then Ruth heard another sound above the wind. A branch cracking high in the pines. The wolves heard it, too. Every head turned toward the ridge…
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