Part 4
“Don’t shoot,” Eli tried to say.
It came out as air.
Sarah Keene heard enough. Or maybe she saw enough in the shape on the floor behind the wolf. She threw one arm out to stop the deputy behind her and said, very quietly, “Weapons down.”
Deputy Mateo Cruz froze with his rifle half-raised. Ben Hollis, the youngest ranger on Sarah’s crew, stood behind him with a medical pack on one shoulder and terror written plainly across his face.
Coal did not move away from the door. His yellow eyes fixed on each person in turn. Snow had crusted over his black coat, and the scar on his face looked almost silver in the flashlight beam.
Sarah lowered herself slightly, not crouching like prey, not towering like a threat. She had been a ranger long enough to know that every creature understood posture before words.
“Eli,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Can you tell him we’re here to help?”
Eli gathered what little strength he had. “Coal,” he whispered. “Let her through.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the wolf rose and stepped aside.
Ben made a sound that was either a prayer or a curse. Mateo did not take his eyes off Coal, but he lowered the rifle muzzle toward the floor. Sarah crossed the threshold first and dropped beside Eli.
“Oh, Eli,” she said, and for once the district ranger’s calm broke around the edges. “What did they do to you?”
“Pocket,” he murmured.
She leaned close. “What?”
“Inside pocket.”
Sarah unzipped his parka and pulled out the folded map and Nolan Voss’s badge. Her face changed as she saw the name.
Mateo glanced down. “That from Voss?”
Eli’s eyes closed, then opened again. “Forged the order. Rourke’s up there. Titan Ridge. Test pits in the basin.”
Sarah swore under her breath. Then she looked at Ben. “Get the thermal blanket on him. Mateo, call it in before the storm eats the signal.”
Ben moved fast, hands shaking only at first. He wrapped Eli, checked his pupils, pressed gauze against the cut above his brow, and kept talking because young rescuers often believed words could anchor a man to the earth.
Coal watched all of it.
When Ben reached for Eli’s shoulder too quickly, the wolf’s growl rolled through the little building.
Ben went still.
“Slow,” Sarah said.
“I’m being slow,” Ben whispered.
“Be slower.”
By the time they loaded Eli onto the rescue sled, daylight had turned the storm from black to pewter. Coal walked twenty feet behind them all the way to the snowcat. He did not approach when the engine started. He did not run when the machine lurched forward. He followed along the tree line until the station came into view below.
At Granite Creek, Dr. Hannah Pike was waiting in the medical room, though she was a wildlife veterinarian by training and a stubborn emergency volunteer by temperament. She had patched more rangers, hunters, dogs, owls, and unlucky goats than anyone in the county. When she saw Eli, she did not waste time looking horrified.
“On the cot,” she said. “Cut the sleeve. Don’t pull it. He’s cold enough already.”
Eli drifted in and out while they worked. He caught pieces of conversation: mild hypothermia, concussion, bruised ribs, circulation returning to his feet, possible frostbite but not deep. Sarah’s voice came from the office beyond the door, sharp and controlled as she spoke with the sheriff’s department and the regional Forest Service office.
Every time Eli surfaced, he asked the same thing.
“Wolf?”
Hannah finally leaned over him. “Outside the north fence. Scaring the life out of everybody and refusing to leave.”
Eli let his head fall back.
“Good,” he whispered.
Two hours later, wrapped in blankets and bitter coffee, Eli sat in Sarah’s office with a bandage over his eyebrow and his ribs bound tight. He should have been in a hospital. Everyone had said so. He had replied that hospitals would still be there after they stopped the men poisoning the watershed.
Sarah did not like it, but she knew the look on his face.
They spread the evidence across her desk: the forged route order, the recovered map, Voss’s badge, photos from Eli’s camera, and a log showing that Nolan Voss had accessed the dispatch system at 3:12 a.m. Voss had also disabled two trail cameras near Deadfall Basin under the note “maintenance request.”
“He’s in the building?” Eli asked.
Sarah’s jaw tightened. “He called in sick an hour after we found you.”
Mateo stood near the door, phone in hand. “Sheriff has deputies headed to his house.”
Ben looked through the blinds toward the yard. “He always acted like he was afraid of getting mud on his boots.”
“That kind usually is,” Eli said. “Until someone pays them enough.”
A thump sounded in the hallway.
Everyone turned.
Hannah opened the office door before anyone could stop her. A young administrative assistant stood there pale-faced, holding a dead radio handset. “The generator just cut out,” she said. “And the landline is down.”
The lights flickered once.
Then the station went dark.
For half a second, there was only the sound of the storm pressing against the windows. Then came the low grind of engines outside, too many and too close.
Mateo moved to the wall and eased the blind aside.
Headlights glowed near the equipment shed. Men were moving through the snow, their faces hidden under hoods and masks. One of them stepped into the spill of a security light still running on battery backup.
Red beard. Broken-heel gait. Cal Rourke.
He pointed toward the station door. “Burn the dispatch files. Take the computers if you can. And somebody get eyes on that black wolf.”
Another man laughed nervously. “Why?”
Rourke’s answer carried through the cold glass.
“Because alive, he’s worth more than any old ranger.”
From beyond the north fence came a low sound that made every person in Sarah’s office stop breathing. Coal had heard him…
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