Part 6
Eli laid one hand on Ghost’s shoulder and felt the growl moving through the wolf before he heard it.
The animal wanted out. Every muscle under its winter coat had gathered tight, ready to launch through the root opening into the dark. Eli kept his palm there, not restraining so much as asking. He had no right to command a wild wolf. He knew that. Still, Ghost stayed.
Grant’s voice crackled again through the speaker.
“You’re freezing in there,” he said. “I know you are. Your feet are bad. Your hands are worse. You won’t make another mile.”
Eli closed his eyes.
The worst part was that Grant was right.
His boots were stiff with ice. His socks had frozen around his toes, and he could no longer feel the smallest two on his left foot. His wrists pulsed under the gauze. His ribs caught every breath. The root hollow was warmer than the open woods only because Ghost blocked the wind and breathed heat into the small space.
“Throw the notebook out,” Grant said. “That’s all. Slide it through the snow. I’ll leave the radio. I’ll even call in your location once I’m clear.”
Eli almost smiled at that. Grant could lie as easily as smoke moved.
“You want money?” Grant continued. “I can give you money. Enough to sell that shack of yours and move somewhere warm. Arizona. Florida. Wherever old men go when they’re done pretending trees love them back.”
Ghost shifted, pressing closer.
Eli’s hand moved to his coat, not for the notebook but for Caleb’s pipe. He took it out in the dark. The antler was cold at first, then warmed under his fingers. Ghost turned its head, nose brushing Eli’s sleeve.
The wolf remembered by scent. Eli was sure of it now. Not in the human way, not with names and dates and grief arranged into sentences. But Ghost knew the smell of the young man who had opened the snare years ago. He knew the smell of blood related to that young man. He knew enough to remain when hunger was gone.
Eli could not explain that to Grant.
He would not have tried.
“Caleb saved you,” he whispered to the wolf. “And you came back for his old man.”
Ghost exhaled against his burned hand. Then, with surprising care, the wolf lowered its muzzle and licked the edge of the bandage where pitch and blood had stiffened the gauze. The rough tongue hurt. It also cleaned away dirt Eli had been too exhausted to see.
The tenderness of it nearly undid him.
Outside, Grant’s voice hardened. “Last offer.”
Eli did not answer.
The silence stretched.
Finally, the speaker clicked off.
For a time, nothing moved beyond the root hollow. Eli understood the tactic. Grant wanted him to imagine every possibility. A shot through the roots. Another smoke flare. A fire set in the brush. Fear was most useful when it had room to invent.
But dawn was closer than Grant knew.
Eli waited until the slope outside softened from black to charcoal. Then he eased his boots back on, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from making a sound. Ghost backed out first, tested the air, and stood aside. Eli crawled after him.
Grant was gone from the immediate slope.
Not gone far. Eli could see one set of boot prints pacing below the hollow, then moving toward the frozen bay. The speaker sat on a stump, abandoned after its work was done. Eli picked it up, removed the battery pack with shaking fingers, and slid the battery into his coat. A little power might matter later.
From the same pocket, he took the signal mirror from Caleb’s cache.
They descended toward Deadwater Bay, where the wind had swept the lake ice almost clean. On the shore above it stood a dead jack pine with a fork at shoulder height. Eli wedged the mirror into the fork and angled it east.
Caleb had taught him the trick, though Eli had already known it in older forms. A flash could travel farther than a shout. At sunrise, if the sky cleared, the mirror would throw light toward the patrol route used by Forest Service law enforcement and county search aircraft after major winter storms.
Eli did not pray often.
He made an exception.
When the first blade of sun slid between the trees, the mirror caught it and sent a hard white blink across the bay.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Eli turned away before hope could make him careless.
Deadwater Bay lay below him, black ice exposed under a thin dusting of snow. It was thick enough to hold a loaded truck, but the cold night and quick sunrise had set the whole sheet under stress. Eli heard the first deep pop from beneath the surface—a sound like a far-off cannon, common on big lakes in hard weather and terrifying to anyone who did not understand it.
Ghost refused to step onto the ice. The wolf climbed instead to a rock shelf above the shoreline and watched from there, ears forward.
Eli walked out alone.
Halfway across the bay, he stopped and turned.
Grant Hollis emerged from the trees with the rifle in both hands.
His face had changed overnight. The polish was gone. Frost clung to his beard stubble. One cheek was scratched open. His eyes were bloodshot, fever-bright, and fixed on Eli with an anger that had outlived reason.
“End of the road,” Grant called.
Eli tightened his grip on the broken branch he had been using as a staff. The ice boomed under their feet. Grant flinched. Eli looked toward the wolf on the ridge and saw Ghost rise, as if the whole forest had taken a breath with him…
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