Part 4
Mara kept the phone in her hand. “First you verify who you are.”
There was a brief silence, followed by the sound of paper moving.
Naomi Reed gave Mara the case number handwritten on the back of her business card beside the duty number, the first name of Eli’s defense attorney, and the sentence Eli had been instructed to use if the meeting site was compromised. She did not sound offended by the challenge. That helped.
“Now tell me whether the meeting was real,” Mara said.
“His attorney arranged a voluntary interview and evidence handoff,” Naomi said. “Mr. Mercer would have had counsel. The government made no promise about charges or immunity, and he knew agents could arrest him.”
Mara looked at Eli. He had told that part straight.
Naomi asked, “Is he medically stable?”
Mara gave a concise report: cold exposure, penetrating wound with an apparent exit, controlled external bleeding, alert but weak, no obvious breathing compromise. Saying it aloud to someone with authority eased a pressure she had not admitted she was carrying.
“Vermont State Police and EMS have your location,” Naomi said. “Your beacon packet opened the medical response before dawn, and your emergency call added the armed threat. The south road is blocked by two trees and an abandoned plow. A team is coming from the north, but the estimate is more than an hour. Do not engage anyone from Mercer Atlantic. If the threat reaches the house before responders do, leave by the safest route available and update us.”
“Tom knows the lake and has people searching.”
“Then we use more than one line. Keep this call open. I’m bringing state dispatch in now.”
Mara almost said she could manage the communications herself. Instead she read the details back to the dispatcher and wrote the state incident number and the dispatcher’s name on a card for Lena.
Eli’s defense attorney joined and identified himself. Naomi confirmed that recording had begun and told Eli he could decline any question or end the call. His attorney confirmed that he had advised Eli and that Eli wished to proceed.
Eli gave the two-part verification phrase. It could not decrypt the files, but it allowed his attorney to authenticate him, preserve the encrypted mirror, and open an index of its contents. Naomi asked three questions about the listed records. Eli’s answers named his own signatures before they named Tom’s.
“You can stop there,” his attorney said.
“Record the rest,” Eli replied.
At his attorney’s request, Eli wrote a one-page account of the ambush, signed and dated it, and noted where the sealed key had been found. Mara witnessed the signature.
Dr. Lena Ortiz reached the cabin within the hour in a blue pickup with a plow blade and cedar branches caught in its grille. She came through the door carrying a medical oxygen kit from the volunteer rescue squad and swearing in two languages at the state of the road.
Lena was sixty-one, compact, usually unhurried around frightened animals, and a volunteer EMT with the rescue squad. One look at the pistol box, the bloodied dressings, and Eli Mercer changed her pace. She checked his airway, pulse, lung sounds, and dressings before turning to the puppies.
“You said gunshot wound,” Lena told Mara. “Dispatch added that armed men were searching the shore.”
“I learned that after our first radio contact. I reported it when the satellite call connected.”
“Good. Then we follow dispatch, not Mercer.”
She checked the puppies next. They were warm, responsive, and breathing without distress, though Lena wanted chest films and observation once the roads opened. Sadie had named them Smoke, Birch, and Belle. She packed their towel, food, and red collars in a canvas grocery bag, then added her spacer, rescue inhaler, written asthma plan, and the stuffed owl she pretended not to need.
Mara briefed Lena while Sadie listened—not on the crimes in the archive, but on the threat and the available routes. She locked Eli’s signed account and the sealed key in the document box. Lena called Ruth and confirmed that she was ready for Sadie.
State police dispatch advised them not to remain at an address the gunmen had identified. The east road to Ruth’s lay beyond the known search area; the north road led toward police and EMS at the salt shed. Lena gave medical control Eli’s vital signs. The physician agreed that he could be moved flat toward the rendezvous, provided they stopped at any deterioration and took no unplanned route.
The clinic truck’s folding rear bench let Eli ride flat, and Mara’s twelve years in emergency rooms made her the better attendant for a penetrating-trauma patient. Lena’s plow truck—with Sadie’s booster and room for the secured puppy crate—was the safer eastbound vehicle. Dispatch logged both vehicles and kept the satellite line open: Lena would evacuate Sadie, her asthma kit, and the puppies to Ruth; Mara would take Eli north toward responders.
Sadie stood by the door in her yellow snow pants, holding the black-and-white puppy against her coat. The other two occupied a travel crate at her feet.
“I want you to come with us,” she told Mara.
“I know.”
“You could leave him.”
Eli turned his face toward the window. He did not make himself part of the answer.
Mara knelt. “I could. Moving him without someone watching his breathing and bleeding could kill him. I can help until the ambulance reaches us, and I have people listening the whole way.”
“Because he’s good?”
“Because he is alive.”
Sadie thought about that, then pressed her forehead to Mara’s. “Call me from the salt house.”
“Salt shed.”
“Same thing.”
Mara held her until Sadie let go first.
Lena fastened Sadie into the booster seat, placed the inhaler bag where she could reach it, and loaded the puppies securely. Before closing the door, she caught Mara by the sleeve.
“If the north route closes?” Lena asked.
“I stop or turn back. No detours, and I do not get out to investigate.”
Eli heard. His expression did not ask her to soften the promise.
The blue pickup disappeared east between walls of plowed snow. Mara watched until the red taillights were gone, then returned to the cabin for the document box, the coil of yellow rescue rope, and Eli.
He could stand only with her shoulder beneath his arm. They crossed the yard in slow steps, his weight increasing each time pain interrupted his strength. In the veterinary truck, Mara lowered the rear bench, secured him beneath blankets, and clipped the pulse oximeter Lena had left to his finger.
“If I lose consciousness,” he said, “do not stop for me.”
“You do not get to make decisions for Sadie and call them protection.”
“I am trying to reduce your risk.”
“Then help me follow the plan.”
He lay back. “What can I do?” “Stay awake,” Mara said. “Tell me if the pain changes. Hold the satellite phone where I can hear dispatch.” She started the engine and turned north. At the first bend, fresh snowmobile tracks cut out of the timber and ran ahead of her…
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