Part 3
Dean crossed the kitchen in two strides and pulled a black work phone from inside his coat. Its screen showed no service, but a small green symbol still pulsed in one corner.
“Pike issued this,” he said. “He said it was for check-ins.” He pried off the thick case and found a coin-sized tracking tag seated beneath the battery sleeve. Turning the phone off had never stopped it from reporting. “He knew I left Camp Bracken before he saw the truck.”
Dean removed every battery, crushed the tag’s circuit with pliers, and sealed the pieces inside an empty coffee tin. He carried it outside and buried it deep in a snowbank before returning. Walt stared at him. “If that thing sent from here even once—”
“Then we have less time than I thought.”
Walt refused to let fear set the order of the next ten minutes. He checked June first. Her shivering had eased without stopping, color was returning slowly to her cheeks, and she could answer yes-or-no questions with a blink. He gave her two spoonfuls of warm broth, waited to be sure she swallowed without coughing, then gave her two more.
The old rescue radio sat beside the window, catching scraps from Bear Ridge now that the storm had passed. Walt switched to a mutual-aid channel that most county crews no longer used and called for Mara Jensen. She had been the charge nurse at Red Pine Memorial through twenty-two years of Walt’s worst nights and now coordinated pediatric forensic referrals for a hospital system beyond Pinewater County.
Mara answered on the fourth call. “Mercer, if that alert is about you, choose your next words carefully.”
“It is, and I need you to write down every one.”
He gave June’s name, wristband number, airway warning, condition, and the location of the chained infirmary. He did not transmit the cabin address. Dean supplied the generator cut, the false location at Lake Arlen, and Nolan Pike’s involvement. Mara asked hard, clinical questions until Walt heard typing beneath her voice.
“I’m filing the mandatory report through our system and sending it directly to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension duty officer,” she said. “Not the Pinewater desk. I’ll request a pediatric transport team under state escort.”
“How long?”
“Longer than either of us wants. Roads are closed east of Red Pine, and Vale’s alert has every local unit looking for you. Keep her warm. Small amounts by mouth only if she stays fully alert. If her breathing becomes noisy at rest, if her lips change color, or if she can’t swallow, you call me and activate that beacon again.”
Mara made him repeat the instructions. Before signing off, she added, “Walt, do not surrender her to anyone whose authority you cannot verify outside this county.”
It was the closest thing to help they had, and it was not close enough.
At Mara’s direction, Walt photographed the wristband, red mitten, gold barrette, and the torn skin on Rook’s paw, saving each image with the time. He kept June’s face outside the frame. Whatever evidence they gathered would document what had been done to her; it would not require the child to perform her pain for another camera.
Rook had begun licking his right front paw. Walt found a split pad and a shallow scrape above it, likely from the metal vent he had torn at Camp Bracken. When Walt brought saline and gauze, June pushed herself upright despite the blankets.
“Rook,” she breathed.
“He scraped himself getting to you.” Walt let her inspect the clean gauze before he touched the wound. “It looks worse than it is.”
She watched every movement. Rook did not enjoy the rinse, but he held still when June rested two fingers against his shoulder. Walt placed a light dressing over the scrape, leaving the paw itself unwrapped so moisture would not collect between the pads.
“Rook hurt?” June asked.
They were the first complete words she had given Walt. Not I’m hungry. Not I’m scared. Her first question was for the animal that had gone into the blizzard for her.
“He’s going to be fine,” Walt said. “You both are, if I get any say in it.”
June studied him as if promises were objects that could be tested for hidden edges. Then she accepted another spoonful of broth without waiting for Rook to approve it. The gesture was small, but Walt felt the trust in it and handled it more carefully than glass.
Dean had been silent since the call. He stood near Anne’s framed photograph on the mantel, looking like a man who had entered a decent home and discovered the full measure of what he had helped deny someone else.
The radio changed from weather advisories to a replay of Graham Vale’s appeal. “June,” Graham said, his voice warm and wounded, “Daddy is waiting. Whatever that man told you, you are not in trouble. Let him bring you back to the people who love you.”
June folded inward. Both hands covered her ears, then one slid to her throat as though protecting the scar from being seen. Rook rose so quickly that Walt’s bandage supplies scattered across the rug.
Walt killed the sound. “That’s her father.” It was not a question.
Dean nodded. “After her airway surgery, Graham told donors and reporters she was recovering at a specialty program out of state. He said privacy was protecting her. The truth is, he couldn’t control how she looked, what she remembered, or whether she could speak when cameras were near. Camp Bracken was supposed to be temporary.”
“How long?”
Dean looked down. “Four months.”
June’s face remained hidden against Rook’s neck. When Walt knelt several feet away, she looked at the evidence envelope on the table. The gold ladybug showed through its clear window, bright and childish beneath the words JUNE BUG — DAD.
She shook her head.
“You don’t have to touch it,” Walt said.
Her fingers tightened in Rook’s fur. “He said no cameras when I’m broken.”
Dean turned toward the window as if the words had struck him. Walt felt anger arrive without heat, colder and steadier than rage. He moved the envelope out of June’s sight and set Anne’s quilt around her shoulders.
Rook’s ears lifted.
At first Walt heard nothing. Then came a thin mechanical hum above the last soft sounds of the stove. Rook left June, crossed to the window, and stared toward the roofline.
Walt raised the curtain by one inch. A black surveillance drone hovered over the clean snow beyond the woodshed, its camera angled at the cabin. Beneath it, a red light blinked with patient regularity.
The tracker was dead beneath the snow, but it had already told them where to look…
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