Part 2
“He’s here,” Cole said.
Above them, Ash stood on the spruce rise with one paw lifted. Lila made a sound behind the snow wall—not a sob, exactly, but the first full breath her body had allowed itself in a long time.
“Don’t let him come close,” she whispered. “There’s wire on his leg.”
That was the new fact Cole carried out of the opening. Tessa relayed it to the wildlife veterinarian already attached to the search, then helped Mara widen the tunnel. The roof of the drift had settled during the night. Every block they removed shifted weight across the thin pocket beneath the granite.
“Lila, tell me where your head is,” Mara called.
“Toward the lake.”
“And your feet?”
“My left ankle’s stuck under my pack. I can’t straighten it.”
Mara slid a small light through the opening. Its beam found a cavity no higher than a dining table. Lila lay on a foam seat pad inside a reflective bivy, with an orange emergency pack wedged against one hip. Frost silvered the edge of her hat. One boot was off, and torn fleece wrapped her swollen ankle. Empty hand-warmer packets, two food wrappers, and a metal cup lay arranged within reach, the orderliness more frightening than a mess would have been.
She had used everything correctly. Correctly had kept her alive, not safe.
Cole crawled in after Mara checked the air and stabilized the entrance. The pocket smelled of wet stone, wool, and the sour metallic trace of fear. Lila’s eyes found his face and then went past it, searching the white slit behind him.
“My dad’s in the truck,” she said.
“We found the truck.”
“His leg was trapped.”
Cole held her gaze. “The divers are setting up. We don’t know more yet.”
She nodded once. Surprise did not cross her face. She had spent more than a day beside that knowledge, hearing the lake shift under the place where she lay.
Mara worked a flexible litter through the tunnel. Lila’s wet outer clothes had frozen into ridges before she managed to change, and the skin above her boot was waxy with cold. They padded the injured ankle without forcing it straight, covered her head, and moved her by inches. When daylight reached her face, Ash came down from the rise.
A deputy threw up his arms. “Wolf coming in.”
“Hold your position,” Cole said. “Don’t crowd him.”
Ash stopped well beyond the ropes, close enough for them to see the black cable end striking his leg when he shifted. His sides worked fast. His ears lay halfway back, uncertain rather than tame, and he kept every person in front of him.
Mara and Cole lifted Lila clear of the tunnel. Her eyes were mostly closed, but at the scrape of claws on crusted snow she turned her head inside the insulated hood.
“Ash,” she said.
The wolf’s ears rose. He took no step toward her. He did not lower his head or make the distance tender for the humans watching. He simply held still while the rescue team carried Lila between them. For several seconds, that stillness felt more exact than recognition and more difficult to dismiss.
A crack ran under the inlet. Black water pressed through a new split above the truck. Mara ordered everyone back from the inner perimeter. The shore lines tightened; the two technicians retreated on their stomachs. Recovery would have to wait for a cable rig from stable ground and a full survey of the new fracture.
Ash sprang toward the trees. His injured foreleg folded when he landed. He struck one shoulder against the snow, righted himself, and disappeared among the balsams with the cable snapping behind him.
Lila tried to raise herself on the litter. “He’s hurt.”
“The vet knows,” Cole said. “We’ll look for him after we get you out.”
“People say that when they mean later.”
Her voice had almost nothing behind it, yet the accusation reached him cleanly. Cole put one hand on the litter rail.
“I mean today if the weather and his trail let us. Right now I need you to keep breathing under that cover.”
She studied him as if deciding whether his answer could bear weight. Then she lay back.
The heated ambulance waited two miles down the forest road, where a plow had opened a turn-around. Paramedics cut away Lila’s frozen laces, started warmed fluids, and fitted heated packs around her torso. Wind grounded the medical helicopter, so the ambulance would make the long run to the hospital in Duluth.
Before the doors closed, Lila caught Cole’s sleeve. “The drift sealed yesterday,” she said. “I woke up and couldn’t get enough air.”
“Save it for the doctor.”
Her fingers tightened. “Ash dug from outside. He heard me hitting the cup on the rock. He opened a space and kept coming back to it.”
The paramedic glanced at Cole but did not interrupt.
“The first night there were coyotes near the water,” Lila continued. “He ran them off. After that he stayed between the hole and the lake. I could hear his feet.”
“How do you know it was the same wolf?”
She looked almost offended, a flash of the living girl beneath the cold. “I saw the scar.”
The ambulance engine started. Cole thought of the cable striking Ash’s leg and the blood beside the drift.
“You knew him from Red Pine,” he said.
“Dad and I were there when the vet cut him out.” Lila’s hand slipped from Cole’s sleeve, but her eyes remained on him. “This time Dad found the cable before the storm. He followed the blood because he thought Ash was caught again…”
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