Part 2
Silver’s teeth had caught the back of Evan’s coat. She let go when the current swung him against her, but the tug was enough to bring his face above water. One pup was in her mouth. Evan searched the boiling surface for the other and saw nothing.
The river swept them beneath an overhang and out into a broader run. Evan used the bank’s curve to angle toward gravel; Silver fought toward the same opening. They came ashore more than a mile below the fire. He crawled clear on his hands, then went back when the pup beside her did not move. His fingers found a faint warmth under its wet fur. Silver bared her teeth as he leaned in. Evan paused, giving her room to take the pup away.
She stayed, trembling.
He pressed gently at the tiny chest and cleared water from the pup’s mouth. He had no idea whether it would help. A shallow cough came at last, then a weak cry. Silver gathered the animal beneath her chin. Evan sat on the stones until his own shaking became too strong to hide.
The second pup was gone.
He thought of Ellie, and for an instant the riverbank was the burned floor of his old house: the same awful arithmetic, one life within reach and another beyond it.
When he tried to stand, his legs failed. Silver moved the pup farther from him and watched. He had once spent an entire January leaving food along the far bank, never catching sight of her until the last day. That patience mattered now. He did not reach toward her again; he let her decide when to rise. Above them the fire had found the dry crown of a cedar. Its sparks carried across the river in the wind.
Flashlights moved upstream. Evan slipped the camera he had carried into a waterproof pouch; the one on the stump had been the decoy. Grant’s crew would come after the card and the person who had seen the fire begin. Evan knew of a winter shelter in a fold of rock two miles away. He gestured toward the trees. Silver lifted her pup. They kept a wary distance from one another as they climbed.
The shelter had a stove, dry kindling, and a little first-aid tin. Evan warmed the room without letting a plume of smoke rise above the trees. Blood had soaked one side of his shirt where the river had driven him into a branch. He wrapped the cut, then opened his tablet to check the memory card. The footage from the morning showed more than the envelope. Near the mayor’s SUV, Daniel Voss handed Grant a medical case and a syringe.
Evan watched the short clip twice. For years Daniel had recorded his inability to speak as a permanent condition, renewed sedating prescriptions Evan had once questioned, and told him there was no point trying to change either one. The sight of him beside Grant did not prove what was in the case. It did make Evan afraid of what else the doctor had done. He copied the footage to the tablet and replaced the card inside his cap.
Daniel had sat with him after the funeral when no one else knew what to say. He brought groceries during winters when Evan would not go into town. Once he had returned an old photograph of Ellie that he found among clinic records, carefully flattened inside an envelope. Evan had taken all of that as kindness. He wanted, absurdly, to call Daniel and ask for an explanation, even while the man in the video placed the case in Grant’s hands.
Silver’s growl came before the footsteps. Through the shutter gap Evan saw three men crossing the clearing: Grant, Mike, and Daniel in a pale coat too thin for the woods. Daniel called him by name and offered an injection that would “settle” him. Grant kept his shotgun near his side.
Evan put the tablet under a loose floorboard. The pup slept by the stove; Silver stood between it and the door. Evan took the hunting gun from his bag. He had spent thirty years hearing other people decide what his silence meant. When the latch lifted, he drew breath until his injured ribs protested.
“I remember,” he said. His voice scraped so badly that the two words scarcely sounded like his own. Daniel stopped. Evan held the gun steady without pointing it at anyone. “The video went out. Leave.”
Grant took a step back. Then he looked at Mike and said, “Burn it.” Mike hesitated with the fuel can in his hand. Grant shouted again, and the shelter wall caught fire before Evan could reach the door. Daniel fled toward the road. Mike ran after him.
Evan pushed the stove’s water bucket over a wool blanket. The roof timbers snapped overhead. Silver pulled the pup away from the heat, and Evan threw the wet blanket across the window ledge to keep the splinters from burning them. He broke the frame with the gunstock. A steep chute led from the back of the shelter to the river. It was a terrible route, but the door was gone.
Silver went first with the pup. Evan followed, slid on shale, and hit the water feet ahead of the falling embers. Below the chute the current tightened into a whirlpool. As he fought toward a shelf of rock, a shot struck the water beside him. Grant stood above the bend with a rifle. Evan ducked under the overhang, but the next shot would find him when he came up.
Silver surged across his line of sight. The rifle cracked. She fell against the rock, and the water around her darkened. Evan got an arm beneath her as the current shoved them into a shallow pocket. Her shoulder was bleeding. From above, Grant moved along the bank, searching for the place they had gone.
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