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Nate, seven. Antonia, five. Carine, three.
Waiting.
“They got caught in an unexpected ice storm. It was all over the papers.” The fugitive sounded amused now. “Can you imagine? A young couple with three little kids, freezing to death up here.”
Gus rose up straight. He’d been twenty and newly home from war. He’d looked at the faces of his young nephew and nieces and wished he could have died up on the ridge in the place of his brother and his wife. Instead, he’d become the guardian to their three orphans.
They were all married now. Antonia and Carine had little ones of their own. Nate and his wife, Sarah, were expecting their first child in a few weeks. A boy.
If he died up here today, Gus thought, the little ones-like grandchildren to him-wouldn’t remember him. They weren’t old enough.
There was some consolation in that.
The wind picked up and swirled the gray horizon, creating a wavelike effect that had a tendency to disorient, even nauseate, novice hikers. As an outfitter and guide, Gus had encountered hikers of all descriptions in the mountains. Most were eager and well-meaning, determined to enjoy their experience while taking proper precautions.
The fugitive poked his gun into Gus’s back. “Well? Answer me. How much farther?”
“Fifty yards. Maybe a little more. We need to be careful in the fog. We don’t want to walk off the edge of a cliff.” He glanced back, slowing his pace. “You don’t need your gun. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I won’t run or mislead you. I don’t want you to hurt anyone else.”
“I want your coat,” the fugitive said suddenly. “Get it off.”
Gus paused and shrugged off his pack and coat. The fugitive took it with one hand and put it on over his wet sweater, taking care to keep his gun at the ready.
He zipped up the coat and gave a shudder of obvious relief. “I don’t know why I waited this long.”
“Because you underestimated how cold you’d get. It happens all the time.” Gus noticed raindrops already collecting on his navy sweater, but its thick wool was a better insulator when wet than the fugitive’s cotton. “What’s your name?”
“Fred.”
It wasn’t his name. “What are you looking for up here, Fred?”
The fugitive didn’t answer. His shivering had lessened, but it wasn’t necessarily a good sign. He motioned with his gun, still clenched in his half-frozen hand, and Gus started back along the trail.
The fog wasn’t going to lift. The wind wasn’t going to let up.
The rain wasn’t going to stop.
“Let’s get to where you want to go,” he said wearily.
They came to the spot where his brother and sister-in-law had died. He’d been a firefighter. She’d been a biology teacher. These days, weather reports were more accurate, but even so, people died on Cold Ridge.
“There’s a rock formation just past where your folks died. It looks like a toaster.”
The fugitive’s words were slightly slurred, but he continued. “Do you know it?”
“I do.”
Gus stared into the shifting fog and clouds. He could walk right past the toaster-shaped rock formation, and the fugitive would probably never know it. Then what? Shoot Gus in the back? Drop dead from the cold? But as he continued along the trail, his legs heavier now, the pack grinding into the small of his back, Gus knew he wouldn’t mislead his captor. He’d just take him where he wanted to go.
The wind was steady, at least fifty miles per hour with higher gusts. He had hiked up all forty-eight peaks in the White Mountains over four thousand feet, and he’d experienced hurricane-force winds. But nothing had prepared him for the jumble of emotions he felt at being here-on the ground where his brother and the woman he’d loved had died.
His brother had taken him up this same trail before Gus had left for basic training.
“Be safe, Gus. I’ll be here when you come home.”
He pushed back the memory and nodded to a rock outcropping just ahead, barely visible through the shifting gray. “There. That’s it. It looks just like a toaster.”
The fugitive stepped up next to Gus and pulled the coat’s hood over his head. It would help break the wind but otherwise wouldn’t do much good. His hair was wet.
He wasn’t shivering at all anymore.
“Pal,” Gus said, “listen to me. You need to get warm. Let me help you. You don’t want to die up here, do you?”
He waved the gun, still clenched tight in his right hand. “Behind the rocks. Go.”
Gus sighed and made his way off the trail, the wind going through his layers, the rain soaking his layers. He pushed through scrubby balsams clinging to the thin soil and climbed over a tumble of boulders to the granite formation. It jutted ten feet out of the ground below a rounded knoll.
The fugitive panted, stumbling on the boulders as he followed Gus behind the outcropping. They were out of the wind now, at least.
“I knew I’d make it back here,” the fugitive said.
Gus could hear the wind whipping through the valley, up onto the open ridge. He shivered. He preferred to keep moving.
But he followed the fugitive’s gaze to a mound of dirt and rock between the base of the rock formation and the knoll.
A shallow grave.
“Who’s buried there?” Gus asked.
“Smuggler. He tried to cheat the wrong man.”
“Meaning you.”
The fugitive didn’t answer, his eyes gleaming with excitement as, with a burst of fresh energy, he got onto his knees. The rain let up now, too, and he set the Smith & Wesson next to his right knee and started moving baseball-size rocks with his red, frozen hands.
“You’ve stopped shivering, but it’s not because you’re warm,” Gus said. “Your core temperature has dropped to the point that your body is focused just on keeping your vital organs working.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? You’re slurring your words. As hypothermia worsens, you get more and more confused. Your mental state-”
“Shut up.” The fugitive glared up at Gus. “I’m digging for gold.”
Was he digging for gold, or was he hallucinating? Despite his slurred speech, he sounded perfectly lucid. He continued to grab rocks and toss them aside, keeping his gun close by as he worked.
Gus stood back. He became aware of another presence up on the knoll in the wind and gray. His teeth were chattering now. His hands were shaking. He wasn’t sure if he could trust his senses. Was he so far gone with hypothermia himself that he was imagining things?
“My coat’s not enough. You’re wet,” he said. “I’ve rescued a lot of people off the ridge who were in better shape than you are now.”
The fugitive looked up at him. His eyes were still, focused, even as he struggled to speak. “You’re not the marshal.”
Gus shrugged. “Never said I was.”
He kicked the fugitive’s pile of wet rocks, creating a distraction, and a man swooped down from the knoll.
Nate.
He leveled a gun at the fugitive.
“Hands in the air. Now.”
“Do it,” Gus told the fugitive. “Don’t make him use deadly force.”
The fugitive raised his hands, and Gus grabbed the Smith & Wesson.
He thought he saw a flicker of fear in the fugitive’s eyes and shook his head. “I’m not going to shoot you,” he said, handing the gun to his nephew. “The situation doesn’t call for deadly force. Not anymore.”
Two more men appeared behind the rock outcropping. Antonia’s husband, a U.S. senator and former rescue helicopter pilot, and Carine’s husband, an airforce para-rescueman. They, too, were armed.
Then came Antonia, a physician, and Carine, a nature photographer who knew the White Mountains at least as well as Gus did. Maybe better.
He hadn’t imagined them.
“We weren’t going back down the mountain without you,” Nate said, his voice catching. “I wasn’t losing you before my baby boy gets to know you.”
Gus sank against the wet rock wall. “I’m worn-out,” he said, “and I’m cold.”