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His bread-crumb trail.
He’d participated in enough mountain rescues over the years to know how they operated. By now, Nate and his wife and his two sisters and their husbands—all gathered in Cold Ridge for a long weekend—would have realized Gus’s quick walk up the trail had gone bad. They’d do a fast-and-easy search for him before notifying the authorities, who’d launch an official search.
Were they thinking, even now, that he’d simply gone off trail and fallen? Or were they aware that an armed-and-dangerous fugitive was in the area?
Did they know his name, what he wanted?
The fugitive coughed, his shivering constant now. “All right, stop,” he said abruptly. “Take off your pack and set it on that rock there. Nice and slow.”
Gus complied, aware of the Smith & Wesson pointed at him. The fugitive’s hands had to be stiff from the cold, his fingers wet and slippery. If he just dropped the gun, fine. But Gus didn’t want him accidentally firing off a round.
“Unzip the main compartment and dump out the contents,” the fugitive said. “Again, nice and slow. Don’t do anything stupid. I want to see what you’ve got in there.”
Gus did as instructed, shaking out three energy bars, a water bottle, an emergency whistle, waterproof matches, dry clothes, a compass, trash bags that could be used as an emergency shelter.
The fugitive toed a trash bag with his wet sneaker. “That’s a lot to carry for a day hike, isn’t it?”
Gus shook his head. “I always pack more than I think I’ll need. If I use everything, I know I didn’t pack enough.”
“Where’s your gun?”
“Not here.”
“You’re a federal agent. You go armed 24/7. You’re supposed to have a gun.”
Gus didn’t know if that was true or not. He and Nate had never discussed those kinds of details. The fugitive had frisked him for weapons in the first minutes after he’d jumped out from behind the boulder, but Gus hadn’t realized it was, at least in part, due to mistaken identity. “Why didn’t you check my pack for a gun sooner?” he asked.
“I didn’t need to. Touch it, and you were dead, anyway. Let you carry the extra weight of a gun.”
His logic made sense. “Do you want to change into dry socks at least?”
“No. Give me your water.”
Before Gus could comply, the fugitive reached down with his free hand and grabbed the plastic bottle from among the dumped-out contents. He used his teeth to open the flip-top and drank deeply, even with his chattering teeth.
He shoved the bottle at Gus. “Close it. Don’t drink any.”
Once again, Gus did as requested.
“You’re older than I thought you’d be,” the fugitive said. “What’s with the white hair?”
“Hard life.”
“I hate marshals.”
Gus said nothing.
“How much farther now?” the fugitive asked.
“To—”
“To where your mummy and daddy froze to death.”
Gus pushed back a surge of anger and gazed down toward the village nestled in the valley below Cold Ridge, lost now in the gray clouds and fog. He could see his nephew and nieces on that cold, awful night thirty years ago.
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.