It was one thing working up some body heat tromping in from the track, knowing a warm fire and lunch were waiting. But hanging about in the shadows had dropped Nate’s core temperature far too low. He needed to get warm, and soon.

As quickly as possible, he made his way back to where he’d left the Woods pack, strapped it on, and then backtracked up the trail to the fork that led to the Hoebeeks’ place. He was about to turn down that trail but stopped himself just in time. There was a chance somebody would find the path he’d made coming in from the train. The last thing he needed to do was lead them right to the Hoebeeks’ door. So he tromped up the trail a bit farther until he found a conveniently bushy spot and literally dove in, rolling on one shoulder and not quite making it to his feet again. Instead, his snowshoes tangled and he ended up on his back. With the Woods pack on, he felt as vulnerable as a flipped turtle. It was almost funny. He stared up at the tall trees rising above him seeming to converge as if toward a heavenly vanishing point. The tops swayed, mesmerizing. The snow wasn’t cold when you were lying in it. Not really. He was this lumpy snow angel.

A vision of Art and Trick Hoebeek lying in their PFDs flashed before his eyes — their faces staring up into the November sky, their arms out to their sides, skin as white as paper, mouths too numb to speak, as the freezing water of Ghost Lake sucked the last calories of heat out from them.

Nate scrambled to his feet. He stood for a moment, regaining his balance. He hadn’t been there to see them like that, but the image was fixed in his head anyway. He was dizzy from the fall, from hunger. He was losing it. And he still had a hard slog ahead of him. He glanced back out at the trail where his northbound steps stopped abruptly. There was nothing to show he’d dived into the bush, but what did he expect they’d think if they followed the trail back to this point? That he’d just flown away? Been airlifted — picked up in a UFO tractor beam? He shook his head. It was the best he could do.

It took him close to twenty minutes to fight his way through the bush to a spot directly behind the Hoebeeks’ place, a distance he could have walked in three minutes on the path they’d made from his place to Dodge’s, through the glade of trees that separated the two camps. Directly before him was the shed where the Hoebeeks kept their four-by-four and snowmobile. Art was one of those swaggering men who was all about Go Big or Go Home. Only the top model of anything was going to be good enough. And right now, that 600 Indy Polaris in the shed was giving Nate ideas. But that would have to wait. All he could afford to think about was getting out of the cold.

He was about to cut between the motor shed and the woodshed to the camp, which was only about fifteen yards away across open ground, when he realized that a path directly from where he stood to the back door would be visible if one of the intruders happened to wander over this way. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, the weight on his back oppressive. He closed his eyes. To hell with it, he thought. And then he imagined his father by his side, calm and strong. Waiting. Waiting for Nate to figure it out.

He groaned. Then, reluctantly — and with a few foul words thrown in — he made his way still farther west, circling the Hoebeeks’ place, wading through the brush like a man through a swamp all the way around to the far side of the house, until finally he was in a place where his tracks would be completely out of sight. And all the time now, the smoke from his own camp was in his nose as if taunting him: a warm fire in his own woodstove and here he was only a hundred yards away playing hide-and-seek.

He knew where the Hoebeeks’ key was hidden. He knew this place almost as well as his own. They had built a brand-new two-story camp about three years ago, a bigger, fancier place than the Crows’, suitable for a family of five — what had been a family of five back then. There were only the two of them left now, Dodge’s mom, Fern, and baby Hilton. Nate somehow doubted she’d ever come here again. So he was looking at a ghost house, he thought, and then immediately wished he hadn’t.

He made his way around to the back door, on the north side of the camp. He stayed close to the wall, inching along, hoping the disturbed snow wouldn’t stand out too much so close to the building. It didn’t really matter anymore; the only thing Nate was thinking about was the woodstove in the living room. He knew for a fact there would be dry wood stacked right beside the stove in a deep box: wood and kindling and paper, matches on the shelf above. It was the way you left camp — ready for the next person who came up.

Having shucked off his snowshoes, Nate opened the door with shaking hands and closed it behind him. It was pitch-black inside. The place was completely boarded up on the main floor. As his eyes adjusted, he could see some light drifting down the staircase from the second-floor landing window. None of the windows upstairs were boarded, but the bedroom doors were closed.

He leaned his back against the door, breathing hard. It was only slightly warmer inside than out. He could do something about that, but he’d need to be able to see what he was doing. After a moment, he opened the door again to let in some light and then rummaged through the pack for his headlamp. He found it, put it on, and hauled the Woods pack inside. He closed the door again and then remembered his snowshoes. Wasn’t much point in leaving no tracks if you left the damn snowshoes and poles sitting on the back stoop for all to see.

It was spooky, looking at this otherwise familiar place through a flashlight’s beam.

“Dodge?”

He whispered the name. Waited. Nothing. What did he expect? He knew he was being absurd, but he had to say it. What he hadn’t counted on was that talking out loud in the dark only made the whole thing eerier still. It wasn’t as if he really believed Dodge was there, not the Dodge he knew anyway. But in the deep gray dimness that surrounded the cone of light from his headlamp, it wasn’t hard to believe another Dodge might be lurking around here somewhere. An angry, otherworldly Dodge — a ghostly wanderer with every right in the world to demand another shot at life in whatever form he could grab it.

“Dodge, if you’re here, it’s me, Nate.”

The wind buffeted the lake side of the house, but there were other, smaller sounds: creakings and scurryings. In his headlamp’s beam, he located the mousetrap in the middle of the kitchen floor. The Hoebeeks had modeled it on the patented Burl Crow method: a bucket with a thin metal rod piercing either side near the rim. The rod held in place a pop can laced with peanut butter; a wooden plank led from the floor to the lip of the bucket. From there it was no big leap for a hungry mouse to the tasty treat spread on the pop can. Except once it made that leap, the pop can rolled on its axle and the mouse ended up in the liquid at the bottom — antifreeze, to keep the smell down. Nate looked inside. There were six small corpses. Six!

He backed away. They’d occasionally find one at his place, but six? He looked around, caught sight of a live one that stopped for a moment, caught in the spotlight, then scampered away.

He saw another and another. The place was infested. Which was very, very weird. It was a new place, and the Hoebeeks were every bit as strict about closing up as the Crows were. Then he remembered: they hadn’t closed up. His dad had done it, on his own, after the failed search for Dodge in November. He’d have done it right but he’d have done it alone, and who knew what state his head was in. He’d been in the search party. Still, that didn’t explain an explosion in the mouse population. Nate didn’t want to think what did explain it, but a barrage of haunted-house images crowded his brain. He growled and shook it off. All he knew was that he wasn’t going to be able to take this much darkness if an army of mice were going to be sharing the place with him.

The Hoebeeks’ place was open concept but much roomier and more modern than the Crow camp, and with the benefit of a second floor. When you came in the back door, the kitchen was to your right and a bathroom was to your left, complete with a composting toilet. So — hallelujah — no need for the outhouse. Mind you, it wasn’t going to flush in below-freezing temperatures. So it was really just a glorified chamber pot. Whatever — beggars can’t be choosers.

There was a deep closet-type pantry to the right of the bathroom door and then the staircase to the second floor. There was a counter separating the kitchen from the dining area, and the living room was to the left, just past the stairwell. Off the living room and around the corner from the staircase, there was a door leading to the master bedroom. The stove, a big green Vermont Castings beauty, was against the east wall. The front door to their camp led out onto the Hoebeeks’ expansive front deck overlooking the lake. There were picture windows to either side of the door, but they were boarded up. Everything was boarded up but for the windows upstairs. There was a skylight up there, too, he remembered, not that it made one iota of difference now, covered by snow.

There was only one window that faced west — faced away from the Crows’ camp. Only one window that Shades and Worried Man couldn’t see if they just happened to mosey over. It was the window above the kitchen sink. The shutters were affixed on the outside. It was painful to even think of going back out again, but better now than after he’d gotten a fire started and was beginning to thaw. With the promise of that fire to look forward to, Nate turned toward the back door and immediately lost his footing — slipped right out — and only managed to keep from falling by grabbing the kitchen counter.

He swore. He’d forgotten how slippery the laminate flooring was. But then he shouldn’t have been wearing his snowy boots inside. He shook his head and tiptoed toward the door, opened it, and took in a good, deep dollop of cold air. The wind off the lake was picking up, from the sound it was making on the front wall, but he was in its lee back here, and it gave him the courage to venture out again. He didn’t bother with the snowshoes, could hardly imagine summoning up the energy to bend over and strap them on. Instead, he edged his way along beside the camp, around the corner to the west wall on the hardened snow left by his earlier tracks. He got to work. There were four barrel-bolts holding the shutter in place. It was done in no time. He pulled down the three-by-five-foot plywood shutter and leaned it against the wall. No need to hide it. If they came this far, they’d know something was up. Then he raced inside, glad to see the difference the one seeing-eye window made in a blind house.

The wood was dry. The fire burned hot. Stripping down to his socks, long underwear, and a turtleneck, Nate pulled a chair up by the stove to absorb every BTU it was pumping out. For one brief moment before he lit the fire, he had thought about waiting until dark so there was no chance they’d see the smoke. It would have been a worthy precaution but not one his trembling body could accept. Besides, he rationalized, the wind seemed to have shifted and was coming in directly off the lake now; the smoke would be blown northward; chances were good it wouldn’t even rise as high as the trees between the two camps.

The wind battered the building. It groaned in its mooring. Nate looked around in the growing shadows. It was going on five and the sun would soon be blocked out by the hills to the west. He was not looking forward to the night.

Just one night, he told himself.

As his brain thawed out, he formulated a plan. He’d get up early and hit the trail in plenty of time. He wouldn’t bother sneaking away. He’d walk straight up the Hoebeeks’ lane to the fork. They find his tracks, big deal — he’d be gone. He wasn’t sure when the big storm was due to roll through, but there was little chance the train would be on time anyway, so once he got to the railroad, he’d just keep walking, heading southeast, following the tracks; the farther away, the better. He could walk on the tracks, which would be a heck of a lot easier than slogging through the snow.

In the luxury of warmth and with a full belly, he thought again about the big snowmobile out back in its shed. The Hoebeeks had come up with an ingenious system. There were doors front and back to the shed and inside a ramp leading up to a steel platform about three feet off the ground. That’s where the Polaris sat. The front opening to the shed featured a Dutch door with the split at the same height as the platform, so you didn’t have to clear the snow in front of the door to launch the snowmobile. There were a couple of portable ramps you could fix to the front of the platform, out over the lower door and onto the snow, however deep it was.

So. There was a fast sled out there. And as far as Nate could see, the guys next door did not have one, other than his dad’s old Ski-Doo. But he’d seen no tracks to suggest they’d used it. He could get out of here fast. The thing is, he’d have to leave the Polaris out at the trailhead. If his life were in danger, doing that wouldn’t be so bad. Was his life in danger? He thought about those guys back at the camp. What were they doing there? It seemed like they had complete access, but the only things worth ripping off were the Kawasaki four-by-four, which they couldn’t use in deep snow, the ancient Ski-Doo, a couple of outboard motors, a generator out in the shed, and a few power tools. There was a new trapper sled for the Ski-Doo, so they could transport some stuff out if they wanted, but they sure didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Thieves would have hit and moved on. These guys seemed to have moved in.

So what did that mean? Well, for one thing it probably meant that Nate didn’t need to “escape,” he just needed to get out, which meant firing up the Polaris and leaving it out at the track was basically a whole lot of wasted time. He shook his head. Couldn’t deal with any of this now. He’d sleep on it.

Ah, sleep . . . How exactly was that going to happen?

He was counting on the intruders next door not seeing the smoke from the chimney, but he’d sleep upstairs anyway, just in case they did see it and came around to investigate. If he was upstairs and anyone came in, Nate would know about it, with half a chance of protecting himself. Then he wondered why exactly he was thinking this way. They were two yahoos who’d broken into his camp. Who knew what they were up to? But did he really expect trouble from them as long as he stayed out of their way?

Before it got entirely dark, he made a trip outside and around to the front corner of the cabin, the side facing the lake. He couldn’t see the hole they’d made in the ice from this vantage point because the brush between the two camps stretched right down to the shore. Even if they went out there to haul up water, they wouldn’t be able to spot the Hoebeeks’ chimney. It didn’t really matter in the end. He’d die without the stove. The weatherman had predicted twenty-five below again tonight. And as for water for himself, he’d be stuck melting snow.

As soon as he’d gotten the fire raging, he’d dug out a box of mac and cheese and poured the contents into a boiling pot of melted ice on the woodstove. He also had Tetra Paks of milk. Butter was in the cooler out at the track, but he found some cooking oil in the pantry; it had frozen solid and looked pretty disgusting, but he wasn’t about to wait around for it to melt. The Ziploc bags of good stuff — baked beans, stew, and chili — were a very long hike away, along with the meat, cheese, and eggs. So mac and cheese it was. And toast made from bread pretty badly squashed from when he’d turtled out. The Hoebeeks had electricity run by a generator, which, obviously, he wasn’t about to turn on. Luckily, they still had an old-fashioned toaster, just like the Crows, basically a square of perforated tin with four wire frames sticking up at an angle on the top, against which you could rest the bread. He put four slices on to toast, turning them so that they burned equally on both sides.

As the darkness set in, he decided that sleeping upstairs was probably not a good plan. He’d be feeding the fire all night. Better just to stay put. He manhandled the queen-size mattress from the downstairs bedroom and tugged it right up close to the stove. There was a big trunk on the landing upstairs where the family kept bedclothes. He gathered blankets and pillows and curled up in the warm. It was early, not yet eight, but he was exhausted and aching all over. The day had started with a lie to the man he most admired in the whole world. It had gone downhill from there. And now he was lying in the house of a dead friend, more alone than he could have ever imagined it was possible to be. And sleep . . . sleep was going to be an almighty struggle. It was a precious cargo shackled to a sinking ship of worries.