He fed the fire. And then he made his way upstairs to Dodge’s narrow bedroom and gathered up the drone and the transmitter.

Could he do this?

He set the drone on the dining room table. He turned it over and released the GoPro video camera from its bay. He went and found his cell phone by the mattress and compared the weight of it, one in each hand; the cell was heavier than the camera, but not by too much.

The camera was small, but thicker in profile than his Samsung. The cell phone could slip into the mount okay, but it wouldn’t stay there. But then that’s what rubber bands were for. In the kitchen, he found the right drawer. The Hoebeeks had a collection of rubber bands the size of a hardball. He liberated four sturdy ones and set about seeing if he could make this work. When he was satisfied that it could, he composed the text he would send.

2 men in the camp. I’m hiding at the Hs. I’ll catch the Budd tomorrow. They don’t know I’m here. They look like criminals.

The last sentence only came to him as he typed it, and with it came a shock of delayed recognition: two men hanging from a thick, knotted rope — hanging on for dear life — as a helicopter rose above the roofline of the Sudbury Jail.

“Holy shit!”

Why had it taken him so long to realize it?

In the video, they had been dressed in prison uniforms; the footage was grainy and in black-and-white, and most of the time he only saw them from the back, except for occasionally when the rope twisted. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was sure of it. How else could they have gotten to the camp without coming in on the trail or from the lake? They must have arrived by helicopter.

Oh.

. . . a chance to get outa here without the bird.

Of course. Wasn’t that what Worried Man had said? And wasn’t that another word for a chopper, a whirlybird? It all made some kind of terrible sense. And yet it made no sense at all. A dire kind of coincidence. More like a paranoid’s dream come true. This is what happens when you lie to your parents: the last terrible thing you saw on the news happens to you.

Why here? And where was the bird — the helicopter?

It was no use trying to figure it out. He changed what he had typed:

Escapees from Sudbury Jail have taken the camp! I’m hiding in the Hs. I’ll catch the Budd tomorrow. They don’t know I’m here.

He pushed send and the message appeared in its bubble. He watched, hoping beyond hope that the word “delivered” would appear under the text, but there was no way, not down here. He knew that. He didn’t even have one bar of service. But maybe he could get some bars without heading up the cliff.

He just needed elevation.

He attached the cell phone to the belly of the quadcopter. Shook the drone to see if the phone moved. No, it was nice and snug. Then he checked again to make sure the payload was dead center — balanced. It looked good. Felt secure.

He’d left his outerwear draped over dining room chairs set all around the fire. It was warm to put on and he was glad of it. He’d do without his mitts, he thought. They would be too unwieldy while operating the controls. Then he imagined his father standing nearby, not saying anything. Just waiting for Nate to figure it out.

Right.

At this kind of temperature, exposed skin would be frostbitten in about ten minutes, max. He had brought a pair of gloves as well, in case he had to do anything outside requiring dexterity. They weren’t as warm as his mitts, but they’d do. He didn’t plan on spending any more time out there than he had to. He picked up the transmitter, jiggled the throttles. He could operate it with the gloves. Or maybe he could get everything set up and then quickly take them off if he needed to.

He got to the door, opened it, and stepped out into a night as still as glass. He would wear his snowshoes. Had to. He needed to get away from the cabin and the trees — down to the beach or maybe even a little way out onto the lake. No, he couldn’t risk that, unless he stuck real close to the underbrush and walked west along the shore a bit. And anyway, even if they did see his tracks, it wouldn’t matter because he wasn’t going to wait until noon to leave. He’d be gone as soon as he could if all went well.

As he passed under the kitchen window, he saw the black plywood shutter leaning against the house. Perfect! He’d need that. He balanced the quadcopter in one hand, picked up the shutter, and, stowing it under his arm, hefted it to the beach. He found a flat place and laid the shutter down, made it as horizontal as he could on the snow. This would be his launch site. The drone wasn’t that heavy, but it would sink in the snow, which wasn’t going to help with liftoff.

The stillness was eerie. There was a weather warning. This was the calm before the storm. So be it. Luck was on his side, finally. There’s no way he could have launched the drone into the wind that had assaulted the cabin earlier. The downside was that there was nothing to drown out the sound of the drone taking off. He held the contraption over his head and pushed the cell phone’s home button. It was 11:35. Would the guys next door still be up? He peered toward the Crow camp. He couldn’t see it from here, but he figured he would be able to see something if there were lights on over there. Nothing.

I’m hiding in the Hs.

That was the message. Not “we’re hiding.” It didn’t matter. No need for lying anymore. He called up the text and pressed send again.

Then he placed the drone on the landing pad, took off his gloves, and shoved them in his parka pockets. He powered up. The four propellers started whirring. Now lift. There was a hesitation, but then — sure enough — slow but steady, the craft took off from the plywood launchpad and began to climb into the dark sky. The red lights were blinking, but he hadn’t expected anything less. The thing was to get it high enough. Come to think of it, he had no idea whether finding the satellite that allowed for GPS control would mean he could send the text message, but it was worth a try. Worth freezing for a few minutes.

The rise was slow, the noise irritating but not too loud. Just in case, he throttled the chopper out toward the lake and westward, the farther from the Crow camp, the better. Up, up it went, higher into the night, wobbling a bit as it found a stray breeze up there, something trickling in over the northern hills, he guessed, because the drone seemed to want to head south down the lake.

“Steady on,” he heard Dodge’s voice in his head. “Easy, Nate. God, she’s beautiful!”

And then he saw what he’d been hoping for: the lights turned green.

“Houston, we have contact!” It was Dodge’s voice in his head.

He operated the left throttle to make the Seeker do a slow 360. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how cellular technology worked, but he was going to give this thing every fricking chance he could. Higher it rose, and higher. Then he pulled both of his thumbs from the spring-action throttles to let the drone just hover. Maybe his mother would still be up, would receive the text right now and answer him. His hands were already tingling — hot, with the cold. He couldn’t exactly imagine standing out here long enough to send her another text, but it would be amazing — so incredibly comforting — to know he’d gotten through.

The Seeker hovered, just as it was supposed to do, but only for a moment, and then it started to keel toward the south, pushed by some unseen force. There was some kind of turbulence up there — something Nate couldn’t feel down here. The front moving in from the north, he guessed, rising up over the hill and swooping down into the basin of the lake while he stood in its lee. He tried to regain manual control but the copter was fighting him. Desperate now, he turned to the RTH toggle on the right shoulder of the transmitter.

“Turn back,” he whispered to the drone. “Return to home.”

It was supposed to do this all by itself, but he could see the green light had turned red again. He had lost his GPS lock. Which meant manual operation was all he had, except he was shaking now and the machine didn’t seem to want to do his bidding anyway.

Dodge was the master of this craft; where was he when you fricking needed him?

Nate groaned. He had lost all feeling in his hands; he was shaking every bit as much as the copter, but now was no time to put on his gloves. Desperately he played the throttles, but the drone was out of his control, spinning, pitching, and rolling — sashaying about like it didn’t know whether it was coming or going. And then suddenly, for no reason he could grasp, the Seeker plummeted, like a duck hit by a shotgun blast.

It was all over in a matter of seconds. The drone hit the lake and burrowed into the snow. For an instant, he could see a blurry red light from under the surface, and then it went out.

Shivering, Nate dropped the transmitter on the plywood launchpad and grabbed his gloves. He pulled them on and then his mitts over them and then shoved his hands into his armpits, staring out at the lake where the crash had taken place. It was over toward the enemy camp, maybe twenty yards out from the water hole, as far as he could guess, for there was nothing but starlight to go by now. And there was no way he could go over there to retrieve it. They’d see his tracks right off, the minute they looked out the sunporch window, which was the first thing anybody ever did at camp when they got up.

“Looking to see the lake’s still there,” Astrid liked to say.

Well, it was there, all right, even if it was buried under snow and ice so thick you could drive a truck across it.

Return to home.

Go. Back. Inside.

There was nothing else he could do. He had either sent out an SOS or not. But it was no use calling for help if you ended up freezing to death doing it. He grabbed the transmitter and shoved it in his jacket pocket. He picked up the plywood panel, no longer anything so special as a launchpad. He trudged back toward the H-camp.

It’s all good, he told himself, shaking with the cold. That’s what Dodge said all the time, even if it wasn’t — even if they were in trouble over one of his crazy schemes. “It’s all good, buddy.”

Well, what could he do? If the message didn’t go through, then nothing had changed, really, other than that he’d lost his not-fully-paid-for cell phone and a three-hundred-dollar quadcopter all at the same time. He’d get out of here tomorrow. That was still the goal. By this time tomorrow night, he’d be sleeping in his own bed. All he had to do was hang tight. Nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing else.