Miles away, Lily turned to Mary, her eyes hard. They’d set off on their trek to the fish camp, Lily favoring her right leg on snowshoes while Mary walked a few paces behind. “Do you know what a blaze is?” the girl asked.
“A mark cut into a tree that indicates a trail,” Mary replied. “Your father always used the Cherokee letter hu, from the syllabary.” She leaned over and drew a backwards seven in the snow.
“Right,” Lily said begrudgingly, sounding irked that Mary had known her father’s blaze. “I’m going to start walking faster, so let’s split up. If we get separated, just look for that blaze. I marked the trail here last night.”
“Okay.” Though Mary had assumed they would make this trip together, maybe going separately was not a bad idea. Lily wouldn’t be saddled with an adult slowpoke and she would no longer have to endure a sullen teenager.
As Mary adjusted her pack, Lily pulled a cell phone from her coat and held it up to the sky. A few moments later she lowered the thing, glanced at the screen and returned it to her pocket, obviously disappointed.
“I’m going on,” she called as she headed deeper into the woods. “Watch for the blazes. And the Rifleman.”
“Who looks like what?”
“Big guy in snow camouflage and goggles. Carrying a commando rifle.”
The girl strode off, her bad ankle apparently less of an issue. Mary followed, wondering what message the girl had hoped to receive from cyberspace. Then she remembered when she’d first driven up, she thought she heard Lily call the name Bryan. Did she have a boyfriend up here? Some white knight she’d expected to come to her rescue?
If so, she’s as delusional as her father, Mary decided, recalling how Jonathan had smeared his face with war paint and searched for her mother’s killer. He and Billy Swimmer had stalked the woods for days, full of fire and outrage, convinced they could find the murderer. Jonathan had wept when they came home empty handed.
“It’s always one of us in the woods, Jonathan,” she whispered as she followed Lily. “Either the real woods, or woods of our own making.”
Hoping that Lily’s tracker had given up, Mary made her way through the snow. Soon Lily’s prints changed from wide hatch-marks into deep boot prints, in the old single-file Cherokee fashion. From the length of the stride Mary could tell she was hurrying. Scared, probably. And mad. No doubt hating to be stuck with her, the evil old bitch she despised.
“Pretty little Lily,” she whispered. “A war party of one.”
Mary picked through snow-frosted gorse and laurel. With her thighs burning at every step, she realized that she was not going to get back in time to tear up the note she’d left for Victor. Possibly he’d already read it by now. What would he think? Would he be hurt? Furious? Frantic? All those things, she decided glumly. She wished she’d explained that she’d called the sheriff, tried to go through official channels, but the snowstorm had paralyzed everything. Though she knew it was pointless, she opened her own phone, took off her gloves and recorded a message for Victor.
“Hi Sweetheart. I’m in the woods, going north from Unaka, North Carolina, following Lily Walkingstick,” she said. “I had no choice. The girl is in serious trouble, and I couldn’t get anybody else to come. I love you and I’ll explain everything later.”
She almost said if there is a later, but decided against it. Of course there’ll be a later, she told herself. Pressing send, she put the phone back in her pocket. If she was lucky, he would get that. If she wasn’t so lucky and wound up frozen to death, maybe someone would find her phone and give it to him. Then, at least, he could listen the message and know that she loved him.
For hours Mary followed Lily. The snow continued, now joined by a swirling mix of fog and sleet. She felt as if she’d fallen into a snow globe, where some invisible hand constantly shook the world. By mid-afternoon she was even wishing for Lily; even a brooding, quarrelsome girl would have been company in this hard-edged forest of frost and ice.
At a delicate growth of tall, willowy cane, Lily’s tracks changed again. No longer were they single-file boot prints. She’d gone back to the snowshoes. “Her ankle must hurt,” Mary whispered, tracing the basket-weave track with a gloved finger.
A quarter mile later, she realized that Lily’s ankle was not the reason for the snowshoes. She’d decided to scale an amazingly steep ridge, ignoring the blazed switchbacks and going straight up. It was a dangerous climb—one misstep could send you plunging downward in a neck-breaking fall. Still, Mary was determined to keep up with the girl. Taking a deep breath, she turned and began climbing side-stepping up the incline. She knew that looking down would induce vertigo, so she kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing on each tree that she passed. With sweat dripping in her eyes, she finally reached the top of the ridge. Thirty feet away she saw Lily, again lifting her cell phone to the sky.
“Getting any signal?” Mary called.
Lily looked up, surprised. “I thought you were following the blazes.”
“No,” gasped Mary. “Following you. Any luck with the phone?” she repeated, longing to talk to Victor.
“No. The best place for cell phones is Shagbark Ridge, but it’s on the other side of the fish camp.”
“Any sign of the Rifleman?” Mary asked, still breathless and dizzy in the freezing temperature.
“I thought I heard something a few minutes ago,” said Lily. “But it could have been an animal. Anyway, the fish camp’s over the next ridge. If the Snowmen are waiting out the weather, they’re probably still there.”
“Okay.” Mary pressed her left arm against her body, comforted by the weight of the Glock in its holster. “Lead on, but cut new blazes, in case we get separated.”
Lily stuffed her snowshoes behind her backpack and plodded ahead. Mary noticed that she was not walking with her earlier bravado. Though she blazed the trees every thirty yards or so, she stuck closer to Mary, tilting her head at certain sounds, once taking a deep whiff of the wind, as if trying to detect the scent of strangers. Quietly, Mary drew her pistol. She’d seen not a trace of anyone, but she didn’t want to be surprised if the Rifleman materialized out of the whiteness.
They reached the fish camp from the backside, circling a wide lake that sported a boathouse and a dock. Thick white ice splintered around the dock pilings, while the middle of the lake remained a slushy dull gray. For a moment Mary was surprised that Jonathan had forsaken guiding hunters for a fish camp job, but then she remembered that he’d spent most of his life on the Little Tennessee River. Fishing, rafting, swimming naked with her while a huge summer moon shimmered on the surface of the water.
“Follow me,” said Lily. “If they’re keeping watch they won’t see us if we stick to the cover of these trees.”
Keeping the lake on their right, Lily threaded through trees that in summer would have shaded a narrow walking path. For a moment the snow quit, but soon another bank of thick clouds rolled in. They reached the camp’s woodshed as a new round of flurries began.
Peeking around the corner of the shed, Mary studied the cabin. It was small, no doubt built for the caretaker of the camp. No lights shone from the windows, nor did any smoke rise from the chimney. If the Snowmen were there, they certainly weren’t availing themselves of the comforts of home.
“Tell me the layout inside the cabin,” she whispered to Lily as she flipped the safety off her Glock.
“We’re looking at the back porch and kitchen,” the girl replied. “Two bedrooms open off a hall, to the right. Living room’s in front.”
“How many windows?”
“One in each bedroom. A big one in the living room. Two on either side of the chimney.”
“Okay,” said Mary, taking command of the mission. “Give me your flashlight and I’ll go check it out.”
Immediately, the girl began to protest. “But—“
“Hard lesson number one, Lily. Whoever’s got the gun, makes the rules. You stay here until I signal you. If you hear any gunshots, turn around and get the hell out of here. That is what your Edoda would want.”
Lily gave a disgusted sigh, but produced a small flashlight from the pocket of her coat.
Mary took several deep breaths, and tried to sprint through the knee-deep snow. She reached the shadows of the cabin’s back porch, where a screen door flapped in the wind. Dodging Jonathan’s snow-covered truck, she kept her gun low, and crept along the side of the cabin, toward the living room. She saw no other vehicle beyond the truck and no tire tracks broke the smooth silk of the snow.
Nobody here, she decided. But what will I do if Jonathan’s in there dead? Eyes wide, mouth gaping open in cadaverous surprise. Her stomach clenched. Years before she’d seen her mother like that; it still made her sick to think about it.
Gun in hand, she ducked beneath the first window and pressed her cheek against the chimney. The stones were icy cold; no fire had burned there lately. She lifted the Glock, crept to the edge of the second window, and risked a peek inside the cabin. But the window panes were a glittering collage of ice and snowflakes, and she could see nothing but frosted glass.
Summoning her courage, she headed toward the porch. A muddle of churned-up snow surrounded the front door, which stood wide open. Cautiously, she stepped inside, directing her flashlight beam around the room. It was a wreck of overturned willow chairs, a rustic looking sofa, a coffee table that held a Scrabble board.
She closed the door, and smelled a pungent, coppery odor. She recognized it immediately, from her days as an Atlanta prosecutor. It was blood. Quickly, she stole down the hall, peering in the bedrooms, readying herself to see Jonathan dead. But it wasn’t until she reached the bathroom that her heart stopped. The room looked like the scene of an axe murder. She turned on the light to find dark, clotted blood drenching the sink and around the toilet, while cotton swabs, gauze and menstrual pads lay strewn all over the floor.
“What the hell?” whispered Mary. “Was a woman involved in this too?”
Trembling, she hurried to the kitchen, the only room remaining, thinking Jonathan must have crawled in here to die. But she found no body; just a stove, a refrigerator, and a sinkful of dirty dishes.
She leaned against the refrigerator and started to cry. Tears of relief, of anger, confusion and an emotion she had no name for. She had been so scared; she was still so scared. Just because Jonathan wasn’t dead here, didn’t mean he wasn’t dead somewhere in a bank of snow or even in the middle of that lake.
For a moment she couldn’t move, she didn’t know what to do. Then she looked out the kitchen window and saw Lily, huddled in the distant trees. “Get her inside,” she told herself. “She’ll be safe here. We can clean up the mess, and then decide what to do.”