Chapter Eleven

The dark form of a pickup truck sits to the side of the track beneath the trees. Whicher scans the blackened woods, chest heaving, sweat breaking on his skin.

Approaching, he can see it’s a double-cab Toyota. Nobody inside.

He steps to it, grabs the door on the driver’s side—it opens.

Keys are hanging from the steering column.

The cab smells of cigarettes.

He jumps in, starts the motor, turns on the lights. The fuel gauge shows the tank half-full.

Shifting into drive, he presses down on the gas, steers out onto the track, toward the clearing. The wheels of the pickup hit the churned-up ruts of snow from the Ford. He pulls up in front of the cabin, leaves the motor running.

He steps out. “Lauren,” he calls.

The cabin door is closed. He jumps up on the porch.

He puts a boot against the door.

Inside, in the light of the wood stove he sees her—she’s at the back of the cabin. The glint of a long blade at her side.

She holds up a butcher’s knife.

“We have to go,” he says.

He takes the boxes of ammunition from Corrigan’s tote.

“Put on my coat. Where’s your case?”

She points at the floor by the cot.

Whicher grabs the case, grabs the plaid hunting coat.

Lauren sets down the knife. She looks at him, face pale, her eyes rounded.

He steps from the cabin, jumps down off the porch, throws the case into the back of the crew cab.

Lauren follows him outside, shivering. She stares at the Toyota.

“Get in,” he tells her. He climbs inside, behind the wheel.

She steps up into the cab, pulls the door closed.

“We need to get the hell out of here.”

Lauren puts both hands to her face, spreads the skin taught across her cheeks.

The marshal shifts into drive, steers out into the track in the woods.

“Where are we going?” she says.

He strains his eyes to see beneath the overhang of trees—the world down to the width of twin headlight beams. “Somebody knows where we’re at,” he says, “that's all that matters.”

“How can anybody know?”

Jimmy Scardino's blood is wet on the seats of the Ford—broken glass all over the cab.

Belaski hears the sound of a motor, sees lights moving, flickering in the trees.

A split second—all it’d taken. The big man went down, shots were coming through the back, glass everywhere, blood flying—blood and pieces of bone.

The last shot caught Jimmy in the back of the head.

They were fish in a barrel, he'd gotten them out.

He thinks of dragging Jimmy from the cab—he was passing out, blood gurgling from his mouth. Nothing he could do, he tells himself; nobody’s going to know.

He pictures holding the muzzle of the SIG to Jimmy’s temple. Squeezing. Making sure.

He feels the rush in his veins, now—the surge of anger. Everything going to shit; the whole damn thing. He sits in silence, in the darkness, motor shut down. Watching the lights moving ghost-like. Jimmy’s Toyota coming down the forest track. A bright phantom.

It draws level with the off-shoot in the woods. Speeds by.

He starts the motor in the Ford, leaves his own lights extinguished.

To follow the tail lights—trailing red into the dark.