Snowbound

FIFTY-EIGHT

The sunlight passed clear and sharp through the glass panes of the library windows.

A perfect silence. No wind. No snow driving against the doors.

Devlin sat up and pushed off the covers, squinting in the brilliant light. Her father was already up. Her mother, too. She rubbed her eyes and yawned and went to find them.

They were standing at the entrance to the lodge, holding steaming mugs of coffee, the doors pulled open, surface hoarfrost glittering outside under the midmorning sun, several feet of snow piled up on the porch. The lake water was still and deep green, rimmed with a layer of thin ice that smoked beneath the sun. The bodies of Ethan and the guards had been dragged away, their blood frozen on the stone. Rachael and Will turned as Devlin approached.

“Morning, honey,” her mother said. Devlin stood between them, noticed for the first time that she was a few inches taller than her mother. “So how long will you be gone?” Rachael was asking.

“Hope to be back tonight,” Will said, “but if we don’t reach Fairbanks until after dark, I don’t know. Can you keep things under control if we don’t come back until tomorrow?”

“Yeah. But I worry about you going out there with the wolves loose.”

“I’ll have the shotgun, plenty of shells.”

“You have to take Devlin?”

“Yeah, Buck and I will fly back here to the inner lake and pick her up. I want to get her into a hospital tonight. I worry all this is going to get her sick.”

. . .

In a supply room, four doors down from where Paul sat dead in a chair beside a cold fireplace, Will found snowshoes, a parka, and an extra box of twelve-gauge buckshot.

He ate an early lunch of beef stew, and Will said good-bye to the women in the library, explained that he would try to return that evening, but if it wasn’t possible, first thing tomorrow morning at the latest.

Rachael and Devlin walked Will to the front door, where he cinched the straps of his snowshoes down across the tops of his boots.

Rachael hugged her husband.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said, and watched him step outside and climb up onto the snowpack.

She stood in the warm, direct sun, watching Will go, his snowshoes sinking into a foot and a half of powder with every step, her eyes burning from the harsh reflection off the ice crystals.

Seconds before retreating back into the lodge, she and Devlin registered a distant droning, which grew exponentially louder with every passing second, until a floatplane buzzed the lodge’s roof, its engine screaming as it descended toward the water, the pontoons catching sun, glimmering like mirrors.

Her heart leaped as the plane touched down midway across the lake, Will stopping just fifty yards out from the lodge—he wouldn’t have to make the long haul to the outer lake.

The engine had cut off. Devlin was squinting, trying to make out the details of the plane, though it had almost reached the far end of the lake, more than a mile away.

Her smile faded.

Will had turned around, tracking back toward the lodge as fast as his snowshoes allowed.

Something was wrong. Will was wearing that same worried expression he used to get just prior to opening arguments for a big trial.

He reached them breathless and sweating.

“What’s wrong?” Rachael asked.

Will leaned over with his hands on his knees, drawing in lungfuls of cold air.

He shook his head, gasping between ragged breaths. “That isn’t our plane.”