A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(12)

Well, I’m going to die. Maybe that should seem ironic—I escaped my attacker only to perish in the forest. But if I have to go, I’ll take this. A simple and painless death. I can feel lethargy creeping over me, and I know it’s hypothermia. Just get sleepy and drift off.

I swear I hear Dalton snort at that. Snort and shake his head and settle in to watch, not the least bit concerned because he knows that simple and painless is not the way I’ll die. I’m just sulking.

Better hurry it up, Butler. You sit there much longer, you might get that easy death whether you want it or not.

I’ve spent twelve years refusing to feel sorry for myself. Whatever problems I faced in life, I brought them on myself. Self-recrimination instead of self-pity. Yet one is as pointless as the other. I’m learning to indulge in emotions I’ve kept tamped down so long—anger, outrage, grief, and yes, self-pity. So I wallow in poor-me for another minute. Then I push to my feet, ignoring the muscles that scream for me to stop, just sit down, take it easy, it’s not like I’m going anywhere while this storm rages.

Which I’m not—going anywhere, that is. I won’t waste my energy when I might very well end up walking away from Rockton. I have a plan, which I was formulating while sulking. I might have allowed myself those moments, but that doesn’t mean I allowed them to be unproductive.

Step one? Send up a silent thank-you to Anders, for the god-awful scarf he gifted me with a few weeks ago.

Some Rockton residents earn extra credits with cottage industries, like knitting. And they’re stuck with whatever materials they can convince Dalton to bring back. Dalton—whose idea of high fashion is blue jeans, T-shirts, and cowboy boots—sees nothing wrong with grabbing whatever is in the bargain bin at the textiles shop. When I complained about my secondhand smelly scarf, Anders outdid himself, buying one that was a truly flattering mix of neon green and bright orange.

He’d made me wear it yesterday by hiding every other option. Now I climb a tree, wrap the scarf between two limbs and leave the most perfect flag imaginable, one I can see even through the snow.

Under that tree, I’ve created a shelter from a downed limb, covered with one of the emergency blankets. It’s little more than a windbreak, but it’ll do. Then I hunker in my shelter, with my back to a tree, gun at the ready, waiting for rescue or attack, whichever comes first.

The storm hasn’t abated, but it did die down while I built my shelter, as if cutting me some slack. Forty-five minutes pass. A few more hours of daylight remain, which means I have a decision to make—do I use those hours to find my way back?

The damn compass hasn’t cleared. I still can’t see the mountains. But my shelter isn’t enough for night. Nor is it safe. He’s out there. Possibly waiting for dark, now that I’ve sent up a flare to helpfully pinpoint my location.

I’ll give it thirty minutes more. And as soon as I think that, I hear the now-familiar distant whine of the wind picking up.

“No. Hell, no.”

I scramble out of the shelter and peer around. The snow is still falling, but it’s light enough that I could have been walking. Should have been walking.

Walking where? In circles? Farther into the forest?

I’m listening to that wind, and I’m squinting up into the sky, as dark as twilight now, and I channel Dalton in an endless string of expletives to describe exactly how bad a decision it feels like. I watch the storm roll in, feeling like the idiot standing in a field, spotting a funnel cloud and thinking, Huh, guess I should have gotten indoors when that siren started.

But this isn’t a funnel cloud. I can’t get out of its path. Ultimately, I did make the right choice. It just feels passive, waiting for rescue instead of getting off my ass and wandering deeper into the forest to collapse of exhaustion and freeze to death.

I take out another flare and light it. I watch it soar into the air, and there’s this little part of me that almost hopes it will bring the guy in the snowsuit, because at least then I can do something. He’ll come, and I’ll be waiting, and I’ll shoot his ass and use his still-warm corpse to construct a new shelter until the storm passes.

It’s an awesome plan. And proof, maybe, that I’ve been out here a little too long.

I light another flare.

The storm hits then. And hit it does, even if I had warning. There’s the darkness and the whine of the wind and then it really is like that imaginary funnel cloud striking, an incredible gust of wind that knocks me clear off my feet. I have to fight to get back up, the storm raging already, as if, like me, it needed a break and is plenty pissed by that show of weakness, coming back full force. I’m grabbing saplings and dragging myself to my shelter, and with every inching step, I’m cursing myself for building the damn thing in a clearing. I reach it and—

Something hits me full in the face, and I scramble back, clawing. A bag. There’s a plastic bag over my head, and I can’t breathe, and I can’t pull it away, and my gloves keep slipping on the plastic, and I’m panicking too much to take them off.

I manage to catch a fold in the plastic, and I yank and find myself holding the emergency blanket that formed my shelter. I fight my way back, but there’s no way this blanket is staying on again. Not with this wind.

I need to take shelter, even if shelter is no more than hunkering down behind a fallen tree and wrapping the blanket around me.

I turn to leave the clearing, and he’s there. The man in the snowmobile suit. Standing less than a meter away. I can’t run in snow. He’s too close for me to pull my gun. I swing at him. It’s all I can do. I drop the emergency blanket and swing. He grabs my arm in an aikido hold, but it’s not quite right; his grasp is a little too high.