A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(3)

He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m going to be sore as hell in the morning, but it wasn’t a high-speed impact.”

I nod. That’s the biggest concern—he could have done serious damage to his spine.

He rolls his shoulders and moves his back, testing. “I should be good to go. How far are we from town?”

“About five clicks.”

“Shit.”

Under normal conditions, that’s a couple hours’ walk along the winding path. With a storm, it’ll be several times that.

I check my watch. “We’ve got less than two hours of daylight left. If you call this daylight.” I wave at the steady snowfall, the sky beyond already gray. “I’m going to say we collect our stuff from the saddlebags and find shelter for the night.”

“Yeah. Eric’ll be pissed, but it’s not like he’ll be flying home in this. With any luck, he won’t be able to radio in either.”

“We’ll start out at daybreak. Which means about, what, ten in the morning?”

A wry smile. “Welcome to the north. Okay. Let’s see if I can stand.”

I take his hand, and he’s shaking his head, mouth opening to tell me that helping him up isn’t a wise idea. I place his hand on a tree instead—it can support his weight. He chuckles, and he’s carefully rising when I say, “Down!” pushing him to the ground as I cover him, my gun drawn.

“What the—?”

I clap a hand over his mouth and gesture with my chin. There’s a figure on the path, appearing from nowhere, just like the one I saw before the storm hit. When Anders sees, I move off him and he flips over, his gun out, gaze fixed on the figure.

The falling snow is a shimmering veil between us, blurring everything more than an arm’s length away. I’m presuming the figure is a man, given the size, but I’m on my stomach, and it’s at least twenty feet away, and all I can say for sure is it’s standing on two legs.

“Shawn?” I call. With the wind dropped, my voice carries easily. The figure doesn’t move. “Sutherland?”

“Shawn!” Anders snaps with the bark of a soldier, nothing like his usual laid-back tone. Every time I hear it, I jump. He gives a soft chuckle.

The figure doesn’t move. I can’t see a face, but I can tell he’s wearing a snowsuit not unlike ours—a bulky one-piece, dark from head to toe. According to the guy who saw Sutherland run, he was dressed in hiking boots, jeans, a ski jacket, and Calgary Flames toque. I whisper this to Anders before I shout, “Jacob? Is that you?” Dalton’s younger brother lives in these woods.

“Jacob?” I call again, and Anders stays quiet, knowing a shout from him would send Jacob running.

“Jacob?” I say. “If that’s you, we’ve had an accident. We’re fine, but we can’t get back to town in this weather. We need to find shelter. Do you know of anyplace nearby?”

When he doesn’t respond, I know it’s not him. As shy as Jacob is, he knows I’m important to his brother, and he’d help me.

This might be a hostile. There are two kinds of former residents out here, residents who left to live in the forest. Some we call settlers, which is what Dalton’s parents were, people who moved into these Yukon woods to live off the land. They stay out of our way, like Jacob does. Then there are the hostiles, those who went out there, snapped, and have become the most dangerous “animals” in these woods.

“Hey!” I call. “You know I’m talking to you. Maybe you can’t see through this snow, but I can see enough to know you’re not holding a gun on me. There are two trained on you, though. If you think we’re easy prey, just raise your hand, and I’ll be happy to demonstrate my marksmanship.”

“That means she’ll put a bullet through your damn shoulder,” Anders calls, giving me a look that says I might need to take the diction down a notch. “That’ll be the first bullet. Her warning shot. I don’t give warning shots. I’m not good enough for that. Mine goes through your chest.”

Which is bullshit, on both counts. He’s a better marksman and more likely to aim a nonfatal shot. But he’s also the big guy with the booming voice, which makes him a helluva lot more intimidating than me.

The figure takes a lumbering step forward. It’s more of a shamble than a walk, and seeing that, an image flashes in my mind. Before I can speak, Anders whispers, “Are we sure that’s a man, Case?”

No, we are not. The memory that flashed is of a walk with Dalton after a particularly rough day. There may also have been a bottle of tequila involved, and some hide-and-seek, the sun falling as we goofed off, me darting around a tree fall … and startling a grizzly pawing apart the dead timber for grubs.

I’ve faced armed gunmen and not been as terrified as I was when that beast reared up, all seven feet and seven hundred pounds of him. Now I look at this figure through the snow veil. It’s a tall, broad shape on two legs. Dark from head to toe. Taking another lumbering step toward us.

I hear Dalton again, from that evening in the woods.

Don’t move. Just stay where you are.

My first instinct is to shout, as it was back then. But I’d had the sense to whisper the idea to Dalton before I did.

It’s not a black bear. Make a lot of noise, and you’ll only antagonize it. Speak calmly and firmly so it realizes you are human.