“I thought the weather didn’t affect these because they’re satellite.”
“Well,” Gideon says, and does not elaborate. He seems tense, looking at the GPS and then up at the sky, around at the forest, peering back at the trail of our footsteps. I have no idea if we’re on a road, or a trail, or if we just picked a direction and walked. Gideon was all, trust me I’m a professional, so I did, and now I’m ready to sob into some snow like a hapless maiden in a Scandinavian fairy tale.
I don’t. I remain upright and merely think about how nice snow sobbing might feel right now.
“Turn off your headlamp, I can’t see,” Gideon says, a few seconds later, which makes no sense but I don’t argue. Once our eyes adjust he circles around a little bit, looks at the paper map, and then shoves it back into his pocket.
“Sorry about that,” he says, and starts walking in another direction. “We overshot a little.”
I follow him because what the hell else am I going to do?
“Ah,” he says, five minutes later, and comes to a complete stop so sudden I almost plow into his back.
“We’re there?” I ask, praying that this particular Gideon Noise means here is the promised shelter, not look at that interesting lizard. Are lizards even out in the winter? Probably not. I duck my head around him and see nothing in the beam of the headlamp.
“This is the bear tree,” he says, pointing at a tree trunk that looks… oily, and like it’s seen better days. “Almost there.”
I simply accept this without question, but Gideon is right this time: thirty seconds later we come into a clearing with a building in the center.
More specifically, a murder cabin.
It’s small, dark, and quiet, and has a forbidding front porch and a forbidding front door and, somehow, forbidding curtains hanging in every forbidding window. It’s a full-on murder-ass murder cabin, and I’ve never been happier to see a building in my entire life.
“Thank fuck,” is all I manage to say. Gideon makes a noise between a mutter and a grumble.
Inside, the cabin is… let’s go with cozy. It’s got a covered wooden porch across the front, two curtained windows looking out onto it, and boards underfoot that bounce more than I’m strictly comfortable with. The door isn’t locked. Inside is dark but warmer than outside, a faint orange light coming from a closed wood stove in one corner. The room is split into flickering darkness and deep black shadow.
None of that makes it feel like anything but a murder-ass murder cabin, but right now I’d face down any number of Satanic cultists in need of a human sacrifice if it means I can sit and eat some soup.
“See,” Gideon says, slinging my pack off his back. “Told you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
GIDEON
By the time we get into the cabin, Andi is exhausted, cold, nervous, hungry, grumpy, and not particularly cooperative. Luckily for her, I’ve got eleven younger siblings, so I’m an expert in getting tired, hungry, grumpy people to eat dinner and go to bed. I put more wood into the stove. I order her to sit right next to it, remove her shoes and outer layers, and stay there while she warms up. She doesn’t seem thrilled at taking orders, but she also seems happy to be sitting somewhere warm, so she does it.
While I heat up soup, I call dispatch again and tell them I found the girl and she’s fine. I don’t mention the truck, because there’s nothing anyone can do about it tonight, no point in worrying anyone, and I can take care of it. I do mention Chloe Fucking Barnes, and tell Dale that the next time I see her anywhere near a tree I swear to God I’m issuing every citation I can think of, inventing a few more, and possibly calling in the FBI to investigate an attempted murder for leaving Andi like she did. I can’t stop thinking about how hard she was shaking.
When I finish that, all Dale says is, “And you’re all right?”
I frown at the soup heating on the stove.
“Fine,” I say, because I’m obviously calling him and having a normal conversation, how else would I be?
“Good to hear, Gideon,” he says, and I think he’s laughing at me. “Take care of yourself. Merry Christmas.”
“Right,” I say, which is impolite, so I fix it with, “Thanks. Merry Christmas to you too,” and hang up.
While I wait for the soup to finish heating, I text Reid that I’m still fine.
Reid: Dolly misses you
Reid: Also I might have given her slightly more treats than you said were technically allowed
Reid: She keeps glaring at me
Me: She’s a cat. That’s her job.
Reid: Think of it as bribing her not to eat me in my sleep
Me: If she wakes you up at 3am demanding crunchies, you did this to yourself.
Me: DO NOT give her 3am crunchies, then it will never end.
Reid: What if she gives me her murder glare, though
I leave my brother to his longstanding feud with my cat and let my friends’ group text know that I made it back in one piece with a bonus houseguest. The responses are mostly emojis, followed by some earnest glad you made it back safe sentiments.
“Andi!” I shout, grabbing two mismatched bowls from a cupboard. “Soup!”
“That smells incredible,” she says of reheated canned soup as she enters the kitchen.
“Eat, then call…” I start, and fuck. I nearly said your dad, as if that’s something I can just say to her, and I can’t because this is so nice, right now: Andi being friendly and pleasant and glad to be alive. There’s no way she’s forgotten what I did but at least right now, we’re not talking about it.
“…anyone you need to call,” I finally settle on, pretending that I was so absorbed in the process of pouring soup that I couldn’t talk and concentrate at the same time. “I just told dispatch that I’ve got you, so they’re probably contacting people now.”
We wolf the soup down in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the scarred wooden table. At the end Andi lifts the bowl and drinks the last few mouthfuls of broth, and that’s another flash of memory: her doing that with cereal milk and her dad laughing about the milk mustache she’d get. After a moment, I drink the rest of my soup, too.
“Thanks,” she says, the fingers of one hand lightly drumming the table, her braid over one shoulder. She must have redone it because it’s smooth now, not the staticky, wild halo it was earlier. Her cheeks are still pink, though, twin blotches of color that go nearly to her jaw and make her pale blue eyes look even bluer. The color’s coming back into her lips and there’s a tiny, red scratch on her chin I hadn’t noticed before. It makes me feel oddly unsettled.
“You can borrow my phone,” I tell her when I realize I’m staring. I grab both bowls and jerk to my feet, the chair scraping over old hardwood. “I’ll get it.”
“Do you want to call your parents first?” she asks. Her voice is light, but I can hear the tension in it, see it in the ramrod-straightness of her spine. “I mean, it’s your phone, I’ve got other stuff I need to do. There’s no rush.”
I nearly ask her why I’d call my parents, because the thought hadn’t occurred to me.