Hard Cold Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

powdery ashes fluttered into motion with a wave of my hand, imitating the panic of the blowflies. They were fresh.
    So Kend and Elana were here and alive long enough to build a fire. Kend had unpacked. But Elana hadn’t taken anything out of her shoulder bag. Not her cell phone or a book or even the bottle of water tucked neatly in the side?
    A quick check of all the cabinets and drawers didn’t turn up a satellite phone. I went outside to look at their car, and to think in the clean air.
    The Volvo was unlocked. Its interior had the look of a lot of time spent driving and eating and maybe sleeping inside. Crumpled food wrappers and T-shirts crushed into the crevices. Some back issues of women’s magazines with muddy footprints where they had slipped to the floor. In the glove compartment, under a pile of receipts and maps and paper scraps, I found the registration in Elana’s name.
    Something large had taken up all of the space in the back of the car. The rear seats were folded down, and a brown woolen blanket was shoved to one side of the trunk area, like it had been used to cover whatever had been inside. Large, and heavy, judging by the sharp rectangular dents in the nappy fabric of the trunk’s floor.
    No second backpack, though. They’d driven up here together. Kend had brought enough gear for a long weekend. Elana had only brought her shoulder bag. And left it alone.
    Something didn’t resonate. I couldn’t tell what, or why. But I wasn’t going to get any answers here. It would be dark in another hour. Already the deepening shadows around the glade made me uneasy, thinking about the bear. I had to get down the hill. And give Willard some very bad news.
    Before I retrieved my ruck, I dragged what remained of Kend back inside the cabin. It was the least I could do for the son of a bitch.

CHAPTER FIVE
    I RAN DOWN THE MOUNTAIN. Night had fallen so rapidly that it seemed to have skipped dusk altogether. I had duct-taped my Maglite to my shoulder. The stark white blaze showed me an oval-shaped fraction of the world ten feet in front me. My steps were short and choppy, but in a steady rhythm that let me coast for long sections. When the lower half of my quads started quivering threateningly, I let myself walk for a quarter-mile before starting again.
    I reached the gate at the edge of the Haymes property just before midnight. My truck was where I had left it, on the opposite side. My phone had one signal bar. I wiped trickles of icy sweat from my face while waiting for Willard to pick up.
    “That was fast,” he said. “I’m not even to Portland yet.”
    “Are you driving now?” I didn’t want him rolling his car in shock.
    Willard must have caught something in my voice that was worth an instant of hesitation before he replied. “What is it? You found her?”
    Sugarcoating the news wasn’t going to comfort anybody.
    “I found Elana. She was at the cabin. She and Kend. They’re both dead, Willard.”
    “What?” he said, as if the line had stuttered, and he’d misheard.
    “Elana is dead.”
    I heard him take a breath, almost a hum, low and under the digital static. “That—” he tried. “What. What happened?”
    “I don’t know. She was shot. Willard.” It was my turn to take a breath. “There’s something else. Kend may have killed her.” When he didn’t reply I continued. “I’m about to call the cops.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Down the mountain from the cabin.”
    It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard tires screeching in the background. I could picture Willard pulling a U-turn right over the highway divider.
    “I’ll be there in two hours,” he said. “Find out where they’re taking her. I’ll meet you.”
    He was two hundred miles away. Set on covering the distance with the accelerator stomped to the floor.
    “Willard, there’s no fixing this.”
    He had hung up.
    I DIDN’T SEE WILLARD in two hours. It was close to seven o’clock in the morning when a