– I knew where their fucking camp was, but keeping in the smooth tracks helped me keep my sanity. She’d followed this same path just minutes ago. She’d been here before me and waited ahead of me. It wasn’t good enough, but it was something.
Sweat stuck my thick clothes to my flesh and my muscles burned with the relentless pace as I ran on and on. With the machines to help them, they’d gotten ahead of me, but it was only six miles from my cabin to their camp. Without the snow I could have run it in no time, with it I was labouring uphill in two feet of the white stuff and fuck knew how much time that was adding to my run. But that didn’t matter, I wouldn’t slow. And as I finally drew close enough to see firelight through the trees ahead of me, a surge of relief spilled through me which couldn’t be contained.
I forced myself to slow down, calming my hammering heart and steadying my breath so that I could hear every sound between the trees.
They were dumb as fuck, the lowest kinds of scumbags, sent out here to work where no one higher up in their gang or cartel or whatever had to deal with them, but no way had they overestimated themselves enough to go without lookouts.
I slipped off of the track created by the snowmobiles and headed into the thickest patch of forest I could see to the right of me.
Snow crunched softly beneath my boots but there was a commotion taking place at the campsite, men yelling and cheering, screaming encouragement for some game I couldn’t let myself focus on right now.
I pulled my knife from my belt, leaving my rifle slung over my back for now. This first move needed to be silent. They couldn’t know I was coming until I was in position to take them all out. After that, I was about to paint the world in red.
The lookouts gave themselves away as they spoke to each other ahead of me, one complaining about missing out on the fun as the other took a long swig from his bottle of beer and grunted his agreement.
I crept closer to the lookouts, using the shadows to hide me as I circled around them and came at them from behind.
I waited until their attention was back on the trees ahead of me then made my move. I caught the first guy from behind, slapping a hand over his mouth as I yanked his back to my chest and drove my blade straight into the heart of his friend. The guy I was restraining started to struggle, but I’d already ripped the knife free and I slit his throat before he could do more than slam a badly aimed elbow back into my gut.
I left the two of them bleeding out in the snow and jogged away, forcing myself to keep my pace measured as raucous laughter sang to me between the trees.
It didn’t take long for me to reach the wide clearing with bonfires blazing and men drinking everywhere in sight. There were a bunch of cars half buried in snow which they must have driven up here before winter came and several huge fallen trees had been cut up to use as benches. Beyond that was a sprawling collection of trailers where the men who worked the cannabis farm lived. They looked like pretty crappy places to live, run down and uncared for, dirty – kinda like the men they housed.
My vantage point was to the north of the clearing, right alongside the main entrance to the old gold mine they used to grow their marijuana which offered employment to this bunch of merry miscreants.
I skirted the rocky opening, clambering up on top of it and using the light of the fires to my advantage as I stayed hidden in the shadows.
Some idiot had hung a floodlight above the mouth of the mine entrance and I smirked to myself as I positioned myself right above it, using it to my advantage as it would blind anyone looking my way.
I laid down, taking my rifle from my back and lining it up as I set a box of ammo down ready beside me.
My heart was thrashing with the desperate need to start spilling blood, but I had to figure out where she was first. My savage girl. The one with the unbreakable spirit and the soul forged in the depths