and bolted from the meadow. He was not going to get shot now. Not now. He slowed and came down through big scattered pines, eyes following the startled flight of a flycatcher, a shift in the shadow of a limb, the lift of a moth. Nothing. And then he saw it. The glint of stainless steel in tall grass. In the long light that cut through the pines. Stainless steel, and two careful steps and he saw the shining length of the barrel, the wooden forestock of the 12-gauge, and then the man’s arm. Outflung. In a green plaid shirt. The arm, the torso twisted back as if arched, the dark curls of the head and a black fleece hat a foot away in the grass. And the wool shirt caked in dried blood and one neat bullet hole in the center of the breast.
* * *
Pierre, you fucker. Good riddance.
He didn’t feel a thing.
He crouched fast, and now he moved as low as he could to the ground, tree to tree, stopping often to listen. He knew Brent and JD would be long gone, but he’d also known that Pierre would have shot the Texans and he’d been wrong. He wasn’t going to get plugged by Brent now. He moved tree to tree as the shadows of the pines lengthened over the beach and broomed over the stones. He covered the shore and then plunged down the easy trail around the falls and— Nothing.
He ran back to the top and cast around in the brush for Pierre’s canoe—he thought if he could find the sat phone he could call in a chopper—but there was no canoe. Damn. Where had he stashed it? Wherever it was, he’d done a good job. Jack looked for sign, for drag marks, and saw nothing. Fuck it. He didn’t have time to screw around any longer. Anyway, Pierre had probably tossed the phone in the river so the authorities wouldn’t find it when he got to the village and ask why he hadn’t called in an emergency earlier.
Jack went to the boat and lifted her and carried her as gently as he could around the roar of crashing whitewater to the launch beach below and laid her carefully on a thick bed of lichen and moss and ran back up and made himself carry Wynn. Wynn was much too heavy. He was unwieldy with the stiffness, but Jack got under him and heaved himself standing, and he kept him on his shoulder all the way down the trail, and though his knees buckled twice he did not let him drop. His ear and chin were against the cold skin of Wynn’s right side above his belt, and he made himself talk the whole way: “Okay, buddy, we’ve got this, we’ve got this, we’re going home now. I’m taking you home.” Over and over. And then he ran back to the top beach and did not look again at Pierre sprawled in the shadows, and he slid the canoe up onto the wheely thing and took almost none of the provisions or gear, they just had to get through the night, and he bumped and heaved the lightened boat down the trail of the portage, and he laid her back into the boat on a bed of empty dry bags and murmured, “Please please please,” and he laid Wynn as best he could over the front seat, and then he shoved off and did not look back at the falls. He knew it was only forty-three swift-water miles to the village. Three days on a normal trip, but he knew they could navigate it safely at night and that they’d be there sometime tomorrow.
EPILOGUE
Jack drove.
The steep twisting road up Dusty Ridge. He drove with his lights off, because it was not yet full night and he wanted to see all the woods and the sandy track going through them. He hit holes filled with the afternoon’s rain that splashed up onto the hood of the truck, and when the wind blew, it gusted water and leaves out of the trees and spattered his windshield.
Though it was a cold October night he drove with the windows down and he could hear Sawyer Brook rushing in its banks. He knew every turn and every big maple. He had driven the road who knew how many times. He had driven it mostly with Wynn, and driven it alone when Wynn was studying for some exam and he