a new bunch of nerves when he’d overloaded any one spot. The brutality of the beating left a normally stoic Birdie near tears and Cutter sick to his stomach. Sarah, who’d witnessed much of the torture, appeared numb. A blessing, Cutter thought. It would all come crashing down around her soon enough.
Cutter doubted the kid would have lasted another hour in that chair, let alone another day. But with the lion’s share of the damage internal, there was nothing to be done beyond making him comfortable until they could get him to a hospital. Cutter had seen people die from head trauma half as bad as David Mead’s looked. If he lived, it was even money as to whether he’d have permanent brain damage or not.
Sarah had broken into tears when she thought she’d been rescued. Her tormentors were dead or in custody, but she and her husband were a far cry from being out of danger. It was a strange reality, with all the advances of the twenty-first century, that they all now had to sit tight in the same cabin where the Meads had spent the last three days in captivity. The radio and satellite phone had gone through the ice with the sled. Kilgore had a cell phone, which was worthless this far out. He told them Donna carried a satellite phone to communicate with the air service that was supposed to pick them up, but they hadn’t used radios for fear that troopers or other people in the area would pick up the transmissions.
Birdie and Cutter had used much of the spare fuel for the ATV to get the fire going after they’d fallen through the ice. It wouldn’t make it a quarter of the way back to the village. The lodge was closer, but not by much. Sending someone there would just put them in the same situation, but separated from the others.
The cabin protected them from the weather, but it was also a crime scene that needed to be preserved. Cutter covered Richard Halcomb’s body with an old blanket, knowing the troopers would want to photograph it as it had originally fallen. The gaping wound in the man’s face was a testament to Sarah Mead’s tenacity and bravery. The axe was evidence too, but Cutter elected to pull it out of the bedframe before the troopers arrived. Survival took precedence over evidentiary value. They needed it to split wood so it would fit into the stove.
Birdie and Sarah spoke in whispers, Kilgore groaned on his bed. Cutter sat in a wooden chair beside the stove, using his grandfather’s Barlow pocketknife to work on his carving while he thought.
The sheer helplessness made Cutter want to put his fist through a wall. They’d come all this way, braving the ice and mud and tears and blood, only to have to sit and watch David Mead die. The kid’s kidneys would just shut down if he didn’t get help beyond a school principal and an ex-soldier with a pocketknife and a plan. Sarah was ambulatory, but she was in more danger than she realized. Her broken teeth made anything but broth and soft crackers impossible to eat—and even then, she threw up most of what she took in. She was badly dehydrated and she needed nourishment now more than ever. A severely swollen jaw led Cutter to believe she probably had an abscess, something that had killed countless people throughout history and could prove deadly in her weakened condition.
They would be found, eventually, but David had hours, not days. Kilgore would go next, then Sarah, if the storm raged on more than two days. Birdie didn’t say it to anyone but Cutter, but she’d seen these blizzards last the better part of a week.
At some point, the blizzard would let up and a search party would come out. Kilgore would certainly lose his leg if he didn’t get to a doctor before too long, but that couldn’t be helped. The first medical treatment available was going to David Mead—triage by how much you deserved it.
Three hours in, Birdie decided she was tired of nibbling on pilot bread.
Kilgore dozed on the bottom bunk, probably lapsing into shock. Birdie shook him awake and gestured to the door.
“Where’s the caribou shoulder you took from the meat house? You got it hanging outside somewhere?”
Kilgore coughed, eyes heavy now. “What caribou shoulder?”
Cutter looked up from his carving. “The meat house at the lodge where you kidnapped the Meads.”
“I don’t know what you’re