Page 14 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

"You carry a field suture kit and a backup radio buried under a rock pile a mile from your house. That's not careful, that's professionally anxious."

I almost smile. "Back soon."

Outside, the cold is different from the storm cold. Storm cold is aggressive and wind-driven. This is still and dry. The kind that packs your nostrils with ice on the inhale. The snow is thigh-deep in the open stretches between the pines, lighter under the canopy. I break trail with my legs and shoulders. The forest is quiet like it gets after a long storm. Everything buried and muffled.

I count birds. Three chickadees working a branch to my right, which means the temperature is above zero. No ravens. The silence is clean.

I reach the cache in thirty-five minutes. The cairn is buried but intact. I clear the rocks, dig down to the ammo box, and pull the backup radio, a box of .308 rounds, four MREs, and a tube of antibiotic ointment better than what I've been using on Zoe's feet. I repack the box, rebuild the cairn, and stand up.

That's when I see it.

A hundred yards east of the cache, at the edge of a small clearing. A line of tracks cutting across from south to north. Not animal. The stride length is wrong. Too regular. Too consistent. The gait of someone with purpose. And the prints are fresh. Made after the snow stopped falling, during this same window of calm. Maybe an hour ahead of me. Maybe less.

I set the pack down and unsling my rifle. Not aiming. Just holding it across my body in a low carry, safety on. The motion is automatic. Unknown human presence in a place that should be empty.

I approach the tracks carefully, staying parallel and downslope where the trees provide cover. Two sets of prints. Both adult male, judging by the size and depth. Heavy tread. Work boots or tactical boots. The stride is purposeful and consistent. No wandering. No hesitation. These are people who know where they're going.

I follow the trail for forty yards without stepping into it. The tracks hold a straight line north-northwest. Toward the ridge. Toward the back side of the mountain, where the Forest Service road switchbacks down to the valley floor.

Not toward the cabin. The trajectory would miss it by a quarter mile to the east. That might mean they don't know it's there. Or it might mean they know exactly where it is and are circling wide.

I find the cigarette butt forty yards further along.

It's lying in the snow beside a flat rock where one of them sat. The compression pattern is clear. He sat, smoked, stood up, and kept walking. The butt is a Marlboro Red, smoked down to the filter. The ash end hasn't scattered, which means no wind hit it after it was dropped. Recent. Very recent.

I scan the tree line. Nothing moves. The chickadees are still working their branch. If someone were within a hundred yards I'd see changes in the birds. The forest is calm. Whoever left these tracks has moved on.

But they were here. Close enough to my cabin to reach it on foot in twenty minutes. Close enough that if they'd angled slightly west, they'd have walked straight into my porch.

I photograph the tracks and the cigarette butt with the small digital camera in my jacket. I note the time, the GPS coordinates, the direction of travel. I study the boot prints one more time, memorizing the tread pattern. Three chevron rows in the heel. A distinctive wear mark on the left boot's outside edge.

Then I wipe my own tracks away as best I can, dragging a pine branch over the snow, and head back to the cabin on a different route. Looping south to avoid crossing their trail. I move faster on the return. The calm window is holding but the light has that flat quality that means the storm is loading up again.

I want to be inside with her before it hits.

The cabin comes into view through the trees. I stop for a full minute at the edge of the clearing, reading the space. Porch undisturbed. The snow I shoveled this morning is still clean. Windows intact. No change in the smoke from the chimney. Everything looks the way I left it. Through the window there’s the warm glow of the fire and Zoe on her stool, head bent over the book.

Something in my chest unclenches so hard it hurts.

I go inside. Stamp my boots. Hang my jacket. Set the pack on the table and start unpacking. She looks up from the book and reads my face the way she reads everything. Quickly. Quietly. With the attention of a woman who learned the hard way that the distance between a man's expression and his intent can contain the worst moments of your life.

"Everything okay?"

And here it is. The choice I've been turning over the entire walk back.

I could lie. Not a hard lie. A soft one built from omission. Everything's fine. Perimeter's clear. Storm's coming back. Drink your coffee, read your book, let me handle the things that happen in the trees. She'd believe me because she wants to believe me. Because the cabin has become the first safe place she's had in weeks and the introduction of a threat would crack something that's only just started to heal.

Tyler lied to her. That's the thought that stops the easy answer. Tyler lied with every smile, every locked door, every reassurance that the world outside was more dangerous than the one he'd built around her.

I am not Tyler. That means nothing if I do the same things and call them by different names.

"I found tracks," I say. "Human. Two sets. About a mile northwest, heading north toward the ridge. Fresh. Laid down this morning during the break in the storm. There was a cigarette butt at a rest point. Marlboro Red, recently smoked."

I watch the information land. Her face goes through a sequence I've seen before. The flash of fear, then the conscious effort to contain it, then the careful neutral expression she learned to wear when Tyler was watching. Except this time the neutral isn't hiding from the man in front of her. It's a structure she's building to hold herself upright.

"How close to the cabin?"

"Quarter mile east. Their trajectory didn't point this way. They were heading for the ridge, probably moving through to the back side of the mountain. Could be hunters. Could be Forest Service. Could be hikers who didn't get the weather memo."