Always so beautiful after a big storm. The most beautiful place on Earth, really. Not a day went by when Clayton didn’t thank the Lord above he’d not only lived here for over fifty years, but been paid to do so.
The storms had covered everything in a thick marshmallow coating. Pine trees looked like lumpy white giants out of some paint-by-numbers canvas. The snow changed leafless hardwood branches into soft skeletons. A trillion snowflakes reflected the morning sun, making the landscape shimmer and sparkle.
The Bv dragged its weighted sled along the snowmobile trail. Fourteen inches of snow had dropped in little more than twenty-four hours. A fresh snow meant Magnus would want to take the sleds out, so Clayton had to make sure the trails were properly groomed and ready to go.
Something just off with that Magnus boy. His brother Danté wasn’t much better. At first, Clayton had thought Colding was yet another Genada doofus, like that ass-wipe Andy Crosthwaite. But maybe Colding was all right. Poor kid was a mess worrying about Sara. And he wasn’t the only one. Clayton liked that girl.
Something was wrong on Black Manitou. Way wrong. Fifty years on the island. Long enough to know the spirit of a place, to know when something stank worse than a shit sandwich with a side of skunk spunk.
Well, no point worrying until something happened. Que sera sera, as Doris Day had said. Now, she had been a looker. Too bad she wouldn’t put out. The little tease.
Clayton hummed “My Way” as he moved up the trail, wondering if Sara and the others had landed in Manitoba.
DECEMBER 1: 7:34 A.M.
SARA RISKED A peek past the stall wall. Through the open barn door, she saw Sven, his dog, and some cows far across the snowy field.
“Get up, Tim. We’re moving.”
“Moving to where?”
The million-dollar question. They could go into Sven’s house, wait for him to come back, and then… what? Use her Beretta to shoot the old man? Take him hostage? There wasn’t any other shelter. Except…
“That abandoned town,” she said. “Right in the middle of the island. We can lie low there for a little bit, figure out what to do next.”
“How far away is that?”
“Maybe five miles.”
Tim stared at her like she had a dick growing out of her forehead. “Five miles? On foot?”
Sara nodded. “It’s our only option.”
“We have another option.” He pointed to the pistol on Sara’s hip.
“No,” Sara said. “We don’t know that Sven has anything to do with this. I’m not going to hurt him.”
“You don’t have to shoot the guy, just point it at him and—”
“No, Tim. I know guns. You draw this thing on a human being, you better be prepared to use it, and I’m not going to blow away some old man. Besides, as far as we know, he has to check in with Magnus every couple of hours or something.”
“Or Colding,” Tim said.
Sara said nothing.
“I say we take the house,” Tim said.
“Doesn’t matter what you say.”
Sara crept to the barn door and looked out. Sven was still out there with the cows from the C-5. Mookie bounded through the snow, running a long circle around the herd. Sven would come back the same way he’d gone out, which meant Sara and Tim couldn’t go out the front—too much fresh snow; Sven would be bound to see the tracks.
She walked deeper into the barn, looking for an exit. Directly opposite the big sliding door she saw a normal, hinged door with a four-paned window on the top half. She used her sleeve to scrape frost away from a small spot, then looked out. Nothing much out there other than snowdrifts, a tiny snow-covered shed and a few snowcapped fence posts.
She pulled the door open, slowly, so that the drift built up on the other side wouldn’t fall into the barn. The snow there looked like a waist-high white wall. She stepped over it into the deep snow, then reached back to help the limping Tim Feely. She carefully shut the door. Some snow fell in, but she hoped the still-running heaters might melt it before Sven returned.
She and Tim stood side by side, backs flat against the barn. Before them was a long stretch of undisturbed white marked with high drifts. A single line of footprints led into the shed. Those tracks were covered with less than an inch of snow, making each print look fuzzy and blurred.
“Look,” Tim said. “There’s no frost on the shed windows. It’s heated.”
He was right. Probably an electric heater like the ones in the barn. Inviting, but too risky.
“We can’t hide there,” Sara said. “Looks like Sven went to the shed sometime last night. Means he might be in there again today. It’s only six by six, nowhere to hide if he comes out.”
“Shit. What now, gunslinger?”
“We just go and hope he doesn’t come back to the shed and see our footprints leading out of the barn. Come on.”
She put her shoulder under Tim’s arm to carry some of his weight. Together, they trudged through the deep snow.
SVEN LOOKED ALL around, searching for any sign of a person. There had to be someone around. Had to. It wasn’t like forty-three cows could just appear out of thin air. They weren’t James Harvey’s herd. As far as Sven knew, James’s cows weren’t knocked up, and these girls were pregnant with a capital P.
Mookie was doing her thing, circling the herd, stopping and staring with her head low to the ground. If her eyes had been lasers, she could have burned a hole clear through the moon. She packed the cows together, waiting for Sven’s commands.
He walked up to one of the cows. It had an all-white head with a black eyepatch. The plastic tag clipped through its ear read A-34. In permanent marker, someone had scrawled Molly McButter underneath the numbers. The tag meant the cows were from the main facility on the south end of the island. How in the hell had the cows traveled some ten miles, during the night, in the midst of a mangler of a blizzard?
“Well, hello there, Molly. I’ll bet you’ve had an interesting night, eh?”
The cow said nothing.
Sven didn’t see any tracks. Just a few snow-covered low lines in the snow. That meant the cows had stood here for several hours, tucked into the edge of the woods, waiting out the storm that had covered their path.
Sven kept patting Molly and talking in a low, calm voice. “Well, ladies, I’d better get you all under cover, eh? We’ve got another storm due soon.”
He held up a hand. Mookie’s head swiveled, her body motionless, her eyes now only on Sven. The dog radiated intensity. This was her favorite thing in all the world. Except, perhaps, for nap time.
“Mookie, find.” The lithe dog shot through the snow and into the woods. She’d search for any strays and bring them back.
Sven started the snowmobile and began guiding the cows back to the barn.
DECEMBER 1: 8:14 A.M.
CLAYTON STOPPED THE Nuge in front of Sven’s barn. He let the vehicle idle and hopped out. A beat later, forty-five pounds of happy-ass black border collie shot out of the barn. Mookie jumped at Clayton, her front paws on his chest, her hind paws hopping up and down as she tried to stretch up enough to lick his face. She whined with excitement.
“Easy there, eh?” Clayton laughed and he twisted his face away from Mookie’s insistent tongue. “Take it easy, girl.”