Chapter 4 - THE MOUNTAIN OF THE LOST
The smell of burning diesel fuel and scorching rubber drifted through the intake vents before I could flip the manual fire dampers closed.
Outside, the generator shed was transformed into a roaring pillar of orange flame, the magnesium flare burning through the wooden framing with terrifying speed. The black smoke was swallowed by the driving snow, creating an eerie, glowing fog across the front lawn.
"He's crazy," Deputy Ruiz gasped, backing away from the window as a small explosion shook the glass—the generator's starter battery rupturing. "He's completely out of his mind!"
"He isn't crazy," I said, my voice dead calm in the darkening living room, illuminated only by the red glow of the wood stove. "He is methodical. He's clearing his board."
I walked to the gun safe built into the hallway wall. Without electrical power, the digital keypad was dead. I pulled a mechanical key from around my neck, inserted it into the backup keyway, and threw the heavy steel locking bolts manually.
The heavy door swung open.
Inside hung my winter tactical gear—equipment I hadn't touched since my days tracking fugitives in the Idaho backcountry. I pulled out a suppressed Ruger 10/22 thermal-scoped rifle, two extra magazines, a pair of night-vision goggles, and a heavy white snow-camo parka.
"Take off that brown department jacket," I ordered Ruiz, tossing her a spare white winter coat from the rack. "That dark uniform makes you a target against the snow wall."
Ruiz looked at the tactical gear, then at me, her eyes wide with shock. "Mrs. Hale... who are you?"
"I'm a grandmother whose family is being hunted," I said, slipping the snow-camo parka over my sweater and pulling the night-vision goggles down over my forehead. "Now put that coat on and grab your weapon."
"What's the plan?" Ruiz asked, her professional instincts finally kicking back in as she unzipped her heavy brown jacket and threw on the white parka.
"He thinks we're trapped inside a darkening house, waiting for him to attack the doors," I said, checking the action on the suppressed rifle. "He expects us to defend this room. But defense is how you die on a mountain."
I pointed toward the back of the house. "There is a sub-basement utility tunnel that exits behind the woodpile eighty feet out into the timber. I am going out into the woods to hunt him from the flank."
"And me?"
"You stay in this hallway," I said, locking my eyes onto hers. "If he breaches the front or mudroom doors, you put three rounds into his chest. You do not talk to him. You do not cite statutes. You eliminate the threat to those children in the pantry. Do you understand me, Deputy?"
Ruiz swallowed hard, her hand gripping her service weapon tighter. She looked toward the kitchen pantry where June and the babies were hidden, then back at me.
"Understood," Ruiz said, her voice solidifying into iron.
I stepped into the cold sub-basement, opened the heavy cast-iron hatch, and crawled through the narrow concrete culvert that ran beneath the rear lawn.
When I pushed open the camouflaged wooden trapdoor behind the cords of firewood, the blizzard hit me with full, vicious force. The temperature had dropped to nearly ten below zero. The wind was gusting at forty knots, blinding to the naked eye.
I flipped down my thermal night-vision goggles.
The world transformed into a high-contrast palette of bright green and glowing white. Through the swirling storm of snowflakes, the burning generator shed shone like a white-hot sun eighty yards away.
And there, standing near the shadow of the burning shed, was Daniel Mercer.
He wasn't running. He was standing motionless in the snow, holding a heavy tactical flashlight in one hand and his halogen axe in the other, watching the front windows of my house like a predator waiting for a rat to bolt from a burning barn.
I raised the suppressed rifle, placing the thermal crosshairs directly over his left shoulder blade.
My finger rested against the trigger. One light squeeze—a ninety-grain subsonic round—and the man who had tormented my daughter and terrorized my grandchildren would drop into the snow, buried by the blizzard within twenty minutes. In this weather, with no witnesses and no power, it would be an open-and-closed case of self-defense during a violent property invasion.
My finger tightened against the cold steel of the trigger.
Then, through the thermal optics, I saw something else.
Beyond the ruined perimeter gate, down on the access road twenty yards past his idling Yukon, a faint, glowing heat signature caught the corner of my lens.
It wasn't a car. It was a human body, crawling on hands and knees through the deep snowdrift on the side of the road.
My heart shattered against my ribs.
Anna.
She hadn't stayed in the timber at Mile Marker 3. She had dragged her broken, freezing body two miles up the mountain, trailing her husband's truck through the dark, following the lights of his vehicle to make sure he didn't reach her children alone.
She was ten yards from the gate, her movement slowing, her thermal signature fading from bright white to a dull, dying gray as hypothermia claimed the last reserves of her life.
And Daniel had just turned his head.
His heavy halogen flashlight beam swept across the snow, landing directly on the shivering, white-clad form of his wife collapsing in the drift.
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Daniel didn't call out. He didn't run to help her.
He raised the heavy iron axe in his right hand, adjusted his grip on the handle, and began walking slowly down the driveway toward the woman crawling in the snow.
