manhunt mounted to find her. He wants to talk to you.”
Schanno took a deep breath. “Patch it through.” He looked at Jo like a man about to eat raw squid. “It’s starting.”
Fifteen minutes later, as Schanno appeared to be winding up his conversation with the Duluth reporter, Borkmann thrust himself into the doorway, looking excited. Schanno said, “That’s all I’ve got to say at the moment,” and hung up quickly. “What’s up?”
“Search plane’s spotted smoke from a campfire on the Deertail just above Hell’s Playground. Guess the trees made it hard to see but it looked like several people. On the second pass, a man and a boy come out waving their arms. Appeared to be Stormy and Louis.”
“Any sign of Cork?” Jo asked.
“Like I said, search plane reported several people at the campfire in the trees. No reason for all of them to signal the plane. I’d say we found ’em.” He offered a reassuring smile.
“Get on the radio to Dwayne. Have the helicopter pick them up.”
“I already did.”
“Wally, may I use your phone?” She felt like Christmas had come two months early.
“Be my guest,” Schanno beamed.
Rose wept at the other end of the line when Jo gave her the news. Jo hung up and said to Schanno, “Now Sarah Two Knives.”
When Sarah didn’t answer her phone, Jo grabbed her coat. “I’m going out to the rez. Sarah needs to know. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“They’ll practically be home by then,” Schanno said. Relief filled every hollow of his long, gaunt face.
Angelo Benedetti pulled into the parking lot just as Jo stepped from the building. He got out carrying two lidded hot cups and a white bakery bag.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“They’ve found the men. I’m on my way to tell Sarah Two Knives.”
“Mind if I come along?” Benedetti gave a nod to the items in his hands. “I’ve got breakfast.”
“Be my guest,” Jo offered with a broad smile and a sweep of her hand, hallmarks of that brief moment when all seemed well.
48
How long he’d been running, Cork couldn’t say. An hour? Three? He felt as if he’d been tortured for a century. Each stride was like drawing a rusty saw blade across his shoulder. He moved no faster than a rapid walk. The old road hadn’t been used for logging in years and was overgrown with rye grass and wild oats and timothy. Two swathes of crushed stalks straddled the center as if two huge snakes had passed there, side by side, an indication that a vehicle had traveled that way recently. Forest service, Cork guessed, or maybe mushroomers. He tried to keep to one of the swathes. Whenever he strayed, his feet tangled in the tall grass and threatened to trip him. Another fall would put an end to what little resolve he had left.
Under a blue-white sky and a brilliant autumn sun, the North Woods had warmed again. Cork was soaked with sweat. He knew if he kept on this way he’d dangerously dehydrate. It was rapidly becoming a question of which of the hellhounds that pursued him would bring him down first.
He had to think about something besides the pain, something to drive him on. He pulled up the image of Grimes fallen among the dripping raspberry vines. Next, he conjured the giant with the shaved head and saw him again, laid out under a gray sky, leaking dark red blood onto wet rock. Dwight Sloane materialized-a good man-with a hole blown clear through his body and the knowledge of his own death rising up into his brown eyes like water in a spring. Cork imagined Elizabeth Dobson, dying alone, afraid. He saw these things clearly, the tragic images falling over his eyes, blinding him to the trail in front of him, curtaining him from the beauty of the woods around him. He was deep in death, slogging through a quagmire of blood. It was like one of those awful nightmares when he tried to run but his feet would not move. And ahead of him, beyond the reach of his hand or voice, he could see Shiloh. She stood in an empty room, in the silence that was the music of death. He saw her turn toward an opening door where light burst through like the flash of fire from the muzzle of a gun. A shadow darkened her face. He heard her screaming.
And the screaming broke through his vision. He was seeing the trail again, and the blue sky and the evergreens. The screaming became a horn honking at his back. He stumbled to a halt and turned around.
A black pickup nearly half a century old rolled slowly to a stop and a head crowned by a wild rag of white hair poked out the driver’s window.
“Hell’s bells, if it ain’t Corcoran O’Connor.”
Cork recognized Althea Bolls, a widow who’d lived alone in a cabin in the Superior National Forest since the pickup she drove was new. He hobbled to her truck.
“Lord, boy, I’ve seen roadkill looked better’n you.”
“I need to get to Allouette.” His throat was parched, and the words came out thin and brittle as autumn leaves.
Althea patted the good arm he rested against her door. “Sure, I’ll take you. You just get yourself in this truck before you fall right over.”
Cork got in the passenger side. On the seat next to Althea were a pair of Leitz binoculars, a copy of Palmer’s Handbook of North American Birds, and a notebook. Althea was head of the local chapter of the Audubon Society and often made excursions into the deep woods to chronicle the birds. She shoved the truck into gear and lurched forward. “There’s coffee in that thermos there on the floor,” she said. “Help yourself. Sorry I didn’t bring anything stronger. Looks like you could use a snort. What happened to you anyway?”
“Long story,” Cork said, and, for everyone’s sake, left it at that.
49
Shiloh indulged herself. She let the hot water from the shower run over her until her skin felt parboiled and her palms and fingers began to wrinkle. She sucked into her lungs the luscious air, hot and moist, as if she were in a steam bath in a Beverly Hills spa. At last she soaped and rinsed, and when she stepped from the shower, she felt clean and new.
She pulled a folded green towel from a shelf above the toilet and began to dry herself.
That’s when she heard the creak of the floor in the living room and she stopped dead still. She listened intently. She’d relaxed, closed the door to caution, and now she felt trapped again and afraid. She draped the towel around her, tucked in the corner to hold it in place. Quietly, she dug into the pocket of her jeans on the floor and pulled out the knife Wendell had given her. She opened the blade. Warily, she peered around the threshold of the bathroom. What greeted her made her step back in surprise.
A woman-slender, blond hair, ice-blue eyes-stood caught in midstep less than a yard down the hallway.
“Who are you?” Shiloh demanded.
The woman stared at her, astounded, as if she were looking at an elephant who’d managed to squeeze into the trailer. “My name’s Jo O’Connor. And unless I’m crazy, you’re Shiloh.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“I saw smoke from the stovepipe.” Jo O’Connor motioned vaguely toward the roof. “I thought it might be Wendell.”
Shiloh leaned back against the door, weak with relief, heavy with regret. “It won’t ever be Wendell.”
“Did I hear the name Shiloh?”
Behind Jo O’Connor, a man appeared. He looked at Shiloh with deep interest.
“So you’re the spark that started the fire,” he said.
“Who are you?” Shiloh asked.
