Right now, Gabriel just wanted to crawl into bed and close his eyes. The plan was to strike out into the mountains in the morning under daybreak, with plenty of time to make the trek and return home before nightfall. None of them wanted to find out what it was like to spend the night in the wilderness, even knowing that the storm showed no sign of relenting and that the longer they waited to leave, the more difficult the hike would become. That was a problem for tomorrow, though, and right now he just wanted to make all of the problems go away, if only for a few hours.
He trudged through the shin-deep powder in the courtyard to the back door of his cabin, opened the door, and stepped into the kitchen. The precipitation had loosened the bandage on his cheek, so he peeled it off and dropped it into the trash bag, careful not to notice the amount of blood that had soaked into the gauze. He was just about to stomp the snow from his boots when he heard heated voices rise from the other side of the wall in the main room. After a moment’s hesitation, he crept across the room and pressed his back against the wall so he could better eavesdrop.
“I don’t care if you think it’s a bad idea,” Jess said. “It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do.”
“And just what do you think that will accomplish?” Cavenaugh asked. He lowered his voice, but his anger was no less apparent. “Look outside. There’s no way they could even make it up the mountain in this weather.”
“Of course they could. They have SUVs with four-wheel drive and helicopters, for God’s sake.”
“You think they’re going to come thundering up here with a chopper because we found some old finger bones?”
“No, but that’s not the point. What we found is the evidence of a crime. That’s why we need to call them. There’s nothing more to debate. What if those bones belonged to Jenny? Hmm? What if that cat had been hiding under this very floor gnawing on your little sister’s remains?”
There was a heavy moment of silence before Jess spoke again.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Another pause.
“Fine,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Make your call. Tell them whatever the hell you want.”
Gabriel heard footsteps on the wooden floor headed in his direction and barely had time to step away from the wall before Cavenaugh blew past. The detective didn’t even look back as he threw open the door, stepped out into the snow, and slammed it behind him.
From the other room, Gabriel heard the beeping sound of a cell phone. He stomped the melting ice from his feet and walked into the main room.
Jess had extended the antenna on her cell and was pacing back and forth across the room, turning in various directions as she walked, all the while watching the small screen.
“Damn it,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
She started at the sound of his voice.
“I can’t get a signal.”
“Must be the storm. Cell signals are weak up here to begin with.”
She grabbed her jacket from the back of the couch and slipped into it.
“Where are you going?” Gabriel asked.
“Outside.” She breezed past him into the kitchen. “There has to be someplace around here where I can get a signal.”
The kitchen door opened and closed again, and with that, Gabriel found himself alone in the cabin with only the company of the crackling fire. He went into the bedroom, pulled one of the blankets off the bed, and returned to the living room. Moments later, he was bundled on the couch in front of the potbellied stove, fast asleep.
***
He awakened to the smell of chicken broth and sat up to find Jess standing over him. She smiled and eased down beside him while he rubbed the residue of sleep from his eyes.
“I brought you dinner.”
She proffered the Styrofoam bowl.
“Thanks. I didn’t mean to be asleep so long.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The world had turned gray, save the flakes tapping at the glass and the crescents of condensation framing the pane. “What time is it anyway?”
“Does it matter?”
He smiled and nodded. “I don’t suppose it does.”
The soup was only lukewarm, but it tasted absolutely divine. He shoveled down a couple spoonfuls brimming with noodles, then looked at her. She was staring blankly into the room and working her fingers into knots in her lap.
“Did you ever get your phone to work?” he asked.
“No.” She turned to face him. “And we lost our internet connection as well.”
“Stands to reason.”
“Does it?”
She rose and paced nervously in front of him.
“Yeah. No cell signal, no WI-FI connection.”
“I know, I know. But something’s not right here. Can’t you feel it?”
“We’re all just stressed out. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day. If everything goes according to plan, we’re going to find our sisters’ bodies. I need to know… We all need to know. I just can’t imagine how much it’s going to hurt when we finally see what actually happened to them. On one hand, it will be a relief to finally learn how they died. On the other, seeing it, seeing how they might have suffered… There’s no way to un-see that.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m probably overreacting. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong, only that something is.”
He finished his soup and set the bowl on the floor. When he sat back, Jess leaned against his shoulder and her hand found his. The fire bathed them in heat and the moment felt natural, comfortable.
“There’s an emergency transceiver in the main cabin,” she said.
“What do you propose?”
Jess was silent for a moment. “I don’t know for sure. I can only assume it connects directly to some emergency broadband channel. Maybe we could just alert them to the fact that we found these bones and let them determine the proper course of action from there.”
“That sounds reasonable enough.”
Another silence.
“What’s the problem then?” he finally asked.
“I don’t think Cavenaugh would appreciate it. He’s made that abundantly clear.”
“Cavenaugh? He already told you to make the call.”
“I get a bad feeling from him.”
Gabriel scoffed. “What could he possibly do?”
***
“So is everyone clear about the plan for the morning?” Cavenaugh asked. He surveyed their faces one by one. “Good. I don’t want to waste a single minute of daylight. I want us out of here by oh five hundred sharp.”
They all rose from the couch and floor where they’d been sitting through the final strategy meeting. The pertinent maps had already been pulled from the walls and rolled into neat tubes, rubber-banded, and marked with a number, one through three, to correspond with the team number. They were laid out on the wooden table they had dragged in from the kitchen. Beside each map was a radio unit, which had already been tuned to a common frequency, and a backpack containing granola, dehydrated fruit, two bottles of water, and a flare gun with two extra loads.
“One more thing,” Cavenaugh said as they were all about to disperse. He walked to the right side of the room where the communications gear had been assembled on top of the cases in which it had arrived. Beside the stack of components was a metal case Gabriel had assumed to be empty. Cavenaugh unlatched the lid and swung it open. He leaned over the foam-lined box and reached inside. “Who knows how to shoot one of these?”
