Page 2

CHAPTER 2

I looked at the text I’d gotten, sent earlier in the morning. “Footloose guy.” That was Rose. Worried but still cracking jokes. I texted back:

IM FINE

That was not true.

I’d only known Rosalie Malone a few weeks, but I hoped she’d miss me if I died today. I think even my dog, Maggs, would miss me, although she hadn’t seemed too distraught when I’d departed Rocky Start to finish the Appalachian Trail. I’d left her there with Rose because I couldn’t think of a better way to protect Rose. And to let her know I’d be back.

Now I realized I could have just said “I’ll be back.”

Because Maggs would be very useful right now: A hard situation had just turned dangerous. All had been going well—okay, poorly—actually, very badly—up until just a minute ago when I saw the two sets of footsteps in the snow, about a quarter mile away. Someone was following me. Two someones. I doubted it was to wish me holiday cheer. Christmas was still three weeks away. A normal person would think it was just two more hikers on the Trail. Except it was the middle of a bad snowstorm and I hadn’t passed another hiker since I’d left Rocky Start two weeks ago. Only a fool would be hiking the Trail now. Which Rose had pointed out more than once.

So they were either fools like me or killers sent after me.

Again, a normal person would lean toward fools, but I wasn’t normal. Sometimes I thought my life was a simulation, a sort of a dark Matrix , and the entity that was running it had a sick sense of humor. This thought had been proven more often right than wrong. Plus, the footprints were spread, ten meters apart, meaning they’d crossed the road tactically on either side of the trail.

Killers.

I scrambled down to my campsite. I slid my sleeping bag out of the snow trench I’d slept in last night. I shoved it in the stuff sack, cinched it shut, put it in my ruck, then shook the snow off the poncho covering the snow trench. I quickly folded it and strapped it to the outside of the backpack along with the thin sleeping pad. I had everything ready in under a minute. I retrieved my Glock pistol from the ruck and made sure there was a round in the chamber. Of course, if the intruders were armed with rifles, I was not only outnumbered but also outgunned. I put it in the outside pocket of my parka.

The problem was the snow. It had given away my pursuers, but it was also leading them right to me. I headed southwest, sticking with the Appalachian Trail. This wasn’t the time to be bushwhacking. Besides, the trail ran along the top of a ridgeline with impassable steep, wooded terrain to either side. I had limited options. I couldn’t hide my trail in the snow. I’m sure Daniel Boone would have backtracked in his own footsteps, leapt up into a tree, and ambushed his followers with a Bowie knife, but my Daniel Boone days were behind me, and there were two of them, and they weren’t going to be close enough for me to take out both, and I’d look like an idiot trying to hide in one of these leafless trees. I’d just die stupid.

I’d have to out-hike them. I considered dumping my ruck to lighten the load, but then I’d just die frozen. My entity was having a great chuckle about my current conundrum. Me, not so much.

Then the simulation dialed up the threat. The trail broke out of the trees onto one of those bald mountaintops that are scattered throughout the Smokies. I took several steps onto the bald, then carefully backtracked, stepping in my own depressions in the snow. It would be confusing for a moment, and often a moment is all you need to gain the upper hand in a gunfight.

I walked off trail left and then right to positions of cover. I came back and wiped both trails as best as possible, meaning the pursuers wouldn’t know which side I was on. Then I hid myself in a cluster of boulders on the left with a clear view of about twenty yards. I lay down in the snow, cleared just enough in front of me to have that view, and popped my trigger finger out of the small hole in my glove—yes, specially made—and put it on the curve of metal.

I thought about Rocky Start for a moment, a place of peace and warmth and safety and Rose.

And then I watched for what was coming next.