But then the memory of the spiked objects in the road returns. I quickly turn off the light.

I remain still.

I can’t hear much above the sound of the river. The creaking of ice floes and murmuring current. A breath of wind.

My chattering teeth.

Seconds pass and a handheld spotlight snaps on. A figure stands at the edge of the cliff and shines the beam down at the river. Whoever he is, he doesn’t call out. He just uses the searchlight to scan the ice, starting with the place where my Jeep crashed through and continuing methodically downstream.

The light touches the eastern bank fifty feet north of me. Slowly it moves my way. If I step forward and wave for help, he will surely see me.

Instead I step backward into the firs.

The head-high trees aren’t as densely packed as I’d thought. As the spotlight touches them, the needles turn from black to dark green to emerald. I clench every muscle in my body to stop from shivering. It takes a terrific effort to force my jaws shut to keep my teeth from chattering.

Step into the light, you idiot. Paranoia is a sign of hypothermia. Do you want to freeze to death out here?

No, Mike. Don’t do it, Mike.

The light continues down the bank, and my entire body begins convulsing again.

A minute later the spotlight winks off, but the high beams from the vehicle continue to shine off the cliff into a space alive with snowflakes. I think I glimpse the driver’s silhouette. Then he disappears into the shadows of the road, leaving his engine idling.

What is he doing?

The realization hits me like a punch. He’s collecting the metal spikes he’d scattered across the asphalt. He’s removing the evidence.

I shiver harder, but this time it isn’t just from the cold.

6

Dr. Elizabeth Holman, I noticed, had gotten a new tattoo. As she leaned over the sedated wolf, his massive body slung along the steel table, his red tongue lolling from his mouth, I spotted an indefinite mark at the base of her neck. I peered closer and saw that it was a tasteful dove with a tasteful olive branch in its tasteful beak.

It was the first truly Christian tattoo I could remember seeing. I had come across many crosses, of course, often flaming or aglow with what looked like radiation, and biblical quotes, sometimes just chapter and verse numbers, other times full quotations, but none of those tats had impressed me as genuine expressions of faith. One reason: most of the religious tattoos I’d seen belonged to people I had arrested for violent crimes.