I watch my wristwatch for five slow minutes while snow drifts in through the missing wall. My first drink is lukewarm and tastes of tobacco. I wedge the can in the coals to boil. The water will heat me from the inside out. When you are hypothermic in the wilderness, you can’t warm up externally. You need to feed your internal engine with hot water and food if you have it. Then wrap yourself in something to trap your body heat between your skin and the outer insulation. What I wouldn’t give for a two-dollar space blanket.

My chief worry is a condition called after-drop. As my frozen arms and legs warm, they will inevitably send chilled blood to my already-stressed heart. The shock can be fatal. People have died of after-drop.

I make a point of taking a piss because I remember that the body has to work extra-hard to heat a full bladder. Then I make another barefoot trip to the river to refill the can. I hunch over the fire while the water heats.

For the first time since I went into the river, I have a chance to reflect.

The people I need to focus on are the ones I interviewed earlier, starting with Mariëtte’s prime suspect. Who else could have laid that trap for me but Bruce Jewett? The man had been a welder, for Christ’s sake.

In my mind’s eye I see the spiked objects laid across the road. Leave it to a student of military history, like Jewett, to use caltrops. The Navy vet knew there was only one way down from Pill Hill. I was bound to run over those spikes. Either I’d die in a fiery crash or drown in the freezing river.

Does he think I’m dead? Or will he come looking for me?

There are bridges, up and downstream, where he can cross. He doesn’t even need a truck. A snowmobile, with the throttle open, could skip across a frozen stretch of the Androscoggin without having to detour more than a thousand yards.

I don’t dare stay here any longer, I decide. I will cut inland to the road that runs parallel to the east side of the river. It won’t be easy in the dark, but I prefer my chances in the woods to sitting motionless in the firelight, waiting for a sniper’s bullet to find me.

I begin gathering up my steaming clothes. It is then that I see the wolf. I glance out into the trees, and there he is, looming at the edge of the shadows. The reflective lining behind his retinas glows with a yellowy phosphorescence.

My first reaction is to reach for the knife. But I stop my hand before I do.

I love and care for this animal, I feel a spiritual bond with him. I am ashamed of my fear of the wolf.