And while deer may not look up into the treetops, men do.

I’ve got to keep moving.

Following the deer path as best I can, I continue over a ridge that runs along an esker, parallel to the main channel of the river. Pushing through a clump of cedars, I trip and fall chest-first onto the frozen ground. The impact doesn’t do anything to alleviate the pain radiating from the gunshot wound in my leg.

But as I recover the energy to raise myself on hands and knees, I notice more deer prints, a dozen of them, all leading in the same direction.

Most hunters don’t realize that deer use different paths at different times for different reasons. Some nimrod, having discovered what looks like a well-traveled deer trail, will set up a stand overhead and wait. Eight hours later, he’ll walk out of the woods without having seen a mammal bigger than a squirrel. These disappointed hunters don’t understand that the deer are only using this road at night, when their only concern is avoiding coyotes and bobcats. They’ll switch to an entirely different trail when humans are out and about. And make no mistake: deer know exactly when legal hunting hours begin and end.

When you are a prey animal, you must devote your entire being to outwitting your pursuers.

It’s a lesson I am slowly relearning.

During my rookie years, Charley Stevens and I used to roam around different habitats—from leatherleaf bogs to heath alpine ridges—and he would give me a private Ph.D. seminar in the natural history of Maine. The old woodsman would point out a line through some cinnamon ferns, more like a crease than a path, and he’d say, “You’d never know it, but that there is a historic byway. The local deer have been using that skinny trail to cross coyote country for generations. It’s not just we humans who have heritage. Critters do, too.”

Charley taught me so much. I owe the man more than my life.

Will I ever see him again?

Or Ora?

Or—?

I stop myself before I can speak the name. Even so, a hot tear runs down my numb cheek.

You’re crying now, Bowditch?

So what if I am?

I am in pain and I am afraid. Mostly though, I am mad as hell for getting myself into this predicament.

Dangerous people have tried and failed to murder me, and always I have found a way to outwit them. I have walked away intact from traps and ambushes, gun battles and truck chases. I’ll be damned if I let myself die at the hands of a nobody like Bruce Jewett. In that moment I vow I will do whatever it takes to return alive to the people I love.

Rage can be a poison, but it can also be fuel.