He had found Pip. Something heavy lifted from his shoulders.

Max stepped into the woods and slid between a gap in the trees, the most logical place to walk. He was twenty feet in before he saw the second print, this time from the larger of the two men—Peter.

Max gave thought to following the trail alone, leaving Lyle behind the way Lyle had planned to leave him, but this wasn’t about Lyle, and it wasn’t about Max. This was about Pip. Max returned to the river and stood on a rock far enough off the bank that Lyle would see him if he bothered to look.

Max put his pinky fingers to his teeth and blew, but his whistle was swallowed by the crushing roar of the cascade. He waved his arms, the shotgun lifted high above his head. Lyle was about to follow the bend that would take him out of sight when he stood and stretched his back. Max thought he had looked his way, but he wasn’t sure. Lyle stood motionless for a few moments before he began his jog upstream.

When Lyle got to him, Max showed him the tracks. “They took the harder trek,” Max said. “Tried to hide their trail. They’re worried that we’re behind them.”

“They should be worried,” Lyle said.

Max and Lyle headed into the woods, zigzagging through gaps in the trees, looking for more prints. The trail led up the side of a hill that wasn’t as steep as the ravine wall they descended the night before, but was a challenge nonetheless. At the top, Lyle looked through the scope of his rifle, using it in place of binoculars.

He spoke as if to himself. “If we knew where they planned to cross into Canada, we could hustle around and cut ’em off. But if we choose wrong…” He slung his rifle onto his back. “For now we follow their trail.”

At the bottom of the hill they came to a small creek, the slow-moving water trickling beneath a thin cover of ice. The ground near the creek had been disturbed—trampled grass, matted pine needles—and food packages had been stuffed under a rock, a half-assed attempt to hide their trash.

“They camped here last night,” Max said, getting excited. “If they left at daybreak, they’re only…” Max looked up the hill in front of them, almost expecting to see Reed and Peter right there.

“We’re close,” Lyle said with a grin. He pulled the deer rifle from his shoulder and jumped across the creek, heading up the hill with the vigor of a man half his age, slowing only when he needed to look at the ground for footprints.

That climb seemed endless, the hillside laced with fallen trees, and rocks, and roots. There were sloughs and creeks that slowed them down, but those impediments would have also slowed Reed Harris. They had to be gaining.

At the top of the ridge, Lyle scoped the horizon in search of his grandson. He did the same thing at the top of the next hill. At the crest of their third hill, Lyle pointed at two peaks in the distance. “If he’s going for the falls, he should be on that hill to the right. If he’s crossing at the rapids, he’ll be the one on the left. We’ll know one way or the other once we cross the valley.”