Her father was dying. Echo could see it in his eyes, in the pale hue of his face, in the slowing of his breath, and especially in the sluggish refill of his color when she pressed on his wrist to find a pulse.

He’d lost a lot of blood in the night, too much, despite his reassurance that he’d stopped bleeding. She’d tried to clog it with a mitten, then her thermal shirt, which she pulled off and tied around him.

She had to move him.

She’d debated leaving in the middle of the night, but the fact that the poachers were still out there somewhere had her father grabbing her arm, practically ordering her to stay.

And frankly, she was scared.

But not so scared of Idaho that she was going to let her father die in an old bear cave. Although, honestly, it might be his preferred choice of final resting places.

Clearly, she was turning dark and grim.

“We need to get you home,” she said sometime around 5:00 a.m., when the slivers of dawn started to creep into the cave. “We can take your machine, and I’ll come back for the dogs.”

He shook his head. “The sled is gone. When they shot at me, they burst a fuel line. I didn’t see it until I found Elsa. I managed to stop it up, but the tank is drained. It won’t get us a mile.”

Perfect.

So she’d just have to come up with another plan.

It was warm out, so warm that she worked up a sweat lugging him out of the cave and down the hill, onto the dogsled, which she’d uncovered and tied the dogs to. They were yipping, barking, whining, and pulling at the sled. Good thing she’d tied it to a nearby birch tree.

If Idaho were out here looking for them, he’d only have to follow the sounds of her excited dogs.

She didn’t like the texture of the snow, the way it clung to itself. Mushing through this would be like glue.

“We’re not going home,” she said as she tucked a sleeping bag over her father. She’d already packed their belongings and added them to the sled. Too much weight, maybe, for the dogs, which meant she’d have to help push. Or run along behind.

“We can’t make it thirty miles home, or however far it is in these conditions, so we’re taking the creek over to Cache Mountain and the cabins beyond. I figure it’s about five, six miles, at the most.”

“You’ll have to cross the lake,” he said. “And then the ridge.”

“I know.”