“The wood for the fire is piled up next to the back door, and there’s a tool shed or some such thing out back.” Hank pointed out the kitchen window.

“I like the house, Hank, but I’m not sure about the location,” David said, peering at the dark shape of the shed on the edge of the woods, a guardian against whatever lurked in the deeper shadows. “It’s so…isolated.”

Hank frowned. “Yessir, I understand. But you’ve got to do some thinkin’. Any place out here is going to be the same, the way I figure it. If you want this job, you got to put up with these woods. I’m not trying to pressure you or nothing,” he added quickly. “Lord knows I wouldn’t do that. But you just got to do some thinkin’. I’d talk it over with the little lady, if I was you. I learned a long time back not to do much without checkin’ with your girl first. Makes ‘em less ornery.”

David smiled. “You’re right, and I will.” He was right; there was no way to avoid the dangers of living out in the woods, and that was one of the job requirements, like it or not. He had to be close to the plant. And how would it look to Hydro if he refused the first place offered to him, especially after this afternoon’s spat with Thompson? He might not be the one to make the ultimate decision of whether or not David kept his job, but he surely had a say in it.

Hank nodded. “All right then. I’d take you on out to the plant, but we need a snowcat for that, and it’s pretty dark now. It’s right through them woods out back.” He went out the front door. David stood for a long moment in the center of the living room. The house was still now, its ghosts asleep or in hiding, and he wondered again about the girl. Who was she, and what had happened to her? Was she Jessica’s age? He shuddered momentarily, imagining himself as the parent, sick and frantic with worry. I will never let that happen, he thought with conviction. Never.

But as he stood in the emptiness of the living room, watching the darkness beyond the glass, he felt alone and infinitely small in this wilderness, a tiny speck of human life. How could I stop it? Jesus, who would even hear her scream?

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hank dropped him off in the parking lot behind the Hydro Development offices about three hours later.