She gives it a good few hours. How long do bears usually stay in one place? This is not exactly Maeve’s sphere of expertise. It has to be looking for food, she thinks, or it’s disoriented by the avalanche. She ices her leg and stretches, ices and stretches again, until she feels like she could run if she really had to. Then she puts on her jeans, and her boots and jacket overtop. At the last minute, she remembers the shovel leaning against the wall. She grabs it to take along with her, half weapon, half shield.

But as she goes for the door, there’s a sound, and she pulls up short. A rough thump or a stamping noise. Something just outside.

Maeve waits, listening, her grip a little tighter around the shovel’s handle even though there is a door between her and whatever is out there.

Then the scrape of a key. She watches, one hand still on the doorknob, as it seems to turn all by itself.

Not something but someone. Someone outside coming in.

For a moment, she remembers her first walk back through the woods at night. And Sim, lighting her way in the dark.

The door pushes open and Maeve is thrust back a foot or two. But it’s not Sim who steps into the fading light.

It’s Dan.

There’s a moment of silence, each on their own side of the door, Maeve too genuinely surprised to know what to say. Dan pulls the key from the lock and sinks it slowly into his pocket. Behind him, the forest is already growing dark.

“What are you doing out here?” His voice is sharper than it needs to be. “I thought I made myself clear this morning: everyone stays together.”

Maeve feels her body contract. She was expecting him to apologize for walking in on her, to make some excuse. Instead, he frowns at the shovel in her hand.

She lets it drop to her side.

“There was—I think there was a bear,” she says by way of explanation. Trying to recover. “A couple of hours ago, just outside. I could hear it moving around, and, you know, they have that smell—”

She’s tripping over her words, her eyes falling to the tool belt he has strapped to his coat. A utility light dangles there, against his hip. Dan, she reminds herself again, has a key to every door on the property. Cabins too.

“You shouldn’t be out here in the first place.” It’s such a change from the Dan she met only a couple of days ago. His voice is clipped, forceful. “Freaking yourself out.”

“No, I mean—it’s true, I was outside and—”

He doesn’t wait for her to finish.

“Let’s go,” he says, already turning away. “This is an emergency situation and I want the whole group together. Where it’s safe.”