Untying his boots, Peter found a gap in the branches and peered across the river. The far bank was in shadow. It wasn’t yet dark enough to require headlights, but the orange sun was low in the southwest. He didn’t see any sign of the dust plume from a fast-moving pickup.

He removed his boots and poured out the water. He stripped off his fleece and T-shirt, then his hiking pants and wool socks and the high-tech long underwear bottoms that had seemed like overkill at noon. He was grateful for them now because, even wet, they would help keep him warm. The temperature would drop below freezing before midnight.

He stood barefoot on a flat rock and wrung the river from his clothes, lean and rough and naked but for the silt on his skin, as if sculpted by some imperfect shaman from no better materials than sacred dirt and snowmelt and mumbled prayers.

As he began to dress again, the fabric still damp and cold, he remembered what the pregnant woman had said about her husband. He’s already killed two people that I know of. He’s cold as ice. And he doesn’t know what I might have told you.

Peter thought of the torn piece of fabric she’d given him, the embroidered hem of her skirt. He checked to make sure it was still in his pocket. She’d given it to him for a reason, he supposed, although he had no idea why. Some kind of good-luck charm? He wished he’d had time to ask more questions. It would help to know what he was up against.

A bad man, she’d said.

The fact that the other man had killed people wasn’t Peter’s main concern. Any idiot with a firearm could take a life. That didn’t necessarily make him dangerous. Peter had lived a life of violence himself, in the Marines and afterward, to protect himself and the people he cared for, and sometimes to end a larger threat.

But what was the context for the husband’s killings? Outside a bar, in a fit of drunken anger? As part of a greater scheme? He wouldn’t be the first ex-cop to turn his skills to some criminal enterprise.

He doesn’t know what I might have told you.

Maybe, like a few guys Peter had known in the service, the husband had grown to like the worst parts of the job. Had gotten good at it.

That wasn’t the only problem. The way the husband had set the trap in the cut told Peter the other man had excellent local knowledge of the roads and terrain. He also was a decent tactician and had reliable partners with good communications. Between the four of them, now, they had at least three vehicles and two kinds of firearms.