The cabin, which consisted of three rooms—a living room that also served as a kitchen and dining room, a bathroom, and a small bedroom—was quaint and casually decorated with quilts, a few cracking landscape paintings, and a reindeer head mounted on the wall. White lace curtains hung in the windows. Dried wildflowers sat in a small vase atop a table big enough for two. It smelled of pine, mildew, and animal furs, which covered two chairs in the corner next to a small bookcase.

He paused at the bedroom door, leaning one hand against the wall for support. With several shotgun pellets still lodged in his side he had to fight to not grunt in pain. He focused on the sounds coming from the living room. He heard the thumping footfalls of a single person walking over the cabin’s wood floor. Then came a dragging noise.

A body, Rook thought.

He tensed, sensing the person’s approach. He took a step back from the door, raising his weapon. A floorboard creaked beneath his foot.

Holding his breath, Rook waited for some sign that he’d been heard. When it came, it wasn’t what he expected.

“Hello?” said a feminine voice speaking Russian. Given the tone and pitch of the woman’s voice, Rook thought she sounded like his mother, who was sixty-two. Harmless. He quickly tucked his weapon into the back of his pants and speaking Russian, said, “I thought the cabin was abandoned.”

The door opened slowly. A woman with gray hair tied back in a braid stood on the other side. She held a hunting rifle in her hands, aimed at Rook’s chest. A dead reindeer, drained of blood, lay on the floor behind her.

Not so harmless, Rook thought. But not yet a threat.

She looked him up and down, her eyes freezing on his torn-up sweater and the deep, blood-red stains surrounding the wound.

“You’ve been shot?”

“Hunting accident.”

“You did this to yourself?”

Rook wondered what the best story would be. He needed this woman’s cooperation, but she was clearly a self-sufficient old hermit who might not take kindly to visitors, especially visitors stupid enough to shoot themselves. “No,” he said. “I was hiking in the woods. They must have mistaken me for a deer. After they shot me, I was unconscious. I woke in the back of their truck and overheard them talking about killing me.”

Rook paused, searching her eyes for some sign that she was buying his story. He saw that her anger had softened and continued. “I jumped from the truck and fled. I came across your cabin last night and took shelter from the cold.”

She squinted at him and then glanced at the fireplace. “You didn’t make a fire.”

“I thought they might be looking for me.”

She pondered this for a moment and then lowered the rifle. “You still have some buckshot in you?”