She turned her head and blinked at him. She looked stunned, like a person jerked back from some distant place by a tightened cord.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, sort of.”

“We’re okay. We’ve got a way out of this.”

“You’re bleeding. Your shoulder.”

“It’s not bad.”

She clutched tighter to the wheel.

He could hear her fear. He could taste it.

“We just have to stay calm,” he said.

They drove. Looking out through the window at the road. The woods rising up ahead. A wind had begun to disturb the top of the spires, and in the swell, it looked like the waking of some sleeping creature, rising up among the crags of forest and granite. Then the snow shifted—there was only the lift and fall of the wind.

“It’s good,” Jack said. “Right?”

“It’s good.”

“We’ll get him back.”

She looked at him abruptly. “Can you hold my hand?”

He pulled her hand into his.

It felt right. Her hand in his. He managed to drag in a breath.

The woods were just trees. There was nothing more.

“We’re okay,” she said.

“We’re okay.”

“And we always will be.”

“Yes. We always will be.”

XV

When you’re scared of someone, you hate them, but you can’t stop thinking about them. You try to know them. Feel their thoughts. You want to see through their eyes so you can know what they’re going to do.

For a long time, I thought about what Bardem was going to do.

I’d thought about it all my life.

Sitting in that car, I didn’t even have to try.

I knew him. And I knew me.

Bardem watched the rearview mirror. The yellow lights of a snowplow shoveling along, down the highway. Distant in the valley. He turned onto a road invisible beneath stacking snow and skidded as he pushed on the gas. He marked the mileage on the odometer. When he pulled up in front of the steel storage building, there were no wheel ruts on the road other than his own.

He got out and stood looking east. The weathered black pines strewn over the landscape. The snowtop dusted in pine needles, the shift of dark trees.

He pulled on gloves and made his way to the garage door. The wind rattled the steel. The snow was several feet high. He squatted and turned the key in the padlock and rolled up the door, his breath pluming.

Inside, the building was dark. He pulled the cover away from the snowmobile and checked the throttle. The oil and filter were fresh. He straddled the seat and grasped the handlebar and turned the key. When the sled fired up, he released the choke. A cold start needed time to idle, and he gave it ten minutes.