He watched her while she watched him. Her drawn face and those eyes. There would never be someone like her again.

“I’ll find it,” she said.

He believed her.

She got up and pulled him by the hand and lifted the briefcase. They went on. Bleak snow falling to the earth like ashes sprinkled by a grieving mother.

XIII

The light is dying now, but I will not go gentle there. I will rage.

Life should spark and burn like meteors and end the same.

Scorch hot as flames.

I will blaze.

And you, fate: Curse me, bless me. Do all the things you do.

Night is near and dark is coming.

But I will spark and burn and blaze.

I will rage I will rage.

The first police vehicle pulled up to the storage building, followed by the second and then the third. It was almost dark. A hyperboreal twilight with red emergency lights flaring across the snow. Doyle got out of the truck and put on snowpants and tightened his shoulder holster. Midge got out of the passenger side and pulled down her fur hat around her ears.

“When do you aim to talk to them?” she asked.

“When I know what it is I’m sayin’.”

Four men and a woman got out of the other vehicles. The law enforcement officer for Caribou-Targhee National Forest stepped down into the snow in worn Carhartt overalls, old eyes looking out of the black balaclava that he wore. Belt with canteen and pistol and leather sheath for a knife. He was as rugged looking as the countryside. The rest were dressed in Kevlar vests and black parkas branded with DEA in white lettering. The woman wore a medical first-aid pack on her shoulders, and all of them carried Glock 17 pistols. Headlamps and tactical packs.

Doyle stood looking at the sled tracks. The faint bootprints that followed. Two sets. It was snowing slightly, and the wind set the woods to shuddering. The others unloaded snowmobiles from behind the truck trailers and stood waiting.

“The cabin,” Doyle said, “is three miles up that mountain. The clerk at the gas station IDed Bardem and confirmed the cabin location. Any questions?”

The head DEA agent raised his hand.

“Sheriff Doyle,” he said. “What do we know about Mr. Bardem?”

“If he aims at you, he ain’t likely to miss.”

The agent smiled. Like it was all a joke or something. Doyle looked at him steadily.

“We got kids out here,” he said. “I don’t want them hurt. You all understand?”

“Do they have the money?” one of the men asked.

Doyle stood watching the agents. He leaned and spat. “I’ll say this once. If any of you hurt one hair on those kids’ heads, I better be dead first.”

Drift of snow. Wind rustled high in the pines.