The truck turned, and he opened his eyes. Red had left known roads and was now driving into woodsy hills Jack had never seen. They made the first tracks along the ridgeline. Tires spinning over rocks and sliding on deep powder curves. The tall, thin trees on the slopes watched like scraggy sentries. A smoky haze out there in the low valley. Finally Red pulled off at a bend in the road marked by a boulder and parked.

Red said, “It’s about five hundred yards. Through them trees.”

They got out. Cold air hit Jack’s lungs and made him bend and cough until his chest was like fire. He looked up with watering eyes. The snow had stopped, and in these hills the sky was dazzlingly bright, the color of frozen sea and just as clear. Red broke a path through the snow without looking back, trudging one way and then another. Jack followed Red’s footprints around tree trunks and under great dark branches, working to master the cough. Slow, even breathing. Not too deep.

He kept his gaze trained on Red’s back. Watch. You must watch him.

This could all be a trick.

He felt for the folded hunting knife in his pocket.

The forest thickened. Great pine boughs and undergrowth. Then they came upon a clearing. A camp trailer set against the trees, about twelve feet long. A horizontal strip of faded brown paint and the roof piled high with snow. The metal hitch rested on a log. Shape of a fire pit in the snow. At the side of the camper was an old wooden smokehouse and toolshed. A roll of orange twine hung from a hook. Red stopped and scanned the site, his breath whiffing from his mouth and floating toward the treetops.

“Check the camper. It won’t be locked.”

Red headed toward the shed. Jack watched him go until a gust of wind made him totter and almost fall. His legs were weak and his head felt tipsy. Fever, he guessed. He trudged to the camper and opened the door.

Coldness and damp. A mold smell. Linoleum floor, and on the bed a mattress stained dark. Rusted sink and a small stove and a dinette. Trash piled in a corner. Jack stepped inside and opened a cupboard. Salt and pepper. Bottle of ketchup. In a drawer lay some plastic silverware. A lighter. The blankets were rotting.

Mouse droppings. The smell was awful.

The briefcase wasn’t there.

He sat at the dinette. What to be done, then? There was no one to give ideas. He bent over and laid his head in his arms on the tabletop. Think. What troubled him most was the dark silk that kept wavering in his head, concealing his sense of danger, making his brain dull … casting him over a black edge …