Page 70 of Smoky Lake

“They made sense to me,” she said firmly. Then she paused and narrowed her eyes at him. “Everything red, everything dead. Don’t you remember that?”

“No, I told you. I don’t remember most of what I wrote. That’s why I’d like to get my notes back.”

Gil had Victor’s binder tucked away somewhere, and Ani had no intention of handing it over without talking to Gil first. Ever since Victor had sat across from her, barely recognizable with a thick curly growth of beard and blue contact lenses, she’d been on edge.

She had so many questions for him, but all he wanted to talk about was whether Gil had dug up that damn binder. He hadn’t even seemed especially worried about Gil’s health. Granted, she didn’t know Victor well—at all, really—but he seemed off, somehow. Maybe that was what going on the run from the CDC did to a guy.

“That’s not the most important thing right now. Gil is going to be back any minute, and he’ll want to sneak out of here. Trust me, I’ve been treating Gil, we’ve been through a lot together?—”

“You just met him.” Victor adjusted the backpack on his shoulders. Apparently he’d been living out of it for days, staying in an abandoned cabin near a lake—but not Smoky Lake, as they’d thought. “He’s a hard guy to get to know. I’ve known him for years and he’s still an enigma.”

“Then leave,” she snapped. “Take your chances. I know Gil well enough to know he did that whole thing to warn us.”

“I don’t need a warning. I’ve been staying three steps ahead of everyone.” Then he added, almost sheepishly, “Except for you guys. You’re very good at disappearing.”

“That’s thanks to Gil.” She grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door and stuffed it into her bag.

Victor scratched at his chin. His beard was even longer than Gil’s sickbed scruff. He looked so much more unkempt than before. “I’m the one who asked Gil to watch out for you. Seems like it’s going pretty well.” He surveyed the double bed in which they’d both been sleeping. “Maybe you need the warning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Be careful. Gil will never settle for one woman. Lachlan says he decided that after he lost his virginity as a teenager, and he’s never changed his mind.”

Ani ignored the stab of alarm that tightened her stomach. Gil had told her that he’d dated a lot of women, but he’d never put it that way.

She shoved aside the entire topic. That wasn’t important right now.

Where was Gil? What was taking him so long? What if he got arrested for that stunt on the RV? Or hauled off to a mental hospital?

She’d just about decided to go find him, no matter the risk, when the door opened and Gil slipped inside.

“We need to jet,” he said in a low voice. He narrowed his eyes at Victor. “Do you know anything about the sniper in the alder bushes?”

“What?” Ani gasped.

Victor went a little pale. “It’s them. How many were there? Did they have faces?”

“What?” Gil squinted at him.

“I mean, what did they look like?” Victor asked impatiently.

“It’s just one guy in camouflage gear.”

“But it could be more. Are you sure it’s not more?”

Gil met Ani’s gaze; she knew they were thinking the same thing. Victor didn’t seem entirely clear-headed. “We can talk about it later,” he said. “Ani, where’s the laundry? Can we grab it on the way out?”

“Yes, it’s just around back. Bad timing to decide everything needed to be washed at once.”

“Actually, it worked out well. Helped me look like a drunken lunatic.”

She scanned him, looking for signs that he was still fighting the virus, but he seemed back to his old self. A little more scruffy, a little thinner in the face, but just as striking as ever—maybe even more so, with his green eyes set even deeper in his face, like jade in a forest. “How are you feeling?” she asked him as she shouldered her bag.

“Better.” That curt answer was all she was going to get—and that fact alone told her plenty.

“What’s the plan?” Somehow she knew he had one. And she was right.

She went first to retrieve the laundry, while Victor stood guard outside the laundry room built onto the back of the structure. A few minutes later, a vehicle pulled up at the door. She recognized it as one of Donohue’s rigs. In his spare time, he liked to tinker on old junkers. A raft of them were parked along the creek. This one was a Ford F-250 with cardboard taped over the driver’s side window and a rear bumper held on with a bungee cord. An Alaskan rig if ever there was one. It would attract no special attention, and the cardboard would block the view into the cab.

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