Page 49 of What is Found

What?He slowed though didn’t stop. Something was wrong. Something wasn’t quite right, but what? Something he had seen?

No.He had a feeling. The back of his neck prickled with a sudden premonition.I’m being watched.

But that was crazy, wasn’t it? They were in the middle of nowhere. He swept a quick glance at the snow around the van and along the base of the mountain. No footprints other than his from the night before, and those no more than vague dimples beneath fresh snow.

I feel something. I saw something.That prickly sensation was still there. He stood, by the van and out of the wind, now motionless. His breath rose in puffs that slowly eddied and swirled then tore apart infeathery strands like cotton candy. He faced the mountain; the narrow road carved into the hills leading up to the springs was to his left. Without turning his head, he slipped his gaze from the van and the mountain toward the leading edge of the road?—

And that was when he saw it—and knew a fresh disaster had found them.

CHAPTER 5

December 2021.

“You think this is cold?” Dare asked, though this was a rhetorical question requiring no answer. “Try going above the tree line. Air paper-thin and wind so fierce felt like a whip stinging your face, flaying your skin down to the bone. This is nothing, son. You want to be me, you need to handle extremes, battle your way through.”

“Uh-huh.” The boy Dare had known as his nephew trudged after. People who thought that Texas was hot and balmy only ever visited places like the Alamo and Brownsville. They went down to the Gulf or maybe Houston and Galveston but only in nice weather. Winters in west Texas could be fierce with ice storms that took down power lines and coated the limbs of live oaks with a thick layer of pure ice four or five inches thick. Sometimes, therewas so much ice the trees bowed like old men with long, heavy beards. More often than not, a branch cracked off, falling in great, jagged spears of ice-caked wood. Although this had not been one of those days, marching through the woods with Dare back then to go ice-fishing in his lake, the boy John had been felt if he rubbed his nose too hard, it might crack off in his hands.

“Tell you an old trick of the trade,” Dare said as they passed through the last of the orphaned maples and live oak. “Old sniper trick.”

“A trick?” His ears pricked with interest. Now they were getting somewhere. What was the point of slogging through the woods on a day like this? He wanted Dare to teach him to shoot. He could care less about hanging out in the cold. But maybe this was what a man like Dare had to endure. He’d seen enough movies to know: a real soldier, a realman,kept going. “What trick?”

“Most people think the trick to being a good sniper is hitting the target. That’s true, but that’s only part of the equation. Theotherproblem with being a sniper,anysniper, is you got to learn to hold yourself real still, still as death. Not just for a couple minutes, not just for a couple hours, but a lot of hours.” Shrugging out of his pack, Dare pulled out ice crampons. “The trick is learning how to become invisible. More to it than not moving.”

“But isn’t it just like being a rabbit?” Perching on arock, he slipped a crampon over a boot. “Be still and wear the right camouflage for where you are?”

“Sure.” Dare cinched down a crampon then fetched up a second, the icy metal rattling and chattering and chiming. “Gotta be quiet, too. Make sure your scope doesn’t catch any light. But there’sstillsomething else you have to remember about being out in the cold.”

“What’s that?”

“You tell me.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Half of what you learn in life, son, is what comes when you shut your mouth and watch and think. So, you just sit now, be as still as you can, and tell me how Istillknow you’re here. A dead giveaway, no matter if I’m standing, say, twenty, thirty feet away or looking through binos. How do I know you’rehere? Because, trust me, if I was all the way on the other side of the lake and you were as camouflaged as could be and let’s say, for grins and giggles, you’re behind a rock, I wouldstillknow. The answer isn’t magic either. So, tell me.” Dare cocked his head. “How will I find you? If I were a wolf and you were that snowshoe rabbit, going all still against a background as white as your pelt… Other than the wind changing and that wolf catching the scent of that rabbit, how would thatwolfknow you were there? What would give that rabbit away?”

Give a rabbit away? Give a sniperaway?He sat, thinking about it, watching Dare watch him, the both of them still as statues…and then noticed the one thing that a statue doesnotdo but a man must.

That was the moment he saw, precisely, the problem with invisibility.

CHAPTER 6

Andnow…

Because he was out of the wind, he saw the one thing that might give away even the most perfectly-camouflaged rabbit—or a hidden sniper, snuggled in the snow.

To his right, a faint, wispy cloud hung above a low hummock of snow. As he watched, the cloud slowly dissipated, the way curls of fog rise from the mirror-like surface of a still lake.

Oh boy.The blood in his veins turned to icy slush. But he knew he was right, that what he saw wasn’t an illusion or a tiny dervish of fine, wind-swept snow. There was no mistake. That cloud was there.

Because someone—or something—wasbreathing.

Might be an animal. Perhaps a goat had settled down out of the wind. Or this could be a curious villager no more eager than he to meet up with a stranger.

Whatever, whoever that is…he…it must know I’m here.His approach hadn’t been particularly stealthy simply because he figured there was no one else on the mountain.

He could continue. Take another step or two or three. An animal would almost certainly bolt.

But, a person? Maybe. Maybe not. Depended onwhatthe person was after, didn’t it?

---