“Fuck me.”
“You would have seen it too.”
Emery snorted. “I didn’t see it, John. There’s no need to be generous.” His high-powered flashlight did a much better job of illuminating the deck and the stairs down, but even with both of them looking, they couldn’t find where the trail of blood picked up again. It seemed like it ended here. “Where the fuck did this shitweasel go?”
“There’s no way he went back through the trailer,” John-Henry said. “Not bleeding like this. I checked.”
The only response was a grunt. John-Henry understood his husband’s frustration; it was like someone had scooped up Vermilya and carried him away—with a nice, convenient plastic tarp underneath to catch all the blood.
John-Henry’s eyes went back to the junk on the deck. To the plastic sled propped up in the corner.
Emery’s head came up. Those scarecrow eyes glowed when the light caught them—a flicker of winter fire. “You’re shitting me.”
This time, John-Henry’s laugh felt like it loosened something in him. “Why not? Set it on the deck, sit, slide down the steps. The ground’s covered in ice; it wouldn’t take much to drag yourself along.”
“We’re talking about someone who was shot.”
“And motivated,” John-Henry said. “And, if this is the same person we’ve been dealing with for the last half a year, intelligent and disciplined and careful. Aniya told me he’s ex-military. He must have been going into shock, but he held it together and got out of here.”
“No, not quite. He got out of the trailer. But he’s still here.”
Before John-Henry could reply, Emery took the steps down. He ran the flashlight over the ground. The packed ice didn’t take impressions easily, not the way snow would, and John-Henry couldn’t see any tracks that indicated where the sled had passed. But it was easy to guess which way Vermilya—disoriented, injured, and rapidly losing strength—would have gone: down, following the gentle slope of the ground.
Emery ran the beam of light in that direction.
A sheet of the trailer’s plywood skirting stood cattywampus, one corner sticking out.
They approached together. Emery kicked the sheet, and it toppled over. He sent the light into the crawlspace.
The man was blond, big, and his face was white and slack, and he lay on top of a plastic sled. John-Henry looked for some trace, anything that suggested he had met this man before, but he found nothing. For a moment, John-Henry thought he was dead, and then he heard faint, labored breathing.
“Well,” Emery said, “shit.”
7
The next morning, after Colt left for basketball practice, the eight of them met in the kitchen. The silence had a brooding quality, lingering over the house all morning. Now and then, Evie and Lana’s laughter from upstairs took some of the edge off. John-Henry tried to focus on that, on the taste of the peppermint creamer he’d poured into his coffee, on the familiar rhythms of their home in winter. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend he’d taken a day off work. That this was a vacation.
“I’m not trying to be a downer,” Tean said. He sat at the table, a mug of tea wrapped in his hands. Jem stood behind him, a hand on Tean’s shoulder. “But are you sure no one saw you?”
“It’s ok,” Shaw said. “You don’t even have to try to be a downer. It comes to you naturally.”
“Uh.”
“It’s a compliment,” Jem said.
“I’m not sure—”
“It’s definitely a compliment.” Shaw nodded along eagerly with his words. “It’s one of your five sexiest traits.”
“I really don’t think—”
But Jem said over him, “Top three, I think.”
“Five sexiest traits,” North said. “I’m standing right here.”
“Oh, you’re a downer too. I mean, not in the same sexy, my-hair-is-wild-and-my-eyes-are-the-deepest-softest-brown-and-I’ve-stared-into-the-black-cold-heart-of-the-universe way like Tean.”
“Damn, that’s spot on,” Jem said.