Read Chapter 29: Into the Woods

The wind had teeth that morning. Camille felt them snap at her cheeks the moment she stepped out of the truck, the cold biting through her scarf, her wool hat, her resolve. Antoine handed her a pair of snowshoes from the bed of his pickup, his breath fogging in clouds.

"Two hours, if the snow holds," he said, cinching his pack straps. "Three if it doesn't."

She looked at the trail ahead—a narrow seam between black spruce and white birch, barely visible under the fresh snowfall. The map was folded in her chest pocket, pressed against her heartbeat. She'd traced the route so many times the creases were soft as cloth.

"Then we make it in two."

Antoine almost smiled. Almost. The bruise of worry still shadowed his eyes, and she saw him glance back toward the village, toward the police cruiser that might come looking for them. But then he turned his face into the wind and set off, and Camille followed.

The snowshoes felt like clown feet at first, clumsy and wide. But Antoine moved with a quiet economy she admired—each step deliberate, body leaning forward, poles planted like a man who'd done this a thousand times. She counted her own heartbeats to find her rhythm, the pace settling into something almost meditative.

The forest swallowed them whole.

They walked in silence for the first hour. The only sounds were the crunch of compressed snow and the occasional groan of a branch shedding its load. Camille's ears ached. Her fingers, even through wool gloves, felt stiff as sticks. But she didn't complain. Antoine carried something heavier than his pack, and she knew the only way to help him carry it was to keep moving.

"You didn't have to come," he said finally, without turning around.

"Yes," she said, "I did."

He paused and looked back at her, and for a moment the wind dropped, and the forest went perfectly quiet. His face was raw, red from the cold, and she thought he might say something. Instead he nodded once and pushed on.

The trail steepened. The trees thinned, then thickened again, and the map's careful markings began to match the terrain—a fallen oak shaped like a hook, a creek crossing frozen solid, a ridge of granite wearing its moss like fur. When they crested the ridge, Antoine stopped.

"There."

Below them, tucked into a hollow of evergreens, sat a cabin.

It was small, built of logs gone gray with weather, with a stone chimney that had shed half its mortar. Smoke did not rise from it. No light showed through the single window. But the snow at the door was disturbed—packed down in a rough oval, the kind worn by a boot crossing back and forth.

"Someone's been here," Antoine said. "Recent, too. That's not wind-drift."

Camille's chest tightened. She pulled the map from her pocket, looked from the paper to the cabin and back. The sketch had been simple—a square, a cross for the chimney, a line marking the ridge. She hadn't dared believe it would be so exact.

"Stay behind me," Antoine said.

"Absolutely not."

He opened his mouth to argue, caught her expression, and closed it. A gust of wind rocked them both, and he shook his head. "Fine. But if I say run, you run."

They descended the ridge, snowshoes sliding on the packed surface until they reached the flat ground before the cabin. The door was shut, but not latched—a rusted iron handle stood out from the wood, one screw loose. Antoine pushed it open with two gloved fingers.

The interior smelled of woodsmoke, old grease, and something else. Something just wrong.

A pot hung over the cold stove, half-full of congealed stew. A spoon lay on the floor beside it. Dishes sat in a chipped basin, and a tin cup had been knocked onto its side, still holding a dark stain at the bottom. On the table, a candle had burned down to a nub.

"Someone left in a hurry," Camille said.

Antoine crossed the room in three steps and crouched by the stove. His fingers brushed the ash, tested it between his gloves. "Still warm. A day, maybe less." He looked up, eyes narrowing. "Luc was here."

"How do you know?"

He pointed to a hook by the door. A faded orange toque hung there, its brim slowly uncurling. "That's his. His mother knitted it. He wore it every winter since we were kids."

Camille pressed a hand to her sternum. Four days missing. Four days of questions, and here was a room where he'd stood—where he'd eaten, slept, lived. She walked the perimeter, her translator's eye catching details the way she caught nuance in sentences. A tarp stretched over a stack of firewood. A second pair of gloves on the shelf, newer, not Luc's size. A mattress on the platform bunk, rolled tight and tied with rope.

"He wasn't alone," she said.

"No." Antoine stood, brushing ash from his knees. "He never came here alone."

He moved toward the window, scanning the treeline outside. His body was taut, all coiled alertness, and Camille understood suddenly how much he trusted her—to bring her here, to show her this side of him, the hunter's patience his photography had taught him.

Something crinkled under her snowshoe.

She looked down. A strip of paper curled by the table leg, its edge torn and rough. She bent to retrieve it, and when she turned it over, her breath stopped.

It was a photograph, ripped in half so one edge was clean, the other ragged. What remained showed two figures standing in front of a truck with a canoe rack. One was Luc—younger, smiling, dark hair tousled by wind. His arm was looped around the other's shoulders. It ended at the elbow. The head was gone.

But the woman's body remained, and so didn't her face entirely. Camille could make out a jawline, a fall of dark hair, a shoulder leaning into him easily.

"Antoine."

He was at her side in a heartbeat. Their shoulders pressed close as she held the torn photograph between them, and she heard the air leave his lungs in a slow, painful exhale.

"Who is she?" Camille asked.

Antoine shook his head. "I don't—" He stopped. Turned the photograph toward the window's gray light, squinting. "I never saw her with him. Not this woman."

"Look at how they stand together." Camille traced the curve of the woman's arm, the intimate tilt of Luc's head. "They knew each other well. This is familiar. This is—"

"More than friends."

The word hung in the cold air of the cabin. Outside, wind rattled the loose pane, and a scatter of snow from the roof slid past the window like a curtain dropped mid-act.

Camille looked again at the table. One plate. One cup. The second set of gloves on the shelf, sized for smaller hands.

"Luc had someone," she said slowly. "Someone no one knew about." Her eyes lifted to meet Antoine's. "Someone who's out there right now."

He turned the photograph over. On the back, in the same hand that had drawn the map—precise, small, deliberate—was an address. A village name she didn't recognize. And a date, almost a year old, circled twice.

"We have to get back," Antoine said, but his voice was tight. "I need to show this to someone who'll know the face."

"And if the storm catches us?"

The sky, visible through the window, had gone a bruise color at the edges. The wind had picked up, moaning through the eaves like something alive. Antoine traced the womans's elbow, the ripped edge of the photograph, then drew his shoulders back.

"Then we beat it," he said. "I'm not leaving this here."

He folded the photograph carefully and slid it into his inner jacket pocket. Camille checked the map once more, then turned to the door. She wanted a moment to examine the cabin more closely, but the instinct was older and louder now—the need to move, to outrun what was coming, to bring this truth back to the village before it buried under snow.

They stepped into the wind, and the forest closed around them.