Their progress through the snow was hard going and slow. They took frequent breaks—primarily for Mercy—and eventually finished the food and water Beckett had packed. Eden had humbly admitted she hadn’t thought about packing food. Mercy understood. The girl hadn’t known they’d be walking in the snow for a full day. Or longer. Mercy hated to eat all the food, but her body desperately needed the fuel to heal and continue her pace in the punishing environment.

Eden had filled the empty water bottle with snow and tucked it under her coat, letting her body heat slowly melt the white fluff. At first Mercy had worried that the bottle would make Eden colder, but both of them puffed with exertion. Sweat beaded Mercy’s skin, and she alternated between chills and shivers.

Sitting down during the first break had been a huge mistake. Mercy’s body had nearly refused to get back up. After that, she simply rested against a tree or braced her hands on her thighs for several minutes, panting and fighting her dizziness.

She’d vomited twice and was angry with her body for purging the food she’d eaten for strength. A concussion was her suspicion. The kicks and punches to her head had rattled and bruised her brain.

The sun came up, creating a weak glow behind the white and gray of the cloudy sky. But at least they could see. Their eyes strained to stay open as the wind changed course and sandblasted their faces with tiny, hard snowflakes. Mercy preferred the huge, slow-falling flakes. And no wind. Their weather had frequently alternated between the two types and also included everything in between.

“I hate snow,” Eden muttered. “Never hated it before.”

Mercy said nothing. She was thinking about Beckett and wondered if anyone at the compound had noticed she was missing. Would Pete know he was the one who’d released her? Would Beckett be punished? It was unsettling. She had previously burned with hate for the man, and now she was concerned.

Or had Beckett deliberately sent her off into the wilderness in a storm? Was there really someone living in a cabin out here? Maybe letting Mercy die a natural death didn’t go against Beckett’s code of honor. She shoved the worry out of her thoughts; she had no strength to dwell on doubts.

They had little concept of time. Eden said it’d been three or four in the morning when she’d spotted Mercy and Beckett leaving the compound, and Mercy estimated the sun had risen around seven.

“Eden?” Mercy asked as a thought occurred to her. “What were you doing out of your cabin that early in the morning?” The fact that this question had just occurred to her told Mercy how slow and injured her brain might be.

The teen ducked her head. “I wander around sometimes.”

She recalled Eden’s previous confession of searching through people’s belongings. Did she do it at night too?

“I don’t sleep well. I like to hide from the sentries and see if I can get around the compound without them spotting me. They haven’t yet,” she added proudly.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” said Mercy, remembering how stealthily Sean moved through the night. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d tailed the teen and watched her wander for his own amusement.

Sentry duty was dull.

Mercy had kept an eye out their entire trek for the steep rock face Beckett had described. You can’t miss it. Nothing resembled it. So far they had passed gentle or moderately steep slopes with snow and trees. No rock.

Did we wander off course?

She didn’t think so. They had definitely followed the bottom of the ravine. There had been nothing lower to walk along. She’d checked her compass a few times, learning they had steadily traveled just a few degrees to the west of south. When they found the rock face, they were to turn southeast for a mile to reach the cabin.

Maybe the rock face isn’t that steep and was covered with snow. We didn’t see it.

Terror shot through her freezing limbs as she imagined them wandering, lost in the white gloom.

A few minutes later, the sides of the ravine flattened out as the women slogged up a slight incline. They reached the top and stopped, panting and staring at the flat, frosted terrain ahead. The visibility was poor. Mercy judged it to be less than fifty feet because of the blowing snow.

Without the sides of the ravine to guide them, she was at sea.

“Are we walking the right way?” Eden asked.

Mercy hadn’t voiced her own doubts during their hike, not wanting to unnecessarily alarm the teen. “Yes,” she answered with as much conviction as possible.

“But where do we turn to walk southeast?”

“It’s farther ahead.” She hoped.

Pulling out the compass again, Mercy searched for a landmark to use so she could guide them in their original direction. There was nothing. The trees had stopped with the ravine.

“Eden, I need you to walk straight ahead and stop when I yell.”

“Why?”

“I want to use you as a landmark, so we can continue moving in the same direction the ravine took us.”

Eden nodded and trudged forward, breaking a trail. The snow had steadily grown deeper and now was to the tops of their boots.

“Stop!” Mercy yelled as Eden started to fade into the snowy haze.

The girl didn’t stop.

Mercy took a few running steps, her knee and head throbbing in pain. “Stop!” she screamed at the top of her voice, imagining Eden disappearing for good.

Mercy didn’t want to be alone.

Eden stopped and turned around. Mercy caught her breath and set the compass with shaking hands. She gestured for Eden to take several steps to her left until she was properly in line. Then Mercy painfully hiked to join her and suggested Eden frequently look backward to be certain Mercy was still in sight. They repeated the slow process several times.

Finally their path sloped down and became a gentle ravine with low sides.

Is this right?

They moved on, Eden’s shoulder under Mercy’s arm again.

A minute later Eden stopped. “Look!”

Through the snowy fog, a towering rock cliff loomed ahead on the right. Mercy nearly cried in relief.

They took a short break, and Mercy chewed up the last of the Children’s Tylenol. Her pain was better than when Beckett had woken her, but she could feel her first dose wearing off. As with the food, she hated to use the last of the Tylenol, but right now it was important she feel her best to keep up the difficult hike.

“Beckett said the cabin is about a mile southeast from here.” Mercy needed to say it out loud again, even though Eden already knew. The vague directions terrified Mercy. No doubt the cabin was easy to find on a clear day, but walking in a thick white soup made her skin crawl with apprehension.

The cabin would be easy to miss.

“Let’s go,” said Eden. “We need to do that landmark thing with the compass again, right? There’re no trees.”

“Yes.” Mercy took a hard look at the barely-there round illumination in the sky behind the fog of snowfall, mentally marking the height of the sun. It was her only way to judge time. At their slow pace, a mile would easily take an hour. Assuming Beckett’s estimate of a mile was accurate. She pointed, and Eden trudged ahead.

After repeating the landmarking process several times, Mercy noticed the teen could move farther away before she nearly vanished into the white haze. The falling snow had lightened up, and Mercy had to squint against the glaring stark white of the ground. Spindly trees cropped up occasionally, and Mercy used them for landmarks, thankful that Eden could help her walk during those times.

It went on and on as they paced exactly southeast.

Their breaks grew more frequent, and Mercy glanced at the position of the pale circle behind the low, gray clouds in the sky.

Has it been two hours? Maybe more?

A mild panic set in. She breathed heavily, and Eden passed her the bottle of melted snow. The water was lukewarm and felt like heaven sliding down her throat. The teen was a good partner. She hadn’t complained, and Mercy had noticed Eden would spend extra effort to break up the snow in her trail. An attempt to make Mercy’s hike as easy as possible when she followed.

Eden was a good kid and deserved to be with her family. Her mother had to be searching for the children. Mercy couldn’t imagine a mother who would abandon kids like Noah and Eden.

Mercy leaned against a skinny fir tree for a break. Tears welled as she wondered if she’d ruined Eden’s chance to be reunited with her family. Horrible scenarios of dying in the wilderness spun in her brain, dragging her toward a deep pit of despair. She’d fucked up. They’d missed the cabin. Everything was her fault. If she hadn’t accepted the ATF assignment, Eden would be just fine.

But Noah would be dead.

Breath rushed out of her lungs. She’d saved one sibling only to lead the other to a possible death.

“Do you smell that?” Eden asked, spinning in a circle, her nose in the air.

“I can’t smell a thing.” Her nose didn’t work. She’d breathed through her mouth the entire hike.

“It’s woodsmoke. Quite strong.” Eden’s blue eyes lit up.

Relief weakened Mercy’s knees, and she sat hard in the snow, her gloved hands pressed to her face.

We’ll be okay.

THIRTY