Cameo couldn’t believe the turn her life had taken. Being on the run from a drug cartel had not been in her binder, but apparently she couldn’t plan everything that was going to happen to her. She swallowed her desire to curse as she kept her eyes fixed on her boots, carefully watching her footing as she navigated a particularly treacherous stretch of the narrow dirt trail that cut through the forest, hugging the base of a steep white mountain.
Even though she tried to keep her focus on not falling into the pines and firs that lined the slope to her right, part of it kept drifting to behind her. She tensed and froze as a sound echoed through the forest and she imagined someone was there, closing in on her. Her heart lodged in her throat, hammering there, and her breaths came faster, fogging in the chilly air. She resisted the urge to hurry onwards and started slowly moving again. Rushing was a sure-fire way of making herself trip and if she fell and hurt herself out here, only one of three things was going to happen.
She would freeze to death.
One of the local predators would eat her.
Or the men she was sure were following her would catch her.
Cameo breathed hard as the trail narrowed even further and sharply began to ascend to a part of the forest where the trees were sparser and the snow had been able to settle on the ground. She held back another curse. This wasn’t good.
Her breath misted in the air in front of her face as she picked her way over a tangled root that crossed the path, gripped a whip-thin sapling with her left hand and eased along a section of trail that had a sharp downwards angle to it that made her feel the mountain was determined to hurl her off it. Sweat dampened her brow beneath her thick woollen hat, irritating her. She wanted to wipe it away, but she wasn’t about to remove her gloves. The temperature was declining rapidly as the afternoon wore on and she couldn’t afford to lose any more of her body heat. She wasn’t sure she would be able to light a fire to warm up when it got too dark for her to continue.
They might see it.
They might find her.
Cameo wasn’t sure how they had caught up with her.
Back in Banff, she had been sure she had lost them, had started to relax while stocking up on supplies and had even spent the night in a motel, but then a red SUV had tailed her rental to the outskirts of the town and hadn’t left her rear view for close to fifty miles. When she had taken a precautionary detour to prove to herself that she was just being jittery and she wasn’t being followed, the SUV had remained on her tail.
Cameo had panicked and tried to lose them, had made it far enough ahead of them that they would have lost sight of her on the winding highway, and had turned down another road.
She had picked a doozy.
The road she had thought would lead her north towards another main road had led her to what amounted to little more than a forestry track. Recent tyre tracks had given her hope that she would find a cabin somewhere at the end of it, some place where she could call for help even when she hated the thought of pulling anyone into danger. When she had reached the end of the track, there had been several vehicles parked there, all of them covered in snow.
Cameo had parked her car next to them, dressed quickly for the weather and grabbed her backpack, and hadn’t stuck around. She had headed into the mountains, following a trail at first, but she lost it somewhere in the woods as a storm had closed in and had ended up taking a quick break to check the map in her pack.
She had checked her position on her GPS five times and had eventually ended up cursing.
It turned out that the valley she had picked only had one building marked on it and it was across the other side of the valley, miles from where she was.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found a trail that led downwards before she reached the snowline, followed that instead and remained on guard, listening for signs of life in the forest. There had to be someone living out here. Those cars had been there for some time and the footprints in the snow had led in this direction, not towards the other side of the valley. She glanced up the mountain. Maybe if she could climb a little higher, where she could see above the tops of the trees, she might be able to spot a cabin nearby.
Probably not. Snow whizzed across the mountain, obscuring the peak of it, and the storm was only getting worse. Soon, it would be a blizzard. Climbing higher to see anything in this weather was not only dangerous, but pointless. She wouldn’t be able to see a few feet in front of her face.
Cameo rubbed her right arm, trying to keep the chill off it as the wind buffeted her and snow bit into her face as the gale drove it through the trees. Her thick dark green coat and black pants had been made for this weather, but she still felt the bitter bite of the cold. Her toes were numb in her waterproof boots, despite the thermal fleece that lined them, and her fingers felt ready to fall off.
She looked up as the light began to fade and told herself that she didn’t need to be worried when a jolt of fear jangled her veins and chilled her blood. Bears would be asleep at this time of year. Although that left her with wolves and cougars to worry about.
She chuckled mirthlessly.
And humans.
She looked back over her shoulder, peering into the gloomy forest, trying to see past the snow that made it through the canopy, falling in great chunks in places as wind shook the pines. She sent up a silent prayer that she had been mistaken even when she knew she wasn’t. It was them. The same men who had threatened her. Maybe they would keep going on the highway or not think to check the road she had taken. Maybe they were right on her tail, hidden just beyond that ridge she could see.
How was she going to get out of this one? If she kept going, she was only moving deeper into dangerous territory. She didn’t have enough food to keep her alive for long, although the cold would probably kill her before hunger did. If she didn’t keep going, there was a chance the men would catch her, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
She could call the authorities.
But part of her was still convinced that was a wrong move and would end with her being in more trouble than she was right now. The cartel, or whatever they called themselves, had made it clear that her parents would end up just like her brother if she spoke with anyone.
She couldn’t keep going like this though. Even if she evaded them, eventually they would catch her, or worse, they would go after her parents to make her give herself up.
She fished her phone from her pocket and checked it, her hands shaking as the screen lit up. No signal. Calling for help wasn’t an option after all. She tried to stop herself, but her thumb moved to the messages and pressed on the icon, and sickness rolled through her as she opened one of them.
Cameo stared at the picture they had sent her, one that had made her vomit when she had first seen it, still terrified and tormented her now.
Nate, her younger brother, was unrecognisable in it, slumped in a chair with his arms bound behind his back, covered in blood.
Dead.
She couldn’t let that happen to her parents.
Wouldn’t let that happen to her.
Cameo closed the message and shoved the phone back in the pocket of her salopettes, shifting the canister of bear spray that hung from her belt aside. She paused and leaned against one of the towering pines, breathing hard as she struggled not to vomit. When they had sent that photograph to her, she had been convinced it was some sort of terrible joke, the kind her brother would play on her.
When two men had shown up at her door and threatened her, she had realised it was real.
Nate was dead and now the cartel he had worked for was after her, all because he had told them she had the money they wanted.
She didn’t.
Her brother had always been a wild card, had always done crazy things, the complete opposite of her as he had rolled with the punches and seen where the wind would blow him, but she had honestly thought he had put that life behind him. When he had moved from the small sleepy hamlet where they had grown up on the east coast to busy Vancouver eight years ago, she had loved having him nearby, had visited him often at first.
But then her job as a park ranger had taken her out of the city and into the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Cameo had thought he had been doing well.
And then he had come to visit her with some of his ‘friends’ and had tried to convince her to use her connections as a ranger to help them move drugs across the border, whether it was by land or sea.
She should have seen then how desperate he was, trying to prove his worth to the neatly dressed thugs he had brought with him.
As a ranger, she came across her fair share of illegally planted pot in the forests up in the mountains, but what her brother had been involved in was something else, and he had been in deep. Before she could find a way to get him out, he had gotten himself killed, and the people he had worked for had come after her.
Demanding she pay them the three hundred grand her brother owed them.
Cameo turned and sagged against the tree, her breath leaving her on a sigh that turned to mist in front of her face.
And she had discovered who had gotten Nate involved in such a shady business in the first place.
Karl.
Her ex.
The ex.
The only man she had ever really fallen in love with. It had broken her heart when she had put an end to things between them when her application to become a ranger, something she had always wanted to be, had been accepted. Karl had refused to come with her across the country.
He had expected her to give up her dream.
Had been angry when she had refused.
Things between them had ended on a bad note and now it was all the worse. Now she was running for her life, fearing her parents might be doing the same. The message Karl had sent had made it clear that if she didn’t get them the money, what had happened to Nate would happen to her parents.
Cameo had immediately messaged her father and told them to head to the remote cabin they owned close to Moose Lake, one that had been in the family for generations. She didn’t think Karl knew about it. She had certainly never told him.
And then she had gone on the run.
She frowned as darkness closed in around her, as the temperature dropped sharply, and tilted her head back as she stepped away from the tree, peering up through the dense canopy to the sky. The clouds were lower now, thick and heavy. It looked like more snow was coming. Just great. Just her luck. At this rate, even the forest floor would be covered in a deep layer of it.
She debated whether to keep moving or to stop for the night. She had a flashlight so she could find her way, but darkness wasn’t the thing she was worried about. It was the local wildlife. A flashlight wasn’t going to scare off wolves or a hungry cougar if they were prowling around in this storm, desperate to eat. Fire was her better option.
Plus, she was cold to the bone now, and hungry. If she didn’t rest, she would probably collapse somewhere out there in the dark.
Resting and eating were worth the risk of being spotted. It was important she keep her strength up. Maybe, if she was lucky, the men wouldn’t come and in the morning she could circle her way back to her car and check it out from a distance to make sure it wasn’t being watched.
She scoured the forest, trying to find a good spot to set up camp. Maybe her luck was changing for the better. There was a hollow beneath the sprawling roots of a fallen tree. It would provide shelter from the blizzard and make it harder for predators to sneak up on her.
Cameo shrugged out of her heavy pack and set it down inside the small earth cave. Her stiff fingers made opening it hard work, but she managed it and pulled out everything she needed for a small fire. She had come prepared, had packed everything she might need to survive in the wild before she had left home. Protein bars. Her water purifying bottle. Thermal layers. Spare gloves and another scarf. Crampons for her boots. Even her sleeping bag and bedroll.
At least life as a ranger had prepared her for surviving while on the run in the mountains.
She gathered what dry wood she could find and made a fire just at the mouth of the earth cave, lit it and watched smoke rise lazily in the air and catch on the wind that carried it south. The fire flickered and guttered, almost going out as a stronger breeze swept around her, but it sprang back to life as the direction of the wind changed again, coming from directly behind the cave.
Cameo grabbed a protein bar from her pack and closed it again, turned the bag and used it as a seat. She stared at the fire as she ate and sipped her water, savoured the warmth of the flames as they flickered and danced. Hopefully, it would be enough to deter the predators. If it wasn’t, then she would use her bear spray.
She fished her phone out of her pocket again and looked at the messages from her father. The last few dozen messages were the same—a heart he sent every morning to let her know that they were fine. She had missed sending one back to him this morning and hoped he wasn’t worried about her. She set up a heart in a message and added ‘bad signal’ and pressed the send button. It would go when she had signal and hopefully it would ease her parents’ minds.
She pocketed her phone and huddled down into her coat, and tried to stay awake, but fatigue rolled up on her and her adrenaline crashed as silence stretched around her. She blinked as her eyelids slipped closed, widened her eyes and sucked down a breath, and then another, hoping the chilly air in her lungs would wake her up.
It didn’t.
Sleep overcame her.
When she woke, it was almost dark. She huffed and chastised herself, pushed to her feet and grimaced as her leg muscles cramped and ached. She stomped her feet to get some warmth back into them, hoping to wake herself up.
Something behind her cracked.
Her hand flew to her bear spray as she whirled to face the direction of the sound, her pulse skyrocketing as images of cougars or wolves filled her mind.
It was worse.
It turned out her luck wasn’t getting better after all.
She stared at the two men dressed in heavy black weatherproof gear, panic lancing her and flooding her veins with adrenaline that made her shake.
The very thugs she had thought had been tailing her.
The one on the left checked his rifle over, his hazel eyes as cold as the snow that whipped through the trees around them.
The one to the right smiled as he aimed a pistol at her.
“Hello, Cameo.”
