The Bodies Left Behind

Anybody within a hundred yards could have seen.
    Brynn leaned forward and scanned the ground, crawling forward carefully.
    There! Something was shiny. Was that it? Brynn reached out carefully and picked up a tiny twig covered in bird shit.
    A second possibility turned out to be a streak of mica in a rock.
    But finally Brynn spotted a silver flare in the night, sitting on top of a curl of oak leaf. She picked up the needle carefully. “Shut it out,” she said to Michelle, nodding at the candle lighter.
    The area went soot black—even darker now because the light had numbed their eyes. Brynn’s sense of vulnerability soared. The two men could be walking directly toward them and she’d never see them. Only acracking branch or crunch of leaves would give away their approach.
    Michelle crouched. “Can I help?”
    “Not yet.”
    The young woman sat down, crossed her legs and fished the crackers out. She offered them to Brynn, who ate several. Then Brynn began tapping the needle with the back of the knife. Twice she struck a finger hard and winced. But she never let go and never paused in the pounding—like the flare of the lighter, the sound of the tink tink tink seemed to broadcast their position for miles.
    After an eternal five minutes she said, “Let’s try it. I need some thread. Something thin.” They unraveled a strand from Brynn’s ski jacket and used it to tie the needle to a bit of twig.
    Brynn dumped out the alcohol from the bottle and refilled it halfway with water, slipped the twig and pin inside and set the bottle on its side. Brynn hit the candle lighter trigger. They stared at the bottle. The bit of wood slowly revolved to the left and stopped.
    “It works!” Michelle blurted, giving her first true smile of the night.
    Brynn glanced at her and smiled back. Damn, she thought, it does. It surely does.
    “But which end’s north and which’s south?”
    “Around here the high ground’s generally west. That’d be to the left.” They shut the lighter out and after their eyes were accustomed to the dark Brynn pointed out a distant hilltop. “That’s north. Let’s head for it.”
    Brynn screwed the lid on the bottle and slipped it into her pocket, picked up her spear. They started walking again. They’d pause every so often to take another reading. As long as they continued north they would have to cross the Joliet Trail sooner or later.
    Curious, she thought, how much reassurance she’d gotten by making this little toy. Kristen Brynn McKenzie was a woman whose worst enemy, worst fear, was the lack of control. She’d begun this night without any—no phone or weapon—crawling cold, drenched and helpless out of a black lake. But now, with a crude spear in hand and a compass in her pocket she felt as confident as that character out of one of Joey’s comic books.
    Queen of the Jungle.

    THE DANCE.
    What Hart called it.
    This was a part of the business and Hart was not only used to dancing, he was good at it. Being a craftsman, after all.
    A month ago. Sitting in a coffee shop—never a bar; keep your head about you—he’d looked up at the voice.
    “So, Hart. How you doing?”
    A firm handshake.
    “Good. You?”
    “I’m okay. Listen, I’m interested in hiring somebody. You interested in some work?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. So how do you know Gordon Potts? You go back a long ways?”
    “Not so long.”
    “How’d you meet him?” Hart had asked.
    “A mutual friend.”
    “Who’d that be?”
    “Freddy Lancaster.”
    “Freddy, sure. How’s his wife doing?”
    “That’d be tough to find out, Hart. She died two years ago.”
    “Oh, that’s right. Bad memory. How does Freddy like St. Paul?”
    “St. Paul? He lives in Milwaukee.”
    “This memory of mine.”
    The Dance. It went on and on. As it has to.
    Then two meetings later, credentials finally established, the risk of entrapment minimal, the dancing was over and they got down to details.
    “That’s a lot of money.”
    “Yeah, it is, Hart. So you’re interested?”
    “Keep going.”
    “Here’s a map of the area. That’s a private road. Lake View Drive. And there? That’s a state park, all of it. Hardly any people around. Here’s a diagram of the house.”
    “Okay . . . This a dirt road or paved?”
    “Dirt . . . Hart, they tell me you’re good. Are you good? I hear you’re a craftsman. That’s what they say.”
    “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “People.”
    “Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”
    “Can I