Chapter 99 - Snow in the Pines
I shoved the heavy wooden doors open. A shower of crusted snow tumbled down onto my shoulders as the frozen night rushed in.
Alistair scrambled out first, clawing his way up the stone stairs into the biting wind. I followed right behind him, pulling the hatch closed and jamming a split log of maple firewood through the iron handles to buy us whatever minutes we could scrape together.
The storm had worsened. Sleet stung my cheeks like needles, whipping through the dense stand of white pines behind the house. Visibility was barely twenty feet. The lights from Miller’s SUV in the driveway glowed faintly through the driving snow, but between us and the tree line was an open stretch of seventy yards.
"We can't take the road," Alistair wheezed, his face pale under the moonlight filtering through the clouds. "They have a man watching the lower bridge."
"We aren't taking the road," I said, catching him by the arm to steady his staggering weight. "We're heading up toward the ridge. Arthur kept an old deer-hunting camp two miles past the power lines. No roads, no cell reception, and no tracks that will survive twenty minutes of this wind."
Behind us, a loud crack shattered the silence of the backyard—the sound of the woodpile collapsing as Miller’s man burst through the cellar hatch. A shout rose above the wind, followed by the sharp *snap* of a silenced bullet tearing through the pine needles three feet above our heads.
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"Run!" I hissed, pulling Alistair into the darkness of the woods.
We plunged into the thick forest, our boots breaking through the frozen crust of snow, leaving a trail that the relentless New Hampshire winter began immediately to bury.
