Shivers go over me. He looks up into my eyes. Kiro needs no words.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Kiro
Icatch threefish. She manages to touch another one.
I bring her to the cave. The place where I nearly died. Where I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for those first wolves. I picture Red and Snowy. It feels like there’s a hole in the world.
“It’s…nice,” she says, walking into it.
It’s not nice, not when I look at it through the eyes of a woman who’s used to furniture and a dry bed with sheets and blankets. I kick aside the dirt and leaves, showing how it can be made clean. I point. “That’s the good side for sleeping. We’ll make a fire here on this side.”
She looks out at the hillside. Her eyes are a dazzling green in the setting sun. I start the fire, but we need more wood.
“Go on,” she says. “I’ll be fine. I’ll unpack.”
I go to her and kiss her, then I grab the small hatchet. “This is good. It’s good that we brought it.”
She smiles, but it’s not a real smile.
I set off toward an area of downed trees just over the next hill. They’ll be nice and dry for a fire. I slam at the largest log, hacking and hacking. It feels good to slam the hatchet against something, to do this violent thing, to stop myself from thinking. If I tire myself out enough, maybe I’ll stop thinking about those wolves suffering and dying out here at the hands of hunters.
And maybe I’ll be able to stop thinking about how much I love having her out here, like a window into a life I’ll never have.
Because I know now I have to bring her back. It was wrong to take her the way I did. It was wrong to tie her up. Wrong to make her beg just because I could. Wrong to keep her.
She belongs to me. It’s the best thing in the world to feel like she belongs to me, that she’s mine. Mine to care for.
Ironically, that means I have to let her go.
We’ll set back out tomorrow, back to the truck.
I’ll say goodbye.
I’ll let her go.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lazarus
I’ve always hatednature.
Especially the shrubberies. Are they even called shrubberies when you’re in the wild? Or would that be bramble? In any case, they’re annoying, and they block your way from every direction.
Nature.
Like they say, you don’t have to taste much to know it’s cottage cheese.
My wilderness guide finishes tying down the canoes and scolding my guys to stay silent. He’s extremely eager for us to catch Kiro unawares.
He’s a rugged specimen of a man in hiking boots and purple Gore-Tex and the kind of sunglasses that have a leather band keeping them attached to your head so that they stay on no matter what peril you encounter—with the possible exception of a beheading, one would suppose.
I got him at a resort at the edge of this wilderness. I asked for the best guide money can buy, and he was it. He was booked up until I paid a few thousand bucks to his handler.
We got here by helicopter. Our Gore-Tex-clad guide put together an idea of where Kiro’s home might be from the anecdotal intel we provided him and from reports that filtered down through the years.
We landed six miles away from where our guide thinks Kiro is.Out of hearing range,he explained. “Who are we hunting here? The Bionic Woman?” I joked.