Free Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds by Michael McBride

and looked up just as the sheriff fired up into the canopy.
    The report was deafening. Avery hit the ground and covered his head with his hands. He heard another shot over the ringing in his ears, and then shouted words he couldn’t comprehend.
    * * *
    “Can anyone hear me?” Dayton shouted into his two-way. The only response was a hiss of static. The infernal transceivers were billed as being able to retain a signal anywhere in these mountains, but they’d learned in a hurry that wasn’t the case. There were all sorts of pockets of dead air up here, and the weather only made it worse. “Damn it!”
    He grabbed Thom by the sleeve and pulled him closer.
    “Listen to me. Here’s what I need you to…”
    His words trailed off. Thom didn’t so much as acknowledge the sound of his voice.
    “Snap out of it!” Dayton shook him by the shoulders until he finally looked down from the trees and into his eyes. “Can you find your way back to my truck?”
    Thom stared at him as though he hadn’t heard. Dayton shook him hard enough to make his teeth chatter.
    “I need to know if you can find your way back to my truck.”
    Thom shook his head, but said “I…I think so.”
    “There’s no time for indecision. Either you can or you can’t.”
    “Yeah…I think I can find it.”
    “Then I need you to head back there as fast as you can. Here. Take these.”
    Dayton placed his keys in Thom’s hand and closed it tightly around them.
    “There’s a radio under the dashboard. Stay with me, Thom. There’s a radio. All you have to do is pick it up, press the button, and start talking. Can you do that?”
    Thom drew a deep breath and nodded.
    “Judy’s working dispatch. I want you to tell her exactly what happened. She’ll know what to do.” He cupped the sides of Thom’s face and looked him directly in the eyes. “Can you do this?”
    “You sure that’s the best idea?” Avery said. “Sending him off on his own like that?”
    Dayton clapped Thom on the cheek and rounded on Avery.
    “Where the hell were you, huh?”
    “You don’t possibly think—”
    “We came up here to find a missing girl and now my deputy’s gone. You tell me how this looks.”
    “Sheriff?” Thom said.
    “For Christ’s sake, son. Get the hell out of here already.”
    Thom turned without another word and ran. He barely made it twenty feet before he disappeared into the blowing snow.
    “Look around you,” Avery said. “You think I could do this?”
    “Guys,” the ranger said.
    “Thom was right by my side and I could see Seaver the entire time. That leaves just you.”
    “Guys!” Seaver shouted.
    They both turned and looked at him.
    “It’s moving away from us.”
    He held up the monitor and Dayton saw a brief flicker of red before the beacon vanished.
    Zeke darted past his legs and charged deeper into the forest.
    The wind died and the rustling in the trees ceased. Dayton’s breath hung in front of his face in the preternatural stillness.
    He walked over to where Crowell’s jacket lay and carefully straightened it out on the snow. The blood on the fabric was already starting to freeze. There were no bullet holes or punctures suggestive of penetrating trauma. The seam was ripped at the shoulder and the lining was torn over the left breast, but there was no indication of what might have happened. All he knew with any kind of certainty was there was an awful lot of blood, and if it was Crowell’s, she was in really bad shape.
    The flakes fell steadily around him, alighting silently upon his Stetson and the shoulders of his jacket. If there was a chance she was still alive, then he had to go after her, which, presumably, her dog had already done.
    He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and focused on doing his job.
    Seaver still knelt on the ground in the same position. The only tracks in the snow around him belonged to the dog. Outside of the heaps of snow that had fallen from the branches and the chunks of bark, the