Deep Woods

by Newbury, Helena

JUST A FEW weeks ago, the woods had been the scariest place I could imagine. Now, all I could think of was getting back to them. We sprinted down the street, Rufus racing alongside us.

  The cops dived back into their car, figuring they could chase us down on the streets. So when we turned onto the path and raced towards the woods, they were taken by surprise. They had to pull up and jump out of their car again, but that only bought us a few seconds.

  We had to climb up out of the valley as we left the town. What had seemed like a gentle slope on the way in was a punishing climb on the way out, especially loaded down by our full backpacks. I was panting by the time we neared the top and then I made the mistake of looking back. The two cops were sprinting up the hill behind us, already horribly close. The cops were unladen and fresh; we were weighed down and tired from a whole morning’s hike. They were easily faster than us.

  Cal heaved on my hand, hauling me up the last few feet, and then we were running down the far side, sliding on loose pine needles, our legs almost running away with us. We jumped the creek at the bottom and ran for the forest. The cops were already cresting the hill behind us. I was frantic, now, lungs burning They’re going to catch us!

  But then we plunged into the trees and things changed. The cops weren’t used to moving through the wilds: they were like me when I first arrived. I could hear them tripping on branches and cursing, crashing through the forest instead of slipping through it. My legs ached and I was fighting for air but, each minute we kept up the pace, I could hear them falling a few more seconds behind us.

  Cal suddenly cut left, away from the course we’d been following, and the noises grew more distant as the cops carried on in a straight line. A moment later, Cal pushed me up against a tree, his finger to my lips. We went motionless, his arms protectively around me, his hard body pinning me to the trunk. Rufus flattened himself to the ground and lay still.

  We waited, hearts thumping, straining our ears. Distant footsteps, rustling undergrowth, and a lot of cursing. The footsteps came closer...then retreated. A few moments later, Cal relaxed and stepped back, leaving a fading, warm imprint of his body on mine. “They’re gone.”

  The rush of relief only lasted a second. “They have the cops looking for me?!”

  He nodded, his face grim. Neither of us had predicted this. We knew the club would monitor the police, watching in case I went to the authorities, but we hadn’t thought they’d be able to use the police to actually search for me. They were a lot more powerful than we’d thought. I wondered what crimes they’d framed me for. Maybe fraud—they could say that they gave me the relocation money and then I ran off. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was, every cop in the state, maybe every cop in the country, was looking for me.

  “They’ll get me,” I said in a small voice. “If I go to a city, even a town, they’ll get me.”

  “Then don’t go to a town,” he growled. “Stay here with me.”

  He’d tried to sound firm, but something else crept into his voice. A need. I looked at him and he looked away. Then met my eyes, defiant. Possessive.

  “I can’t stay in the cabin forever,” I said softly. “And they know the area we’re in, now! They know you must live somewhere hiking distance from town. They can sweep the whole woods, find the cabin. Find you and Rufus.”

  Cal’s jaw set firm. “Let ‘em come.”

  I bit my lip. He meant it. He’d fight off the whole club and an entire army of police, if it came to it. He’d die to protect me.

  And that was exactly why I had to leave.

  29

  Cal

  THE NEXT MORNING, back at the cabin, she confronted me. The day before had been exhausting: all the way to town and back in one day, plus the stress of her nearly being caught. We’d pretty much eaten and then fallen into bed. But when she sat down at the table, I could see the dark circles under her eyes. She’d been awake all night thinking and worrying. I sat down opposite her on the new chair I’d made: still rough-hewn and in need of sanding.

  She looked at the table for a moment, drew in her breath, and said, “I need to go to Canada.”

  Cold shock, then fiery rage, disturbingly strong, at the thought of being separated from her. “What?! No!”

  She put her hand on mine. The touch of her was calming but I didn’t want to be calmed, right then. “It’s the only way,” she said. “I can’t go to the police or the FBI: they control them. I can’t go to another city or another state: my picture’s everywhere by now, they’d arrest me and then disappear me. And I can’t stay here. They’ll find this place eventually.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why they can’t just let me go. I’m just one woman. I’m no threat to them!”

  I nodded. It was weird. They knew that if she ever went to the authorities, they could make sure it came to nothing. So why go to all the trouble of hunting her down? It almost felt personal.

  “Canada’s the only safe place,” she said. “They don’t have any pull there...I hope. I can start fresh.” She met my eyes. “I won’t be a threat to you and Rufus.”

  Hearing his name, Rufus strolled over and looked from Bethany to me, his tail wagging. I stared stubbornly at Bethany and shook my head. No. No way. I wasn’t going to let her run off on her own, just to protect us.

  She squeezed my hand. “It’s the only way,” she said gently.

  I sat there fuming. Wasn’t this exactly what I’d wanted? For her to leave, so everything could get back to normal? Except I hadn’t expected it to feel like this. I’d been secretly imagining some fairy tale ending where I beat the club, vanquished them like some heroic knight, in a way that let her get her old life back. I wanted to think of her happy and free, not hiding out in Canada.

  But none of that changed the fact that she was right. If these bastards were prepared to use the entire state police to search for her, they’d do whatever it took...even searching the woods. “How do you even plan on getting there?”

  “Walk,” she said defiantly. “We’re in Idaho, the border can’t be that far.”

  “It’s a hundred miles!”

  “We could do that. If we did it together.”

  “You mean, I see you to the border?”

  She bit her lip. “No.,,” she said tentatively.

  Go with her? Something inside me soared and for a glorious few seconds, the idea seemed golden and bright. A new life. A new start. The two of us together. It wasn’t like I couldn’t build a new cabin, buy a new cow. There was plenty of wilderness in Canada.

  Then I woke up. Nothing had changed. What had happened in Marten Valley—something we still hadn’t talked about—was a reminder. She was still a city girl and I was still a fucked up mess who couldn’t be around people. I couldn’t give her the life she needed. And after what I’d done, I didn’t deserve to be anywhere but out here on my own.

  I shook my head and forced my voice to be hard. “How would you get across the border? You have your passport with you?”

  She blinked, shocked and a little hurt, too. That made me feel like shit, but it was the only way. “No,” she said, “But we could sneak across, there must be places—”

  She still said we. She was still hoping. My guts twisted, but I pressed on as if I hadn’t noticed. “Even if you could, how are you going to live? How are you going to get a job, without any ID?” I sighed. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. You need a whole new identity: a Canadian passport, driver’s license, everything, so you can start a new life. And we need to get you to a proper border crossing, and get you in officially.”

  She stared at me in miserable silence for a few seconds. And I realized that this whole idea: leaving her life in the US behind, starting a whole new one...that wasn’t what scared her. What scared her was doing it on her own. I almost reconsidered.

  But I couldn’t doom her to a life with me, either. She deserved better.

  That’s what I told myself, but I knew it was more than that. That offer she’d made me in M
arten Valley...she wanted to know me, know why I was out here on my own. If we stayed together, sooner or later she’d get me to open up.

  I couldn’t let that happen. She thought I was a hero. I couldn’t take the look of disappointment and disgust on her face when she found out the truth.

  This is better, I told myself.

  Better for who?

  “It’s the only way,” I said out loud.

  She bit her lip, looked away and nodded. “But how do we do it? How do we get a new ID and everything?”

  “We need to go see Jacques.”

  30

  Bethany

  CAL STOOD UP and motioned for me to get up, too. He pushed both chairs and the table down to the other end of the room. Then he knelt down, took out a knife and started gently prying at one of the floorboards.

  I stood there numbly watching him. He wasn’t coming with me. I’d known he wouldn’t but a little part of me had held out hope. The worst part was that I could see he wanted to: he’d tried to hide it but I’d seen the way he had to fight himself. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t let himself be with me. He was still keeping me at a distance and soon, he was going to separate us forever.

  I wasn’t ready for how that felt. When you’re sharing every waking moment with someone, two weeks can feel like two months. It wasn’t just the sexual tension, that thick heaviness in the air that made every look loaded, that made us freeze each time we accidentally brushed fingertips as we passed a dish or folded a blanket.

  I’d gotten closer to him than I had with anyone, despite the mysteries of his past. He’d taught me a new way of life and I’d gradually gotten him to talk, even if it wasn’t about himself. We were changing each other.

  And now I was going to leave. And I’d never see him or Rufus again.

  The floorboard came loose and Cal put it aside. Instantly, Rufus trotted over and immediately decided that the hole was the most interesting thing ever, and stuck his head down into it. I had to put my arms around him and haul him back so that Cal could reach down and pull out what was hidden in the dark space: a dented metal lockbox.

  When he opened it up, it was full of tight wads of bills. I stared at it, open-mouthed. “Where did you get that?”

  “Selling animal hides. I only hunt what I need to eat, but the hide would just go to waste if I didn’t sell it.”

  I picked up a wad of bills. Rufus sniffed them, then gave a snort, disappointed that the treasure was boring human things, and trotted off for a nap. I examined the bills, then did some rough math in my head. “But there must be twenty thousand here!”

  “‘Bout eighteen, I think. About three thousand a year, for six years.”

  I stared at him. “This is all the money you’ve earned, the whole time you’ve been here?! What about what you spend, in town?”

  He shrugged. “Things like coffee, matches...that barely makes a dent. A few hundred dollars a year.” He frowned regretfully “Had to get a new coffee pot, last year because I couldn’t fix the leak. That cost me a bit.”

  While he counted the money, I eyed one of the patches on his shirt. He’d been brought up make-do-and-mend. He spent virtually nothing. In fact, that trip to town, buying me all those clothes...that had probably cost him more than he’d spend in a whole year, but he hadn’t hesitated.

  “Closer to nineteen,” he announced, putting the money back in the lockbox. “Should be enough to buy you a new identity.”

  My jaw dropped. “Wha—No! No, you can’t spend all that on me!”

  “I don’t need it.” He put the floorboard back and gave it a thump with his fist to lock it into place. Then he stood and offered me his hand. “Let’s go see Jacques.”

  “Cal, I can’t. It’s too much!”

  “You said yourself,” he said firmly. “It’s the only way.”

  His jaw was set. He wasn’t changing his mind. And Canada was my only hope, and his plan for getting there sounded a lot better than mine. But why did it have to involve clearing him out of his life savings...and worse, leaving him behind?

  “When it’s all over, when I’m settled, I swear, I’ll pay you back,” I told him.

  He looked away as if the promise weakened him for a second. “I know,” he said. Then he offered me his hand again.

  If I did this, it set me on a path...one that ended with me saying goodbye forever. But I didn’t have a choice. If I stayed here, Cal and Rufus were in danger.

  I took his hand. He pulled me up so fast, so effortlessly, that I went light-headed. I tottered in front of him and he put his hands on my hips to steady me, the warmth of his palms soaking straight inward to my groin. I looked up into those cornflower blue eyes and tried to imagine never seeing them again.

  “This is the right thing to do,” he rumbled. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself, as much as me.

  I swallowed and nodded.

  And we went to see Jacques.

  31

  Bethany

  “So who is this guy?” I asked as we tramped through the undergrowth. We were heading in a direction we hadn’t gone before, not towards Tucker’s or town. It was a beautiful clear, crisp day and each gust of wind made a few more gold and scarlet leaves flutter down from the aspens, slowly building into an endless soft carpet that looked like frozen fire. I was luxuriating in my new boots and everything was perfect...except when I thought about the future.

  “He’s a smuggler,” said Cal. “Lives on the river. Moves stuff back and forth over the border in trucks, then uses boats on the river to distribute it.” He glanced across at me and must have read my expression. “You thought criminals only lived in the city?”

  “No,” I said defensively. Yep. “How do you know him?”

  “He doesn’t live that far away. Five hours’ walk or so.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I was still getting used to Cal distances, where a five-hour walk was nothing.

  “Basically my closest neighbor,” Cal continued, “So I made sure to check him out before I built the cabin. I see him a few times a year, but I stay out of his business and he stays out of mine.”

  It was mid-afternoon before I glimpsed the first sliver of gleaming blue through the trees. As the forest thinned out, the slivers joined together to form an endless blue expanse. It was a river hundreds of feet across, big enough to have a few small islands a little further downstream. “Tell me we don’t have to wade across that,” I pleaded.

  “Nope.” And Cal pointed.

  As I stepped out from behind him, I saw a tiny square of wood about half a mile upstream. A raft. People still used rafts?! And on the far side of the river, moored at the bank—

  “Is that what it looks like?”

  Cal nodded. “That’s where he lives.”

  It was a steamboat, the sort of thing Huckleberry Finn would wave to, and it must have been well over a hundred years old. Its white paint was faded and it looked like it hadn’t moved in a long time, but it still had a proud beauty about it, with its tall chimneys and high wheelhouse.

  We hiked down the side of the river to the raft, a square of tied-together logs and barrels no more than eight feet per side. A rope stretched across the river, threaded through iron rings hammered into the deck, so that you could stand on the raft and haul yourself across. As soon as we got on, the whole thing started leaning and rocking drunkenly, but once we balanced our weight, it settled down. Then Rufus leapt aboard, woofing excitedly, and we had to tame the raft all over again.

  Cal leaned down to the rope and began to pull us, the muscles in his back stretching out his shirt as he heaved. I bent down next to him and helped and gradually, the far bank crept closer. I realized after a while that the raft was a pretty good defense. Any visitors were slowed down to a crawl as they made their way across, and they were helpless, out here, hands too busy with the rope to reach for a gun and with nothing to take cover behind. I guessed it was deliberate.

  Something else occurred to me. How did Cal know so much
about buying new identities, and how much they cost?

  The rope took us right to the steamboat. We stepped off onto the deck and were met by a woman in her late thirties in a silky black robe patterned with pink roses. From her bare feet and the way she held it tightly closed against the breeze, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “This way,” she told us in an accent that might have been Italian, and she led us below deck.

  It was dark, down here, the only light coming from fairy lights strung along the ceiling. I couldn’t see the floor underfoot and when I stepped on a plank and felt it move and sink a little, my stomach knotted. The entire boat creaked each time the wind moved it against its mooring. How close was this thing to going to the bottom?

  We passed through a narrow passageway, Cal’s wide shoulders almost brushing the walls. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I realized there were cabins on both sides of us, their doors open. Every one was stacked high with goods. I saw bottles of whiskey, cigarettes, and a tall pile of small white boxes. At the end of the hallway, the woman opened a door and led the way into a much bigger room, which must have been a grand stateroom when the boat was built. It still had its wood paneling and ornate holders for lanterns.

  Jacques was at least fifty but could have been over sixty. The dark hair, still almost black in places, was stylishly cut and made him look younger, but his pointed beard was pure silver. His pale blue eyes still had that joyful, youthful sparkle but the smile lines must have taken decades to form. He was wearing a chocolate brown, pin-striped suit that would have cost hundreds at some Seattle vintage store, but might well have just been something he’d kept since his twenties.

  He lounged in a scarlet, wingback armchair as if it was a throne. He had a tumbler of brandy in one hand, a lit cigar in the other and he gave off the air of a man for whom everything is right in the world. The woman who’d led us in perched herself on his knee, crossed her legs and regarded us with suspicion and just a little protective jealousy.