“What’s she like?”
Maddie didn’t turn back to look at Stefan, but she knew that he was back there. She could hear his heavy breath and his footsteps crunching in the icy snow. But most of all, she knew that he had just as much reason to fight as she did. She was just glad that they were finally fighting on the same side.
“Natalia?” he said.
“Yes. How long have they had her?”
This time, it took a moment for Stefan to answer. Maybe because time didn’t have any meaning anymore, with the short Alaskan days and gloomy, sunless sky. But more than likely because it felt like forever to Stefan. It was a feeling Maddie could relate to.
“Four days. The Wolf came for her four days ago.”
Just four days. It wasn’t much time, but it was forever in a lot of ways. Maddie knew better than anyone that it only took a moment for a life to change forever.
“What happens if she doesn’t get her medicine?”
“It depends,” Stefan said. “She is diabetic. She needs a daily shot of insulin. Depending on what she’s been eating—if she’s been eating … I do not know. She will likely need a doctor. The Wolf promised he would bring one. He was supposed to bring one. But the Wolf … he lies.”
“She’ll be fine,” Maddie told him. “We’re going to get her back.”
The air was slightly warmer and the ground was covered with a slick sheen of water. Maddie hadn’t known that there could be anything slicker than ice, but that was before she’d moved to Alaska. Now she knew that the ground could always be slicker, rougher, steeper. Things could always get worse. And they usually did before they got better.
She stopped for a moment when they reached the top of the ridge. Down below, there was an icy lake and a silt-covered beach. A familiar red plane floated in the distance, and it was all Maddie could do not to scream out for her father and run in its direction. She would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the helicopter not far away. And the tents.
“That’s it?” Maddie said—the words a question. Somehow, she’d expected something far bigger, darker, scarier. They’d been walking for more than a day, every step bringing them closer to this place. In a way, Maddie realized, this is where that White House corridor led. Six years later, she was finally going to come out the other side.
“Binoculars,” Maddie said, holding out her hands. Stefan gave her the pair they’d scavenged from the fake ranger’s gear, and Maddie laid low on the ground. The snow and ice didn’t melt through her raincoat, but she could feel it on her legs. It didn’t matter. She trained the binoculars on the camp below, memorizing every possible detail.
“I count four guards,” she said, handing the binoculars to Stefan. “Does that sound right to you?”
He looked into the binoculars and scanned the camp. “Yes. The Wolf would never leave home with fewer than two. Two extras make sense under the circumstances.”
Smoke rose from a big fire that someone had built between the two tents. Three of the armed guards were positioned on the perimeter, scanning the trees. Waiting. For Stefan or Uri. For trouble.
Maddie looked up at the overcast sky.
“What is it?” Stefan asked her.
“There has to be a satellite looking for Logan. Drones, too. Someone’s going to see that fire and come asking questions.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Yeah,” Maddie admitted. “I think so. Logan will have called in the cavalry by now. Help could be just over that ridge.”
Stefan looked at her. “Or not.”
Maddie nodded. “Or not.”
“So what do we do now?” Stefan was actually asking. She wasn’t some tagalong, some annoying girl. She was the person with home court advantage, and he was smart enough to see it. She liked him for it. Even if she also still kind of hated him for trying to kill her and messing up her hair and all.
Maddie pushed up onto her knees in the snow. She started to stand.
It took her a moment to register that Stefan was standing behind her, and Uri’s gun was in his hand. Maybe it was the way the sun was getting lower, the sky darker, but everything seemed to change as the ice bled through the denim of Maddie’s jeans and the world got very dark and very cold.
“Uri was right, you know. You are the only child of the man who took the Wolf’s only child.” Stefan stared down the sight of the gun. “You would be more than enough to trade for my sister.”
Logan was going to kill Maddie. As soon as he was certain she was safe, of course.
The metal cuff felt tighter, colder, when she was the one to put it on him, so he pulled against the limb again and growled and cursed under his breath.
Only the sound of the laughter made him stop.
“Your woman is either very smart. Or very stupid,” the Russian said.
“Don’t kid yourself, comrade,” Logan told him. “She’s both.”
The yellow sat phone was lying in the snow. Waterproof, freeze-proof … idiot-proof. He just had to reach it. He just had to stretch. Sinking down, Logan stuck out one of his too-long legs, finally grateful for the extra inches as he eased the phone close enough to grab.
“They will kill him, you know,” Uri said as if they were just making conversation. As if Logan actually cared about his opinion.
“Your new friend Stefan. The Wolf will shoot him dead.” For some reason, when the silence came, Logan had to look at the man. He saw the look in Uri’s eyes when he said, “The girl will not be so lucky.”
Logan lunged for the man, but the cuff held and jerked him back, shaking snow and ice from the tree, raining down on top of him like fire.
“And you wonder why she left you,” the man said with a laugh.
Logan turned back to the tree, looking at the icy branches, calculating the weight of the snow and the circumference of the limb. Then he started to climb, carefully, balancing himself on the icy length, edging farther and farther from the base of the tree until the limb snapped, crashing into the snow and taking Logan with it.
“Nicely done,” the Russian mocked. “You’re smarter than a tree. Your father must be so proud.”
Logan’s father was probably worried sick. For the first time, Logan let himself admit that much. The most powerful man in the world was probably frozen with grief. Logan couldn’t even think about what his mother was probably feeling.
And Maddie …
Would they have reached the camp yet? Would she have seen her father?
How many rounds of ammo were there in the two guns? And did she get her other knife back—the little one that Stefan had taken? Maddie wasn’t the kind of girl to be content with just one knife, after all.
But most of all, Logan wanted to know that she was going to be okay.
“They probably aren’t dead yet,” Uri told him. “If you leave now, you can catch them. Stop them.”
“Stop them from what?”
“Walking into a trap.”
“Those are big words for a man who got knocked unconscious and tied to a tree by a teenage girl,” Logan reminded him.
“The girl’s going to die, President’s Son. And so is your new friend Stefan. If he thought the Wolf would honor his bargain, he is a fool. The Wolf lost everything six years ago. And before he dies, he is going to take all of his enemies down with him.”
Logan was on his feet. He was reaching for the phone and wiping away the snow that covered the keys. It was cold in his hand, but it felt like life itself as he looked down at the screen and began to dial a number he knew by heart.
When he heard the beeping he thought it might have been the phone finding a signal, maybe it was the White House switchboard, connecting him to a line.
But then Logan pulled the phone from his ear and looked down at the little flashing battery. When the screen went blank it felt like the part of him that had faith, that believed deep down that everything might be okay, turned off, too.
For a long time, he just stood, staring at the blank screen. The battery wasn’t low. It was dead. The phone was a useless weight in his hands. And suddenly it was all too much.
He roared and almost threw it off the cliff, into the icy river below, before he remembered the charger.
Logan raced to the big, flat rock where the remnants of the packs were laid out. Maddie and Stefan must have taken Maddie’s father’s phone, so Logan grabbed Stefan’s solar phone charger like it was a lifeline in a stormy sea. But the sky was so overcast that the phone didn’t even register a charge. Not yet.
Logan looked around the big, flat rock at their collection of gear, but the map was gone, and Logan swore again to kill Maddie Manchester. Just as soon as he got her back.
“Having trouble?” Uri asked. Logan didn’t think twice, lunging toward him.
“Where did they go?” he yelled.
But Uri shrugged, indifferent. “To their deaths, of course.”
The map was still locked away in Logan’s memory—locked inside his mind. But he didn’t trust his bearings. There was too much at stake and the light was getting too low, and Logan knew that if he got turned around—if he missed a single landmark—he might never make it in time.
Logan grabbed the man and shook him, pounding his head into the tree. “Tell me where the camp is,” he growled out.
“Why?” the Russian asked. “If I tell you where to find the girl, you’re going to do what? Save the day? Let me go? Or maybe you will just kill me if I refuse.”
“No.” Logan let go and backed off. Angry as he was, he wasn’t a killer. “You can either take me to the camp or stay here, tied to that tree, and wait for the bears to get hungry. It’s your call.”