THIRTY-THREE

The dawn was beginning to hint at its arrival with a blush of pink on the horizon when Vitoria determined that they were on a fool’s chase. She, along with Streeter’s failing set of lungs, had mounted the foot of Iroquois and progressed, as instructed, what had to be over a half mile. Or two. Or twelve. Yet no lane, or even the offshoot of a trail, had appeared.

As Vitoria stopped, she did some panting herself—and knew a frustration that was so deep, she was cursing in Spanish in her head.

“Go…back…?” Streeter wheezed.

She looked all around and saw nothing but this singular snow-covered road that continued farther up toward whatever was at the peak—picnic spot, observatory, park ranger station.

There was a desire to blame the intel Streeter had brought to her, but that was counterproductive. And this was a lesson learned. Her desire for a given outcome had colored her analysis of the information and led them on this wild-goose chase.

A waste of time and energy.

“Yes.” She allowed one, single curse in her native tongue to escape her lips. “Back to the car.”

Resuming the lead, she made a little circle and continued along, putting one snowshoe in front of the other over the track they had made. And though there was some relief that came with a downward course, her anger did not permit any appreciation of the aid.

Perhaps it was best for her to abandon the search for the bodies of her brothers. If she were honest, the reason she wanted to find them was not so much the closure and burial, although she would feel she had done a right and dutiful thing if she could put them in proper graves. No, she was desirous of the knowledge that they were well and truly gone. That she didn’t have to worry about her reinstating the business only for them to miraculously show up and steal her future away—

Vitoria slowed and then halted.

“What?” Streeter groaned behind her.

Well…there it was. The cut-through they had been looking for, the lane so narrow and unmarked that she had missed its appearance on the ascent due to the snow’s masking properties: It was only thanks to this different viewpoint that she could pick out the break in the forest, the hole in the evergreens.

“We have found our drive,” she announced.

Success gave her a burst of energy, and it certainly improved Streeter’s respiration. The pair of them made quick time through the man-made tunnel in the forest and then there it was. Yes, this had to be her brother’s bolt-hole: The structure was single story and unadorned, only a row of thin windows just under the roofline allowing light into the interior. A snow-covered car was parked off to one side and there was a petroleum tank the size of an outhouse cozied up to the opposite flank.

Although none of that was what told her it was Ricardo’s.

The door was the telltale. It had no handle, no knob, just a security keypad that offered a choice of either a numerical grid or a thumbprint reader.

If this were just a hunting cabin in the woods almost at the border of Canada, why would you need such security?

Vitoria went forward, the piff, piff, piff of the snowshoes loud in her ear. She had never been much for premonitions, but as she came up to the door, she had one that was very clear.

Bad things happened here. Very bad. Although…not recently: the snow cover was utterly undisturbed by tire track or human print, and God knew that snow-impacted car hadn’t been driven anywhere in quite a while.

Before she attempted the numerical lock, she paused and looked to the heavens. After offering a prayer in Spanish, she put in their mother’s birthday—

The shift of the lock was automatic, and as if forces from the other side of the grave wanted to urge her entry, a release of interior pressure pushed at the door, causing it to open a crack.

Vitoria clicked on her headlamp, the beam a bright, burning blue that hurt her eyes until they adjusted. Extending her hand, she opened things wider, that shaft of light from her forehead penetrating the dense dark.

“Whattaya see?”

She didn’t bother answering Streeter. Bending down, she released the snowshoes and stepped free of them. “You stay here,” she told him.

“No problem.”

As she put one foot over the threshold, she turned…and her headlamp illuminated a severed human hand that lay on the floor, just inside the door, like something one might find in a gag gift store. The shriveled fingers were curled up around the palm and frozen in place, the decayed flesh gray and white.

It had been cut off cleanly.

“Be on guard,” she heard herself say.

“Yeah. Okay.”

As Streeter answered, she frowned and realized she’d uttered that to herself. Forgetting all about him, she went in farther and closed the door most, but not all, of the way. God knew she wasn’t about to take a chance on getting locked inside…except there was no need to worry. There was the same keypad and thumbprint reader on the interior—

That was what the hand must have been used for, she thought. Someone had escaped from here, getting free of her brother’s vengeance by cutting that hand off and using its print. Because they hadn’t known the code.

Taking a deep breath of air that was as cold as that of the outdoors, she smelled mold and must, but not the telltale sweet stench of mortal decay. Then again, given the layer of dust on everything? Nobody had been in here in a long time—so whatever bodies there might be had gone through their decomposition process already.

She saw the boots first. Then the legs, long legs encased in blue jeans that were stained—so this was not either of her brothers, as neither Ricardo nor Eduardo ever wore those kinds of pants. The male torso plugged into the denim was clothed in a loose sweatshirt, and there were hands at the base of each arm. So this was also not the one whose fingerprint had been used for escape.

As she inspected the grimacing face, she winced. The man had been in great pain as he had died, his gray, frozen visage bearing a stunning wound in one eye’s socket.

A burn, she thought. Someone had stabbed him in the eye with a torch or a flare.

Moving her head around, she inspected the interior and found nothing surprising: Galley kitchen, tiny bathroom, cots to sleep on. There was a minor degree of inhabitation debris like wrappers for foodstuffs and soda cans, as well as some weapons, so she guessed they had been here for a time before the ruckus had occurred.

Training the headlamp higher, she noted those narrow windows all the way at the top of the walls. Smart. One wouldn’t want anybody seeing inside—

Across the way, there was another door, one more akin to that of the entrance than the bathroom.

Vitoria stepped over the body and proceeded over to what turned out to be a stairwell down into a cellar. As her beam penetrated the black hole, something skittered out of the way at the bottom, and she began her descent cautiously, putting her gloved hand on a railing that was bolted into the wall.

There was a slight smell of death halfway to the lower level, the awful perfume the kind of thing that activated the most ancient part of her brain, triggering thoughts of stopping, turning around, leaving immediately. Which she refused to do.

At the bottom, she stopped and looked around.

There were three cells directly ahead, and there was a body locked in one, its arm extending out through the bars, the hand missing. The head of the man had been badly beaten in, with a pool of dried blood around it, all facial features unrecognizable between the damage and the decaying.

Vitoria took a deep breath. More blue jeans. It wasn’t either of her brothers.

Turning around, she—

“Oh…dear God,” she said in Spanish.

As she hastily made the sign of the cross, her stomach clenched and then heaved—and she had to cover her mouth or throw up.

A corpse was splayed against the far wall, hanging by chains that had been locked on its wrists. The male was naked, the head lolling to the side, a trail of long-dried blood running from one side of the neck down the chest to the leg, a wound of some sort in the abdomen.

She knew it was Ricardo by the hands and the pattern of hair.

But she had to be sure.

Walking forward, she shook so badly her teeth rattled together and her hands slapped against her hips. And when she leaned to the side so the beam flashed upward to the features of the face, she began to cry. The dried-up eyes were open with horror, the mouth distended as if Ricardo had cried for help that would never come, the flesh horribly wrinkled and falling off in strips because he had been dead for so long yet no one had come for his remains.

For all of the violent things Ricardo had wrought on others, for the many deaths he had caused, directly or indirectly, for the rigid restrictions he had put on her, there was plenty to justify this terrible, lonely, painful demise.

Yet as she stared at the decayed remains of the face she had known all her life, she thought not of all the bad things. She remembered the vases of flowers on their mother’s birthday: Though she was before the body of the man, she thought of the soul of the child.

She would mourn the latter, for that was the one she had the most in common with: all those hard, early years of poverty that had been the kiln to Ricardo’s ambitions had served the same purpose for her. They had been dirty and hungry together, mocked in the street as they begged, beaten, and chased away.

As emotion overcame her, there was a temptation to fall apart. To sink to her knees and wail. To throw her hands up in a scared defeat and return to safety back in South America.

This was what she had come here for, however. A slate wiped clean—and Eduardo was dead, too. She knew that without a doubt. If someone had done this to Ricardo, then the other had been killed as well.

Vitoria had wanted a revolution. So she needed to be able to stomach the bloodshed.

As she forced herself to go back upstairs, she tripped at the first step—but upon none of the others. Up at the top, she cleared her throat a couple of times and breathed through her nose. For some reason, she wanted the smell out of her nostrils before she went outside, as if that would dim the memories. Or perhaps she was trying to catch her breath. Or…

She couldn’t think straight. But she needed to start doing that immediately.

Striding to the door that was still only slightly ajar, she said roughly, “Nothing.”

Outside, Streeter pivoted around, his exhale of cigarette smoke floating up to the brightening sky. “No?”

She made what she hoped was a negatory sound and closed things up behind her. Before she put herself once more in her snowshoes, she checked to make sure the locking mechanism had engaged.

“So this was a waste of time,” he muttered.

“Yes. It was.”

If he had known her better, or been paying closer attention, he might have noticed her voice was hoarse. And her hands were shaking. And she was breathing hard. But he was too self-involved, and that was perfect.

Clipping herself back into the snowshoes, Vitoria set off once again, at a faster pace than before.

She had no choice but to leave the bodies, even that of her brother. It was better for her to pretend she knew nothing and be sought out by law enforcement if things ever came to that. Which would be a very long while, if at all. This outpost was totally secluded and secure, and she and Streeter’s tracks would be covered by snow soon enough—

“I’m sorry.”

Vitoria looked over her shoulder without breaking stride. “For what.”

“Bein’ wrong. Wastin’ your time.”

Now she lost her rhythm. “It’s okay. Do not worry yourself about it. We all make mistakes.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“You are welcome, Streeter.”

As she continued on, she tried to distract herself with plans to continue following up with more of those names in Eduardo’s journal. But it was hard. Ricardo’s throat had been torn open, for godsakes.

What kind of animal did that?