Chapter 2 - The Ghost Path
The darkness rushed in around them like cold water.
Vincent’s heart hammered against his ribs, not from fear, but from the brutal physical strain of carrying Lily.
She felt surprisingly warm in his arms, her breath hitting the exposed skin of his neck in ragged puffs.
"Head into the tree line," Vincent ordered in a low, sharp whisper.
Margaret did not argue.
She stepped off the crushed-gravel roadway and sank calf-deep into the powder beneath the hemlock trees.
Vincent followed, planting his heavy boots carefully to avoid snapping dry branches under the snow.
He carried Lily twenty yards into the dense brush before kneeling behind a massive, fallen oak trunk.
He set Lily down gently, letting her back rest against the snow-covered bark.
Her face was contorted in agony, her hands clutching her swollen right boot.
"Don't move," Vincent whispered, his lips inches from her ear.
Lily nodded frantically, biting down on the sleeve of her coat to suppress any whimpering.
On the road above, the vehicle crawled into view.
It was a matte-black Ford F-350 with tinted windows and a heavy steel brush guard.
The headlights swept over the exact spot where Lily had fallen minutes earlier.
The truck slowed.
Then it came to a complete halt.
The passenger door clicked open.
The driver door opened a second later.
Two tall men stepped down into the blizzard, their figures silhouetted against the bright halogen beams.
Both men wore heavy tactical parkas, insulated gloves, and balaclavas covering their faces.
Vincent watched through the pine needles as the taller man raised an automatic carbine to his waist.
The driver knelt near the edge of the road, shining an intensely bright spotlight at the snow.
"Footprints," the driver called out, his voice cutting through the wind.
"Three sets."
"One of them dragged or fell right here."
The taller man cursed loudly.
"They abandoned the lodge on foot. They can't be more than a few hundred yards out."
"Check the lodge first?" the driver asked.
"No, you idiot," the taller man barked.
"Romano’s still here. Tracks lead downhill."
"He’s protecting the old woman."
"Move down the road. If they see headlights, they’ll cut into the timber."
Vincent felt the cold seep into his bones as he listened.
These were not opportunists.
They were professionals executing an order.
They knew Vincent Romano was here, and they knew Margaret was with him.
Beside him, Margaret’s face had hardened into stone.
Vincent slid his Glock from its holster, pulling the slide back a fraction of an inch to verify the brass casing in the chamber.
"Stay with Lily," Vincent whispered to Margaret.
"I’m going to flank them before they find these tracks."
Margaret’s hand suddenly shot out and locked onto Vincent’s wrist with surprising strength.
"No," the old matriarch said.
Her voice was barely audible, but the urgency in it stopped him dead.
Vincent looked at her in surprise.
Margaret had watched his grandfather run an empire with blood and fire.
She had never flinched from violence in her entire life.
"Vincent, look at the way they’re moving," Margaret whispered.
Vincent turned his gaze back to the road.
The two men were not advancing blindly.
A third man had stepped out of the bed of the truck, setting up a tripod-mounted thermal scanner.
If Vincent stepped into the open to engage them, he would be spotted instantly and gunned down.
"Don't leave us," Margaret commanded.
"You kill two, three more will flank us while we freeze to death."
"We need to get off this mountain without taking the main road."
Vincent exhaled a cloud of steam, holstering his weapon.
"There are no other roads down this crest," he said.
"The drop to the river is eighty feet of sheer granite."
Margaret shook her head slightly.
"There is a maintenance path."
Vincent frowned in the dark.
"I’ve spent summers here my whole life. There’s no path."
"Your grandfather built it in 1974," Margaret said, her voice trembling slightly from the biting cold.
"Before you were born."
"When the union strikes turned violent and they tried to blockade our winter house."
"It runs behind the granite ridge, down into the old water-pump shed near the ranger boundary."
"It’s overgrown, but the bedrock beneath it is solid."
Vincent looked through the falling snow toward the steep, dark ridge behind them.
"Can you find it in this blizzard?" he asked her.
"I walked it with your grandfather while you were still a child in school," Margaret replied firmly.
"Follow me."
Vincent turned back to Lily.
Her hands were trembling violently now, not just from the cold, but from the searing throbbing in her fractured ankle.
"Hang onto my neck," Vincent told her gently.
Lily looked at him with profound sorrow in her dark eyes.
"Vincent, you can't carry me across a mountain trail in the dark. You'll slip."
"I didn't ask for your opinion, Lily," he said softly, lifting her effortlessly into his arms once more.
"Hold on tight."
Lily wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into the warm wool of his collar to stay warm.
Margaret led the way through the thick curtain of hemlocks.
She used her silver raven-headed cane like an ice ax, testing the snow depth with every step.
The wind howled like a choir of ghosts around the mountain peak.
Vincent walked behind her, his boots sinking deep into the powdery drifts.
His back muscles burned with white-hot agony.
Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass.
Lily held onto him, her slight weight shifting whenever he had to climb over fallen timber or navigate frozen boulders.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into his ear.
"Stop talking," Vincent grunted between heavy breaths.
"You're wasting oxygen."
"I shouldn't have agreed to come on this trip," she said, her voice shaking.
"Margaret asked me to accompany her, but I should have known something was wrong."
"This isn't your fault," Vincent said, planting his boot firmly on a patch of exposed granite.
"Someone planned this weeks ago."
They pressed onward for twenty grueling minutes.
The sounds of the truck on the road above faded into the roaring storm behind them.
Finally, Margaret stopped near a massive outcropping of dark limestone.
A small, weather-beaten structure of rusted corrugated tin and heavy timber stood wedged against the stone face.
It was completely covered in climbing ivy and icicles.
"The utility pump shed," Margaret whispered, leaning heavily on her cane.
Vincent reached the heavy wooden door first.
The iron padlock was rusted solid.
He shifted Lily into one arm, drew back his heavy boot, and kicked the latch with all the force in his body.
The rotten frame splintered inward with a loud crack.
Vincent carried Lily inside, out of the howling wind.
The air inside the shed was frigid, but it was dry and shielded from the murderous gale.
He laid Lily down on an old wooden workbench covered in dry canvas tarps.
She gasped in relief, her head resting against a bundle of dry canvas.
Vincent turned back to the door, pulling it shut and wedging a heavy iron pipe against the handle.
Margaret leaned against the wall, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
Vincent immediately knelt beside the workbench, pulling out his flashlight and keeping the beam strictly on the floor.
He gently took Lily’s right boot in his hands.
"This is going to hurt," he warned.
"Just do it," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
Vincent carefully worked the frozen laces loose, slowly sliding the heavy leather boot off her foot.
The ankle was swollen to nearly twice its normal size, the skin bruised with angry shades of purple and black.
He checked her toes.
They were cold, but there was blood flow.
"Not compound, but severely torn or fractured," Vincent said, pulling a roll of industrial duct tape from an old tool rack.
He grabbed two flat wooden survey stakes from the corner of the shed.
With methodical mafia field-dressing precision, he bound the wooden stakes along both sides of her calf and ankle.
Lily gripped the edges of the workbench, her knuckles turning white, but she did not cry out.
"You're tough," Vincent remarked quietly, securing the tape.
"You have to be when you grow up with nothing," Lily murmured, opening her eyes to look directly into his.
Across the small room, Margaret was wiping dust off an old metal cabinet bolted to the stone wall.
"Vincent," the old woman called out softly.
Vincent stood up and walked over to her.
Mounted inside the cabinet was a heavy, military-grade Motorola VHF base-station radio, connected to an ancient deep-cycle battery.
"Does it have power?" Vincent asked, feeling a rare surge of hope.
Margaret turned the heavy rotary switch.
A faint amber bulb flickered to life on the face of the console.
A burst of dry static hissed through the small speaker.
"It works," Margaret said.
May you like
Before Vincent could take the microphone, his cell phone in his coat pocket suddenly vibrated once.
A sharp, single buzz that shattered the silence of the shed.
