Chapter 5: Night Shift

The door shut behind Roman, and the bell over it jangled for a long time.

Nobody touched the envelope.

Tobin came down the bar and picked it up.

He read it standing there, while the whole room watched him.

"Canada," he said.

"What?"

"We go north. Tonight. Ginny's truck. There are packs up there who don't read Council mail."

Ginny didn't argue.

That scared me.

"Toby's right," she said quietly. "Rogue is forever. You run now, before he gets them to sign it."

I took the envelope out of Tobin's hand.

It was heavy paper with three elders' seals at the bottom.

Their names and addresses were printed under the seals, for answers to the charge.

"If we run, he's right," I said. "About everything. You're the forecaster who killed two men. I'm the thief who ran off with his cat."

"I don't care what he says about me."

"I do."

Tobin stared at me.

"And the Crown opens for the Moot," I said. "Eleven Alphas. Their families. Your weak layer is still in that slope, isn't it?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

"I'm going to the Moot," I said. "I'm going to tell them who was on my radio. You can go to Canada. I'll tell them that part too."

The bar was very quiet.

Tobin looked at me for a long time.

"You'd go back there alone?"

"I'd go back there with the truth. That's more than I had last time."

He gave a quiet laugh.

"Eight months of oatmeal," he said. "I'm not letting you have the good part alone."

The next morning Ginny drove me to the Larch Creek ski hill.

It was two lifts on a lumpy mountain above the mill, with a log base lodge and a rope tow for kids.

The grooming barn was a red tin shed.

Inside sat the oldest snowcat I'd ever seen, with its engine cover off and a tarp over the seat.

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