A flashlight beam swept through the pines fifty yards to our left.

“Over there!” a voice shouted over the wind.

I didn’t look back.

I pulled Alexander down the wooden steps and into the deep snow.

The drifts came up to my knees.

Alexander groaned, his boots slipping on the hidden ice beneath the powder.

We scrambled into the shadow of a thick hemlock grove.

Behind us, the cabin windows shattered one by one from the intense heat.

The orange glow cast our long, shaking shadows deep into the forest.

“Keep moving,” I muttered, my teeth already chattering.

“Claire, I can’t,” he whispered, his face pale in the firelight.

“You can,” I said, squeezing his waist. “You have to.”

We walked deeper into the trees, away from the access road.

The sound of crackling timber and shouting men followed us.

We climbed a steep, rocky ridge where the pine needles were thick.

My lungs burned with every breath of freezing air.

I looked back and saw three silhouettes standing by the burning cabin.

One of them held a rifle.

They were looking at the snow, trying to find our tracks.