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he’d followed that elk onto the two-track and found Jolee in
the snow, he’d been far too distracted. Life had taught him not to
care, not to get too emotionally invested, but this situation had
sunk him deep into something he wasn’t ready for and didn’t want.
But what choice did he have?
    Until this had happened, he’d had a purpose.
Spring would be here before long, and his plans would come to full
fruition. And he was sure to find Isabelle by then, he
reasoned—although after so many years of looking, even he had to
admit to losing some hope. There was a damned lot of land to cover,
and he’d explored more of it than probably anyone in the history of
the state.
    But then this giant wrench in the works had
come along…
    He had his brother’s wife locked up in his
cabin—a brother who thought he was dead. Hell, Carlos might even
believe his wife was now dead, if they didn’t do too much
investigation around the wreckage—at least until spring, when the
way down the ravine was less treacherous.
    We’ve got until spring, he told himself,
swinging the maul again, aiming far past the point of impact, as if
the top half-foot of wood didn’t even exist. The result was a fine,
resounding split, the wood flying apart, the wedge of the maul
separating it cleanly. His father had taught him never to split
wood with an ax. A maul did the job best, and a dull one at that. A
sharp maul was no good to anyone—it just got stuck in the wood.
    Silas swung again, thinking about his
father, gone too many years now. The old man had taught them both
all of the same things. He and Carlos had grown up side by side,
their mother a distant, warm, sad memory from the time Silas was
about six and Carlos fifteen. Maybe the old man had spent more time
with his younger son, teaching him to set traps and track and hunt.
Carlos had been doing older-boy things by then, dating girls and
asking for the keys to the truck all the time. Perhaps the
experience of their childhoods had been more different than he
realized, Silas thought.
    But the old man had done the right thing,
the smart thing, when he finally succumbed to the cancer eating
away at his esophagus—too many years of chewing tobacco, something
Silas would never do—putting provisions in his will that one son
receive all the land, the other son all the money. It was supposed
to get them to work together, Silas was sure, although perhaps his
father had known that was an improbability. Silas had been
outspoken about the rape of the natural world taking place in the
logging camps and strip mines, and had made it pretty clear what he
would do if he got his hands on the land.
    Still, had they parted ways amicably, it
would have all been all right. According to the will, Carlos had
the right to continue working on the land where he was already
established—he just couldn’t go any further or put up any new
logging camps or mines without his brother’s permission. There was
plenty of money to be made still, and if there was one thing Carlos
knew how to do it was making his money make money.
    And Silas, who had never valued money and
possessions in the same way his brother had, would have been happy
protecting his land and the wildlife living on it. So maybe the old
man had anticipated their split, had known the brothers would never
see eye-to-eye, and had done the only thing he could think of to
avoid trouble between them.
    And it might have worked. If it hadn’t been
for Isabelle, maybe it would have turned out the way his father had
imagined. Instead, his world had ended in fire and pain and death,
while his brother…
    “Silas?”
    He stood upright, hearing the screen door
creak on the side of the house. It was Jolee. His brother had gone
on with his life, continuing with the business—even if it involved
using Silas’s land and making illegal deals and if someone got in
the way, well, everyone in Carlos’s world was expendable, after
all…
    And Silas had known all of those