I tried checking my phone again, and again my phone betrayed me. I’d packed a lot of books for the trip out here. It just happened that all those books were stored in bits of data. We all talk a big game about the smell of old books and the symphony of flipping through their pages, but once you run out of space in your luggage for other creature comforts, there’s really no contest between paper and digital.

After a while, I ended up staring out of the window at the forest. It was a lot more alive out there than I’d thought it would be. I caught a rabbit or two snuffling through the snow, and even what I thought was a bear out in the distance. For a few moments, my new deathly fear of the cold gave way to imagining the kind of cool snowmen you could make out there. I’d always been more of a snowball guy than a snow fort guy, but Ryan had always loved building in his own weird snow sculptures, all carefully smoothed spikes and inexplicable curves. I can also tell you from personal experience that he could hold a very long grudge against people who messed with his art. It would be fun to screw around like that again. Hell, part of me was even considering another expedition out there into the forest, just for fun. So long as we stayed away from the large bodies of water, and as many of the small ones as possible.

My gaze eventually went to the parking lot, where Dr. Grodin was going through the luggage at the back of his van. I caught a glimpse of a hunting rifle, which was interesting for a guy who apparently had no intention of venturing out into the cold. The other two cars were pretty nondescript, though I could see through a window that one of them had a shovel packed in the back seat. Maybe the Deckards…? No, that couldn’t be their car, not with the other one packed full of sporting gear. You could probably cover an entire bear corpse with that pile. What could they possibly be using it all for? Although I suppose they wouldn’t be the first rich morons to buy more than they could use.

I was still mulling over all this when Grodin finished his rummaging and slammed shut the back door of his car. He looked to his left and waved at me, and I waved back. Honestly, I would feel pretty bad if the dude turned out to be the bird smuggler. He seemed like a pretty stand-up guy.

After a few more minutes of drumming my fingers against the sheets, I reached out and grabbed my jacket, which had been hung over a chair to dry. My Smith and Wesson 42 was still holstered inside it. Maybe there is a kind deity out there, after all. A dip in ice-cold water and two days being left uncared for hadn’t done my pistol many favors. I was lucky to get my hands on it before it started to rust.

I got out of bed, wobbling a little on my feet and clutching my head, and pulled my gun cleaning kit out of my backpack. Taking my gun apart and cleaning it properly left a few stains on the blankets, even after I tried to use my jacket to cover it all. Maybe I should get Ryan to leave a slightly bigger tip.

My phone rang in the middle of the process, and I glanced over to see my Dad’s icon on the screen. With a sigh, I answered the call and put him on speaker.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Amadeus – I mean, Ryan told me you got into trouble.” He always called Ryan by his middle name, one of their own little rituals. I would’ve been a bit jealous, except I’d rather jump back in the lake than be called by my middle name. Why had Ryan told them about what had happened, anyway? It’s not like I’d actually died or anything.

“Yeah. I’m – I’m fine. How are you guys doing? Honestly, I kind of expected Mom to call before you did.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Her flight only got in a few hours ago, though. I wanted to get an update on how you were before telling her about it. There really isn’t any problem, is there? Other than what just happened, I mean. No issues in the City? Is Ryan treating you all right?”

“Nothing like that.” I assured him. “But… I’d rather not talk about what happened right now, okay? It’s just that, it hasn’t really been, um, resolved yet, and it’s probably best to tell you about it as a complete story, you know what I mean?” It was a ridiculous excuse, but Dad’s always excelled in reading between the lines.

The problem was that if we weren’t going to be talking about the right now, we were going to have to talk about what had already happened. Like the drinking, and the arguing, and the dropping out of college… Or even worse, we’d have to talk about my future. And even after all these months, I still wasn’t ready for that conversation.

I felt Dad try to tiptoe around those topics, try his hardest not to lead this talk down the same old trails our arguments usually went. After all this time, I finally appreciated it. It’s a pit we all trip into at one point, don’t we? We pat ourselves on the back for our own efforts, and judge everyone else by what they accomplish. My father was trying to move past everything that had happened. He deserved at least as much on my end.

The conversation lightened up a bit as we got into sports. I’ll be straight with you; I find playing sports a lot more fun than actually watching them. But I kept up with the events enough to argue about it. It’s always been the thing we’ve bonded over most. In fact, we actually talked long enough for my eyelids to grow heavy. I was brought dinner at the tail end of the conversation, and honestly felt too tired to even eat properly. Didn’t stop me from finishing the whole tray, though.

“I’m guessing you boys won’t be coming over for Christmas?” Dad said at last, and there was a subtle and undeniable hopeful note in his voice.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. Then an idea struck me. “But you guys could always come over here to visit instead. There’s a lot of good places to visit here, and you guys could stay at Ryan’s place if you want to.” I had a nice big waterbed back there that could fit two, and if the couch was comfy enough for naps, I was sure I could spend the nights on it.

“We’ll think about it.” He said, in a tone that said he actually would, and not what you say when you’re looking for an excuse to hang up. The sun had already set by the time I ended the call, and I watched the light grey of the sky fade to a starless, empty black. Luckily, the light switch was close enough I didn’t have to get out of bed.

There were no dreams this time. I’m not sure why, but it might’ve had something to do with the fact that I was woken up early.

I’m equally uncertain of what knocked me out of the Land of Nod. If it was a sound, it wasn’t loud enough to remember. Ryan would’ve had a bunch of explanations, like a change in temperature or air flow in the room, but it could’ve been a psychic sixth or seventh sense for all I know. What matters is I did wake up, and that same instinct drove me to grab the gun off the side table before going for the light switch.

The room was pitch dark, but I could tell who - or what- ever it was, it was right beside me. “Hey!” I yelled. “Who are you?” My hand bumped something on the table, and the trill of the bell was almost deafening in the darkness.

The intruder panicked, smacking me on the chin with something, and I scrambled back to point the gun in front of me. I felt that same presence throw the door open and run out. Idiot I am, I was too busy switching off the safety of the gun. Because I’m sure if I’d taken a closer look, the dim lighting of the hallway might’ve given me something to recognize. As it was, all I got was a dark blur, and when Ryan and a concierge both came in here a minute later, they turned on the lights to find me pointing the gun at them.

This caused its own few moments of chaos, which it took Ryan a few moments to shush. At last, the concierge retreated outside, no doubt to mull over consulting the manager of the guesthouse at this hour.

“Look,” I said, quietly and carefully setting the pistol back on the side table. “Ryan, you’ve got to believe me here.”

Ryan smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I severely doubt you smacked yourself on the chin with a table lamp, anyway. Now, are you sure you didn’t see anything?”

I shook my head, feeling the throbbing in my temples come back in full force. “My eyes were like, blurry. I don’t think I would’ve seen much even if the lights were on.”

He nodded, pacing up and down the room, those silvery bright eyes taking in everything. “Do you have any idea of what intention your nighttime visitor had? Did you see any signs of a weapon?”

“No and no.” I said. I frowned. “Did you lock the door when you left, by the way?”

“I did. Alma has a key for when she’s taking you your meals, and even when locked, you can open it from the inside in an emergency. Yeah, it’s probably someone who got their hands on the key. Unless…” My brother closed the door, frowning, then locked it. He leaned down beside the door handle, flicking his hand and letting his multitool pop out of his sleeve. He tapped the end of it against the lock, not even taking out an attachment. His face screwed up in concentration, clearly listening or feeling for something. His nose twitched like a weasel’s, thinking, then he gave the lock a sharp blow with his fist. The door creaked open.

I blinked. “Holy shit. You think all the locks in this place are like that?”

“I’ll have to do some tests, but I don’t think so.” He locked the door once more, and repeated his experiment. Sure enough, it opened just as easily.

The concierge was called in a second time. “I remember the Deckards were staying in this room when my brother here was brought in. Am I right?”

“You are, sir. They’d arrived just two days before, with their big talk about their skiing and such.” She still looked understandably sullen at being called in here and having a gun pointed at her. But she’d survive, I’m sure.

“And how long ago did someone here check on the locks?”

She stared at the door in some consternation. “A few years ago, I think. Sir, are there any problems – ”

“Yes, yes there are.”

For my part, I was just shuffling around on my stupid lumpy bed, trying to figure out why all this had happened. It couldn’t possibly be for revenge. Why would the poachers target me out of everyone who’d gone after them? And other than my gun, I didn’t have much on me that was actually valuable, much less valuable things that I kept right beside my –

I rolled myself off the bed, ignoring the sharp influx of pain, and leaned against the wall. “Ryan,” I called, and he turned back to look at me with surprise. “Ryan, the bed…”

Give the man a prize, he understood me immediately. There weren’t many reasons why someone would be that close to me when I woke up, unless it didn’t have much to do with me and more with what I was on. Ryan crossed the room and threw off the sheets and blankets, flipping over the mattress.

“There’s some kind of pocket here on the underside.” He said. “I think, wait – ”

He began pulling out bags of shimmering feathers, the blue-tinged white of the peaks of the ocean’s foam. The same blue-white of the Hilloughby buntings. There were entire bags full of them. How many birds had they stripped of their feathers?

The concierge let out a long, low whistle, and not much else. She, at least, must have heard about the poachers yesterday. Ryan turned over one of the feathers, walking over to the lamp by the window to see it more clearly. “It must have been a rush job, but the feathers aren’t damaged at all.” He muttered. He turned to the window for a moment, staring out at the parking lot, then shook his head and turned back inside.

“An ingenious find, Dy.” My brother said, setting down the feather with the others and giving me a soft round of applause. I had to admit that made me feel a warm rush of pride somewhere in the chest cavity. “You helped crack the case wide open.”

“You’ve figured out who did it?” I asked slowly. “I mean, if the Deckards were staying right here when I was brought in – ”

“Not yet, Dy, not yet. Give me a little more time.” He turned over the mattress again and began to make the bed once more. “You, on the other hand, still need your rest. You took your pills for the night, I hope?”

*

He gathered all the guests together in the dining area of the guest house, at least three rooms away from mine. I’ll admit it would’ve been impractical to the extreme, but part of me had hoped he had found a way to do it here. But still, he’d supplied me an earpiece, and started the proceedings right on schedule.

From what I could hear, he was pacing up and down, no doubt eyeing every guest carefully as he prepared his speech. There’s a certain method to his madness there. Plenty of his dramatics are used to throw his targets off guard. While he might turn up his nose at the use of confessions as evidence, I’m yet to hear him complain about his targets panicking and telling their whole life story in the process..

“I refuse to listen to this man’s ravings! I’ll call the cops on you, woman! I’ll call the senator! The Attorney General!”

“We’ll have this wrapped up in a few minutes, Mrs. Deckard.” Ranger Maloney said, in frankly a gentler voice than she deserved. “Just quiet down for now.”

“She does make an excellent point here, Mr. Neville.” An older, graver man’s voice called out. “I’m not sure on whose authority you’re speaking for here.”

“There’s no need to worry so much, Professor Silva. I’m sure the police will iron out any issues of jurisdiction,” My brother told him, no doubt waving away the objection as he spoke. “In fact, they’d already be here right now if an early morning snowdrift hadn’t blocked the road. That too was handled, wasn’t it, Ranger Maloney?”

There was a moment of silence I had to assume was a nod. “They’re on their way, yep.”

“Excellent.” I could hear Ryan rub his hands together. “Now, I know in as cozy an establishment as this that every wall has ears. So I’m certain you’ve all heard about a group of poachers shooting a group of Hilloughby buntings a couple days ago now. The bodies of the birds promptly disappeared, and the poachers were found with a large sum of money, indicating they had already found a buyer. I’m sure you’ve also heard that last night my brother had his room broken into. He then discovered a collection of feathers from the buntings in a sewn pocket under his bed.”

“You hide it in your own room and then have the audacity to accuse us!” Mrs. Deckard cried, clearly not giving up looking for an excuse to be outraged. Everyone in the room ignored her.

“Now,” Ryan continued, the audio from the microphone buzzing and clicking for a moment, “I already had my reasons to suspect the people in this building, which I don’t feel the need to go into here. Let me only state that the staff here were all busy with their duties during the period in question, with them corroborating each other’s stories. I find it unlikely they or any other local was the buyer I was looking for. A fact which pointed directly at all of you guests, of course.

“The attempt to take back the buntings in the middle of the night was very ill-advised. Yes, it’s possible Dylan and I may have found them anyway. But discovering the true culprit would still have been much more difficult. You see, the lock to the room was faulty, and could be opened without a key. It’s understandable why the staff would’ve missed it; it’s quite tricky to find without a purposeful search. You’d probably need a great deal of luck – ”

“Wait a moment,” Doctor Grodin said, his voice growing higher and reedier with excitement, “wait just a moment! Weren’t Mr. and Mrs. Deckard staying in that room when your brother was brought in?”

“How dare you!” Mrs. Deckard shrieked, this time with her husband stepping in before she could destroy the earpiece through sheer volume overload. “Nonsense, pure nonsense, darling.” He told her. I heard his voice for the first time here. Though really, it was the first time I’d heard most of their voices. He in particular spoke in soft, dulcet tones that nonetheless held an oily underside. “Really, I can’t expect Mr. Neville here to believe we tried to take the feathers off those birds. Why, in all my life I’ve never even plucked a chicken! Now, the doctor here, on the other hand, he might claim to be here on a vacation, but I know for a fact there’s a hunting rifle in his car …”

“Very observant, Mr. Deckard, although I doubt Doctor Grodin would’ve recommended keeping my brother in this room if he’d already stuffed some birds under the bed.” Ryan said. He wasn’t quite yelling yet, but there was a firm, determined increase in volume. “But you two weren’t the couple I was going to accuse, in any case. Professor Silva, didn’t you and your wife come here every summer for the last few years?”

“Well, yes…” It was Silva’s wife who spoke this time, in a quavering and hesitant voice. She sounded rather sweet. I would’ve shared some tea and cookies with her under different circumstances.

“Indeed. According to Alma here, you two had your favorite room for all those years, which also happens to be the one the Deckards took. And, of course, the same one we had to commandeer for my brother. Once you add up all those summer visits, you two must’ve spent a long time in here. Certainly more than the Deckards, who were only here for a day or two – a period spent mostly outside! I don’t think you two had anything malicious in mind when you found the fault in the lock – you probably just forgot to tell the front desk about it. And no doubt you equally didn’t think much of it when the Deckards reserved your own special room. You didn’t usually come here during the summer, after all.

“But once you got your hands on the buntings, things were different. They were hunting down the poachers now. You had to be low-key. And those two Deckards were always out of the room anyway. It really would’ve been the perfect place to hide it… except when Doctor Grodin and the rangers placed Dylan in there, and suddenly you had so many more things to worry about.”

“Hey, now, didn’t we just tell you folks that we were nowhere close to where those poachers were? We have the photographs to prove it!”

“That’s true.” Ryan acknowledged. “And that would exonerate you quite handily, except for just one more careless mistake. You left your shovel in plain sight, Dr. Silva. I’ll grant that’s not exactly unprecedented for an ornithologist to have. But that was unusual enough to remind me that even if you weren’t close enough to be handed the birds directly, you were close enough to dig a little hole to dump the money into. Probably told the poachers you hired to hide the birds there, too. And you had just enough time to dig those buntings back up, and strip them of their feathers.”

“They call those things a dead drop, don’t they?” Ranger Maloney said, in that same calm voice she no doubt also used to sing injured squirrels to sleep, “Where people hide stuff they want their criminal friends to get their hands on. We found the hole that you people dug this morning. There were still a few feathers you left in there.”

“Finding it was really quite trivial after I figured out your route” Ryan told them, no doubt preening himself at this very moment. “And now, Professor Silva, Mrs, Silva, it’s probably best if you two – AARGH! OW!”

“Oh god, what is that, sand?”

“My eyes! It’s in my eyes!”

The microphone buzzed, filled with sounds of coughs, sneezes, and cries of pain and outrage. In the commotion, I heard a voice yell out. “I got them, honey! Now run! Run!” I heard the sound of running footsteps.

I yawned and got out of bed, scratching my neck. It was a good thing my headache had cleared a little this morning. Hopefully, this fever was on the ropes by now. Peering out of the window, I saw Professor Silva and his wife sprint out of the front door with quite an astonishing speed for elderly academics. The two of them were headed straight for the parking lot. I took my gun off the side table, aimed carefully, and shot out three of their car tires. Alas, I couldn’t aim at the fourth properly from this angle.

Yawning once more, I went straight back to bed. The sooner this fever cleared up, the better.