Elysium Dreams

Six

"What if he watched?"  Lucas slowly started turning in a circle.  "What if he climbed one of these trees and watched through a scope?"

"You don't think we would have noticed?"  Special Agent Arons asked.

"I don't know," Lucas was still looking thoughtful into something I couldn't see.

"Let me help you think through it," I said to him.

"How far do you think you could see out here?"  He finally turned his striking, icy blue eyes to me.

"I don't know, I think snow-blindness would be a problem during the day," I answered.

"You've never been hunting," Lucas smiled at me.

"Can't say I have," I admitted, "but that does not change the thought process behind it.  Sitting in a tree where you could see the investigation going on for hours on end, I would think that would be problematic.  Back home, they hunt in blinds, I do not know if it's different up here, but they do not sit on a tree branch all day."

"That's true," Lucas looked back out into the woods.

"Besides, we would see his tracks somewhere," I told him.

"Not if we weren't looking for them," he pointed to the ground.

He was right, outside the path to this spot and within the spot itself, there weren't any other footprints.  This meant that no one had bothered to secure an outside perimeter.  This seemed like a major oversight.  There weren't even footprints leading past this spot.  We were in a natural clearing and outside the clearing was the rest of the world.

"We should search the area," Gabriel said.

"Damn," I looked at my feet.  I was already ankle deep in the white powdery crap.  I hated snow.

"Put ten feet between you and begin walking forward, we'll go one way until I say to stop," Gabriel shouted.

"Between us," Lucas said to me.  I knew he meant between him and Xavier.  I didn't think this would help with a sniper, but you never knew.

Xavier flanked me on one side.  Lucas took the other side.  Gabriel gave them a look, but said nothing.  It had become somewhat obvious since I joined the group that Lucas was protective of me.  That didn't mean he walked in front of me everywhere we went, quite the opposite.  He helped me prove myself, making sure when I took point, I was calm and firing straight and fast.

We began walking.  The snow proved deeper once we got off the path.  It went above my snow boots, spilling into them.  I could feel it squelch under my feet, soaking my socks.

There were other factors to contend with though.  I didn't have the men's long legs; I was shorter by at least half a foot.  The snow was nearly up to my knees in some spots.  I struggled to move my legs.

The cold air didn't help.  The wind was blowing and the forecasted high of thirty-one degrees hadn't hit yet.  The cold air burned in my lungs.  Together, they tired me faster.  Two hundred yards in and I was already panting.  My feet were cold and nothing I could do would warm them.

I'd had hypothermia before, only a mild case, but a mild case was still hypothermia.  It hadn't felt like this.  It had been instantaneous after jumping into Lake Michigan in late October.

"Stop," Xavier said.  We'd made it maybe another hundred feet.  He walked over to me.

"Go away," I huffed at him.

"Still have smoker's lungs," Xavier pulled off his gloves and felt my face.

"Then why isn't Gabriel panting?"  I asked.