Gideon stood on the second-story fire escape of the Bellweather school, his left hand resting on the icy iron handrail, his right hand on the sling of his carbine beneath the wool blanket pinned over his coat.
Mara climbed the metal steps behind him, her snowshoes tied to the pack on her shoulders. Her thighs burned from the two-mile trek through the frozen courier ravine; the wind on the ridge had dropped the temperature below freezing, turning her wool scarf into a stiff, frosty mask across her mouth and chin.
“Two trucks,” Gideon said without turning around.
Mara followed his gaze down the snow-covered slope of the athletic field.
A quarter-mile away, where the school’s gravel driveway met the county road, two heavy commercial trucks had idled into the ditch. Their headlights were extinguished, but their clearance markers glowed amber in the dark, throwing long, thin beams across the drifts. The low, guttural chug of their diesel engines drifted up the hill, steady as a pulse.
“Are they Venn’s regulars?” Mara asked, pulling the scarf down from her lips.
“Venn’s security contractor,” Gideon said. “The men who wear the dark coats with the pale armbands. Four in each cab, probably six more under the canvas in the flatbed. They have twelve-gauge shotguns and hunting rifles with deer scopes. No heavy machine guns. Venn didn’t bring the armored half-track because the culvert bridge on the county road won’t take six tons.”
