Page 10 of The Pact

I hit the speed dial for Tomasetti.

This morning when Kevin left the house, the idea of running away with his best friend had seemed like a grand adventure. Now, cold, hungry, and scared out of his wits, he figured it was the worst mistake of his life. The good news was they’d lost whoever had been chasing them. The bad news was he’d dropped his backpack—and his phone. How could he have been so stupid?

“How much farther?” he called out to Aaron.

“Seems like we should have been there by now.” Aaron didn’t slow down. “Stop worrying. We’ll get there.”

But Kevin was worried. They’d left the trail a ways back. Everything looked different in these woods after dark. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mom. The house was probably nice and warm and smelled of whatever she’d fixed for supper. Dang, his dad was going to be pissed. He’d likely get grounded for the rest of his life. What had he been thinking?

They trudged through the dusting of snow that whispered across the ground, catching on dead leaves and brush. Kevin was trying to figure out a way to tell his friend he wanted to turn around and go home—and still save face—when Aaron called out. “There it is!”

Aaron’s flashlight went black.

“Dude!” Kevin cried.

“Shhh! He’ll hear us!”

Kevin came up beside Aaron. Sure enough, the trees opened to a clearing. A small cabin sat in the darkness, smoke puffing from the chimney. No lights in the windows, but a porch light glowed yellow.

“Old man Henderson’s place,” Aaron whispered.

As his eyes adjusted to the near total darkness, Kevin took in the scene. The cabin was off to the right, a hulking form nestled in the trees. Farther out, Henderson’s pickup truck was parked in the gravel lane. Junk littered the area. Old farm implements surrounded by high grass. A rusty stock trailer sat at a cockeyed angle. A tractor tire lying on its side. A fifty-gallon drum.

“Lookit.” Aaron pointed. “There’s the pen.”

Kevin looked past the barn and saw the silhouette of the chain-link pen. It was too dark to make out any details; he couldn’t tell if the buck was inside.

“Come on,” Aaron whispered. “This way.”

The Amish boy ducked left. Sticking to the shadows of the trees, they skirted the cabin and barn. Not for the first time, Kevin wished to God he’d never gotten himself into this. If Henderson came out and saw them, they were dead meat.

“What if he’s got dogs?” Kevin squeaked.

Aaron was so intent on their quest, he didn’t even look at him. “I think we’d have known by now.”

The crunch of leaves beneath their feet seemed inordinately loud in the silence. Kevin followed Aaron, pushing through thick brush, ducking the occasional branch. All the while, he kept his eyes on the cabin, expecting at any moment for a light to go on and a dozen junkyard dogs to come rushing out and tear them to pieces.

He nearly ran into Aaron when he stopped.

“There he is.” Awe echoed in the Amish boy’s voice.

Kevin looked past him. The sight of the buck was otherworldly in the falling snow, like something right out of one of his graphic novels. A massive buck with a rack of antlers like he’d never seen stood in the center of the pen, head high, tail raised, staring at them. Snow flew sideways between the boys and the deer, and Kevin thought he’d never seen anything so cool in his life.

“Whoa,” he murmured.

“Never seen a deer like that,” Aaron said quietly.

For the span of a full minute, the boys simply stared. The deer stared back, snorting, breaths puffing from its nostrils.

After a moment, Aaron set his knapsack on the ground, opened it, and pulled out the wire cutters. Two pair. He turned to Kevin, his expression solemn and determined as he handed the wire cutters to his friend.

“You know what to do, right?” Aaron asked.

Kevin reached for the wire cutters, hoping the darkness covered the fact that his hand was shaking. “Yeah.”

Aaron studied the pen a moment. “Too dark to tell for sure, but it looks like there’s a gate. If there is, we open it. If it’s chained or locked, we go to the back and cut the fence. Four feet wide. As high as we can reach. Hopefully, that buck is smart enough to find his way out.”

Aaron looked at him. “You ready?”