“No sense standing when your legs are about done. You burned a lot of calories today. I’ve been keeping track.” The old man slid the hot mug and the bread toward the edge of the bunk.
“Drink. Eat. Sugar and caffeine. Best fuel there is for the brain.” Alex didn’t waste time asking questions.
He sat down and took a long, burning swallow of the bitter liquid. The heat hit his stomach and started moving blood through his frozen body again. His mind began to clear.
“Why?” he asked, tearing into the bread. “Because I appreciate elegant solutions,” Solomon said with a faint smile. “That thing you did with the tree? Beautiful.”
“And the way you got rid of Wheezer on the trail—that was pure aikido, no matter how stubbornly you insist on calling it Newton. This barracks has too much muscle and not enough brains.” At that very moment, the barracks door slammed open under a hard kick.
Carl the Cannibal filled the doorway. He looked terrifying, and the blood on his cut cheek had dried into a black crust. In his hand gleamed a long, sharpened knife.
Three of his remaining followers crowded behind him. The whole barracks went silent. Men pressed back into their bunks. Everyone expected a killing—open, bloody, and public.
Carl moved toward Alex. His eyes were bloodshot, and his breathing came in rough bursts. “That’s it,” he rasped.
“You and I are done talking. I’m going to carve you up nice and slow.” Alex tensed, ready for what might be his last fight.
But Solomon, without even turning his head, said quietly, “Carl, put the knife away before you hurt yourself.” Carl stopped two steps from the bunk.
He looked over at the old man, surprised. Rage and caution fought across his face. “Stay out of it, Solomon,” he growled.
“This is my business, and the kid is mine. He crippled two of my men and got a third one shot. I’m going to make an example of him.”
“He was yours while he was in the woods,” Solomon answered calmly, taking an unhurried sip of tea. “Now he’s mine. My books don’t balance.”
“I need a smart assistant with a head for numbers. This boy counts faster than you wave that knife.” “You’re overstepping, old man,” Carl said, taking a step forward and lifting the blade.
“I’m the law here.” Solomon slowly raised those sharp birdlike eyes. There was no fear in them. Only boredom.
“No, Carl. You’re just meat. Strong meat, but meat. The law is numbers.”
“If you touch my bookkeeper, then tomorrow morning Captain Smith will learn where five cubic yards of prime cedar disappeared to after the last timber run. And who sold it to civilian truckers for liquor. You want solitary, Carl?”
“Or maybe a firing squad for theft of government property on a large scale?” The barracks went dead quiet. Carl turned pale.
Only two people knew about the stolen timber: Carl himself and the buyer outside the wire. How did Solomon know? But Carl had no doubt the old man was telling the truth. Solomon knew everything.
The hand holding the knife dropped. Carl swallowed hard, realizing his authority was tearing apart in front of the room. But fear of execution outweighed his hunger for revenge.
“Fine,” he said through his teeth. “Let him live. For now. But listen to me, physics boy. Step outside the fence, and Solomon won’t be there.”
“Out there it’s the woods, and I’m the one in charge.” He turned sharply and shoved his own men aside as he went back to his corner. Alex let out a breath.
His heart was pounding in his throat. He looked at the old man with quiet gratitude. “Thank you,” he said.
“No need,” Solomon answered dryly, taking away the empty mug. “Archimedes said give me a place to stand, and I’ll move the world. I just gave you that place to stand.”
“But understand this, Alex Walker. Nothing in this camp is free. I bought your life back from death, and I paid well. Now you owe me.”
The old man leaned close to Alex’s ear and whispered, “Tomorrow night there’s a big card game in the fuel shed. Men from the neighboring camp are coming in to play twenty-one.”
“They won’t be betting paper money. They’ll be betting control of the whole camp. My job is to watch the bank. Your job is to watch their hands.”
“You have to identify the cheat. If you’re wrong, they’ll cut both our throats right there at the table. If you’re right, your debt is cleared.”
Alex closed his eyes. He understood now that he had only traded one fire for another. Carl was a simple enemy, a brute.
Solomon was something else entirely—a strategist who used other men’s lives like chips on a table. And tomorrow night promised to be worse than the logging camp. That would require more than body mechanics. It would require probability theory, with the price of a mistake measured in inches of steel.
The fuel and oil warehouse sat at the far edge of the camp. Outside, the wind moaned and covered tracks with snow. Inside, the air was thick with the heavy smell of diesel and grease. In the middle of the huge shed, between rows of steel drums, someone had built a makeshift table out of wooden crates covered with army cloth…
