Jess peered up from the floor of the Blazer. “Did we make it?”
Burke’s mouth was a thin line as he drove. He glanced in the rearview. “Not sure yet,” he said. “That old boy was out there when we passed, and he had a pretty big rifle in his hands when he came to take a look at us.”
“I guess I’ll stay down a little longer, then,” Jess said, pulling Lucy closer.
Burke said, “I think that’d be wise.”
Jess stayed on the floor, her arms around the dog, as Burke navigated the road into Deception Cove and out the other side. Lucy wasn’t much for car rides; she panted nonstop, drooled a small lake, and licked Jess’s face obsessively whenever she made the tactical error of coming within range.
“It’s okay, girl,” Jess told her. “We’re almost through, I promise.”
Lucy licked at her face again, regarded her with worried eyes, clearly unconvinced.
Finally Jess felt the Blazer slow, though she could see only treetops from her vantage point. The road got rough; she could hear gravel pinging the underside of the truck, and she surmised that Burke had found the forestry main line. He stopped the truck.
“Should be all clear now,” he said.
She sat up, the muscles in her legs protesting. Leaned forward and pushed the passenger seat up, released the door, and managed to slip out to fresh air without tripping on the seat belt and falling on her face. She stretched, breathed in deep, the damp, loamy smell of the rain forest, the sun, actual sun, on her face.
Then she came around the front of the Blazer to Burke’s side. “Okay, out,” she told him. “It’s my turn to drive.”
He frowned but said nothing.
“This road’s bound to be muddy,” she said. “When’s the last time you drove a four-by-four, Burke?”
A pause. “Been a while.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I’m sick of being chauffeured. Your turn.” She hooked her thumb. “Out.”
Burke smiled a little bit and did what she said. He went around to the passenger side and made himself comfortable while she adjusted the seat and the steering wheel.
“Right,” she said, shifting back into gear. “So how far up this road are we headed?”
“Past the big clear-cut” was Burke’s only input, then up a side road. Jess set the trip monitor anyway, watched the miles count up. The road was in decent shape, actually; it had been graded recently and didn’t show signs of too many washouts. She made good time, encountered no other drivers. Found the front of the clear-cut within five miles and the back end another mile past, a spur road heading up into the bush just beyond it.
“Must be up this way,” she said, and Burke grunted in agreement like the world’s most stoic GPS. She turned the wheel and pressed the gas.
The road got shitty real fast from there. It could hardly be called a road, more a pair of twin trails through the brush. The woods got denser, encroaching on all sides, and winter runoff gutted the tracks, sending the Blazer yawing this way and that, forcing Jess to take things extra slow.
Five minutes of this and Lucy crawled over the center console and into the front seat, dropping herself unceremoniously into Burke’s lap. She exhaled a long, put-upon sigh and stuck her nose in the gap between the seat and the passenger door.
Burke groaned. “Dang, you’re a heavy dog,” he said, but when Jess glanced over, she could see he was smiling. He had his arms around her, stroking her flank.
“She’s a big, fat baby, all right,” Jess said. “If you weren’t in the truck, she’d be crawling on my lap.”
It took twenty minutes of climbing on that muddy trail before the land leveled out and the grade eased off. Jess guessed if the overgrowth weren’t so dense, you could probably look out and see Deception Cove and the water, but as it was, you could barely see sky, much less make out where you stood in the grand scheme of things.
Whatever this road had been used for, the rain forest had reclaimed all but the bare basics. Tall pines and Douglas firs, western red cedar, spruce, deadfall draped with lush carpets of moss, ferns of all variations. This was a primeval place; it was quiet here, it was wet, and it was alive. This was what she’d missed when she was overseas. Even after she’d quit missing Ty and quit missing her town, the rain forest had kept her homesick, and Jess imagined it always would.
You can’t leave this place, she thought. You can’t let those boys drive you out of here. You’ll never survive somewhere else.
The time for that decision had come and gone already anyway. She was into it now, and she’d brought Burke along with her. One way or the other, they’d be seeing this through.
She was contemplating this notion when the road widened out and the forest grew lighter by a degree or two. Up ahead, lodged in between the tall trees, she saw signs of humanity: a collection of trailers, a vehicle. A mountain of junk she couldn’t begin to identify. The whole spread looked deserted, abandoned. It looked like a mess, and Jess knew better than to be surprised.
“Yep, this was Ty’s space,” she said, stopping the truck. “Let’s go poke around, and maybe we get lucky.”
* * *
Mason and Jess split up. Not on purpose, just kind of wandered off in different directions. Jess took Lucy along the left side of the little clearing, toward a couple of moldy, mossed-out trailers on the fringes of the forest. Mason bore right, toward the rusted-to-shit carcass of a Jeep Wagoneer and a couple of burst-open bags of trash, mostly fast-food wrappers and pizza boxes. There was a trailer back there too, looked in slightly better condition than the two by Jess. A couple more cars scattered around.
The whole place stank of cat piss and something chemical. It overpowered the smell of the rain forest such that Mason could taste it whenever he breathed. The ground was mud and pine needles, and there were tracks in the mud, boots and tires.
Mason didn’t see anything that looked worth killing over. He figured if Ty Winslow had brought the spoils up here, whatever they were, he would have had to hide them somewhere dry, protect them from the elements. Hell, it was already raining again, that irritating drizzle that wormed under your jacket if you let the hood down but wasn’t cold enough to not make things claustrophobic with the hood up. Mason left the hood down—he couldn’t hear with it up—but he didn’t like the idea. He was running out of dry things to wear.
He was halfway to the third trailer, the one in the far back, when the kid stepped out from behind the junked Lincoln Continental, holding the pistol. “That’s about far enough,” he said. “Don’t you come any closer.”
He was young, early twenties maybe. A shock of blond hair underneath a dirty ball cap. Rail thin, acne scarred, his eyes wide, his movements electric. High on something, Mason surmised, and that didn’t bode well.
“Now hold on,” he said, keeping his hands where the kid could see them. “I don’t mean any trouble.”
“This is private property,” the kid replied. His voice was as shaky as his gun hand. “I’m within my rights to shoot you. Best you leave before it comes to that.”
He kept the pistol aimed in Mason’s direction, though his hand swayed enough that he had Mason in his sights only about half the time. But that didn’t make Mason feel much better.
“I just have a couple of questions,” he said, slow. “You answer them for me, and I’ll be on my way.”
The kid’s lip curled. “Does this sound like a negotiation?” He took a couple of steps forward. Turned the pistol sideways, Hollywood style. “I’m telling you, get off my property or I’m gonna shoot you.”
“Are you going to shoot me, too?” That was Jess, come out from in between the two dingy trailers. She carried the shotgun with her and had Lucy by her side. “And the dog?”
The kid spun, waved the gun around in her direction. “You ain’t got but one gun between the both of you,” he said. “I’m supposed to be scared?”
Jess gestured at Mason with the shotgun. “Burke over there just finished doing fifteen years for first-degree murder, and he’s never pulled a trigger in his life. He doesn’t need to be armed to mess your shit up, kid.”
The kid looked at Mason. Swallowed a little, wet his lips.
“And this dog beside me is mighty protective,” Jess continued. “She’ll tear your throat out soon as you make a move.”
Now the kid looked at Lucy, who stood at attention beside Jess, watching him, her ears cocked. The dog wasn’t pissed off yet, Mason could tell, probably thought this was some kind of game—but the kid didn’t need to know that.
“You’ll get one of us, sure,” Jess said, and her voice was dead calm. “You won’t get us all. And if it’s me you decide you want to take down, you’ll want to make sure your aim’s good.” She leveled the shotgun at his chest. “Because if I have any life left in me after you pull the trigger, I’ll perforate your shit on my way to the ground, you hear?”
The kid stared at her. Swung the pistol around, wild, toward an approximation of where Mason was standing, then back to Lucy and Jess. “Who the fuck are you guys?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“That over there is Burke, like I said,” Jess told him. “The dog’s name is Lucy, and mine is Jess Winslow, and if we’re in the right place, I believe this whole sorry compound belonged to my husband.”
The kid’s eyes got wider. “Ty?”
“The very same.”
“Shit,” the kid said. “Ty—he told me all this was mine if anything happened. You can’t just come up here and take—”
“I don’t want it,” Jess said. “What I want is to clear up a few things about my dead husband, and it sounds like you might be the guy who can help. Now, are you going to put the gun away and we can talk, or do we have to keep measuring our dicks in this rain?”
The kid made to talk. Stopped. Started again. “You first.”
Jess lowered the shotgun. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said. “What’s your name, anyway?”
The kid gave another beat. Closed his eyes, like he was so messed up he was trying to remember. Messed up, or scared shitless.
“Rengo,” he said.
“Rengo, all right.” Jess gestured at the trailer behind him. “Invite us inside, Rengo, and let’s talk for a while.”