28

They hike by moonlight to save the batteries on the headlamps, and an eerie glow removes all color from the landscape, casting ghostly shadows through the trees, over the rocks, making the mountainside feel like another planet entirely. But around midnight, the rain returns, clouds obscuring the moon. The dark is so thick now, a living, breathing thing.

They’re nearing the cabin, Victor assures them, a half-mile away, so they strap the headlamps on and power through without stopping to put on rain gear. They’ll be dry soon enough.

His fake ankle sprain has gotten fake worse along the way. He’s trying to buy himself time, but the more time he buys himself, the darker it gets, the colder it gets, the more miserable they all get. And what is he buying time for?

He wonders if mountain lions are nocturnal.

Victor feels it coming. The loss of control. He can feel himself panicking again, so he makes himself stop. Forces a deep breath, like hitting “reset” on himself.

It’ll be uphill, past a boulder the size of a Suburban. So familiar. Victor knows exactly where they are. This was his rock. His place. How many times had he sat here over the last five years, with his .22, waiting for rabbits or marmots or anything stupid enough to come across his path? He’d never been one for meditation, but it didn’t take him long to realize that if he was absolutely still, the wilderness would come alive. Mule deer would saunter by in front of him, birds would land right next to him, and those stupid, stupid marmots would poke their fat little heads right up.

He knows this place. He knows the game trail that cuts across the scree. He knows the cluster of tall pine trees encircling the cabin. He’s the only one who knows this place.

The temptation, in this moment, to run away and hide. To turn off his headlamp and disappear. To find the cabin by himself. The map is borderline useless in the dark; without the ridgeline to look at, the topo contours mean nothing. The others wouldn’t stand a chance. Not until morning, at least.

“You coming?” Santi says.

“Huh? Yeah, sorry. Just resting.”

Santi and Amelia trudge back, their headlamps on Victor like the lights of an oncoming truck. He has to turn away to keep his eyes from watering.

“You sure we’re close?” she says.

Victor nods. He’s tired. So tired.

His clothes are plastered to his skin beneath the backpack, the thighs of his jeans stuck to him as though painted on. They should have put on their rain gear.

They should have done a lot of things.

“Want some peanuts and raisins?” Santi says, holding out a plastic baggie with what’s left of the trail mix. “I ate all the M&M’s. Sorry.”

“What if the phone doesn’t work?” Amelia fishes the Advil container from her pocket and hands it to Santi, who shakes it a couple of times.

“One left,” he says as he opens it and hands it back to her.

“The phone’ll work,” Victor says.

Amelia tilts her head back and gulps and washes the pill down with the last of their water. “I’m just saying, what if? I mean, we could have been halfway down the mountain by now. Maybe we would have run into other people. Maybe we could have made better time if we were on the trail. If we weren’t headed straight uphill—”

“It’s going to work,” Victor says again.

Santi whirls on him. “Don’t yell at her.”

Was he really yelling? He didn’t feel like he was yelling. “What else am I supposed to say? It’s going to work or it’s not going to work. Either way, we’re standing out here in the middle of the goddamn rain in the middle of the goddamn night—”

“Have some peanuts,” Santi says, tossing the baggie to him.

Victor lets the bag hit him in the chest. “I’m not hungry.”

“My ass.” Santi shakes his head, and the headlamp beam shifts like a searchlight. “Just so long as you stop yelling at her.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” Amelia says.

Victor chuckles. “You guys make a good couple.”

“And you make a crappy Boy Scout,” she says.

Santi bends down to pick up the plastic baggie. “He’s right, though. It doesn’t make much sense to worry about it until we get there. If the phone doesn’t work, then we use the cabin as a base. There’s water, there’s food. We get some rest and go downhill. By the time that happens, we’ll officially be lost. They’ll officially be looking for us.”

People like Victor are not supposed to be jealous of people like Santi, yet here they are. Santi is the one Amelia looks at without pity. And Victor is . . . what is he, exactly? If Jerry had lived, maybe they would have been able to figure out the answer to that question in Victor’s group session. He chuckles.

“What’s so funny?” Amelia says.

Victor stares past their headlamps and wipes away the water dripping down the side of his face. He walks between them, leading the way again, remembering to limp. “What isn’t?”

And soon they’re wading across the helicopter’s landing zone through waist-deep wildflowers. Down the trail made wider every year by runoff from the snowmelt. The cabin hidden until they’re almost right on top of it.

The motion detector sets off a floodlight, crisscrossing tree shadows along the cabin’s horizontal siding, revealing thick wooden shingles instead of an aluminum roof because Winslow likes the rustic look.

“I’d almost convinced myself that you were making this up,” Amelia says.

Victor ignores her. The spare key hangs on a hook underneath the old picnic table by the fire pit outside. In the winter, the table disappears under six, seven, eight feet of snow. It can’t have many seasons left in it.

The key does not slide in easily, and Victor turns it upside down to try again, but this is even worse. A sense of alarm begins to creep over him. He leans down, shining his headlamp on the lock at an angle, and turns the key over again. It’s like he’s stabbing at the lock.

“You want me to give it a try?” Santi says because he’s so helpful and caring and kind and nothing bad that ever happened to him has ever been his fault.

But the key slides into the lock, the deadbolt settling flush against the side of the door with a gratifying click. Gratifying because Santi can go to hell. The door is thick, a new addition, installed a year ago after endless discussions with the custom door guy from Durango. Probably carved from a thousand-year-old tree.

Victor leans into it and it opens and he stands in the doorway.

He pauses for a moment before flipping the light switch, passing his headlamp across the room like a TV detective investigating a crime scene. The beam hits the bed-slash-couch in the corner, authentic Indian blankets piled high against the pillows, then lingers on the coffee table by the fireplace. Above the stove, pots and pans dangle from the wrought iron pole stretching from the wall to the center post. The oven’s digital clock reads 1:23 AM.

It strikes him that he’s never been here alone.

Winslow’s rustic wooden shingles muffle the sound of the rain against the roof, which is now only a harmless patter. Victor turns on the light and steps inside, shrugging off his backpack and leaning it against the table near the door.

The others enter behind him, and Victor watches them take the place in. It is impressive, he has to admit. Not so much the size or what’s inside, but the fact that it exists at all. Up here, in the middle of nowhere. Electricity and water and a refrigerator.

After Santi helps Amelia out of her pack, she wanders over toward the large sliding glass doors. “I bet the view is amazing.”

“Can’t put a price tag on it.”

“We should start a fire,” Santi says, digging through his open backpack and pulling out dry clothes.

“Mi casa es su casa.” Victor hears himself speak, and it’s as though he’s in a dream.

So strange, being here with them, after everything that has happened. So strange being indoors again, where the rain can’t get to them. So strange. A small red basket hangs from the center pole, filled with bags of dried fruit. Dates, apricots, cherries, raisins, figs.

“They’re past their expiration date,” Victor says as he opens a bag of Mission figs. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s so dry up here, things last forever.”

“I kind of thought it would be bigger,” Santi says, pulling on a dry white T-shirt.

Victor laughs. “Next time we’re stranded in the wilderness, I’ll be sure to find a bigger place.”

Now Santi’s the one laughing. “I meant that as a compliment.”

“Can we fill up our water bottles?” Amelia says.

“Cleanest, clearest, coldest water you’re ever going to taste.” Victor goes to the sink and plays with the faucet; nothing comes out. “I’m going to have to open up the valve downstairs.”

“You should get dry first,” she says.

“Are you thirsty or not?”

“Ease up,” Santi says. “We’re here. We made it. You can be happy.”

I’ll be happy when you’re gone, is the first thing that pops into Victor’s mind. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

Amelia tilts her head and gives him a little squint. “He’ll understand.”

But Winslow won’t understand.

It’s different now that Victor has made it this far. Now that he’s inside the cabin. He thought he’d feel great—triumphant, even—but instead, he’s as afraid as he’s always been. He feels the way he’s always felt in this place: like an intruder.

He feels Winslow’s glare burning into him, as if it’s radiating out from every item in the house. How can Victor still be scared of a man who isn’t even here?

“He doesn’t like it when people mess with his things.”

“We were stranded. He’ll und—”

“Can I go turn on the water now? Are we done with this conversation?”

“Yes, Victor,” Amelia says flatly. “I’m thirsty.”

“Good.” He spins away from them and says over his shoulder, “Just don’t touch anything.”

He leans hard on the railing as he steps slowly downstairs. Once he’s out of view, he puts his full weight on his ankle for the first time all day. The initial steps are tender, as though faking the injury tricked his body into believing it was real, but soon he’s able to walk without a limp at all.

Emerging into the basement room, he sees the two single beds. Four closed doors. A small Navajo rug takes up much of the floor. The beds are stripped and unmade, pillows on top of sheets folded at the foot of each. It’s all he can do to keep himself from collapsing onto one of them.

The footsteps upstairs change from loud thumping to muted shuffles; those two have taken their shoes off. He checks the doors. As he’d expected, all are unlocked except the one.

He opens the door to the water pump and flips on the light. The room is about six feet wide by twelve feet deep, with two fifty-gallon tanks at the far end taking up most of the space. It’s loud in here: water from the underground spring uphill rushing through a diverted pipe, bypassing the house, and flowing back into the small creek below. The pipes freeze in the winter, so they have to drain the whole house before leaving. It’s quite the production.

He finds the valve below the green tank and turns it all the way to the right.

A warm shower would feel so good right now, but he decides against filling the hot water tank. No need to make the place any more comfortable for the others.

Somehow, he’ll get rid of them.

And when they leave, he’ll do what he came to do, and then he’ll take some supplies and he’ll go down the mountain, and when he’s back home, he’ll look Winslow dead in the eyes.

Winslow won’t have any idea, not for a while at least. And even then he won’t be able to prove anything. But Victor will know. Every dinner table conversation, every family meeting, every single time he looks at the man’s face, Victor will know.

The tank has to fill before Victor can turn the pump on and send water up through the house, and that won’t happen for a few minutes, so he leans back against the wall and lets his body slide to the ground. So tired.

The footsteps above him have stopped. They must be on the couch. Maybe snuggling together, dry and snuggling as he sits down here with his wet clothes and his ribs throbbing again and now another headache, a dehydration headache made worse by the altitude. He needs water. He needs rest. He needs everything.

Santi and Amelia. He has to get them out of here, and soon. He should call for help tonight, on the satellite phone.

Satellite phone.

Victor laughs in spite of everything. Because that’s the funny thing about a lie. In order to make it work, you have to devote yourself to it. If you’re less than one hundred percent committed, you’re going to slip up, let the truth come out, blow the whole thing apart.

Only now, with them all safely inside, with the water coursing through the wall behind his head, with Santi and Amelia upstairs—in his stepdad’s cabin!—doing who-knows-what, does Victor let himself acknowledge that Winslow always takes the satellite phone home with him.

He knew it was a lie when he said it, but what were his other choices? Santi and Amelia had been threatening to go down, and he’d had to think fast, to say something. This was the only way he could convince them. He didn’t start out believing it.

He’d only come to believe it because he’d wanted it to be true.

His ankle throbs against the leather of his boot. Maybe the ankle really is hurt. He’ll take the boot off in a little while. Right now, he just wants to close his eyes. Everything will sort itself out. He knows this place. He has the advantage. He just needs some rest.

***

A woman’s voice says his name. Victor. Gentle, kind. And again: Victor. He’s back home and none of this has happened and his mom is waking him up.

“Victor?”

He opens his eyes to see Amelia squatting down inside the water room doorway. Her feet are bare, and she’s wearing dry clothes: Jerry’s hemp shorts and a loose white T-shirt. She’s reaching out to Victor with her good arm, her bad arm still held close against her stomach, and he sees down her shirt, and she’s not wearing a bra because her bra must be wet, and is she coming on to him right now? That doesn’t make sense, not at all, what with Santi upstairs and everything—

“We found another first-aid kit. We should take a look at your ankle.”

“Huh?” Victor says.

She seems to recognize where he’s looking, so she sits back. “What are you doing down here?”

He presses his palms into his face. “Just waiting for the tank to fill up.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, pushing himself to his feet and limping over to the green tank, which is full and has been for who knows how long. “Of course. We’re good now. Should be good.”

“Santi made some cheese and bagels. You should come upstairs.”

Victor flips a switch on the wall between the two tanks, and the whir of the small pump fills the room, drowning out the other sounds. “We’ll have water soon.”

The downstairs sink sputters, spitting out air like a car with a faulty muffler, then finally comes to life. There’s water coursing through the house now, so they’ll have to close all the faucets. It’s on the checklist.

“Where’s the phone?” she says. “We should make the call now so they can come get us first thing tomorrow morning.”

“In a minute,” Victor says. “In a minute.”

The tank is cold against his palm, full of water that would otherwise be flowing beneath the house. How lucky they are! Does he have any idea, Winslow always says, how much value the underground spring adds to the property? Not that they’ll ever sell it, of course. The cabin is priceless.

Victor stands there long enough, says nothing for long enough, that Amelia goes back upstairs. He’s bought himself some time, maybe five minutes, but even he knows that there’s no more stalling to be done.