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Miriam’s face flushed as she processed the scene. Kim lay on the ground, unmoving and frighteningly still. No sign of Abby or Kawa.
Dammit.
Miriam knew this would happen. She scolded herself for leaving Kim behind. Rushing to her side, Miriam grabbed at Kim’s wrist to check for a pulse. Before she found the rhythm, though, she saw Kim’s chest rise slowly, then fall. Miriam exhaled, realizing only then that the breath had caught in her chest. Not dead. A quick scan of Kim’s body showed no obvious signs of trauma. Certainly no gunshot wounds.
“Kim?” Her voice came out shakier than she would have expected.
Miriam sat on the ground and cradled Kim’s head into her lap.
“Kim?”
Still nothing. She lightly patted Kim’s cheeks.
“Kimiko?”
Kim’s chest suddenly rose higher as she inhaled a deeper breath. Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilating. Fear apparent. She sat upright so quickly that her head almost clipped Miriam’s chin.
After looking around, Kim pulled up her knees and rested her head on them. She groaned.
“That bad?” Miriam asked.
“My head,” Kim said. She rubbed the side of her temple.
No sign of the gun. Kim had clearly underestimated Abby. Gotten too close. Given her an opportunity.
“Yeah. Getting pistol-whipped doesn’t feel good.” Awkwardly, Miriam reached out and put a hand on Kim’s back, a little unsure of what to do after she made it that far. She decided to rub gently. “You’ll be okay, though. Probably. I’m just glad she didn’t shoot you.”
If Abby had gone to the trouble of stealing a gun to escape Kim’s guard, she had a plan. There could be no question that Abby meant to kill the dobhar-chú. Losing even one of the adults could spell doom for the population, even if there were others in the area, as Miriam suspected. The job wasn’t to protect them, though. The job was to find them and prove their existence. Abby was about to do that in a completely different way.
“You were right,” Miriam said. “Abby’s going to kill them.”
Kim turned her head to look back. “We have to stop her.”
Miriam didn’t like the prospect. She wasn’t a hunter of people. She wasn’t an enforcer of decency.
Who was she kidding? She could rationalize with herself all she wanted, but she was already committed to this, either through a need to protect the dobhar-chú, or to please Kim. Miriam wasn’t quite sure which.
“Okay,” Miriam said. “But we need to be smart about it. And we need to find Macy first.”
Kim nodded. “Deal.”
“We don’t have weapons.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Miriam replied. “But Kim, we really should consider calling the authorities.”
“No. Then the secret will be out. People will come for miles. If they don’t kill them outright, then their habitat will be eroded. We can’t out them to the world. Besides, they’re not even known animals, and that means they aren’t protected.”
“Yet. But they will be once the world knows they exist.”
“That won’t be fast enough.”
Miriam wasn’t sure she completely bought Kim’s logic, but she did feel the passion emanating from her conviction. Wasn’t the entire point of the expedition to out these animals to the world? It wasn’t that Miriam didn’t want to protect them. It was just that she and Kim had very different ideas about how to go about doing it.
“But what can we do? Let’s say we stop Abby today. Let’s say she leaves. She’ll be back. She knows about them, and if she knows, someone else probably knows. Her contact, for one. We can’t stem this tide.”
Kim scooted herself around so that she sat facing Miriam now, her black eyes stern and cold. “Then we have to make sure they can’t come back.”
“We’re not killing anybody. Not unless they present a direct threat to us.”
Miriam wasn’t shocked exactly, but she also didn’t believe Kim could live with the consequences of what she was suggesting. In Rose Valley, Miriam had killed a man. One too far gone to save, perhaps, but a man all the same, and that had changed her. She could shoulder it. She’d managed to justify it, compartmentalize it, and live with the consequences, but she knew she’d never been the same since. It was that action that had finally pushed her away from her father for good. That finally gave her the strength to chart her own path.
Kim stared at her for a bit in silence, making Miriam uncomfortable enough to avert her eyes downward. Kim was mad. Fine. But murder? No.
Miriam offered a hand to Kim, helping her to her feet. She wobbled a bit at first, but quickly looked steady enough to move. What they decided to do with Abby might come to a head eventually, but finding Macy was first priority. Stopping probable murder could come next. Miriam didn’t doubt her ability to stop Kim from doing anything stupid. Passion was no match for strength and training.
First, Macy. Miriam didn’t even know where to start. Somewhere in this maze of trees languished a red-headed southern girl with a laughable amount of camping experience. It seemed an impossible task. Even with above-average tracking skills, the chances of finding Macy seemed astronomically low.
“Kawa went that way,” Kim said, pointing up the hill next to the cave entrance.
Not what Miriam was looking for.
“Macy first, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
Miriam wandered through the clearing. She could see signs of their presence. Scuff marks on the ground. A few partial footprints. In the cave, she could see a smoothed-out area on the ground where the dobhar-chú had slept. None of this was going to help her find Macy. In a forest this vast, surely Macy hadn’t been at this exact cave. Neither life—nor Miriam’s luck—worked that way.
“Sneakers, right?”
Kim’s voice sounded muffled with Miriam in the cave, but she’d heard enough. She rushed to the mouth and peered out to Kim, kneeling on the ground.
Kim looked briefly up at Miriam, before looking down again. Her eyes carefully studied the ground. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think these are hiking boots.”
Looked like luck might have broken Miriam’s way this time. Or perhaps, ending up in this place wasn’t as coincidental as it sounded. Clearly, the dobhar-chú liked to den here. It was the only non-porous shelter Miriam had seen. With as often as it rained, that cover was valuable to dobhar-chú and humans alike. Macy would need shelter to avoid hypothermia, so it made sense that she’d seek out and find shelter from the rain.
Kim stood up and dusted off her hands, her gaze never leaving the dirt. She walked a few feet forward, following the tracks that Miriam could only barely see from her vantage point. She stopped, then laughed.
“Like I said. Kawa went that way.”
Miriam went to where Kim had started, retracing the steps to verify her claim. Sure enough—though not always fully clear—it did look like a pair of sneakers had headed up the hill.
“Good job.”
“Thanks,” Kim said. “Seems I may know what I’m doing, after all.”
Miriam couldn’t tell if that was meant as a passive aggressive jab or the sort of self-deprecating humor girls her age tended to reach for. Based on her time with Kim thus far, Miriam decided on the former.
“Ok. Well if Macy went this way, then that’s where we go.”
“After you,” Kim said, stepping aside and motioning up the hill.
Miriam walked past without hesitation, planting her feet and navigating the steep terrain. Finding Macy’s trail put them one step closer to wrapping up this entire cluster of an expedition.
But also one step closer to having to steer Kim away from murder.
