Lucy was barking. Lucy never barked, and that’s how Mason knew they’d followed the right path.
The dog had led him through the tunnel, narrow and claustrophobic, and out into a cave beneath a rocky outcrop, hidden amid the forest and likely invisible from above. And where Mason could barely see a trail, the dog had found it instantly, dashing away as Mason caught his breath, turning back to stare at him, whining, yawning, stamping her feet, nervous, her collar jangling as she tried to urge him to keep moving.
He’d never known Lucy to track anything, but it was clear that she and Jess had some kind of connection that trumped anything he could comprehend, and if Lucy was this excited, Mason would trust her without question.
They followed the trail down a ways across the slope of the mountain, Mason carrying the sheriff’s rifle and hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. He’d never really been trained in shooting—beyond a few hurried practice rounds with Jess before they’d taken on Kirby Harwood and his friends—and he’d come to see pretty quick how he was useless with anything other than a shotgun or pistol at close range. A rifle, a distance shot, he’d be a liability. But at the least, Mason hoped he could scare Logger Fetridge and Dax Pruitt a little bit.
Through the trees, Mason could see the stubby forest thin out and the slope of the mountain steepen, could see how the trail led to the base of a bowl beneath high rocky palisades, where the mountain seemed to drain into the rainforest and drop toward tidewater. He had a suspicion this was the start of the Iron Creek Jess had descended a few days before, and he hoped she’d come up the same way and they’d run into each other, hoped that’s what had Lucy so excited.
And then the dog began to bark, and Mason’s heart rate quickened. He knew they’d find Jess somewhere down that slide path. What he couldn’t know was what shape she’d be in.
* * *
Somewhere a dog was barking.
Jess opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, blinking in the light that seemed to aim down from above, directly onto her position. From the angle of the light, she could tell it was midafternoon and getting later, the sun beginning its descent toward the west but bathing the slope of the mountain in gold, in the meantime.
Beside the crumbling rock face, out toward the river path, Logger Fetridge lay dead, and Dax Pruitt beside him, still breathing, but faint. Jess’s body was sore, but she was alive. And a dog was barking, somewhere.
She’d rarely heard Lucy bark. The dog was mostly quiet, save the odd whimper or whine, but she might join in the chorus if she heard other dogs letting loose. Her bark was distinct, deeper than Jess would have imagined to look at her, to know her; it was a sound of authority that belied her mostly diva personality.
But the bark she was hearing now sounded suspiciously familiar. It came from somewhere above the cliff face, high up the mountain.
Jess lay against the rock, sharp and uncomfortable at her back. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound. She’d begun to accept the fact that she might die up here, come to believe it might even make better sense to the world if she did, if she just disappeared and let the man and the dog and the county she loved just evolve to go on without her.
She could die up here, and it would be easy; she would never have to worry about dragging Burke and Lucy into violence again. Wouldn’t have to worry that she would hurt Burke someday, that she would let him down and lose him the way she’d lost Ty and Afia.
She wouldn’t have to worry. She wouldn’t have to work. She could just lie here and wait and just…cease to be.
But Lucy was still barking, and that meant Burke was up there too. And as much as Jess wished that things could just be easy for a change, she knew if there was anything worth working for, it was Burke, and Lucy, and the family they’d become.
Jess tried to push herself to her feet, and couldn’t. She hurt too bad, her chest where the bullet had found her, and her right leg, which was probably broken. Instead, she made herself crawl, over the dirt and the rock toward the base of the rock face and beyond, past where Logger Fetridge lay dead and Dax Pruitt lay dying.
She crawled, though it hurt, and Lucy kept barking. She crawled and hoped that the dog and the man she loved would find her.
* * *
He rushed to her. He rushed down the mountain and followed the river chute and followed Lucy to where Jess lay collapsed on the ground. When he reached her he rolled her onto her back and tried to help her, though he didn’t know how. He saw she’d been shot and tried to pack the wound with dirt and a strip he’d torn from his T-shirt, and all the while the dog milled about in a panic around them. Jess was breathing, but barely. She’d lost so much blood, and try as Mason might, he couldn’t get her to focus her eyes on his own.
He wrapped her up as best he could, feeling helpless and useless and utterly to blame, like she was slipping away and he was letting her go. He tried to prop her up, and she whimpered when he moved her, so he left her with the dog, picked up his rifle and the dead man’s rifle and Jess’s shotgun, and he went and climbed to the top of the rocky prominence above them and fired the guns, one after the other until they were empty, into the sky, and when they were empty he went down to the men who were dead or dying and dug in their pockets for more shells. And he reloaded the rifles and fired again, over and over, until he heard the roar of the state police helicopter buzzing over the mountainside, until he was sure the men in the machine above had seen them, until he was sure they were coming to help.