IT TURNS OUT BRIELLE is from the same part of Oregon as Warden. It turns out she knows a little bit more about Warden than Dawn. And it turns out Warden wasn’t exactly truthful when he was telling Dawn his Origin Story.
“It was in the news,” Brielle tells Dawn. “All over the place. I can’t believe they let him into this program.”
Dawn frowns, confused. “What do you mean?” she asks. “I thought he just…stole a truck, or something?”
Brielle makes a face. “He’s dangerous,” she says. “Like, violent, but you know that. Pretty much the whole county wanted him thrown in jail.” She shrugs. “Rich family, though. They talked the judge out of it. Sent him here instead of jail, and now here we are.”
Dawn takes a moment to digest this. “Okay,” she says. “But what did he do?”
Brielle meets her eyes. “He attacked some guy,” she tells Dawn. “Warden and his friends. Beat him nearly unconscious and left him by the side of the ocean.” She shakes her head again. “The guy drowned when the tide came in. Warden’s friends went to jail.”
Brielle shrugs again.
“Rich family,” she says again.
There’s no time to process this new nugget of information. Not with Warden at large and Amber and Lucas both getting closer to death with every minute that passes.
(Assuming they’re not dead already.)
Dawn and Brielle stop talking. They focus on covering ground. It’s easy now, in the daylight, with decent visibility and the top of the ridge more or less a straight line, albeit a line with plenty of ups and downs, over boulders and small rises, and down into narrow valleys.
They move slowly, and it’s not just because of Dawn’s ankle. Warden and the others are out here somewhere, and Dawn knows the last thing she and Brielle need is to stumble upon them accidentally. Ideally, she and Brielle will be able to just dodge the others completely, find a way to sneak past them and continue down to headquarters without Warden or anyone else even realizing they’re there. It sounds like the easiest solution to the Warden problem, and given the latest developments, it honestly might be the only solution.
There’s no way Dawn and Brielle are going to overpower three big teenage boys (plus Kyla, wherever she stands).
So they hike, and hike cautiously, scanning the ridge ahead of them and stopping every few minutes to listen. They don’t hear anything; the ridge is still spooky quiet, and so they keep going and hope that, I don’t know, Warden and the others fell to their deaths somewhere in the night.
(It feels weird to Dawn to be hoping that other people are dead or at least grievously injured, but whenever she starts to feel guilty she pictures Alex all beaten up and bruised at the bottom of that ravine, and she knows Brandon and Evan will gladly do the same to her if they catch her. It’s kill or be killed at this point.)
Dawn and Brielle hike for an hour or so. They climb over the last mini mountain on the top of the ridge, and then the ridge turns southeast and begins to drop altitude, and from what Dawn can remember this means there’s only maybe another hour or two in the alpine before they pick up the trail again through the forest.
And after that it’s another solid five or six hours, maybe, back to headquarters, but they’re traveling light and there’s plenty of daylight left, and even though the trail is going to take them right past the spot where that angry mama bear tried to attack her on the outbound hike, Dawn isn’t thinking about that right now. She’s starting to believe that even on her busted ankle they can make it back, past Warden and the others and even that scary bear; they can make it to safety before darkness sets in.
It’s a good thought and it buoys her spirits and gives her energy, and she keeps hiking, following Brielle and putting one foot in front of the other and blocking out the pain and the fatigue and the hunger. They chew up the trail and now and then there’s even a cairn again, and even knowing that Warden and the others are out there, Dawn can’t help feeling just a little bit optimistic.
She’s survived the ridge, and it could have killed her. She didn’t freeze to death or plummet into the abyss, and Brandon and Evan didn’t catch her. Hiking, in daylight, with Brielle, everything seems safer somehow.
Dawn’s even starting to think about what will happen when they reach headquarters, when Brielle stops dead in front of her, and Dawn nearly runs her over.
“Hold up,” Brielle says. She’s staring at the ground. Dawn looks over Brielle’s shoulder, and sees what Brielle sees.
Footprints.