None of them spoke. They walked quickly, an army of three, unhappily determined to do what they needed to do. Beck led the way, and Imogen and Tilda stayed a step behind. Now that they were on the march, Imogen was buoyed by the conviction blooming inside her. Beck was right—they couldn’t let this asshole win. And they’d been planning this trip for a long time, and had their own unfinished business.
The creek was only six feet wide where it flowed through the camping area. With the aid of their walking sticks it was easy to step on rocks and scamper across. As they started scrambling up the steep, rocky slope on the other side, Imogen recognized the overhang she’d seen from camp. It arched twenty feet at the top and extended a good thirty or forty feet across, but everything within lay in shadow. Up close, it reminded her of the Anasazi homes she’d seen on previous trips to Montezuma Castle and Canyon de Chelly, where people once used ladders to reach their rock-ensconced dwellings. This rock shelter could’ve used a ladder, but all they had was a gravelly hill without even a path.
Near the top, Imogen glanced behind her. She could see the colorful specks that marked their camp—backpacks, clothes, the food bag they’d hastily hung. Their neighbor had an easy view of them every time he peeked out from his ledge. He’d needed no stealth to know when it was safe to come down and raid their stuff.
When Beck came to a stop, fully upright beneath the towering eave of the shelter, Imogen and Tilda immediately flanked her. Imogen had never been so happy to be in Tilda’s company. Now that she had her game face on, Tilda looked formidable, the very picture of don’t-fuck-with-us. Imogen had to stifle an inappropriate giggle. With their walking sticks gripped tightly, they could have been cosplaying the warrior women of Wakanda. Her nerve lasted about four seconds, and then a man emerged from the darkness.
“Y’all about as quiet as a pack a rhino.”
He blinked away an interrupted sleep. He was tall and scraggly, in dirty, ill-fitting clothes. His buzzed haircut showed blotchy bits of scalp, scars where his strawberry-blond hair wouldn’t grow. In contrast, the hair on his chin and face, though short, grew thick and coppery. He looked weary and unhappy, and something about him reeked of trouble. Yet Imogen was almost relieved: standing before her was a real person; he wasn’t a phantom, a figment of her overactive imagination. And the others could see him too.
“We don’t want any trouble,” said Beck.
“Y’all are trespassing,” he said.
“It’s a National Park.” Imogen couldn’t believe she’d blurted such a retort; first impressions pegged him as utterly the wrong kind of man to sass. But it pissed her off that he should claim a wonderland for his own—in addition to their belongings.
“We just want our things back,” Beck said. She didn’t sound nervous or angry, just matter-of-fact. “And we’ll leave you alone.”
The man came a few steps toward them, into the light. That was when Imogen noticed the blood. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows and the left cuff was tinged with a brownish stain. Much of his left forearm was streaked with fresher blood, and he’d used Band-Aids to patch a wound deep enough to still bleed through the bandages.
They kept the iodine tablets in the first aid ditty and Imogen suspected he’d stolen the whole thing for the medical supplies, not the water-purifying tablets. She remembered the bloody T-shirt they’d found; it could’ve been his. It brought her an immediate rush of reassurance. If that was all he needed, maybe they could get everything else back and continue on their journey. She felt a touch of sympathy for him too, with the evidence that his need had been great.
Beck took in his injury. “I can fix that. It looks deep. Probably needs stitches.”
“You a doctor?” His bright blue eyes scrutinized Beck; then he considered Tilda and Imogen, with a directness she found unnerving.
“Yes,” Beck said, standing up straighter. Perhaps she, too, felt less vulnerable seeing his condition. “We don’t carry large quantities of medical supplies with us, but I’ve got a little of all the basics. Well, you have them now—they’re with the stuff you stole. Give you some antibiotics too, take care of any infection.”
His eyes traveled over them again, suspicious and evaluating, before settling on Beck. “You’d do that? Fer me?”
“I’d do that for anyone I could medically help. Even the jerk who took my stuff.”
“We could make it an exchange,” Imogen suggested, suddenly seeing an opportunity. “She patches you up, you give us our gear back.”
“Sounds fair,” said Tilda.
Beck nodded. “Deal?”
He looked shifty, like an animal that wasn’t sure if the creatures before him were a threat. “How’d you know where I was?”
“Saw you light a cigarette last night,” said Imogen.
“And I’ve been out here many times,” Beck said. “Everyone who comes out here knows about this shelter.”
“And here I thought I was just lucky.”
“Maybe you’re luckier than you thought.” Beck nodded, eyes on his wound. “Looks like a serious injury. What happened?”
He glanced at his left forearm and lifted it a little, revealing that it was patched up on both sides. “Doesn’t hurt that much, all things considered, but it bleeds like a motherfucker. Just when it’s all scabbed, I move round and it rips back open.”
“So what do you say?” Beck said. “We don’t need to get in each other’s business, but we do need that stuff you took—and it looks like you could use a bit of assistance.”
“Well, thing of it is…” He sniffed with his crooked nose. “You seem like nice enough girls ’n’ all, but I need some a this stuff.”
Imogen reconsidered him. What sort of person didn’t accept help and a fair exchange? It was easy to envision, by the coarse look of his hands, his trip-wired posture, and that unfortunate nose, that he probably hadn’t had an easy life. Maybe he was used to living on the streets, or roughing it in the outback. She wondered if, somewhere in the shallow cave, he had a backpack and at least basic gear. What was he doing here? Why didn’t he just leave and go to a hospital?
Her mind raced back to all those episodes of Alone. Every contestant had a satellite phone and could call for help when they couldn’t take it anymore, when they got too hungry or too lonely or too cold. But the call meant giving up on the game. The more determined contestants tried to push past their unlucky mishaps—a broken tooth, a fishing hook embedded in a thumb. But eventually they got too concerned about infection and permanent harm. Every injury ultimately signaled the end of every player’s shot at the prize. What was this guy’s story? Why was he risking his health to stay a little longer? Beck, even without Imogen’s reality-show acumen, was thinking along the same lines.
“You probably need your arm too, and that hand even more. It would really suck if you got gangrene.”
Imogen had to admire the way her sister was playing it. She’d seemed to know right from the start that something about him was off, and had found a way to make herself useful and not a threat. Imogen wanted to help her out, if she could. She hadn’t done any theater, on or off the stage, since she was a teenager, but she gave it her best shot.
She uttered a gasp and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You aren’t going to cut his arm off, are you?”
“Ewww!” Tilda grimaced and turned away, as if the sawing were about to begin.
Beck took the bait, but not in the way Imogen expected. Beck rolled her eyes at the silly girls, trying to share a traitorous moment with the thief, Can you believe how ridiculous they are? He chortled, and she leaned in to get a closer assessment of his wounded arm. “It’s not to that point yet, it’s not turning black or green. But it could. You want to keep an eye out for any red streaks radiating from the wound—that could be a sign of blood poisoning, and that would be life-threatening. If an infection in the blood reaches the heart…” She looked around at the canyon behind her. “I’m not trying to be dramatic, but they wouldn’t be able to get you out of here in time.”
“I’m not looking to get outta here, just trying to lay low fer—”
“I suspect you aren’t looking to die either.”
There was a silent standoff. Imogen saw Tilda holding her ground, but her eyes gave away her unease as they shifted between the man and Beck.
He abruptly turned and headed into the darkness behind him. They heard him rustling around. Imogen froze in place, unsure what was about to happen.
“What are you doing?” Tilda whispered to Beck. She managed to keep the volume of her voice almost nonexistent, even as it registered alarm. “He looks like a rabid fucking dog, let’s just leave.”
“Keep calm, it’s fine,” Beck said. “Remember there are three of us. And he’s injured—we’ve got bargaining power.”
Imogen wasn’t feeling as confident as her sister. Had the man retreated to get their first aid ditty—or something else?