“I’m going to eat two hamburgers when we get out of here,” said Gwen.

“I’m going to eat two cows.”

Just then a succession of quick staccato sounds cut through the air—not close, but not far, either.

“What was that?” Gwen said.

“Sounded like gunshots.”

“And what do five shots mean?”

“I’m not sure, but probably nothing good.”

“Well, let’s get moving then.”

“Yes, let’s go.”

The sound of clothes adjusted, zippers zipped, packs being lifted back on. Oscar just kept his eyes closed. The sound of the running water was soothing, and he was happy here now. He wasn’t thirsty anymore. The cold water on his skin felt delicious, especially when a breeze blew through. Let the others figure out the things like water and food and how to escape from men with guns. He wished he could tell Lily and Claudia, and his mother too, that he wasn’t in pain anymore. This was a good place to rest, and he needed to rest. He leaned to his left, easing himself down with his good arm. As soon as his head was against the ground, he fell back asleep.

Chapter Eighteen

Todd

When he saw them reach the pass, he stopped for a moment and exhaled in relief. Three figures silhouetted by the light of the morning sun. Visible, moving slowly, and then gone behind the ridge, on the eastern side, and on their way to safety. He had spotted them when he’d come out of the woods; he’d watched Tracy’s fall; he’d seen the dog help her up the slope. He knew they weren’t out of danger yet—now two of them were hurt, with miles to go before they reached a trail. But they were safer on the other side, out of sight from this valley. Or at least he hoped they were.

As they were stopped on the rocks, after Tracy’s fall, he’d gestured to them. He’d tried to communicate that it was no good, no good; that there might still be danger coming. All they knew was that he’d fired twice, which meant he was okay. But they hadn’t worked out a signal for what had actually happened. They were continuing on and over the pass with no more worries, believing there was no one else behind them.

His shot had been perfect. It hit his target, and the head jerked right before taking the upper body with it; the figure rolled over, backward and onto the ground. But when Todd rushed into the clearing and over to the body, the face beneath the cap wasn’t A.J.’s. It belonged to someone Todd had never seen. A Latino man, maybe Todd’s age. Beside him was a high-powered rifle. A small backpack and a satellite phone. An associate of José’s? He must have been. Why else would he be out here, trying to pick off members of their group? Why else would he have needed to kill? And if he was the one who had followed them, if he was the one who’d fired the shot, then where the hell was A.J.?

He stepped back into the center of the clearing, still confused. But he had promised to signal to the others that he was all right, and so he fired two shots into the sky.

Then he returned to the body. As the darkness eased and more light entered the woods, Todd examined the man for clues. He was wearing a khaki-colored work shirt, olive pants. His skin was sun-darkened, dirty at the hands. Todd knelt and unzipped the man’s pack, which held only water, a bag of sunflower seeds, some foil-wrapped food. An extra box of ammunition.

Controlling his feeling of revulsion, not looking at the corpse’s bloody face, he patted down its pockets. In one pants pocket, a set of keys, including the key to a Chevy. In another, a crumpled wad of small bills and a gas receipt from Fresno. No wallet, no identification. But in the pocket of his shirt—especially hard to reach up there, close to the face—he found a slightly bent snapshot of a girl, maybe seven or eight, looking up from a table and laughing. She was wearing a white party dress and her hair was tied back with a pink bow. A birthday party, maybe? Todd felt a twinge of sadness looking at this picture, for the loss the girl did not yet know she’d suffered. He’d killed a man, maybe a father. He’d orphaned this little girl. Yet this man had tried to kill them, and would still be trying if he were alive. Todd hadn’t had any choice but to do what he’d done.

He wondered how this man had followed them without being seen. They’d kept looking behind them, all the way across the valley and up the other side—but the man knew these mountains better than they did. Maybe he’d come in by some alternate route. Maybe he’d just avoided detection. If he’d gone to the pot grow looking for José, surely he would have seen A.J. Maybe A.J. had blamed José’s death on them. Maybe he was dead now too.

But what if this man hadn’t gone to the grow? What if he’d come from someplace else entirely? What if he was totally unrelated to all of it, to José and A.J. and the marijuana garden, their desperate attempt to get out? What if he was just a random psychopath, killing people in the mountains? It happened. And yet Todd, beneath his exhaustion and fear, knew he was being delirious, knew that this man was tied to everything else; that father or not, little girl or not, he was tied to the garden and likely to a drug cartel; that he was bad news and had to be dealt with.

But what if the man hadn’t killed A.J.? After all, they’d left him a little ways from the camp, and maybe this man hadn’t bothered to look. Todd had planned to ditch his rifle here, or someplace close by, so that whoever found this man—who he’d thought would be A.J.—would find his rifle with him. But he wasn’t sure now what had happened to A.J., and so he needed to keep the rifle. And if A.J. did show up here, he didn’t want him taking the dead man’s weapon, so he picked it up and removed the ammunition and then smashed it against a rock. The pounding reverberated through the trees and up out of the forest; he could hear the echo come back from the canyon walls. But the steel barrel wouldn’t break, would not even dent, so he went off a hundred yards away and buried the rifle beneath a log. The man himself he left out, propped against the tree. He tucked the girl’s picture back into his front shirt pocket.

Todd stood and said a short prayer over the body, asking forgiveness of the man, his daughter, and God, praying that the man’s soul rest in peace. Then he made his way out of the woods. It was bright now on the valley floor, the sun almost directly in his eyes, but he walked on into the open air, over to the stream, where he released the man’s bullets like silver fish into the water. It was then that he caught sight of the others moving up the mountain. That he’d watched Tracy slide down the slope. That he’d tried to give the message too complex for hand signals. Tracy had gotten back up, and they’d continued toward the pass, and now it was just him. Just him in the canyon, or so he hoped.

He wasn’t sure if A.J. was alive or dead. But he did not feel safe moving in daylight, expecting a shot every second as he knelt and splashed water on his face. He knew the safest thing to do would be to wait until dark again, to move up the slope when no one could see him. But he couldn’t wait, he did not want to be here, alone in this vast canyon, or even worse, not alone. Either way he was overwhelmed by the size of it, the silence. There was an ominous feeling, caused by the knowledge of the dead man and the fear that there might still be a living one.

Then he remembered something—they’d destroyed A.J.’s glasses. They’d crushed the lenses into the ground, stomped the glass into hundreds of pieces. Unless he carried an extra pair or his brother brought him one, A.J.’s vision would be limited. He probably couldn’t have found his way over the ridge and into the valley. Even if he could have, there was no way he could line up a shot. And he didn’t have his rifle anymore.