by Katie Cross
Steve squinted ahead of him, then bent back to his task. Rocks scrambled beneath his feet as he started back up. Beneath the sound, I heard a quiet, "Yep," before he returned his attention to the hillside. Dust coated his arms and legs. He walked like a tired donkey. What pushed him so hard?
Why was he here?
I remained a few steps back and to the side in case he plummeted down the hillside. Clods of dirt and small pieces of rock plunked behind him. At the top of the little rise, near clumps of thick bushes and some trees, Kimball glanced back for a moment. Seeing us separate and not far away, he turned back to speak with Ellie. I quelled a rush of jealousy. Kimball had no real hold on her attention, even if he wanted one.
Still, I didn't like him that near her. Too skeevy.
Their conversation drifted toward us as we closed in. I readjusted my pack across my shoulders, gratified that my left shoulder hadn't struggled with the trip so far. The pack was heavy, but all the work I'd put into recovery seemed to pay off so far. Later, after a few days, it might be a different story.
"Seems like a great place to live." Kimball had his thumbs hooked into his backpack straps. "Adventure awaits, and all that. Mountains. Exciting stuff. Are winters bad here?"
He strapped on a huge smile when Ellie looked his way, but her expression didn't change. She murmured a response. When she turned to look to the north, his amiable brightness dimmed. His tone had a bit of strain in it, like he fought for something to talk about. Ellie never spoke out of obligation, which meant he probably struggled to know what to say next. His conversation reminded me of a nervous tic. A compulsive effort to stop the silence.
The whole damn thing was a moving puzzle, and I didn't like it.
It didn't take a genius to realize that Ellie's jaw was tight, shoulders pulled back. Even though they'd stopped hiking, she didn't take off her pack. She studied the ridges in front of her with a ruffled forehead like she'd missed a clue.
Something wasn't right.
Steve grunted when rocks slid beneath his feet, sweeping him farther down the mountain. This time, he recovered quickly, and with what seemed to be the last of his energy, he pushed himself up the last few feet. Explosively landing at the top, he dropped to his knees on a clump of grass. His chest heaved from the final exertion.
Kimball hardly spared him a glance. I gained the ridge and put myself closer to them. The sun had long been sinking toward the horizon, and I guessed we had an hour or so left of daylight, with the dredges of light for another hour after that. Full dark would descend soon enough, and I wanted dinner.
Ellie looked my way with a little twitch of her lips that resembled a welcome smile, and it sent a thrill of victory through me. Might have been nothing, but I'd take it as progress. Just like sleeping in my arms last night.
Baby steps.
Kimball pulled me from my thoughts. "We're close?"
Ellie pulled her bottom lip through her teeth. "I think so," she finally said. "This ridge should be the final one before we drop into the canyon where you think the cabin is. Which means the cabin is likely somewhere down there."
Her hand made a vague waving motion. Kimball's expression brightened, but Ellie's darkened like a thunderstorm.
"But?" I drawled.
She looked at me and I saw the trouble in her gaze, even through her sunglasses. "But I don't think we can get down right here." She pointed down. "Check it out. The rocks are a straight drop right here. The cabin should be just that way." She motioned to the left, where a spur of rock and trees blocked half of the canyon from view. Wouldn't take long to walk the ridge and see if the cabin was there or not.
So why did she hesitate?
I stepped up to her side and gazed down. The rock face that unfolded below was straight down and daunting, but not impassable. If we had the security of ropes and if it were just the two of us, I'd attempt. For Kimball and Steve, it was an absolute no. To our right, the ridge ran at a steep slant down, but curved in a sort of elongated bowl. Uneven, thick woods cluttered the ridge tops, with sharp mountain spurs jutting all the way down to the bottom of the canyon like stone roots. Somewhere down there should be a creek.
In other words, it was as dangerous and impassable as expected.
Kimball had already started to venture down the ridge to the left, where Ellie expected the cabin. When he was out of earshot, I quietly asked, "What's wrong?"
With hesitation, she shook her head. "We could get down there, but it'll take a while. Not enough light for it today, but Kimball has told me at least six times that he wants to sleep in the cabin tonight. He's determined."
"Because it's haunted?" I asked incredulously.
Was Kimbal twelve?
She shrugged. "I don't know. He's just insistent it's tonight. I told him he could sleep there tomorrow but he won't listen."
My gaze drifted northwest. "Meanwhile," I muttered, "we have a cranky grizzly bear just a few ridges over."
"I haven't forgotten," she said quietly, with a quick glance to Steve. He sat on a rock now, his body doubled over as he rifled around for food in his pack. "Besides, it probably wouldn't be safe up here anyway. We're too exposed. We have to go down this ridge and find a spur that isn't so treacherous. Might add more than a few hours and it won't be fun."
"You sure you don't want to camp here?"
"No." She shook her head as she glanced around our immediate area. "Too exposed. What if another storm came through at night?"
She made a good point, and the thought gave me a shudder. Last night's lightning storm on this ridge would have been utterly open to the thunder and electricity.
A death wish.
"What else?" I pressed after she hesitated again. Her gaze fluttered to mine, but I saw relief in there.
"I just . . . I don't know. Something is off."
"If you want to end this guide now, say the word," I murmured quietly. She tensed, so I hurried to continue. "We don't have to leave them behind, I'm not suggesting that. But this path is stupid. Take back control, E, or it'll be dangerous for all of us. If there's anything I learned from the last three years," I added with the painful bitterness of experience, "it's not to ignore your gut."
She frowned, but nodded. The words sank in, I could tell. While I'd support any decision she made, I certainly wanted her to make the safest one. She fell silent, so I gazed around again. The feeling of being in the open swept through me, no doubt exacerbated by the constant uncertainty of the past two days.
I'm back in the States, I told myself firmly. This isn't Afghanistan.
This is under control.
And yet . . .
A whoop caught my attention. Ellie and I looked up at the same time. Kimball beckoned for us, barely visible off to the left. Steve didn't even move. He lay down near his bag now, an arm thrown over his eyes.
"Found it!" Kimball called. "It's right down there."
Ellie drew in a deep breath, her shoulders expanding. She sent me a look that I couldn't interpret, but thought meant this isn't going to be pretty. Dirt and baked grasses crunched under our feet as we picked our way over, leaving Steve behind. Kimball pointed down, exultant.
"See?"
Indeed, a dilapidated building waited at the bottom of the canyon, near a dried-out creek that clearly hadn't seen much water this year. The roof had caved in on one side, and primitive logs crossed each other at the corners in ninety-degree angles. One end slumped to the right. For a moment, I swore I saw a flicker of movement inside, but figured it was a bird when it didn't repeat. Late afternoon shadows slanted over it, casting it in darkness.
"Wow." Ellie's eyebrows lifted. "You're right, Kimball. The weird, haunted cabin of your dreams does exist."
Kimball beamed.
"Now, how do we get down there?"
"It'll take a while to safely work our way down that slope," Ellie said with a ring of authority that took me back to our childhood, "but we can make it down. We'll have to be very careful. If we hike as a group,
we can make sure that rocks don't dislodge and fall down the slope onto someone else. No one can twist an ankle, though, because going down this scree field with an injury is a recipe for disaster. Got it?"
She stood at the top of a shale field of rocks that looked daunting enough to me. The three of us stood back a few paces in a half-circle that faced her. After locating the cabin, she scoured a bit further and found this scree field to take down. With every word Ellie said, Kimball nodded eagerly, hands rubbing together with eagerness to crash down the volley of rocks ready to bruise our bodies. The cabin waited at the bottom.
We were at least forty-five minutes away, at best. The ridge hovered so high over the canyon below it already started blocking out daylight. Shadows crept up in the crevices. Steve's pale expression meant he wasn't too excited about our foray down the rocks either. With all that brawn, he'd fall hard.
Ellie readjusted her backpack and nodded. "Then, let's go. Everyone with me."
She started down the slide, nice and cautious, and nobody spoke. Each of us kept close to her tail and focused on where to step next. Not even Kimball had a word to say. All our attention focused on a path to boulder down, stop for rocks, hold our breaths, and eventually crawl toward the weird cabin. Any attempt to keep track of our surroundings was nearly lost. I stopped a few times to keep an eye out overhead, but someone would inevitably slip and draw my attention back. Whether it was Kimball's strange excitement, or Steve's even greater withdrawal and apprehension at every step, something wasn't right.
That cabin wasn't just a cabin.
But I couldn't stop our descent now, nor could I rule out massive paranoia after my deployment. In my mind, enemies waited at every shadow. Ever since I stepped off Afghani soil and back onto the terra firma of the US, I wasn't sure what part of my instinct was real. I'd honed my instincts to the sandbox of Afghanistan, but now I had to figure them out again in real life.
Ellie kept pressing toward the cabin and I could always trust her. Last night, the affection and the warmth in her tone had been real. No denying that. Ellie never falsely represented herself.
We inched our way down the scree field with quiet, painstaking care. The occasional call of birds rang through the air, followed by the shudder of rocks as they skittered by. Even I felt the eerie silence all the way to my chest.
Finally, an hour later, the four of us fanned out in a line. We slowed to a stop on dirt ground again. A great sigh of relief slipped out of Ellie as she glanced around. The black ends of hair swept her shoulders as she regarded me.
"We good?" she asked.
I nodded. Kimball didn't respond. His gaze had turned nearly feral with excitement and fixed beyond the cabin. He issued a high-pitched whistle. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when the quaking aspen trees behind the dilapidated structure started to rustle. Only those trees. No movement near the neighboring pines. Nothing else even gave a sigh. A shot of color caught my eye. To the right of the cabin, where a small, circular clearing had been made, lay a shiny, foil wrapper.
A candy bar wrapper.
Next to it lay a small, folding camp chair that almost blended into the bush where it had been hastily shoved. The lines in the dirt beneath meant it had recently been pushed there. A few things clicked together in my mind at that very moment.
Kimball's incessant chatter up the side of the ridge, like he wanted to make noise all the time.
His loud whoop once we arrived.
His obsession to get here.
Movement in the cabin.
Signs of people here now.
This had all been set up, and something was about to get really ugly. Just as I made a move to close the distance between me and Ellie, Steve tensed. Ellie's eyes grew wide, then panicked. A second before I heard her shout, a rustle came just behind me. I turned a second before something slammed into the side of my head.
Everything went black.
13
Ellie
Devin crumbled like bits of paper.
Before I could so much as scream, a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind in a vise-like grip. The moment I felt the muscular hold, I started to kick, scream, and thrash. Wild fear had her grip on me, and I let her roll.
"Calm down!" Kimball shouted right in my ear. "You're only going to make this worse. I don't want to hurt you, but I will."
"Let me go!" I shrieked.
My cries echoed off the cliffs, bouncing like an erratic bouncy ball. I gathered my thoughts together to stomp on his foot, but stopped. Several other male bodies advanced out of the trees. I could get away from Kimball, but not from them. Two of them, like Steve, had thick necks and arms as wide as trees. Steve's upper lip curled when he saw them. He took a few steps forward next to Devin's limp body, which he ignored.
Tension tripled through the haphazard circle of men that had formed. Including Steve and Kimball, there were five of them, and they all had nasty snarls on their faces.
"Calm down," Kimball muttered, his breath hot in my ear. "Or they will kill you. Let me emphasize to you that they have done so before."
Common sense replaced my sense of rage. Although I didn't relax, I stopped fighting. Instead, I eyed the four other men with a sick feeling in my stomach. Two of them looked like hulks, just like Steve. The other two, like Kimball, were smaller men. More wiry. Unlike Kimball, who could have been considered handsome, the others were more intense than attractive. Lowered brows. Sharp lips. One of them had white-blond hair. The other had coppery brown hair that probably appeared red in the sunlight. Here, it looked like muddy water.
The two strapping men with clenched teeth and dark gazes seemed to take stock of Steve. Just when I thought the simmering rage in the air would explode, Kimball shattered the quiet.
"Gentlemen," he called. "What kind of welcome is this?"
The two smaller men stepped forward. Each of them stood next to one of the burly men, as if each had been paired off with a behemoth. "You brought outsiders," called the small redhead, then looked to me and Devin.
"You say outsider," Kimball replied easily, "I say practice."
"The girl?"
"Creator's wish."
Interest sparked the redhead's gaze. He glanced at the behemoth of a man next to him, then to me. The behemoth leered at me through a fire-scarred expression. I growled, my teeth bared. Whatever Kimball meant by practice or Creator's wish, it couldn't be good. The behemoth's sickening stare didn't leave any questions about what he'd do to me.
The redhead snorted with amusement, then lifted his gaze back to Kimball. He gestured to Devin with a nod.
"The other one?" he asked.
Kimball shrugged. "Practice. Warm-up. Whatever."
"Do they know?"
"No."
"And the Creator?"
"Always watching." Kimball tsked. His gaze darted to the treetops. "Always watching."
"What is this?" I hissed and attempted to wrench myself free. Kimball increased his hold until pain shot through my arms, like he wanted to squeeze the bones until they broke. His raw strength surprised me. After seeing him at the gym, I never would have thought he could overpower me.
I stopped fighting with a frustrated grunt, unable to budge an inch. I could smash his toes with the heel of my boot, but there were five other men ready to attack. If the way they knocked Devin out was any indication, they wouldn't hesitate with me either.
"This," he said silkily in my ear, "is Survival Club. And you, my dear, are our new prize."
Twenty minutes later, my heart rate still hadn't slowed.
It pattered under my ribs like a wild thing trying to fly. They'd tied my hands in front of me and my ankles together, then shoved me in the old cabin and met back outside. Gathering darkness made it difficult to see, but I could make out some flurry of scurry of movement through the aged slats in the logs. Steve and the third behemoth, a man with biceps like hams, gathered wood into a large pile near the edge of the clearing. Bonfire, I'd guess. But why not put i
t in the middle?
The fire-scarred man who gave me the lusty glance with a promise of terrible violence dragged stones in a circle around the edge of the small open space.
Some sort of ring?
With a shaky breath, I forced my mind to focus on something else.
Not far outside the cabin, but far enough he wouldn't be able to hear me, lay Devin. He hadn't moved. They'd left him there without a backward glance. He lay on his back, his left arm thrown wide and knees bent. I hadn't torn my eyes off him much, afraid of what his stillness could mean. Would he wake up soon? Ever? My throat felt thick with fear for several reasons, but the greatest was for Devin.
Would we make it out of this?
There's no way I'd ever leave here without him, even if that meant I had to haul his limp body away. Hopefully, he'd wake up soon, and we'd have more options.
The three smaller men stood in a huddle not far away, speaking quietly. Fire behemoth squirted lighter fluid on the bonfire pile. Steve rummaged for a lighter, struck it, and touched it to a nearby branch. All of them recoiled away when fire raced over the saturated branches, then exploded in bright, yellow flames. A wave of heat rolled past the cabin, and the flicker illuminated the canyon walls. Steve tossed the lighter and lighter fluid aside as I tried not to panic. Those kinds of flames could set this whole ridge aflame, then there'd be no escaping for anyone.
My thoughts flittered around, unable to land, not fully aware of the ugliness of our new situation. As though I wanted to comprehend the whole picture, but didn't truly dare. Still, I forced myself to take mental stock. Facts were easier to work with than emotions. If there was anything I had practice with, it was bottling emotions away to deal with later. So I bundled up my terror and worry and anxiety and pushed it into a box at the back of my mind. The way I had when Jim came at me with a stick. Or when Lizbeth and I walked through the mountains to find Bethany.
Or when Devin left.
I had a lot of boxes.
I turned my mind to this moment and everything I knew about our situation. Clearly, Devin was passed out. Whether waking up would be a good thing or not, I wasn't sure yet. They could have plans for him. Hadn't Kimball said practice? If Dev didn't wake up, that would likely indicate a severe head injury. Hope of getting him out of here intact dwindled with every passing minute. Now, I just hoped to get him out alive.
