He dropped his pack and cut away from the path, his form disappearing in the trees.
‘What?’ I asked again, and again he shushed me. Sighing, I dropped my pack, too, and picked my way behind him through the standing and fallen trees. Gradually my eyes adjusted and I concentrated on Lucas’s feet, watching where his heels landed and putting my boots in the same spots. When we scaled logs, he helped me over and I was too weak to resist. We hiked for at least ten minutes, to the point where I started panicking we’d lose our way back to the canoe. Was he leading me to his father, to their hidden campsite? I’d left the gun in the pack and had no idea how to find my way back to it alone. Then a familiar scent cut through the woods and I lifted my head to see a faint, flickering light eclipsed by Lucas’s silhouette. A campfire.
We slowed down and approached cautiously, using the muffling effects of the snow to our advantage.
‘ – too goddamn early to be breaking camp. You’re insane.’
‘I want to get a jump on today before the storm hits. No chance of finding Blackthorn in a whiteout.’
That drew a groan from the other person. I leaned carefully around a tree trunk and tried to count heads at the campsite, which was still a good two hundred feet away. Lucas crept even further up and crouched behind a boulder. I was calculating the risk of trying to join him when a familiar voice spoke up.
‘We’re not going to find shit until sunrise anyway, which is still an hour away.’
The voice belonged to Micah, the US Forest Service ranger who’d volunteered to be part of the Congdon search party, the veteran who had no problem with crazy people. He’d been at all the planning meetings and had kept in contact with Dr Mehta even after the expedition had fallen through. I could only see one other head beside his, crouched near the fire.
The rangers talked for a few more minutes, discussing routes and lakes. I couldn’t tell, though, which Blackthorn they were looking for. Did these two represent the search party Dr Mehta had assured me was still looking for Josiah? Or had they been alerted of the kidnapping and sent to find and arrest us? As I tried to get a better look at the man tending the fire, Micah stood up and walked straight toward us. I ducked behind the tree as the crunch of snow and pine needles became louder and louder. Holding my breath, pulling my legs in, I pressed myself into the base of the tree trunk. Silence. Then came the sound of a zipper and a thick stream of urine hitting the ground. I closed my eyes and waited until he finished and moved back to the camp. I heard the bang of a pot on the grate just as Lucas appeared at my side.
I touched my ear and pointed at the men, but he pointed in the opposite direction, making a gesture I didn’t understand. I shook my head. He pointed away again and leaned in until his mouth grazed my ear.
‘Now, before it gets lighter.’
Then he drew me to my feet and we moved like shadows into the fading night.
Lucas led us back to the canoe as easily as if we were crossing through my yard to the garage. We didn’t speak until we reached the portage trail and stood over our packs.
‘We’ll make camp here.’
‘We should get farther away. Head in the opposite direction of where they talked about going.’
He moved until he was only inches away and his fingers caught me in the side, pushing enough to make me wince.
‘You’re not going any further tonight.’ Then he lifted both packs, one in front and the other on his back, before shouldering the canoe and stepping back onto the trail we’d just made. ‘Anyway, the safest place to be is the site they’re leaving. Get a branch and cover our tracks.’
We waited until they packed and left before setting up a few hundred feet away, close enough to catch a glimpse of the icy water but still well hidden, situating the tent behind a giant fallen pine, jeweled with cones. By the time I crawled inside, the hand warmers had given out and my boots were covered in ice from hauling the canoe in and out of lakes. We ate and drank without speaking, then rolled out the sleeping bag.
‘Just one?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s a double. Better for body heat.’
His eyes caught mine in the dim flashlight, before skimming down my body.
‘Lay down.’
‘Lucas—’
‘Now.’
When I did, he pulled my shirt up and redressed the wound. The soiled bandage had bloodstains mixed with a greenish-tinted fluid that had soaked to the edges of the padding. Neither of us commented on it. Silently, he swabbed the stitches with alcohol, found more clean dressing, and bandaged me with ridiculously tender fingers, as if trying to make amends for poking me on the trail. I blinked at the ceiling of the tent, illuminated by the first, fragile morning light as he smoothed tape over my ribs and tugged the shirt back down. Then he slid carefully to my other side and zipped us both into the bag. There was enough room to sleep side by side and that’s what I should have done. I should have turned as far away as I could, but I was cold and hurting and too weak to resist the warmth of his body. Instinct took over and we curled into each other, fitting curves into hollows, cushioning bone with flesh. For eight years I’d dreaded going to bed, preferring insomnia to the nightmares and ghosts. I’d never spent the night with a live person before; I’d never felt this foreign surge of comfort or experienced the gift of listening to someone else’s heartbeat through their chest, and I knew I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve anything about Lucas Blackthorn, this boy who’d gone from a panicking, violent kid to someone who lovingly redressed wounds in the arctic dawn, whose lips were brushing over my hair and whose fingers nestled in the dips between my vertebrae.
He should have choked me to death the first day we met, I thought as I drifted into the no-man’s-land between consciousness and sleep.
Because I was going to avenge my mother. I was going to orphan him.
27
I woke up shaking, turned my head to check for Lucas, and sat bolt upright in the sleeping bag. He was squatting near the tent entrance and rummaging through my pack.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting us something to eat. I wanted to let you sleep a little longer.’ He didn’t move away from the bag.
‘The protein bars are on top.’
‘That’s not the only thing in here.’
Adrenaline flooded my chest and I tried to keep my voice steady. ‘What do you mean?’