by Logan Fox
Suddenly, her chocolate-coated protein bar tasted rancid in its sweetness. She folded its wrapper closed and slid it back into her jacket. She fumbled with her pendant, stroking the smooth metal hard with her thumb.
Her father could be dead. Finn thought so too, she’d seen it in his eyes.
Outside, the landscape changed from a flat town to a road winding up the side of a mountain. Pine trees littered the slopes. Even further up, white dusted the top of the mountain.
Snow.
Tears pricked at her eyes then; sudden, unbidden. She blinked furiously.
Her father was alive. He had to be. She’d know if he wasn’t, right? She’d pray to Santa Muerte tonight, ask the saint to look over her father.
Which is what she should have done, instead of just praying for her and Finn. She’d been selfish. Maybe this was La Flaca’s way of punishing her. This dread; not knowing.
She’d pray for her father tonight. Santa Muerte would hear her prayers, and keep him safe.
If he was still alive.
* * *
The scenic route to Turkey Creek took them just over fifteen minutes. The driver kept looking to the side of the road, hope sparkling in his eyes whenever he came to a wide shoulder. Then he would meet Finn’s impassive gaze in the rearview mirror and, just like that, decide he could take them a little further. And a little further. He drove them all the way to the end of the road that wound up the side of the mountain. When a signpost came into view with a few pointers highlighting various hiking trails and scenic spots, the man sagged as much as his cowboy hat.
“Thanks,” Cora said.
The man gave her a confused smile and then nodded furiously. “Sure. No problem. Have a good…”
But his voice faded as Finn got out the car. Cora’d barely gotten herself out the car before he threw the car in gear and spun away from them. Sand and dust billowed up behind him as he tore out of the cul-de-sac.
Cora laughed. “What the—?”
A hand closed around her arm. She jerked, spinning to face Finn. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“What?” she demanded, yanking her arm free. “Steal, or hitch a lift?”
Finn looked torn, his eyes flashing arctic blue. Wordlessly, he started up one of the footpaths without waiting for her.
She stood for a moment, her chest so tight with frustration, breathing was a task. Then she exhaled hard and went after him. “You didn’t have any money left,” she called out after Finn. “And he had like fifty of them.”
Finn gave her an unreadable look and then twisted a branch out of their way with a crack.
“You were the one that said I had to hitch a lift. So what, am I not supposed to listen to you? I thought that’s what you liked; me listening to you. Obeying you. Yes, master. No, master. Three bags full, mas—”
“Enough!” He didn’t raise his voice, but its timbre sent a cold shiver through her.
She licked her lips and glanced around as they began trudging up a hill. A small insect buzzed around her head, and she swiped at it.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?”
Finn didn’t say anything.
She inhaled, sped up, and grabbed Finn’s arm. It was like grabbing the root of a massive, fleshy tree — there was a softness to it but in the scarcest sense of the words. His muscles moved under her fingertips. Did his whole body feel like that? So firm, so powerful?
She shook the thought away, just like Finn shook off her grip. “You can’t keep me in the dark like this. I have a right to know—”
“Not now,” he said and began moving at a faster pace.
They’d been trudging up a gentle incline; now the path twined through twisted trees and tangled branches at a slant that made her thighs burn. She was about to call out to Finn, asking him if they could stop for a minute — knowing he’d probably ignore her — when the ground leveled out, and their path opened to the banks of what had to be Turkey Creek. Her lungs took a deep, involuntarily breath; as if her soul was trying to drink in every emerald hue surrounding them. She’d been hearing the river for the past half an hour or so but, this close, the sound was as magical as pixie dust.
Finn dropped his bags and crouched by the river, scooping up two handfuls of the water and bringing it to his face.
“Should you drink—?” she began but cut off when he splashed the water over his face and neck.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, water beading his lips and dripping from his chin.
She put her bag down and came up beside him, cupping water and washing her face with it.
When she looked up, he was already trudging over the stones forming a crude bridge through the middle of the creek — if you didn’t mind your feet getting wet. Her boots were thoroughly soaked when she came out the other side, but they didn’t let any water through.
Although Finn didn’t seem to care if she walked beside him or ten miles behind him, she tried to keep within a foot or two of him. It was reassuring, having his solid frame so close to her. The sound he made as he moved through the brush became a soothing thump-thump which drove her mind into a trance-like state as they moved higher up the mountain.
She lost herself in the wilderness. Birds called out around them, the sounds growing more urgent as the sun began to sink.
“What’s that?” she asked, taking a few quick steps so she was beside Finn. The path was a little wider here, which meant they barely bumped elbows.
“Bird,” he said.
The strange knocking sound faded away, but it was soon replaced with a dry, rattling sound.
“What’s that?”
“Bird.”
“That?”
“Bird.”
“Really?” she asked dryly. “Another bird?”
“Sure,” Finn said. “Why not.”
She pressed her mouth into a line and forced herself to stop asking him questions.
The number of insects buzzing around them multiplied as the heat of the day began leeching from the forest. Their path split more than once, but Finn hardly needed to glance at the choices before choosing a direction. It was like he had a compass inside his head, or he’d been on this hike enough times he barely needed the directional posts. Twice, though, he did consult the folded pamphlet in his jacket. She’d seen the shop owner scrawling something on it earlier — it had to be directions to wherever they were going.
Soon, twilight clung to the trees like spiderwebs. The pools of shadows between the trees became deeper, closer together.
Then the trees stopped. One minute they were pushing through vines and branches on a barely-visible path that might have last seen humans six months ago, the next her footsteps rang on stone.
“Are we here?” she wheezed.
“Almost.” Finn scanned the area ahead. There was just enough light left in the sky to pick out the shape of the mountain rearing up to their left, and a few jagged cliffs and rocks to the right.
He sounded tired. She could barely put one foot in front of the other. Her stomach was hollow with hunger, her mouth ash-dry despite the glugs she’d taken from her water bottle. Her legs were numb, her nose ached, and her eyes stung.
And she had itchy bites on her arms from one of the insects she’d eventually been too tired to swat at.
Finn came to a halt. She’d been looking at the precipitous drop a few feet away from where they walked and didn’t see. He grunted when she walked into his back.
She groaned, cupping her aching nose. It thrummed painfully.
“Here.” He sounded unhappy.
It took her a few seconds to figure out what he was pointing at.
When she saw it, she laughed. “Seriously?”
He didn’t answer, but she hurried forward and ducked down, sticking her head through the narrow crack punched into the smooth stone wall.
“Hello!”
Her voice came back sounding sad and hollow.
Ello.
Lo.
* * *
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Fuck. He hadn’t expected the gap to be so narrow. Finn shifted his shoulders, dropping their supplies to the ground. Cora had her head in the hole, but scrambled back and flashed him a smile.
“It’s a cave!”
He ground his teeth at her. He urgently wanted to ask her how big the cave was, but that might prompt her to ask why. She did, after all, need to know the why of every fucking thing on this green earth. Finn looked away. He wasn’t pissed with her; he was pissed at himself. His issue with small spaces was something he should’ve gotten over a long time ago.
“You first,” he said.
As long as there wasn’t a goddamn cliff face on the other side, it was the right thing to do. He’d keep up the rear, make sure it was just the two of them going through that narrow, so fucking narrow—
The girl was already halfway through the fissure. With her small shoulders and narrow waist, it was no wonder she didn’t have an issue. He was twice as wide as her.
Fuck.
Her head reappeared. “It’s not really a cave,” she said, sounding utterly disappointed.
Relief — disgustingly warm — poured over him like dirty dishwater. He just had to get through the gap. No tiny cave beyond. Open skies. His heart rate began accelerating. Clenching his jaw, Finn crouched and handed Cora the bag. She disappeared, the ease with which she moved through that narrow fissure making his skin grow cold.
She probably thought this was some amazing fucking adventure, didn’t she?
He didn’t allow himself a pause. He lay on his belly and grabbed the first handhold he could find on the inside of the fissure. It was a narrow, triangular tunnel less than ten feet deep. He hauled himself forward, trying to ignore the way the stones scraped over his shoulders and back.
The faster, the better. Less time to think.
But he’d been thinking about it all the way from the rental shop, hadn’t he? A heart that had been fluttering erratically all the way up the mountain began pounding hard against his chest. He tightened his grip on a tooth of rock and tried to drag himself deeper inside the cave’s entrance. Or — he was seriously starting to suspect — its exit. His shoulder had snagged against a protrusion about a foot from freedom. He took a second to gather himself; his breath, the tremor of unease working its way through him, his suddenly scrambling thoughts.
“Can you hear that?” Cora asked, her voice coming from deeper inside the cave. “The sound the water makes?”
Too narrow. Can’t fit, big guy like you. We’ll get stuck again. Trapped in that hole. You want that?
Finn squirmed, tightened his grip on a tooth of rock, and pulled. The rock broke off in his hand. His throat began closing. Breathing was too hard. The rocks bit into his muscles. Was the tunnel collapsing? The thought brought sweat out on his skin. He gritted his teeth so hard he could hear every ivory cap creaking against the other.
Leave her. She’s safe now. Safe from them, safe from us. Don’t get us stuck again. Can’t bear going back to that filthy fucking hole in the des—
He squeezed his eyes shut as he hurriedly fumbled in his pocket for a mint. He shoved it into his mouth and ground it to paste between his teeth. Then he tried to inhale that sharp taste.
He wasn’t in Syria. This was Turkey Creek, middle-of-fucking-nowhere Cliff, New Mexico. He wasn’t in some dingy fucking hole in the ground, reeking of sweat and excrement. He was clothed. He had water. Food. He’d seen sunlight less than ten seconds ago.
But that did nothing for the feel of dirt brushing his naked shoulders. And the smell of that dirt, somehow more pungent than his own stink.
Peppermint flooded his mouth, wrenching him back to the present. It left him feeling seasick, but he could again force his fingers to search blindly ahead. They found the lip of the tunnel, gripped the stone. His shirt tore where it had snagged against a rock as he yanked himself out of the tunnel. He scrambled up, rushing past a bewildered Cora until he could feel air moving over his skin. Skin prickling with sweat grew cold in an instant. His lungs burned for breath, the bruises on his breastbone ached in time with his palpitating heart as he tried desperately to bring his weak body under control. He’d survived capture by enemy forces, but he couldn’t crawl through a tunnel without wanting to bawl like a fucking baby?
Something touched his arm. He swung around, swatting away Cora’s hand.
“Are you okay?”
He stumbled away from her until his feet splashed into a stream. Forcing his eyes up, he blinked until the three solitary stars up there were no longer smeared across the purple sky. Cora didn’t ask after him again; he heard her shoes moving over the stone floor of the cave. He couldn’t go back in there. Not yet. Maybe not ever. How the fuck he was going to get out of here, he had no fucking clue. Maybe he could go over the top of the cave. Scale the side of the cliff it was set into. There had to be a way.
Any fucking way except that tunnel.
Finn sat down at the edge of a small pool a foot away from the stream running over its rocky bed a few yards from the mouth of the cave. This had to be the hot springs — the water draining into the pool was lukewarm. He took off his boots, stuck his feet in the water, and sat forward with his head in his hands. He ate another peppermint, sucking it slowly so the taste lingered on his tongue.
He felt Cora come closer and stand a few feet behind him.
“It’s beautiful.”
An understatement. He looked up, drawing a breath scented with spring water, stones baked by the sun, and peppermint. Cora came to sit beside him. She’d already taken her boots off — her feet were long and tapered, her toes almost fingers how thin and slender they were. She hesitated, and then stuck them inside the pool with his. There was barely enough room — he had to shift aside so their feet wouldn’t touch. But his legs ached from the hike, and he wasn’t about to go and find another pool. It was already starting to draw the tension from his feet, from his body, from his mind.
“I used to be claustrophobic,” she said calmly as if it was the most natural thing in the world to talk about.
He made a sound he hoped she would take as a signal to back off. She didn’t. Honestly, he hadn’t expected her to.
“I lied the other day. When was it, yesterday?”
He glanced across at her, but she was staring into the pool, hands swaying through the warm water.
“About what?”
“I remember the kidnapping. Papá always said I was too young, but I do. I remember them taking us — me, Naomie, Sofia.”
“Your sisters?”
“Naomie was my mother. Sofia, my younger sister.”
Odd, how she called Swan ‘Papá’ like a four-year-old but called her mother by her name.
“You don’t have to do this,” Finn murmured.
She flinched at his words, turned to him. Most of her face was in shadow now. Some from the darkness of their environment, perhaps some from the darkness of her memories.
“It’s all in the past, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. As much as Syria was in his past. The hole. That knife slicing over his throat. All in the past…yet those memories — those emotions — shared his present like clingy poltergeists.
She nodded, lifted her feet from the pool and hugged her knees to her chest.
“Do you think they killed my father at the funeral?”
“I don’t know, Cora.” He shifted, rubbed his eyes with his fingers and thumb. “My partner is still trying to get hold of him. I’ll know—we’ll know, as soon as he does.”
A cricket chirped somewhere in the distance, a light breeze rustling the needles of a nearby pine.
“Until then, assume he isn’t,” Finn said.
“Is it better that way?”
He rolled his lips between his teeth. “I don’t know,” he rumbled quietly.
They sat in silence for a long time, until the sun was well and truly gone from the world. He stood eventually, his stomach too tight with hunger,
his mouth dry with thirst. They needed a fire — to keep warm, to keep animals away. What they would see on these bare rocks he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t be surprised if a cougar visited them in the middle of the night. They were agile enough to hunt in these cliffs.
Cora came to help him, her feet padding near-silent on the cave’s stone floor. When she saw him collecting small stones to ring the fire pit, she found a few of her own to add. The same with the tinder, although most of what she brought was too wet to be any good. Then she crouched down and watched him build a fire, seeming fascinated by the process.
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Why’d I ask?” he mumbled. When he looked up, firelight danced in her eyes. She grinned ruefully — if a touch sadly — at him, and then buried her head in her arms where they rested on her knees. He packed out the meager supplies he’d been able to buy from the rental shop.
Tinned spaghetti and meatballs. Salted cookies. A veritable feast. Cora added — after some hesitation and a furtive glance in his direction — an impressive handful of stolen protein bars. He stared at them for a moment before lifting the tab on one of the cans of spaghetti.
It wasn’t her stealing he’d been so angry about, earlier.
When he’d come up to the car she’d hitched a ride from, it was obvious from the man’s shock that the driver hadn’t seen him in the shadows. He couldn’t blame the man — Cora’d been smiling, her hip stuck out and accentuating the curves on her body as she waited. That pitch black hair of hers flying behind her as the wind gusted.
He’d have picked her up too.
But he was nothing like the cowboy hat wearing driver. He’d seen perversion in the man’s eyes like a cancer. The way his lips had curled, like he could already taste Cora’s fear on his tongue. And she hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t even thought twice about sliding in next to him. She’d never have made it to her next stop if he hadn’t been there. She’d have been found days — maybe even weeks — later. Used and discarded like a condom in a cat-piss-stink alley.
When would she realize the world devoured souls like hers and rarely even spat out their bones?