by Katie Cross
“You take a look.”
“You want him to freak out if something happens to me? He’ll blame you and kill you.”
“Why would he kill me? He doesn't care about you.”
Kimball muttered something while I closed another three feet between me and the pack. Eight feet left and they hadn’t noticed me yet. Devin let out another growl, but this time Kimball’s alert stare became more suspicious. When nothing jumped out to attack them, their immediate fear faded.
Steve pushed away from the tree where he leaned. “Something else?” he asked quietly.
As one, they moved closer to the sound. Devin had wisely positioned himself so they stepped away from the bag instead of returning. They slanted at an angle to where I lay, allowing me to crawl forward again.
Five feet.
The sound of bracken crunching under their shoes echoed through the meadow as they continued to advance. I scooted my body across the dirt with the terrible realization that they could probably see Devin now. He'd face a decision point soon: he'd have to reveal himself and draw their attention or stop acting like a bear. If he stopped the noises, they might abandon the search, which would possibly expose me when they returned.
Which meant he’d reveal himself soon.
As if they sensed Devin's hesitation, the two of them paused. Frantic, I scurried the rest of the way to my bag, clamped my hand on it, and pulled. Steve glanced up, as if he heard the pull of canvas against the ground. I froze, my breath held, as Steve started to scan. His gaze roved to the left and headed right for me. I lay in the open, sprawled on the ground. He’d be able to cross the space between us in less than ten seconds. There’d be no matching or dodging those giant fists.
The cry of a voice broke the air.
“Hello, the camp!”
Steve and Kimball jerked to attention and swung their heads the opposite way. A body appeared across the meadow, brought by a familiar pair of green pants. Neils! Sweet baby pineapple, but he had fantastic—and terrible—timing.
Indecision warred within me. Did I call out a warning to Neils, or finish the task? The rustle of bushes not far away reminded me why we were here. With a shake of my head, I turned back to the mission. Once I had the keys and the radio, I'd call out to Neils. Doing so before would doom all of us.
I reached for the outside zipper of my bag seconds before Kimball returned the cry.
“Over here.”
Kimball and Steve tensed as Neils approached. I gently tugged on the zipper as Neils slowed to a stop a few steps away. He eyed each of them, as if he could also feel the tension in the air. My heart began to pound. Neils was only doing his job. What if they harmed him? This wasn’t fair for any of us, but at least I’d signed onto this hike.
Steve stood with his arms at his side, the permanent glower more apparent on his face. His suspicious glare dodged back to where Devin’s bush-shaking had now stopped. Silently, I slipped my fingers into the canvas material and felt around, hoping to feel cool metal against my fingertips.
“What took you so long?” Kimball asked.
I froze.
Did he just ask that question?
“I could ask the same," Neils replied, with his distinctive accent and crisp intonation. "I saw the fire. What happened? Where is Ellie?”
With a sense of deepening dread, I gazed over my bag in their direction. Their heads and shoulders were the most visible part of them from here. Did I have something wrong? Was it Neils that just acted so friendly to them?
Yes, it had to be. The slight accent in his words was a dead giveaway.
“Lost everything, including her.”
“What?” Neils snapped.
Kimball sighed. “It was her fault. We started with the hike she suggested, just like you wanted, and then cut across the mountains to the cabin. They almost didn't buy the stupid treasure story, or whatever, but I figured it out. No one knew where we ended up, and nothing appeared suspicious, just like you demanded. When we got to the cabin, we subdued her. Just like you said."
"And?" he drawled, murderous.
A slight hesitation followed. "She . . . got away. She set fire to everything.” Bitterness lined Kimball’s voice. His words rang with halted frustration. “And by everything, I mean everything.”
“The dust?”
His voice had hardened into an unmistakable rage that confirmed my worst fears. Neils was in on this. Although the details weren't clear yet, the fact that he had something to do with the pixie dust was abundantly clear now. What did Devin think of this development? Now, we also had to escape a park ranger who knew these mountains even better than I did and had wanted me there.
A shiver scooted down my spine and pushed me back to my purpose.
Radio.
Truck keys.
Get the hell out of here.
The gentle rustle of leaves sang behind me for a few seconds before I heard a low whisper.
“Behind you.”
Devin lay there, a look of serious concern on his face. He tilted his head to the pack, then raised his eyebrow in silent question. I shook my head back and forth just once. My fingers continued to rummage through my bag, now almost empty. Steve had ditched most of my gear, probably to lighten the load. Maybe I could recover it later. I shook that thought away.
Nope. Didn't want to go back there.
“We gotta go,” Devin murmured. “No keys. Let's just get out of here.”
My fingertips grazed something cool and hard. I held up a finger from my free hand as shouting rose from beyond us.
“All of the dust and the girl? You idiots! You screwed up everything.”
A combined litany of curse words from Kimball and Neils followed. My heart beat faster. All they needed was to glance over. They’d see my shoes or my hair or something distinctive in the trees, and then they’d realize that the suspicious sounds had—even more suspiciously—just stopped for no reason. If they stepped back just a few feet and looked anywhere, they’d see me on the ground.
Game over.
My fingertips closed over a jagged key. With a muted cry of triumph, I pinched it between my two fingers and pulled the entire key ring free with the light tinkle of metal on metal. Their rising shouts reverberated through the meadow as I scurried backward, abandoning my favorite bag and all the food and resources inside. We'd have to make it without the radio.
Dirt coated my arms and legs as I folded the keys into my fingers and hustled backward. My body left a clear path in the dirt, but we'd have to take the chance that they didn't follow it. Devin touched my back as I approached so I knew he was there.
“Nice work,” he murmured.
“What now?” Neils shouted. “What now? You will repay every damn dime of what you would have made—”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Kimball cried. “It was your idea to bring the girl. You should have made sure she arrived, not me. You're the one that wanted her. And Collins was going to take her first, just so you know. I wouldn't have touched her, of course.”
The syrupy placating of Kimball’s tone made me want to vomit. Kind Neils, whom I'd met countless times on the trail. Who acted like my friend. All this time, a diabolical member of a drug ring that destroyed lives and wanted to rape me. Why he'd wanted me at the cabin only made me sicker, so I forced the thought away.
“I don’t care who was in charge of getting her there!” Neils shrieked. The crack of a palm hitting skin followed. I winced. "You ruined everything and I still didn't get my chance with her. You're not worth the risk anymore, Kimball. Maybe you never were!"
Devin looked to me from where he lay on his back. “You ready?” he mouthed.
I nodded.
Dev gazed past us to a thick canopy of trees that dropped into a steep hill. If we were careful not to jostle anything, we’d be out of sight in just a few steps and at the bottom in a few more. Once there, we could slip into more mature trees without so many bushes and be nearly undetectable as we escaped.
; Dev looked back at me in silent question, then grabbed my hand and squeezed it. The touch gave me a rush of courage. I nodded.
"Let's do it," I mouthed.
With one glance around us, and as the fever pitch of Kimball and Neils’ voices rose, Dev rolled back onto his stomach and began to crawl away, low to the ground. With my heart in my throat, I followed.
Dirt coated my lips from crawling so long on the ground, but I ignored the gritty texture and the taste of loam on my tongue. Instead, I focused on the weight of the keys in my palm. The reassuring texture of metal and freedom and hope against the tender, filthy skin.
We got this, I told myself. We got this. We’ll get out of this area, hit the trail at a run, get back to the truck, and then be home free within an hour.
We got this.
Then a hand clamped down on my ankle.
And I screamed.
20
Devin
Ellie’s scream turned my blood to slush.
I whipped around to find one of Kimball’s withered cronies standing over her, a booted foot planted on her back and a leering grin on his face. Ellie struggled valiantly under the pressure of his foot, her limbs flailing. He leaned forward on her ribcage with a guffaw. She grunted against the pressure. Her attempts to shove off the ground by planting her palms on the dirt failed when he kicked her arms out from under her.
Rage built in my body.
“Well, well,” he called over his shoulder. “Lookee what I found here. A spy.”
The shouting we'd left behind had turned into a fistfight about ten seconds after we'd turned away from the pack. A shot rang out, and the scuffle of fighting calmed.
I shot to my feet, crossed the distance in two steps, and threw myself on top of the man. He fell to the ground with a startled screech, dropping like melted butter under my weight. With jagged, dirty nails, he reached for my face. I grabbed his shirt, yanked him off the ground, and slammed a fist into his nose. He crumbled with a gurgled scream. I hit him in the face again, and he went limp.
Fog flowed into my vision, clouding what I saw. One minute I saw the ragged, graying face of a man that intended harm to Ellie. Blood flowed down his nose and stained his lips. The next I saw Trixie as he lay dying in my arms, skin stained with soot and dirt and blood all over his teeth.
Someone grabbed my shoulder and jolted me out of the hallucination.
“Devin.” Ellie’s voice rang through my ears. “Devin, let’s go.”
Go, I thought. I can’t go. We don't leave brothers behind. I have to stay with Trixie.
I shook my head.
No, I thought. No, I'm not in Afghanistan. I'm not there. I'm home.
Despite my struggle against it, the hallucination gained ground and overtook my mind. Smoke clouded the air as I slipped back to Afghanistan. I could still smell the hazy scent. It wound like lacy tendrils past me. What was that smell? Something distinct, like burning rubber but . . . worse. Skin. That was it. Singed hair. Burned skin. Trixie. Trixie was in my arms, his lips moving as he tried to say something.
"Devin!" Ellie cried.
I dropped the body, and it turned back into the rat that wanted to hurt Ellie. My Ellie. Ellie. Ellie wouldn't be in Afghanistan. She didn't speak to me there. My head banged like drums from the inside while I tried to decipher what was real. I’m not there, I told myself. I’m not there. This isn't real.
I tried to clear the picture with a racing heart. The fog faded. Ellie stood in front of me, hair wild around her shoulders, face lined with anxiety. But she'd always looked scared when I imagined her in Afghanistan. Each time I almost died, she'd been there. Her face had looked so worried.
“Are you real?” I heard myself ask.
Her expression softened. “Yes, I'm real. I'm not a hallucination or a memory. Devin, you’re with me." Her hand pressed over her chest. "I'm Ellie. Ellie, your best friend. Ellie, the girl you spent your life with.” Her gaze darted away, and then back. “You’re not in Afghanistan. You’re in the mountains with me.”
Mountains.
I tried to peel the haze away as I struggled to my feet. That guy wanted to hurt her. I remembered that. Running down a slope. A pack. Reality slammed back into me all at once.
Kimball.
Steve.
Neils.
She tugged on my arm, then swore under her breath. "We have to go!" she whispered. Shouts from the rise above us grew stronger. Two male figures appeared on the ridge overhead, only a few yards away. I recognized one of them, but just as I remembered his name, it slipped away. Instead, I could hear screams of pain that belonged to Afghanistan. They echoed in my ears and made them ring.
Trixie's choked pleas to stop the agony.
My chest felt tight and my head dizzy. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. The command went unnoticed. I thought I saw Trixie lying at my feet in the forest bracken, his arm almost separated from his body, and blood pooling beneath him.
Afghanistan returned with full force again, filled with smoke curling around me and distant shots. Sand in my gums. Heat under my feet and the dust and smoke of a destroyed Humvee choking the air. A shot sounded overhead. I ducked when the sound of, “Incoming!” rippled through the air.
“Duck,” I cried. “You gotta duck.”
“Get back!” Ellie shouted to someone I wasn’t aware of. She’d moved. She stood in front of me now. “I wasn’t afraid of you before, and I’m not now.”
I’m not in Afghanistan, I told myself again. I’m not there. I’m not there.
Reality slipped back into place as I frantically tried to catch back up. Forest. Ellie. Running. We had been running . . . but why? It’s like I lost time. The flashbacks occurred and I had no idea how much time passed while I struggled to find my mind again.
“Traitor!” Ellie shouted. “You’re a traitor, and I’ll make sure you go down for this, Neils.”
Neils.
Park ranger.
Danger to Ellie.
My mind snapped back into place. The sands of Afghanistan cleared out of my mental landscape. Within half a second, I had Ellie behind me, with my body between her and the men leering at her now with hatred in their eyes.
I’d seen that look before.
Hell, I'd felt that look before.
“Let us go,” I commanded as Neils skulked closer. “We’ll let you go. Mutual pass.”
Ellie held onto my shirt behind me, like she didn't want to be parted even a little. It grounded me to know right where she stood.
Neils scoffed. “Right,” he drawled with a dramatic roll of his eyes. “I completely believe that you won’t tell anyone what you saw here, nor what you did. That the authorities won’t be on me in half a second once you get back to your truck.”
“Who says they aren’t already?”
Neils scoffed, then reached into his belt. A black gun appeared with a flash. My instincts kicked in. I whirled around, bear-hugged Ellie, and threw us to the ground. The sound of shattered wood broke above us seconds later. Ellie let out a muffled groan as I rolled us down the hill, narrowly missing a sapling and plowing through a dense chokecherry bush that grabbed her hair. She let out a little mewl of pain when it ripped a lock of hair free on our tumble down. Gunshots rang behind, hitting the dirt just behind us as we rolled free. The hot ricochet of a bullet whizzed past my ear as I forced us over a crumbling log.
And I dropped right back into Afghanistan.
This time, I lay low in the sand. Night descended around us in utter darkness broken only by a thick band of stars. The whine of bullets sped overhead as we burrowed farther into the sand, plastering our bodies into the ground to get farther and farther away. The sand gritted against my cheek, painful against unwashed skin and the gritty beginnings of a beard. My heart thudded, heavy and fast, as the bullets whizzed by.
My thoughts pulsed like the drum of a heartbeat, an image of Ellie in my head.
I’m so sorry I left you. I’m so sorry I left you.
Amidst the foc
us and horror of the moment, when I tried not to think of bullets tearing hot through my body and what it would feel like to fade into death, Ellie appeared. Her laugh rang through my mind. Her green eyes regarded me with amusement that faded to concern. When we'd been together in Pineville, she'd always kept a hand near me, even though there’d never been anything implicitly romantic about it.
Always near.
Even before I died.
"Talk to me," I demanded. "Talk to me, Ellie."
“Devin!”
Shocked to hear Ellie’s voice here in the boiling sands, my head jerked up. The sands melted away. I stared into her eyes with a verdant emerald backdrop of the forest behind and realized.
I’m not there.
Another shot rang out, followed by a scream. The memory stole me away again. This time, for good.
21
Ellie
His arm felt gritty beneath my fingertips when I touched it. "Dev, it's Ellie. It's me. I'm here. That isn't real."
He paused. "Quiet. They're shooting."
"Ellie," I whispered. "I'm real."
He looked beyond me, then shook his head. The scuffles and shouts from the other snivelly rat that now had a broken nose ceased after the last gunshot. Neils had stopped pursuing us to yell at someone else, which likely meant that the other guy was now dead too.
It gave us a few moments to get out of here.
Where was Steve? Kimball? Had they both already been shot? If that other man could appear out of nowhere, so might someone else.
My hand trembled when I put my palm against Devin's cheek and willed him to return to me. Come back, I begged silently. Please come back. Terror filled his eyes amidst a backdrop of war. He struggled inside, I could see that. I wanted to soothe it all away and bring him back. Wanted to melt these horrible men into oblivion and forget they ever existed. Devin had demons now.
Demons only I could fight.
"Dev, it's me. Ellie. I'm here in the mountains with you. You're not in Afghanistan."
He continued to blink.