Chapter two
“…YOU SHOULD have secured him. We can’t take any chances.”
“I’m not going to tie him up. One does not tie up guests, Alex.”
“He’s not a guest. He’s—”
“He’s in the photos.”
“What?”
“The photos. In the bedroom. In the hallway. Above the fireplace. He’s in the photos. He’s telling—no. Don’t move. I can show you if you need to see. If you would just trust me, I could—”
“It’s not about trust. I told you that. It’s about survival. We’re not—”
Nate groaned.
“Oh look,” the girl said.
“He’s waking up.”
“Get away from him. Art, just—”
Something poked his cheek.
He opened his eyes.
The little girl was staring down at him. Her eyes were the brightest green he’d ever seen before in his life. They were enchanting.
He made a little strangled noise in the back of his throat, jerking up.
“Howdy, partner,” she said, stepping back.
“Welcome back to being awake. You were unconscious for twenty minutes, seventeen seconds. That’s a long time for someone like you.”
Nate was on the couch. His Chucks had been removed. A blanket was laid over him, which fell to his lap as he sat up. His head felt stuffed, his muscles stiff.
The man sat across from him in a wooden chair Nate recognized as being from the kitchen. His shirt was buttoned a little, enough to cover the bandage. The gun sat on his thick thigh, his hand around the grip. He was breathing shallowly, his eyes never leaving Nate.
“You can’t kill me,” Nate said, the first thing that came to his mind.
“I can,” the man said, a sneer on his face.
“Very easily. You’d be surprised at just how easy it would be.”
“He’s not lying,” the little girl said solemnly.
“He’s a gunslinger. A lonely man, a six-shooter on his hip, the iron hot as he fixes the brim of his hat and rides off into the sunset on the mesa—”
“I told you not to read those damn books,” the man said.
“Well, I found those other books, but you wouldn’t let me read them. The ones you said were inappropriate for someone my age, even if I’m—”
“Art.”
She rolled her eyes. Then.
“Did I do that right? Did I look exasperated because you wouldn’t let me find out why Judy needed to stay after class to meet with the teacher in order to raise her grade? I mean, why couldn’t she just get extra work to take—oh. Oh.” She frowned.
“That can’t be ethical.”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Nathaniel,” he said. He coughed and shook his head.
“Nathaniel Cartwright.”
“Wow,” the girl said.
“Just like I told you earlier. How about that.”
“And why are you here?”
“This is my cabin,” Nate said, wondering where the anger was coming from. Because yes, he’d had a gun pointed at him. Yes, he’d been threatened. Yes, these people were here, and he didn’t know who the fuck they were. And maybe he was a little embarrassed too. He’d passed out for no goddamn reason, for fuck’s sake. That added to it, sure. His blood was boiling. He stood, the blanket falling to the ground. It was an afghan his mother had knitted. He hated the sight of it.
The man immediately raised the gun.
The girl took a step back.
“This is my cabin,” Nate said again, the words stronger.
“You don’t have the right to ask me what I’m doing here when I live here. Who the fuck are you? You know what? I don’t care. I’m calling the cops.”
The man cocked the gun.
“You’re not going to do shit.”
“You would have shot me already if you were going to,” Nate said, looking around for his cell phone before remembering it was still sitting on the bench seat in the truck.
“Oh boy, hoss,” the girl said.
“You should not have said that.”
The man fired the gun. The blast was flat and sharp in the small space of the living room. Nate swore he felt the buzz of the bullet right by his cheek. He turned slowly to see a ragged hole in the wall behind him. His skin felt like it was vibrating.
“Don’t think I won’t do it,” the man said coldly.
“Because I will do whatever it takes to keep her—” He grimaced then, leaning forward and groaning.
The girl was at his side in an instant, hands running over his stomach and chest.
“What’s wrong with him?” Nate asked, feeling like he was floating above himself, secured by a thin tether.
“Nothing,” the man said through gritted teeth.
“It’s just—”
“He was shot,” the girl said.
“By a jerk who wouldn’t get out of the way.”
“Shot,” Nate repeated dully.
“Like he almost just shot me.”
“He missed,” the girl said.
“I didn’t miss,” the man said, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Nate didn’t know what to do with that.
“Why don’t you take him to a hospital?”
She glanced over her shoulder.
“Because that’s not how being on the run works. Don’t you know that?”
“Art, I swear to god, you’re going to—”
“He doesn’t know how it works,” Art said, turning back toward the man.
“I’m just telling him so he knows. You need to stop talking. The more you talk, the more you hurt, and I don’t like it when you hurt. I need you to be okay again so we can be together. I cried, Alex. You made me cry. That’s not very nice of you.”
And wonder of all wonders, the man’s scowl softened.
“You don’t need to cry. Especially not over me.”
She fussed over him, tugging on his shirt.
“You don’t need to get shot. Or be rude. I don’t like it when either of those things happens.”
“You’ve never seen me get shot before.”
“Yes, but I’ve seen you be rude all the time, so.”
The man slumped back in the chair, tilting his head back. His grip was loose on the gun. It would be so easy to just—
“Here,” Art said, taking the gun from the man’s lap, holding it toward Nate.
The man’s eyes flashed open.
“What are you doing?”
“He was thinking about going for the gun,” Art said. The gun looked huge in her small hand.
“I figured if I gave it to him, he would know he could trust us.” She frowned.
“Or at least trust me, seeing as how you almost shot him in the head trying to show how manly you are.” She looked back at Nate. “Wasn’t he manly? Say yes so he feels better.”
“Yes,” Nate said immediately.
Art turned back toward the man.
“Do you feel better?”
He tried to sit forward.
“Give me the gun.”
“No. Nathaniel, come get the gun.”
“Nathaniel, do not touch that gun, I swear to—”
Nate stepped forward and took the gun. He didn’t know the first thing about how to use it, but he pointed it directly at them.
“Nathaniel,” the girl said.
“Don’t be rude.”
The man stood with a groan and forced the girl behind him. She squawked but stayed where he’d put her, peeking around his hip to look at Nate.
“If you point that thing at me, you better be ready to use it.”
The barrel shook.
He put pressure on the trigger.
“He looks unsure,” the girl whispered.
“That’s not a good look to have when you’re pointing a gun.”
Nate blinked. She didn’t even sound scared. He felt bad, yeah, of course he did. Whatever was happening, she was just a little girl, and this wasn’t her fault.
He said.
“I’m going to get my phone. I’m going to call the cops.”
“You’re still pointing that gun at me,” the man said, pushing the girl farther behind him, much to her visible irritation.
“I told you—”
It was a distraction, of course. Even while he was still talking, the man moved. One moment they were facing off, the gun in Nate’s hand, the man several feet away. The next, the man had moved, and the gun was now in his hand. It took Nate’s brain a few seconds to catch up, to understand what had just happened. His arm was still raised.
He lowered it slowly.
The man wasn’t pointing the gun at him anymore. He sat back down in the seat with a groan.
The girl glanced between the two of them.
“Now that that’s out of the way, y’all reckon we could patch this up here, buckaroo?”
NO BARS.
The fucking Nokia had no bars.
He sat in the truck staring down at the green screen in the dark.
They hadn’t tried to stop him when he’d gone outside. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The man had made some kind of noise, trying to push himself up, but the girl put her hand on his shoulder, forcing him back down. Which for such a little thing was rather remarkable.
“He’ll be back,” the girl said as Nate fled out the door.
Fuck that.
He raised the phone above his head, hitting the top of the cab of the truck.
No bars.
“Come on,” he muttered.
He got out of the truck.
The air was cold. The sun was gone.
He turned in circles.
No bars.
He got into the bed of the truck.
No bars.
He jumped into the air as high as he could.
Still no bars.
He eyed the roof of the cabin.
Probably not the best idea.
He should just leave. Get back in the truck and head back down the mountain.
If he took it slowly, he’d be back in Roseland in a couple of hours.
His phone would work.
He could find a cop. Hell, he could call Big Eddie. He might not even have to get all the way back to Roseland before it worked.
Yes. That sounded like a plan.
“All right,” he muttered to himself.
“I’m going to do that. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s smart. It’s safe. Good plan.”
He got back into the truck and reached down to turn the key.
Except there was nothing there.
Because he didn’t have his keys.
“Motherfucker,” he growled, slamming his hand against the steering wheel.
When had he last had his keys? It would have been at the shed before he—yeah, fine, before he fainted. He’d felt them cool against his neck, buried under all that terror of having a fucking gun pointed at his head. Either they were still sitting on the ground by the shed, or they were inside after they’d carried him in—
And that—something buzzed a little at that, didn’t it? Like an electrical pulse in the back of his brain. It was disbelief mixed with ??????? because how had that happened exactly? The man had passed out. The girl couldn’t have carried him in herself. The man must have woken up and carried Nate inside, but… he was injured. He’d been shot. Nate had never been shot, but he could imagine what kind of pain he’d be in. Nate may have been thin, but he was a hair over six feet. He wasn’t small. Yes, the man was much larger—probably had a good sixty pounds on Nate—but if he was hurt, and if Nate could take him by surprise….
Unless they were just pretending the man had been shot.
Or if there was another person in the cabin. Someone he hadn’t seen yet. Maybe the girl’s mother.
He had a feeling the keys weren’t by the shed.
He got out of the truck.
He turned toward the road.
He started walking.
He made it three steps before he stopped.
He turned back around.
They were in his cabin.
He wasn’t the one that needed to go.
He took a step forward, determined.
They had a gun that had already been fired in his direction.
His next step was less determined.
As were the ones after that.
By the time he reached the porch steps, he was sweating despite the cold mountain air. His hands were shaking, and his head was pounding.
He managed to make it up the steps, the wood creaking underneath him.
The door was still open partway. He couldn’t see much.
He steeled himself, took a breath, and pushed the door open.
The man was still sitting on the chair, head tilted back, eyes closed.
The girl was next to him, her hand on his side.
The gun was sitting on the coffee table.
“Told you he’d come back,” she said without turning around.
The man cracked an eye open. “Huh.”
“Who else is in this house?” Nate asked, going for firm but landing somewhere around shrill.
The man closed his eye. “What?”
“The house,” Nate repeated.
“Who else is here?”
The girl cocked her head, waited a beat, then said.
“No one. Just us three.”
Nate nodded, head jerking up and down.
“Fine, then you’re not really shot.”
The man snorted.
“He is.” The girl patted the man on the knee.
“He shouldn’t have been, but he’s an idiot. Do you like sunglasses?”
“Art,” the man said, a warning in his voice.
“What?” the girl asked.
“It was just a question.”
Nate wasn’t sure what was going on.
“I don’t care about sunglasses—”
“Oh,” the girl said.
“That’s too bad.” She brightened.
“Are these your books, partner? Going down the dusty trail on your horse named Benny with your clichéd and borderline racist caricature of a Native American sidekick that—”
“Yes,” Nate said.
“Those are mine. The books are mine. That chair you’re sitting on is mine. Everything you see here is mine.”
“Okay. Jeez. You don’t need to brag.”
Nate sputtered.
“Jesus, I’m not bragging. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The girl squinted at him.
“Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”
“Listen, little girl—”
“My name is Artemis Darth Vader. I told you that already.”
“That’s not a real name!”
“It is,” she insisted, and for the first time since this craziness had begun, the girl looked almost… upset.
“It’s mine. It’s my name. No one else can have it. It belongs to me. You can’t take that from—”
The man winced, but he lifted a hand and dropped it on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
The little girl’s chest heaved once, twice, three times before she sighed.
“Her name is Artemis,” the man said quietly.
“Art, for short. She’s… very partial to it.”
Nate didn’t know what to say to that.
“He’s my Alex,” Art said.
“And he’s been shot. There’s no one else in the house. We didn’t know who lived here. We didn’t hurt anything. I read some of your books. We ate some of the food, canned stuff that didn’t look like it’d be missed. We slept in the beds. He needs to feel better. Okay? That’s all I want. I need him to feel better.”
“Where are my keys?” Nate asked quietly.
“I dropped them,” Art said, looking back at Alex.
“By the shed. I couldn’t get them and you and Alex at the same—”
Alex coughed.
“We couldn’t lift you and grab the keys at the same time. Not with how weak I am.”
“Right,” Art said.
“Because you’ve been shot. In your skin.”
Nate moved across the living room, giving the two strangers a wide berth.
Neither of them went for the gun.
He was out the door before they could speak again.
THERE THEY were. Just… sitting in the grass next to the shed.
He bent over and picked them up.
The generator hummed.
He looked down at the keys in his hand.
All he’d need to do was get back in the truck. That’s it. He had what he needed. His phone was in his pocket, his keys in his hand. He hadn’t even unpacked anything. He hadn’t had time. If the man had been shot, he didn’t need to know how. He didn’t need to know what they were running from. Who was after them. He didn’t need to be involved. Hell, he didn’t even have to tell anyone about them. He could go back inside, tell them they had a day to clear out before he called the cops, and he could sleep somewhere down the road in the truck. He’d come back tomorrow and they’d be gone, and he could pretend none of this had happened. He would go about living his strange, isolated existence where he was going to figure out what he’d do next. He’d grieve over that lack of grief he felt at his parents’ loss and then move on. He wouldn’t have to worry about a dangerous man and his weirdly named daughter.
Yes. That sounded good.
He turned back around.
The girl was standing there.
He jumped and made a rather embarrassing sound.
“Howdy,” she said, staring up at him.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped at her.
“You’re really jumpy.”
“You snuck up on me!”
“Yes. I’m really quiet. It’s one of my strengths. What are you doing? Are you contemplating? I do like contemplating. It’s so… normal.”
He stared back at her.
She smiled up at him. If he hadn’t felt the air splitting around a bullet near his ear only a little while before, he might have thought her beautiful.
But as it stood now, she was obviously a fugitive on the run and had somehow involved him with her crazy father.
“Yes, well,” he said stiffly.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be leaving—”
“Do you have more food?”
“Yes. No! I don’t—”
“Which is it?” she asked, cocking her head.
“What?”
“I asked if you had more food. You said yes and no. It can’t be both. It’s paradoxical.”
“How old are you?”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t you—I’m twenty-seven.”
“Oh. Alex is forty. He’s older than you. Do you have more food? There wasn’t much in the pantry. And he needs to eat to get his strength back. I was going to go to another cabin to see if there was more food, but then you came, and now we’re standing here with you saying both yes and no to a question that was either-or.” She paused, staring up at him, barely blinking. Then.
“I like sunglasses. Alex got me some. They are inside. I’m not wearing them now because it’s nighttime, and Alex says you can’t wear sunglasses at night because it makes you look stupid.”
“Yes, I have more food,” Nate said, desperate to get this strange girl to stop talking. “I can—”
“Oh good.” She reached out and took his hand. He barely flinched.
“Let’s mosey on over, then, to that thar horse and buggy you pulled up in, partner. I like your books. They make me happy. Do they make you happy?”
They were walking toward the truck. Nate hadn’t even known they were moving.
“I don’t… know?”
“Oh. That’s okay. Sometimes not knowing something makes it wonderful. That’s what Alex said. But he only says that when I ask him a question I don’t think he knows the answer to. He’s clever like that.”
They were at the truck. She watched with interest as he lowered the tailgate, like she’d never seen such a thing in person before.
“Do you have soup?” she asked politely.
“I read that soup makes you feel better when you are sick.” She grunted lightly as she pulled herself up into the back of the truck and started rooting through his stuff.
“He’s not sick,” Nate said.
“He’s been shot. Don’t touch that.”
“Yes. Do you have soup?”
He did. It was cheap and easy. Most of what he’d brought were nonperishables or stuff that could sit in the freezer for months on end and still be edible after being nuked in the microwave.
“He needs a hospital.”
“No. I’m on it.”
“The wound could get infected.”
She stared at him.
“That’s what the soup is for.”
“Look, I could take you both down the mountain to—”
“We’re fine here.”
“This is my cabin.”
“Yes, but there’s only you, and there’s so much room. We can share. Oh look. I found the soup. Wow, there is a lot of it.” She looked back over her shoulder.
“Are you sick too?”
It would explain all of this if he were trapped in a fever dream of some sort. Maybe he’d wake up soon in his apartment in DC and none of this would be real.
“No. I’m not sick.”
“Not like Alex. But I think you’re sick somehow.”
“Would you stop going through my—why do you call him that?”
She had stacked four or five cans of soup in her arms.
“Call who what?”
“Alex.”
“That’s his name.”
“Why don’t you call him—let me carry that. You’re going to drop it.”
She looked at him defiantly, her chin propped against the cans of soup stacked in her arms.
“I can carry it.”
“Fine, but how are you going to get down?”
She looked at the tailgate. Then back at him. Then she walked toward the edge of the truck. She crouched down and let the cans fall. They clanged against the truck. She turned them all upright at the end of the tailgate. She jumped down. She turned back toward the truck, then reached up and grabbed the cans before stacking them once again in her arms.
“Like that,” she said simply before turning toward the house. She stopped at the porch steps.
“Hey,” she said, looking back at him. “Do you also have bread? Because I read that soup goes with toast and bread becomes toast when you put it in the toaster.”
“I have bread,” Nate said.
“I know. I saw it. I was just seeing if you would tell the truth. Can you bring it, please?”
Then she was up the steps and through the door.
Nate stared after her.
The keys were still in his hand.
He pushed the tailgate up and locked it in place.
He could leave now. He had everything he needed. He’d helped them as much as he could. There was nothing else he could do. All he needed now was to get in the truck and drive away.
He walked around to the driver’s door.
He reached for the handle.
Or at least he tried to.
Instead, he reached into the back of the truck into one of the paper bags. He found the loaf of whole-grain bread he’d bought at the market in Eugene.
“Leave,” he told himself quietly.
“Just leave.”
He walked toward the house.