Chapter 53
Come away from the window!” Joni said. “Whoever is out there will be able to see you.”
Helena snapped back, pressing herself against the cabin wall.
“Should we blow out the candles?” Maggie asked.
Liz shook her head. “They’ll still smell the smoke from the chimney. They’ll know we’re inside.”
A flash of torchlight passed the window, driving across the walls of the cabin.
Helena whispered, “They’re getting closer.”
Joni recalled the lone figure they’d seen earlier crossing the beach, heading for the cave. “They’re coming for the cocaine . . . ,” she whispered to herself, a slick of sweat building under her arms. She had set something in motion that she was unable to stop.
Liz snatched a breath, her expression pinched in the flickering light. “We say nothing, okay? Stick together. There are four of us.”
Outside, they heard the tread of approaching footsteps. They were heavy, slow. The trudge of boots on stone.
Instinctively, the four of them gathered closer, bunching around Maggie, who was still seated, injured ankle raised.
The footsteps drew nearer, following the perimeter of the cabin, making their way steadily toward the door.
Then they stopped.
Joni held her breath. She glanced at her friends. In the candlelight she could see the furrow of Liz’s brow and the clench of Helena’s knuckles as she held her hands in fists at her sides.
“What are they doing out there?” Maggie whispered.
Whoever was out there must have been waiting on the other side of the door.
Joni picked up the iron poker lying beside the fire, feeling its reassuring weight in her hands. She held it at her side, realizing too late that they should have locked the door.
The cabin door swung wide. A blast of cold wind gusted in from the mountain, blowing out the candles. The icy wind lifted the curtains, flicked through the leaves of the logbook, rattled an open cupboard—and then stopped as the stranger stepped inside, the door clanking shut behind them.
Joni raised her free hand in front of her face as a dazzling beam of torchlight blazed into the cabin. The stranger flicked off their headlamp, and for a moment, there was only darkness and the roar of blood in Joni’s ears.
Gradually, her eyesight adjusted to the low light from the woodstove, and she could make out a dark figure blocking the exit.
The shape of the man’s face emerged: a shadow of dark stubble, an angular nose balancing a lean face, an orange beanie pulled low.
She heard Maggie’s swallow. “Erik.”
—
In the glow of the woodstove, Joni watched as Erik stared at Maggie, unblinking. After several long seconds, he ran a hand over his face, as if wiping away a thought that wasn’t welcome.
He cleared his throat. Took in the others. “Hello,” he said, voice gruff.
Liz hurried to relight the candles, fumbling in the semidarkness with the matches.
“Sorry I disturb you,” he said, gaze lowering, a strange formality to his statement.
“It’s late to be out hiking,” Joni said, keeping the poker flush to her thigh, out of his eye line.
“Yes,” he agreed, and said no more.
There was silence in the cabin, gazes searching, feet shifting.
“Can I . . . come in?”
The friends looked at one another. What could they say? It wasn’t their cabin. Joni remembered Liz explaining that the philosophy behind the DNT cabins was that they never turned anyone away.
Eventually Joni nodded.
Erik took off his backpack, which thumped to the ground. Hadn’t Maggie said it had been only half-full when she’d come across him in the woods? Now it looked bulging, buckles pulled tight.
He shrugged off his jacket and unlaced his boots, setting them together neatly by the door. He crossed the cabin toward the kitchen area, socked feet leaving a trail of damp condensation marks on the wooden floorboards. She could smell something animal breathing from his skin.
There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept properly in days. A restless energy burned off him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, searching in the cupboards. He glanced sideways over his shoulder, looking at Maggie, then quickly away.
He rummaged in one of the drawers and pulled from it a pan and wooden spoon. From the next, he took a can of something meaty, snapping back the ring pull and tipping its contents into the pan.
There was a strange tension brimming in the cabin.
She felt alert, on edge, trying to gauge Erik’s sudden appearance.
Had he come for the cocaine? Or was he simply out hiking?
He’d posed no immediate threat to them, yet Joni’s heart rate was rocketing, as if she were in danger.
She turned the poker in her hand, uncertain.
“Where have you come from?” she asked.
“The mountain.”
Joni glanced at her friends, trying to read what the others were thinking. She wanted to get Erik talking, to try to unpiece what he was about and why he was here. “You and Leif are brothers, right?”
He lit the hob and set the pan on the flame. “Yes.”
“He said you’ve been away for a while.”
He nodded. “Moving around.”
“It must be nice to see each other again,” Joni said, a forced note to her tone.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It is easier when I am away.”
Maggie caught her eye, looking as uncertain as Joni felt.
Erik pushed a hand beneath his orange wool hat, resettling it over his dark hair. Joni could see the similarity between the brothers in their bone structure, but where Leif had a solid, calming presence, Erik seemed twitchy, making small, jerky movements, eyes lowered.
While he waited for his food to warm, he took out a hip flask and drank from it. “Are you going to stoke the fire, then?” he said to Joni, his gaze flicking briefly to the poker in her grip.
She felt heat in her cheeks. “Sure.” She knelt in front of the woodstove, making a show of adding another log and using the poker to adjust its position.
Beside her, Helena, arms folded, said, “I hear you came across Maggie when she was lost in the woods.”
Erik’s dark gaze shifted briefly to Maggie. “Yes.”
“We were surprised to find her so far off the path,” Helena said, a clear challenge in her tone. “You were supposed to be leading her back to the coast.”
Erik’s eyes narrowed the smallest amount. “I was—but I took a detour to avoid a river crossing.”
Helena looked unconvinced. “You disappeared in a hurry when the rest of us arrived.”
Maggie shot her a warning glance.
There was silence. Into it, Erik said, “I came out here to be alone.”
Helena glanced around the cabin and said, “And yet, here you are.”
Erik’s mouth tightened. He said nothing further. He didn’t mention Karin, just like he didn’t mention the cocaine. It was the absence of words that felt unnerving.
Joni could hear the first bubbles of the wet meat warming in the pan.
There was a disconcerting sense that they were waiting for something to happen—but what, she didn’t know.