Chapter Seventeen
Ryder
It isn’t a sense of direction driving me through the woods—I have next to none. It isn’t sound, either, which was just the trigger to set me off. It’s instinct, or maybe intuition, that feeling I’ve spent my entire life trusting because it rarely does me wrong.
The morning light is still sparse through the canopy of branches over my head, and when I slow down to get my bearings I see movement in the distance, just beyond the farthest I can clearly see through the fog.
I creep towards it slowly, unsure what I’ll find and unwilling to back away.
A snap of twigs behind me causes me to turn around, and suddenly I find myself staring straight down the barrel of a hunting rifle.
It’s impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t seen it.
The way an object and the direction it’s pointing can stop time for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of it.
My breath stops in my chest as the world narrows to the darkness inside an inch-wide tunnel of metal.
A lifetime goes by in my mind, but in reality, only a second could have passed before the weapon is lowered, revealing an all-too-familiar face.
Blonde hair, wide eyes, and all the physical presence of a lamb. Paige is the one holding the gun.
June 2017
Washington, DC
The letter came on a Tuesday. Paige had been waiting weeks for that letter. Ryder had, too, but it wasn’t for him.
“Well?” he prompted after she tore it open and scanned the words on its single page.
“I failed again,” she said. She didn’t sound sad, like she did the first time she got this letter, two years before. Or defeated, like she did the second time. This time, she sounded angry.
“It’s a really fucking hard test,” Ryder said, trying his best to console her. He wasn’t lying. Only a few people were accepted into basic field training each year—the entry test had to be hard, or anyone would be able to get in.
“Says the guy who passed on his first try.” She said it like an accusation.
“They change the questions each time, I probably just got lucky. And the endurance tests carry a lot of weight, fitness is a big part of—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ryder hesitated. “Not fitness, I mean… just, like. Strength, you know? Lifting stuff, they really—”
“So, what, you think I’m not strong enough or something?”
That wasn’t what he was trying to say, not exactly. “I just meant it’s easier for me because I’m…” He trailed off. He couldn’t think of the right words to express his thoughts, and his mind began to flounder. Maybe it was his thoughts that were wrong.
“You think I failed because I’m a girl?”
It was a painful question, for so many reasons. “No! You know that’s not what I meant, Paige—”
“You think I failed because I’m some petite, frail damsel who can’t pass a fucking endurance test?”
“That’s not. What. I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?!”
“What if you’re just not cut out for this?!”
The silence that filled the space then was laden with the weight of generations, of familial bonds and promises that could never be broken, no matter how many problems might be solved by their breaking.
“I’m going to pass this test, Ryder,” Paige said. “I’m going to be a Witchfinder, just like my mother was, just like my grandfather was. And if that means I have to work five, ten, twenty times harder at it than you do, so be it.”
“I’m not saying you can’t do it—”
“I don’t wanna hear it anymore, Ryder. I don’t need advice from someone who got off easy.”
It stung. And he wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she was the one who had things easy.
He wanted to tell her that she was the one who got better grades in school and never got in trouble, that she was the one who could trust authority figures and didn’t have to worry about her last name giving the ‘wrong impression.’
But it wasn’t exactly true, was it? Because Ryder had noticed, sometimes, how people talked down to Paige, how they overlooked her.
He noticed her being told to watch her tone, even when she had to shout to be heard.
He noticed her insisting she could walk home by herself, even when her voice and body language said she would be looking over her shoulder the whole way.
He noticed the way no one listened to her if she wasn’t smiling.
Paige got some things easy, Ryder got others. It hurt, sometimes, knowing those things would never be the same.
Paige and I stare at each other in disbelief, neither of us expecting to find the other in these woods this morning.
“Ryder, what are you doing out here?” Paige asks as the rifle hangs at her side.
I clench my jaw and feel my heart harden to keep itself from breaking. “Could ask you the same question.”
Paige swallows some words at first, then says, “Hunting trip.”
“Since when do you hunt?”
“I didn’t, ‘til recently.”
“What are you hunting?”
She shuffles her feet. “I think you’d better get out of here,” she says nervously. “It’s not safe—”
“What are you hunting, Paige?” I ask again.
Paige clutches her rifle to her chest like she’s afraid I might take it away. “It’s… it’s classified, Ryder, I’m sorry—”
“Right, classified. Of course.”
“Once this is done, we can talk, I promise, but right now you need to leave—”
“How many?”
“Ryder—”
“How many sasquatch have you shot?”
Paige looks pained, like she’s trying to break the toughest news of someone’s life. “It’s not what you think.”
“Not what I think? Paige… Jesus, there are other ways to get a promotion.”
“Get a—what?”
Of course she’ll deny it. She doesn’t know how much I know. How much I’ve seen. “Lemme guess—you’re out here assisting Sieger, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“He told you that if you came out here with him and helped him on his fucked-up Big Game Hunting trip, and if you helped him cover it up after—”
“Ryder, no, it’s not—”
“--then he’d help get you into the AEAD position, did I get that right?”
“That’s not what this is!” she insists desperately.
“I already talked to Nix about the job, she was this close to giving you—”
“Ryder, we’re culling.”
That stops my train of thought dead in its tracks. “Culling?”
Paige looks at me pityingly, like I’m the one who’s na?ve, like I’m the one who’s too young to understand. “They’ve almost doubled in number since the last count. I knew you wouldn’t like it but… it’s for their own good.”
Something in me cracks, like a dam breaking open. “‘For their own good?!’ Are you fucking kidding me?”
“If we let the population grow like this, they’re going to run out of space. They’ll start getting closer to cities, closer to civilization—”
“So what?! They’re herbivores, they’re reclusive, they’re not hurting anybody!”
“It’s not just about hurting people, they’re going to be seen.”
“Let them be seen, then!”
Paige stares at me, aghast. “Ryder,” she says slowly, “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re not thinking clearly.”
“Yes, I am . I’m thinking more clearly than I have in years. We keep them hidden to keep them safe—if keeping them hidden means we have to kill them, that’s not keeping them safe anymore.”
“It’s not just keeping them safe, it’s keeping people safe! They’re bigger than a silverback gorilla—herbivores or not, they’re dangerous!”
“So we chase them out of their own habitat?! There used to be thousands of them out here, don’t you get it? We’re the invasive species, not them!”
“Invasive?” says another familiar voice from a few yards away. I turn toward the sound just in time to see Sieger stepping through the trees, holding his hunting rifle in one hand. “Who’re you calling invasive, son? We’re the dominant species.”
“We’re supposed to be protecting them,” I say again, though I know it’ll mean nothing to him.
“We are protecting them, Flórez,” Sieger replies in his most amiable, diplomatic voice, a voice he’s spent decades perfecting. “Didn’t she tell you? We’re thinning out their numbers.”
“Is that why you’re killing off the ones who are too young to fight back?”
“These animals are capable of more than you know, Flórez.”
“Even the child you shot in the leg last week?”
“Child? That was a juvenile?” Sieger whistles. “Hoo, they’re making ‘em big these days! Gonna have to start bringing bigger guns!”
I stare at Sieger, horrified but not at all surprised. Then I look at Paige again. “And you think you’re helping them? With this asshole?!”
I think something snaps in Paige, too, because her expression and her posture change from lamb to angry terrier. “Okay, you know what?” she says, setting her gun down against a tree so she can plant her hands defiantly on her hips. “You can just can it with the judgy, holier-than-thou—”
“ Judgy?!”
“Yes, judgy! You’re being judgy, you’ve always been judgy!”
It shouldn’t matter, not right now. But it does. “I am not judgy!”
“You are! You were judgy about how many times I applied for field training, you’re judgy about the guys I date—”
“Because the guys you date are below your league!”
“Then that’s my choice!” she shouts, and I can feel years of tightly-wound bonds start to unravel between us. “You can’t keep treating me like your tween daughter and expect me to respect your opinion!”
“I don’t treat you like—”
“I mean, do you even want me to move up at work?”
“Of course I do, you’re the one holding yourself back!”
“Excuse me?!”
“The way you’re always apologizing for everything, with all your, ‘no worries if not’ crap—no wonder no one takes you seriously!”
“This is so fucking typical—you know, you have no idea what it’s like to be a woman in this field.”
“Don’t pull that shit with me, women move up at the bureau all the time! Nix has the third-highest position—”
“Nix got promoted because she acts like a dude!”
“What the hell does that mean?!”
A gunshot shatters our bickering to dust. Sieger stands with his rifle pointed into the air above him, smoke drifting out of the barrel.
“Jesus, you two make me glad I never had kids,” he says. “We’re done here. Paige, let the man enjoy the rest of his vacation, we’ve got hunting to do.”
Sieger starts to leave. Paige looks at me, angry and full of hurt, and I know without a single doubt that she’s going to follow him. Her rifle is still leaning against a tree. I step into her path, between her and her gun, physically blocking her from picking it up.
“She’s not going with you, Sieger.”
Paige heaves an exasperated sigh and tries to step around me. “Ryder, get out of the way…”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I say as I move to block her again.
“Yes, I do, I’m not a child!”
“We can go into detail later, but you’re wrong on this one. You’re just gonna have to trust me.”
“Ryder, I’m going to go do my job and there’s no way for you to stop me!”
Paige tries to step around me, I step in the same direction to stay in her way. She feints to my right, then tries to dart around me to my left, but I grab her arm to stop her.
“Let go of me!” says Paige, trying to twist out of my grip.
“I’m not letting you go with him!”
“Let her go, son.”
I turn to reply to Sieger and find myself staring down the barrel of a rifle for the second time this morning.
There it is again—that gut-freezing feeling of life or death, but this time I have a lot more adrenaline and indignation coursing through me.
“You’re gonna shoot me to get your way?” I say, my voice as smooth as the outside of a missile silo. “You think you’ll be able to cover that up? With a weapon and a witness, you think you’re gonna get away with murder?”
“God, what an unfortunate accident,” Sieger says, finger on the trigger. “I mean, you were supposed to be in Florida. No one would have expected you to be running around in these woods; it’s no wonder I thought you were one of those beasts.”
“Greg, quit screwing around,” says Paige, as though we’re two boys fighting on the playground. “You’ve scared him straight, okay? You can leave him alone now!”
“You watch your mouth!” Sieger snaps at her. “I’ve been with this organization since before you were born, and I’m not gonna take this kinda crap from two disrespectful brats who can’t go fifteen minutes without looking at their phones!”
The thing about adrenaline, the thing that most people forget, is that it’s functional. It heightens senses and shortens reaction times and makes it much easier to catch someone else off guard. Even someone holding a gun.
With Sieger and Paige just distracted enough, I grab the rifle behind me, swiftly lifting it to my eye level and pointing it in Sieger’s face. Sieger snaps back to attention, aiming for me again. All three of us are silent, holding perfectly still.
“Ryder,” Paige says slowly, as though trying to calm a skittish horse that’s wielding a blowtorch, “put down the gun.”
“Not ‘til he does.”
“He didn’t mean it,” she pleads. “He’s just messing around, he’s not going to shoot. Just put. Down. The gun.”
“Why are you siding with him?”
“I’m not siding—”
“Why are you telling me to put down the gun and not him?!”
Paige goes quiet. I don’t move. Neither does Sieger.
“Better listen to the girl, son,” Sieger says, and he doesn’t sound as scared as Paige does. He doesn’t sound scared at all. “We both know you’re not gonna pull that trigger, you might as well save us some time and put it down.”
“What makes you so sure I won’t?”
“Come on, bleeding-heart animal lover like you? You don’t have the stomach for it. Just put it down, you can go back to your vacation, and we’ll go back to our hunt.”
“I have firearms training, same as you two.”
“Didn’t say you don’t know how to use it. I said you wouldn’t.”
“For God’s sake,” said Paige, “can you two quit swinging your dicks around already and put the fucking guns down?!”
“Get out of here, Paige,” I say without looking at her. “If he’ll point a gun at me, he’ll point it at you just as easily.”
“I’m not leaving!”
“You weren’t around for the old Hunts,” Sieger goes on, ignoring Paige entirely. “Your generation’s weak, got no appreciation for the thrill of hunting something smart enough to outsmart you.”
“The thrill of hunting an endangered species?” I say. “That’s not a ‘thrill’ I have any interest in, thanks.”
“I’m not talking about the yetis, son. They’re a substitute.
I’m talking about the real Hunts, the Hunts we went on back before they started making demands, thinking they ought to have a seat at our table.
I went on Hunts with my pops and your granddad back when we could track Witches and pick ‘em off like flies, all in service of our country. Back when it was our sacred duty to take Witches down like the animals they are.”
I could say that what happens next happens because I lose control. That I’m not thinking clearly, that my finger seems to move of its own accord. The truth is, I’ve never made a more deliberate, lucid decision in my life than I do when I pull that trigger.