Chapter 24
The next day we pushed hard. The trail wound through the spine of the Smokies, up and over peaks, through stands of spruce and fir that smelled like something clean and old. The fog came and went. Other hikers appeared and disappeared like ghosts in the mist.
I talked to two of them. A couple from Ohio who were section hiking and an older woman doing her second thru-hike who wanted to know if we’d seen any bears.
Salome hung back during these exchanges, sunglasses on, looking like exactly the kind of person you didn’t approach with small talk. But she watched me do it.
“You talk to strangers,” she observed afterward. Not a question.
“Recent development.”
“You are not good at it.”
“I’m aware.”
Something that might have been a smile crossed her face.
It was hard to tell with the scar. That scar.
If her story was true, the cartel had given it to her.
If it wasn’t true, it was still the kind of wound you got from a blade, and she’d still survived getting it, and that told me something about who she was regardless of the rest.
Eventually, late afternoon, we came around a bend and the forest opened up and there it was.
The observation tower at Kuwohi, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains.
The old name had been Clingmans Dome, renamed to the Cherokee word meaning “mulberry place.” I preferred the new name. It felt right. Something reclaimed.
We passed the spot where I’d been ambushed the previous winter. There’d been no news reports of two bodies found since the event, so I assumed the bodies were still down the ravine, bones picked clean by scavengers. I didn’t bother to mention it to Salome. None of her business.
“Can I take your picture?” I asked Salome.
She frowned, looking as thrilled about that as I was. “Why?”
“So Pike can confirm whether you are who you claim you to be.”
She thought about it, then nodded. “Understandable.”
I snapped a couple of shots. “I’ll be back.”
I climbed the ramp. Salome stayed below, keeping to herself.
The concrete ramp spiraled up to the observation deck and there were a handful of tourists up top, the kind who drove to the parking lot and walked the half mile from the road.
Day-trippers with clean clothes and phone cameras.
I must have looked like something that crawled out of the woods, which was accurate.
At the top, I set down my ruck and looked out.
Three hundred and sixty degrees of the Smoky Mountains.
Layer after layer of ridgelines fading into blue haze.
North Carolina one direction, Tennessee the other.
Somewhere down there, in the wreckage of the flood, was Rocky Start.
And in Asheville, Pike was healing. And in New York City, Rose was with Poppy.
I’d done it. Third time. Springer Mountain to here. Added together, the whole trail. I stood there and waited for whatever I was supposed to feel.
It was quieter than I expected. No fireworks. No grand revelation. Just the wind and the view and the faint awareness that I’d walked a very long way and the walking wasn’t really the point. Jackie would have been insufferably pleased about that.
I sighed.
A tourist asked me to take his picture with his wife. I did. Then he offered to take mine.
Change only goes so far, then survival kicks in.
I passed on the offer.
I moved away from the tourists and took out my cell phone. There was service this high up.
I called Luke first. He answered on the second ring.
“You alive?”
“I’m breathing. Ten fingers. Ten toes. I need a pickup at Kuwohi. The parking lot.”
“When?”
“Now would be good.”
“I’m in Asheville. Give me a few hours.” A pause. “You okay?”
“I finished the Trail. And I’ve got a situation. I’m going to send you a couple of photos. Ask Pike if he knows the person.”
The silence on Luke’s end lasted about three seconds. For Luke, that was a long pause. “Copy,” he said, and hung up.
Then I called Rose.
She picked up immediately. “Max.” Not a question. Just my name, the way she said it, like she’d been waiting.
“Hey.”
“Are you done?”
“I’m at Kuwohi. Luke’s coming to get me. Save you a trip.”
“You finished.” I could hear the smile. “Third time’s the charm.”
“Apparently.”
There was a pause. The kind that has weight to it. The kind where two people who aren’t great at saying important things try to figure out how to say them anyway.
“How was it?” she asked.
I thought about that. The Marine with the bad prosthesis.
Louis, who turned out to be a cartel assassin.
Claire and Boone and the ashes at the dam.
Giving away Maggs. The knife-wielding drug addict and the pistol-wielding husband.
The sobbing breakdown on the trail after Fontana that had ripped something loose inside me I’d been carrying for decades.
And Salome, waiting below, who might be the boys’ aunt or might be something else entirely.
“It was good,” I said. “I talked to people.”
Rose laughed. Actually laughed. “Jackie will be thrilled.”
“Don’t tell her. She’ll want me to do it again.”
“Max.” Softer now. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” They came out easier than the first time.
“Come home,” she said.
Home. I’d never really had one before Rocky Start.
Before Rose. Home had been wherever my ruck was, which was a thing operators told themselves so they didn’t have to think about what they were missing.
I knew better now. Home was a flooded town on a bend in the Little Melvin River with a cottage that needed sheetrock put up the right way, not my way, and a woman who loved me for reasons I still didn’t fully understand but had finally stopped questioning.
“There’s something I need to deal with first,” I said. “A situation. I’ll explain when I see you.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not a yes either. I’ll be careful.”
“You’re never careful.”
“I’m getting better at it.”
Another pause. “I love you, Max.”
“I know,” I said, which Rose would recognize as a Han Solo reference because she’d made me watch those movies, but I also meant it the other way. The real way. “I love you too, Rose.”
I hung up before I said something stupid and ruined it.
I found Salome at the base of the ramp and we walked the half mile to the Kuwohi parking area. There were cars and a restroom. We got there and found a quiet place to wait.
Salome was watching me. “Did you talk to Pike? Confirm my identity?”
“Not directly. I’m waiting on that.”
She nodded.
“Someone is coming to pick us up and take us to him.”
My phone buzzed. I took it out. There was a text message from Luke
PIKE CONFIRMS ID
MARIA’S YOUNGER SISTER SALOME
WAS WITH HER WHEN SHE GOT SCAR
TRUSTS HER 100%
For the first time I allowed myself to completely relax. Salome saw the change.
“Pike confirmed?”
She gave a slight smile. “Good.” She looked toward the parking lot, then back at me. “When this man comes, what do we tell him? About the assassin. About me.”
“The truth. Luke’s one of us.”
“Ah,” she said. “Rocky Start. A town of retired killers. I thought it was a myth. Just whispers.”
“Rocky Start is very real,” I said.
“Good,” she said.
I sat down on the bench next to her and we waited for Luke.
The mountains did their thing around us, being ancient and indifferent and beautiful.
The fog rolled through the valleys. Tourists came and went, cameras out, taking pictures of something they’d forget about by next week.
I used to be like that. Moving through the world without stopping. Getting to the end.
I thought about what Jackie had said. What happens when you finish the goal?
I’d finished the Trail. And now I had something harder ahead of me.
Not the cartel threat, although that might be a problem.
The harder thing was what came after. Going back to Rocky Start.
Picking up Pike’s mantle as the law. Loving Rose in peace and quiet, when there was no crisis to hide behind and no trail to walk and no windshield to kick out.
Being present. Being still.
The Entity that controlled the simulation of my life was probably rubbing its hands together in anticipation. Because it was the one thing I’d never been trained for. And the one thing I couldn’t do alone.
Two hours later, Luke’s electric minivan pulled into the lot. He got out and walked toward us and I watched his eyes move from me to Salome and back. Assessing.
I stood up and shouldered my ruck for the last time on this trail.
“Let’s go,” I said to Salome.
We walked to the van together.
I was going home.
Back to Rose.
THE END
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