Chapter 29
Zach’s bruises had settled deep and made whole patches of him tender.
Opening his eyes in the dark, only the sudden memory of the phone recording downstairs, his knowledge that every minute increased the risk of it being discovered, drew him out of the warm sleeping bag, sore and exhausted.
He kept Mr. Fantastic in his shirt, slipped past Dave, Russ, and his father sleeping, and went downstairs.
He cupped his hands around his face and peered out a window toward Mount Mariah.
No light. No tracks. No sign of anyone—animal, man, woman, or monster.
First came a scraping sound that had to be Zach himself setting down the phone. Then Bram ordering him to drink water. The clunk-clunk of Zach heading upstairs.
“Lemme get you a drink, too, Dave. Something a little stronger than water, maybe?”
“I shouldn’t, but after today…”
“I hear you, man.”
“It’s almost like—like we were chosen,” Dave had the same dreamy, self-important tone Zach remembered him using the first day as he’d fantasized about being an early Western settler. “Chosen to survive.”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Bram said.
The recording was silent for a time, as if both men were contemplating how special they must be, what a grand purpose they must have compared to those who had died.
Impatient to know what his father had said to Pike, Zach skipped ahead, paused, heard Dave say goodnight, then skipped ahead again until he heard Pike’s voice. Zach rewound carefully to the precise point his father and Pike began speaking.
Bram’s voice. “Want a drink?”
“Whatever.”
Shuffling sounds. Shifting sounds.
When he next spoke, Bram’s voice came through louder and clearer. The men must have settled on the couches near the phone.
“First off, I don’t think bad of you, Pike. It’s not like that.”
“You accuse me of something so—so—awful? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say you did anything wrong, bud. Any man who says he can’t understand is lying to himself. Women—they can make you do things you never would otherwise.”
A hesitation before Pike spoke. “She must have gotten hurt coming up here. Alone. Lost. Like Dave said.” Pike transitioned to a hoarse whisper. “They might wake up, one of them is going to come down and hear you saying—”
“They’re not.”
“You can’t know that for sure, you—”
“I swiped some sleeping pills from Jon’s pack. Dissolved them in their drinks. The kids’ll probably be out until noon. Dave, too, the way he was hitting the whiskey on top of it. So we can talk without worrying.”
Zach’s mind immediately sprang to Russ, and he pulled at his hair hard with worry. It’s like I’m already asleep, Russ had said. Were pills even safe if Russ had a concussion? But no, it was all right, Russ had been breathing just fine, snoring as Zach left the bunkroom only a few minutes ago.
And wait, kids, his father had said, which meant Zach, too. But he’d poured his water bottle out the window. A flare of outrage kindled in Zach’s chest at the violation of it, at the way his father had disguised deception as a parent’s nurturing care.
Pike must have appeared shocked by Bram’s admission that he’d drugged Zach, Russ, and Dave, because Bram scoffed, said, “Please. Don’t pretend it’s some big thing.
My wives both used that stuff like it was candy.
I know how it works. And I needed to talk to you, man to man, without having to think about them.
Because—this is some bad business. I mean, Ginny’s stomach alone—”
“I didn’t do that! That was animals, like Dave said. None of it—none of it was me.”
“A sight like that,” Bram marveled, “it sticks, yeah? Makes for a story. It all does. A billionaire’s son and a D-list ski-movie star dead?
A beautiful girl’s body found mutilated in the same slide?
Add that to who your family is, who Dave is…
this group—it’s going to be a story. A big one.
And let’s say into all that mess I whisper the word ‘murder.’ All her faults, Ginny was a knockout.
Young, blond, white, surrounded by money. How do you think people would react?”
A sound of outraged, wordless denial from Pike, but Bram pressed on, slippery and relentless. “There’s evidence, Pike. We’re talking DNA, airtight proof that Ginny died right here. Right here in this room.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? You did it right over there.”
Zach pictured his dad pointing toward the woodstove.
“I wasn’t even here,” Pike insisted, gaining better hold of himself now, strident. “You got here before me. Maybe you did something.”
A rumble of smug pleasure from Bram. “Let’s see, huh?
Let’s see how much I know. Ginny got here when she said she would, a whole day before the rest of us.
You knew she’d be up here early. I’m the one who told you that, and I remember, Pike, because you lit up when you heard it, got so excited you invited yourself on a father-son trip with a father too old come and with no son at all.
You asked me not to tell Ginny you’d be there, remember?
Said you didn’t want things to be awkward.
But that was obviously bullshit. You didn’t want her to know because she wouldn’t have showed.
She told me all about it, how after she ended things she blocked you, avoided you, and that pissed you off.
You think I didn’t see you lurking outside the office whenever you were in town?
Didn’t notice how often you dropped by for no reason?
Hid in your car outside? They call that stalking, buddy.
She’d sneak out the back to avoid you, you know.
The disrespect of it, Pike, no wonder you figured ‘Hey, this is my opportunity to get her to listen. Get her somewhere she can’t run off, somewhere she’ll be forced to hear me out. ’ ”
Bram paused, waiting for what Zach wasn’t sure.
In the silence Zach bit the inside of his cheek and pictured the size of Pike’s arms. His ropy neck.
Zach’s knee-jerk concern for his father sickened him after the revelation of the sleeping pills, and he tried to slough it off, his love or need or whatever it was that kept his body and mind tied to Bram a dried skin needing to be peeled away to clean him.
“After she was killed,” Bram went on, “killed right over…there…you tidied up. Packed up. Hauled her and her stuff outside, way off-trail and out of sight. Then, well, you did a hell of a lot of cardio, bud. No wonder you looked so wrecked when you showed up yesterday. Figured you’d leave the body in the woods, maybe pile some snow on it.
But you had to make it like she was never even here, yeah?
You had to get rid of her car. Had to text me her excuses.
So you grabbed her car keys and her phone, and you headed back to the trailhead.
Drove her car and parked it out of sight or pushed it off the edge of the road.
Plenty of spots to do that. Had to hike all the way back to the trailhead and get your own car and move that, too.
I’m guessing you parked up the last road that split off before the Pantheon parking lot.
Then you stayed there in your car, maybe got some sleep.
Waited past the guide’s meet time so you could come up last, look as innocent as possible.
” Bram snorted. “Right off I knew her texts were weird. But it all makes sense now, because of course when you were using her phone, pretending to be Ginny, you couldn’t resist taking a dig at Shane.
What was it, again? That she wasn’t coming to Pan because she hated him?
Then back up the trail you came. No wonder you were downing drinks. That’s a stressful twenty-four hours.”
Pike’s voice had a shaky thinness. “No. You don’t know. You’re guessing.”
Bram continued as if Pike hadn’t spoken.
“Now why the hell haul her all the way up Mariah? I’m thinking once those boys came in jabbering about how they saw a bunch of circling crows, once Dave got us all fired up about going to see if some alien had been munching on a dead elk, you thought, ‘those birds found her,’ and decided to get her as far from here as you could, yeah?
So you waited until we were all asleep, fetched her, put her phone and keys back in her pocket, dragged her up there on your pack sled, and dumped her over the ridge.
Probably thought the storm was perfect, huh?
Would cover her up? But of all the places you could’ve tossed her, man—miles of woods and mountain in every direction—you chose the spot that slid.
What are the chances? That’s some bad luck.
” His father’s scornful, artificial laugh faded out and there was a beat of quiet before he asked, “You still think I don’t have any evidence?
Because that hangs together pretty well, Pike.
No way I could know all that without evidence. ”
Yes, his father lied so fluidly, so convincingly, that even for Zach it was difficult to believe he didn’t have more evidence than a few texts and a crusted diamond.
Bram must’ve filled in these blanks on his way to and from where Dave and Russ waited on Mariah.
But it did fit, made any other suspect sound impossible, each little puzzle piece assembled into a frame; the only missing piece the question of what had destroyed the elk, had ravaged Ginny’s middle.
“Why are you saying these things? What are you after?”
Bram didn’t hesitate. “You need to invest more in Ajax Prop.”
Now it was Pike’s turn to laugh, bitter and still unsteady. “Boy, are you barking up the wrong tree.”
A sigh from Bram. “Look, this is what it is. You want me quiet, you put more in.”
“Nope. I need to cash out, actually.”
In an uncharacteristic loss for words, Bram stammered, “I—I don’t think—you’re not fully appreciating—you’re not getting your situation here, Pike.”