Chapter 31
Bram and Pike rattled through numbers on the recording. Zach half listened, spreading his fingers around his skull to try to keep himself whole as his mind cleaved apart, bifurcating into two entirely different understandings of reality.
One side of himself whispered that he knew nothing about stocks, insurance, trusts, beneficiaries. That the vagueness of that grown-up language, its dullness, its benignity, only meant that his father was taking care of important things; taking care of him.
The other side throbbed with a single word that grew so loud it drowned out everything else: “Run.”
Sounds still slipped from the phone, but Zach heard only the men’s panting hunger; a ravening for a satisfaction just there, just beyond their line of sight.
He hit stop on the recording. The phone read 5:12 a.m. It would be light within an hour and a half.
Descending the snowed-over trail in the dark would be dangerous.
Not just because of the possibility of slides, but the likelihood of getting lost. His mother’s lessons had included stories of stranded groups, and invariably the physically strongest, the ones too impatient to wait for the snow to stop, to stay put for rescue, were the people who ended up wandering the woods, injured or even killed because they underestimated the indifference of a winter wilderness.
He felt the menacing darkness of the wilds roll through him.
Zach stood, his decision made for reasons that were still too slippery to cobble together, reasons distilled into his mother’s voice, frantic in a way it had never been when she’d said the words in real life:
Sometimes it’s smart to be afraid.
He would run. He would take Russ’s phone downhill. He would send the police the recording the moment he got reception and let the grown-ups figure it all out.
And after that, he’d keep going. Half the insurance his dad had talked about was his sister’s, and he felt a desperate urgency to reach her, to physically cup his body around Bonnie’s like a shield.
As he packed water, food, fire starters, Zach tried to ignore the hum of his heart. Had to work to breathe through the weight of the ceiling pressing down heavy from above, laden with the threat of his father, of Pike.
A 50 percent charge on his beacon. His radio at 72 percent. He’d be traveling alone, no one to communicate with, but if he got hurt? It might be his only lifeline. His avalanche probe leaned against the entry wall, still modified to substitute for his lost ski pole.
He placed a matchbook among the growing pile of items, nervous that the matches from his mother’s emergency kit might be insufficient if he was forced to stay outdoors for any extended period.
After a moment’s thought he took Mr. Fantastic out of his shirt and set him atop the pile to be packed, too.
As he worked, Zach deliberately avoided the area where he’d found the earring.
He couldn’t bear the idea of stepping where Ginny had taken her last breath.
Didn’t want to pass through the air where some residue of her, some gossamer bit of soul or shard of her final pain might adhere to him like a fresh-spun spiderweb on a morning trail.
He hadn’t been back in his mother’s bathroom, either, since the day she died.
What was the list of things required for outdoor survival?
Fire, water, shelter, food.
A whisper stroked prickly through his brain. His plans didn’t fully hold together. Nothing he’d overheard quite interlocked in a way that let him truly understand. Maybe he was being rash, foolish, shortsighted.
Or maybe Pike was waiting in the shadows, ready to strangle him.
Zach ascended the stairs and went down the hall one cautious foot at a time.
Pushed the mercifully quiet bunkroom door open.
The wheeze of the sleepers was punctuated now and then with snores.
Zach acclimated to the blackness until he could discern the outlines of things; until the signs of human life within—the exhalations, the occasional twitch of a sleeping lump—took on a reassuring regularity.
His backpack sat at the foot of his bunk. He lifted it two-handed and crept back into the hall, resting it near the top of the stairs. Then he tiptoed back into the room and began to pull the sleeping bag he’d appropriated from Steve off the plastic mattress.
The slither of it cut through the quiet to force Zach’s hands still.
He waited, listening, blinking at the sleeping figures around him.
He resumed drawing it toward him more slowly to mute its sound, the painstaking gradualness of it a torture that forced him to suppress a jittery impulse to whisk the bag off the bed in a single motion.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
At last he held the sleeping bag in his arms. He waited for any hitch of breath, any atmospheric change or eddy in the cold black that might indicate his father had been disturbed. Should he try to wake Dave, play him the recording?
The pills loomed large in Zach’s head. He’d be far more likely to wake Bram than rouse a drugged Dave, a possibility that forced Zach to back tentatively out of the room, the sleeping bag swishing.
In the hall, Zach shouldered his pack and grabbed the sleeping bag storage sack flopped on Steve’s bunk. After a moment’s thought, he put the guide’s backpack on his other shoulder and descended the stairs, forcing himself not to run, not to make any noise.
Downstairs, he stuffed Steve’s sleeping bag into its sack, then quietly emptied his and Steve’s backpacks onto the kitchen counter, shoving unnecessary items—a bulky sweater, a book—aside.
He was about to fill two empty water bottles next to the sink when he recalled the sleeping pills Bram had used to dose the others.
Could there be residue, some little bit of the drug that might make him sleepy?
Zach scrubbed the bottles just in case, then rinsed, filled, and packed them.
He decided to take Steve’s small first-aid kit, emergency blanket, clean long underwear, and a pair of his socks.
The clothing was too big, but given that Zach’s extra base layer now sat soaked in the bottom of his wet sleeping bag, at least it was a backup.
Rooting through the side pockets of Steve’s pack, Zach discovered a palm-size orange device with a small screen. The screen lit up green, and he toggled through the options.
It was a handheld GPS. His mother’s had been a newer model, but similar. Like hers this one had topographic maps preloaded. Like her Steve had uploaded the trails to, from, and around the hut. But unlike with his mother’s GPS, there was no way to use this device to call for aid.
Even so, the invisible bands around Zach’s chest loosened.
He’d be able to find the route down to the parking lot, down the mountain, even if he lost sight of the blue plastic trail markers nailed into trees.
Why hadn’t Steve taken it along yesterday?
It didn’t matter. He squeezed the device in his hand like a talisman, feeling its protection from disorientation, from directionless wandering.
It was 5:38 a.m. Out the hut’s windows, the edge of the world was glowing blue through the falling snow. The sun would be up in about an hour.
The thought of coming light made his hands go shaky and stupid, a countdown to something unidentifiable but horrific.
Zach, frustrated by his own nervous inefficiency, by the way he couldn’t move as fast or coordinated as his mind told him was necessary, packed and dressed, grateful that though his neck gaiter, mittens, coat, and snow pants all reeked of sweat, saliva, or both, they’d dried overnight.
He put his beacon around his waist and set it to transmit.
The flip of that switch both silly and responsible, given he was preparing for disaster knowing there’d be no one to receive any signal of distress.
Once bundled, Zach immediately felt a rising creep of perspiration on his neck. He was about to plunge outside when he paused.
The earring. What should he do about the earring?
He went to the bookshelf. The diamond was still behind the books, its trailings looking like the dried-out remains of a tiny jellyfish.
He couldn’t leave it where it was. His father might destroy it, or Pike might find it. Maybe he should take it with him?
But the crust on the thing, the hairs? What if he somehow destroyed DNA by having it in his pocket, or it got wet, or he dropped it? He didn’t know how it all worked, but the risk of ruin was too high. He’d hide it in the hut, dry, safe, and waiting, somewhere his father and Pike would never look.
Zach scanned the room. On a shelf in the kitchen sat a line of extra paper towel rolls, still in plastic. There was a nearly full roll already open by the sink.
If he hid it inside the packaging of the last in the row, someone would be guaranteed to find it. Not right away, but soon. Because there was no way that in the next day, even two days, their group would use enough paper towels they’d open multiple rolls.
And cleaning supplies struck Zach as a special kind of safe haven. He’d never seen Bram tidy anything but his own car. Pike, Dave, even Russ, they had certainly acted the whole trip like that kind of thing was below them, letting Steve bustle around with no offers to help.
Zach punctured the plastic covering the hollow cardboard tube with his thumb.
He tore a blank page out of a paperback, fished a pen from a drawer, and scrawled, “This belongs to Ginny George, murdered in this hut by Pike Whitlock. Her body is on Mt. Mariah. It is DNA EVIDENCE. My dad Bram Fisher is lying about his business and there is something about insurance please tell the police.” Zach printed his name and the date, then after a moment below his name wrote, “I love you, Bonnie.” He slid the paper under the earring and its mess so as to avoid disturbing whatever clues it held, folded the paper around it, then slotted the tiny, makeshift package through the hole in the plastic.
Before putting the roll back, he smoothed the torn packaging so that the note wouldn’t fall out.
Ginny must have been so scared. What would it be like, to look into the face of death and see someone who claimed to love you?
Zach wiped away tears with a sleeve. Forced away thoughts of Ginny’s last moments.
He had to go. Had to go down the mountain toward town, toward a cell-phone signal. Toward Bonnie.
A bead of sweat dripped down Zach’s spine. He put on his backpack and rushed outside, only remembering the creature that might be waiting there as the door clicked shut behind him.