36. Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
Gina
I don’t understand what’s happening, but the important thing is that Benji walked off into the woods with two men who might be dangerous and who might want the engagement ring Benji believes I lost. The rest is noise.
“I’m going to look for him,” I announce when the group devolves into arguing over what to do next.
Milo grabs me by the back of my T-shirt. “You can’t just run off into the woods after him. We don’t know who these people are.” Apparently, they’d hoped to find out with a little breaking and entering, but had no luck.
“The hell I can’t,” I protest, twisting and trying to wrench free. “Let go.”
“We need a plan.”
“The plan is to find my husband,” I snap. When Milo doesn’t let go, I stomp on his foot. He’s wearing his steel-capped work boots, so the stomp does nothing.
“Wade said that Benji waved back at him and looked relaxed. He was leading them.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not in danger.” They could be holding him at gunpoint. He could be hurt or worse. A jolt of terror gives me the strength to rip free of Milo’s grasp.
“Benji’s taking them somewhere,” Milo insists. “Where?”
“I don’t know.” Happy Lake is eighty acres, but it’s mostly wilderness outside that. Lakes and swamps and streams will have him walking in circles. “You’ve been deeper in the woods with him than I have.”
“Maybe he wanted to get them away from you,” Joelle says. “Keep you safe.”
“Maybe he hopes to lose them somewhere in the woods,” Pamela suggests.
I can’t bring myself to point out all the flaws in that plan.
In leading them away from me—which could only ever be temporary—Benji might have walked to his death.
My heart is pounding, demanding I turn and run in the direction Wade saw them going.
It’s taking every ounce of my disintegrating self-control to stand here.
Milo shuts his eyes for a moment and sighs. “I know where he is.”
“Where?” I demand.
“Don’t be mad.”
Oh, now I am mad. “Milo—”
He winces. “I told him if he ever hurt you, no one would find his body in the bog off the Jack Pine Trail.”
“The bog?” Goddammit. “And he knows how to get there?”
Milo shrugs. “We were clearing undergrowth from a section of that trail, and I said it was five miles further along, so yeah.”
If Benji went into that bog, getting him out again would be a pain in the ass, never mind the other two, who might be dangerous. I need to go now.
“Organize a search of any other places you can think of,” I say to Milo. “I’m going. I’ll call you when I find him.”
“You can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous.”
“They want the ring, and I can give it to them, and we’ll all walk out. No one has broken any laws yet. It’s a misunderstanding. That’s all.”
“Gina—”
He reaches for me, and I evade, walking backward away from him. “No one murders someone in cold blood over a ring, but they might murder him for leading them into a bog. I’m going. Stay and organize a search if you want to help.”
“Gina!” he calls after me as I turn and break into a run.
The four-wheeler is parked by the woodshed. I have just enough presence of mind to check that I have a full gas tank before I fire it up.
Once I’m away from the cabins, I go full throttle.
Trees fly by. Meadows with tall grasses and flowering wild raspberry bushes.
A pair of deer race across the trail far ahead of me.
I concentrate on the trail. It’s in good shape, but there are still depressions and soft patches, tight turns that I need to pay attention to, and possibly people out enjoying the morning.
I pass no one. The trail is quieter than the lodge was.
It takes a lifetime and no time at all to reach the place where the edge of the bog is close to the trail. I stop the four-wheeler and strain to listen over the thundering of my heart.
I can’t hear much at first, but there it is. Distant voices. Raised. Angry.
There’s no way I’m going to risk getting the four-wheeler stuck, so I climb down and step off the path, moving quickly.
Bogs are deceptive. The ground beneath my feet near the trail is dry.
Firm. I make good time down the gentle slope.
The ground becomes softer where it levels out.
Water collects in a few shallow puddles here and there.
I keep going, easily avoiding the wet places.
The trees thin out, giving way to the sedges and grasses that look, from here, like they fill a meadow or border a pond when they actually fill a shallow basin of spongy muck and dark water.
The voices are closer. I can hear what they’re arguing about now.
Benji is insisting it’s a little farther, just across the meadow—it’s not a meadow, and he’s almost far enough into the bog to discover that crossing it the way they’re heading is a bad idea—and the two men are accusing him of taking them on a wild goose chase.
I send a quick text to Milo, just in case none of us come out.
Found them in bog. Going in.
There’s more water now, and I have to jump across it from time to time. The ground is spongy. Grasses scratch at my bare legs. I can’t go much faster, but reaching them doesn’t take long.
“I’ll go ahead and get it,” Benji says, sounding eager. “You wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Promise.”
“Go get it,” one of the men says.
“No,” the other says. “We all go, or no one goes.”
I work my way around a scraggly stand of young tamaracks, and there they are, thirty or forty feet from me.
Benji is a further ten feet from them, his hands up while they argue. The one who wants Benji to go is waving his arms around, no gun in sight, but the other man keeps one hand low, my view of it obstructed by the tall sedges. Benji’s eyes are tracking that hand.
A gun. It has to be.
“Hey!” It’s out of my mouth before I question the wisdom of startling them. “Leave my husband alone!”
The two men whip my way, and sure enough, the hand I couldn’t see before is clasped around a gun, and now that gun is pointed at me.
“Gina!” Benji shouts, edging his way around whatever semi-dry hummock of land he’s standing on.
The gun shifts back to him. He freezes.
“I have the ring,” I say, yanking the vegan leather cord over my head and letting it dangle over the deeply dark brown water next to me. “You shoot him, I throw it. Good luck finding it.”
“You found it?” Benji asks in surprise.
“I never lost the rings. Actually, that’s not true.
Trouble stole them, but I found them.” My hands shake, but I turn the back of my left one his way.
“I’m wearing your wedding band.” Now that I’m talking I can’t seem to stop, nervous energy propelling every word forward as I try not to look at the gun as it swings my way again.
“I told you I lost them because, at first, I was scared you’d want them back, and I wanted something to hold onto from that night since I couldn’t remember.
I didn’t know how to tell you I’d lied, and when Diana moved the wedding up—I forgot.
And I’m sorry I left last night. I needed my mom.
I’ve never really needed her, so that’s new. But I love you, and—”
“Can we do this later?” the man without the gun asks, slapping at a mosquito. “Give us the ring so we can get out of this hellhole, and you can get back to this lovey-dove shit.”
The gun is still pointed at me. “If you shoot me, I’ll drop it,” I say quickly.
The man with the gun lowers it. “We don’t want to shoot anyone.”
“Good,” I say, relaxing now that the gun is no longer pointed at me. “The water isn’t deep, but it’s murky and filled with leeches.”
“Leeches?” the unarmed one asks, his face blanching.
“Oh, yeah.” I nod vigorously. “If you’ve been in the water for any length of time, you might have a few on your legs.” I latch onto his terror. It might be what gets us out of here. “They like to get under socks. You can’t feel them when they bite, so you don’t even know they’re there.”
“You’re kidding,” the man with the gun says with a shudder.
I shake my head. “Nope. We used to come out here to collect them for bait. Some of them get pretty big.” Big is relative, but I’m guessing they don’t know much about leeches.
The guy without the gun tries to leap to the next bit of dry ground, but I can hear the splash from here. He screams obscenities as he jumps out of the water.
“They’re attracted to splashing and movement,” I say. I don’t know if that’s true or just an old wives’ tale, but it will take ages to get them out of here if one of them twists an ankle. “Come toward me, slow and careful.”
“You first,” the one with the gun says to Benji.
Benji doesn’t wait for the other guy to object but picks his way back to them and carries on toward me, jumping from hummock to hummock, grabbing handfuls of sedge when the spongy ground throws his balance.
He’s graceful and quick, and the two men follow his path.
They are neither graceful nor quick, but Benji pauses now and again so they can catch up. Which is so— Benji of him.
When Benji reaches me, he hugs me so tight I’m surprised my ribs don’t crack. “I was trying to keep you safe,” he whispers.
“Now it’s my turn,” I whisper back.
He smiles at me, but he looks worried.
“We’ve got this,” I say softly as the two men reach us.
I take the lead, but the going is easier, the ground firmer. Soon, we’re climbing the gentle slope to the track and my four-wheeler.
Both men fall heavily to their butts, pulling off wet shoes and socks and rolling up damp trousers. Sure enough, small, dark, tapered shapes dot their lower legs.
“Get them off!” the one with the gun snaps. The other guy retches a little.
I rest my hands on my hips and stare down at the men. “Give me any guns you have, and I will.”