She’d assumed he’d be with her, teaching her things until... she really hadn’t thought things through. By now, shouldn’t shehave gotten used to the feeling of having her world upended every day?
“Have you ever spent a winter up here?”
“Tried it. Got snowed in for a whole month.”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“I’m going to leave you with a gun. Do you know how to use one?”
Karl kept a Glock for protection, which she’d seen only once on the day he brought it home. The whole idea of having a weapon in the house freaked her out so much she’d told him she never wanted to see it again.
If he’d only ignored her and brought it on the glamping trip. . .
Fisk stepped over to his cot, grabbed a book from a small pile of yellowed paperbacks, and handed it to her. The title was stamped on the tattered forest-green cover in caution-orange block letters:How to Stay Alive in the Woods.
“Here’s the instruction manual. Read it cover to cover. But if you keep your firewood stocked, boil your drinking water, and don’t eat anything with white, milky sap that tastes bitter or soapy, or smells like almonds, you’ll be off to a good start.”
Why did it feel like another end?
“There are a few basic medications around, but if you get sick or hurt, or get any kind of significant infection?—”
“I’m a definite goner.”
He nodded.
#LauraIngallsWilder
She wasn’t cut out for prison. But she wasn’t cut out for this life, either. “I don’t think I can make it out here alone, Fisk.”
“Well, people do tend to do better in the environments they know best.”
She could figure out how to cross the border into Mexico... but what did she know of the country besides Cancun, Cabo, andhow to order a skinny margarita in Spanish? She couldn’t stow away on a ship... all that water. Without a passport or any money to get a fake one she wasn’t getting near an airport. The only place Cara really knew was Los Angeles. And even then, only the Westside. “I can’t go back to Beverly Hills as the fugitive du jour. I’ll be recognized immediately.”
“That city goes on forever. It can be easier to get lost there than here. Most places, really.”
And what would she do when she got there?
Outside, Maybelline brayed in what sounded like sheer panic. Then Joanie, Ruth, and Lucretia joined in.
Without a word, Fisk rushed out the door.
Cara stood frozen, trying to decide whether to dive under a cot or run outside into the bushes.
“Got him!” Fisk shouted.
Cautiously, Cara peeked out of the yurt. Fisk had planted the blade of a shovel into a patch of grass near the donkey, severing the diamond-shaped head of a thick, tan snake whose body still wriggled enough to weakly rattle its tail.
“Is she . . . are you . . . ?”
“Everything’s OK.”
Cara stepped outside as Fisk dropped the shovel and petted Maybelline until she settled down enough to let him check out her legs, from hooves to haunches.
“You’re OK,” he murmured. “You’re OK.”
Cara’s heart was still racing. “What would you have done if?—?”
“Can’t even think about it,” Fisk said, wiping away what might have been a tear. “Scoop up what’s left of that thing so Maybelline doesn’t start freaking out again.”
