I glass the valley one more time, slow, every fold and gap of it, and find nothing. Reznik, that undying ghost, has vanished again. Fuck knows where he'll turn up next.
Then I get up and start back down.
She's awake when I get back to camp.
Caroline sitting up with the blanket around her shoulders and the flannel on underneath. Her hair is a disaster, but with Wolf's head in her lap, she doesn't seem like she cares at all. She's smiling and cooing baby-ish nonsense at the dog, which I despise and I know he loves, that spoiled furry bastard.
But I can't fully blame him for leaning into it, because when she turns and directs that same sunny smile at me, I go belly-up almost as fast as he did.
It does something to me, that smile. Every fucking time. A kryptonite I never knew I had.
"You're back," she says. "I woke up and you were gone. Wolf wouldn't tell me where. He's very tight-lipped for a guy whose favorite hobby is licking his own crotch."
I want so badly to banter and laugh with her. But this morning is not a time for jokes. "I hiked up to check the ridge."
Her smile dims a notch. She knows me well enough now to read between the lines. "That doesn't sound like the beginning of good news."
I crouch by the cold fire and start building it back up, because my hands need something to do.
"The camp's empty," I say. "They moved out in the night. Trucks, men, all of it."
"That's good, right?" she says. But she says it the way you say a thing you already know isn't true. "They left? Maybe they gave up?"
"They didn't leave. They moved." I get the kindling going, cup the flame. "An empty camp means I don't know where they are. That's worse."
Her eyebrows come together as she broods. "Worse than eight guys with guns four miles away?"
"I'd rather have a problem I can see versus one I can't."
She pulls the blanket tighter. Wolf nudges her hand and she scratches him without looking, her eyes on me. "So they could be anywhere," she says. "Like, in town. Or guarding the ways out."
"Exactly."
She's no fool. She may be new to this world, but she learns fast. Besides, it's in her blood. Bill always had a knack for this sort of thing.
She lets out a long breath. And then, because she's her, she says, "Well. Cool. Love that for us."
I almost laugh. I'm not sure how she does it—how she takes a thing that should flatten her and turns it sideways and makes it small enough to manage. I've been doing this work my whole life and I've never learned that trick. I always felt like every mission would be my last.
"What do we do?" she asks.
And there it is again.We.The enormity of that silly little word.
"I don't know yet," I tell her honestly. "I need to think."
But "thinking" is the last thing on my mind right now, funnily enough. Instead of sketching out a map of the mountain and evaluating escape routes, or trying to read the storm patterns to see what might be coming for us, I'm looking at Caroline and feeling a familiar hunger build in my stomach.
The flannel hanging off one shoulder.
The mark I left on her throat, just visible above the collar.
The heat in her eyes that matches mine.
"You've got that face on," she says dubiously. "The thinking-yourself-to-death face."
"Yeah, well, there's a lot to think about."
"There always is." She lifts the corner of the blanket. An invitation. "It'll still be there in a few minutes."
