“You’ll need bait,” Reyva said.
“Whole forest full of nice fat bugs and slugs,” Mariana said, waving her hand at the dark-cloaked trees. “I’ll find you some. Whoa, can’t believe I just offered to do that.”
“No splitting up,” Claire cautioned.
“I’ll stay close,” Mariana promised. She heaved herself up with a groan and shuffled to the edge of the trees. She began rooting through the dead leaves with the toe of her shoe.
Claire wound the wire around the head of the nail, squeezing it as tight as she could. The other end she wrapped around anoval rock. She felt Reyva watching her.
“Do you think we’re being hunted?” Reyva asked quietly.
She thought of the wolf or mountain lion she’d seen—or not seen—in the murky mist.Just a hallucination, she thought. She couldn’t start imagining additional dangers when they had more than enough real ones.Focus on the real. One problem at a time.“I think Jack’s father is dead and that Jack only has a knife. One of him, three of us.”
That wasn’t an answer, and both of them knew it.
If Jack were desperate...
His father had clearly gotten in over his head, with whatever scam or deal he’d bought into. It stood to reason that Jack would now be overwhelmed.
Claire glanced into the forest. She could see Mariana moving between the trees, bending over and then straightening. “Both Jack and his father were afraid of someone else,” she said. “Someone worse.” They’d talked about it, a drug dealer or a loan shark or some other kind of criminal, but they hadn’t talked aboutwherethat “someone worse” was. That was a key detail.
“You think that someone else could be here, near the Lake House.”
“I think I have an overactive imagination and sense of paranoia,” Claire said. “And I think we don’t know the full story.” She wondered how much wire she’d need to cast the hook in the water.
Reyva struggled to sit up. “Fishing can wait. We should keep moving.”
Claire wanted to tell her to lie down again. But she noticedthat once again, the birds had gone silent. Prickles ran up and down her neck. Reyva was right—they could wait to fish until they were certain they were safe. She tried not to wonder if they’d ever be able to be certain.
Slowly, quietly, she stood up and held a hand out to Reyva to help her up. When they were both standing, she called softly toward the trees, “Mariana,” as she tucked the makeshift reel into her pocket.
Mariana emerged from between the trees. She was carrying what looked like a pile of slugs in her cupped hand. “Everything okay?”
“I think we need to keep moving.” She didn’t have a good explanation for why, but Mariana didn’t ask, and Reyva already understood.
Keeping to the shore, they continued on, with the dock behind them.
Nineteen
The three of them walked until it was too dark to see, and then they slept like rabbits, in a tangled, exhausted heap, beneath the cloud-choked sky. Claire had nightmares where she kept running and running and couldn’t escape. She woke in a start to discover it was still night. When she drifted off, she woke again, this time to a cry from Reyva—awakened by the pain in her arm.
When dawn came, Claire wasn’t convinced she’d slept at all. She sat up on the shore and looked across the lake. They’d made some progress at least—they were beyond the sight of the dock, she was glad to see, but that left nothing in the view but water and forest and the cloud-choked sky.
It felt a bit as if there was nothing else in the world.
She should have felt alone, but she couldn’t shake the sense that they were being watched. She thought again of her conversation with Reyva: the conviction that there was someone else out there, someone worse. It wasn’t rational, she knew. Whoever Jack and his father feared could be miles away. There was no reason for anyone else to be in these woods. But the certainty wasthere, knotted in the base of Claire’s stomach.We’re not alone, she thought.And we have to keep moving.
She hugged her knees to her chest and tried not to think about how hungry she was, how sore she was, how tired she was. It wasn’t a hunger she’d ever felt before. It felt as if a creature were inside, gnawing at her innards.
Standing, Claire felt dizzy. She waited until the moment passed, and then she toddled to the edge of the water. Bending over, she scooped water in her hands and splashed her face. She wanted to drink it, but reminded herself that she’d have to seek out rainwater to be safe.
“We need food,” Mariana said behind her, softly. “Especially Reyva. I think... She’s in a lot of pain, even though she won’t admit it.”
She’d guessed that.
“Did you finish making the fishing line?”
She pulled it out of her pocket—a stone with a wire wrapped around and a curled nail hook. Joining her at the water’s edge, Mariana held her hand out. “We can take turns trying.”
