After all, he clearly hadn’t used his phone to call for help, or he wouldn’t still be here. She wondered if he was still huntingthem, or if he’d stayed because he was hiding out from whomever his dad had crossed.
Or maybe he’s just hiding from the consequences of his dad’s actions: murder.
She’d never hidden from anything as serious as that, but she understood the urge to hide when you didn’t want to face the judgment of the world. Certainly she’d done it often enough—hiding what she thought, what she felt, and who she was—and she knew Mariana understood too. Mariana hadn’t wanted to talk about why her family had had to move from California.
Of course Claire wasn’t about to pop out from behind the rock and have a heart-to-heart with him. He had held a knife to her throat, after all. Not a sensation she was likely to forget any time soon. But she hoped that Mariana didn’t hit him over the headtoohard.
Ideal would be no violence at all. If they waited long enough, he’d eventually fall asleep, and they’d steal the phone. Done and done. After that, all they’d have to do would be to keep themselves in one piece until rescue arrived.
They watched him squat by the shore and skin the rabbit—Mariana looked away—with the same knife he’d held at Claire’s throat. When he finished, he tossed the intestines into a pile and turned his attention to the fire.
He drew a metal stick out of his pack—a fire starter, Claire recognized. And he’d said he didn’t have anything useful with him.Liar.Maybe they could steal that too. Just take his entire bag. She wished she’d thought to grab it the first time they’d run from him.
He lit a fire quickly and fed it, then speared the rabbit on a stick and began to cook it. The scent of smoke and cooking meat drifted toward them, and Claire heard her stomach rumble. She pressed her hands against her stomach and tried to will it to stay quiet.
“We go now, and we get the phoneandthe food,” Mariana whispered.
“He hears you coming, and it’s all over,” Reyva whispered back.
They stayed put, but it was hard as they watched him tear the meat off and eat it. She’d never thought she’dwantto eat rabbit, but at this point, cuteness would be no protection.
He washed his hands in the lake, his back to them, and Mariana glanced at Claire as if to say,I can take him.
Claire shook her head.
It was too far from their hiding spot in the woods to the shore. They wouldn’t get a second chance at catching him by surprise. Right now, he had no idea they were anywhere nearby. They couldn’t waste the chance with impatience. They needed to stay hidden so that—
Wielding a stick the size of a baseball bat, the wild man burst out of the woods only a few yards away from them. He leapt over the rocks and was swinging before Jack had time to react.
The wild man clobbered him in the side of the head.
Jack collapsed like a leaf falling from a tree.
Claire felt frozen, staring in shock. Muttering to himself, the wild man examined Jack. He placed his grimy hands on Jack’s neck, as if feeling for a pulse, then nodded, seemingly satisfied.
Not dead, Claire thought. She hoped.
He hauled the boy up and over his shoulder. As he passed the fire, he extracted the carcass of the rabbit with one hand, holding Jack steady with his other. All three of them stared from their hiding place as he began trudging up the trail, casually chewing on rabbit bones.
“What. The. Ever-loving. Hell,” Reyva said.
“Did he kill him?” Mariana asked. “He’s not dead, is he?”
“He still has his pack,” Claire noted. He hadn’t shed it while preparing or eating the rabbit. Probably kept it close to him at all times. And most likely the phone was still in there. Hopefully undamaged after his fall.
“Not an answer to my question,” Mariana said. “But... yeah, you’re right.” They could all see the bag, with the precious phone, on Jack’s back. “So, we follow them?”
Claire considered the dangers, their options, and the odds of failure. “Yeah, we follow.”
Twenty-One
Creeping up the trail, Claire, Mariana, and Reyva followed the wild man. He grunted as he walked, and Jack bounced on his back with each stride.
She had so many questions chasing through her head. Loudest:Why?
Second loudest:Where is he taking Jack?
And again:Why?
