“Damn you,” Marge says, staring straight at me. I can see it then, the coldness of her gaze, the pure predator’s gaze.
“I don’t understand.” Luciana speaks up. “How did you get from synthetic decomp to all this?”
“Why would Nemeth have such a thing in his pack?” I shrug. “The only reason I could come up with was to throw off Daisy. Remember how all this started—with fairly innocuous acts of sabotage. Basically, trying to get Martin to call off the expedition to Devil’s Canyon, then when that failed, trying to force us to turn back. I think the synthetic scent was plan C. If we did start searching that area, Nemeth would use it to distract Daisy, confuse the issue. You said Daisy did catch scent at the boulder field but became disoriented. When I finally discovered the chamber, I couldn’t imagine why Daisy wouldn’t have found it—her specialty is rubble piles.
“Which meant Nemeth had to be part of what was going on. Except he was at the other end of the canyon when Neil got hurt. And you talked about feeling like someone was watching you that day, but Nemeth was right beside you. Plus, all the various incidents, the scope of the terrain covered . . . One person couldn’t do all that.
“Once I accepted Nemeth’s involvement, Marge became his logical partner in crime. Then, when I discovered the first missing hiker was Marge’s sister—no way that’s a coincidence.”
I turn to Luciana. “I’m guessing she’s the one who attacked you. Her job was to eliminate you while Nemeth returned to the cliff face. He must’ve had a second bag stashed away with his hunter’s garb, rifle, other weapons. Hence he left his hiking pack behind. But it didn’t go quite as they planned. Daisy escaped, forcing Marge to chase her—a fruitless enterprise. Then Marge had the second task of booby-trapping base camp with the stolen food. By the time she returned to where she’d left you tied up, you’d managed to escape. Which put their plan in immediate jeopardy.”
I return to Marge, monitoring the expression on her face. I’m guessing about a lot of this, filling in the gaps with what makes the most sense. Given her rigid spine and hostile gaze, I’m doing a pretty good job of it.
“At that point, you hightailed it back to town,” I provide. “You had to reestablish yourself as diner owner Marge while monitoring what Luciana and the sheriff did next. Did you worry about Nemeth?” I ask her. “Taking on seven people all by himself? Or like him, did you assume we were easy prey? Martin got him in the end. I don’t know how Nemeth managed to survive the fall or crawl out of the ravine. I’m assuming you must’ve helped him? Maybe he had one of those fancy coats with built-in GPS. You used it to locate him, then assist him to the trail, where you could call for the other searchers while pretending to have just found him. I’m guessing you hid his crazy face coverings and other gear. It won’t matter. The police have his clothes, which will be incriminating enough. His reinforced military pants will bear the marks from my knife. His shirt will have a bullet hole from Miggy’s gun. Between what’s in your log cabin and his own wardrobe, there’s more than enough evidence.”
“Nemeth is the one always in the woods. I have a diner to run,” Marge clips out. “Like you said, we’re a couple. Of course he has access to my parents’ hunting cabin. What he does while he’s there and I’m at work, how am I supposed to know of such things?”
“Throwing him under the bus, Marge? You love him, but not enough to save his ass? Or is this just what you two do—survival of the fittest?”
A sound. I look to the side and Nemeth’s eyes are open. Those piercing blue eyes that reminded me of glaciers and open sky. Not from the wilderness but of the wilderness. More so than anyone knew.
“How could you do it?” I can’t help myself. “Killing strangers is awful enough. But you knew Martin. You spent years with him, and still you lined up the rifle sights and pulled the trigger. Planning the ambush of Luciana—would you have killed Daisy, too, if she hadn’t run off?”
Luciana flinches, reaches for Daisy reflexively.
“Bob. You murdered one of the nicest guys on the planet. Who’d worked alongside you to keep our party safe. Then Neil, Scott, Miguel, myself. You’re no wild predator. You’re a snake.”
Nemeth blinks his eyes. I see no remorse. I see no emotion at all. He did what he did. What happened, happened.
It breaks something inside me. That he could do so much damage and feel nothing at all.