She took the cup in both hands, sat beside him, leaned against him. Another raindrop fell, pinged on the coffeepot, sizzled and turned to steam.
“Great timing,” Leni said. “It’s going to dump on us any second.”
“There’s a cave up at Glacier Ridge.”
She looked up at him. “I can’t stay away.”
“But your mom said—”
“I’m scared,” she said in a small voice.
He heard the spike of uncertainty in her voice, recognized that she was asking him something, not simply telling him that she was afraid.
He understood.
She didn’t know what the right answer was and she was afraid to be wrong.
“You think I should go back for her?” she asked.
“I think you stand by the people you love.”
He saw her relief. And her love.
“I might not be able to go to college. You know that, right? I mean, if we have to run, we’ll have to go somewhere he won’t look.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Wherever you go.”
She drew in a breath, looked shaky enough that he thought she might collapse. “You know what I love most about you, Matthew?”
“What?”
She knelt in the wet grass in front of him, took his face in her cold hands, and kissed him. She tasted of coffee. “Everything.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say. Matthew knew Leni was distracted, that she couldn’t think about anything but her mom and that her eyes kept filling with tears as she brushed her teeth and rolled up her sleeping bag. He also knew how relieved she was to be going back.
He would save her.
He would. He’d find a way. He’d go to the police or the press or his dad. Hell, maybe he’d go to Ernt himself. Bullies were always cowards who could be made to back down.
It would work.
They’d separate Ernt from Leni and Cora and let them start a new life. Leni could go to college with Matthew. Maybe it wouldn’t be in Anchorage. Maybe it wouldn’t even be in Alaska, but who cared? All he wanted was to be with her.
Somewhere in the world they would find a fresh start.
They ate breakfast, packed up camp, and made it about fifty feet back down the trail before the storm hit for real. They were in a place so narrow they had to walk single file.
“Stay close,” Matthew shouted above the driving rain and screeching wind. His jacket made a sound like cards being shuffled. Rain plastered his hair to his face, blinded him. He reached back, took Leni’s hand. It slipped free.
Rain ran in rivulets over the trail, turned the rocks slippery. To their left, fireweed quivered and lay flattened, broken by wind and rain.
The trail darkened; mist rolled in, obscured everything. Matthew blinked, tried to see.
Rain hammered his nylon hood. His face was wet, rain running down his cheeks, burrowing beneath his collar, beading his eyelashes.
He heard something.
A scream.
He spun around. Leni wasn’t behind him. He started back, shouting her name. A tree limb smacked him in the face. Hard. Then he saw her. She was about twenty feet away, off the trail, too far to the right. He saw her make a mistake. She slipped, started to fall.
She screamed, fought for balance, tried to right herself, reaching for something—anything.
There was nothing.
“Le—ni!” he yelled.
She fell.
*
PAIN.
Leni woke in a stinking darkness, sprawled in the mud, unable to move without pain. She heard the drip-drip-drip of water. Rain falling on rock. The air smelled fetid, of dead things and decay.
Something in her chest was broken, a rib, maybe; she was pretty sure. And maybe her left arm. It was either broken or her shoulder was dislocated.
She was on her backpack, splayed above it. Maybe it had saved her life.
Ironic.
She peeled the bug-out bag’s straps away from her shoulders, ignoring the seizing, scalding pain that came with the smallest movement. It took forever to free herself; when she did it, she lay there, arms and legs sprawled out, panting, sick to her stomach.
Move, Leni.
She gritted her teeth and rolled sideways, plopped into a deep and slimy mud.
Breathing hard, hurting, trying not to cry, she lifted her head, looked around.
Darkness.
It smelled bad down here, of rot and mold. The ground was deep mud and the walls were slick wet rock. How long had she been unconscious?
She crawled slowly forward, holding her broken arm close to her body. She made her slow, agonizing way to a slice of light that illuminated a slab of stone carved by time and water into a saucer shape.