“Sent you here?”
He nodded.
“If I thought it was the safest place.”
“You would have sent me alone. Really?”
She didn’t answer.
“It was my mom’s idea,” he said. “And she left when I was three. I see her on holidays and in the summer. That’s all. And still my dad let her come up with this.”
“Stop bitching,” Hannah said.
“What?”
“You’re here. You’re not happy about how you got here, and neither am I, but that’s not going to change reality. Here’s your reality: I’m not going to let you sit on your ass on a mountain and wait to die. Now get up.”
The next flash of lightning showed her face, and he saw how intense she looked. Angry, almost.
“You don’t get to quit,” she said. “I will by God get you out of these mountains safely, but you don’t get to quit. You’ll go home and tell them what you think and I hope they have the faintest idea, the faintest sense, of what you endured. But right now? Stand up.”
He got to his feet slowly.
“Tell me the mistake you’re making,” she said. “You’re full of observations when it comes to my mistakes. Now pay attention to yourself. What mistake did you just make?”
“Quitting.”
“You weren’t actually going to quit on me. I know better than that, even if you don’t. Tell me the real mistake.”
Jace had no idea what she was talking about.
“You’re going to run out of water,” she said. “And once we get close to the fire, it’s going to be awfully hot, and you are going to wish you hadn’t wasted all of your water up here. So refill when we get to the creek, and then ration it. Because despite what you might think, we are going to get down to that fire.”
32
A light became visible in the tower when they were still a mile from it, and Ethan saw the glow and stopped walking, only to be nudged again by the pistol.
“Guess she’s home,” Jack said. “That’s marvelous, don’t you think? Would hate to find that we’d missed our chance.”
Ethan looked at the light and thought of the woman who waited with it and tried to imagine a scenario in which he could protect her.
Came up empty.
The path was clear to them now, they knew the way even without him, and so he was expendable. They were keeping him on hand in the event that they needed him later, but that need was not so great as to save his life if he did something dangerous. And all of the options left to him were dangerous. Fight or flight, that was what he had, primal as it got, and he’d passed on better opportunities to make both choices before. He’d waited to reach Republic, only to be reminded of that thing that every survivor had to always consider-disaster was never a destination, but always a detour.
“The best thing to do is to let me talk with her,” he said. “I’m the one who understands that boy, and she would know about me by now.”
“Interesting option, don’t you think, Patrick?”
“Fascinating. But I have to say that I don’t care for it.”
“You feel the need to be involved in the discussion, is that it?”
“Well, I’ve come all this way.”
“True. Would be a shame to endure so much and watch from the shadows while Ethan reaps the rewards.”
“Indeed.”
“I suppose we’ll put it to a vote then. All in favor of staying together?”
Both men said, “Aye.”
“All opposed?”
Ethan didn’t speak. Just kept walking toward that light.
“Two in favor and one abstains. Not unanimous, perhaps, but as close as you’ll get.”
When they finally broke out of the woods and headed across the final stretch leading uphill to the lookout tower, Ethan could only hope that she was watching. If the light was on, she was likely awake. If she’d lied about the boy, she knew there was a threat, and maybe…maybe Connor was up there. It was possible she was hiding him now, trying to figure out what to do. Or waiting on help. Something. She might not be alone.
Jack was just behind Ethan, and Patrick floated some fifteen steps back and to the right. They reached the base of the stairs and all of them looked up, studying the cab. No shadows moved inside of it. They went up, turned at the first landing, up again, turn, up again, turn.
Forgive me, Ethan was thinking, a silent whisper to the woman above them. I had planned it to go another way.
He came to the top and there the wind blew hard enough that he wanted to grab the handrail. For the first time, he could see clearly through the windows. There was a table, a stove, an empty cot. Nobody moved inside.
“Open the door and then step out of the way,” Jack said. The musical good-natured tone was gone from his voice. All bloody business now.
Ethan opened the door. Stepped aside and then glanced behind him, expecting to see that Jack had drawn the pistol and was in a shooter’s stance. Instead, Jack stood casually, the black hat cocked low on his head, one hand on the guardrail. It was Patrick, down on the landing below them, who had the rifle to his shoulder.
“Go on in and say hello,” Jack said.
Ethan turned and walked through the door and called out hello, and though he had expected the answering silence, he did not expect to see what he did.
The lookout’s radio was demolished.
“Something went wrong here,” he said, and he was genuinely puzzled. He’d anticipated some possibilities-Connor’s presence, for example-but not this. He reached out and picked up a broken plastic fragment and then a severed cord. Why would she have destroyed her own radio? Her only chance to call for help?
“Are you sure you’re the only ones looking for the boy?” he said. “Besides the right people, that is?”
Besides Luke Bowden, his blood still hardening in the mountain breeze. Besides Ethan.
“Well, this is interesting,” Jack said. “She’s gone, brother. And she destroyed her radio before she left. Apparently she didn’t want us to be able to report her poor job performance.”
Ethan moved away from the radio, studying the room. Saw the Osborne fire-finder and saw the empty glass beneath it. The map was gone.
“They’re on the move,” he said. “She didn’t destroy the radio. He did.”
He understood it now. The broken radio, the lie to the searchers. Connor did not trust help. Connor did not trust anyone.
“How are you so sure?” Jack said.
“Her life revolves around that radio. It’s her job and her lifeline. To him, though? It would have been the scariest thing in the room. He found his way here because it was easy to navigate to. If she turned on the lights, like she did earlier? You can see it for a long ways. So he saw it, and he came here, and once he was here, she went to call it in. That would have been the natural reaction.” He pointed at the remains of the radio. “And there we have the unnatural reaction. That would be Connor. He wouldn’t want his location broadcasted.”
“Why lie to the searchers, though?” This was from Patrick.
“I’m not certain about that.” Ethan moved to the window, stared out at the dark expanse of mountains. There were faint red ribbons down below, where the fires coiled and burned. “But she believed him. He told her what he was running from, and she believed him.”
“The lights went on less than an hour ago,” Jack said. “They’ve not gone far.”
Ethan could see his own face reflected in the glass, seemingly part of the maze of dark mountains and ribbons of fire. He watched his mouth begin to smile as if it were something beyond his control.
“I can find them,” he said.
“I’d hope so. You’re rather worthless to us otherwise.”
“I can find them,” he repeated, but again he was whispering in his head to this anonymous woman from the lookout, not an apology this time. Thank you. I will not fail you now.