Once off the plateau and through the grass, they found a stand of pines perhaps forty feet deep. Here was where an inexperienced tracker would lose himself almost immediately, and Ethan stopped once more and panned his flashlight across the area. Again he watched Patrick Blackwell from his peripheral vision, wanting to see what he did. This time, he did the right thing-ignored the ground entirely and looked at the trees.
This was critical because it was the first thing their quarry would have done. Reaching a change in terrain, with no trail to guide them, lost people paused to assess the obstacles, and then, nine times out of ten, they chose the path of least resistance. Or anyway, the path that appeared to offer the least resistance.
One of the pines had fallen, probably taken down by a lightning strike in a storm similar to the one they were walking into, and it lay horizontal. Nobody climbed over a tree unless he had to, so Ethan looked to the tree’s left and right and found the terrain unchanged and the slope no steeper on one side than the other. That determined, he drifted to the right. Most of the world’s population was right-handed, and he knew that Connor was too. Turning in the direction of your dominant hand wasn’t a lost person’s first instinct-taking the easiest path was-but it was common. Combine that with the fact that when you drove a car in America, left turns were far more likely to force you to cross traffic and thus far more dangerous, and Ethan believed that most people would default to the right if given no clear reason to turn to the left.
Off to the right of the fallen pine, then, and there he found the ground covered in lichen and saw the first prints. He moved to the side, careful not to disturb them, knelt, and studied them with his flashlight.
Two hikers, two sets of impressions. He put his own foot beside each one even though he didn’t need to-he did it because it was a good time waste, and his job was to waste time and last until sunrise-and demonstrated to the Blackwell brothers that each track was substantially smaller than his own.
“Woman and boy,” Jack Blackwell said in a musical, nearly cheerful tone. “That’s the idea, I believe.”
“I believe it is,” his brother said.
They moved on a few feet; the lichen faded to dirt as it led up to the rocks and now the imprints became distinct, and Ethan knelt again, and for the first time since they’d left the tower, he felt true surprise.
These were not Connor Reynolds’s prints.
The size was about right, and the depth of the impression indicated someone of about the right weight, but neither imprint matched Connor’s boots. Ethan had paid careful attention to boots. They were required gear, but despite that, kids often arrived in sneakers or basketball shoes, and he had to outfit them with boots, because broken ankles were easily acquired on a mountainside. This year, every boy had worn boots, and Connor’s had not been a wise choice. They weren’t for hiking; they were cheap imitation military-style boots, black and shining and sure to cause problems, because they weren’t broken in. Ethan had packed extra moleskin with Connor Reynolds in mind, in fact, expecting the boy to get blisters fast.
Neither of the prints he was looking at matched Connor’s. One appeared to be from a hiking boot tread, and the other was more unique. A fine boot, but heavier.
“Perhaps if we give him enough time, he will detect their foot odor,” Jack said. “A veritable bloodhound, our Ethan.”
“Sadly, we don’t have that sort of time,” Patrick answered. “We should be moving along, don’t you think?”
“I do. Any chance that we are on the wrong track?”
“None. They’re proper size, but more important, they’re very fresh prints. I rather doubt two people of similar size decided to leave the lookout tower in the night for a mountain hike.”
“Agreed. And yet our tracking expert seems perplexed.”
“I have a theory on that. I’m beginning to question his pace.”
“You think that he’d waste our time? Ethan?”
“I’m merely saying I’m curious.”
“We certainly couldn’t have that. Time is valuable to us. More so than to Ethan.”
He let them talk, and then finally he straightened and turned to face them. Patrick was closest to him now, Jack standing well removed. A reversal of position because Patrick was better equipped to judge Ethan’s work, or so they thought.
“It’s them,” Ethan said, though he knew that it was not, and he tried to keep the gratitude at this providential discovery out of his voice. Other hikers had passed this way, rare in the backcountry, and they were headed in the direction he wanted to go. His job had just been made immeasurably easier. He no longer had to convince them that he was following a trail that didn’t exist. He simply had to follow the wrong trail.
Hell, he could even pick up the pace.
34
There was police tape stretched across the gravel drive that led to Allison’s home. Everything beyond it was dark, no sign that it was a home at all. There were fresh ruts in the grass from the fire trucks and the emergency vehicles that had come to save her less than twenty-four hours earlier.
For the first time since she’d left the hospital, Allison thought about the possibility of meeting up with the men who’d so calmly entered her house in the night and heated tongs in the stove to burn her flesh. They’d been specters before, plausible but not yet near. Now, seeing the crime-scene tape, she could see them again, hear them. Smell them.
Jamie Bennett didn’t even pause at the tape, just drove right through it, bowing it inward until it went taut and snapped and then it was fluttering in the gusting wind behind them, and ahead, the remains of Allison’s house took shape. Charred walls, gaping holes where glass belonged, a buckled roof.
“Welcome back to the Ritz,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. Her voice was barely audible and she was looking at the damage out of the corner of her eye, as if she couldn’t face it head-on.
Allison didn’t answer her. She was staring at the house and remembering passing sheets of shingles to Ethan on the roof as an early-autumn snow flurry fell. They’d slept in a tent that night, as they had every night until the roof was done; they’d made a pact not to sleep in the house till it was finished, but they’d made that pact when it was warm and their bodies didn’t ache from the work of it yet. They’d both regretted it in the final weeks, and then the roof was done, and suddenly it made sense again.
“Where do you want me to go?” Jamie said. “I’m not sure why we’re here.”
Allison put the window down, and the air that filled the car was heavy with smoke. Some of it was stale, traces of the flames that had been hosed out of her home, but more of it was fresh. The mountains were burning, and the wind carried notice of it.
“They’ll have the road closed,” she said.
“We’ll get past them.”
“For a quarter of a mile, yes. And then you’re going to run out of road, Jamie.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Have you ever ridden a horse?”
Jamie Bennett turned to her in the shadowed car and said, “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“No. I have never ridden a horse.”
“You’re about to.”
Jamie put her foot on the brake but didn’t put the 4Runner in park. The headlights were fixed on the burned-out cabin but beyond, in the darkness, the stable stood, and inside it, unless someone had moved him, and Allison couldn’t imagine that they had, Tango stood as well.
“That sounds crazy,” Jamie said. “We don’t need to-”