“My mess?” Her voice rises as we jog silently toward them. “You told me they’d never catch on. They knoweverything.”
Silence. Then, his voice even tighter. “What?”
“They know I broke into the Roc and Phil’s house. They found the coins, and they know I was being paid by someone in the mining camp.”
“What did you tell them, Muriel?”
“I gave them the description you fed me, which saves your ass, but it doesn’t help me, does it? You promised me a hundred grand, and you’ve given me a fraction of that.”
“I promised a hundred if you got what I needed.” His American accent begins to slip. “You didn’t. I’m not paying you for making a hash out—” A sharp intake of breath.
We’ve reached a spot where the path turns. Muriel andRutherford are just up ahead, and we can’t barrel out and risk spooking Muriel into attacking Rutherford with that knife.
Dalton eases into the forest, placing one foot down after another, as carefully as he can. I wait until they start talking again, in hopes it’ll cover any sound of my own approach.
“What do you want me to say, Muriel?” The American accent is gone completely now. “You have me at knifepoint. Arguing with you isn’t going to help me.”
I move up alongside Dalton, and he points. It takes a moment to see Muriel and Rutherford through the thick tree cover, but then I make out their figures. Muriel has him pinned to a tree, knife at his back. He’d been wearing a balaclava, but it’s rolled onto his forehead.
“I want fifty grand,” she says. “I accept that I didn’t get what you wanted, but that wasn’t my fault. I gave you all the information I could get.”
“Which was useless. I needed to know how things were going wrong in town, and you gave me a list of penny-ante concerns. The bedrooms are small. The bathrooms are communal. The food options are limited. You’re expected to work. You sound like a bloody tourist complaining that your three-star resort doesn’t have a spa.”
He cuts himself short, as if realizing this won’t help. “I needed ways to know how things are goingwrong, Muriel. At the very least, I need evidence that Eric and Casey are overwhelmed, between their new town and their new baby. The fact that they caught you and figured outeverythingsuggests even that isn’t a problem.”
“People have complaints. I gave you those.”
“People will always have—” He stops short again. “I presume you cannot get access to your coins?”
“Yes.”
“That is your problem, and I will count them against the fifty thousand you earned. You will get twenty-five.”
“Forty.”
A long hiss of breath. “Thirty-five.”
He’s faking the negotiations. Muriel hasn’t thought this through. Rutherford is at knifepoint. He could promise her the whole hundred grand. He doesn’t because that would be suspicious. He’s going to play this out until he has Muriel in Lilith’s cabin. Then he can ship her off without paying a cent. We need to rescue her, and we will—as soon as we can safely intervene.
“Forty thousand,” she says.
A low growl, as if she’s a shrewd negotiator driving a hard bargain. “Fine. Now will you lower the knife please?”
She backs up, and Dalton relaxes. I rock on my toes, tension thrumming through me. Do we grab her now? No, they’re relaxing. Just wait for an opening.
Muriel steps back, knife raised. “Walk. And I want to be flown outtomorrow.”
He sighs, as if he’s dealing with a difficult teenager. “I can’t promise tomorrow because it’ll be late when I get back. But I will place the call and say it’s a priority.”
“I want to be flown to Seattle. No dropping me off in the middle of nowhere.”
“I will see what I can do. At worst, I’ll provide you with options, possibly Vancouver or Anchorage.”
“Vancouver.”
“We willsee. Now, I don’t suppose you have a tissue? The back of my neck is bleeding.”
“I barely nicked you.”
