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My eyes shot up to the rearview mirror. Warren stared back at me, his mouth still twisted into that sour expression.
"When?" I asked.
"The last time Grimes took Sophia. "
Suddenly, I realized what had been missing from Fletcher's writings on his battle with Grimes: that mysterious third person he'd tried so hard not to mention.
"You . . . you helped Fletcher rescue Sophia all those years ago? I thought that you and Fletcher had a falling out over a woman when you were young and that the two of you didn't speak after that. "
Warren looked at me in the mirror another moment before he turned his head and stared out the window.
"Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Fletcher and I used to go hunting in the mountains together all the time when we were young. After he left and moved down into the city, I kept on going without him. "
"So when Jo-Jo approached him about getting Sophia back, Fletcher needed you to guide him. "
"Actually, Jo-Jo came into my store one day, covered in mud and crying up a storm. I'd never seen her before, so I asked her what was wrong, and we got to talking.
She told me how Grimes had kidnapped Sophia and how she'd been out in the woods trying to find her sister with no luck. " Warren cleared his throat. "So I told her about Fletcher being the Tin Man. "
I could picture it all in my mind. Jo-Jo stumbling into country Daze, Warren sitting down with her, Jo-Jo sobbing out her story, Warren realizing that she had a problem that only his former friend could solve - The right tires hit a rumble strip on the side of the road, jolting me out of my musings. I turned the wheel, edging the car away from the dangerous curve. The road straightened out for several hundred feet, so I looked at Warren in the rearview mirror again.
"That was how the two of them met? Because of you?"
Warren nodded. His dark eyes met mine in the mirror again. "I knew that he could help her, that he was probably the only one who could help her. Even back then, Harley Grimes had a reputation for being an evil, vicious, crazy son of a bitch. "
"Half g
iant, half dwarf, and all mean," I murmured, echoing what Jo-Jo had once told me about Grimes.
Warren nodded his agreement. "But I didn't think that Fletcher would ask for my help too. At first, I refused, but then Jo-Jo came back to the store and begged me to guide him up there. I couldn't turn her down then - or now. "
"Thank you, Warren," I said in a soft voice. "For everything. "
"Bah," he said, waving his hand. "Don't thank me until it's over, Sophia is back where she belongs, and that bastard Grimes is finally dead. "
He stared out the window again, his eyes distant, his lips pinched together, the lines on his face grooved even deeper with old memories, old hurts, old heartaches. I wondered what Warren was seeing, what he was remembering, what he was feeling. If he was reliving the trip he'd taken with Fletcher so very long ago or if he was thinking ahead to the danger he was going to face for a second time.
Either way, there was nothing for me to do but keep on driving and hope that I could get us all back down the mountain again in one piece after we rescued Sophia.
Warren directed me to one of the many scenic overlooks on the narrow, curvy, switchback roads of this section of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike the others that we'd passed, which were little more than gravel pits squeezed in between the road and the sheer edge of the mountain, this overlook was actually a park with a paved lot. I stopped Roslyn's car in front of a sign planted in the grass that read Bone Mountain Nature Preserve .
I stared through the windshield at the wooden sign and realized that maybe I wasn't as unfamiliar with the area as I'd thought.
"Is something wrong?" Owen asked, noticing me eyeing the sign.
I shook my head. "No, not wrong. But I've been here before. I should have remembered when I first heard the name. Fletcher brought me here years ago. Not to the park but to this mountain. "
I didn't add that the old man had taken me out only to desert me on our hike, just to see if I had the strength and smarts to get back down the mountain on my own. One of the many tests he'd given me over the years. I wondered how much I'd be tested today. Didn't much matter. Like I'd told Finn and everyone else: Harley Grimes was a dead man. He just didn't know it yet.
"Gin?" Owen asked. "Are you okay?"
I shook my head to clear away the memories. "Yeah.
Let's move. I want to get eyes on Sophia and Grimes's camp as soon as possible. "
Owen, Warren, and I grabbed our gear, locked the car, and walked up a series of steep, narrow stone steps that led from the parking lot to the top of a ridge that curved and bulged out like a half-moon. A few blue and green fiberglass picnic tables perched in the grass, along with a couple of dented metal trash cans. A three-foot-high stone wall marked the edge of the grass and separated the tables from the steep drop below. The ridge offered a sweeping view of the cluster of mountains that surrounded us.
Trees and rocks stretched out as far as the eye could see, like green and gray ribbons unspooling in every direction, crowned by the deep, vivid blue of the sky and the burning orange citrine jewel of the sun so very high above.
