All of them turned to see a second man, this one in camo with a trimmed beard and a shotgun in his hand, by the cave. He stopped, raised the gun, aiming at them.
The wild man instantly released Claire.
“It’s you!” He hissed like a cat and then ran, back bent, with arms swinging, toward the man with the gun. Over his shoulder, he called to the three girls, “Run! Don’t let it take you!”
Unfazed, the man kept the gun leveled, aiming toward the girls as if he didn’t see the other man, until the wild man barreled into him, grabbing him around the waist. His shot fired wildly toward the sky, sounding like a crack of thunder and shaking the leaves until they rained down, as the two men fell.
Claire, Reyva, and Mariana ran.
Ten
You can’t run in a straight line through the Maine woods. You weave between trees. You clamber over fallen logs. You watch for rocks. Brambles grab your sleeves, your hair. They scratch your arms and your face. Any exposed skin.
You can’t run quietly through the woods either. You crunch dead leaves. You crack fallen twigs. You thump down on rocks, and you squish through mud.
And you leave a trail, if you aren’t careful.
It was only after they’d run wildly over roots, rocks, and dead leaves with no other goal butawaythat Claire cleared a spot in her mind to think again:
Two men in the woods.
One had scared them, then saved them. The other had tried to shoot them. And either could easily follow the track they’d left behind—a wide swath of broken twigs, crushed leaves, and trampled ferns. Even she, who had never tracked anyone in her life, could have followed the trail they were leaving.
“Stop,” she panted.
The others slowed.
She leaned over, hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath. Her side ached, and she felt coated in a sheen of sweat. She listened to the birds calling from tree to tree, like children squabbling over a toy.They’re back, she noticed.
“We lost them,” Mariana said. “Right?”
“Not for long.” Claire pointed to the obvious trail behind them. With the recent rain, it was worse. She could see their footprints in the muddy ground as clear as if it were a pack of elephants tromping through the forest.
“Maybe they won’t follow us,” Mariana said.
Both Claire and Reyva snorted at that. Claire said, “Enormous forest, yet they just happened to be right by the cave exit?”
“You think they were waiting for us?” Mariana asked.
She hadn’t fully thought it through, but— “Yes. Definitely.” If you wanted to catch a mouse, you closed up one hole and then waited for it to emerge from the other hole. Someone had sealed the trapdoor shut knowing there was only one other way out.
“Why?” Mariana asked. “And what was up with the guy who hadn’t showered or shaved in a millennium? Why did he attack us, and then attack the man with the gun? Did they know each other? Wait—don’t answer that. Let’s make sure we’re safe before we do postgame analysis. Are we safe?”
Listening, Claire heard the moment the birdcalls stopped. The forest was dead quiet. “Not safe. Keep running.”
The others didn’t ask any questions. They just started running. In the distance, Claire heard a trickle of water and had an idea. She veered toward the sound, and Reyva and Mariana followed, like birds in a flock, again trusting her without a word.She wondered if they had any idea how much that trust meant to her. Panting hard, she had no breath to tell them.
Soon, she spotted it: a stream, tumbling over mossy rocks. It bubbled and gushed and gurgled as if it were trying to chatter with them as it jumped and wound between the trees.
Reyva and Mariana didn’t slow. They jumped over the water, their sneakers squelching in the mud on the opposite side, but Claire halted in the middle. The water soaked through her sneakers into her formerly dry socks.
“Hey,” she called softly, a stage whisper.
They stopped and looked back.
“Retrace your steps, carefully,” Claire said in a loud whisper. She pointed at the stream. “If we walk in the water, they won’t know where we’ve gone.” She didn’t know if it would fool an expert tracker who expected tricks like this, but there was a chance that their pursuers could underestimate them.
Carefully, they walked backward. Closer to the stream, they sank a half inch into the mud, deepening their prints but not adding any new ones. They joined Claire in the brisk, bubbling water.
