“Do you remember the name?” Calder demanded.
“Wilder something, or Wilderness ... I don’t fucking know. She had some brochure.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No, she took that shit with her.”
My chest tightened. It wasn’t a complete loss, I reminded myself. We had an idea of where Rachel had gone. We could search online, find a list of the retreats around here—Which would be innumerable, given the vast marketability of nature retreats in areas like this,the pessimist inside me whispered.
“I don’t know why the fuck you’re asking me. Maybe you should ask the fucking waitress who gave her the brochure. She could tell you.”
“Waitress?” Calder and I said in unison.
“Yeah, the bitch who couldn’t get my eggs right thought she’d get back at me for not tipping by passing that shit to Rachel.”
Marlene.Calder and I looked at each other, coming to the same simultaneous conclusion.
“All right, Mr. Westman. Thanks for your cooperation—”
“Fuck—”
“If you continue to go about your business here without further incident, I won’t call the rangers and the police and tip them off to youractivities,” Calder threatened with an olive branch as he pulled Brandon off the camper.
“Wait.” I put my hand on Calder’s shoulder, stopping him from releasing Brandon. He glared. “I can’t leave him like this.”
Calder’s stare hardened as I walked in front of Brandon. If he wanted to, he could have stopped me, but he didn’t.
“Hold him still.”
Brandon’s beady brown eyes narrowed on me, full of hatred. “Your sister’s a cunt.”
I exhaled slowly. Do no harm. Giving him a fake smile, I reached for his face and replied, “And you’re a very small man.”
Brandon’s shout shook through the forest as I reset his broken nose without warning.
Chapter 6
Calder
Rule #19: Never draw a weapon you don’t intend to use or aim at anything you’re not willing to kill.
“Why didn’t Marlene tell us about the brochure?” Lara asked as soon as we reached the truck.
I slid my Glock 42 in its holster back into the glove compartment and hit the ignition. “We’re going to find out.”
“You didn’t pull out your gun,” she said, not bothering to hide her surprise.
“I didn’t intend to use it,” I countered. Shifting into reverse, I cupped her headrest and looked over my shoulder, catching her gaze along the way.
“Not even to warn him?”
“Never pull out a gun you don’t intend to use or aim at anything you’d regret shooting.”
Being homeschooled at Stonewall Ranch was different in a lot of ways. In addition to the basics, we got the ... not-basics, including firearm lessons.
Cassius had been trained in Hojutsu, the Japanese martial art of gunnery, so our lessons went beyond target practice. We started from the bottom. Everything from cleaning, assembling, disassembling, diagnosing problems, and repairing, all the way to tests on different kinds of rounds and which guns theywere used for. And eventually, once Cassius was satisfied we’d mastered respect for the incredibly dangerous weapons, lessons on how to actually shoot them.
“You would’ve regretted shooting him?”
