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Her fingers found the seam where the fabric had worn thin from all the times she’d repacked it, and she thought, not for the first time, that she recognized this bag better than she recognized her own reflection anymore.

Lance had taught her how to pack a go bag. In the methodical way he had about everything, he’d listed off supplies.

Everybody needs one, he’d told her. Just in case.

She’d laughed at the time and asked him just in case of what—an earthquake, a zombie apocalypse—and he hadn’t laughed back.

She didn’t know then that he would be the emergency she needed a bag for.

Her latest emergency was that she was running out of emergency supplies, and she wasn’t even talking about things women in civilization considered necessities, like shampoo and body lotion.

A month ago—or maybe it was two—she’d used the last of her travel bottle of shampoo and resorted to making her own with a mixture of water and herbs she found on the mountain. Her hair might be clean enough, but it was still in a bad state.

She could feel the mats without looking, thick ropes of tangles she hadn’t had the ability to work through. Then the bristles on her brush started snapping, and she gave up. Now she was glad she hadn’t been vain enough to bring a mirror.

A week after she first walked up the mountain, she forced herself to descend and creep close enough to civilization to find out if there was any news about the situation that sent her fleeing. Or any news about her. But the trip hadn’t provided any information, and she couldn’t risk hanging around and being seen.

“How long since I’ve been off this mountain?” she asked the dwindling contents of her pack before zipping it shut. “I need to keep track of days on a cave wall or something.”

Was it bad that she talked to herself this much? Around week three she’d stopped caring. Talking to herself kept her moving.

Kept the panic in its box.

She went through her morning chores with deliberate motions that wasted as little energy as possible. The mountain was catching up to her and she felt more exhausted than usual.

She camped near fresh water whenever she could, and she went to the small stream with her filter and her one good bottle. She worked the pump handle with both hands and watched the water spill clear and cold into the bottle, careful not to lose a single drop. Every ounce cost her energy to replace, and she’d learned the hard way what carelessness cost out here.

“Not as hard as the first time I put in a catheter,” she murmured, capping the bottle. “I made it through organic chemistry. I can do this.”

The self-encouragement kept her going, which was all she needed.

As she gathered water and an armful of dry sticks to light the fire, the new day dawned, promising to be beautiful. Even though it wasn’t hot, she was already perspiring. There wasn’t much shade in the clearing, so she spent a portion of her day finding a new place to camp.

By the time she foraged for berries and any other growing thing that could be of use to her, she was tired enough to need a break. Basecamp was still an hour out, maybe more with the scant energy she was running on. And she knew better than to power through on uneven ground.

She found a flat shelf of rock tucked against the mountainside and broke branches for a lean-to to give her a little protection from the sun, wincing a little with the motion. Her back had been bothering her, and she was out of painkillers.

“Dammit. Why did I wander so far from camp?” She curled onto her side, knees to her chest, and watched branches whipped by the wind that was constant up here.

“Even though I didn’t choose this life for myself,” she whispered, “some people would kill to have it.”

Kill. The word felt wrong in her mouth. People used it without thought.

I’d kill for a coffee.

I’d kill to have that car.

But the word carried a different weight for her now.

That was exactly what she was running from in the first place.

Chapter Two

“You’re going up the mountain for a month. Everything you need is on your back. If you can’t function out there, you don’t belong at Black Heart.”

The trainer Grant Upchurch, aka Church, delivered the line the way he delivered most orders—flat and final, with no room for questions. The man could read a eulogy in the same voice and nobody would flinch.

Wyatt stood in formation with the other five in the group, his pack riding along his spine, receiving orders.