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If it’s easy, Duke whispered in her memory, then it isn’t worth it.
Bradley leaned in. “But where are we now relative to where we’re going today?”
She pulled out her big map and pointed to where she’d marked a giant square. “This is where we are now.” She dragged a finger several inches over. “And this is Jasper Canyon. We’re headed there.”
“It all looks very… wavy,” Walter said through a grimace.
“Yeah. Those are elevation lines. We’re going down to river level.” They’d all seen the river in the distance; they knew how far they still had to go. “We’ll have to leave the Jeep soon and go on foot. It’s not going to be easy.”
The guys looked at each other, and Lily looked at Nicole. It was going to be a rough couple of days.
Bradley was the first to break the silence. “Then we’d better get started,” he said. “Let’s eat and get out of here.”
There wasn’t much variety—instant oatmeal, nuts, and berries—but they savored the last of their fresh food, knowing their next meals would have to be light, nonperishable, and heavy on the protein. Nobody mentioned Lily’s and Leo’s clothes—mostly dry now in the heat of the fire—but they hung there like guilty shadows.
They took down the tents and loaded everything into the Jeep, driving a few slow hours on the increasingly bumpy and treacherous road before deciding that it was time to take the rest on foot.
They checked their packs and determined what they absolutely needed to have. No way was Lily leaving the gun in the Jeep, so along with Duke’s notebook, she zipped it, her satellite phone, and Terry’s phones into a gallon-size plastic bag.
Leo put his hand on Terry’s phone in the bag. “Should we take those? Will it look bad?”
“Nah. I grew up with every ranger in the county. They’re good guys but it’s not FBI headquarters down here.”
Those who needed to switched out their shoes, and they each packed a change of clothes, and enough energy bars, beef jerky, water, and C rations to last a couple of days. Nic took the first aid kit and everyone had their sleeping bag and tent strapped into their hiking pack, but—
“Keep it as light as possible,” she reminded them. “I know you want to take everything, Bradley, but I promise you won’t need cashmere down in the Maze.”
He looked quietly insulted, but then removed a bundle from his pack and put it back in the Jeep.
And then, they set off in relative silence. The mood was thick with hope and apprehension… but maybe the quiet energy Lily sensed in the group was also focus. They’d never done anything like this in their lives, and here there was an intermittent cairn to guide the way, but no obvious path.
“Do you remember how bad cell service was at the ranch?” Leo said, surprising her with how close he was.
She looked over her shoulder at him, confused. “What brought that up?”
“I don’t know. I was just thinking about how pissed the guests would get when they realized there was basically a square foot of space on the entire property where we could occasionally get a signal. It reminded me that I haven’t checked my phone or email or anything for days. I think that summer was the last time I was this unplugged.”
“What do you think’s happening online?” Walter said, frowning down at his feet.
“Same thing as every day,” Leo said. “Somebody’s mad. Somebody’s lecturing. Cat memes.”
“Someone’s posting a shirtless bathroom selfie on Instagram,” Bradley said.
Leo barked out a laugh. “Half your feed is shirtless bathroom selfies.”
Bradley glared at him. “Not half.”
“Those hell rectangles have turned you guys into zombies,” Nicole said. “Instagram? Twitter? If you hate ’em so much, delete them.”
“Of course we hate them.” Bradley laughed. “That’s the point. We go there to feel superior and angry.”
“Not Walt,” Leo said. “He’s got almost a million followers on TikTok; they can’t get enough of his pure animal content.” He looked over at Walter as they navigated a relatively flat section. “What was the one that went viral first?”
“The one about responsible ferret ownership,” Bradley said, laughing.
Walter shook his head. “No, it was about the mating habits of the common fro—” His words were cut off with a sharp cry as he lost his footing, crumpling to the ground and sliding a few feet down a rock face.
“Shit!” Nicole scrambled over, falling to her knees to check where he was clutching his ankle, rolling in pain. “What happened? Are you okay?”
He grimaced, pointing at a pile of loose stones hidden behind the tangled limbs of a fallen juniper. “I slipped on those rocks,” he said, voice tight through clenched teeth.
They moved him to flatter ground, and Leo kneeled at his side, gingerly working his boot and sock off.
“Oh shit,” Bradley whispered as they all stared at his quickly swelling ankle. A purple bruise was already blooming beneath Walter’s pale skin.
