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Jessica leaned in to look, but Silas waved her forward. “You go on,” he told her. “It’s already getting dark.”
She followed his gaze to where the shadows had lengthened over the ridge and nodded solemnly. “What about you?”
“I’ll catch up,” he promised. When she hesitated, he added a self-deprecating shrug. “So much for my fearless leadership, I guess.”
She laughed, and then she was gone, hiking uphill around the bend. Silas wasted no time, legs churning up the slope, sage slapping at his bare arms. Within minutes he had hit the ridge, bent double, panting for breath. He glanced down the trail but couldn’t hear anyone coming yet, so he took his time scanning for a suitable hiding place. When he spotted the low-hanging limb of a tall sugar pine leaning heavily over the trail, bent from years of wind and snow, he seized the opportunity, hefting himself into its branches.
And then he waited, breathless, belly to the bark. It wasn’t easy; the limb arched steeply and wasn’t all that fat, and it took a lot of core work, really, to keep himself steady. He was concealed, he thought, but just barely; any shift of his torso and he’d probably give himself away.
It seemed like forever before he heard voices, and when he did he frowned. Because it sounded like the girls were in front now. A stealthy peek as they approached confirmed that Meg was now in the lead, followed by Jessica, with Danny bringing up the rear. Maybe when Jessica had caught up, she’d explained Silas’s predicament, and he’d gone back to check? A prickle of doubt made itself known; it wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could just hop down right now, no one the wiser.
But then his boot caught on a branch of pine needles, sending a few fluttering to the ground, and Meg caught the movement. Her sharp eyes traveled from the branch to Silas’s face in a heartbeat, and for a brief second he was sure he caught the hint of a smirk on her face.
It was as if a fuse he hadn’t known existed had been lit inside him, and he doubled down on his plan, arms encircling the limb tightly. The enthusiasm of his movement unbalanced him, and his body listed right, then left, like a wobbly canoe, but he managed to hold on tight as Meg passed under the tree, feigning ignorance of what loomed aboveher. He only had to hang on long enough for Jessica to pass, and then Danny would be directly below him and Silas could leap, scaring the living daylights out of him.
And it would have worked beautifully had his hand, gripping the bark, not slipped—sending Silas spiraling downward to fall in a heap not an inch from Jessica’s face. He landed with an“Oof,”the breath knocked out of his chest, and the only thing he heard for what felt like the span of a full minute was her ongoing, never-ending scream.
When he managed to pull himself to his feet, he was just in time to see the back of Jessica’s ponytail disappearing down the trail as she lit out in a full sprint in the direction from which they’d come.
Danny and Meg both yelled in tandem for Jessica to stop. Silas still couldn’t draw a full breath. “Oh hell,” he muttered, when he could.
Beside him, Danny took on the role of Mr.Responsibility. “Youget to go chase her down.”
“Youinvited her!”
“Youmade this mess!” Danny shot back.
“Enough!” Meg shouted. “We all need to go after her!”
Jessica moved fast for a girl in sandals, Silas could say that much for her. The three of them had run nearly a hundred yards before they caught sight of her again, and even then, it was too dark now to see more than the dull outline of her bright-pink crop top through the trees. Silas knew he should take out his flashlight, but he didn’t want to waste the time. His footsteps increased in speed, but Jessica had a heavy dose of adrenaline on her side: she kept the gap between them wide. By the time Silas felt close enough to call out to her, all the air had been sucked from his lungs.
They paused, panting, somewhere midway down the slope.
“We should all split up,” Danny suggested, and that was fine by Silas; he was already in motion again, legs churning downhill.
“Head back to the fork in the trail!” Danny shouted after him. “Meg will go up. Who the hell knows where she’d go?”
“Yeah. Okay!” Silas was already several strides down the trail. “You stay here in case she comes back.”
He made it to the V in record time, and stopped again, yelling out into the gathering darkness. “Jessica! Jess!”
Nothing.
And so he took off again, heading back uphill this time, because no way was Jessica faster than him, covering this much ground in her sandals. Just above the V, he ran smack into Meg.
“Shit!” she gasped, stumbling backward.
“Sorry!” he shouted.
Her hand clamped down on Silas’s arm, presumably to steady him, but it was her expression that stopped him cold. It was that underlying urgency—that lit fuse—that he felt radiating from her nearly all the time these days, staring him right in the face.
“What were you thinking?” she said, kind of shaking him.
“Danny,” he gasped, because this was all his mind had room for. “I think he knows.”
He didn’t have to say what about. That was what Silas snagged on, in that moment, in his mind. Meg didn’t ask. She knew.
“But Jessica,” she said weakly, and Silas nodded. Jessica would tire herself out eventually; she might have slowed or even stopped already. She was probably just out of sight through the trees, feeling foolish for overreacting. With just one more sprint they could catch her, if Danny didn’t beat them to it.
