But introspection can only last so long. By the time I returned to the campsite, Rose had already gotten the tent all set up, which made me feel shitty. A dumb reaction, seeing as it was her tent in the first place and she knew what to do with it. I’d practiced setting it up on the lawn of the inn on numerous occasions but had yet to put it together on my own.
I crawled inside while she was changing clothes so that I could unroll my sleeping bag—well, that was Rose’s, too, since I’d borrowed most of my gear from her. The rest was on loan from Mr. Howe. In fact, the only piece of backpacking equipment that was actually mine was my compass, which had been my grandfather’s. My mother had hated him with a passion, so when I’d found it in the garage in a box along with some of his other stuff, including his ashes, most of which had spilled everywhere, I didn’t bother asking if I could have it. I just took it.
“Want to lie down with me?” I asked Rose with as much optimism as I could muster. I thought it would be nice to close my eyes and put my hand between her legs.
“Can’t,” she said as she double-knotted the laces of her Nikes. “I told Shelby I’d walk with her.”
“Walk where?”
“I don’t know. Up by the waterfall I guess. Avery’s got a camera. She wants to take pictures of us.”
“Since when are you friends with Shelby and Avery?”
“Since when am I not?”
I didn’t have an answer to that question. Not one I wanted to tell her about, anyway, so I tried a different approach. “Well, aren’t you tired?”
“What’s there to be tired of?”
“Not being with me.”
“I’m sure we’ll have time for that later.” Rose squeezed out of the tent and started to walk away.
“Time for what?” I called out.
She didn’t look back. “For me to get tired of you.”
—
When the girls were gone, I wandered over to where Dunc and Tomás were arguing over how to build a fire. They’d even made this giant ring of rocks and piled a bunch of sorry-looking twigs in the middle of it.
“You know you can’t do that,” I told them.
“Why not?” Dunc swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d gotten an awful sunburn on his face, despite repeated sunscreen warnings from both me and Mr. Howe, and currently looked like a cross between the lady who worked at our local tanning salon and fucking Donald Trump.
“You’re going to burn the mountain down,” I said. “Also, it’s illegal. Or did you not see the ABSOLUTELY NO FIRES ALLOWED signs when we drove into the park?”
Tomás pointed one of the twigs at me. “You know, you can be kind of a dick.”
“Thanks.”
Dunc sniffed. “Those people we met had a fire.”
“Those people we met probably had a lot of things they weren’t supposed to,” I muttered. “Doesn’t mean we’re having a fire.”
“Who were those people anyway?” Tomás asked.
Dunc kicked at the rock circle, sending stones rolling. “Dude said he was some sort of preacher, but he was full of shit.”
“A preacher? Like, a religious person?”
“Yeah. A preacher. That’s what I said.”
I nodded at Dunc. “Why’d you think he was full of shit? I mean, I thought that, too, but I want to know why you did.”
Dunc kicked a few more rocks, then shoved a pile of Skoal in his lip before answering. “Don’t tell anyone, but Archie went through some of their stuff while you were lying down in the grass with that lady. Let’s just say some of the things he found in that tent of theirs sure didn’t make it seem like the guy was a preacher.”
I gaped. “He seriously did that?”
“What lady?” Tomás asked.
Dunc sighed. “Yeah, he seriously did that.”
“What’d he find?”
“Just some booze and stuff. Arch might’ve taken some.”
“Taken some what?”
“Booze.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“What lady?” Tomás asked again.
A line of brown drool ran down Dunc’s chin. “One of the Preacher’s acolytes. He had two of them. Apparently their God-given job is to walk around naked while he prays for more ass or something. Arch and I got an eyeful before Gibby and Avery showed up and ruined the whole thing. It was a pretty nice scene to come across. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you, Tomás?”
“Know about what?”
“The pleasures of naked girls.”
Tomás looked at me. “What were you doing with Avery?”
“We were just, uh . . . taking some pictures.” I fumbled for the lie, and even I could hear how awkward my words sounded.
“Yeah, I bet you were,” Dunc said. “But hey, Arch thinks he knows who those people really are.”
I blinked. “How’s that?”
“He told me he heard about two convicts escaping from that state mental hospital down in Napa yesterday, then robbing a bank. Guess they were last seen heading north with two female accomplices.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I heard that, too. It was on the news at the gas station. That’s not them. No way.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, first of all, we only met one guy down there. Not two.”
Dunc shrugged. “Arch says there were four sleeping bags in that tent.”
“Why would they come here?”
“Why wouldn’t they? I’d hide out somewhere remote if I were them. Apparently they’re carrying half a million dollars in cash.”
Half a million dollars. I’d missed that part of the news story. And I shivered a little, picturing all that money and what I could do with it. But I also recalled that eerie movement I’d seen in the woods behind the campsite. Maybe that hadn’t been some migraine-induced trick of the eye. Maybe I really had seen something.
Or someone.
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know who those people were, but there was something off about them. That woman I was talking to? Maggie? She told me they’d driven here from Arcata.”
“Arcata sucks ass,” Dunc said.
True, but not relevant. “Yeah, but later she told me about a weather report she heard all the way down in Willits. That doesn’t make sense. That’s almost three hours in the other direction.”
Tomás looked at me. “What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. It just makes me wonder, you know?”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” Dunc wagged a grubby finger at me. “It is them. It has to be. Coming from Napa, they would’ve gone straight through Willits. I bet they have that cash on them. That’s why they were so sketchy earlier, following us around everywhere.”
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “But then why’d the Preacher call us down there in the first place?”
“To find out who we were. What we’re doing here.”
“I guess.” It still didn’t make sense to me, though. He’d let Avery photograph him. In fact, he’d invited her to do so.
“Think we should tell someone?” Tomás asked me.
I looked at him. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Dunc tipped his head as he spit again. “Yeah, I don’t know, either, but you better be careful telling Archie any of this. Give him proof he’s right about who those people are, he’s going to go after a whole hell of lot more than a bottle of Jim Beam.”