He shrugged. “Tomás’ll do it, then. Shame, though. I trust you a hell of a lot more than I trust him.”
It was a moment of surreality that followed. I stood and watched, disbelieving, as Archie—who’d shed his sullenness to become something animated, enthralling even—hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders. With a toss of his head, he beckoned for the others to follow, before turning and walking into the woods, heading toward the trail leading back down the mountain.
And then they did it. One by one the rest of the group went after him, their lights bobbling before them, like beacons in the darkness.
“I’m getting Mr. Howe!” I called after them.
“No, you’re not,” Archie called back.
Shelby waved at me as she took off, hair still floating as she moved. Clay and Tomás went next. Followed by Dunc.
“Rose . . . ,” I pleaded as she turned to go. I couldn’t believe she would leave me. “This isn’t what you want, is it? You, out of everyone, you have no reason to do something like this. You don’t need money. Who could you possibly be trying to help?”
The smile she gave me nearly broke me with its tenderness. “You really don’t know?”
“No!”
She whispered in my ear, “You.”
—
I know now that what I should’ve done was go and wake Mr. Howe right off the bat, tell him what was happening, how I’d lost control of everything. But I didn’t. And I don’t know, sometimes when you’re in the middle of seriously fucking something up, it can feel as if what’s been done can still be contained. That it’s not so bad yet that anyone needs to know how stupid you’ve been.
That was the feeling that kept me from doing anything smart or right, after I’d watched the six of them march down the mountain, straight into a hell of their own making, and maybe it’s what makes faith so damn dangerous in the first place. Because I believed things would get better. That I could fix what was already so very broken without having to answer for my failures.
I went and found Avery instead. Back at the campsite, she lay curled in her sleeping bag on a tarp beneath the stars. A pang of guilt went through me to see that, to know Rose was the only reason I had shelter. I fell to my knees and shook Avery. Her head tossed and her long hair was strewn all around her, as if she were rooted to the ground. I shook her again. Harder.
“Ave!” I whispered. “Ave, wake up!”
Her eyes fluttered and opened.
“Ben?” she mumbled, her voice throaty and thick.
“You have to wake up,” I told her, tugging on her arm with pit bull persistence. “Please!”
She let me pull her up to sitting, but remained bleary. “What is it?”
“It’s the rest of them. All of them! They’ve gone and done something stupid.”
“Rest of who?”
“Everyone! Except Mr. Howe. They’re going to—”
She rubbed a fist on her eye. “They’re going to what?”
“They’re going to go steal money from the Preacher!”
“Huh?”
“I’m serious!”
Her nose wrinkled. “What money? Who has money? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. But they’re doing it anyway. They’re drunk. They’re fucking trashed. We’ve got to stop them.”
Avery still hesitated, so I explained it all to her. How it was that Dunc and Archie had come to believe the Preacher and his friends were the fugitives who had robbed a bank down in Napa, and that if they were, they were more than likely carrying over half a million dollars in cash. Honestly, it sounded stupider than ever once I said the whole thing out loud, and Avery, for her part, remained skeptical.
“I think they’re just playing with you, Ben,” she said with a yawn. “Archie’s a dick. You know that.”
“You really think Clay and Tomás are teaming up to play practical jokes with Archie?”
“No,” she admitted. “But still—”
“But still what?”
“Well, where’s Rose? Didn’t you tell her about this? She’ll know what’s going on.”
“She’s with them,” I said. “She went with them!”
Avery blinked. “Without you?”
I was glad for the dark, to hide my burning cheeks. “Yeah. She went without me.”
“Oh.”
“Archie’s got that gun, Ave. You know that. Even if they’re just fucking around, something bad could still happen.”
This got her moving, got her scrambling out of her sleeping bag and reaching for her shoes. “Shit. Shit. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. We have to do something.”
“But what?”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Back down the mountain!”
“Then go stop them!”
“How?”
Avery was on her feet. She tossed a headlamp at me. “You go. Find them. I’ll get Mr. Howe. You can tell them that he’s coming. That’ll stop them.”
I nodded. I turned and ran.
25.
I FLEW DOWN the mountain, as fast as the night would let me, cursing Archie and wishing I’d had the nerve to swing at him. Or do anything to break his hold over the others, who were apparently mindless enough to follow him wherever he might go.
I also puked pretty much the whole way, something that was both unfortunate and seriously unpleasant to do while running. But I couldn’t help it, all that sloshing and booze and fear and adrenaline. Although my getting sick was only partly due to being woefully drunk on cheap bourbon. I also understood, somewhere deep inside of me, that if anyone were to get hurt on my watch—seriously hurt—I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. There wasn’t a single part of me, not one, that could bear the thought of once again having someone else’s blood on my hands.
—
It was a seemingly endless scramble down the dirt trail that twisted back and around to the other side of the mountain. My legs pounded and pounded and pounded, but finally I reached the ridge where we’d spied on the naked swimmers. Switching my headlamp off, I crouched low and peered into the black gorge, that remote spring-fed canyon that lingered against the thicketed woods, on the edge of utter desolation.
Other than the burbling stream and the occasional owl hoot, there was nothing but silence. Fog hovered over the water, curling wisps of it, and the air was rich with the scent of wet granite and pine. I could see nothing of interest. The Preacher’s campsite was too far away, set back from the shore, closer to the trees.
I had no choice but to descend into the gorge. Stealth seemed wise, but without the headlamp, I slipped a few times, sending dust and rocks flying down ahead of me. I swore under my breath and tried crab-crawling the last stretch, finally giving up and sliding on my ass the rest of the way and breathing a sigh of relief when I touched solid ground.
Walking upstream, I kept my back to the cliff wall so that my body was in shadow. This felt safer, to have cover behind me, and I was glad for the burbling of the creek that masked my halting steps.