She shoved it away.
Five hundred feet up, they stopped to rest, sitting in six inches of powder on a rock outcropping, Abigail between her father and Isaiah, watching the snowflakes swarm in the beam of her headlamp, all four of them practically panting in the thin air.
In a lull between wind gusts, Lawrence looked over at Jerrod, said, “So Scott told you what we were looking for up here? Was he gonna cut you in but you double-crossed him? That the deal?”
As Jerrod passed a water bottle down the line, he shook his head. “Month ago, I left Hinterlands, Inc. for the day, got to my Bronco, and realized I’d forgot my keys. When I came back in, Scott was on the phone, feet propped on his desk, talking to you about the logistics of transporting a ton of gold through seventeen miles of wilderness. It got my attention.”
“So all of this, two people dead, ’cause you forgot your keys.”
“Ain’t life some shit?” Isaiah said. “Tell me, Larry. I did some research on this ghost town before I came out here, but since you the professor, what the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you got a theory or something.”
“Yeah.”
“So share that shit.”
“No, I don’t—”
“I ain’t asking. What you think wiped this town out?”
Lawrence hesitated, said, “I figured an act of God.”
“You mean something supernatural?”
“No, I mean I thought God wiped them out. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone raining from the sky, the angel of darkness. Nothing else made sense.”
“That’s cold.”
“Yeah, well—”
“But I like it. Read the Old Testament. Back in the day, God used to do that shit all the time.”
Abigail took her drink of water, glancing at Isaiah.
“Could I ask you something, Isaiah?” she said.
“Sure, we can friend up for a little while. You know, I’m actually a great guy. You met me under any other circumstance, you’d probably love my ass.”
Strangely enough, she believed him, imagined meeting him at her local gym, developing a flirtatious banter on neighboring rowing machines.
“Were you and your partners in Iraq together?”
Isaiah swiped the water bottle out of her hand, took a drink, wiped his mouth.
“Force Recon.”
“Desert Storm or—”
“Iraqi Freedom.”
“I just wondered, because on the hike in, I noticed Jerrod has post-traumatic stress—”
“We all got that shit.”
Jerrod turned, and she could see his eyes narrowed under the bulb of his headlamp, considered the possibility that she’d misread him, that he might be capable of killing her.
“Why would you talk to her about that?”
“Chill out, my man.”
“You saw combat?” Abigail asked.
“Christ, Isaiah. Tell her to shut the—”
“Yeah, we got into some shit.”
“What happened?”
“Our unit slipped into southern Iraq in the weeks leading up to the major offensive.”
“Ize, not fucking around here. What are you—”
“Jerrod, my therapist says it’s healthy to talk about it. Bad for you to hold this shit in.”
“You’re crazy.” Jerrod got up and walked away.
“The navy had bombed hell out of a Republican Guard division about a hundred twenty-five miles southeast of Baghdad, in the city of Kut. We were sent in a day later with the objective of confirming that no enemy combatants or artillery had survived the attack, greasing the skids for the invasion.
“Our CH-forty-six set down on this ridge just before dawn, and soon as we touched ground, we started taking
