I looked down at him. All that energy he seemed to have when he woke up, that was all just a show. It was for me. Now he was paying for it.
“The lake’s gotta be close now,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
He didn’t move. “Guy and Maskwa,” he said. “A kid and his grandfather. They’re dead, Alex. And we’re next.”
“Get up, Vinnie.” I reached down and hooked my hands under his arms. When I pulled him up, everything went black for a moment. I fought off the dizziness and pushed him forward.
We walked for another hour. There were no words spoken between us. We just kept moving. We met up with the trail again, and saw a perfectly preserved bootprint right in the middle of it. When we crossed over to the other side of the trail, we heard a stream. When we got to it, we both dropped our spears, fell down on the ground, and drank the cold water. If someone had seen us at that moment, he could have walked right up and shot us in the head.
I sat up and splashed the water on my face. It was so cold it hurt. The sun was above us, shining down on us with no warmth at all. It felt like even the sun had abandoned us, another strange thought. I shivered.
“This stream must lead to the lake,” I said.
Vinnie didn’t answer me. He was on his hands and knees, the water dripping from his face.
“Vinnie.”
“Do you hear it?” he said.
“Hear what?”
“The music.”
“Vinnie, there’s no music.”
“The water,” he said. “It’s making music.”
“Don’t leave me, Vinnie. Don’t give up.”
“The water flows from the four hills to the Path of Souls.”
I crawled over to him, grabbed his collar and pulled his shoulders up so he was facing me. The tape was coming off his face. New blood ran down his neck.
“Vinnie, I’m gonna tape you up again. And then we’re gonna go get the guys who killed your brother. Okay? We’re gonna go fuck them up right now.”
His eyes came into focus. “The Path of Souls, Alex. Tom’s already there.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s there. But it’s not your time yet. Or mine.”
He looked into my eyes for a long time. Then he nodded. He pulled the bloody tape off his face without flinching. I dried everything off as well as I could with my shirttail, and then I put new tape on his face while he held his hair back. When I was done, he stood up and gave me his hand to help me up.
Vinnie reached into his pocket and pulled out Tom’s wristwatch. I had forgotten all about it. He wiped some of the mud off the band, touched the hands through the broken crystal. “Let’s go find them,” he said.
I picked up my spear. It was a good heavy stick, with a sharp point on one end. This is what we had. This and the element of surprise.
We followed the stream for the next half hour. The sound of the water running over the rocks was hypnotic. It made me drift off into more memories. The flashing lights on a patrol car, the patterns the lights would make on a wall. Riding on a bus, working a baseball in my hands.
Then, a sudden noise. We both froze. It sounded like something moving in water. A boat, maybe?
We walked slowly, careful not to make any noise, holding our spears with both hands like a pair of primitive hunters. I could see the water now through the trees. The stream ran down a little wash and into the lake, maybe fifty yards away.
We made our way down to the shoreline, hiding behind the thick wall of trees. Finally, we saw what was making the noise.
It was a moose, calmly chewing on a great green mass of water plants. On another day it would have been funny, finally seeing a moose up here.
I let my breath out.
And then I saw the plane in the distance.
“That plane-” Vinnie said. He stood behind the tree next to mine, looking out at the water.
“It’s Gannon’s.”
“That’s what I thought.”
It was a small lake, maybe a quarter mile across. The plane was right in the middle, spinning slowly in the wind. It had to be anchored there. The nose of the plane drifted around toward us.
Somebody was sitting on one of the floats.
“Alex, who is that?”
The bottoms of his boots were just skimming the water. He was wearing a green poncho.
And that hat. I recognized it.
Gannon was right there in front of us, sitting outside his plane. The way his hat was tipped forward, it looked like he was asleep.
“Am I seeing things?” Vinnie said.
“If you are, then I am, too.”
“Is he really just sitting out there taking a nap?”
“If he is, we’ve got to get to him before he wakes up. Think we can swim out there without making too much noise?”
“We don’t have to,” Vinnie said. “Look.”
He pointed to a spot along the shoreline, maybe a third of the way around from where we were standing. A yellow rubber raft was drifting lazily, just a few feet from shore.
“You figure that boat was tied up to the plane?” I said. “And somehow got loose?”
“It looks that way.”
“I don’t like this, Vinnie. It’s too easy.”
“How many men flew in, do you think?”
“Well, if Gannon is involved in all this, then everyone else at the lodge has to be, too, right?”
“You would think,” he said. “Unless-”
“Unless he did this all on his own,” I said. “Or with somebody else we don’t even know.”
“Didn’t Helen say she wasn’t even there at the lodge when they came back?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “And Ron and Millie. Hell, we didn’t talk to them at all. For all we know, Gannon was the only person around that morning.”
“The morning they supposedly left the lodge.”
“Maybe they just assumed he flew them back and saw them off.”
“Gannon brought their stuff back in the plane,” Vinnie said. “He put it all in the Suburban, and then ditched it in the woods by the reserve.”
“There’s gotta be somebody else involved.”
“Yeah, and they’re somewhere around here, waiting to shoot us as soon as we get in that boat.”
“Or else they’re back on the trail,” I said. “Waiting for us there.”
“Or else they’re buried in the ground with my brother.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, could be.”
“So if he’s really here alone, maybe he was up all night, waiting for us. Maybe he really is asleep now.”
“In which case we’d better do something before he wakes up.”
“So which is it?” he said. “Is this a trap? Or is this our only chance?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Vinnie,” I said. “What does your gut tell you right now?”
“It tells me this is all a setup. How about you?”
I looked out at the lake-the plane slowly turning, Gannon on the float, his hat turned down, the rubber raft
