Dryden had two pistols in the Explorer: the one he’d taken from the gaunt man in Malibu, and the one Danica’s stepfather had owned. Each was loaded, with a round in the chamber. He had one in the glove box and one in the center console tray, a few inches from his right hand. He took hold of the latter and tucked it out of view beneath his right leg—he could still get to it in an instant.

“Let’s not assume the worst,” Danica said. There was tension in her voice.

“Always be ready for it, though.”

Twenty feet from the Explorer the two men split up, one moving toward each side of the vehicle.

Dryden buzzed his window down. He rested his right hand on the outside of his thigh, an inch above the grip of the concealed pistol, and waited.

The man that came to the driver’s side door was in his sixties. He had close-cropped hair, which was bone white, and a goatee centered on a weathered face. He wore glasses that were about twenty years out of style.

“Folks lost?” the man asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Dryden said.

The guy stared at him for a moment, processing that answer. Finally the man said, “What’s your business up here?”

“Russell Moss.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want to see him about?”

“That’s between us and him.”

“Not yet it isn’t. Not while I’m in your way.”

Dryden started to reply to that, but Danica set a hand on his shoulder before he could speak. She leaned across him to look at the older man. He stooped down to see her through the open window.

Danica nodded toward the distant car. “Is that a C.B. antenna?”

Dryden looked. Danica had good eyes; the slender mast of the antenna was just visible, centered on the vehicle’s roof.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you call the camp and talk to Moss?”

The man frowned. “Want to tell me what this is about?”

“Tell him Richard Ellis’s daughter wants to see him,” Danica said. “That should be good enough.”

The guy frowned, thinking it over.

“Please,” Danica said.

The man’s gaze went back and forth between her and Dryden for another few seconds, and then he stood upright and walked back toward the sedan. The other man followed. The two of them got back into the vehicle and shut the doors, and for a long time nothing else happened. Dryden imagined the radio call going through. Imagined the reply, and whatever exchange followed it.

Five long minutes passed. Neither he nor Danica spoke. They just sat there, waiting, watching the road beyond the parked car.