They reached Solano’s cabin five long minutes later. It sat to the right of the path, little more than a tenebrous mass huddled amongst the trees, unwelcoming. It featured a crude open porch sheltering a drunkenly leaning door. No windows adorned the exterior, only dolls, all banging about animatedly in the wind.

Jack, still carrying Rosa, started toward it.

“Wait,” Nitro hissed. He set Lucinda on a grassy patch of ground, gestured everyone closer so he didn’t have to shout to be heard, and said, “We need to check it out first. Make sure it’s all clear. I’ll go.”

“I’ll come,” Jack said.

“No, stay here and keep watch.”

Without another word, Nitro approached the cabin. He stopped in front of the closed door, pressed his ear to it. He waited, a motionless silhouette. Then he pushed open the door and disappeared inside.

“I don’t like this,” Pita said.

“It’ll be dry inside,” Jesus said.

“It feels like a trap.”

“What feels like a trap, Pita? It’s just a—”

“Shhh!” Elizaveta said. Because she thought maybe Pita was right. The cabin appeared not only sinister but…wrong? This was a feeling, nothing more. Still, the sight of the ramshackle place gave her the creeps.

Thunder boomed overhead, though no one took their eyes from the gaping door and the blackness beyond it.

The seconds dragged. Elizaveta blinked water from her eyes and wondered what was taking Nitro so long. The cabin wasn’t that big. He only had to poke his head in the different rooms. Had the killer been waiting inside for him then? Had he ambushed him, taken him out silently? Was he waiting for the rest of them to investigate?

Elizaveta looked at the others. Only Jack looked back at her. He seemed uneasy as well.

“I’ll check,” he said quietly. He set Rosa down.

“No,” she said. “We should go together—”

Nitro shouted a curse.

8

Something small and black darted out the cabin’s door and past Jack’s legs. It brushed Elizaveta’s right ankle before vanishing into nearby vegetation.

A cat, Elizaveta thought, her heart pounding. Just a cat.

“What the fuck?” Jack said. He had already stepped inside the cabin and was presumably speaking to Nitro.

Jesus and Pepper and Pita piled in behind him. Elizaveta glanced at Lucinda’s inert body lying on the ground in the rain. But she couldn’t move the woman by herself. Nitro or Jack would have to get her. She took Rosa’s hand and entered the cabin as well.

It was nearly pitch black—nearly, because Elizaveta could make out what Jack was pointing at.

Nitro held a semiautomatic pistol in his hand.

He slipped off his backpack and dumped the weapon inside the main pocket.

“Why do you have a fucking gun?” Jack said.

“Why do you think?” he said. “For protection.”