The path widens again but becomes rockier, as if I’m walking in a long-dry creek bed. Then the trees fall away and I’m in a wide clearing of smoothed stone that looks like poured concrete. Power poles carrying electric cables march straight up the slope. I feel my shoulders hunch forward protectively. This is the most open area so far; if Verne is close enough to see through the fog with a scope, I’m an easy target. I still don’t see the drone. Then I’m back in the trees and I release a breath I’ve been holding. Just as I’m thinking about calling Finn back, my phone rings. “Yes?” I say.

“Feels like you’re exposed when you cross those open areas, doesn’t it?” Finn says.

“You like trying to play mind games, don’t you?”

“Oh, this is no game.”

“Sure it is,” I say, reaching out to grab a young pine tree trunk and pull myself up the trail. “You want to show you’re in control, you have eyes on me, yada yada. Just remember I’m bringing you your money. You keep your end of the bargain, I’ll keep mine.”

Finn is silent for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is flat. “In about a hundred feet you’ll come to another clearing. Once you step out of the trees you’ll see three flat rocks on the right-hand side of the trail. Directly across from them is a bush. I’ve left something for you in that bush.” He ends the call.

I walk on, uneasy. When I step into the clearing, I see the flat stones he’s talking about, the bush across from them. The couple holding hands is still ahead of me, but they’re at the far end of the clearing. I see no one on the trail behind me. I take a knee and look in the bush. Maybe Finn left a rattlesnake for me. Then I see in the center of the bush a bright blue box, the kind you would open to find a ring inside. It’s clean, so it hasn’t been here long. I pluck it out and look around. Short pines stand vigil around the clearing. Through the fog I still don’t see anyone below me on the trail.

I open the box. What lies inside could be an old, flattened apricot, except for the neatly sliced edge that has seeped blood onto the cotton below, blood that is now dried and almost black. It’s a human ear. An ear missing its lower lobe.

There is a high, faint whir and I look up to see the drone hovering just above the tops of the pines at the bottom of the clearing.