“You’re welcome,” Caesar says, leaning me back against an outcropping of stone. I hear zippers and Velcro tearing open, and then Caesar is lifting my tank top, peeling it away from the wound. I feel a slight stick in my side, and then Caesar is unwrapping something. “Clean through-and-through shot,” he says. “Maybe a .22.”

“He used that,” I say, gesturing toward the rifle on the ground.

Caesar glances at it, then starts wrapping a compression bandage around my waist, gauze covering the two holes. “Where’s Verne?”

“He went over the edge. What did you give me?”

“Ketamine,” Caesar says, tightening the compression bandage and securing it. “A very small dose. You should be feeling it soon.”

“Where’s Finn?”

Caesar shakes his head. “Don’t know. I was chasing Verne through the woods.”

I grab the rifle and use it as a crutch to get to my feet. “We’ve got to find Finn.”

“You need to go to a hospital. Are those knife wounds on your arms?”

“They’re superficial.”

“That gunshot isn’t.”

I walk carefully down the rock face in the direction Verne fell and peer over the edge of the slope where it starts becoming precipitous. Below me I see Verne in a heap against a chain-link fence that stretches across the slope, a final safety barrier between hikers and the open cliff face that plunges hundreds of feet below. Even from here I can see the slashes in his hands and face from the drone rotors.

Caesar comes up beside me. “We’re lucky there was fog this morning. Otherwise he could’ve picked us off easy.”

“You did a pretty good number on him with the drone.”

“That was Frankie. He got the drone airborne to try and find Finn.”

I reach for my earpiece and realize it’s gone. Must have fallen out at some point when I was fighting with Finn. I wondered why I hadn’t heard anyone talking. “I told Frankie to get Tane off the mountain.”

“He’s doing that now,” Caesar says. “Please, let’s go to a hospital.”

“Tell Ethan and Uncle Gavin to keep an eye out for Finn,” I tell him. “Maybe he went down in the cable car.”

“Suzie, there are gonna be cops all over this mountain in a few minutes. I guarantee there are cops down below with the cable car. Finn isn’t going anywhere.”

“I’m not taking that chance.”

“You might have internal bleeding. You need a doctor. Let’s sit down and keep an eye on Verne down there. I’ll tell Ethan and your uncle to get the cops and a medic.”