Whether it’s endorphins kicking in or the ketamine, I don’t feel so terrible all of a sudden. I lower myself to the stone and let Caesar take the rifle. I look up at the sky, squinting. The sun is bleary, like a light bulb held up behind a gauzy curtain, but it’s there. And the fog is beginning to clear, like I knew it would, and the gray line that was at the horizon is now turning blue. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It turns out Verne’s little .22-caliber round perforated my large intestine, which leaked some of its contents into my abdominal cavity and led to a lovely case of peritonitis. To my everlasting regret, Ethan can now say that, for at least a short time, I really was full of shit.

Thankfully I’m in the hospital when the doctors catch it. The surgery to repair my bowel is relatively easy, although when I wake up in a recovery cubicle, a thin curtain drawn around my bed and bright lights shining down, all my fears of hospitals rush me at once. I panic and try to get out of bed, ripping off one of several wires attached to me, which causes a monitor to start beeping as if agitated. Two nurses get me back in bed as I gibber and weep, and finally someone knocks me out with a shot.

When I wake up again, I am in a proper hospital room, sunlight glazing the blinds. Ethan is sitting next to my bed, eyes closed, mouth open.

“Wakey-wakey,” I croak.

Ethan starts, nearly knocking over a vase of flowers on the table next to him. “Hey,” he says, wiping his face. “What. Huh?”

“You’re hilarious,” I say. My mouth and throat are dry and my tongue is coated in a sticky film. “Get me some ice chips or I’ll stab someone.”

Ethan stumbles out of the room and returns with a plastic cup of ice chips, which he places in my mouth one at a time.

“This is the most inefficient way to drink water ever,” I say.

“That’s why you have an IV. Open up.”

I part my lips so Ethan can slip another ice chip into my mouth, where I let it melt on my tongue. “Where’s Finn?”

“I need a shower,” Ethan says, rubbing his face. He looks paler than usual, his red hair in unruly spikes.

“Where is he, Ethan?”

Ethan shakes his head. “Uncle Gavin and I waited at the trailhead, long after you got brought down the safety road by the fire rescue folks. We were watching for him. But he never came down that trail. Didn’t come down the cable car, either. The cops searched every inch of that mountain and found nothing.”