Ready with the knife, she turned away from the stream, stepped warily over patches of leaves, and headed toward her best chance to survive.

• • •

MAX RECALLED WHAT RAMBO HAD said in the second movie.

The best weapon’s the human mind.

Yeah, right.

The guy’s got a body like a chunk of granite and he wants to talk about his mind. But he decided the advice was good. He didn’t know the first damned thing about chasing someone through a forest the way Rambo did, with his bow and arrow and knife like fucking Tarzan. It didn’t matter. All he needed to do was be smart.

And use his phone.

He assumed that, when the outburst of Rambo music had suddenly ended, it meant that Sansborough had put Rudy’s phone on mute. Not that it mattered. He and Rudy had each installed the “find” app on their phones, adding each other to the lists. When he opened the app and told it what to look for, son of a bitch, a map appeared. A dot showed that Rudy’s phone was to his left, heading toward the lodge.

He knew what that meant.

She was trying to get to a gun.

He almost raced in that direction, but couldn’t do that without making a lot of noise and warning her.

Be smart.

He picked up a rock and hurled it high into the air, throwing it as far as he could, way beyond where he estimated Sansborough might be. The rock crashed down through mist-cloaked branches, snapping twigs, thumping onto the ground and bouncing. Its trajectory was almost straight down. He hoped it would make Sansborough unable to guess from which direction it had been thrown. He used that noise to hide any sounds that he himself made while he simultaneously moved parallel toward where Sansborough was.

That’s smarter than Rambo.

When he saw that the dot on his screen came to a stop in reaction to the noise from the rock, he grinned and hurled another in that direction, high and far. Again, he used the crashing, snapping noise to prevent her from hearing him step carefully toward the lodge.

Definitely.

Smarter than Rambo.

He tossed another rock.

With luck, he’d be waiting when she crossed the parking lot.

• • •

WHEN SIMON SAW THE HIGHWAY 55 road marker, he resisted the urge to drive faster, needing all his strength of will to continue to blend with the stream of traffic. If a policeman stopped him and wondered why he was driving a car that wasn’t registered to him, if the policeman used that excuse to search the vehicle and looked in the trunk, it would all be over.

His phone chimed.

Another text coming through.

Again he felt pressure in his chest as he looked toward the seat next to him and saw that Rudy Voya had sent a new message.

NE OF MARSDON. A LODGE.

• • •

ANOTHER ROCK CRASHED THROUGH UNSEEN branches beyond Liz, breaking twigs and crunching down onto leaves.