Dance was at my elbow. He lifted Starla out of the women’s arms, and reached for my hand. I reached for Grayson. We ran together, slowed by the baby and Grayson’s cast. I saw hands appear from trees, ropes fall down like snakes. Someone lowered a big bucket and we loaded Starla inside. She clung to the handle and rose. Jamey clambered up the tree alongside her, helped by the handholds nailed to the trunk. I climbed after her, pulling myself to the platform at the top. I reached back for Grayson, and hauled him up, his boot clunking onto the tree stand. Dance was just behind him.

But then there was no more room. Where were the women, Jamey’s friends? I had thought they were right behind us. But they didn’t come up the tree. I waited, watching.

We were already crowded, all of us plus a stranger: the one who had lowered the bucket, a boy with a bright blue mohawk. Then Mica rolled onto the platform, smooth and effortless, like she was getting into bed. She lay on her shoulder on the edge of the deer stand, keeping us back from the ledge.

The women didn’t come up behind her. Maybe they had run to another tree.

“Don’t say a word,” Mica said.

The wind rattled through the treetops. It was strange not to hear even the pop of a fire. Something, a sheet of metal from one of the half-built houses or a loose plank of wood, beat against a trunk. It reminded me of a school flagpole, clanging in the breeze.

Voices came from below. Shouting, a whistle through fingers. Over Mica’s shoulder, I could see only a small square of the camp. But I could see when the men walked into the clearing.

Two men. I didn’t recognize them, but Jamey did. She sucked in her breath.

Mica said, “Shh.”

Jamey looked away from the edge. She had lifted Starla from the bucket and was holding her tightly, hiding her face. If she couldn’t see the men, maybe they couldn’t see her.

I knew that trick. I had done it so many times when Lobo came home. Hiding from him in the woods. In my own house, hiding from men—not even wanting to glimpse them at the door, believing, though I knew this not to be true, if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t find me.

These were Jake’s men, then.

“Hellooooo?” one of the men called from below.

“Swear to Jesus, I smell a fire.”

“That tree fence sure didn’t make itself, whatever the fuck that was.”

I heard boots kicking rocks, scattering leaves. One of the men threw something and it bounced off a tree. Then I heard a shriek. Female.