“If you had been reasonable, we wouldn’t be here. But here we are.” She hit the emergency brake again, and the elevator shrieked into motion. “We need Trey, and we need him now.”

“I refuse to work with that asshole, and you should too. He’s not like us, Cal. He’s so stupid, he’s dangerous.”

“I didn’t realize I had been promoted to your category.”

“I haven’t told anyone but you about this plan,” I whispered. “And I won’t. I know this might make me an idiot, but I trust you.”

Cal took one step toward me then, followed by another, and another, until she was close enough that I could see each one of her eyelashes. The elevator was small, but the space we took up inside it was so much smaller.

She traced the seam of my belt with her fingertips, and rubbed the leather against itself like she was starting the slowest of fires.

“Cal,” I said, swallowing.

“I trust you too. And I want to help you, Pey. I do. But this thing we’re doing?” She paused long enough for her bottom lip to go between her teeth before pulling it, slowly, free. “It only works if the trust goes both ways.”

The elevator door dinged and, just like that, she was back on her side.

“Let’s talk to Trey,” she said, rubbing my stolen paper between her fingertips, the universal sign for currency, “and we can all get what we want.”

SILAS

SILAS LUGGED ANOTHER BAG of rocks from the trunk. He could get the car only so far into the woods, but it was worth it, he thought as he wiped dirt and sweat from his forehead. The place had been a robbed grave for too long.

The first time he built the firepit was with Philip. He could almost see the way his brother wrinkled his nose in concentration as he selected the best of the rocks that Silas pried from the dirt with his grubby little hands and delivered, arms outstretched. This was going to be their place, Philip said with each discarded option. Just theirs. So it had to be perfect. Silas dug until he couldn’t feel his fingers that day and cried when the sun went down.

He tore open the bag of rocks, ignoring the nagging feeling of inadequacy for buying them from Home Depot. He was an adult now. He couldn’t spend a whole day pulling rocks like old teeth from the soil. He used his hands to dig into the middle of the firepit, sifting through wet leaves and ash until he hit aluminum, which he pulled out and threw over his shoulder into an open garbage bag. And then again. And again, and again. It was like meditating, he thought. At the very least, he was communing with nature.