“Did you steal that money?” I asked. Still moving slowly, I wandered across the small clearing until we were only a few feet apart.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Did you hurt that security guard?”

“No,” he said, flinching a bit.

“Did you kill Pug Mattock?”

“Pug? From the bookmobile?” Ryan’s face went slack with surprise. “He’s dead? What happened? The poor guy. And his wife, oh, man.”

I’d already been convinced that Ryan was blameless, but his shocked look would have convinced all but the most hardened of cynics.

“Okay, then,” I said, after giving him a short synopsis of Pug’s death. “I’m not going to tell the cops where you are. I’m not going to tell anyone, not unless you say it’s okay.” I studied him. His brown hair was twice as long as I’d ever seen. But his frame didn’t look any leaner than it had the last time I’d seen him, two and a half weeks ago, the day he’d vanished. “Your mom knows where you are, doesn’t she?”

He quirked up one side of his mouth in a partial smile. “I left my cell back at the house, in case they could track me with it, but I picked up one of those prepaid burner phones to text with. Mom ships food and toothpaste and stuff to a summer place I know is vacant.”

“So you’re okay? But don’t say you’re fine, because no one who’s been hiding out in an honest-to-goodness log cabin with no hot shower could possibly be anything close to fine.”

His partial smile turned into a full-fledged version. “It’s really not that bad,” he said. “Kind of like living in one of those reality shows.”

Sure, only without any backup if something went wrong. Though camping was all well and good, it wasn’t how I’d want to live for very long. But his spirits seemed high enough, so I said, “How did you find this place, anyway?” By this time we were both standing by the cabin’s front door. Technically probably the only door, but still.

“Ian and Felicia hire me to do seasonal work. I helped clear this trail last fall. One day I went off trail to . . . to use the bathroom,” Ryan said, reddening, “and I found this place. Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

He pushed the door open and I peered in. There was room for his small sleeping bag, a collapsible chair, a couple of cardboard boxes of food and supplies, a battery-powered lantern, a camp stove, a small kerosene heater, a bicycle, and absolutely nothing else.

After a moment, I said, “And now you’re going to tell me what this is all about.”