“Looks that way. And that fishing line you found’s too light to do any serious fishing. I think he’s using it for trip wires to set off the device. Go slow. Look for traps. If you see something that looks like a clue just remember that it might be rigged.”

“Will do, Rhyme.”

“Sit tight. I hope to have some directions for you soon.”

Garrett and Lydia had covered another three or four miles.

The sun was high now. It was noon maybe, or close to it, and the day was hot as a tailpipe. The bottled water that Lydia had drunk at the quarry had quickly leached from her system and she was faint from the heat and thirst.

As if he sensed this Garrett said, “We’ll be there soon. It’s cooler. And I got more water.”

The ground was open here. Broken forests, marshes. No houses, no roads. There were many old paths branching in different directions. It would be almost impossible for anyone searching for them to figure out which way they’d gone—the paths were like a maze.

Garrett nodded down one of these narrow paths, rocks to the left, a twenty-foot drop off to the right. They walked about a half mile along this route and then he stopped. He looked back.

When he seemed satisfied that no one was nearby he stepped into the bushes and returned with a nylon string—like thin fishing line—that he ran across the path just above the ground. It was nearly impossible to see. He connected it to a stick, which in turn propped up a three-or four-gallon glass bottle, filled with a milky liquid. There was some residue on the side and she got a whiff of it—ammonia. She was horrified. Was it a bomb? she wondered. As a nurse on ER duty she’d treated several teenagers who’d been hurt making homemade explosives. She remembered how their blackened skin had actually been shattered by the detonation.

“You can’t do that,” she whispered.

“I don’t want any shit from you.” He snapped his fingernails. “I’m gonna finish up here and then we’re going home.”

Home?

Lydia stared, numb, at the large bottle as he covered it with boughs.

Garrett pulled her down the path once more. Despite the increasing heat of the day he was moving faster now and she struggled to keep up with Garrett, who seemed to get dirtier by the minute, covered with dust and flecks of dead leaves. It was as if he were slowly turning into an insect himself every step they got farther from civilization. It reminded her of some story she was supposed to read in school but never finished.

“Up there.” Garrett nodded toward a hill. “There’s a place we’ll stay. Go on to the ocean in the morning.”