“Lewis,” she called.

“Coming.” He shifted his light and slipped through the brush.

She turned her bright beam down the steepening decline, searching for another sign. “There.” A long divot in the low evergreen shrubs, twenty yards ahead. “You see it?”

“Got it.” Lewis picked up speed and passed her effortlessly.

She crashed in his wake. The scrub was thick now. Bushes tangled her feet. Blackberry canes snatched at her clothes and scraped her skin. Then she was beside him in the spiky junipers, looking at a swath of cracked branches. She leaned in, found a dark spot on a hard stem, and touched it. Her finger came away red.

As she turned her light toward the lake, Lewis put his arm out across her shoulders, stopping her.

They were at the edge of a high drop.

Below them was nothing but water.

She swept her beam across the surface. “Peter,” she called. “Peter!”

Because the surface was forgiving, the water was in some ways the best possible landing place. But it was also the worst, because if he was unconscious when he hit, he could have drowned. If he was lucky, the shock of the cold water might have woken him. It depended on how hard he’d banged his head, and whether his body was still intact enough to swim.

Lewis tugged at her arm. “We need to get down there. This way.” Farther to the right, the slope eased toward a tree-lined drainage. They followed it down to the lake.

They found Peter on the muddy bank, his boots still in the lapping shallows, his cheek planted in the dirt.

“Hey, Marine.” She knelt beside him in the mud. His cheek was cold. “Marine! Wake up!”

No response. Lewis was beside her. “Been here a couple of hours. Wet clothes, probably hypothermic. Help me roll him.”

They got Peter on his back and laid him flat, then Lewis put a finger to Peter’s neck. “Got a pulse.” He put his hand flat on Peter’s chest, feeling for rise and fall. “Shallow, but he’s breathing.” He ran his hands gently around Peter’s skull and neck, then down his limbs and torso, including the armpits and groin, periodically checking his fingers for blood. “No major head trauma, no sign of massive bleeding, no compound fractures.”

June bent over him. “Should we move him?”

“I ain’t waiting on the locals.” Lewis stripped off his jacket, a matte-black high-tech raincoat. “Let’s get this on him. It’ll help keep his heat until we get to the car.”

When they sat him up, he mumbled something. She grabbed his face in both hands. “I’m here, Peter. Lewis is here.”

Peter’s eyelids were at half-mast. He voice was thin, and he sounded a little drunk. “Helene,” he said. “Find Helene. He took her.”

“First things first.” June picked up Peter’s arm and tried to fish it through a coat sleeve.

“Sleep,” he mumbled, and pushed June’s hand away.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” She grabbed his nose and twisted.