She’d hidden, she said, when she heard Dawn and Lucas fighting with Warden, and managed to stay hidden as Brandon and Evan riled themselves up for the chase, and after the four Pack members disappeared back up the snowy trail, she’d come out of hiding and gathered what she could and set out to follow.

“No offense,” Brielle says, “but I really didn’t give you and Lucas much hope of getting back to headquarters, not in a storm. But I knew Warden would probably think I left with you, and the others would just forget about me, so I thought I could slip past and, you know, get to safety, while the rest of you fought it out.”

She speaks matter-of-factly, as though this kind of life-or-death disaster is what she normally does for fun, as though two people aren’t already dead and more people want to murder each other.

As though she isn’t talking about leaving Dawn and Lucas to fend for themselves.

But then she kind of smiles at Dawn. “Anyway, I’m glad I found you,” she says. “I didn’t really want you to die.”

They pack up and head out.

It’s an overcast morning and the ridge is covered in fresh snow, but there’s more visibility than yesterday, at least. Dawn can see the spur ridge stretched out in front of them to where it meets the real ridge in the distance. Behind them, somewhere, is the end of the spur ridge, and Lucas.

Dawn tells Brielle about Lucas as they hike. Her ankle is sore, but if she moves slow, she can limp across the rocks on it. Brielle watches her, stays close to Dawn like she’s worried she’ll fall again, and Dawn wonders why the other girl doesn’t just abandon her.

But Brielle isn’t going anywhere apparently, so Dawn tells her about Lucas and the spur ridge and the crevice in the rock and the blood. How Lucas was stabbed and it’s not only Amber they have to try to save now, but him, too.

And Brielle listens with a grim expression, and when Dawn is at the part where she slips and falls and breaks her flashlight, Brielle glances back once more across the terrain toward the end of the spur ridge and shakes her head.

“What a clusterfuck,” she says, and at this point, Dawn is inclined to agree with her.

“You said you left after Warden and the boys,” Dawn says, after they’ve walked a ways in silence. “But I guess you didn’t find them.”

“Not yet,” Brielle replies.

Dawn looks south along the solid spine of rock that marks the trail, two or three more miles over jutting mounds of snowy rock. “Then they’re still out there,” she says, and she shivers but it’s not from the cold. “Ahead of us.”

There’s nothing to do but move cautiously.