Warden turns to see where she’s pointing. It’s the tallest peak in sight, just jagged rock reaching high into the clouds, mottled with little patches of snow here and there. There does not seem to be any easy way up, at least not anything visible at this distance, and just looking at it makes Dawn’s stomach feel queasy.

Lucas was right. It’s a scary freaking mountain.

But if Warden’s afraid, he doesn’t show it. “You mean the Raven’s Claw?” he asks her. “You call that Fart Mountain?”

“I don’t,” Dawn hastens to assure him. “It’s—that’s what Lucas called it.”

“Oh. Lucas.” Warden’s lip curls into something like a smirk. “Yeah, I guess that checks out.”

They look across the ridge toward where Lucas is hiking with Alex about a hundred feet away. As if he can hear them, Lucas stops and turns around, stares back at them, shading his eyes. He sees Dawn and then he sees Warden, and he doesn’t look happy about it.

The two guys kind of stare at each other for a beat, and it’s awkward AF.

“Why do you call it Raven’s Claw?” Dawn asks Warden, to break the silence.

Warden blinks. “Because that’s what it’s called,” he says, forgetting about Lucas. “I stole the counselors’ map once. That’s what it was labeled.”

That answer makes enough sense that Dawn momentarily misses the obvious follow-up question. “Wait, you stole the map?” she asks after a beat. “Do you still have it?”

Warden shakes his head. “Photographic memory, though.”

“So you know where we are?”

“I know where we are, and I know where we’re going,” Warden tells her. Then he smirks again. “And I know how to get us out of here, too.”

Chapter 32

DAWN HAS SO MANY QUESTIONS:

1. “How did you steal the map?”
2. “Are you seriously planning to escape?”
3. “Why don’t you just wait and graduate?”
4. “What if you die?”

—

But mostly:

1. “Will you take me with you?”

—

She doesn’t get a chance to ask any questions, though, because it’s about at this point that Christian comes back up the trail to see what’s taking them so long.

“What’s taking you so long?” he demands. “You’re holding everyone up.”

Warden is unfazed. “Just fixing her straps, dude,” he says. “Don’t have a conniption.”

Christian looks like he wants to argue the point, or at least the tone of the point. He doesn’t, though. “Get a move on,” he grumbles, and turns to lurch back along the ridge. “We don’t want to be up here at nightfall, I promise you that.”

Dawn watches the counselor retreat. Even Christian is intimidated by Warden, she realizes. If anyone can escape this place, maybe it’s him?