Thing is, there isn’t much food left. Dawn manages to salvage a couple of canteens and a pot. Emergency matches. Some energy bars and some trail mix, a pack of rehydration gummy candies. Two backpacker meals—Santa Fe Chicken and Bombay Delight—and three packages of instant oatmeal. She leaves the lentils.

It’s not much food for a solid two-day hike. Dawn knows she’ll be starving by the time she gets to headquarters, but so be it. Those Out of the Wild office nerds can cook her a freaking buffet when she gets there.

Dawn zips up her backpack. Buckles it closed. Lifts it onto her shoulders and fastens the straps. It’s lighter without her tarp and the books and her sleeping bag, so that’s a plus. All that remains is to take the first step, and the next.

All that remains is to Do the Right Thing.

But of course it’s never that easy.

Chapter 73

DAWN’S CREEPING PAST the other tents when she sees him. Warden, sitting at the remains of last night’s fire, now just smoldering, flickering charcoal and ash.

Smoke, and cold rain.

Warden’s sitting on a log with his hoodie pulled up. At first, he looks like a statue, or any one of the boys, but then a log pops and blows sparks in the air, and Dawn can see that it’s Warden.

And she can see that he’s watching her.

“What are you doing?” Warden asks. He stares at her, not moving, his face half engulfed in shadow and his voice chillingly calm. Beside him on the log sits Christian’s knife and Amber’s bear spray. Dawn tries not to focus on the knife, tries to meet Warden’s eyes.

She doesn’t say anything, and Warden picks up the knife. He stands and walks toward her. “Dawn?” he says. “I asked you a question.”

Dawn is terrified.

Naturally.

She feels her whole body start to shake involuntarily and she prays that Warden can’t tell. His face dissolves into shadow as he moves away from the fire, and he’s just a silhouette and the silhouette is holding a knife.

Dawn swallows and tries not to look scared. “Where did you get that knife?” she asks.

Warden glances down at the blade in his hand. “This thing?” he says. He studies it, absentmindedly. Turns the blade over in his hand, watching how it catches the light. “It’s Christian’s knife.”

“I know that,” Dawn says. “So how did you…?”

Warden looks up sharply. Dawn can’t see his eyes, but she can tell they’re boring into her, reading her soul. “I took it from him,” he says. “On the top of the Claw.”

It’s at that moment Dawn knows that Christian is dead.