Something Wilder

“I don’t understand.” But Lily was worried that she did, in fact, understand. They’d already known that Terry came to get Duke’s journal. But to think Terry had accomplices? That their group was being followed? A shiver ran through her when she remembered the cigarette butt, the rustling at night. She’d been so distracted by Leo and the possibility of what Duke had done that she’d let down her guard. “Son of a bitch.”

Leo shook his head, stunned as he read through the texts again. “They think Terry has double-crossed them,” he said. He looked up, and then scanned the vast canyon below. “Whatever plan B is, they could be anywhere.”

“If they were following us…” she said. “If there’s any way they know where we were headed…”

“Then they might have beaten us there,” he finished, turning to face her.

His eyes pulled to hers. The race was on.

Chapter Twenty-Five

IF THEY HAD been in a hurry before, it was nothing like this. The competitive fever that blew through them was palpable, turned Leo’s vision wavy as they scrabbled down the cliff. Ankles, knees, and elbows collided with rock and thorny brush—skin and joints be damned. They’d been through too much to lose, and knowing someone was on their tail—knowing someone else believed just as fervently that there was treasure to be found—lit a white-hot fire under their asses.

They didn’t talk much. Leo worked on committing the photo to memory and Lily looked around and behind them a lot. She seemed to have a solid map of the river in mind now that she’d seen it from above. They tried to stay on as much of the flat rock terrain as they could, but eventually had to go farther down, into the more varied and green landscape near the water. They got to the river’s edge and hiked over small boulders, through marshy patches—leaving as few tracks as possible—and once Lily started searching for a good place to cross, he knew they must be close. Ahead of them was a wide bend, curving sharply enough to the left that it hid the river upstream from view.

Lily stopped just before it, at a section with fast-moving—but relatively shallow—water.

“This is probably our best bet,” she said. “Belly of the three.” She squinted out at the water. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I’ve been down here a hundred times and don’t remember seeing a cabin. But there must be one at that bend.”

He remembered the section she meant, remembered looking at it on a map and wondering how some of the land in between hadn’t been completely washed out in high-water years. The turns of the river at that point were a white-water rafter’s dream, and the slot canyons hugging the river there had been carved and recarved over centuries into intricate, lacelike mazes. It was the perfect place to hide something: without detailed, specific directions, it would be next to impossible to find their way in, and even harder in the near darkness to find their way back out again. Urgency and excitement were twin mallets: Go. Faster. Go faster.

Lily gazed down at the water with a wariness Leo could see her trying to fight.

“Take your time,” he reminded her.

“We don’t have time.”

“We absolutely have time to cross carefully.”

With their first step, ice-cold water rushed over their ankles, submerging their boots.

“I guess dry feet are out,” Leo said.

At its highest point, the water reached his knees, but even so the current was fast and strong. He held on to Lily’s hand and, with their eyes on the opposite riverbank, they made it across without incident.

She didn’t bother to consult a map again, just charged upriver, ducking into a tangle of cottonwoods, hugging the line of the red rock to her right. After another half a mile or so, worry grew in Leo’s chest. Without the distraction of conversation or kissing, the reality of what they were doing seemed to press down on his brain, pins into a pincushion. Really, what were the odds anything remained out there? Who was Terry working with, and how many of them were there? Why had Terry brought Bradley, Leo, and Walter along when he could have set up a trip with Wilder Adventures on his own? Even if Leo and Lily were a half day ahead, how long would it take them to crack the code? How long until they could—

“You’re too quiet,” Lily said, holding a cluster of thorny branches back so they didn’t whip into his leg when she passed through. “Are you freaking out?”

“Yes.”

She laughed, peeking at him over her shoulder. “Me too. But we’re in too deep.”

“Way too deep,” he agreed.

Still… he couldn’t imagine where a structure would even be. Where the landscape was open, it was wide open: rocks, low sagebrush. And where it was narrow, it was tight: high-walled canyons and claustrophobic shadows. So he nearly ran into her back when Lily stopped abruptly.