But as I watch her walk back down the beach path, I think it probably will be. She’s a journalist in her heart, and when there’s news, she reports it. I think she’ll call this afternoon and let me know the paper is going to print the story. I can picture news anchors around the country saying to their respective audiences, “Remember that viral video we showed you last week about the hero saving the girl from drowning? New information has come to light, and you’ll never guess what it is.”

  I figure I’ll have about twelve hours to get out of town.

  Which means that if I want any sort of life with Claire, I need to tell her the truth.

  It occurs to me that if I left, I’d miss Hannah as much as Claire. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Claire is perfect for me—and the last week has been wonderful. But the heart doesn’t work the way the head does.

  Hannah is far from perfect for me, but if I’m honest with myself, she’s the one I would prefer to be coming home to right now.

  I’m not sure what to do. Break up with Claire? Ask her to run away with me? I take the final steps to my house, going through the words I should say, playing different scenarios in my head.

  But when I walk in the door, Claire is tied to a chair, duct tape strapped over her mouth. There are two men holding guns to her head.

  One of them is a hairless gorilla with tattoo-coated arms.

  The other one is Marco.

  “Hello, old friend,” he says, his lips spreading into a broad, sinister smile.

  Chapter 15

  I step forward with my fists raised, and the hairless gorilla comes at me, ready to fight.

  “Stop,” Marco says, his voice sounding annoyed.

  He presses the barrel of his gun into Claire’s cheekbone. She tries to squirm away, but he keeps the gun hard against her skin.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, raising my hands.

  “Don’t move,” Marco says. “Keep those hands raised.” Then he nods to his partner. “Now, Jasper, you can have your fun.”

  The big guy, Jasper, walks toward me. He’s a good two inches taller than me, making him at least six five. He’s wearing jeans and a Motörhead T-shirt, both pulled tight over a husky, freakishly muscular frame. There isn’t an inch of skin on his bulbous arms not covered in tattoos.

  “I can’t tell if you spend more time at the gym or the tattoo parlor,” I say. “But I can tell you don’t spend much time reading books.”

  Jasper smirks and tucks his pistol into his jeans. It’s a bulky revolver ill-suited for being stuck into jeans, but that’s where he keeps it.

  He circles around behind me and then swings his big fist underneath my raised arms. Pain explodes through my ribs, and air rushes from my lungs. I fall to the floor, holding my side and trying to catch my breath.

  Jasper squats down and drives his sledgehammer hand into my face. I see stars. Blood trickles from one nostril and my lips are bleeding into my mouth. I blink back tears and feel a wave of nausea.

  “Don’t knock him unconscious,” Marco says. “Stick to the body.”

  Jasper does, thundering me with blows to my ribs, stomach, and back. I roll and squirm and try to cover myself, but if I can’t fight back, there’s little I can do.

  “That’s enough,” Marco says, stepping forward to stand over me. I sit up, trying to breathe shallowly so I don’t inflame my bruised—or broken—ribs.

  “You know why I’m here?” he says.

  “To kill me,” I say. “So why don’t you go ahead and get it over with?”

  “I’m here for what you stole from me,” Marco says.

  His hair has grown longer and is pulled back in a ponytail, but otherwise my old partner is unchanged. He’s dressed in a sharp outfit: black shirt and pants, gray sports coat, expensive dress shoes.

  “Marco,” I say. “We both know this was never about the diamonds. You just got your feelings hurt because I was quitting. You didn’t want to be left alone, that’s all this is. You’re a jilted little schoolyard bully, petulant because your best friend dissed you.”

  Marco considers this. “Maybe so,” he says. “But I still want those fucking diamonds.”

  I spit a glob of blood and mucus onto his shoe.

  “Fuck you,” I say, a string of blood hanging from my mouth.

  He takes the butt of his gun and pistol whips me in the forehead. I fall back onto the floor, dizzy and lightheaded, fighting not to pass out.

  “Hey,” Jasper whines. “You said not to hit him in the head.”

  “Do as I say,” Marco says, “not as I do.”

  Blood crawls down my forehead from a fresh gash.

  “Tie him up,” Marco orders.

  Jasper rolls me over and duct-tapes my hands together behind my back. Then he yanks me onto a kitchen chair and wraps my feet to the legs and my arms to the back. He positions me facing Claire, who is tied in the same way except for the added swatch of tape over her mouth.

  They haven’t hurt her as far as I can tell, but she’s clearly traumatized. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are red from crying. Her skin is pale, as if she might be sick at any moment.

  Marco pockets his Beretta inside his shoulder holster, and he pulls out a folding knife with a rubber grip and a curved serrated blade. He kneels next to Claire. He presses the point against her cheek, not quite hard enough to draw blood, but close.

  “Don’t, Marco,” I say.

  “She’s got pretty eyes,” Marco says. “It would be a shame to have to cut them out.”

  “Don’t fucking touch her!”

  Marco turns to me, keeping the blade against her skin. “You see,” he says, “this is what I didn’t have last time we met. Leverage.”

  “Let her go, and I’ll tell you where they are,” I say.

  “No,” Marco says. “Tell me or I hurt her. I won’t kill her, Logan, not yet, but I will hurt her.”

  Last time Marco and I had a standoff, I had all the cards. This time, he does.

  “I hid them at Lake Aloha,” I say, reluctantly. “It’s a lake outside of town. You have to hike there. She and I went up there last week and I got a few.” I gesture with my head toward the bathroom. “They’re in a bottle of ibuprofen in my medicine cabinet.”

  Marco gives Jasper a nod, and the big guy goes into my bathroom. He comes back with a bottle of Advil. He shakes it and the tablets rattle around inside. He opens the bottle and pours maroon pills into his palm. He inspects them and dumps them on the floor. He pours another handful and sifts around in it. He holds his palm for Marco to inspect.

  “Ah,” Marco says, digging two pea-sized diamonds from among the pills. He inspects them, staring obsessively as if he’s caught in a hypnotist’s trance.

  “Here’s another,” Jasper says, and Marco plucks a smaller diamond from Jasper’s meaty hand and holds it up to his eyes.

  “This one would be perfect for an engagement ring,” he quips, ruffling Claire’s hair.

  “The whole bag is up there,” I say. “Three million on the low end. Five if you’ve got the right buyer. Let Claire go, and you can have them all. I’ll take you right to them. You just have to let her go.”

  “No.” Marco shakes his head. “That’s not how we’re going to do this. We’re going up there together, all four of us.”

  Chapter 16

  The van pulls into the parking lot and rolls to a stop in an empty space facing the lake. I sit in the passenger seat, my wrists tied with duct tape. Behind us in the van, Claire sits with her hands and feet bound and tape over her mouth. She is trying not to cry, and failing. Jasper is twirling a lock of her blond hair with his finger.

  “Don’t worry,” I say to Claire, craning my neck to see her. “We’re going to be okay.”

  “That’s true,” Marco says, looking in the rearview mirror. “You’re going to be just fine—if your boyfriend does what he’s told.”

  Marco pulls out his knife. He leans toward me and pauses.

  “Try anything,” he says, “and she dies first. Got it?”

  I say nothing.

  “I want to hear you say it,” Marco says.

  “Got it,” I say.

  Before we left, they cleaned the blood off my face, but there’s still a bruised gash on my forehead, and my lips are swollen and crusted red. They ransacked my hiking equipment, throwing together enough daypacks and water bottles for all of us. I was able to pick a few ibuprofen off the floor with my mouth and dry-swallow them. I have no idea if they’re doing any good. My ribs feel like they’ve been pounded with a meat tenderizer.

  Marco cuts the tape from my hands and yanks it off—and my arm hair with it. Behind us, Jasper is doing the same with Claire. She gasps as he yanks the tape off her face.

  “The rules are very simple,” Marco announces to the whole vehicle. “Logan, if you run off, we kill Claire. Claire, if you run off, we kill Logan. If either of you try to call for help or signal a hiker or ranger or anything like that, we kill both of you. And we kill whoever you try to signal.”

  Marco fixes me with his steel-gray eyes. “Do you believe we’ll do it, old friend?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I believe you.”

  The parking lot is nearly empty, with only a little hustle and bustle from a few employees coming and going from the general store and working on the dock. It looks like the hoopla caused by the newspaper article has already passed.

  The four of us pretend to be friends getting ready for a day hike. Claire is the worst at pretending. She’s shivering, holding her head down, and sniffling. She’s wearing no makeup and looks terrified, but she is still beautiful. Her blond hair is coming loose from being pulled back, and strands hang down around her face.

  It’s true that an hour ago I was considering breaking up with her, thinking about how I might like Hannah more, but she doesn’t deserve to be going through this.

  “It will save us about four miles if we take the water taxi,” I tell Marco.

  Marco looks down at the lake and the trail running alongside it.

  “How long without it?” Marco asks.

  “About eleven miles.”

  “One way?”

  I nod. Claire and I are the only ones dressed for hiking. Before we left my house, I insisted that Marco let us change into comfortable cargo shorts, boots, and lightweight polyester T-shirts. Marco, who is only one shoe size smaller than me, was able to put on a pair of my running shoes, but otherwise his slacks and jacket are completely impractical for hiking. Jasper, in combat boots and jeans, looks more appropriately dressed for a rock concert than a day hiking in the wilderness.

  “We’ll take the boat,” Marco declares. “But if either of you try anything,” he adds, looking back and forth between Claire and me, “we’ll kill the driver and dump him overboard.”

  The driver is a different person this time, a chubby twenty-something with a trucker hat and big stud earrings. We are the only ones in the taxi. When we load onto the boat, I keep expecting the driver to spot Jasper’s gun. Marco’s is well hidden in his shoulder holster, but Jasper’s is only stuck into his jeans with his shirt pulled over. Still, the kid doesn’t notice and doesn’t seem to care that half our group isn’t dressed for hiking.

  As the boat skims across the surface of the lake, the air is colder. Clouds are moving in, covering the sky in murky gray. Claire holds her arms tightly around her body. I can see goose bumps on her legs and arms.

  The boat speeds past the docks of the cabins perched on the granite banks.

  “Can you get to these houses only by boat?” Marco asks me, as if we’re pals and I’m taking him to a new place to hike.

  “Or by foot,” I say.

  Marco frowns. “What about in the winter?”

  “No one lives here year round,” I say. “The lakes are frozen and you’ve got to use cross-country skis to get in and out.”

  The cabins appear to be vacated for the season, except for the one where the girl was drowning. A man is sitting on a deck chair at the edge of the water, reading a book. The father, I assume. He looks up at us and gives a friendly wave.

  At this distance, there’s no way he could recognize me as the man in the newspaper photograph.

  I’m going to die because I saved your daughter, I think. I would be okay with that—to trade my life for hers. The problem is I don’t want Claire to die because of me.

  The boat slows as the driver navigates through a narrow channel to Upper Echo Lake. The water is so clear that we can see trout swimming beneath the boat. A few minutes later at the dock, the boat pilot points to the pay phone.

  “If you guys want a ride back, give us a call,” he says. “The number’s posted. There’s no cell service out here.”

  “We’ll probably hike back,” Marco says.

  There is a subtext to these words. Marco and Jasper will hike back because they don’t want any witnesses to say the boat pilot transported four people into the wilderness but only two came out.

  Chapter 17

  The boat speeds across the water, leaving us alone on the lake’s edge. Claire starts crying, as if she’d been holding out hope that something would happen to keep us from going through with this.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to her, putting all the earnestness into my voice that I can. “I hate myself for putting you in this position.”

  She says nothing, but her eyes communicate all of her emotions: anger, confusion, fear, sadness, and—rising through all those to the surface—a feeling of betrayal.

  Marco insists that I lead and he follow behind. Claire will be between him and Jasper, who will bring up the rear. If we pass another hiker or a ranger, we are supposed to act normal, like we are just four friends out enjoying the day.

  “Don’t forget,” Marco says before we start, “no matter how fast you think you can run, our bullets are faster.”

  We begin hiking uphill. When we pass the wooden sign stating that we are entering Desolation Wilderness, Marco quips, “Sounds ominous.”

  We hike in silence for an hour, and then Marco says, “So, where’d you find the girl, old friend? She’s cute.”

  I don’t answer the question. Instead I say, “Where’d you get your new partner? Mercenaries-R-Us?”

  From the back of the line, I hear Jasper chuckle.

  “Is it love?” Marco continues. “Back when we were pulling jobs, I never figured you for the settling-down type.”

  “Back when we were pulling jobs, I never figured you for the betraying-your-partner type,” I say. “Looks like neither of us ever really knew the other.”

  “I sure as hell don’t know you,” Marco says. “You’ve got millions of dollars in diamonds and you hide them out here in the woods? You live in a shithole when you could be living in a mansion. What the hell are you thinking?”

  Instead of answering, I pick up the pace so Marco will be too out of breath to keep asking questions.

  We hike for two more hours, and then Marco insists we stop at an overlook to rest. The sky is completely overcast now, and the temperature is dropping. There’s a real autumn chill in the air.

  We sit on a fallen tree in the order we hiked, with Marco between me and Claire.

  Marco turns to Claire. “What about for you? Do you love him?”

  She is quiet for a moment and then says, “I did.”

  Marco laughs. “Did you hear that? She did. That’s gotta hurt.”

  I say nothing.

  “How did you meet?” Marco asks Claire.

  “Leave her alone,” I say.

  Marco ignores me and goes back to questioning Claire. “Did you ask him out or did he ask you out? I bet you asked him out. The Logan I knew back in Los Angeles never had the balls to talk to a girl. He’s got movie-star good looks, but he’s got no game with the ladies.” He nudges my arm. “I know you better than you think, old friend.”

  “That’s enough,” I say.

  “He wasn’t good with girls,” Marco says, “but I once saw him beat a guy twice his size unconscious with his bare hands. Your boyfriend was something special back in the day.”

  “That person doesn’t exist anymore,” I say quietly.

  Marco laughs hard.

  Jasper clears his throat and hocks a thick glob of snot and saliva out into the trees.

  “The thing I don’t get,” Marco says to Claire, “is how you never suspected anything. Some strange guy living in Lake Tahoe. No job. A comfortable stream of money. Probably no real friends. None of that struck you as odd?”

  “Leave her alone,” I say again.

  “He really had you fooled, didn’t he?” Marco says. “Are you dumb or was the sex really that good?”

  I rise. “I said leave her alone, Marco.”

  Marco looks up at me from the log, grinning, then he rises slowly. He pulls his Beretta from its holster. He points the barrel at Claire’s head and she twists her face away and puts her hands up, as if they could stop a bullet.

  “Hurt her and I’ll kill you,” I say.

  Marco chuckles. “You’re good, old friend, but there are two of us, and we’ve got the guns.”

  I step back, raising my hands.

  “If you want to save your honeybunch,” he says, “you’ve got to give me those diamonds.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” I say. “Let’s get moving so we can both get what we want.”

  Chapter 18

  I bring them to the same granite slope where Claire and I first kissed a week ago.

  “We’re here,” I say.

  Marco looks around curiously. “Okay, so where are the diamonds?”

  I turn toward the lake and point. “Out there.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll swim out and get them. When I get back, you let Claire go. Deal?”

  “You’re not going out there alone,” Marco said. “Jasper, go with him.”

  I smirk. “Do you have any idea how cold that water is? It’s pure snowmelt. It’s probably not even sixty degrees.”

  Jasper walks to the edge of the water, bends over, and sticks his hand in. He holds it under for four or five seconds and then pulls it out. His hand is red, as if sunburned.

 

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