The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(35)

“Hey,” I call quietly to Jasper. “Up?”

It’s so dark I can’t see the look on Jasper’s face. Part of me is hoping he’ll say no. That he’ll have another idea.

“Shit, seriously?” he whispers.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No. I don’t have any ideas at all.”

Climbing the tree is way harder than I expected. Not at all like the rock faces with my mom. There we were always sliding over and up, over and up. This is just up, up, up. We aren’t far and already my arms have started to shake. Jasper seems to be having no problem, though, and him being right behind pushes me higher, until finally, he reaches up and puts a hand on my calf.

Stop climbing, the touch says. Don’t make a sound.

Sure enough, there are voices below. Cracking branches and crunching leaves. I pray that the tree holds when I hear Doug’s voice, clear as day.

“Isn’t there some kind of path somewhere?”

I am relieved I didn’t hurt him so bad they had to call an ambulance. And I am also terrified that I left him well enough to come after us.

“There’s trails a ways back, up to the right,” another man says. “We use ’em to hound the bears. That’s where they must be headed. We should cut them off before they get there. On the trails, they’ll be off like a shot.”

“But they’d have no way of knowing the trails are even there,” Doug says quietly. He’s almost right beneath our tree. “They’re not from here.”

“What we need is a warning shot,” a third man says. Younger, more jacked up. Like he’s looking for any excuse to blow something away.

“Sheriff will beat your ass if he catches you firing again outside—”

Bang! Bang! Bang! So loud, so close to my head. I almost let go of the tree.

“Screw the goddamn sheriff.” The young guy laughs stupidly.

“You dumb f*cking—” Doug shouts. “If I wanted to get the police up here, I would have called them myself.”

No police. Because Lexi and Doug do have something to hide. Of course they do. My arms shaking as I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m gripping the tree so hard it feels like my hands might start to bleed. And the way my heart is racing—if Doug doesn’t kill me, passing out from this height surely will.

“Hey, shithead,” the young guy laughs at Doug. He sounds high. “You’re the one who asked for our help.”

“Finding them. Not killing them, you idiot!”

“Listen, you motherf*cking—”

“He’s right,” the older hunter growls. “Knock it off. I’m not getting my ass locked up because of you.”

“Now, come on,” Doug snaps. “Let’s get to that trailhead. Maybe they know this area better than I thought.”

After the flashlights bounce away and the voices fade, Jasper starts back down the tree. My whole body is trembly and weak by the time my feet are back on the ground.

“Good call on the tree,” Jasper says, brushing himself off. “And thanks, you know, for back there. The diner. That was—” He can’t even find words. “No offense, but I wouldn’t have thought you had that in you.”

Like stabbing someone is a thing to be proud of.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” And I don’t. “I want to pretend it never happened.”

“Okay, but he would have killed me. You know that, right?” Jasper asks. “You had no choice.”

“Everyone always has a choice.” All normal people anyway.

“Okay, whatever, feel bad about it then,” Jasper says, sounding annoyed and exhausted. By me. And why would he understand? He doesn’t know what my dad said to me. Doesn’t know how bad it could be if I am a proven danger to others, even if that “other” is Doug. Jasper steps forward into the darkness. Like we’ve already decided which way to go. “I saw a light this way when we were up there. Maybe they’ll let us use their phone.”

We move on, scratching and slipping our way through the rough woods once more. In the darkness, I lose all sense of time. Lose all sense of everything, except the rhythm of the crunching leaves and my shifting feet. Jasper flips on his flashlight app now and then, only long enough to be sure we’re not headed off a cliff. Having to focus so hard on not falling down, not tripping, not getting whacked in the eye with a stick has calmed me. In the midst of the very worst, I am once again at my best. So twisted, and so pathetically true.

“Hey,” Jasper calls after a while. “We should head more to the right.”

When I look up, I can see we have been drifting to the left of the lights. Or light. A single house, it looks like now. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, a little town, maybe, but I can’t help feeling disappointed. We’ll just have to hope that they, whoever they are, are actually good people this time. And not just pretending to be.

I don’t get far left before there’s some kind of dip in front of me. A wide swath of dark that could be a real ditch, a deep one. “Can you flash the light over here? It goes down. I can’t tell how far.”

Jasper flicks on his phone, shining its metallic yellow haze on the branches before panning to the spot in front of me.

And that’s when my eye catches them. At the faded edge of the light. Boots. With someone’s feet in them. Someone right there. Close enough to grab me.