We pile into the SUV, Jonathan up front, and me sandwiched between the girls in back. Once everyone else is in, Blake goes to the Charger and hands the cell phones off to Cooper. They talk for a minute, then Blake climbs into the Escalade. He spares us the country music as he navigates us onto the highway, and we head south.
“Where are we going?” Jonathan asks, and I smile when Blake says, “It’s a surprise.”
I turn to Izzy. “How’s everyone else from Benny’s?”
“Pete’s good,” Izzy answers. “Got a gig at a new club in the Tenderloin. Jen got a job at Denny’s, and Steph moved back in with her parents up north. I haven’t seen anyone else.”
Ginger goes on and on about how shutting down flesh markets like Benny’s is another step toward true equality for women, and the girls catch me up on everything as Blake drives. I pretend not to notice his frequent glances in the rearview at me.
“Did he tell you where we’re going?” I ask Izzy after about an hour on the road, as the Sierras start to loom to our left.
She shakes her head.
Ginger hands Jonathan’s guitar over the seat to him, and he plays us the song he’s writing for her and a few others before segueing into the pizza topping song. Everyone but Blake sings along as the highway rolls by.
An hour later we’re all giggling and punchy from the long ride, but no one’s complaining. It’s just so great to be together again. Our laughing is interrupted by the ring of the phone from the speakers.
Blake hits a button on the steering wheel. “Yeah, Coop?”
“You’re clear,” Cooper says out of the speakers. “I’m heading back.”
“Ten-four,” Blake says, then disconnects.
I turn to see the black Charger pull off the exit we’re just passing.
As we start to climb into the mountains, our attention turns to the passing scenery: trees and cliffs and green, and a forever view back down into the valley. We reach the top of the mountain and inch through a national park checkpoint behind a line of traffic. Blake pays the fee and collects a map.
“Kings Canyon?” Jonathan asks, taking it from his hand and holding it up for us to see.
I snatch it from his fingers. “How long are we staying here?”
“Just overnight.” Blake glances in the rearview at me as he answers, that almost-smile playing over his lips. “Thought you’d earned a night out.”
Dragonflies buzz in my belly at the look he gives me, and I turn my attention back to the beauty outside the window to help distract me from the untouchable beauty right in front of me.
After a few minutes Blake turns off the main road onto a smaller side road that cuts through the forest. A little way up, the woods open out into a cluster of cabins. As we drive deeper, I realize it’s a whole little village.
We bump over poorly maintained roads and Blake finally pulls into a dirt driveway in front of a decrepit looking two-story cabin. Thick pine branches overhang a steeply pitched tin roof, and some of the wooden shingles around the shuttered windows are falling off. A huge stone chimney up the front looks like the only thing holding the rickety structure up.
“What is this place?” Izzy asks.
“My family’s cabin,” Blake answers, sliding out of his seat. “I spent most of my summers here when I was a kid.”
I shoot him a glance. “I thought you were from Texas.”
“I am. But I spent time here with my grandparents every summer.”
“Looks sort of creepy,” Izzy says. “Like it’s haunted.”
Blake’s face is all nostalgia as he looks it over. “No one else comes up here anymore . . .” He glances at me. “. . . which is why I figured it would be safe.”
He lifts the tailgate and hands me my duffel bag. As everyone grabs their bags from the back, I notice sleeping bags, a few grocery bags, and an ice chest buried back there. We climb a flight of stairs to the front door, and Blake unlocks it. I step through into an open room, a dark leather sofa along the back wall and two leather and wood rockers in front of the massive stone fireplace that dominates the entire room. There’s an open archway to the right, where a wooden picnic table sits near a door beyond, which obviously leads to the kitchen. Up the middle of the room is a ladder, which goes to a loft upstairs. The curtains are drawn, so it’s dim, but there’s a thin coating of dust on everything, and cobwebs in most of the corners.
Blake sets his bag on a chair and pulls back the curtain on the window up front. He opens the window, pushes back the shutters, and the room is flooded with bright sunlight.
“You’re sure this place isn’t haunted?” Izzy says, eyeing her surroundings warily.
Blake shrugs. “No guarantees.”
After lunch we hike out on some trails that wind past rivers and meadows full of wild flowers, to a fire lookout, where we can see forever. All there is for miles is mountains, trees, and lakes. It’s so quiet.
As we meander back along the trails toward the cabin, I hook my elbow through Jonathan’s and slow our pace a little, letting the others get ahead of us.
“So, where is this safe house you’re at?” he asks, kicking a rock in our path.
“It’s—” I glance at Blake, on the trail up ahead. “I’m not supposed to say.”
He tugs me closer. “But they’re taking good care of my best girl, right?”
“Yeah.” I slow us even more. “So where were you, Jonathan? You had everyone totally flipping out.”
His eyes don’t leave the path. “I went looking for Marcus.”
“And . . . ?”
“He wanted to know what you were going to tell the narcs. I told him you didn’t know anything.”
I fix him in a hard gaze. “You were missing for, like, four days, Jonathan.”
He shrugs. “We had a few beers.”
He won’t look at me as he says it, which makes something in my gut tighten uncomfortably. “What’s going on?”
His eyes go all wide and innocent as he turns to me. “I got drunk, passed out, woke up, got drunker, passed out—”
“Stop!” I say, shoving him away. “You have no idea how scared everyone was. We thought Ben might have killed you.”
He rolls his eyes. “Ben’s cool with everything, Red.”
I feel my eyes widen. “He had someone shoot at us, Jonathan! That’s pretty goddamn far from ‘cool’ in my book.”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t him.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course it was him!”
He shakes his head again. “Marcus said no.”
“Then who?”
“No fucking clue,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve had boyfriends of at least twenty chicks threaten to kill me when they’ve caught me with their women. Could have been any one of them.”
“Be serious. That was not a jealous boyfriend.” I stumble on a tree root because I’m not watching the path, and Jonathan catches me.
“Think about it, Red,” he says, steadying me on my feet. “I’m the one that got shot, not you. Do you really think Ben’s guys would have shitty aim?”
I chew my lip as I think about that, and when I look ahead, I see Blake fire me a glance over his shoulder. Could he be wrong about all of it? Maybe Ben’s not after me at all. “I don’t know, Jonathan. I’m not buying the jealous boyfriend thing.”
He shrugs again.
When we stumble back to the cabin, Blake starts a fire in the outdoor fire ring near the driveway, then sets a grate over it. It’s not too long later that he’s cooking and we all have a beer in our hands. My job is to flip the corn while he grills burgers and dogs.
The sun drops behind the tall pines as we eat, and as we’re finishing, it disappears altogether, leaving us in the flickering glow of the campfire. We’re well into our third or fourth beers when Jonathan ducks into the cabin and comes out with his guitar. We talk and joke, and Jonathan plays, and I’m cracking up at something stupid he said when I realize this is the most I’ve let down since I got thrown out of my parents’ house over two months ago. My cheeks ache and I’ve given myself the hiccups from laughing so hard.