“You don’t have to twist my arm.” Nibbling on a cracker, Gil’s girlfriend stepped away from the stove and held out her wineglass for Rene.
Nate chuckled. “I have a feeling you two will be hammered by dinnertime.”
“You almost say that like it’s a bad thing,” Rene quipped.
Nate kissed her shoulder as he stepped around her to the counter. He started to open the junk drawer where they kept the extra matches. That was when he saw something outside the kitchen window.
He froze as two people staggered from the shadowy woods.
“Oh my God,” Rene said behind him. She must have seen them, too.
It took Nate a moment to figure out it was a man and a woman, both wearing dark jackets. They didn’t look like hikers or campers. At least, they weren’t wearing backpacks.
In all the times he’d stayed at the cabin, Nate had never encountered a stranger anywhere near the house. It didn’t make sense that this couple had just come out of nowhere. The man was balding and about thirty. As he approached the cabin, he seemed to notice Nate in the window, staring back at him. The guy waved, and then started limping.
The woman’s short-cropped dark hair was messy, and she had dirt on her face. She looked exhausted. “Help us!” she cried. “For God’s sake . . .”
Suddenly Nate heard the back door being unlocked. He turned away from the window in time to see Cheryl opening the door for the two strangers. “Are you hurt?” she called.
“We couldn’t get any goddamn cell phone service!” the man yelled. “Our car broke down—”
“We started walking and got lost,” the woman spoke over him.
The guy almost knocked Cheryl down as he staggered into the kitchen. He pushed the door open wider, and it banged against the wall. His companion followed him in.
“We thought we were going to die out in those fucking woods,” he gasped. “We’ve been walking around for at least three hours . . .”
“Are either of you hurt?” Nate asked. They’d never answered Cheryl’s question.
“My ankle—I twisted my goddamn ankle,” the man said, plopping down in a chair at the breakfast table. He accidentally knocked over Cheryl’s wineglass. It hit the floor and shattered. Red wine spilled across the worn linoleum tiles. “Oh fuck,” he groaned, sounding angry. “I’m sorry, okay?”
The woman half-collapsed in the other chair.
“I’ll clean it up,” Cheryl said. “Where do you guys keep the mop and the broom?”
Nate pointed toward the broom closet. “There, thanks, Cheryl.” He turned to the man again. “Where’s your car?”
“I don’t know,” the man grumbled. He looked down at his foot and winced. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“He’s a physical therapist,” Rene said. “You should have him look at it. He knows what he’s doing.” She filled two glasses with water, and then stepped around the mess on the floor and set them down in front of the couple.
The woman greedily drank her water. But her friend, still gasping, scowled at his glass. “Shit, don’t you have anything stronger?”
Nate hesitated. Something was wrong. It wasn’t just the unsettling way these two strangers had barged into the house and wreaked havoc. Nate could have sworn that when he’d first spotted him emerging from the thicket, the man hadn’t been limping at all. And the dirt smudge on the woman’s cheek looked phony—almost clichéd. Nate wasn’t sure about the cell phone reception in the middle of the woods, but he’d always been able to get phone service in the cabin—and certainly on the highway.
“Something stronger?” Nate repeated. He couldn’t believe the balls on this guy, turning down a glass of water and practically demanding that they raid the liquor cabinet for him.
“I’ll get you some brandy,” Gil said.
Nate swiveled around to see his brother in the doorway to the kitchen. He was dressed in jeans and a V-neck sweater. His hair looked damp, and he was barefoot.
“We keep the hard stuff in the living room,” Gil explained to the man. “Nate, check out his ankle for him, okay?” He turned and headed toward the living room.
Nate wondered why his brother didn’t seem the least bit wary of these two. Plus, he wasn’t exactly dying to look at this guy’s ankle.
Rene was using paper towels to soak up the spilled wine while Cheryl, with the broom, swept the glass into a dustpan.
Nate turned to the man again. “Let’s have a look. Which ankle is it?”
The guy immediately pulled his foot away. “Don’t bother yourself. I just need to stay off it for a little bit . . .”
Nate noticed, for someone who had been traipsing through the woods for three hours, his shoes didn’t look very dirty.
Past James Taylor’s singing and the sound of Cheryl sweeping up the glass, Nate thought he heard Gil whispering on the phone in the next room.
“So—you don’t have any idea where you left your car?” Nate asked—to distract the man.
“Alongside one of the roads off the highway,” the woman answered for him.
“And you didn’t walk back to the highway for help?” Rene asked, dropping a wad of soggy paper towels into the sink. She turned to them. “Why in the world did you go into the woods? You’d have had a lot more luck getting help by flagging down a car on the highway . . .”
“Yeah, well, we were at least a couple of miles from the goddamn highway,” the man said impatiently—as if Rene were an idiot. “Okay? Jesus.”
“Hey, pal,” Nate said. “I know you’ve been through a lot. But that’s no way to talk to us. We’re just trying to help you.”
The guy gave him a defiant stare. Then his gaze shifted, and he straightened up in the chair.
Nate turned to see Gil in the kitchen doorway again.
“We’re all out of brandy,” Gil said. “What were you guys doing in the woods anyway? It’s private property.”
The man frowned at him. “Oh shit,” he muttered. He slid his hand inside his jacket and glanced at his companion.
The woman suddenly shot out of her chair and grabbed Cheryl, who screamed. The broom and dustpan dropped to the kitchen floor with a clatter. Shards of glass scattered across the tiles. It happened so fast, Nate barely saw the woman take the pistol from inside her jacket. She jabbed the gun barrel against the side of Cheryl’s head.
The balding man jumped to his feet, knocking over the chair. He pulled out a gun, too—and pointed it at Gil. “Get your fucking hands up,” he growled.
Glaring at him, Gil was obedient.
