Samantha was scoping out the cars.
The green Subaru had a bike rack, Colorado plates, and two people in their sixties who had been standing at the rail long enough to be done with it. She put them first. The minivan behind it had four kids in it and a woman who had not gotten out from behind the wheel, so she put them second. The white pickup was one man by himself and she crossed him off.
Clouds were building over the range to the west. Two cars had already gone down. In an hour there would be six vehicles up here and three people standing at a log rail with no car.
Forty feet down the rail Marcus said something and the agent with the paper laughed.
She kept looking at the mountains.
The Subaru couple had their keys out and the hatch open and would be gone in a few minutes.
She put her hands in her pockets and started walking. Vlad had a ten-foot head start on her.
“— hell of a place to stand around all day,” Marcus was saying. “Do they rotate you guys out, or —”
“Hey,” Samantha said.
She came in on Marcus’s left and stepped between him and the paper.
“Afternoon. Have you seen either of these two up here today?”
There was a navigation bar across the top with the sports section still in it, and a headline under that, and under the headline the two photographs side by side, Marcus laughing and the school picture.
She read the headline.
“Are they lost?” she said.
“No ma’am.”
She let him look at her.
“There’s no water up here.”
“No ma’am.”
“Do not get him started,” Vlad said.
The agent looked over.
“He will talk to you until you die. Yesterday he talked to a marmot for twenty minutes.” Vlad put both hands on the rail. “The marmot got bored and left.”
The agent folded the paper in half.
“There’s a number on the bottom if you see them.”
“Okay,” Samantha said.
He went on down the rail toward a couple with a dog.
Marcus had both hands on the log.
“We are going now,” Vlad said.
“Give me a second.”
“No.”
She went across the lot. The man from the Subaru had the hatch up and was trying to get a cooler to sit flat.
“Are you two headed down the east side? We’re trying to get to Buena Vista.”
“We are.” He straightened up and looked past her. “Three of you?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the cooler for a second and then moved it over.
One of the men from the Suburbans came out from between them and started across the lot with his hands in his pockets.
Samantha got in behind the driver. Marcus took the middle. Vlad went around the other side and pulled the door shut. They sat there quietly while the man closed the hatch and got in the passenger seat.
The agent was thirty yards out when the woman started the engine.
They came out of the lot past the two white Suburbans. At the second switchback she leaned forward. “Can you stop right here? We left our packs this morning.”
The woman pulled onto the gravel. “You left them down here?”
“We came up light.”
“Well, that’s smart.”
“We drove,” her husband said.
They went down the bank. The packs were where they had left them, under the overhang. Samantha got her arm through a strap and stopped.
“You went first,” she said.
Vlad dragged his out and knocked the dirt off the bottom of it.
“We went at the same time.”
“No.” She got the other strap over her shoulder. “I had a car picked out for two.”
Marcus looked up.
“He would have talked to that Fed until it got dark.” Vlad picked up Marcus’s pack and held it out to him.
Marcus took it.
“There’s a reward,” Samantha said.
“What?”
“On the paper. Above the pictures.”
“How much.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Marcus got the pack up onto one shoulder with the strap twisted and had to take it off and do it again.
Up on the road the Subaru was still running.
“Get in the car,” Samantha said. “Assume they see the news tonight.”