“I don’t want you to go,” I said. “I want to come with you.”
“Lisette,” Michael said as he ran his fingers alongside my frozen cheek that was painfully wind-burnt. “We already talked through all of this. You’ll be safe in the cave alone, and Adam and I will be back to meet you there in just a couple of days with Rob. It will all be okay, I promise.”
“But what if it isn’t?” I asked as I felt the tears fill my eyes and then start to freeze and stick to the rims of my eyelids.
“It will be,” Adam chimed in with a mustered grin. “You know that I won’t let him do anything too stupid that would get us killed. We’ll come back to you.”
“You’d better,” I said with a sniffle.
There was no point in me standing there wasting time in the cold. If any of us were going to survive this attempt, we had to stick to the plan. It was the only chance we had. Besides, it was too late to turn back now. We were committed.
Michael kissed me and his warm breath filled my mouth as his tongue traced inside my lips. I held onto him and pressed my face against his as my fists clenched his jacket. I didn’t want to let him go and I could tell by the way that he let me linger in his arms, that he didn’t want to let me go either. When we finally pulled apart, the look on his face was more frigid with fear than the temperature. Saying goodbye was definitely not something that Michael and I did well. It didn’t matter how much we tried to console each other, we were both always too afraid of losing one another to be effective at calming each other down.
Adam threw his arms around me in a big bear hug and squeezed me until it felt like I could just stay inside his grasp forever and forget about the rest of the world. I buried my face against his chest and felt his cheek come to rest against my temple.
“Lisette, we’re going to come back to you, I swear it,” he whispered softly into my ear. “I don’t care if you chose Michael, I still love you. And you know that I will always come back to you, even if I have to drag him along with me.”
I let out a muffled laugh that was also partly a cry. I loved them and didn’t want anything to happen to either of them. When Adam let me go, I took one last painful look at Michael before they both turned and walked away. It had to be that way. They had to be the ones to leave first and they knew it. After that last time that I had left them, I had sworn never to leave them again and they both knew that I would stand right there in that frozen spot in the snow until I could no longer see them in my sights. When the silhouettes of their shapes finally disappeared from view, I turned and walked back toward the cave using the map that Adam had given me and let myself cry along the way. My own wet tears stung my face and felt like they burned my skin with extreme cold as they met with the air. I walked and walked, without letting myself think about anything at all because I knew that if I did, I would start to think about all the things that could go wrong. Instead, I focused on the trees and the clouds and the sound of the birds in the woods around me. I took note of the direction I was walking in and the position of the sun in the sky. As the day turned to dusk, I knew that I was almost at the cave and I started to think about the logistical and mundane tasks of setting up the tent in the cave and starting a fire. I couldn’t bear to let myself think about anything else.
But as the cave came into view, I thought that I could see a small billow of smoke coming from it. This was not part of the plan. There shouldn’t have been anyone here in this cave now that Stacy had left. Someone was here and my adrenalin immediately began to kick in as I wondered who it could possibly be all the way out here in the wilderness. It might have been a trap set for us, or someone that had been following us and now knew that I was alone. Michael and Adam had taken the guns with them, but I still had the two knives with the curved tips tucked into the buckles of my boots. I reached down and pulled one of them out and gripped it tightly in my hand as I walked slowly toward the cave and tried to ready myself for whoever might be in there. I stalked around the side of the cave and then crept up to the entrance before trying to peek stealthily around the corner. I held the knife up next to my face in case I was met with an immediate attack. I couldn’t have been more surprised by what—and who, I saw standing inside the cave.
“Stacy?” I asked in shock as I stepped fully into view.
I was so surprised that I dropped the knife from my hand and had to dig it out of the soft pile of snow by my feet.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
For a second I was worried that maybe she had betrayed us. Maybe she was still here as some sort of attempt to capture me and that the guys were walking into a trap. But then when she looked up at me, I immediately recognized the look on her face because it was one that I was all too familiar with myself—remorse.
“You were right,” she said. “I just couldn’t run away and abandon Rob, not after being his partner for so many years. It just didn’t feel right.”
I smiled at her and was so happy to have her company that I almost wanted to hug her.
“He’s going to be pissed as hell at me for breaking our one rule,” she said as she chuckled and shook her head.
“I’m sure he’ll get over it,” I smiled. “But what are you doing back here in the cave?”
“I was getting ready to come and find the three of you,” she said. “But it took me a while to get back this far and I needed to stop and rest for a bit. What are you doing here? I thought you guys were all going into town to get Rob?”
“We have a plan, kind of,” I said. “Michael and Adam are going to get Rob and then are bringing him back here to meet me at the cave. From here, we’re headed to Canada like we had discussed. You can come with us if you’d like.”
“I thought you didn’t like me,” she said as she looked over me with a raised eyebrow. “Trust me, I can pick up on these things. You definitely weren’t fond of me before.”
I wasn’t going to deny it.
“True,” I said. “But I like you better now that I know you’re not the kind of woman to abandon her partner and friend. Besides, I could use some company here. I’m worried sick about the guys and I could use some distraction.”
“When are they supposed to be coming back?”
“By the time that they get to Rob, rescue him, and then make it all the way back here, it shouldn’t be longer than forty-eight hours. Any longer than that and it’s cause for concern,” I answered.
“Forty-eight hours is a long time,” she said.
Stacy looked almost as worried as I felt, although that would have been impossible since I felt like there was a flock of a hundred butterflies all warring against each other in my stomach.
“Well, I’ve already got a tent pitched, and a fire started. I’ve got a bit of food and water too,” she said.
“So do I.”
“I guess all we can do now is wait then, right?”
“Yeah,” I said as I sat down in the cave and laid my backpack on the ground.
“What is the plan that you guys decided to enact, exactly?” Stacy asked.
I opened my mouth to answer her, but when I started to speak it suddenly dawned on me how crazy this plan would sound. I felt all the blood drain from my face and felt an instant wave of dizzying nausea sweep over me.
“Are you alright?” she asked as she reached for a water canteen and handed it to me. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “I just realized how bad our plan is.”
“What?” she asked with a look of shock. “If it’s a bad plan then why did you guys decide to do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said in a panic. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least a decent idea in the face of limited options.”
Stacy sat down right in front of me and crossed her legs. Then she rested her hands on her thighs and looked me straight in the eyes.
“I know a lot about plans and also a lot about failed missions,” she said. “Tell me what the plan is. What are Michael and Adam on their way to go do?”
