Firewatch Ch 25

Wilde’s long legs carry her with dangerous speed along the narrow, winding trail. Trees and branches are jagged and sharp in the beam of her light. The moon is out, big and yellow.

An orange glow ahead looks too big and too bright. Wilde pours on more speed, and she can see the campfire. Aria Durano stands over it, tossing in a 3-ring binder. She picks up a shoebox.

“No! Stop!” Wilde shouts.

Aria looks over, then dumps the contents of the box into the fire, which leaps, sending thousands of sparks into the air in a rush. She throws the box aside and flees into the dark.

Teeth grinding, Wilde bursts out of the trees and into the campsite, dropping to her knees and sliding across the ground. She reaches desperately for the binder, but it’s already warped and deforming in the flames. Piercing pain hits hard and Wilde yanks her hand back with a hiss, clutching it to her chest as she watches the flames.

That only lasts a moment. Jaw clenched, she grabs her flashlight with her uninjured hand and pushes herself upright. She stumbles after Aria.

“Aria Durano! FBI! Stop!” She staggers to a halt, breathing hard, stinging tears in her eyes. Her hand is badly burned. She sweeps the light left and right. There’s nothing but the mist and the clouds of her breath.

Two gunshots pop off in the dark to her left. Swearing, Wilde lurches that way, clambering up a rise and hurrying down the far side. “Flores!”

A suddenly light blinds her. “Wilde?”

Flores lowers her flashlight and gun.

Wilde blinks rapidly and shines her light around. “Who are you shooting at?”

“She took off. I shot in the air. I was trying to get her to stop. She didn’t. It’s too dark.”

“Johnson?” Wilde winces as she presses her flashlight into her injured hand so that she can draw her gun.

Flores puts her back to Wilde’s. Together, they pan their lights over the trees. “I don’t think it’s her, Wilde.”

It’s quiet. Nothing moves.

After a moment, Wilde holsters her gun and lets out her breath. “God damn it.”

“I don’t understand how she could move so fast.” Flores sounds shaken. She looks over her shoulder. “What happened to your hand?”

“It’s fine.”

“No. Show me.”

“Forget it.” Wilde shakes her off and plunges forward, but Flores grabs her and yanks her back.

“All you’ll do is get lost! We won’t find them. We need to get more people out here.”

Wilde stares into the dark, breathing hard. Then she looks down and closes her eyes. Her burned hand is in agony, but she clenches it anyway, so hard that her palm bleeds from her fingernails.

F-FILES

Flores thanks the nurse, who smiles and leaves the room. They’re at the hospital in Ontario. It will be dawn soon. Search parties are in the forests surrounding Barney now.

Wilde looks pitiful, her skeletal form hunched as she sits on the exam table, cradling her bandaged hand.

“It was right there in front of us,” she murmurs.

“What was?”

“That thing. It was there, Flores. It was really there. It spoke to us.”

“Do you mean the woman pretending to be Chief Johnson?”

“You really think that was a woman?”

“It was obviously a woman. I think she’s connected to Aria Durano, I think they’re doing something bad with these women that they’re recruiting like Ro Nielsen and Hailee Siegel. I think that’s what was on those tapes. I don’t understand why they’re using tapes. And I don’t understand how she could move like that in the dark. I had my light in her eyes. She couldn’t have seen anything. She should’ve been blind.”

“If she were human,” Wilde says bitterly. “They won’t find them. Hailee Siegel and Ro Nielsen are gone.”

“Not human? What, exactly, do you think she was? What aren’t you telling me?”

Wilde shakes her head. “I never saw one like that. In person. You were with her for an hour. You really didn’t notice anything strange?”

“Of course she was strange. She was impersonating law enforcement, and it was obvious.”

“She was impersonating more than that.”

Flores frowns and folds her arms. “The patch.”

“What?”

“The patch on her jacket. It was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know. It was dark. But I don’t what it was. It looked…”

Wilde stares at her with an unnervingly intense vulnerability.

Flores breaks eye contact, blushing. “I don’t know, exactly. But it didn’t seem right.”

“Like instead of a real police patch, it was just the idea of one. Like what someone who’s never seen one before would think it should look like.”

“It was dark,” Flores says firmly.