A figure passes the doorway.
“Will?” I call.
No answer.
“Is someone there?” I say.
I take a slow step, hand dropping to where my gun should be, except, of course, I don’t have it. I take a deep breath and consider pulling my knife, but I’m better without it. Another step. Then a figure fills the doorway, and I stop short.
“It’s me,” a male voice says.
I don’t recognize the voice, and the shape is just that: a human figure. It doesn’t actually “fill” the doorway. It’s average size. Slight build. The head is slick and round, as if bald, and it comes to an odd point at the back. Then a hand rises and pushes back what was a hood, and light hair flops forward.
“Bastion,” I say.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Sebastian goes still. Completely still, and I want to see his face—I desperately want to see his expression—but the light is at his back.
His head drops forward, and his hand rises to shove his hair back as his shoulders slump.
“Shit,” he says, as if I’ve just caught him trying to take an ATV for a joyride.
“Step back,” I say. “Hands up.”
“I—” He pauses. “Right. Okay.”
He lifts his hands over his head and backs out of the doorway. I follow. His gaze goes to my hands.
“Yes,” I say, “I do not have my gun. However, if you think that makes me defenseless—”
“I’m not going to—”
“Yep, you’re not. Whatever you had in mind by sneaking up, it’s not happening.”
“I—”
He looks at me, but it’s not quite at me. The hair’s fallen again, and he’s peering through it, as if hiding behind it.
He is in hiding, and he must figure the hair helps disguise him. But even if his picture was out there, he wouldn’t need to hide behind hair to go unrecognized. He is cursed—or, in this case, blessed—with a very average white-boy face. No scars. No marks or freckles. No striking features.
Sebastian puts his hands on his head and lowers himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged. I tense, and then I realize what he’s doing. Taking a nonaggressive position. Like Dalton making offenders assume a downward dog. From there, Sebastian can’t leap up and attack me without signaling his intentions.
“I came out here to talk to you,” he says. “I saw the plane land. I’ve been watching. I was going to ask if I could help carry stuff to town, but really, I just wanted to see how you reacted. Whether you looked me up while you were in Dawson City. Whether you found out who I am.”
“You have your answer.”
He nods. “I do.”
His voice is calm, resigned almost.
“What are you going to do about that?” I ask.
His gaze rises to mine. “I think the question is what you’re going to do.”
“I’m looking for someone who killed a man to solve a problem. I believe you know a little something about that.”
He flinches. It’s not a hard, dramatic flinch, just the barest tightening of his face. Then he nods. “I do, and I understand that you’re going to think I did this. I didn’t. But convincing you of that isn’t my biggest problem right now.”