“What’s that mean?”
“You’re not happy, sad, scared... definitely not mad. Distorts your tactical decisions.”
Hannah was absorbing every word.
Shaw asked, “Your fight? How long did it last?”
“Forever.” Hannah looked at the lake as a duck came in for a landing. Ungainly on land, but how elegant in air and on water. “I guess really? Five minutes. I don’t know.”
“It should’ve been over in twenty seconds. Her on the ground, breath knocked out of her. You without a scratch.”
“Dope... How?”
“You move fast. Surprise. A feint.”
“Fainting?”
“No.” He spelled the word. “A fake move. As if you’re going to hit her. She gets ready to block it but you drop to a crouch, wrap your arms around her thigh and just stand up. Legs are a lot stronger than arms. She goes down on her back, breath knocked out of her. You put an elbow in her solar plexus.” He pointed it out on his own torso. “Elbow. Not a knee. That could kill.”
“Oh, cool! Show me. Pretend I’m Brittany!” The girl turned and went into a fighting position.
Shaw gave a laugh and kept on walking. Hannah caught up.
He said, “The next alarm. The lake.”
“Fifty-nine, ninety-nine on sale.”
“What?”
“The Walmart boat. How come your father’s rules are always, like, ‘Never do this, never do that’?”
“He thought it made more of an impression. My brother called him the King of Never.”
They came to the shoreline.
“So, what’s the alarm?”
He told her, “We run fishing line through the grass about eight inches off the ground along the back of the property. Then we balance a box of kitchen pans on a plank or branch and tie the line to it. They trip the wire, the box falls and we hear.”
“Can I do it?”
He handed her the spool of forty-pound-test he’d taken from the house and they walked to the tree he’d indicated.
“Your father taught you all this?”
“Yes.”
“When you were my age?”
“Little younger.”
When he was Hannah’s age, Colter used what his father had taught him and rappelled a hundred feet off the top of Echo Ridge to where the man—his dad—lay, in the hope that he could save him. A futile hope, as it turned out.
“Tie it there.”
She started to but he stopped her. “No, this way.” He tied an anchor hitch, making sure she understood how to bind one. Then they walked along the shoreline, Hannah unspooling as they went.
Hannah looked over the property. “They could still come through the woods.” She was pointing to the dense forest to the right of the cabin as you faced the front.