“Got under your skin,” Ranger commented a while later, after we had both sat there blankly, lost in our own thoughts.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Deep?”
“Deep enough.”
“How long you staying?” he asked, not exactly a touchy-feely person, so I figured that was about all the Sloane situation.
“Couple days,” I told him, figuring that it was the best place for me, that he would put me to work, that it was a good way to keep my body – and mind – occupied for a while. “How long has it been since you’ve had another body in this place?”
“Seven months,” he told me casually, as if that was the most normal thing in the world.
I was somewhat of a loner by nature, but I enjoyed interacting with my coworkers at least here and there. Lincoln and Smith especially. I couldn’t imagine going months on end without speaking to another person.
“Before you came to help us at the cabin,” I pressed, “how long since you saw another person?”
“Four months maybe. Saw some dipshit kids partying in the ghost towns over the winter. One of ’em likely lost a toe. Tried to warm them up a bit on their way to their car, but it was likely cut off.”
“Do they do parties a lot around here?”
“Couple times a year. Mostly in summer though.”
“And, what? You keep an eye? Are you the mayor of the Pine Barrens?”
“The law is too stupid or too lazy to do rounds most of the time. I want to make sure the assholes don’t set my home on fire. If even a small one starts, half the forest could be gone in a matter of hours. Especially in drier seasons. And this far out, you gotta keep an eye on the guys.”
“The guys?”
“Out here with booze and drugs and girls who got no one to call on for help.”
“And when the guys try to pull something?”
“They learn real quick that no one gets away with that shit in my home.”
His home.
That was a quirk of Ranger’s; he thought the entire one-point-one million acres of the Pine Barrens were his home. And, in a way, they were. He had lived there for years. First, just camping out. Seeing the sites. Getting to know every inch of the forest across all the counties, across all the miles.
Then, Quin had gotten the business finally up and running. He had worked hard to track down guys he had met in the service – me and Smith and Lincoln. Then some other people he had happened upon with special skills over the years – Kai and Miller.
But he had spent months trying to find Ranger who had fallen off the face of the Earth as far as anyone was concerned. No one had seen or spoken to him. No financial records had been recorded. His accounts were all still active, full of money, but he never touched them. His house had been sold. His car had its insurance paid automatically, but it hadn’t been spotted on a single camera in over a year.
He was a ghost.
So, of course, Quin enlisted me.
Because no one could go missing. Not really. Not truly. There was always a trace. There was always a scent of them somewhere that could be picked up on and followed.
It took me five months.
Five fucking months in the goddamn Pine Barrens. Alone. In a tent. Living off fucking energy bars and cans of beans.
By the time I finally came across the hammock he had slung up between two trees with a small fire a few feet away to ward off the early spring chill, passed out like he hadn’t a care in the world, I hadn’t exactly announced myself gracefully.
I had stalked up, overturned the hammock, and knocked him on his ass.
We went a few rounds, both of us taking a solid beating.
Then I offered him the job.
But there was a condition.
He had to have a place. An actual building with actual running water and electric and protection from the elements.
Because, apparently, there was no one in the world better at holding a prisoner than Ranger. No one could sneak out on him, manipulate him, distract him, guilt him.
It was what made him so good at what he had done in the military.
And why he hated himself and the world because of what he had done.
Why he hid himself in the woods miles away from other people.
It took a lot of convincing to get him to agree, to do something he never wanted to do again. But, in the end, when he realized that all he had to do was babysit, not interrogate, not torture, not eventually put a bullet in someone’s brain when they ran out of intel, he set to building his house, getting his life a little more on track.
But it wasn’t just the little acre or two that he had built and farmed on that he considered his.