Cameron

We need to get off this mountain. Now.

Siena's trembling voice took up residence in Cam's head as she stealthed through the grove east of the cabin.

Leaving now wasn't an option; they couldn't hike off Agnes before nightfall. But they could prepare for the morning.

Siena kept trying to contact repeaters on the radio while Isaac packed up their communal belongings. This left Emmett and Cam searching their side of the mountain for any other sign that what she'd seen in the tree tunnel had been real, and in order for them to be effective, Siena had needed to tell them everything she remembered.

The risk of capture by a masked man and Cam's own head pinned to the wall by knives was far more desirable than alone time with Emmett, so they split up, leaving her ample time with her own thoughts.

Deadswitch was all Siena had to look forward to for over a year. Completing the study was all she'd wanted. Even if they found no other evidence in these woods, Siena's fear alone was enough to convince Cam they needed to call it.

But they had more evidence, didn't they? They'd found a dead woman, for crying out loud.

Stupid. They'd been acting stupid since the body. For all they knew, they were dicking around while sharing some prime mountain real estate with a serial killer.

Maybe waiting until morning to leave wasn't the best idea.

Isaac joined Emmett and Cam as they reconvened on the porch, both returning empty-handed.

"So we're just gonna go?" Emmett gave Cam one of those shitty patronizing smiles he always gave when he was frustrated. "Because Siena had a meltdown?"

As much as Cam deeply desired to tear Emmett a new asshole, the stakes were too high to fight again. Clearly, he felt differently.

"You know her, Emmett. She wanted to be here more than she wanted to marry you."

Okay, so maybe the no-fighting thing was a little too aspirational. Luckily he only rolled his eyes at her.

"She'd live up here if she could," Cam said. "We wouldn't be able to drag her off this mountain after only a week if she didn't think we were in danger."

"She has delusional disorder!"

"That doesn't make her inept! You heard the recording for yourself. We all did. If that audio is the product of Siena's delusional disorder, then we all have it."

Emmett crossed his arms. "The recording isn't proof of anything."

Jesus, was he trying to gaslight her now? Cam took a deep breath, but it didn't douse the heat in her chest. "I don't get why you're suddenly so averse to leaving. You're the one who wanted to hike back when we were at Wolf Ridge."

"And now we're here," said Emmett.

"And now we have more to worry about than Naomi."

Emmett frowned. "Naomi?"

Shit. "Nothing. Freudian slip."

"The reason I wanted to turn back before is because we were only a couple of days in. It would have been a lot easier to cover our losses then than it is now, after we've already started our work."

Cam barked a frustrated laugh. "So this is about money?"

Emmett sucked on his bottom lip, shaking his head. "Don't you dare."

"It's always about money with you, isn't it? And always at Siena's expense."

Emmett sneered, opening his mouth to cut into her before Isaac spoke up.

"I think we should go, too."

His voice was quiet, boyish in a way that caught Cam's attention. He stared vacantly at the forest, clutching his field journal in front of him as he ran his thumb along the page edges. The cardboard covers of the notebook were frayed all over.

"Why?" Cam asked.

"The omens. Every day there's another."

Omens. The word sent a shiver up her spine. She combed her fingers through her hair, following Isaac's eyes when they left her again for the forest beyond the porch. "I'm not superstitious, but you're not wrong. I said it from the very beginning... it feels like the universe doesn't want us here."

Not the universe,she corrected herself. Deadswitch. She thought of the night in the pub after they'd won funding, and Dr. Feyrer's glassy eyes as he talked about his research.

There were anomalies on Mount Agnes far more important than Alpenglow...

Cam wasn't like Siena. Siena had trusted the old man like a father, but Wilder was always a little too woo-woo for Cam. His field journals—the ones she'd gotten her hands on—were all about following his senses and feeling out the energy of a place.

Cam fucking hated that.

He had an obsession with trails, too. Or was it paths? He'd remind himself at the end of every entry: stay on the trail or follow the path or...

Don't stray from the path. That was it. Don't stray from the path, Wilder, he'd write to himself in third person. She fucking hated that too. Unfairly hated, perhaps. She was critical of him because her entire professional career had been an addendum to his research. She hadn't brought up that night in the pub to Siena after, not because she'd forgotten, but because it had made her angry. How dare he keep research from them? This was her and Siena's livelihood—especially Siena's. Feyrer had wanted so badly for Siena to be his acolyte; Siena had been too enamored of the idea of this study to realize she didn't need him.

But now... now, Wilder Feyrer made a little more sense to her. Because how the hell did you explain what had happened to Siena? The body hanging in the tree? The mysteriously melted glacier?

Were the anomalies found by Dr. Feyrer's research team similar to their own? Maybe they'd know if he hadn't hidden the bulk of his findings.

The research stays in the woods.

"It's like God isn't here."

Cam's attention snapped back to Isaac. "What the hell did you just say?"

"I..." He shook his head, his thought remaining unfinished.

"Why would you say something like that?" Emmett asked before sharing a look with Cam. For the first time this trip—maybe the first time ever—she and Emmett were on the same bewildered wavelength.

"I thought you didn't believe in that shit," Cam said.

"It's... not so simple," Isaac stammered.

Cam raised her eyebrows. "Is that so? Care to explain?"

Cam waited, but Isaac didn't elaborate. Even in the dark, she could see the flush of his cheeks.

"God isn't anywhere, kid. You better get used to it." Cam had learned that lesson the hard way.

She headed for the door. "Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow."

They left their equipment tucked away behind the broken door of the cabin. If Cam could find any leftover funds in their budget, she would hire a packer to come fetch what they abandoned. But she was too tired to think about that now.

Dawn warmed the trail as they left Agnes Cabin. Emmett fell to the back of the group with Siena as Cam took the lead. She couldn't make out any of what they muttered back and forth to each other, only Emmett's persistence. Siena didn't sound as annoyed as she usually did, which meant she was exhausted. Cam could convince Siena to do anything when she was exhausted, like going to the pub with Feyrer after the conference. That had been Cam's doing.

A part of her wished they'd never gone and heard Feyrer whisper about anomalies on Agnes. He'd died before telling them the truth. Cam had thought she'd uncover his secrets on this trip. Perhaps she had been on the brink.

She always entered these woods looking for something and always left empty-handed.

"Cam!"

Cam turned around.

Siena had stopped. "This doesn't look right."

Cam glanced back at the trail and frowned. She'd been so caught up in her head that she hadn't even noticed the trail thinning to the size of a rabbit run.

"Maybe we took a wrong turn," Emmett said. "Let's double back."

"There's only one path off the southern face, and we're headed in the right direction," Cam said, and inhaled. The air smelled different here, too. Muted and damp. Foliage ran thick along the path's edge. She couldn't recall such density when they'd hiked up.

"We're obviously not going the right way," Emmett insisted.

Isaac unclipped his pack and slid it from his shoulders. "I'll run back and see if we missed a fork."

"Isaac, no!" Cam barked. "We need to stick together."

"You all are worse than my mom. I'll be back in like thirty seconds, tops."

Before Cam could argue any further, Isaac's giraffe legs had already carried him back up the trail and out of sight.

Cam threw her hands up. "Dude..."

"Don't worry," said Siena. "He has a blue belt in karate."

She would have laughed if any of this were funny.

Siena unclipped her chest strap. "I can run and get him."

"No," Cam and Emmett said at once.

Cam sighed. "Just... stay here and wait for him to come back. I'm going to see if I can reach the descent from this trail. I should be able to spot the cairns once the trees are out of the way."

"You just said—"

"I'll literally be right there." Cam pointed to the thicket ahead. "You can throw a rock and hit me."

"Plan on it!" Siena called after her as Cam pushed forward, branches catching on her backpack as she shoved herself through the thick growth. The trail only thinned, but there was no other way. This path had to lead them down the mountain.

The granite was farther away than she thought, which made no sense. But she'd be hypocritical if she didn't turn back now.

Her stubbornness won out, and after a couple hundred paces, the trees cleared, and Cam approached the ledge, shielding her eyes from the sun.

The valley was big. It had always been big, something that travel journalists dubbed breathtaking in their columns for local papers and Backpacker magazine. But it looked different, now—more grandiose—as though the divide and the peaks beyond covered the entire state of California.

Three peaks jutted boldly from the horizon. Charlotte, Lucille, and...

She'd never seen this other mountain before, not in person, and not on a map. The peak's skirt was sharper and more chiseled than the sisters, the summit uncapped by snow, like a diamond resting on its face. A black forest flanked its base, but she couldn't tell if a fire had swept through the area. A dark shadow cast over that part of the valley.

Panic fluttered through her chest, the same emotion she always had the first few nights on the trail when she woke up in her bivy thinking she was still at home. The longer she stared at the mountain, the harder she fought to figure out why she couldn't remember ever seeing it before, and the more lost she felt.

She needed to find something familiar, and quickly, but when she turned back to the forest to locate the rest of her team, the forest wasn't there.

Cam stood face-to-face with a cliffside. Water dripped from its moss-laden surface. She took a step back, eyes following a switchback trail as it wound up the side of the mountain, stretching onward and onward until it disappeared between jutting crags.

She wasn't at the top of Mount Agnes. She didn't know where she was.

And the sun was setting.