Chapter Six
She was feather-light on top of him, her hair snarled in damp tangles across his chest. She’d tried to pull away, but there was no room for distance on the narrow bunk and he’d just maintained an easy, gentle pressure until she’d subsided against him, like a sleepy cat. He was feeling pleasantly wrung out, and he wasn’t so eager to wrap it up.
“I think I might actually have passed out for a second there.”
She snorted, and he saw a tiny tilt to her mouth when she lifted her head to rest her chin over his nipple.
“Six,” he said.
A line appeared on her forehead. “Six what?”
“Smiles. You’ve smiled at me six times since we met.”
Her eyes widened slightly before her right eyebrow quirked. “You’ve been counting?”
“I have. I usually have a much better success rate.”
“Well, you do put in a lot of effort.”
He lifted his head so he could see her face better. “What do you mean?”
She put her palm on his chest and tried to squirm away, but he pulled her closer and tucked her head back under his chin. If talking to his chest was easier than talking to his face, he could deal with that. But she was going to talk to him.
She settled again, and he poked her in the shoulder. “Explain.”
Her sigh played across his skin, and he could feel goose bumps forming. A shiver rippled through his muscles, and she laughed softly.
“There must have been a smile with that. I’m giving myself a credit. Seven.”
She went still. The pads of her fingers were now pressing into his tattoos instead of resting lightly on top. “That.” There was a bleakness to her tone that made him go slightly hollow in the gut. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“What? What that? What did I do?” He started to lift his head again, but lowered it when he felt her stiffen. Listen. Just listen. He could do that. “I don’t understand.”
Her head came up and she studied him openly for a moment. She put her head back down against his chest. She traced the edges of a tattoo with her fingers, sending the fine hair around his nipples to attention. There was another soft laugh and the tantalizing scrape of nail over nipple. But this time he made no comment.
“Maybe you don’t,” she said.
He squeezed her gently. “Tell me.”
“You don’t just have a character when you go undercover. You have a facade the rest of the time, too.”
“Eh?”
“It’s like you want everyone to think of you a certain way. As this charming rogue you can’t help loving even if he screws up big.”
But that’s exactly who he was. Wasn’t it?
She was on a roll now. “You have this smile. Looks like you’ve practised it in the mirror. And if a woman doesn’t fall for the first one, you ramp it up a level.”
He shifted on the narrow cot. That stove must really be starting to put out some heat. Sweat was forming at the small of his back.
“My bet is you’re the life of the party, no matter what the event. The centre of attention wherever you go, rave or funeral. What I don’t get—how do you keep it up? It must be exhausting to be ‘on’ all the time. Don’t you ever just want to kick back and be you? And damn anyone who doesn’t like it?”
Her hand swooped through the air, demonstrating her vehemence. He caught it and threaded his fingers absentmindedly through hers. “But how do you know that’s not the real me? Charming, lovable…”
“Fake, narcissistic…” Her fingers twitched, wanting to fly, but he held on. “No, that’s not real. You slip up every now and then, when you’re exhausted, mostly.”
This was not good news. Not about the facade. He wasn’t really buying that. But if he let his cover slip, even for a second when he was working, it could be the last gig of his career. And his life.
“Damn.” Is that what had happened with Cain and his crew? Had he slipped up? He’d found it harder to drop back into character this time, had been finding it harder every time, really. But he just needed to take more time between ops—make sure he was rested and recharged.
His hand rasped against the last few days’ worth of stubble as he rubbed his chin. She shrugged. “It probably has to do with your childhood.”
“Umm hmm.” He was replaying the last week in his head, trying to remember if he’d made any mistakes, said the wrong thing, pronounced a “th” sound.
Mia tipped her head back and glanced at him. “You were abandoned as a kid, right?”
His hand clenched around hers, and she jerked.
“Sorry, what did you say?” he asked.
She pulled her hand away, decisively this time. “I asked if someone took off and left you when you were little.”
The room was getting really hot. He couldn’t figure out how Mia’s skin was still so cool to touch. She nudged him, and he swallowed a sigh. She’d promised to talk, but it wasn’t supposed to be about him. Unfortunately, building rapport was key to an interrogation. “My dad left when I was about four, but that’s hardly unusual.”
She rested her hand on his rib cage. “And what was your mom like?”
He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Unstable. Things were rocky for a few years, but my aunt and her family stepped up, and I lived with them until I left school.”
Her index finger traced the edge of his wrist. “And I bet you fit right in. Found a shared interest with every member of the family?”
He braced his hands against the mattress and pushed himself up to an angle. “Isn’t that what families do?”
She hadn’t moved with him, and was studying the altered landscape with interest. “Were you the one teenager in the world who didn’t rebel? Always courteous and polite? Kept the grades up, made the parental figures proud? Bet the first tattoo happened well after you left the nest.”
All right. Enough. That had to be enough rapport-building. “All of the above.”
Her hand skidded lightly over his hip, following the muscle that angled down his torso, and some of his annoyance ebbed away. Her hair was drying now, and he ran a skein of it through his fingers, distracted by the silky texture and gentle wave. “What was your childhood like?”
There was barely a hitch in the glide of her fingers over his skin and he tugged gently on her hair, wanting her closer, even as he knew he should be pressing his advantage. But there was still time for that. After.
Smile number eight was wicked and sultry. “My childhood was idyllic and I was pretty much another teenage angel.” Her hands grew more brazen and his eyes drifted closed. “And I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since.”
#
She almost had made up for it, too. Could be that it’d been too long since she’d had a really good partner, or it could have been the leftover adrenalin, but their time in that awkward little bunk was the best she remembered in a long while. She hadn’t even minded the forced proximity after the fact—the facts—too much. It had really almost been enjoyable.
She adjusted the straps on the bag they’d found in the cabinet and rolled her shoulders to make sure the weight was evenly settled. With the supplies divided between them making lighter loads, they’d make better time to the crash site. Or what she hoped was the crash site. She gave the hut one last fond look and headed for the door.
Hudson was on his knees, pushing his hands through Neville’s thick fur, massaging the dog’s muscles and warming them up for the push ahead. He leaned back on his heels and looked up at Mia. “Should we leave him here? We don’t really know what we’re heading in to.”
Mia shook her head. “Not a chance. We don’t know if we’ll come back this way.”
Neville wormed his way between the V of Hudson’s legs and put a paw on his knee, literally begging for more of the rubbing. Hudson obliged, an easy smile curving his lips. “This is a very good dog.”
“You got that right.” She smiled back at him and stroked Nev’s head. Memory reasserted itself and she backed away. Had he counted that one? They’d had mind-blowing, wild monkey sex while taking shelter from a storm, while trying to find a lost load of drugs for a gang of drug traffickers. They hadn’t reached a new stage in a budding relationship.
She stepped off the porch into the misting drizzle. “We should go. We’ve got a lot of ground to make up.”
Hudson picked up her hand and squeezed it gently before letting it go. “Worth it.”
She couldn’t help the smile the followed, but it drifted away soon enough as Neville loped past them to take point. Fear and adrenalin had brought them to this point, but they were now within only an hour or two of the location where she thought the helicopter might have tried to put down.
“So what’s the plan here? If we do find the drugs, what’s going to stop Dipshit and Sidekick from just killing us and taking them and the credit?”
Hudson shrugged. “They could. But they don’t do a lot of thinking for themselves. Today would be a good example why. If this is Cain’s idea of a loyalty test for me, they’ll do what he tells them and bring us, and the drugs, back to town.”
“But can’t you just take the drugs in to the cop shop? That must be enough proof to take down the group.”
“Close, but not quite. I didn’t know until now how they were transporting the drugs. I have to make sure the helicopter and pilot can be tracked back to Cain, and I have to make sure all the evidence is independently supported so I don’t have to testify for the prosecution to win the case.
She stopped to adjust the new pack. One of the tabs kept slipping, and she tucked the end of the strap under it in a makeshift stopper knot. “But why wouldn’t you testify? Isn’t that just part of the job?”
“Too risky. Even if the court agrees to protect my identity, the shitrats aren’t going to keep that promise. And if word gets out, my career as a UC operative is over.” He gave her a stern look. “And handing out traffic tickets to pissed off motorists is not a career option I’m interested in.”
The tiny hope that had been flitting through Mia’s mind crashed and burned. She’d thought Hudson might be willing to take her information in confidence and build an investigation himself. Then Abe would go to jail and she’d finally be done with living on the run once and for all. But apparently that was not to be. And she hadn’t really thought she’d get that lucky. She’d always known there was a price to pay for her actions, and she was willing to pay it. It had always been a question of when. Her mother wouldn’t stay in hiding forever and Mia wouldn’t be able to protect her when she insisted on resuming her normal life. Apparently “when” was now.
She sighed and adjusted her headlamp
Hudson glanced at her. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure you won’t have to testify either. All I need is the registration for the helicopter and the pilot’s identity and proof of the drug transport. Mitch should be able to put the rest together without our direct involvement.”
Mia sped up. “Well, you can tell Mitch he’d better make sure he can put it together without me. Having me testify isn’t going to help your case.”
Hudson barely increased his pace to keep time with Mia. “And why’s that? That criminal lifestyle you lived when you were calling yourself Raina Meadows, maybe?”
The inside of her mouth tasted sour. She stopped and took a sip from her water bottle. Hudson stood quietly, just watching her.
She’d known she wasn’t going to be able to avoid his questions forever, and technically, she’d even promised him, earlier in the hut. And given how much she’d been enjoying herself at the time, she couldn’t really argue the circumstances constituted duress. “It was a long time ago.” She slid the water bottle back into the side pocket and started walking again.
“Warrant’s still on the system, so it’s obviously not something the statute of limitations has passed on.”
She laughed, a strangled croak of a noise. “No, it wouldn’t have. I don’t think murder has an expiry date, does it?”
“You didn’t murder anyone.” His stride didn’t even falter. He just kept eating through the distance with those long legs. Wasn’t he going to recoil in horror? Cuff her right there and then and drag her back down the mountain?
“How can you say that? You know nothing about me.”
He turned his head and his eyes slid over her from head to toe. When they met back with hers, there was a bedroom smile on his face that did funny things to her nether regions.
Her cheeks heated. Ridiculous, given what had happened between them—what she’d instigated between them. “That doesn’t count.”
“Why? Because you only did it to avoid answering my questions?”
She stopped dead. “That’s not true.”
He turned to face her and walked backward. “No?”
“No.” She moved closer to him. “I wanted you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you pissing into the wind on the middle of the slope. Shutting you up for five seconds was just an added bonus.”
His face went blank and his back foot slid out from under him. He stumbled, coming to a stop just inches from her. She closed the distance between them. Trailed a hand down his chest. Whispered into his ear. “Are you happy? That I wanted you?”
He nodded.
“Then maybe you need to go back to secret squirrel school, so you can tell when you’re being played.” She smiled at him. Full wattage. He stayed put as she strode by. Let him count that one. She was pretty sure it was number nine.
#
Well, he’d fallen for that one, hook, line and come on. He shook off his stupor and grinned at the back of her head as she stalked away. Neville bounded into view, probably confused they were so far behind, but she motioned him ahead with a wave of her hand.
Hudson would get the truth out of her, but there was no chance the feisty little wildlife biologist had committed murder. He’d stake his life on that. Had, he supposed, when he’d slept beside her that first night in the tent, and the next night at her house, and just now in the way hut. Not that that experience could technically be called “sleeping”.
He shook his head as he resumed his trudge toward the crash site. Hard to believe he’d only known Mia for a matter of days.
Mia had her GPS out when he joined her on a stony ridge. She swung her arm out, pointing to the next peak. “I was there, at the top of the slope, when I noticed what looked like a clearing over here with damaged trees surrounding it. I could smell something chemical. It definitely could have been fuel, so the possibility is good. But I have to tell you Hudson, if this isn’t the crash site, I’m out of ideas.”
He bounced the pack higher on his back. “I trust you. Let’s keep going.” No need to mention that following her single idea was the only lead he had.
There was an odd expression on her face when he turned to face her. Her brows were drawn together and she was chewing the inside of her lip. One hand crept up to curl around the bottom of her braid. Bingo. She was ready to talk. All he needed to do was hit the right note and she’d spill the beans on whatever connection she had to the murder file.
“I do, you know. Trust you.” He kept it light. Supporting, not pushing.
Her hand clenched around her hair, and then she was moving again. “You shouldn’t.”
This was it. She could make all the ridiculous claims about his childhood and facades she wanted, but the truth was, he was a damn good cop and his skill was about to pay off. “Tell me about the murder.”
The rain thickened and she pushed out a heavy breath before tucking her chin into her collar. “I was young. And stupid. Incredibly stupid. I’d just graduated high school and was looking for a summer job to save money for university. Mom said there’d be enough from my biological father to pay for tuition and books, and that she and my stepdad would help with housing, but I’d have to cover meals and extras. I found a job working in the food court at the mall for minimum wage.”
She shook head. “I used to come home smelling like a deep fryer. And then the child support cheques stopped coming. I’d turned eighteen right after graduation. Apparently dear old sperm donor had decided he wasn’t going to honour the tuition promise he’d made unless I came to work for him over the summer. Mom was furious. She knew she could take him back to court to have the agreement enforced eventually, so she told me to forget about my father, that she and my stepdad would find the money for school. But two weeks later, Dad—my stepdad—was diagnosed with cancer.”
“So, to take the pressure off, you went to work for your father.”
She nodded.
“What kind of company did he run?”
“He’s in the natural resource sector.”
“What, like Morecon Industries? Pipelines and oil sands kinda thing?”
She hunched deeper into her jacket. “Exactly like Morecon Industries.”
Something in the way she said it made the pieces slide into place. “What did you say your last name was?”
“I’m not sure I did, but it’s Blackmore.”
“Your father is Allan Blackmore, president and CEO of Morecon Industries?”
She didn’t respond, not that it had really come out as a question, but she picked up her pace.
“Sorry, go on.”
She sighed. “The short version? Turns out my father didn’t think I needed to go to university. He figured I could learn everything I needed to know from him. He’d never managed to snow anyone quite the way he had my mother. Never had any other kids, so he thought it was time to start grooming me to take over his company. When I told him I was going to school, regardless of what he thought, he tried to bargain. He’d pay for any place I wanted to go—every penny and a living allowance—as long as it was for a business degree.”
Hudson’s laughter came in a sharp bark. “I can guess how well that went over.”
Her mouth tilted up in one corner. “He and my mother met at a protest, for crap’s sake; you’d think he would have known I’d end up a tree hugger.”
“So no more summer job with Morecon?”
“Not just ‘no more summer job’—I went and joined the protest group that was trying to prevent the pipeline survey. My father disowned me on the spot. Even had a lawyer send me some official-looking paperwork about it.”
There was no hint of humour in her voice now.
“There was this guy. Abe.” The ground underfoot was slick and rocky, but Mia didn’t slow. Frustration and self-loathing rode under her words, and Hudson put away the sudden twinge of jealously at the mention of another man.
“He was so cool, so edgy, and he seemed so much more passionate than the others. He was incredibly charismatic. Charming. He got hungry at one of the protests and chatted up one of the cops. Next thing you know, he’s walking back with a sandwich in his hand. He managed to talk the guy right out of his lunch.”
She hit a slippery patch, and Hudson grabbed her arm to stop her fall. She yanked it back and kept walking. “He had tattoos up both arms, and every single tattoo had a story. He said each one represented a victory against oppression or corporate greed.”
The power bars he’d had at the cabin were congealing in Hudson’s stomach. Some of Mia’s antipathy toward him was starting to make sense. He had full collection of art on his body. And she’d called him out on his attempts to charm.
“So after a few weeks of protests, Morecon finally got a removal order. The work was due to start the next day. Abe said he had a plan that would stop them from going ahead. A few of us snuck away from the protest site that night. I’d told him how to get to the equipment field. He wasn’t worried about security, said he’d already taken care of it, but he told me to keep watch to make sure none of the cops made their way up. I heard the noises, lots of banging and windows breaking. I knew they were vandalizing the equipment, but I stood there and kept watch because that’s what Abe had told me to do and I thought what we were doing was noble.” She shook her head. “Such an idiot.”
She was pushing herself even harder now, like the words were feeding her energy. She had to pause to catch her breath between sentences, but her story just kept coming. “They ran back right as the sun was coming up. We were stuck.
“There was stand of trees and shrubs between the field and the lower access road to the site. The cops were starting to disperse the protest below and workers were starting to trickle into the site. So I saw it all. One of the workers headed for a machine. It looked almost like he was dancing across the clearing. Abe had found out the security guard had a drinking problem and had arranged for him to get a bottle of his favourite that night. He’d bragged about slipping a micky into it as well.”
The disgust was thick in her voice when she talked about Abe, but it was clear to Hudson that she reserved the worst of her repugnance for herself.
“The guard got up into one of the massive bulldozers. Something blew apart in the engine as soon as he turned the key, but somehow it kept running.” She stopped abruptly and Hudson had to grab her to keep from knocking her over. The rain was coming harder and the wind was picking up. Mia looked past him. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was seeing the scene all over again.
“The noise…” She shook her head. “It sounded like the world was coming apart. People knew something was wrong. Other workers started to run toward the bulldozer, but the engine was shredding itself and shards of metal were flying around like shrapnel in a war zone. An equipment operator lost an eye. I’m sure there were more injuries than that, but when they saw the guy on the ground with a piece of steel sticking out of his face, they backed up and stopped trying for the bulldozer.”
She took a deep breath and started walking again. “It picked up speed. I could see it from where I was hiding. The door swung open. The guard tried to get out, but the dozer hit a bump and he fell back into the cage. The blade on the front came up and the engine started to scream. When he hit the fuel depot, there was a moment of silence when the engine finally stopped, and then the whole thing went up.”
She looked at Hudson. The skin across her cheekbones was pulled tight in the glow of his miner’s lamp, and the storm-darkened hollows under her eyes made him think of empty skulls.
“The guard never stood a chance.” She tilted her head up and let the rain wash down her face before picking up her pace again.
“And you’ve been on the run ever since? Mia, why didn’t you go to the police? It was a horrible thing, but you didn’t directly cause the damage, and if Abe spiked the guard’s booze he would have been the one deemed culpable.”
She stopped. Her face crumpled and a fist clenched around his heart. “I wanted to. Oh god, I wanted to.” She pushed rain and tears off her face and took a couple of deep breaths. “When the guard climbed up into the cab, Abe started to laugh and said the old man was a goner, or something like that. When I looked at him, something in his face scared the crap out of me and I realized I had no idea what he was capable of. I got up, told the others we had to stop it.”
She lifted her hand to her hairline near her left eye, and his light picked out the shine of a fine scar he hadn’t noticed before. “Abe tackled me. Held a knife to my eye. And then he made me watch.”
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of what that night must have been like for Mia, and he wanted to crush her to his chest and take the weight of it from her shoulders, tell her it was going to be all right, everything would be all right. But Mia stopped him with both hands propped against his chest. She looked up, and her miner’s light blared into his eyes. He turned his head and she stepped away. She wasn’t done yet.
“We were able to get away in all the commotion that came after. Abe told us not to say anything, not to talk to anyone, not to even be seen until he’d spoken to us. He let the others go then, but he held me back. Told me that if I ever said a word, he and all the others would say it was my plan, and that I’d caused all the damage to the machines. He told me what to say to the cops when they came around, that he’d fix it so I had an alibi.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and the skin on the back of Hudson’s neck tingled.
“He also told me it was a one-time deal. He had ‘friends’ in the police department and he said if he ever got word of me even speaking to police, he’d make sure I ended up as suspect number one. And if I tried to blame him, he’d go after my family.”
“And you believed him?”
“Hell yes I believed him. I told you he was charming. Well, he had that same smile—the one he’d used to get information out of me and the sandwich from the cop—the whole time he was telling me how he was going to control every day of my life.” The light from her lamp rocked across the landscape when she shivered. “Hell yes. And he…”
She swallowed hard and then faced into the driving rain and started walking again. Hudson fell in just behind her.
“He followed through. The cops came to talk to me and I told them exactly what he told me to say. And somehow, it held up. They believed me. Abe had fooled them all—including me. It was Abe who pointed out the protesters would never accept me if they knew I was Blackmore’s daughter. To them, I was Raina Meadows. Abe was the only one who knew my real name. The only one who could connect Raina Meadows to Mia Blackmore.
“So I ran home with my tail between my legs. I knew I needed to turn myself in, to tell the cops what really happened, but I had to tell my parents first. They had to agree to go into hiding until everything was finished. I needed them safe.” The light wandered as she shook her head again. “When I got home, there was a flower arrangement on the counter with an unsigned card that read, ‘Thinking of You.’ My folks had assumed it was from me and wanted to know how I’d known.” His lamp caught the sad twist of her mouth. “That was how I found out my stepdad had been accepted into a clinical trial for a new cancer treatment. It was the only hope he had of seeing another five years.”
Hudson swore. “And if they went into hiding he wouldn’t be able to access the trial. So you couldn’t tell.”
Mia nodded. “And for years, on the anniversary of that night, he’d send them flowers with that same message on an unsigned card: ‘Thinking of You.’”
What a son of a bitch, keeping Mia on a string and giving it a yank every now and then. “Did he do anything else? Make any other threats?”
She laughed, and a note of hysteria in the sound made his muscles tense.
“I worked my ass off. Took courses right through the summer and worked nights and weekends to pay for them, so I could graduate in three years instead of four. Right after I walked across the stage, I started my first job with the province of New Brunswick. I made a friend working a moose migration survey along the Maine border. We finally finished the radio tracking and came out of the bush. We went to a bar, but some guys kept hitting on us and a fight broke out. I had to give my name to the cops as a witness.
“A week later, all the tires on my friend’s car were slashed and sugar poured in her gas tank. He’d told me that’s what they were going to do to the pipeline equipment—pour sugar in the tanks. Again, it could have been random vandalism, or one of the jerks from the bar, but about a week after that a letter arrived at my parents’ place. I got them to forward it on. It was a printout of a sheet from the police records system indicating that information had come in that warranted Raina Meadows being upgraded to a Person of Interest in the death of Randal Neilly.”
“He pulled your alibi.”
“Just like he said he would. But he obviously didn’t give them my real name or they would have found me easily. I just don’t get why he’d care that I had to give a witness statement?”
“He didn’t. These kinds of people only care about power. He was just telling you he was in charge—that he could control your life however he wanted.”
She sighed. “I almost turned myself in at that point, but my stepdad had finally graduated to a maintenance program with the trial treatment, and he and mom were about to start travelling for the first time since he was diagnosed. So I told myself just a few more months. And I swear, it was like he knew.
“He sent a package to my office address. It took me a few weeks to get it because I was back out in the field. There was a newspaper clipping. Pete, one of the other protestors, had gone missing and his parents had given an interview, trying to drum up leads.” Mia glanced at him. “Pete had a bracelet he wore all the time, just black thread and a charm, meant to ward off the Evil Eye. It was in the package. It could have been a fake. Just another way to put me on edge, but…”
Hudson worked his jaw, trying to loosen the muscles that had become stiff and clenched. “But,” he agreed. Without being able to ask the missing man if he still had his bracelet, Mia had had to consider the fact her fellow protestor was dead, and that Abe had had something to do with it.
“So I figured, if he knew where I worked, he’d always be there in the background, keeping an eye on me. So I quit my first job and switched to contract work. My name still goes on every report I produce, and I’m sure they end up online and he could find me that way, but by then I’ve already moved on to a new job, new location. He knows where my family lives, but he also knows if he were to ever actually hurt them I’d go to the cops in a heartbeat. But if I were to turn myself in I couldn’t protect them anymore.”
“He’s got someone on the inside monitoring the police systems for your name. Have you had any other police contacts?”
“Just the other day at the resort. Where we conveniently ended up in the paper.”
He grabbed her arm and stopped dead. “He wouldn’t even need to rely on his police source for that one. Your parents, are they okay?”
She patted his hand then pulled away to keep moving. “It’s just Mom now. She’s fine. We had a plan.”
“Damn, Mia. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Well, there haven’t been any flowers for the last couple of years? Maybe it’s over?”
“I don’t feel comfortable with that gamble.” The words were out before he realized he would never normally have been so blunt. He would have smiled and put the other person at ease, all the while thinking the worst. But with Mia, the honesty had jumped to his lips, bypassing his brain. He frowned. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it wouldn’t be a healthy habit to fall into.
She stopped and rolled her shoulders under the straps of the pack. “Well, there’s no point in worrying about it now anyway.”
“Seems like this is a perfect time to worry about it. What else do we have to do??”
She adjusted the beam on her headlamp and pointed, and he saw the splintered tree tops and chunks of wood and debris that were scattered on the ground near a thick barrier of trees.
“We have to go and find your drugs.”