“The hike was two weeks long, and the last day, we were supposed to rock climb. They took us to this little cliff face, and really, the cliff itself was only about twenty feet high, but it was on the edge of a mountain, so when you were at the top, looking down, the perspective made it seem like you could fall thousands of feet. They kept saying it was just a trick of the eye, but I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t doing it. And this one counselor, he practically came at me with the harness. He’d had it. He’d had enough of me and my mouth. Well, I’d had enough, too. I took off running.

“I was a good runner. Thin, light. They didn’t catch up to me. We weren’t that far from civilization, so I had a pretty good sense of which way I needed to go. We’d all been hiking for two weeks. We couldn’t carry the rock-climbing gear the whole time, so we’d stopped off at the lodge before and the lodge was pretty close to a town. So anyway, my plan was just to walk until I got somewhere, and then I’d get to a phone and call my father and say that I had done as much of his little camp as I could and it was time for me to come home.”

Cole nods, and for a second, she wonders if that’s where the story will end.

“It turned out I wasn’t on the road I thought I was.”

He chews briefly on his bottom lip. He hasn’t looked away from Luke once since he started to tell the story; he doesn’t now.

“I heard the truck when it was pretty far away. And I knew it wasn’t from the lodge because it was . . . well, those cars were new, and this one was making a hell of a racket. I thought about trying to wave it down, but there was plenty of day left and I figured I’d be fine. If the guys in the truck knew anyone from the lodge they might turn me in, and God forbid they make me go back to that fucking cliff.

“At any rate, I was going to ignore the truck. That was my plan. But at the last second as it was driving past me, I turned and looked, and the guy in the passenger seat was . . . He had the prettiest blue eyes. They were like crystal. And I remember, I smiled like I’d never let myself smile at another boy. That was my mistake.”

Her stomach’s gone cold, and across the room, Marty’s jaw is set, his deep breaths flaring his nostrils.

“They pulled over. There were three of them. I guess they were in their twenties. And they started out helpful. Asking me if I needed a ride, where I was going. And I told them I was good and not to worry about me. And then it was like they all smelled something on me. Probably from the way I talked or the words I used. Maybe they saw a city boy or maybe they just saw a faggot who could have been from anywhere. They all came at me at once. Like a force. I just remember it felt like my head was on fire all of a sudden. Then I was in the back seat of the truck and they’d tied my wrists up . . . I just remember being astonished by what was happening. Nobody had ever lifted a hand to me, ever. Nobody at my school fought. We were too damn rich!”

He smiles so broadly all of a sudden, Charley almost returns it on reflex. But it’s not that kind of smile, and she knows it.

“I remember as they drove me, I spit out a tooth they’d knocked loose. Then they took me to a shed and . . . the rope. The rope was maybe the worst part because I could see the rope . . . on my wrists. They’d pressed me facedown on the floor, and my hands were out in front of me. The rest I could just hear and feel. But the rope I could see.” Again, he looks to Luke, to the bandaged evidence of his injuries, and it’s no longer any mystery to Charley why this memory’s come bubbling to the surface now. The platform, the limekiln, the woods. Brutal men who move like a single, hateful force. “It’s funny, how many porn stories there are on the internet about the type of thing that happened to me. But the thing they never get is that the people doing it to you are doing it because they’re sure it’s the worst possible thing they can do to another person. And you feel that in everything they do. When you scream, when you beg them to stop, they push harder. That’s the thing people don’t understand about rape. It’s the feeling of having hate, someone else’s hate, inside of you, and you try to gather every part of you into the space that’s left over, and the longer it goes on the space gets smaller and smaller.”

After a long silence, Cole looks from Luke to her, and whatever expression’s on her face causes him to give her a sympathetic smile. As if he’s pitying her, when really it should be the other way around, she figures.

“I realize at times I’ve made a deliberate effort for you to see me as less than human,” he says, “but believe me when I say I have my own reasons for wanting to see this drug do some good in the world. And you can also believe me when I say, I’m going to get everyone responsible for doing this to him. Everyone.”

Before she can respond, he leaves the room.

For a while, she and Marty just stare at each other, as if Cole Graydon’s humanity is a bitter pill neither one of them is ready to swallow.

This time it’s a helicopter that wakes her.

In the hallway, she moves to the window and sees a bright light appearing out of the night sky to the south, sweeping low over the black waters of Lake Patrick as it approaches the ranch. Cole’s helicopter; she’d recognize it anywhere. She took a fateful ride in the thing a few months before, and its details are emblazoned in her memory, from its retractable runners to its leather-padded passenger compartment.

As she emerges onto the front porch, she finds Cole close to the front steps standing in a huddle with the younger security guy from last night and three black-clad men she doesn’t recognize. Cole has a new outfit on—a black T-shirt and jeans so similar to what his security guys are wearing she wouldn’t be surprised if they’re borrowed from one of them. Freshly showered, with no product in his hair, he looks startlingly boyish.