Page 33 of The Perfect Revenge
Borowitz’s phone rang.
“It’s my fiancée.I have to answer it,” he said, picking up.“Is everything okay?”
Whatever the response was, he turned grim.
"I'll be right there."He hung up."Devon just woke up, and he's upset.She can't calm him down.I have to go."
He started to get up.Susannah looked like she wanted to stop him, but Jessie shook her head.
“We’ll be in touch,” she said as he extricated himself from the booth.
Once he was gone, Susannah turned to her.
“Upset kid or not, why did you let him off the hook?”
“I didn’t.Even though he dodged my question, his evasiveness helped answer it for me.I think we’ve got a new lead to follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Hannah could already feel the burn in her legs.
She and Dallas had only been on the trail for about fifteen minutes, but almost all of it had been a steep uphill slog so far.She thought she could see the path start to level out about fifty yards ahead of them and hoped she was right.Otherwise, they'd have to take a break, which she didn't want to do so early on.Dallas would think she was pathetic.
And she didn’t want that.Telling the boy with the muscular build, wavy black hair, doe-like blue eyes, and charmingly sheepish smile that she was already struggling was not an option.
“What would you say the temperature is?”she called out to him as he was a couple of paces ahead of her.
“When I checked in my car just before we got out, it said it was 97 degrees.But it feels well over a hundred to me.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head.“It was something like 78 degrees when we left town.That’s a pretty dramatic shift.I guess that explains why we’ve hardly seen anyone.Is it going to be like that the whole way?”
“What way?”Dallas asked.
“A ghost town.”
Hannah had been hiking many times before, but usually only on day hikes, not overnights, and never on this trail deep in the Santa Monica Mountains—which were mostly really very big hills— so she didn't know what to expect.
“I’m sure we’ll run into a few more folks,” Dallas said.“This trail eventually dips down, leading to a cool spot—literally and figuratively—called Split Rock.There’s an actual giant boulder with a huge crevice in between that you can walk through.People sometimes like to take a rest there.But once we get closer to the Backbone Trail, we should have the area mostly to ourselves.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
“Depending on our pace, between an hour and a half to two hours.”
Hannah was quiet until, as she'd hoped, the trail did finally level off.After taking a few seconds to catch her breath, she posed another question that probably should have come up earlier, but only just occurred to her.
“Do you think we have enough water?”
“I loaded up my backpack with a gallon and a half,” he said.“Yours took a gallon.”
“So that’s why it’s so heavy.”
He laughed.
“Well, the good thing is that it will get lighter as the trip goes on.But to answer your question, that should be enough to last us until midday tomorrow, when we’ll get back to the trailhead.Plus, I loaded up the cooler in my trunk with Gatorades and extra water, so we’ll be able to replenish when we get back to the car.”
"So until then, we're on our own?"Hannah didn't want to sound like a wuss, but she needed to know where they stood.
“Yeah.But we’ll be fine.I’ve done this hike many times before and have never had an issue.”
