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ADELE

Adele slipped back toward camp. Exhilaration had her breathing deep and moving fleet-footed up the path, past the hulk of Enchantments. She’d found the perfect hiding space, something she hadn’t seen on any map or on the WholeEarthNow images. This is why her father always insisted on recon. There are things you can never know about a place until you’ve had boots on the ground.

The stuttering rumble of the generator disrupted the deep peace of the site. It was an invasion of sound, and the area seemed disturbed by it. Again, she felt that stutter. That question. What was she doing here?

The answer was clear: money.

What do you need with all that money? her father, a true minimalist, would probably wonder out loud.

Peace, freedom, security, the knowledge that Blake and Violet will not want for anything , she’d tell him.

Things that can never be sought without , he’d surely offer. Delusion.

The world had changed, though, hadn’t it? Since her dad was a young man with a family? In a postpandemic world where inflation ran wild, and even with a job her health-insurance premiums were a big chunk from her paycheck, and her grocery bill was shocking, and the kids didn’t have a fraction of the things their friends had now. Or maybe it was just that they’d lost so much when Miller left them. Maybe if they’d never had so much, the absence of that security wouldn’t be so frightening.

The things that kept her up at night: Could she pay for school for both kids if they didn’t get scholarships or she couldn’t get aid because of her abysmal credit history? What would happen if she got sick? Who would be there for her kids if she died? What would happen if she didn’t die young? Would she ever be able to afford to retire?

That’s what I need with all that money, Dad. The world has changed.

Some things don’t change , he would tell her. She heard his voice so clearly; far more clearly than that of her mother, who was alive and well.

As Adele approached the site, she noticed the slightest flicker of light from inside Malinka’s tent, making her big dome glow pink from within.

So was that not Malinka on the path?

Or had she taken another route and beaten Adele back to camp?

Whoever it had been out there, Adele hadn’t seen the figure again or anyone else as she picked her way through the overgrown property, finding the established paved paths hiding beneath the fecund overgrowth.

Now Adele edged closer to Malinka’s tent and heard the young woman’s childlike voice. She was whispering something, but Adele couldn’t make out the words. It brought her back home through a mental wormhole to standing outside Violet’s closed door, listening to her daughter sing to herself or talk to her friends. Not eavesdropping or spying; she’d never had to do that with Violet. Just listening to her become, marveling at her smooth, grown-up singing voice, or how kind and wise she was with her friends, her word choices. She was so far from the little baby Adele had carried in her arms, and yet that essence was the same, somehow. Something uniquely Violet that stayed glowing at the center of who she was. Her essential self.

Violet’s being Violet again. Blake always meant it as an insult. But Violet had always been Violet. And only a grown woman who’d been to hell and back knew what a gift it was to own yourself, to know yourself.

Adele strained toward the tent to hear better—yeah, eavesdropping this time. But try as she did, she couldn’t decipher the young woman’s words, just the tone. Urgent. Secretive.

What had Malinka discovered on her solo recon tonight?

Still standing outside the tent, Adele opened Malinka’s page on Photogram. Nothing new. Then she checked her WeWatch channel. Malinka was dark, hadn’t posted anything since the attack. Whoever she was talking to, it was offline.

A rustling in the foliage behind her caused her to jump like she’d been tasered, heart flying into her throat.

Adele froze as a huge black form emerged from the branches.

A giant bird, black in the shadows, with an impossibly large wingspan and kited tail, whooshed over her head, a shadow that lifted with great, silent flaps of its wings and then was swallowed by the clouds as suddenly as it had appeared.

The buzzard again. She imagined it with another feast for its chicks. Was it the same one? She felt a strange connection to the mama buzzard, hunting and fighting to feed her babies.

Her heart was an engine, and she breathed to calm herself, glad she hadn’t cried out and revealed herself as listening outside Malinka’s tent. She watched the sky for another glimpse of the bird. Falconers considered buzzards difficult to train and lazy because they were willing to feed on carrion. Adele thought that was a little unfair. They were survivors; she admired that. Being difficult to train wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wildness was underrated.

Inside Malinka’s tent, the girl had gone quiet. After guiltily hovering another few seconds, Adele turned to return to hers.

And smacked right into Wild Cody.

Her face came to his chest, which was hard and unyielding. He smelled of woodsmoke and sage. He lifted hands to her arms to steady her as she stumbled back. Then he smiled, released her quickly, and put a finger to his lips. Shhh.

He waved a hand, indicating that she should follow, then moved away.

She noticed that the two Range Rovers were gone. Did that mean that the Extreme team had gone back to the hotel? Was it only her and Wild Cody and Malinka on-site? The game was supposed to start in a few hours.

Cody crouched by the fire which had burned down to embers and coaxed it back to life.

Adele realized she was cold and felt herself drawn to the heat. Wild Cody (that was a stupid name; she couldn’t call him that) nodded toward one of the logs that they’d pulled around as makeshift seating. And for no reason she could identify, she sat. He stared over at her with that clear, seeing gaze, and she saw something she hadn’t expected: kindness. The warmth of the fire reached her skin, and the glow washed his face, softened the hard edges, filled in the landscape of lines.

Adele wrapped her arms around her center. He took a flask from his pocket, handed it to her.

Ew, had he been drinking from it? Postpandemic, that was pretty gross.

“It’s not mine,” he said, reading her expression. “I found it in my tent.”

“What is it?”

She took off the cap and sniffed it gingerly. Bourbon, a good one, light and woodsy. It reminded her of Miller: the old-fashioned was his go-to drink. It wasn’t Adele’s favorite, but he’d always saved the boozy cherry on the bottom for Adele. She remembered that sweetness, that biting alcoholic edge. She hadn’t allowed herself a single sip of anything since Miller left. She felt strongly that she had to be present and in control for the kids at all times. She was tempted to drink from the flask but capped it instead. She tried to hand it back to him, but he held up a palm.

“I’m sober five years,” he said. “But someone put a flask of booze in my tent.”

“Who?” she asked, horrified. “Who would do something like that?”

He smiled, and for a moment, she flashed back to her father, face lit by the campfire, smile broad and relaxed.

“I think someone was trying to mess with me,” said Cody.

She remembered the form in the hotel, the book, and cigarettes. She found herself telling him about it.

“Mind-fucking,” he said with a nod. “I understand they’re good at it. They like to keep you wobbly so you can’t focus on the game.”

She put the flask down, held her hands up to the fire, considering. That was pretty messed up. But she liked the explanation better than the idea that somehow Miller was here in this wild place, stalking her. She couldn’t even imagine seeing him in the flesh again. He had become a ghost. A haunting.

She picked up the flask, unscrewed it again, and poured out the bourbon onto the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “They shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong.”

He looked into the flames. “Nothing surprises me anymore,” he said easily. “Nothing people are willing to do anyway.”

Adele heard resignation, a kind of awakened sadness. He used a big stick to poke at the stacked wood in the fire, and some embers crackled.

“So what did you find out there?” he asked.

Wild Cody’s voice was gravelly, familiar. She’d heard it before—a lot. His had been Blake’s favorite nature show back in the day; probably it still was. She saw it turn up on the BoxOfficePlus Continue Watching queue from time to time. Usually after Blake had been bullied or treated badly by his former friends. It was her son’s comfort show, something they’d watched together in a time when things were happy and good. Long ago, it seemed.

“Just what they said would be there,” she lied. “The overgrown paths, the pool and clubhouse, the casitas. All in various states of disrepair.”

He watched her. She found she liked the look of him—rugged, outdoorsy, ready for anything in the way that her father had been. She remembered when she’d watched with Blake that she’d liked his adventurous spirit, his ready laugh, the clear joy he took in animal life. Here beside the fire, he didn’t seem unhinged to her at all.

“What were you looking for?” he asked. He poked at the fire with the stick; a log tumbled, and the flames danced.

Adele lifted her shoulders. She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular. But she found it all the same.

“Nothing in particular,” he answered for her. “Just recon.”

She nodded.

“Smart.”

“You?” she asked. “Same?”

He offered an assenting dip of his chin. The fire was roaring now, and Adele reached out her hands again, slid from the log onto the ground and leaned against the wood.

“I heard the game is rigged,” he said. “That the winner is chosen before the game ever begins.”

He took from his pocket what looked like a bag of leather strips. He lifted one out and took a bite. She was guessing jerky. Then he offered the bag to Adele.

Her stomach grumbled, and she took the bag, selected a small piece, handed the food back, earning another smile. She took a small bite, just to be polite. But it was actually good, meaty, spicy. She really hoped it wasn’t lion or the flesh of some other endangered animal.

“I heard that, too,” she admitted. Though she stopped short of telling him about the cameras. Knowledge was power, and you never knew how it could be used. They were opponents, here for the same reason. There could only be one winner. There would be no allies in this game.

They chewed in silence. The cloud cover was so thick that it seemed like dusk, though there were still hours before sunset.

“Then, why play?” he asked.

“In case it isn’t?” she answered.

“It’s a lot of money,” he said, shifting down to the ground, as well, spreading his arms wide along the log.

“It is,” she agreed.

“And you’ve got kids. A past to leave behind.”

Even if Maverick hadn’t skewered her with it during the live, it was all out there for the world to see.

Anyway, she wasn’t the only one here with a past.

“As do you,” she said easily. “Why are you here?”

He bobbed his head again, took off his hat, his salt-and-pepper hair wild, but it was thick and lustrous. He was older than Adele, certainly, but definitely not old.

“Money doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “I’m on the redemption circuit.”

Right. She’d seen a slew of articles about him recently, about how he’d hit rock bottom, was clawing his way back to wellness. How he’d made mistakes and was sorry. Addiction. Rehab.

“My son, Blake, and I have watched every one of your shows,” she told him finally. “He learned so much—so did I. About animals, the environment, insects, other countries and cultures. It was truly great.”

He took another bite of jerky.

“It was a dream come true,” he said. “Imagine getting to do all that, get paid, see the world, everywhere you go kids love you. I was only ever at home outdoors in nature.”

She was surprised by his candor. But she’d known some people in recovery before. If they were doing the work, they were wide-open. Honest.

She offered him a smile. “Swin with the dolphins, hang with the sloths, hunker down with the gorillas in Rwanda. Blake still wants to do all of those things.”

“Turns out I could outrun the bulls but not my demons,” he said. He held her gaze. “You don’t get to run from those. Gotta face them down, apparently.”

There’d been rumors about his addiction, sexual harassment on the set, exploitation of Indigenous guides. The show went off the air; Blake was heartbroken, watching the old seasons over and over.

Then the whole lion thing. Some video of Cody raging about a conspiracy to ruin his reputation. Wild Cody was canceled before canceling was a thing. It was long ago, or seemed so with the pandemic, and then the Miller nightmare, her father’s passing, and she didn’t remember all the details, just another man she thought was one thing but turned out to be another.

What she did recall from the show was how tender, how reverent he was with all the animals, even when he got bitten, attacked, and stung, how much awe and love he seemed to have for the natural world. How peaceful he seemed in his role.

“The Wild Cody thing didn’t quite fit,” she ventured.

He laughed, mirthless. “That was a marketing thing. It never sat right with me. But it stuck. I had pushed for Wilderness Cody.”

She ran a hand through her hair, down the back of her neck which was aching from sleeping on the ground. She knew all about how if you didn’t stand up for who you were early and often, then someone else could slap an identity on you that some how became the truth. Corporate wife. Stay-at-home mom. Betrayed. Abandoned. Suspected.

She and Cody locked eyes. Blake had believed that the whole thing about the lion was a lie. And Adele humored him because he thought the same about his father’s alleged crimes, and that she couldn’t let slide. In the man by the fire she saw a sadness that she recognized all too well.

“I’ve never hurt a living thing,” he said quietly, as if reading her thoughts, maybe still ruminating over the things Mav had said. “Except myself.”

She was surprised to find she believed him.

“I’ll just call you Cody, then?” she said, giving him a smile.

“That’ll do.”

The generator rumbled loudly, emitting some kind of grinding sound, then suddenly went quiet. But no one emerged from the trailer, which stayed dark.

“I heard people yelling earlier,” said Adele.

Cody looked over in the direction of the trailer. “Trouble in paradise, I’m guessing, from the vibe around here.”

“Yeah,” Adele agreed reluctantly. There was a definite vibe. Not a good one.

“Just be careful tonight,” Cody said, poking the fire again. “Once the game starts, no one here has any friends.”

He glanced over at the trailer. Adele felt her stomach clench a little.

“And the only true prize in this world is living another day.”

Then he rose and disappeared inside his tent without another word.