“You want your ride to your camp, don’t you? And you still owe me—for saving your life. So, what’s going on?”
“I don’t need you to drive me to my cache. That’s why I took walks. I scouted routes across the massif. I can make it on my own.”
“I promised I’d take you and I will. But I deserve an explanation.”
He stared into the darkening desert, at the stray waving banners of mists—the ghosts. “Nothing I say could ever be enough, and frankly the less that’s said, the better.”
“Better for me or better for you?”
“Riley, please. What I’m doing is against the law. I don’t want you involved. And I can’t have anyone tracking me through you. If I could erase all your memories of me, I would. It’s best you forget everything about me. Nothing happened. We never met.”
“I can’t forget this.”
“You
