It's the same thing when you're in a fire. Despite all the sounds trees groaning and cracking under their own weight and falling to the ground with an earthshattering thud, the roar of the fire all you care about is the seconds in front of you and nothing else. You're not thinking about past or present or future bullshit.

When I left West Bend and got my first taste of that the way my mind turned off, unburdened with all my family bullshit, worrying about my brothers I knew I was hooked on all of it: jumping, climbing, boarding, surfing, whatever ate up my focus completely and entirely.

Driving is the exact opposite of that.

I pull out my phone, slide my finger across the screen, as if something different is going to happen this time.

No signal.

Screw Silas and all of this.

Conflicted. I think that's what the shrinks call this shit. I have conflicted fucking feelings about her death.

I was more than interested in her death before I read that bullshit in her diary about killing the old man for money. Money, of all things. It's not like we grew up with money and then lost it somehow. We never had any our whole lives. She never had any. So when the hell did money become so damn important?

So I don't know why I'm crawling along this windy road up the side of the mountain and way the hell outside of West Bend. It's colder as the elevation increases, the trees up here bare of leaves. I don't know where this cabin is, but it's cold enough here that there's probably snow on the ground at the top. Normally, I'd be pleased about the fact that snow weather is coming soon. That means snowboarding. And snow bunnies.

Except now, all I'm thinking about is the fact that I'm driving my ass up the mountain in the damn cold while Autumn and Olivia are hanging out in their warm house without me.

I don't like it.

I don't like that I don't like being away from them.

This whole thing is making me edgy as hell.

I check the paper again, holding it against my steering wheel as I squint to look at my crude drawing of Silas' directions. If it were anyone but one of my brothers asking me to meet him and whoever the hell else up here in the middle of nowhere, I'd tell them they were fucking crazy.

But it's Silas.

So I'm driving up to a remote cabin to meet him and his con artist girlfriend. And her team.

Isn't that some shit?

When I finally find it, everyone is already there.

"Is this the twin?" A nerdy-looking dude yells from across the room before I even get a word out.

"We're just brothers." I look at Silas and roll my eyes. "I hope we don't look that much alike. I'd hate having to look at your ugly mug in the mirror every day."

"Yeah, unfortunately we're brothers," Silas says, wrapping his arm around me and trying to put me in a headlock. We struggle for a second until I look up to see his girl holding a glass of champagne and standing in front of us.

"Boys, please don't destroy this place," she says.

"Yeah, okay." Silas laughs as he lets go of me and slides his arms around her. He says something to her, his face pressed against hers. I look away from the intimacy of the moment, a pang of jealousy running through me.

Silas makes the round of introductions. Tempest, his girl, is striking. She's way too beautiful to be with him, I decide to tell him later. And she's smart. The whole group of them are. They're smart and charming and... criminals.

There's Iver, dressed in a suit even though we're out in the middle of nowhere, talking about places I've only seen on TV Monte Carlo and Santorini and Crete. He should be a pretentious dick, the kind of guy with too much money that you just want to punch, except that in the next breath, he's showing me how to scam people in card games.

There's Emir, who I think might be the nerdiest nerd I've ever met. He hardly looks up at me when I walk in and basically spends the rest of the night hunched over computers four of them lined up on a table, wires crisscrossing and zigzagging everywhere in a tangle working on God-knows-what. Probably an algorithm involving world domination.

And there's Oscar. Oscar is old school, the grandfather of the group. He's classy and British or European or something with an accent, and he's quiet. He looks completely unassuming, a doddering old man, but then he says something and you realize that not only has he heard everything going on, but that he's sharp as a tack.

They make normal conversation, talking about old times, old heists, stuff I'd be interested in if it weren't for the fact that I'm sitting here instead of at Autumn's place. I get annoyed that we're not talking about what we're actually here for, the con or whatever the hell it is we're going to do that's going to solve everything. But then Elias is on the television, and I'm momentarily distracted. He doesn't flip me off at the awards show, although River does punch some jerk in the face who tries to talk in the middle of her acceptance speech, and I immediately like her.

I think about what Autumn and Olivia are doing right now. They've eaten dinner, I'm sure. I wonder what Autumn cooked probably some atrocity. Olivia has had a bath by now. Autumn's sitting beside her on the bathroom floor, her knees tucked up to her chest while looking at a magazine, Olivia playing in the tub with her bath toys and drawing on the walls with crayons made of soap. When Olivia's done, Autumn's bathing her and then reading to her.

I finally got to read a story to Olivia the other night.

I palm my cell phone, wanting to look at it again, silently cursing my stupidity for being so wrapped around the axle about a girl.

Except I know it in my gut. She's not just any girl. She's the girl.

It hits me, right there, that realization crashing against me full force like a ton of bricks.

"We're going to grift the town," Iver says.

"It's so dramatic when he says it that way," Tempest says, rolling her eyes. "You're always so over-the-top with these things."

"You need a little more flourish in your life, darling," he says.

"I have just enough flourish, thank you."

"Look, maybe we just let it go," I say, shrugging.

"Fuck, are you kidding?" Silas asks.

"No, I'm not joking. I'm aggravated," I tell him, the edge returning to my voice with a vengeance. I don't want to screw around here with them. Don't they get that? "It's not like one of us can't just go kick the hell out of Sheriff Easton and get his confession on tape or something. Shit, I can go wail on him myself."

"That doesn't solve the issue with the town," Iver points out.

"We've looked into the mining company, the one buying people off their property," Oscar says. "These people are no good. They're the worst kind of business. They have a history of destroying towns, blowing into a place like West Bend and bribing law enforcement, stealing people's homes out from under them. Then, they strip everything from the land, make a windfall, and pull up out of a place, the town totally destroyed, residents left in the lurch."

"So what?" I ask, feeling suddenly defensive and noncompliant. "This isn't my fight. I'm not Robin Hood, taking from the rich and helping the poor."

"One of those assholes the mayor or sheriff killed our fucking mother, and you don't even give a shit, Luke?" Silas' voice gets louder as he stands close to me, looking like he wants to push me.

"You're going to... what? Avenge her death, Silas?" I ask. "Make those bastards pay? Why? She didn't do jack shit for us."

"You don't want to be involved? Fine," Silas says. "Why'd you even come up here, anyway?"

"I'm just saying, there are options other than running some complicated con scheme here," I point out. "What does that even do? Send them to prison? So does a murder confession."

"But a murder confession doesn't help anyone else," Oscar says. "Like Letty Weston, Tempest's grandmother."

"Your grandmother lives in West Bend?" I ask flatly.

Tempest nods. "She's in a retirement home, but still has her property, said no to the mining company's offers on the place. But the company has a real bad habit of making sure that people who say no end up saying yes."

Autumn has said no to the mining company, I remember, pulling up that conversation from somewhere in the back of my mind.

"Listen to the plan," Oscar says. "Then decide if it has merit."

So I sit and listen to the plan and the background they have on everyone. Besides the shit about the shady mining company, Emir dug up stuff about the sheriff and the mayor, dirt that's enough to convince us that they're rotten to the core, corrupt and poisonous to West Bend and its residents.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking of Autumn and Olivia and how the hell to keep them as far away from this as possible.

Oscar lays out a map, plots of land marked with red marker. "The mining company is going after the europium on the properties, we know that," he says. "That's what your father had found, what he told the geology teacher at the high school about. That teacher is long gone now, paid off by the mining company to disappear or "

"Or made to disappear," Silas says grimly.

"Yes," Oscar agrees. "He's gone and no one else knows about the europium."

"Well, no one except the people in this room," Tempest says. "And the mayor and the sheriff."

"So the mining company has been picking off people one by one," Iver says, sipping from his champagne glass.

"Not literally, though," I say. "It's not just coming in here and murdering "

Oscar holds up his hand. "Literally, no," he says. "It's buying parcels of land, mostly, which is legal. Technically. Duping residents about the value of their property isn't the worst thing a company can do."

"But we do think they've done worse," Tempest says. "Intimidation, outright threats there have been rumors floating around. It's not official representatives from the mining company, but they're obviously behind it."

"So, what are the properties marked on the map?" I ask, stepping forward for a closer look.

Oscar trails his finger over the paper. "These are properties we've marked, places we've been able to find out that the company is interested in," he says. "They're casting a wide net."

"How do you know they're interested in these places?" I ask, squinting to orient myself on the map.

"Don't ask," Emir mutters.

"It's best not to know," Oscar assures me. "Emir's technical prowess doesn't always operate within the bounds of the law."

Iver chuckles. "Doesn't ever, he means."

"None of what you do is legal," I point out.

"True," Oscar agrees. "But what Emir does is quite illegal."

"Seems like there's not much of a distinction," I say. Then I see it. Autumn's orchard, outlined in red marker. "What's this?"

Oscar leans over, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "One of the properties the company is quite interested in," he says. "It's one that we can consider using to our advantage."

"Using to your advantage? How?" Thoughts are rushing through my head, one right after the other. Autumn mentioned that there were men on the outskirts of the property. She mentioned the offer to buy her land. I clench my fists at my side, feeling the nearly-irresistible urge to walk out of here and go straight to her place.

"We select target properties, and our rival energy company shows interest in them," Tempest explains. "Our surveyors find europium on the properties "

"That we ensure is there, of course," Oscar adds.

"How?"

"That will be my doing," Iver says.

"So... what? Are you guys going to break into some top-secret lab and steal " I start. "Of course you are."

"Our company drives up the cost of the land, and we get the mining company to put in bids to buy up useless land," Oscar explains.

"A big company like that, it's a drop in the bucket," I protest. "How is that useful?"

"The mining company is going to have a problem with the company who does its extraction and testing," Oscar goes on.

"An unfortunate data leak," Emir says, shrugging. "Can't trust anyone these days."

"And... you're the new company doing the testing," I say.

Oscar nods. "We'll fail to find anything of value on the properties the company has already purchased," he says. "The mining company will want to unload the properties onto their rivals also us and there you have it."

"That doesn't take care of the sheriff and the mayor," I say.

Oscar holds up his index finger. "All in good time. You haven't allowed me to finish."

"This property," I interrupt, pointing to Autumn's place on the map, "is not involved. She's not involved in any way with this. Do you understand?"

I try to ignore the glare I can feel coming from Silas' direction. I want Autumn and Olivia kept far away from any of this shit, out of danger.

Oscar nods. "No involvement," he says.

No involvement, I think.

That's when it hits me. Autumn can't know about any of this. If she did, she'd be an accomplice to the hundred laws I'm sure we're about to break. Autumn, and especially Olivia, have to be protected from this. If they're involved, they're even more vulnerable. If the mining company wants her land, they're going to keep trying to get it and she's going to keep saying no, which puts her in danger. And that means the mining company has to be stopped.

But I have to keep Autumn and Olivia out of this.

I have to stay away from them.

If Autumn doesn't hate me, she'll come after me.

So I realize what I have to do. It's for the best. If I care at all about Autumn, I have to let her go.

29.

Autumn I swallow hard to try to manage the lump in my throat. "It's no big deal, you know," I say, my voice wavering, betraying how I really feel.