Thunder banged from the night sky, and the rain finally let loose. It poured down, rattling through the trees, soaking her. Her hair flattened and stuck to her head in strings. The hill steepened. She nudged the horse.

Despite its fatigue, it faithfully responded. She patted its neck. After all this, she couldn’t keep calling it Horse.

“Faithful,” she said. “That’s you.”

The rock came out of the darkness. It just appeared in midair, flung hard, and hit her in the forehead.

Pyrotechnics flashed in her field of vision, electric red and yellow against the night. The pain echoed through her head, dull but shocking.

She was barely aware that somebody had jumped out on the trail ahead of her. A shrill voice cried, “Stop. Stop, horse.”

The horse dug its feet into the soft ground and hauled up. Jo grabbed for the horse’s mane even as her butt headed sideways and south.

She hit the dirt and heard a girl’s voice. “Crap.”

Jo looked up, her eyesight pulsing with light, and saw Autumn’s sleek riding boots gleaming in the rain. The girl was trying to mount the circling horse. It was an awkward jittery dance, Autumn hopping on one foot as the horse pivoted away from her.

Jo couldn’t believe it. “You’re horse-jacking me?”

“No. I goofed.” Autumn got one foot in the stirrup and held on to the saddle horn. The horse kept circling. “Get on.”

Head throbbing, Jo bumbled to her feet. “Don’t you dare leave me.”

Steadying herself, Jo cautiously, reassuringly, raised her hands to the horse and said, “Whoa.”

Like magic, the animal stopped spinning. It tossed its head and blew out its nostrils and stood still.

Jo grabbed the reins. She couldn’t keep the outrage from her voice. “Why did you throw a rock at me?”

“I thought you were him.” Autumn grunted and pulled herself awkwardly into the saddle. “Hurry.”

Jo pushed Autumn’s foot from the stirrup, painfully lifted her own boot in, and struggled her way into the saddle behind the girl.

“I’m not him. And you’re lucky.” Squashed behind Autumn, she swung both arms around the girl. “He’s coming. We have to get back to the Hummer and get everybody out of there.”

Autumn was breathing heavily. The altitude and the run through the forest were taking a toll. Jo clucked Faithful into a walk.

“If I’d known it was you I wouldn’t have thrown the rock,” Autumn said.

Jo’s head throbbed. “Okay.”

“I thought it was me or him. Better safe than sorry.”

Autumn’s voice had a thread-line crack in it. She twisted and looked behind them. Nothing was visible in the darkness.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Coming.”

Jo nudged the horse in the ribs. Faithful broke into a trot.

“I seriously didn’t mean to hit you with the rock. It’s . . . I was taught . . .”

“Taught what?”

“Never to hesitate. To protect myself.”

“By attacking?”

“Look out for number one. Cruel world, all that. My dad drummed it into me. You know, how you should never swerve on the road to avoid an animal? Because you might crash and kill yourself?”

“My dad told me the same thing when I learned to drive. But that’s a long way from brain people with a rock.”

Autumn seemed as tight as a cloth caught in a wringer. “My dad was serious. Full on. Like, the world is a road where everything’s trying to make you swerve. It not only doesn’t care if you live, it will actively hoard life to itself. You have to take your chances where you can get them, without regret or remorse.”

Jo let the words blow away in the rush of the wind. “Hard attitude.”

“It was ingrained in me. Protect myself. And sometimes, protecting myself requires proactive steps.”

Jo already, in general, hated the word proactive. Now she had an additional reason. “Preemptive war. See something, take it. Hell of a worldview.”

“Seize the day. Without hesitation or fear.” Autumn quieted. “Okay, I was mistaken.”

Jo ducked as a branch swayed down in the wind. “Is this an apology?”

“My dad also said never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”

“I hate apologizing too. Having to say sorry sucks,” Jo said. Her tone left room for Autumn to hear, but . . .

“I panicked. I won’t again,” Autumn said. “Are you okay?”

Apology, then. As close as it came. She’d take it.

“I’m okay,” Jo said. “So are you. Even if you’re a king-size pain in the ass.”

“I feel like my nerves are on fire.” Autumn’s voice thickened. “My dad’s plane has landed by now. Think he knows what’s happened?”

“Maybe.”

They rode. Jo thought about how to broach the subject she needed to talk about—without panicking Autumn. The girl was one spark away from an explosion.

“Tell me about the Bad Cowboy.”

Autumn stiffened. “Why do you care about it?”

It, not him.

“This weekend was planned as a way for you to defeat him. Edge and your dad set it up so you’d have the tools to do that.”

She spoke in the past tense to distance the conversation. She didn’t want to scare Autumn by bringing him into the present moment. Not yet.

She added, “It was built into the fabric of the reality scenario. It could be important.”

Autumn’s shoulders rose. Her shoulder blades protruded from the back of her sweater, birdlike. Jo sensed her fighting competing urges—to cry, to scream, and to keep it suppressed. Not the top layer of the story. The grit. The garbage she’d buried in the basement, years back.

“My dad never believed me that the guy was bad,” Autumn said.

“Did your dad ever see this man?”

“He says he doesn’t remember him. But I’m sure he did.”

Jo kept her arms snug around Autumn’s ribs, holding her steady as Faithful trotted through the trees. “This was at a birthday party?”

“No, somebody’s huge open-house thing. Fourth of July weekend. Cocktails and croquet on this enormous lawn, and pony rides for the kids. Keith Urban played a private set for the adults.”

Autumn’s Fourth of July parties definitely outdid Jo’s. When she was a kid, her family would drive to the beach at Bodega Bay and sneak a few sparklers along. Jo and Tina and her brother, Rafe, would run barefoot along the sand, racing the waves, waving their white-hot sparklers in the sunset. Then there would be hot dogs.

“This guy Red Rattler was on the staff?” she said.

“Valet parking the guests’ cars. All the staff wore costumes. He wore a cowboy hat and a shirt like the one in the sports bag. God, I want to gag. I can smell it.”

“What happened?”

“Some of us kids were playing hide-and-seek. I thought I’d outsmart everybody. I crawled through a hedge and ran to this field where the cars were parked, and I hid in my dad’s car,” she said. “So I was kind of scrunched down in the backseat, peeping out the window. And I saw him.”

“Red Rattler.”

“Going car to car, searching through them.”

“Stealing?”

Her birdlike shoulders tightened another degree. “Maybe. Probably. He was systematically going through each car. I didn’t know what to do. And he kept coming closer, and I got scared, so I hunkered down. I knew something wasn’t right, but I was frozen. I thought if I got out, he’d see me.” She stopped. “And then he came to Dad’s car.”

“Oh, Autumn.”

“I ducked down on the floor of the backseat but he opened the door, and he was whistling. He found me right away. The way he looked at me. It . . .” She paused a long moment. “It was like, burning. Like his eyes were on fire, and he wanted to drill a hole through my head.”

“How terrifying. What did he look like?”

“Those clothes. Except much bigger. He was fat.”

“How fat?”

“He was a whale. He wheezed when he talked, and he sweated. And he had long hair, like the hippies, or Indians—”

“A braid?”

“Exactly. He was early twenties, maybe. He had a mustache, Pancho Villa style. But that wasn’t the thing about him,” she said. “It was that weird eye with the white ring around it. And he said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He seemed so angry. Then he grabbed me and . . .”

She went quiet.

Breathed. “He pulled me up, staring at me. Like staring would put me under his power. He said, ‘You was spying on me, wasn’t you?’ Then he said, ‘Spying’s a nasty habit.’”

Jo felt a chill.

“He was smiling, but not with his eyes. His eyes were probing me, like somebody pushing against you with a stick. Or with . . . eager fingers.”

“Did he touch you anywhere else?”

“No. He just stared, and talked. ‘You know who spies? Dirty worms. Crawling through the dirt so nobody can see them.’ Then he said, ‘You know what we call worms who spy on other people and then tattle? We call them snitches.’”

“Autumn, that sounds awful. Were there no adults around?”

She shook her head. “He said, ‘Bad things happen to snitches.’ Then he pushed his face right up next to mine. He pointed at that freaky eye, and said, ‘This is the white snake. It sees everything. If you snitch, it’ll see. And it’ll send other snakes to get you.’ ”

“Dear God.” Jo felt a hot lump in her chest—empathy with the confusion and fear Autumn had felt. “But you didn’t keep silent. You told your dad about him.”

“Not at the party. Later.” Autumn’s voice sounded thick. “It took days to work up the courage. I felt—dizzy. Scared to tell him.”

“Why?”

“Embarrassed. Frightened of the Bad Cowboy. He made me feel so . . . ashamed for some reason. And I was scared my dad would explode. He can be overpowering. Like a black tornado. But he . . .” She took a beat. “He thought I was blowing everything out of proportion.”

“This is your dad who tells you to watch out for number one? To strike first because the world is out to get you?”

“I know,” Autumn said.

But Jo didn’t. “What is it?”

“It was right after my parents divorced. I was seen as having adjustment issues.”

“Your father thought you fabricated the incident?”

“Embellished. Exaggerated. Misconstrued it. Got hysterical.”

“How confusing for you . . . to be told your experience wasn’t real by someone you trusted.”

The girl’s shoulders drew even tighter. She said, “Huh.” She seemed to fight for breath.

“Autumn, you were a child. Red Rattler was an adult. And he terrorized you. He was—”

“Mind-fucking me.”

“Yes.”

“And my dad didn’t believe me. He thought I was trying to manipulate him. To get something from him by complaining.”

Jo wondered what was coming next.

“Screw my dad. For not believing me.”

Her shoulders shook and she began to cry again. “Dustin . . .”

Jo wrapped her arms tighter around Autumn’s waist.

She thought of other things Autumn might come to realize: that the power of the Bad Cowboy probably arose not only from the fear she experienced when he threatened her but from the rage she felt toward her father for not believing her—which left her not only terrified but alone with her terror. This was probably one reason the Bad Cowboy had invaded her unconscious life to such a degree. He represented her deepest fears of being powerless and unprotected in what her father had led her to believe was a terrifying world. She even used the word “worm” repeatedly—she felt invaded. The Bad Cowboy and her sense of not being heard, seen, felt, had wormed their way under her skin. And so it developed into a canker sore. Which she picked at, trying to make her father see what she needed from him.

And instead of listening to Autumn, instead of recognizing her terror, her father saw her as having developed a phobia. But the Bad Cowboy was not an illusion. Not a clown to be deflated. Emotionally, he was a continuing slap in the face.

Unfortunately, in real life he was something much worse.

Jo heard a noise behind her.

Autumn turned in the saddle. “What was that?”

Down the slope, through tree trunks that stood like toothpicks, Jo saw—what? Possibly a form, flowing in the darkness. Possibly nothing but her own fears.

“Let’s go,” she said, and kicked the horse in the ribs.

Faithful broke into a canter. Autumn tried to see behind them.

“I’m scared,” she said.

Who isn’t? “We’re going to get back to the Hummer and get everybody out of there. Hold on.”

They hit the crest of the ridge a minute later. Jo hauled back on the reins. Faithful tossed his head.

“You ever gone down a hill on horseback before?” she said.

“Yeah. If we slip, or you start to fall . . . jump.”

She nudged Faithful forward. He edged down the hill, digging his feet into the slope. The pitch of the wind changed. The trees overhead caught it and sent it whispering back at Jo, a fearful hush.

Below, the clouds parted for a moment, and she saw the white-water frothing over rocks. The rain was thundering down, and the river was higher than when she’d left.

“Here we go,” she said.

They got halfway down the slope before the soil on the hillside slipped, and the horse lost his purchase.