“What?” Terry replied dumbfounded.

“The green light is on,” Blake barked. “Hell the fence ain’t even turned on!” Blake threw the lever up turning the fence back on, the red light glowing. The fence was hot again. A five-joule charger was powered by a large solar panel that Blake had installed, which in turn juiced a bank of twelve-volt batteries. There was no electrical power on the mountain and no lights.

“Where are Jesse and Shane?” Blake asked as he stormed by Terry and headed back to his truck.

“Hell if I know,” Terry snorted. “I got my damn ear bit off and was knocked unconscious for a bit. I came to about 1:00 this afternoon or so and nobody was here, but the truck still was. Jesse, he’s got the keys. I don’t know what the hell happened!”

Blake fumbled through his center console until he found a flashlight. He shined the light at the right side of Terry’s head and grimaced. Dried blood painted the side of Terry’s head like Gorbachev’s stain, with the back center of his ear completely bitten off. His ear had the shape of the number nine.

“D-A-M-N,” Blake said. Terry looked up, anger and disbelief in his eyes.

Blake went back and cranked the truck so that the battery wouldn’t die as the high beams lit up everything in their path. He walked toward the old, beat-up F-100 farm truck. Just as Terry said, there was no sign of Shane or Jesse. Blake shined the light inside the truck. The keys weren’t in it, but two cell phones were on the seat.

“Do you have your cell phone, er, do you have a cell phone?” Blake asked Terry.

“Yeah, got mine. It was in the truck with theirs and I used it to call you. I waited an hour before I even got a bar on it.”

Blake walked along the fence and moved the light inside as the corner of his eye caught a large black mass on the ground. Eduardo lay dead, just as they left him. “Why’d you guys leave him here?” Blake shouted, almost instantly realizing that must have been when the trouble began. “Never mind,” he said.

Terry followed Blake as they walked around the perimeter into the woods and followed the back fence lines. The fence was on and it was tight all around. Made no sense to Blake.

“You said some escaped,” Blake said, “how do you know that?”

“When Jesse and Shane didn’t come back I had some time to kill since I didn’t have no way to get down the mountain,” Terry said, “so I did a count. One black fella missing from this cell, one red head missing from up top. That’s it.”

“GODDAMN IT!” Blake said. “You know what’ll happen to us if someone finds out we’re holding them on this land? We can’t take that chance!”

“You figure that’s where Jesse and Shane went?” Terry asked. “To fetch ’em?”

Blake stared at Terry and wanted to tell him what a dumb shit he thought he was. How he was no different than that running back that missed the block on the safety, only this time the safety took off Terry’s ear before trying to wreck Blake’s life. Again. Can’t catch a friggin’ break, Blake thought to himself.

“Maybe they chased them and came out somewhere else,” Blake said to Terry, seeking approval of his idea.

“I figured they’d have found a phone and called if they’d done that,” Terry quickly surmised.

Of course they would have, you dumb shit, Blake said to himself.

They walked along the back fence line to the top of the encampment and shone the light into the woods. The harsh light made it surprisingly difficult to see. It brightly illuminated the face of each tree while plunging the backsides into utter blackness, casting long dark shadows on the ground. Blake took a few steps forward and Terry followed close behind, looking over his shoulder all the while to make sure he could see the truck lights. Blake realized almost instantly how pointless it was. He had no idea where to go, what to do. He stopped to think for a moment.

A shriek from above pierced their ears as a huge raven descended and swooped at them. Blake and Terry ducked just in time to see the raven fly into the headlights of Blake’s truck before ascending, out of sight.

“Shit!” Terry said, already heading back toward the truck lights. “That scared the hell out of me!” Blake followed, knowing there was nothing he could do, not now. This was serious and he needed time to think.

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” Blake said, acknowledging the obvious but wishing there was another, any other way.

“What’ll I tell ’em?” Terry asked. He knew he was sworn to secrecy; Blake had made that crystal clear when spelling out the terms of the three thousand dollars in cash he was going to receive the next month. Cash. More money than Terry had ever had in his hands. Who needs to get a GED, Terry had thought when Jesse hired him, thrilled that he had found a way to earn so much money.

Blake thought about it and figured a dog attack was the most likely answer, but they’d want to know where it was and what kind of dog so they could go after it. Then the doctors would call the police. Just more questions that he didn’t want Terry to have to deal with.

“You know, hospitals are slow,” Blake said as he led the witness. “What if I take you to someone who could clean that up for you without having to go to a hospital or to see the police?”

Terry wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say.

“Tell you what,” Blake continued. “There ain’t nothing they can do for you anyway except put antibiotic cream on it. How about I go get you some from the drugstore and a splint for your fingers so you can doctor it yourself. You can tell whoever asks that a Rottweiler attacked you but you kicked him good. Just tell them it was away from here...over on Wolf Creek or something. That way we can finish all this up here and I can give you the three thousand bucks I promised you in a few weeks.”

“Yeah,” Terry said, hearing nothing other than the words three thousand bucks.

“C’mon. I’ll take you home,” Blake offered. “You’ll have to show me where you live.”

Blake and Terry descended the mountain in silence. This was serious, Blake knew that much. Terry’s ear was nothing, the least of his worries. If any forest authorities caught sight of those escapees and were able to find out where they came from...that Blake was holding them captive on federal land! If something unspeakable happened to Shane and Jesse or, worse yet, even if they were all right but they spilled the beans on him...

It was only in that moment as he slithered down the mountain that Blake realized what a snake he was. Somehow, he had seen only dollar signs. He was no different from Jesse, no different from Terry just a moment before, and hadn’t seriously considered the risks of what he was doing. At least he had the good sense to not tell Angelica about any of it so that he could keep her protected, but still...

All of Blake’s worst thoughts and fears ran across his mind like an old fashioned ticker tape. His first thought was that he might not get the money he had worked so hard for during the past two years, the money he had counted in his sleep and dreamed of. Then he thought that maybe, somehow, he could be in trouble with the law.

“I’ll go out first thing in the morning and look for Jesse and Shane,” Blake said to Terry. “You just take the day off and recover.”

“Fine by me,” Terry said. “Hell, I’ll need some time to mend up anyway.”

“I never asked you, but how well do you know them fellas?” Blake asked.

“Shane and Jesse?” Terry answered. “Not at all. They’re Rabun County High fellas and I live up near Sky Valley, closer to Highlands than Clayton. I just happened to see one of Jesse’s posts on Facebook one night when he was was fishing for a helper. I shot him a message once I caught wind of it, that’s all.”

“So you don’t know them at all? Their families, where they live...nothing?” Blake asked.