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that.”
    “Once my father gets a bug up his butt . . .”
    “So you said.”
    “The whole purpose of the course was to teach you to know what you’re shooting at before you so much as finger the trigger.”
    “I still don’t like it.”
    “I sleep better knowing it’s there.”
    “But I don’t. And think about it. It’s not right,” Fiona said. “A gun shouldn’t have that kind of power.”
    “But it does, and if there’s a prowler . . .”
    “You . . . me . . . both of us . . . We don’t need this. Not ever again. Why would we elect to stay here? Come with me. We kill some time while Walt—the sheriff—sweeps the woods. It’s safe again, and we return.”
    “I won’t give him that power. Some faceless dude who’s stealing pancake batter? We talked about this. You convinced me: ‘Once a victim, never again a victim.’ I’m not giving some phantom the power to make me leave.”
    “And if it’s not a phantom?” Fiona asked.
    The two exchanged looks. For a moment it appeared Kira was about to ask a question, but she censored herself.
    “He hit a house a half mile from here,” she said. “Who would be dumb enough to hit the next-door neighbor?”
    “These guys are not rocket scientists.”
    “You’re not telling me something. I can see it, and don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
    “If you stay, I stay,” Fiona said.
    “That’s bullshit. I’ll be fine.”
    “What about moving back in with your par—”
    “No way. Not even for a week. I’m done there. You know how I feel about that.”
    “But one week?”
    “I love them, but I’m not living with them. My father’s look is . . . tragic. He can’t help himself. It’s like it happened to him. It’s like secondhand smoke or something.”
    Fiona reached for the DVD’s remote control. Kira leaned forward and placed her hand onto Fiona’s.
    “Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re trying to protect me. I know how awful you’d feel if anything happened. But nothing’s going to happen. I’m in charge of my life now. I have a life now. You made that happen. You, the Advocates, my parents, this whole valley. But I’m not running from some dude stealing soup cans. ‘Once a victim, never again a victim,’” she repeated.
    “But there’s also, BS is BS. ‘Being smart is being safe.’”
    “I’m staying,” Kira said. “Unless you’re kicking me out?”
    “Yeah, right,” Fiona said. She touched the remote and the movie continued.
    Kira settled back into the couch and pulled the bowl of popcorn into her lap. “I love it when they go to Paris,” she said.
    But not Yellowstone , Fiona was about to say. She didn’t.

6
    W ith Beatrice leading the way, Walt, Fiona, Tommy Brandon, and Guillermo Menquez followed a game path through a dark forest of fir, white pine, and aspen on a north-facing slope. Beatrice was not actually leading, but following a scent from a can of evaporated milk found by Fish and Game Deputy Ranger Menquez a hundred yards from the Berkholders’ stucco home. That the can carried a scent, and that that scent led them deeper into the woods, encouraged Walt that they were onto something.
    “No bear tracks that I’ve seen,” Menquez said. He was a stocky man with a thick mustache and an oily face.
    “No scat,” Walt said, agreeing. “No fur caught in the shrubs or on the stumps of old branches—”
    “Show-off,” Fiona said.
    Walt ignored it. “No evidence that any of the food in the kitchen had been consumed.” He expected Beatrice to lead them to a camper, a squatter, and Menquez, a bear expert, was along in case they encountered one—or, if Walt’s theory proved right, the “bear” required a translator. The Hispanic population had exploded in the valley over the past decade. Increasingly, his office and Fish and Game dealt with Mexicans squatting in the national forest while moving from one menial job to another. With the collapse of the economy had come whole settlements of twenty,