All his life, Mathias has paid close attention to people, watching them, studying them and weighing their words and movements. It's become easy for him to read people, but Veronica is different and even as she speaks, he thinks the only way he'll ever know the whole story is if she chooses to tell him. He likes that.

"She and Henrich would have been great friends," he says with a dry laugh, taking a bag from his pack for himself. "Getting into trouble together. She is not here, I assume?"