Veronica purred a little growl that sounded like the precursor to a catfight.
“While we’re engaged in girl talk,” Shirley said, “I’m not getting any warmer or drier.”
“Who has food?” Aubrey asked. “We need to keep fueling our bodies.”
“As long as it’s not human flesh,” Shirley said, “I’ll eat anything.”
Madison’s windbreaker pockets contained a variety of snacks rivaling a convenience store. She even had beef jerky. A gift, she said with a blush, from Jeremiah. Even half-starved, Aubrey couldn’t bring herself to eat dried cow flesh. In a cannibal situation, she figured she’d become the eatee, not the eater.
Even though the women were all soaked to the bone, they forced themselves to drink water. Staying hydrated was as necessary in cold, wet weather as in hot and dry. The rain had stopped, but a heavy mist blanketed the forest.
“We could be within spitting distance of the camp” Shirley said, “and walk right by it.”
“We’d hear noise, wouldn’t we?” Madison turned in a circle. “Which way is camp?”
Aubrey strained to hear human noises over the sounds of the forest. She wished she’d paid more attention to Grant’s attempts to instruct her in the use of her compass. She hadn’t believed she’d ever need to use it. Grant would be there to guide her. If only she had hung onto him during the bear incident, instead of allowing panic to rob her of all common sense.
“I barely know up from down at this point,” Shirley said, “much less north from south.”
Or right from wrong? Could a person’s moral compass become that disoriented? Shirley was a self-admitted embezzler. Random clues shuffled through Aubrey’s memory. Bender had done Shirley wrong. Was Stewart an innocent bystander in an attempt on Bender’s life? Had Shirley attempted to murder Doug to end his blackmail?
“We need to keep moving,” Madison said. “My feet are going numb with cold.”
ROWDY HUNTER’S
SURVIVAL TIPS
You’re reaching the end of your battle for survival. Rescue is near. Or death. Did you give someone your itinerary, so they know where to search? Do you have clean water? Food, or the tools to catch food? If you’re going to hunker down for a while, have you made a shelter to protect yourself from the elements? Can you make a fire? Signal for help? The True Test of your skills means using the tips in my book to save your greenhorn keister from death in the wilderness. It won’t do you any good if all they recover is your corpse.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The one lesson Jeremiah could say he’d actually learned at Survive or Die camp was how hard it was to control a group of people. Survival on his own would have been a cakewalk. He was still confident he’d make it out fine. His concern was for other folks.
Jack Bender was pale as a sheet and still as death.
“Is he still breathing?” Rankin’s tone of voice was matter of fact.
“I can’t tell.” Candace knelt near Bender. She had commandeered hiking slacks from a better prepared camper back in the A frame shelter. “You two go find Grant. Tell him to hurry.”
“Nothing doing,” Rankin said. “We leave you here alone, and that old bastard will be dead before we reach the river crossing.”
Candace studied Rankin, pure venom in her icy eyes. “You don’t know anything. I love Jack. I want him to live.” Her words were flat and unconvincing.
Rankin snorted. “You love something, but it’s not him. Let me guess.” He framed the shape of a rectangle with his huge hands. “Is it green and about this size? Has the number fifty on it? Or were you worth Benjamins to old Jack?”
What a waste of skin. Jeremiah glanced toward the trail Grant had taken, willing him to return swiftly. He couldn’t leave these three losers alone in the woods. There’d be nothing left by the time Search and Rescue came for them. If any of them died, that stupid death threat he had written would come to light. He’d take the blame.
His thoughts dwelt on that critical moment when he’d ended up on Bender’s ship of fools instead of with Madison, as he’d intended. She just plain vanished when people bolted. How had he let that happen? Had he panicked when the bear charged?
Jeremiah tried to relax. Madison Wilhelm was resourceful. She would make it to safety, and so would he. Then he was never letting her out of his sight again.
Rowdy Hunter’s survival book had been worth every inflated penny. Following his suggestions, Sotheara had sealed her notebook, map, and pen in a plastic bag. She had dry paper on which to catalog the dozens of Bender Clips’ barrels. Relying on her phone alone was too risky.
“Someone’s coming,” Berdie whispered.
“Is it Search and Rescue?” Sotheara harbored a guilty hope that Dale would sweep her up and carry her to civilization, like a hero in a romance novel.
“Hush. It’s Bud.”
The creepy old wrangler. Not her first choice. Or her last. Bud had stalked her in the woods. She’d seen him crouched beside Jessie like a bobcat on a bunny. Bud terrified her, but he knew the way to camp.
“Stay down.” Berdie pushed Sotheara lower behind a barrel.
“Come on out!” Bud yelled. “No use hiding. I see you moving around.”
He drew his gun from the holster on his hip and headed straight for the shed. Sotheara’s heart hammered against her ribs until she thought it’d burst. Bud wasn’t coming to rescue them. He was covering up the toxic waste. He’d shoot them both and bury their bodies with the barrels.
“You and me got a bone to pick, old woman.” Bud cackled like a maniac. “Let’s settle this once and for all!”
“Settle what?” Sotheara whispered.
Berdie shrugged. She pulled her gun out of an inner jacket pocket. This was not going to end well. Sotheara popped up.
“We can settle this peacefully.”
Berdie yanked her down as a shot blasted from Bud’s gun. Sotheara covered her ears. Wood splintered behind her.
“Sorry!” she squeaked.
“It’s okay, kid. I was so focused on getting us to Lodgepole, I ignored all the signs that someone was following us.”
Berdie rose from a crouch, barely peeking above a barrel.
“The kid already sent pictures with her phone thingy,” she yelled. “Shooting us won’t stop the authorities from shutting this place down!”
“I don’t have a signal,” Sotheara said.
Berdie waved her free hand in Sotheara’s face. “Hush! Let me handle this.” She gripped the gun with both hands. “Bud, you just turn around and head back to camp.”
“Like hell I will. You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, old woman. You had to blab about Penelope Entwhistle.”
Sotheara exchanged a startled glace with Berdie.
“I was telling people the truth,” Berdie said.
“I can’t have you upsetting my applecart by spilling the real story about my great grandmamma. You think you have it bad, with these idiots accusing you of inheriting a taste for human flesh? Imagine if it were true.”
Berdie’s wrinkled face went ghost white.
“He’s a cannibal?” Sotheara asked.
“Guess so,” Berdie whispered.
Sotheara rose to a crouch beside Berdie and risked poking her head above the barrel.
“I saw you Wednesday. You tried to kill Jessie!”
“Naw,” Bud drawled. “I was just gonna finish the job your boss started. Damn fool’s so incompetent, he couldn’t even properly kill a scrawny woman. Then you had to go and interfere. She coulda been the evening’s main course instead of that other fella.”
“Main course?” Berdie’s wrinkles deepened as she scrunched her face into a confused expression. “You and the camp cook—”
“Millie had nothing to do with it,” Bud said. “Did seem like she was close to figuring things out, though. I
might have to deal with her before I pull up stakes and move on.”
“Did you kill Wilson Dudley?” Sotheara asked.
“Who’s Wilson Dudley?” Berdie asked.
Before Sotheara could explain, Bud broke into a raspy cackle.
“Stretched that fella farther than a cheap roll of hamburger.” He hooted. “Served him up to you greenhorns in chili, barbeque, stew and burgers!”
“Oh my god!” Berdie dropped to her knees and vomited in the dirt, heaving the meager contents of her stomach.
“I made you all cannibals, and you didn’t even know it!”
Sotheara heard boots crunching on gravel. Berdie was incapacitated while she retched. Sotheara reached for the gun with a trembling hand. She barely knew the handle from the shooting end, but she grasped it and aimed toward the approaching cowboy.
“Hold it right there!”
Bud stopped. He was way too close for comfort.
“Put your gun down.”
He raised it instead, holding it with the barrel facing upward.
“Gonna shoot me, little Chinese girl? I heard your people will eat anything that moves. Dog. Cat. Monkey. I’ll bet ya even partake of human on occasion.”
“I’m Cambodian. I’m vegetarian. And I’m not going to let you kill the bats.”
Sotheara pulled the trigger.
Aubrey followed Madison, Shirley, and Veronica down a logging road, hoping it would lead to civilization. Instead the ruts filled in with vegetation and faded as the road dwindled to not much more than a game trail. Aubrey feared they had become completely lost when Shirley stopped. She held up a hand.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Not another bear.” There was more frustration than fear in Madison’s tone.
Aubrey heard the faint sound of rushing water.
“The waterfall.” Veronica started to sprint, seemed to remember her earlier mishap due to haste, and slowed to a shoe-flapping trot.
Shirley squealed. “We made it!”
The women stumbled onto the riverbank. The rope bridges that would take them to a parking lot and eventual rescue were not exactly a welcome sight, in Aubrey’s eyes anyway. They looked even dicier than during the first challenge. One bridge dangled in the river, the surging water clawing at it. In the pre-dawn dimness, the far bank was a wall of black and gray.
“Do you think the bridges are safe?” Madison asked.
“I say we send the lightest one over first,” Shirley said.
“That would be me.” Veronica attempted a hair flip, which was difficult considering her hair was dirty, wet, and tangled, but she managed.
“Madison, do you have a signal?” Aubrey asked. “Call camp and tell them to send a bus.”
Madison powered up her phone. “Wow, finally. I have two bars. This might be the end of my battery.” She reached Althea and managed to relay their location before her phone died.
Veronica chose the sturdiest looking bridge and pranced across it like a gazelle.
“Next?” Madison asked, clearly indicating it was not her.
“Seems like you’re the next lightest,” Shirley said to Aubrey, “but knowing your distaste for rope bridges, I don’t think you’ll mind delaying your crossing.”
She was right. As Aubrey watched Shirley scramble across, she was afraid she had just let a murderer escape. Attempted murder, at the least. The two women disappeared down the path to the parking lot without a backward glance.
“They didn’t wait for us,” Madison said.
“Althea knows we’re here. The bus won’t leave without us.”
“If the bus can get through.” Madison said.
“The road over the dam washed out,” Aubrey said. “This parking lot was on the near side of the lake.”
“Then I suppose we should go now. It won’t take the bus long to get here.”
The women quibbled over who should cross next when a man’s voice called out.
“Hello. Hello!”
Aubrey remembered Shirley’s claim about Bud the cannibal wrangler, and held up a hand to silence Madison. Then she recognized the voice.
“Over here,” Aubrey yelled. “Grant!”
Aubrey raced to him, tripping over a branch and nearly doing a face plant. Grant caught her before she fell.
“Aubrey! The bridges. We’re almost out of this mess.”
As they hugged, Aubrey laughed and cried simultaneously. The struggle was nearly over. They had both survived the long, terrible night, and rescue was a rope bridge away.
“I called camp,” Madison said. “Althea said a bus is on the way.”
“No telling how long before help arrives.” Grant pulled off his wet Bender Clips baseball cap and slapped it against his thigh. His blond hair appeared blue in the pre-dawn gloom. “Jack’s so weak, he can’t walk. His whining might have a basis in fact this time. He needs help.”
“You left him alone?” Madison asked.
“Candace, Rankin, and Jeremiah are with him.”
All were on Aubrey’s potential murderer list. Well, maybe she could cross Jeremiah off.
“I marked the trail with tape.” Grant used his cap to point at a strip of fluorescent orange tied to a pine branch. Even in the misty darkness, the tape was visible. “I have to go back. You gals cross the river. Send Search and Rescue that way.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Aubrey said.
Veronica appeared on the far side of the river, waving her arms. Aubrey could barely hear her over the roaring waterfall.
“The bus is here!”
With hand signals and yelling, they got the message to her. Bender. That way. Send help.
Grant pulled on his cap, then pushed aside rain-drenched branches, his feet squelching deep into mud. They walked single file, Madison close behind Aubrey, following bits of fluorescent tape marking the freshly trampled trail. The clouds had dissipated. A sliver of moon and ridiculous quantities of stars filled a sky so crystal clear, it took Aubrey’s breath away. Or maybe it was the all night hike that left her feeling oxygen deprived, her head buzzy.
“If I’d known the parking lot was so close,” Grant said, “we could have carried Jack.”
“Were you out of cell range?” Madison asked.
“I didn’t have a signal when I last checked,” Grant said, “and then my phone disappeared.”
“You never lose cell phones.” Aubrey shook her head. “Where was it last?”
“In the mesh pocket on my backpack.”
“Someone stole it,” Aubrey said. “They’re going to kill Bender.”
Grant stopped and turned. “Aubrey. Or should I call you Sherlock?”
She wasn’t sure if that was any better than being called Miss Marple.
“No one’s going to murder Bender with two other people as witnesses.”
“But the killer might do in Bender,” Aubrey said, “and then the others.”
“If we walk up on a scene of mass murder,” Grant said, “the solution will be simple. The killer is the last man standing.”
“Or woman,” Madison said. “It’s happened before. Berdie claims it was Penelope Entwhistle, not her uncle, who ate those people. Oh, Aubrey! What if—”
“Hurry!” Aubrey pushed Grant’s shoulder.
“What if what?” Grant plowed through rain-damp bushes.
“What if Bud gets there first?”
“Then they’ll be headed our way,” Grant said.
“Not if Bud roasts them over a campfire,” Madison said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Shirley told us Bud threatened to eat her,” Aubrey said. “He’s the cannibal, not Berdie.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jeremiah stepped into the clearing with a load of branches. Jac
k Bender was silent under the lean-to. Jeremiah had covered Bender with a silver survival blanket, thin but remarkably insulating, after Candace had refused to huddle with Jack, which would have done more to warm him than the barely smoldering fire.
“We can’t stay here,” Candace was saying for the umpteenth time. “We’ll freeze before anybody finds us. One of us needs to go for help.”
“That’s what we sent Grant for. To get help.” Jeremiah dropped the branches. “If we’d kept going, we’d be at the river crossing by now. Search and Rescue could find us there a lot easier than way back here in the brush.”
“Then let’s go,” Rankin said. “Jack will just slow us down.”
“We all saw the bear,” Jeremiah said. “We can’t leave him behind. We’ve got the boss wrapped up like a burrito. Convenient for a predator.”
“Great idea,” Rankin said. “Then none of us is to blame.”
Instead of protesting, a grim smile formed on Candace’s lips.
Jeremiah heard thrashing in the undergrowth. Rankin reached for his gun, but Jeremiah could have told him the racket had a human source. Sure enough, Grant Sommers stepped out of the fog and into the clearing. Rankin pulled his empty hand from his jacket.
Jeremiah’s heart jumped when he saw Madison. He had hoped she was already back at camp. She smiled and gave a little wave. Jeremiah wanted to run to her and envelope her in a hug, but there were more urgent issues to attend to first.
“I could hear you halfway to the river crossing.” Grant rested his hands on the waist strap of his backpack. “What’s the problem this time?”
“These two won’t quit arguing,” Candace whimpered. “They’re going to upset Jack.”
Candace’s makeup smeared across her face like a crazy-person’s war paint. Her borrowed hiking slacks were torn and muddy. Jeremiah had figured Candace for being older than Madison. Maybe closer to Aubrey and Grant’s early forties. She had aged a decade tonight.
“Where’s Search and Rescue?” Candace asked. “You were supposed to bring help.”
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