Backcountry

by Pamela Beason

  “We’ve had a lot of others stay inside their tents all night,” Aidan told her.

  Maya nodded her agreement. “They don’t all have to be brave explorers. They just have to find the strength to endure twenty-four hours by themselves.”

  “Justin’s creating a rock pyramid,” Aidan reported. “He promised to knock it down tomorrow.”

  Taylor was making lists in her journal of things she planned to do in the future. She seemed to be the only teen with any noticeable ambition.

  Sam and her two peer counselors enjoyed a quiet evening by themselves. While Sam and Maya talked and explored the immediate area, Aidan collected some long grasses, then sat with his back against a tree as he braided them and then proceeded to deftly stitch the braids together with more grass, creating a small circular mat.

  Sam peered over his shoulder. “Coaster?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “Unless I keep going, in which case it could be a placemat. Or even a doormat.”

  “Interesting. You should teach the kids how to do that.” It would relieve her of some teaching duty, in addition to giving the kids something else to do in their spare time.

  He nodded. “I will.”

  The sunset was largely hidden behind the tall mountains surrounding the lake, but the three of them stayed on the shore, watching the stars come out until they got cold and crawled into their tents, Aidan and Maya to read and Sam to write up her notes.

  When she got up to pee, Sam was treated to a meteor streaking across the black velvet sky. The August Perseid shower was over, but she was happy that a few stragglers were still rocketing through early September. It would be nice if some of the crew kids were seeing them now.

  She sat on a rock by the lake shore for a moment, grateful that no whistles had sounded. If only Chase were beside her. With him unwilling to give up his job and Sam unwilling to join him in Salt Lake, they seemed doomed to slip into each other’s lives like asteroids temporarily caught in a planet’s orbit, then slingshot away, alone in the vastness of space.

  Did that mean they didn’t love each other enough? Should one of them be willing to make a major compromise? Her only other long-term relationship had been years ago with self-absorbed newscaster Adam Steele. He had definitely expected all compromises to be hers.

  * * * * *

  As her crew regrouped the next day, the talk was all about what had happened during their solo campouts. Nick recounted the small animals and birds he’d seen. “I heard a great horned owl, too.”

  “Something a lot bigger than that was prowling around my tent,” Ashley said. “A bear.”

  Justin and Gabriel rolled their eyes. But Maya, who had brought Ashley back, confirmed the story. “There were bear prints about thirty feet away from Ash’s tent.”

  Ashley looked smug. “I threw a rock at it, and I heard it run away.

  “Omigod,” Olivia gasped. “I don’t know what I’d do if one came close to my tent.”

  Maya’s mouth turned up at the corners. “There were bear prints in your camp, too.”

  “For real?” Olivia’s brown eyes were huge. “I went out to pee when a bear was there?”

  “Huh,” Justin huffed. “It was probably too afraid to come to my camp. I was ready for it.”

  “The point is,” Sam said, “that bear was around but left us all alone. Nobody had to blow a whistle. You should all be proud of yourselves.”

  Ashley turned to her. “I saw your light. You guys didn’t really need to come check on me.”

  The muscles between Sam’s shoulder blades tightened. “I didn’t, Ash. You saw a light?”

  The girl nodded. “Headlamp or flashlight. In the woods, not too far away.”

  “Me, too,” Taylor said. “I figured it was one of you.” Her gaze bounced from Aidan to Sam to Maya.

  Could it have been that hunter? Or another backpacker? Wandering around after dark in the mountains was not a common activity. She considered how close together the solo camps had been, how Ashley had observed smoke from several of the cooking fires.

  “Maybe it was one of your friends here,” Sam suggested, checking their expressions. “Was one of you skulking around in the dark?”

  Did Nick look troubled? Was that a flash of guilt she saw on Justin’s face? She simply couldn’t tell. Her entire crew professed their innocence, swearing they’d all stayed in their own camps for the entire time. Sam didn’t know what to think; they all had headlamps and they’d all had plenty of time on their hands during their solo campouts.

  She’d been warned about teens hooking up for sex. Had one of the boys been sniffing around Ashley’s and Taylor’s tents?

  Their faces revealed nothing.

  If one of them was guilty, he or she was hiding it well. She had no evidence against anyone. “Anyway,” she summarized, “you all survived. Now, gear up; we’re moving ten miles today.”

  * * * * *

  At their next camp, she instructed Aidan and Maya to set out the food and pots for dinner and then find something else to do. Aidan perched on a log, a minuscule sewing kit beside him, and set about stitching up a rip in his pants leg. Maya braced her back against a tree and focused on a book in her lap. Sam sat not far away from her, reviewing her guidebook and keeping an eye on her crew.

  Gabriel was the first to notice that dinner preparations were not underway. “What’s supposed to happen here?” He spread his hands out to indicate the supplies. “Who’s supposed to do what?”

  Sam yawned dramatically. “Staff is tired. It’s the crew’s turn to cook from here on out.”

  “Huh.” Taylor’s expression was annoyed, but she walked over to the supply area to survey the dinner ingredients. “It looks like goulash tonight.”

  Shaking his head, Justin reached for the largest pot. “I’ll get the water. Lightning, wanna come with me?”

  Nick grabbed another pot, and snatched up the water filter, and they turned toward the creek they’d crossed a short time ago.

  They argued about who was supposed to do what and girls’ chores versus boys’ chores, but the teens managed to cook dinner with a minimum of scorching and when it was clear that the staff was no longer responsible for doing dishes, either, the crew also cleaned up afterwards. She had to remind them to hang the remaining food from the trees, but overall, Sam imagined that Kyla would be proud of her group.

  * * * * *

  Sam reported the successful solos to Troy that evening. He congratulated her on how well her expedition was going, but he sounded despondent.

  Maya was right, it helped to be away from Bellingham, in the backcountry with a job to do. The tasks Troy was doing every day would remind him of his dead wife and daughter. “How are you, Troy?”

  “Day to day,” he responded. “And thank you again, Sam.”

  “Please stop thanking me. I’m only a third of the way through this gig.” She could hardly believe she was saying that; it felt like she’d been out here for at least a month. “Have the cops been by? Is there any news?”

  She heard Troy slowly inhale and then exhale just as slowly, and guessed he was trying to keep his voice under control. Finally he said, “A Detective Greene from Snohomish County was here yesterday.”

  “What did Greene want?”

  “She asked about Chris and what we knew about him, and she wanted to know all about the company history and finances, what Kim did at Wilderness Quest and what I’m doing, how long you had worked here.”

  “Did she ask how much you were paying me?”

  “Yeah, she did. I explained that these were extraordinary circumstances.”

  “No kidding.” She felt slightly guilty about the deal she’d made with Troy, but she needed that extra money. And this was an extraordinarily stressful job that she would never have taken under normal conditions. “Do you have a clue what the authorities might be thinking, Troy?”

  His laugh was bitter. “They’re checking out me, Chris, you, everyone I ever prosecuted.”

>   She hadn’t considered that pool of possible suspects: Troy’s job with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office had no doubt earned him many enemies. “Are there any suspects there?”

  “I suppose there’s one or two. Over the years, I received several notes from one guy by the name of Hockney. He got five years for his third DUI; he was upset, to say the least. He lost his job, of course, and his wife and kids left him while he was in lockup.”

  “Those sound like self-inflicted wounds.”

  “It’s a common story. There’s another one, a Martha Sheldonack, who hates me because the guy we prosecuted didn’t get sent away. It was a case of road rage, and the guy sideswiped their car and killed her husband and daughter. But there was also a deer that ended up entangled in the wreck, and the defense made it sound like Bambi caused the accident instead of the maniac who forced the Sheldonacks off the road.”

  Sam was grateful that it wasn’t her job to handle all those sad cases. “Do you think either of those two is so determined to get back at you that they would hurt your family?”

  “Seems like a long shot.”

  “Do they live in the area?”

  “Hockney is in Ferndale and Sheldonack lives in Deming.” He named two towns in Whatcom County, each less than twenty miles from Bellingham.

  She was glad she was up in the mountains away from the crazies.

  “My best guess, Sam? The cops are grasping at straws, hoping the right one floats by on the stream.”

  “That’s the feeling I’m getting, too. Stay strong, Troy.”

  “Remember that your break is coming up in a few days; we can talk more then.”

  “I’m ready for some time off.” She concluded the phone call.

  As she lay in her tent that night, she dreamed fitfully about hazy threats that never quite materialized. In her nightmare, she was hiking with her friends in dense fog when a rifle barrel appeared out of the mist.

  She tried to shout a warning, but her voice didn’t work right and Kim and Kyla couldn’t hear her. Sam woke to find the corner of her sleeping bag had flopped over her face as she slept. The word “Kyla!” was still echoing in her head.

  Chapter 9

  Sam didn’t find the note until she had stuffed her sleeping bag into its sack. The small slip of paper, previously smashed under her makeshift pillow, skittered across the floor of her tent. She flattened it with her fingers.

  KLAPTON WAS HERE.

  All caps, scratched in blue ink on the back of a sales receipt. Squinting at the faded print on the other side, she made out the words Glacier, OJ, and ter jrk.

  Looked like the writer had stopped at the convenience store in the small town of Glacier and purchased orange juice and...teriyaki jerky? But how the hell had the note appeared under her pillow? Goosebumps spilled down the back of her neck at a sudden vision of a hand snaking into her tent as she slept.

  She rarely zipped the exterior rain flap; being completely closed up made her feel like she was sleeping in a sandwich bag. Had she left the net door unzipped, too?

  She backed out of her tent and inspected the ground around her knees. She’d obliterated whatever marks were immediately in front of the door by crawling over them, but she located several prints a couple of feet away. Two mostly whole prints, a couple of heel and toe marks. Men’s boots, most likely. Not big enough to be Justin’s or Gabriel’s, too big to be Nick’s. The prints looked about Aidan’s size.

  He was bent over his pack, stuffing in cooking gear, when she tapped him on the shoulder and shoved the note in front of his face. “Did you do this?”

  He pulled his head back a few inches and stared at the note for a minute. His forehead wrinkled, and he pursed his lips. Then he took the note from her, lowered it in front of his chest and scanned the message again. Flipping it over, he studied the receipt side for a few seconds.

  “What’s up with this?” she asked again, pulling it from his hands.

  Finally he raised his eyes to hers. “Am I supposed to have an answer to that?”

  “Is it some sort of joke?” she persisted.

  He quirked a sandy eyebrow. “If it is, nobody let me in on it. Who’s Klapton?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t got a clue. The only Clapton I know is the guitar player, and his name is spelled with a C.”

  Maya joined them. “What’s going on?”

  Sam showed her the note. “Someone left this in my tent.”

  “Inside your tent?” Maya asked, her eyes wide. “When?”

  Sam abruptly realized she’d only assumed the note had been left as she slept. “I’m not sure.”

  Now that she thought about it, it could have happened anytime after the tents were set up. She hadn’t been standing guard, and as Voyagers, the kids were allowed to wander around camp. If one of them had pushed the note beneath her pillow yesterday evening, she could have easily overlooked it until this morning.

  Maya raised an eyebrow just as Aidan had. “Who’s Klapton? Or is it a what?”

  Sam shrugged. “Beats me. There were boot prints outside my tent, too.”

  “And that’s a surprise?” Aidan asked. “We’re all wearing hiking boots.”

  The three of them inspected the area. Aidan stepped next to one of the prints, bounced on his feet, then stepped away. “See, those are mine. Timberlands. There’s the tree circle logo.” He spiraled a finger above a smudged circle in the prints.

  To Sam, Aidan’s seemed slightly larger than the first prints, but then, he’d bounced to make a deep impression in the soft ground. “Why were you standing outside my tent?”

  Aidan rubbed his stubbly jaw, thinking. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed his index finger at her chest. “Remember, I came over here yesterday to ask you about dinner?”

  It seemed unlikely that his prints would have remained intact with all her comings and goings since then, but she wanted to believe him. “I remember now, thanks.”

  Maya’s brow was still furrowed. “Wait. Aidan, wasn’t Klapton the guy that Kyla talked about?”

  “Was it? I don’t remember.” His expression was perplexed.

  “You know,” Maya persisted, “on the day we got back from the last expedition. Remember, we were in the locker room and she got a Facebook message from him?”

  Aidan scratched his head. “Sorry. Girl chat doesn’t register with me. Just ask my sisters.”

  Sam faced Maya. “What did Kyla say about Klapton?”

  Maya pulled on an earlobe, thinking. “I’m trying to remember. I think he was some sort of long-lost boyfriend that got into drugs, big-time. She didn’t know what to do about him.”

  Justin nudged his way into their trio and stared at the ground, too. “What are we lookin’ at?”

  How easy it was to make others look by simply gazing in a certain direction. Sam shifted her eyes to the boy’s face. “Nothing of interest,” she told him, hoping that was true.

  Justin jerked his head toward the cluster of the other five crew kids, who stood talking to each other, their packs resting on the ground at their feet. “We’re ready.”

  “Then I’d better get a move on. Be there in a minute.”

  When he’d walked out of earshot, Aidan asked, “You’re using Kyla’s gear, right? Are you sure that note wasn’t stuck to the bottom of the sleeping bag or something?”

  Sam was starting to feel foolish.

  “Might be some sort of crew prank, too,” Aidan added. “Although I still don’t get it.”

  “Want me to grill them?” Maya asked.

  Sam considered. If any of the staff asked and the teens hadn’t been in on the joke, they would naturally be curious about the note. After twice seeing the hunter and Taylor and Ashley’s reports of lights in the woods during their solo, the suggestion of someone skulking around in the dark while they slept would definitely freak everyone out. Sam was a little freaked out herself. “Don’t say anything to the kids; we’ll see if one of them gives us a hint.”

  Her pe
er counselors nodded and walked toward the waiting crew. Sam crawled back into her tent and began to shove her belongings outside toward her pack. The note felt like some sort of junior high prank designed to scare, like rattling a door knob and then vanishing into the night. She needed to be the adult here and not overreact.

  Someone was probably trying to spook her. Or maybe Aidan was right, the note had been in her gear the whole time. The small slip of paper could have been inside Kyla’s pack or stuck to the sleeping bag or stuff sack. But she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of a hand slipping inside her tent as she slept. In her imagination, that hand belonged to that long-haired camo-wearing hunter. Had he been holding the light that had flashed through the woods on the solo campouts, too? Was he following them? Was he stalking them?

  Was it only her imagination, or had Aidan reacted oddly when she showed him the note? It had seemed like he was stalling for time. Were those boot prints his, or a stranger’s? She shuddered.

  Crazy thoughts? Had she become paranoid because her friends had been murdered?

  Maybe.

  Possibly.

  Probably.

  Who wouldn’t be paranoid? She had killers skulking around her brain.

  She unclipped her tent from the frame and snapped the poles into a bungee-corded cylinder.

  Get a grip, Westin. It was only a note. The prints came from common boots. Most likely Aidan’s boots. She was spooking herself with all these speculations. Someone was probably playing a joke. The real joke was that she was expected to be the voice of reason and sanity on this expedition.

  Rolling up the tent and ground sheet, she stuffed them into the tent sack. The next camp was twelve miles away. If nothing happened there, she would know she was imagining threats where none existed.

  * * * * *

  None of the kids revealed anything about the note. If it was a prank, they kept the secret well. Sam still didn’t understand what the words were supposed to mean, and when nothing more happened in camp, she suspected the Klapton note was no more meaningful than the fortune cookie scroll—just old detritus from an often-used tent.

  The night before the staff break, the scheduled exercise was intended to get the crew to start talking about feelings, since the counselors would be staying with the kids for the next two days to discuss their emotional and behavioral progress and their work on the family contracts. As was now their habit, they all sat in a circle, this time with the candles in their midst for a focal point. Firewood was scarce in the area. Partially because of that, and partially to temper the discomfort of having the counselors in charge, the group would be allowed to use stoves for cooking during the staff break.