Backcountry Read online

  Sam wrapped her arms around her midriff. They had not encountered other hikers all day, but she still couldn’t rid her brain of the itchy feeling that their camp was being watched. Just a case of nerves on their final night, she told herself. Understandable after last night’s drama. Why did Troy have to ask her about that hunter again? Tonight, she was the one who needed to be watching her crew. Tomorrow the kids would be reunited with their parents, which meant that her work would be judged by six sets of parents.

  Before they began their sharing exercise, Aidan pulled Sam aside and asked if he could make cocoa for everyone as a final reward.

  Sam nodded. “Great idea. Thanks, Aidan.”

  As they formed their usual evening circle, he disappeared into the darkness toward their makeshift kitchen area.

  Sam elected Gabriel to start the exercise.

  His pimples had been replaced by a ragged beard and a tan, and he was no longer such a flabby boy. “I’m glad I met all you guys, even if you did make fun of me.”

  Several of the others looked away, uncomfortable with the reminder.

  “I’m grateful that my clothes are almost falling off now.” He hitched up his pants for effect. “I’m glad I got to work on my new game story. That was fun to do with you guys.”

  He pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. “So here’s my share with you. This is the synopsis for my game.”

  He proceeded to read a convoluted summary of the conflict between the rebels and the invading aliens, with fierce battles and dirty tricks on both sides. Sam expected the rebels to triumph in the end and expel the aliens, but to her surprise, Gabriel said, “I’m gonna structure the game so that the best result is a peace agreement where both species share the planet.”

  “A future where cyborgs will be treated with respect,” Justin interjected, the trace of a smile on his lips.

  Gabriel glanced at him uncertainly. “Okay.” He looked back at his piece of paper. “And you all get a copy of the game for free.”

  They clapped at that.

  Nick stated that he was grateful for the whiskey jacks and the bear and goats and the sunsets. “And for making new friends.” He ducked his head, suddenly shy. “Here’s my share for you.”

  He handed each participant a drawing. They were remarkable sketches of scenes during the expedition: the whole group as seen from the back, mesmerized by the goats on the opposite ridge; everyone focused on the visiting whiskey jacks; the group effort of passing Justin over the rope; a couple of pictures of the characters acting out Gabriel’s play; rappelling and studying tracks and trying to make bow-drill fires.

  Now she knew what the boy did in the spare time allowed for journaling and writing letters and notes for contracts. “These are absolutely amazing, Nick.”

  Taylor looked up from the drawing in her lap. “I want all of them. Can we swap e-mails and make copies and send them to everyone?”

  Sam considered. “I can do even better. If you want to trust me with your drawing, I’ll get the Director to copy them tomorrow and give you each a set.”

  Olivia eyed her sketch, which depicted her playing the alien queen in front of the campfire. “I want to keep mine, just for tonight.”

  The other crew kids decided to do the same.

  “This is an incredible gift, Nick,” Sam told the boy. He tried to maintain his cool demeanor, but he failed to stifle a grin as he sat down.

  Justin reluctantly took his turn. “I don’t know how I can follow that, Lightning, but here goes. Um, gratitude. Those gray jays—camp robbers, whiskey jacks, whatever you call ‘em—sitting on my hand. Those little tiny bird feet—that was unbelievably sick! And the sunsets, the way we all named the colors; I’ll never forget that.”

  “As for sharing, Sparky, Martini, Sweet T and I are making a joint effort, so first we’re going to finish the gratitude thing. Spark?”

  Ashley stood up. “The thing I like most about being here is that there’s time to just be, you know? I had time to think.”

  Murmurs of agreement rippled around the circle. Sam hoped they’d all remember the peace that came from being unplugged from cell phones and Internet.

  “I’m not done,” Ashley told the group. “I wrote another haiku.”

  Clasping her hands in front of her stomach in an antiquated performance posture, she took a deep breath and then recited, “I thought it was a sentence, as in jail. But I found it was a gift, as in jewel.”

  Sam had to fight back tears. “Wonderful, Ashley! Thank you.”

  “I liked the storm at the lookout the best,” Taylor said. “Even with those meekam mice.”

  Olivia took her turn next. “I camped with a bear. I still can’t believe I did that. And slept only a couple of feet away from a mountain lion! But most of all, I’m grateful that you guys let me be me. And that we never got around to discussing religion.”

  “Were we supposed to?” Sam murmured to Maya beside her.

  Her protégé shook her head.

  The four teens put their arms around each other’s waists. Ashley counted down. “One, two, three.” Then they belted out a unique rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Justin had a rich baritone and others did their best to harmonize, with Taylor and Ashley slightly off-key as they sang:

  When you hike through a storm

  Hold your head up high

  Even though you’re afraid of the dark

  In camp after the storm

  You’ll get food that’s dried

  And the haunting howl of a voltenark

  Hike on, through the wind

  Hike on, through the rain

  Till you smell like a corpse fly-blown

  Hike on, hike on, with that contract in your head

  And you’ll never pee alone!

  No, you will never pee AALLLOOOONE!

  The five audience members applauded as the four singers bowed.

  Taylor beamed. “I’m especially proud of the ‘corpse fly-blown’.”

  “The ‘haunting howl of a voltenark’ was all me,” Justin boasted.

  “Very poetic,” Sam told them. “And a fitting end to our final sharing exercise.”

  “Everyone, grab your cups!” Aidan held up a pot of cocoa. The teens scattered to their tents and then quickly regrouped to accept their share. After he poured the last cupful into her mug, Sam’s cell phone in its jacket pocket vibrated against her hip, and she turned to retreat into the woods.

  “Aren’t you gonna drink that?” Aidan tilted his head toward the cup in her hand.

  “Of course. I’ve just got to go confirm pickup plans with the office.” She took a small sip to show her appreciation. “Thanks for the cocoa, Aidan. That was a really nice gesture to end the group session.”

  He dipped his chin. “My pleasure, Cap’n.”

  “You and Maya will make sure everything gets buttoned up for the night?”

  Maya emerged from the darkness from behind her. “Don’t we always?”

  “Thanks. I know I can count on you two.” She made her way into the woods to be out of earshot from the camp.

  * * * * *

  “I believe we can make it there by one o’clock,” she confirmed to Troy. “We’re all extra grubby, but I guess that’s normal.”

  “The parents wouldn’t think they had gotten their money’s worth if their kids didn’t return filthy and hungry.”

  “Then we’ve nailed it,” she told him.

  “We’ll have a few extra hours at the office for the ending ceremony and good-byes. And then you’ll be done, Sam.”

  “I’m looking forward to the end and dreading it at the same time.” She was tired of being a responsible adult and making the damn bow-drill fires and eating crap every day, but—although she’d never dreamed she would admit it—she was going to miss all the kids.

  “That’s what Kyla always said, too.”

  She pondered for a moment whether to ask him about the investigation, then decided that could wait. “See you tomorrow, Troy.�
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  After stuffing the phone back into her jacket pocket, she picked up the cup of cocoa and pressed it to her mouth. A slimy skin of cooled milk glued itself to her upper lip before the cocoa even reached her tongue. Ugh. She wiped the scum off her mouth with a finger and then poured the rest of the cold liquid onto the ground and then scuffed dirt over the damp spot.

  The camp was quiet, with all tents dark. She wasn’t surprised. It had been an exceptionally long day. She was so tired her body felt like it belonged to someone else. At the lake’s edge, she rinsed out her cup. Her right shoulder burned, and probably would for days. Beneath her ribs, her abdomen hurt where the belt had bruised it, and the skin there was chafed and sore. Her hands still ached from clutching that jacket sleeve this morning, so she soaked them in the frigid water until numbness set in.

  The clouds had cleared and the starry heavens were mirrored in the tranquil black lake water. She wished Chase was here to share this view with her. What was he looking at right now? Most likely a boring television screen in a hotel room somewhere.

  The atmosphere was cold and clear. There’d be frost on the ground in the morning. She loved hiking in autumn, but the weather was unpredictable. In the north Cascades, hikers never knew when the trails would be buried for the winter. Last year she and Kim and Kyla had hiked well into October, but this year, this camp might be buried under a foot of snow within a week.

  She stared at the diamond-studded sky. Could heaven really exist up there? Personally, she liked to believe that some spirits of the dead became the wind, some the glittering stars in the universe. She whispered to the night, “Well, Kim, Kyla, it’s almost over. I did my best. I’ll always miss you guys.”

  Finally, she walked to her tent and slipped into her sleeping bag.

  * * * * *

  A few hours later, a low rumble awakened her. She lay still, listening intently. A rockslide on the mountain across the lake? The pitch of the sound grew higher and louder, changing to a whining buzz. It didn’t sound like the whop-whop cadence of the helicopters flown over this area by the Border Patrol. Had to be a small plane, flying low through the valley. Then the sound faded into the distance.

  Weird. Like the plane had buzzed their mountain lake, which seemed like a dangerous thing to do in daylight, and almost suicidal on a moonless night with high peaks all around.

  Sam pulled on her pants, boots, and jacket and slid out of her tent with flashlight in hand. Her breath steamed in the cold night air. All was quiet, except for Gabriel’s snoring. Aidan’s tent was unzipped, its door flap hanging loose. Walking to it, she thumbed on her flashlight and aimed the beam through the net door. His sleeping bag was empty. Had he been awakened by the noise, too?

  Flicking off the flashlight, she strolled through the trees to the shoreline. Moonset had preceded sunset tonight, sinking behind the peaks to the west in the early evening. The shadows around her were dense. Selecting a rock, she sat, scanning the surroundings. Had the plane been searching for something? Had it even been here at all? She wasn’t sure now that she hadn’t dreamed the sound of an aircraft passing overhead.

  A movement at the water’s edge halfway down the lake caught her attention, but her eyes couldn’t translate the shapes in the darkness. A mountain goat coming down for a drink? An elk? She squinted. No, the patch of black was more bear-shaped. Or perhaps human-shaped. Aidan? Whoever or whatever it was melted back into the forest.

  She moved a hundred yards in that direction, but then was stopped by a gigantic downed log that blocked the easy path around the shoreline. Aidan might be out for his last solo ramble in the mountains before heading back to college. She couldn’t hold that against him.

  If the shape hadn’t been him... Did she really want to enter the woods at night in pursuit of an unidentified creature? It would be just her luck to encounter one of the rare north Cascades grizzlies. She could see the headline now: Clueless Trail Guide Eaten by Bear on Last Night of Expedition.

  A step sounded behind her, and she turned.

  Suddenly a hand snaked over her mouth and a muscular arm whipped around her throat, jerking her backward.

  Chapter 19

  She wrapped her hands around the arm, trying to tear it away from her trachea, but she was off-balance, heels dragging in the dirt, clutched tightly against the attacker’s chest.

  Her heart hammered in her chest. Her first thought was: Please God don’t let him have a knife. Her second was: Aidan?

  “Don’t scream, okay?” a deep male voice rasped in her ear.

  That voice did not belong to anyone on her crew.

  The hunter.

  Why did they always say “Don’t scream?” Of course you would scream if you could. Wasn’t that the most logical response unless there was a knife pressed against your throat? Was there a knife pressed against her throat? She didn’t think so. She slid her hands up the offending arm to be sure.

  The arm tightened, choking her. Her attacker took a couple of steps backward, dragging her so she couldn’t regain her balance, hiding them both in the shadow of the forest. “That fucker Troy, trying to keep you from me. I can’t believe it took so long for me to find you again. Why didn’t you give me better clues? Now we only have tonight...”

  Black spots danced across her vision. She tugged frantically at his arm, trying to get even a tiny breath of air.

  “You calmed down now, Kyla?”

  She would have answered if she could breathe. Instead, she stopped struggling and made herself go slack, sagging against him. Maybe he’d believe she was unconscious. She wasn’t far from it.

  The arm rasped away from her throat. The hand slid away from her mouth and he spun her around, clamping her arms with both hands to hold her up. “It all came together, Kyla. We’ll be okay now, right? Just—”

  He stopped, grabbed her higher, digging his fingers into the tender trapezius muscles between shoulder and neck. “Kyla?”

  The stranger thrust his face close to hers until their foreheads nearly touched. His breath smelled like he’d been feasting on road kill. Then he shook her, hard. “Shit, you’re not Kyla. Who the hell are you?”

  Rubbing her throat with one hand, she managed to croak, “Her replacement.”

  Her whistle was around her neck, under her shirt. If she could somehow just unobtrusively pull it out...

  Spittle flew from his lips as he demanded, “Why are you pretending to be Kyla?”

  Sam flinched. “I’m not.” She curled her hands around his wrists. “Let go of me!”

  His grip was as strong as a gorilla’s. She couldn’t shift his hands. His fingers were pinching nerves; her arms were going numb.

  He stank like a burger left out in the hot sun; even the long dark hair that hung down around his face smelled like it hadn’t been washed for six months.

  “What the hell did you do with Kyla?” he growled, sending more foul saliva her way. “Is this a trap?”

  Grungy camouflage fatigues covered his wiry frame. A knife was sheathed on his belt, and the strap of his rifle was slung over his left shoulder, the tip of the barrel protruding from behind his back. A scope was attached to the barrel. He was definitely the hunter who’d been following them earlier.

  “Are you Erik?” She wiped the back of her hand across her face. “Klapton?” She could feel the whistle against the skin of her chest, and tried to slip her fingers under the cord to pull it out. Why hadn’t she ever studied self-defense, for godssake?

  “How do you know that? Are you in on the deal, too?” He shook her, digging his fingers into her shoulders again, holding her at arm’s length so she couldn’t reach his chest. “Where’s Kyla?”

  “In on what deal?” He’d started to say something about what Kyla had told him. “What did Kyla tell you?” she croaked.

  Letting go of Sam’s shoulder with his right hand, he grabbed her by the throat, his thumb and fingers digging into the soft flesh on both sides of her trachea. He demanded, “Where is Kyla?”


  She slapped at his fingers around her throat. He loosened his grip enough for her to gasp. She coughed twice. “What the hell is wrong with you? What do you want?”

  “Where’s Kyla? Tell me!” He grabbed the front of her jacket this time.

  “Kyla’s dead.” So she could say it. The word fell out of her mouth and thudded onto the ground between them.

  He stared at her for a moment, bloodshot eyes gleaming in the faint starlight. Then he shoved her backwards, slamming her into a tree trunk. “What the fuck?”

  She rebounded off the tree and staggered forward, rubbing at the back of her head, one hand held out to fend him off. Troy had been right when he said that Erik Heigler was not in his right mind. This maniac wasn’t even trying to be quiet. Surely one of the crew kids or Aidan or Maya would hear their ruckus and show up soon. “Erik, Kyla and Kim were murdered a month ago.”

  “What? What!” Wild-eyed, he pulled at his greasy hair. The rifle strap slid off his shoulder.

  She wanted to run, but assuming the rifle was loaded, he could probably shoot her in the back faster than she could get away. And then he could go to the camp, to the sleeping teens...

  Her heart was pounding so loudly in her head that she could barely hear him. She had no idea whether she was whispering or talking in a normal voice. “Kyla and Kim were murdered a month ago,” she repeated.

  “No!” He shook his head as if he could cast off the fact. Snatching his knife from his belt, he pointed the tip at her left eye. “That fuckhead Charlie.” He let the leather strap slide down his arm and swung the rifle around with his left hand, pointing it in her direction with his other hand.

  She was nearly cross-eyed, trying to focus on the knife and keep the gun within view at the same time. The roar of blood in her head was deafening. Charlie?

  When Heigler looked at her again, his eyes were shiny with tears. “Who killed them?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Troy? That douchebag Chris? Kyla wrote me. He’s the one, my ass.”