Temi came around to the back of my chair to look. “Are you sure it’s an eye?”
“It looks like an eye to me.” Simon pointed. “There’s the outline of the head.”
“Its eye is… iridescent.” It reminded me of spilled engine oil.
“The head is weird too,” Simon said. “It’s too dark to see, but it doesn’t look furry to me. Or maybe the fur is extra short. And look, no ear, at least not one that protrudes.”
“Definitely not a bear,” I said, though I’d never truly believed it was. “Unless some mad scientist has been tinkering with bear DNA and making some creative alterations.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Of course it’s possible. Haven’t you seen how crazy large tomatoes are these days? Genetically modifying things is all the rage.”
“I know that,” Simon said, “but I thought that since we have some Vulcans down here, we might have a real life Predator too.”
“Oh, please, they’re not Vulcans. Real aliens wouldn’t look like aliens on Star Trek. Or Predator.”
“What is Predator?” Temi asked. “Aside from a noun.”
Simon didn’t say anything to her, but his stunned expression spoke loudly.
“Sorry, Temi,” I said, “I forgot to tell you that if you’re going to work on this team, you’re going to have to cultivate a basic background in science fiction books, films, and television shows.”
“That’s… helpful for archaeological digs?”
“No, for understanding Simon.”
Simon nodded solemnly. Judging by Temi’s dubious expression, she wasn’t sure how important communicating with him would be.
A phone bleeped.
“Oh!” Simon’s hand lunged down to yank it out of his pocket so fast that he almost fell off the chair. “They’re moving.”
He slammed the laptop lid shut, and I gritted my teeth. I would have reminded him that he was manhandling my computer, but he was too busy stuffing things into his pack and knocking over his chair in his haste to stand up.
“We have to hurry,” he said. “The tracker only has a mile range.”
“Are we sure we should be bothering them again?” Temi asked.
“No, but I’m hoping they won’t notice us bothering them. We can slip in, see what they’re digging up, get a sample of the language, and slip out.”
“Is that all he wants?” Temi pointed to the door. Simon had already jogged out of the cafe.
“I’m not sure, but he’s not getting anything else.” I patted my pocket, thinking I still had the van keys, but they were missing. “Kid’s a klepto,” I muttered and ran after him.
Though Temi clearly had reservations, she followed me. Zelda was parked right outside, a testament to the lightness of the traffic today, so we caught Simon before he zoomed off, though he did already have the engine running. Temi climbed in, and I slid the side door shut a second before the van backed out of its parking space. Simon threw it into drive fast enough that I tumbled across the carpet and bonked my head on the refrigerator.
“No, no,” I said, “don’t wait for us to get our seat belts on. We’re fine.”
Both of Simon’s hands gripped the steering wheel, and his phone rested on his thigh. If he heard me, he didn’t give any indication of it. I was fairly certain he ran through the light on Gurley Street, too, though with my butt planted on the floor, it was hard to be positive. I’d laugh if all this effort turned out to be for tailing our prey to the Prescott Denny’s.
Temi sat on the floor, too, her right leg thrust out before her, a grimace on her face. She wiped it away when she noticed me watching.
“I’m not sure a background in science fiction would be enough to understand him,” she said.
I smiled. “It’d only be a start, that’s for sure.”
CHAPTER 13
I squinted at the topography map spread in my lap while the van bumped and groaned up a dusty road. “We might be going to Lower Wolf Campground.”
Another campground. Great.
Simon cursed under his breath and threw on the brakes. Dust hazed the road ahead. We’d gone off the gravel a while back to follow the deep ruts and potholes of a forest service road that hadn’t been serviced in some time.
“Almost caught a glimpse of them there,” he said. “I thought they’d be able to navigate these holes on their bikes a lot faster than us, so I was going as quickly as I could.”
“We noticed.” Temi, sitting at the table behind us, rubbed her head.
“They’ve slowed down though. They must be looking for something.”
“Maybe they know we’re following them,” I said.
“They shouldn’t be able to hear us over their motorcycle engines unless they turn them off.”
“Something they’ll do when they reach their destination,” I pointed out.
“I’ll try to guess when they’re getting close, and I’ll stop our engine before they do. Hopefully.”
“We’re novices at tailing people,” I told Temi.
“Yes, as far as I can tell, your business is expanding into new territories by the day.”
By the hour, I thought.
The road forked and we turned into a dry valley clogged with scrubby brush. Pine trees rose to either side. The ride grew even bumpier, and I squinted suspiciously at the leaves beating against Zelda’s fender. “We’re not on a road anymore, are we?”
Simon grinned, though he didn’t take his eyes from the route ahead. “Nope.”
“It looks like a dried river bed,” Temi observed.
We splashed through a trough filled with mud and water.
“Mostly dry,” Temi amended.
I compared the topo map with what the GPS map on my smartphone offered. The cell had a couple of bars of reception, but the maps were slow to load. Not surprising. We weren’t on-or close to-any official roads. “We’re not far from Mount Union and Hassayampa Lake.” The trees blocked the view, but I waved in the general direction.
“What’s down here?” Temi asked.
“Uh, nothing.”
“There must be something.”
“Maybe those two were just looking for a private place to-oomph.” The ceiling was higher in the van than in a car, but my head almost cracked it anyway. If not for the seat belt I’d wisely put on earlier, it would have. “Get busy,” I finished weakly.
“They did seem to be sharing the one bed,” Simon said.
“Their faces were similar,” Temi said. “I took them for siblings.”
“Which makes it all the more likely that they’d look for a private place if they wanted to get busy,” I said.
My joke met with pitying stares, and I went back to studying the map. We rolled out of the riverbed and onto a road with brown grass and weeds sprouting from the center between the ruts. They were tall enough to slap at the base of the windshield. They also-as we discovered when my head nearly hit the ceiling again-disguised big rocks.
“If we get stranded out here, I’m going to pummel you,” I told Simon.
“Noted.”
The road dipped back into the riverbed, then out the other side. It never detoured far from the dusty banks, and we occasionally splashed through water, a rare find in the desert mountains this late in the year.
“Oh,” I said, “this must be the Hassayampa River.”
“Anything significant about it?” Temi asked.
“Well, it’s kind of an interesting river. The name is Native American and means the river that flows upside down or the upside down river. We’re not far from the headwaters, and some of it is obviously above ground, but it flows beneath ground for a lot of its route, a good hundred miles if I remember correctly.” As I’d spoken, I’d plugged the name into Google, but the reception had grown too pitiful for the search.
At that moment, we splashed through a clear pool framed by granite boulders. Water sprayed the windshield.
“Oops,” Simon said and veered to the left. It took a few tries before he managed to coerce the van up the bank and into the dryer shrubs on the side.