“I suppose he helped with the rope for both of us.”
“Hm, from my point of view, his role seemed more… decorative.”
“Decorative?” Simon lifted his chin. “No, no, I’m the mastermind, you see. I assigned the grunt work to you two ladies, since you’re so capable of doing it.”
“Uh huh. Tell me this, Simon.” I pointed at his feet. “Is it difficult to be a mastermind when you’re only wearing one sandal?”
“Not at all. Masterminds don’t use their feet very often. Though I do wonder when it fell off. I kept it all through that swimming jag. Think the monster ate it?”
“Those of us who are clad in appropriate footwear can only imagine,” I said.
“Indeed,” Temi murmured.
“Oh, well. I’ll buy better sandals next time. Perhaps something with leather instead of rubber.”
“Careful,” I said. “I’m not sure our business can afford such largess yet.”
It took us an hour and a detour through the wetlands around the end of the lake before we drew close to the parking lot, a parking lot unexpectedly bright with headlights and flashlights. I couldn’t tell who they belonged to, but the Jaguar was in the middle of things.
“Is that the police?” Temi asked.
“Not the police.” Simon pointed. “Those are Humvees.”
“Uh.” I stopped on the trail. “Who wants to go tell those nice National Guard folks that the fun is over and they can go back to their units?”
Simon bumped Temi’s arm. “Put out the sword, or they’ll see us.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Drop it,” Simon said at the same time as I grabbed it from her.
The glow disappeared as soon as it left her hand, but a flashlight from the parking lot swept across me, then came back, shining in my eyes. An urge to flee filled my legs, but that would make us look guilty, and those fit men in boots and camouflage could surely outrun a guy in socks and two girls with injured legs.
“You out there,” a man with a deep voice called. “Come here. Slowly. And keep your hands up.”
Simon and Temi lifted their hands. I couldn’t do that without lifting the sword too. How were we going to explain it? Worse, if they searched us, how were we going to explain the gold in Simon’s pocket? It didn’t look like much in its ore form, but I couldn’t count on them not knowing what it was. They’d think we’d stolen it or mugged someone out here, or who knew what?
“You too, lady,” the man growled. “Hands up.” Several more men and a couple of women had joined him at the edge of the parking lot. At least nobody was pointing guns at us yet, though they all had them…
I thought about tossing the sword in the lake, but there were too many flashlights shining on us. Everyone would see it. Sighing, I lifted the weapon along with my hands.
Temi went first down the trail. Maybe they’d see her limp and feel some sympathy for us. I was doing a pretty good limp of my own right now, though I couldn’t imagine these guys giving us the friendly treatment and escorting us to the hospital.
“…that a sword?” someone asked.
“Yes, do we…”
“Just some dumb kids.”
Yes, dumb kids, that was us. And it seemed like a promising angle to play up. These people were out here searching for monsters, so maybe they’d wave us away…
“What are you guys doing out here?” the original speaker asked when we were standing on the pavement a few paces from them. It was too dark to read his nametag, with all the lights being shone on us instead of the other way around, but I figured he was a sergeant, since he was older than the ones holding the flashlights and seemed to be in charge.
“We were going to camp,” I said, “but it got too cold, so we’re going home.”
“Yes, I imagine it’s quite cold when you’re soaking wet,” the sergeant said, lifting bushy black eyebrows.
A shame that jeans didn’t dry very fast…
“Yeah,” I said when neither Simon or Temi spoke. “We fell in.” That might have been a plausible excuse if we were ten, but I doubted they’d buy it. Maybe if they knew we’d been in kayaks, but considering how we’d illegally obtained them-and then left them on the other side of the lake-I wasn’t going to bring them up.
“You kids know there’s a curfew in Prescott?”
“No, we just got here. We’ve been on a road trip.” I pointed to the Jag. “From New Mexico.” At least the plates backed up the out-of-state claim. “We heard there’s nice camping in the mountains around here.”
The men exchanged looks. Maybe I shouldn’t have added that, not when the White Spar had been so recently devastated.
“You brought a sword?” the sergeant asked. “And a whip.”
“You guys have guns,” Simon pointed out.
Leave it to him to stay silent until he could say something lippy. I would have elbowed him if I wasn’t still holding my hands up.
“The woods are dangerous,” I said. “There are badgers and rattlesnakes and things.”
One of the younger men was squinting at Temi, and I had a feeling she was about to be recognized. I wasn’t sure whether it’d help us or not.
“Should we take them to the police, Sergeant?” someone asked from one of the Humvees.
“I know that kid.” The younger man pointed, not at Temi but at Simon. “He’s the one with the blog.”
Oh, hell.
Other men started nodding and saying, “Oh, them,” to each other. I tried to decide if that tone of voice suggested we wouldn’t be taken to the police or that they were more likely than ever to drop us in Lieutenant Gutierrez’s lap tonight.
The sergeant and the young man who’d identified Simon stepped away and shared a quick conversation of whispers. I caught Temi eyeing her car. At some point, she’d lowered her hands and slipped out her keys. We’d have a much better chance of outrunning soldiers in a Jag than on foot, but someone would get the license number, if they hadn’t already. When she met my eyes, I gave a quick head shake. I wasn’t ready to start a life of fleeing from the law. Chances were it wouldn’t be nearly as glamorous as it was in the movies, and even if I was on the lam in Bolivia, I’d probably still be expected to pay my student loans.
The sergeant returned and waved for his men to stand back. He drew Simon and me aside. Actually, he drew Simon aside, and I tagged along to keep him from sticking his foot in his mouth.
“You see anything out there?” he asked.
I blinked. He wanted intel from us?
“Yup.” Simon started to reach for his phone, but one of the privates with rifles tensed, and he only pointed at his pocket. “If I can get my phone out, I can show you some new pictures.”
The sergeant nodded. “Go ahead.”
“We were over in those rocks.” Simon pulled out the phone, but it didn’t respond when he punched the button. A few drops of water dripped from the corner of the case. “Ugh. Forgot. It fell in too. Damn, I had a couple of blurry ones from when the monster was chasing us into that-” he glanced at me, “-hole.”
Broken phone or not, the sergeant’s eyes were riveted to Simon. “You saw it in the Dells, you said? So far, the people we’ve talked to… nobody’s leads have panned out. But you actually had some pictures up on your site.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen it a couple of times.” Simon stood a little taller. “Today, it was definitely over there, between the rail trail and the lake. It sort of… cornered us for a bit. We hid in the hole until it left, but it might still be out there.”
Or under 50,000 tons of rocks. I wasn’t about to say it though, not if these guys might leave us alone to go investigate.
“Got it,” the sergeant said. “Look, you kids leave this to us. You’re going to get yourselves killed running around out here with-” he frowned at the sword, “-toys. Curfew’s at ten. If we catch you out again, we’ll have to detain you.”
“We understand,” I said as contritely as I could manage and dragged Simon toward the car. He was staring and sputtering at the “toy” comment. Temi took it in stride, merely unlocking the trunk and waving for me to toss our gear, toy included, into it. I was all too happy to set the sword in the back.