Rocky Mountain Mayhem (30 page)

“And this is melted snow,” Kate said. “I’ve
had enough of that for one trip.”

“I second that,” Vivian said as she took a
tentative step on the first log. It didn’t budge so she placed a
foot on the second log.

Lucy was at the rock and held out a hand,
helping Vivian the rest of the way across. Kate went next and
crossed the stream without incident.

Wendy didn’t have a problem on the first log,
but once she had both feet on the next, the rock it had been on
gave way and the log rolled out from under her. She landed in the
creek with a splash and a yelp.

“What’s happening?” Nelson boomed.

“Wendy slipped on a log,” Vivian reported.
“We’re okay.”

Lucy jumped in the creek and put an arm
around Wendy’s waist. “I’ve got you.”

Wendy wiped water off her cheek. “I think I
screwed up my non-bionic ankle.”

“Oh no,” Kate said, stepping onto the large
rock she had used getting across.

Wendy hobbled across with Lucy and Kate’s
help. Back on solid ground, they helped her to a butt-sized boulder
and she eased down.

“Thanks, Lucy, for sacrificing your dry feet
for me,” Wendy said.

Vivian carefully removed Wendy’s hiking boot
and sock. “Doesn’t look too bad, yet.”

“Do you think you can keep hiking?” Nelson
asked.

“Yes,” Wendy said and flexed her toes. “I
think if I wrap it and take a couple of pain relievers I can keep
going. I don’t want to turn back now.”

Lucy dug in the CamelBak and pulled out their
first-aid kit. She handed Vivian an Ace bandage and tossed Wendy
two ibuprofen pills and the tube for the CamelBak.

Smith beeped them. “You ready to move? Hayes
and Cervantes are coming up.”

“Almost done,” Vivian said, trying to hurry
and wrap Wendy’s ankle. When she finished, she put Wendy’s sock and
hiking boot back on.

Wendy stood up gingerly, testing weight on
her left foot. “I’m okay. It’s tender but I’ll live. Let’s go.”

They started out again, and it wasn’t long
before the girls reached the old mining camp.

“Finck’s here, right?” Vivian asked the
team.

“Affirmative,” Smith answered.

Lucy, going against orders, ventured over to
one of the shacks and poked her head in the door. She gasped, then
hollered, “AHHHHHH!” She turned tail and hauled ass up the
trail.

LUCY’S scream carried through the valley and
reverberated off the mountain faces. Vivian figured the people down
in Vail could hear it. Finck ran out of his hiding place in a
shack, gun drawn, and Nelson shouted question after question in the
girls’ ears.

Vivian, Wendy and Kate had run after Lucy. If
Lucy screamed and ran away from something on a trail in Colorado,
it was a good idea to follow suit.

Vivian finally turned around and saw what she
had fled from. A mountain lion ran at full speed across the meadow
toward a pine grove.

“Holy Jesus…oh my gosh…mother of a son of a
sailor,” Lucy said between pants, hand on her chest. “I thought I
was going to be mauled. You should’ve seen its teeth. Fuckin’
A!”

“Damn, that thing was huge!” Vivian
yelled.

“We wouldn’t’ve let you become a kitty
treat,” Wendy said, giving Lucy a one-armed squeeze.

The tension and fear in Vivian gave way to a
burst of uncontrollable laughter. She bent over, she was laughing
so hard. The other girls joined in, her hysterics being
contagious.

Hayes and Cervantes ran up the trail and met
Finck, who didn’t look happy. The girls walked back down the trail
to them.

“That’s one heck of a set of lungs you’ve
got,” Finck said to Lucy, putting his gun back in the holster.

Cervantes shook her head. “I thought it was
Craig.”

“Or a raccoon,” Hayes said with a grin and
gave Lucy a light punch on the arm.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’d like to
see what any of y’all would do if a mountain lion bared its fangs
to you.”

Finck made a gun with his finger and thumb
and did a pretend shot.

Wendy shifted from foot to foot. “Holy crap,
my ankle. Think any of these places have a chair I can sit in?”

Finck shook his head. “The closest thing to a
chair is that rock right there.” It was not much of a rock.

She laughed, then looked at the girls. “Screw
it. Y’all ready to keep going?”

They were, but Lucy bent down to tie her
shoe.

“We’ll hang back in one of the shacks for a
few minutes,” Hayes said and indicated Cervantes. “We need to stay
behind you guys.”

“Got it,” Lucy said, standing and then
walking up the trail.

Finck went back to his post.

They didn’t get far before Vivian said, “Uh
oh” and fiddled with her shirt.

“What?” Nelson beeped.

“My mike has come undone,” she said into the
abyss that was her cleavage. “I don’t see it.”

“Go back to Cervantes and have her fix it,”
Nelson instructed.

They walked back to the mining camp and
Vivian leaned into the cabin Hayes and Cervantes had gone into.

She caught them in full make-out mode. Lips
locked, hands in inappropriate places, moans and groans.

Vivian let an “oh” of surprise escape before
she could stop it. She covered her mouth and Cervantes looked up at
her, horrified.

“Oh, uhhhh … we, we were—”

Hayes scrambled to his feet and helped her
up. “We were just playing the couple-in-love-out-for-a-hike
part.”

Nelson said in Vivian’s ear, “What’s going
on? I can’t hear you.”

They must have their microphones off
,
she thought, then turned from the shack and said loudly into her
shirt, “That was Hayes and Cervantes. The reception must not be
good in there since you couldn’t hear them.”

Vivian turned back to the agents, who had
straightened their clothing. “My mic needs to be re-stuck. It’s
gone missing.”

Cervantes got right to it and Hayes politely
stepped out of the shack.

“Well, he is cute,” Vivian said with a smile
once she was done.

Cervantes’ cheeks went from pink to full-on
crimson. Nelson coughed in her ear. Smith laughed.

The girls got back to the trail, working
their way toward the old homestead. A little way down the path,
ferns grew in lush patches and the pines began thinning out.

Vivian stopped at a side trail. “Is this the
way to the cliffs?” she asked the girls. “I bet it has great views
of the mountains.”

“Don’t take that,” Nelson said. “No detours,
stick to plan.”

Vivian sighed, knowing she was missing a
magnificent picture opportunity, but kept going. A few minutes
later the pine trees gave way to a meadow and she didn’t feel too
bummed about missing the cliff view. The mountains rose around a
meadow full of wildflowers, and she felt like she should hold out
an imaginary skirt and twirl around like Julie Andrews in
The
Sound of Music
.

“This is amazing,” Kate said and whipped out
her camera.

Lucy got out her cell phone. “We need one
together. Huddle up, girls.” She snapped a picture holding her cell
phone as high above them as she could, which wasn’t very high. The
picture had a small bit of each of the girls — Vivian’s curls and
chin, Lucy’s left eye, Wendy’s chin, Kate’s right eye.

Keeper.

“Look at that.” Vivian pointed to one of the
mountaintops that was more rounded than peaked.

The peak sort of resembled a thumb or other
body part according to Vivian’s trashy imagination. Lucy held her
hand in front of it, in a grip, and moved her hand up and down. All
of the girls cracked up and Kate lined up a picture.

“I think this wins the trashiest of the
trashiness award on this vacation,” Wendy said through her
laughter. “This is worse than the grotto pictures.”

Vivian tried her hand at it, and Kate got her
handy picture, too.

Nelson said something, but Vivian couldn’t
hear him over their laughing.

Wendy quit giggling enough to reply to
Nelson. “You don’t want to know what we’re doing, but I promise
it’s not dangerous.”

“I know where they are and probably what
they’re doing,” Smith said to Nelson. “They’re coming your way.” He
coughed, trying to cover a laugh.

Nelson sighed audibly in everyone’s ear.

It was just a mountain peak, but it looked a
little too much like something else. While they were taking
pictures, a thin white cloud drifted above the rock. Vivian doubled
over.

“Keep moving!” Nelson finally shouted.
“You’re out in the open and it makes it harder for us to cover you.
You’re sitting ducks.”

“We couldn’t help it,” Vivian said to him.
“You’ll see why later.”

Playtime over, they did as instructed and
were soon enveloped again by pines and aspens. Though the
temperature was in the low sixties, Vivian started to perspire and
the knots on the aspens started to look like big, gaping eyeballs.
A twig snapped off to her right and she picked up her pace, making
Lucy, who was in front, hustle along.

“What is it?” Lucy asked.

“I just have this creepy feeling all of a
sudden.”

The trail curved ahead and a dark-haired,
bulky man about 5-foot-10 appeared, hiking at a brisk pace. He kept
his head down and wore a baseball cap so Vivian couldn’t see his
face. He reached into his pocket and fiddled with something.

“Run!” she yelled and dashed into the
overgrowth.

She hauled ass, running for her life.

THAT’S him! That’s him!” Vivian yelled to
Nelson as she ran through the aspen and pine trees off the trail.
Lucy was beside her, Kate and Wendy right behind.

Nelson shouted orders at the other agents on
the trail, and Vivian heard running and crashing as the team took
action.

She spotted a thick stand of spruce trees and
ducked behind them. She sat against the thickest tree, shaking from
fear and adrenaline.

“Did they get him?” she asked Nelson and the
girls. There was too much commotion and chatter coming through the
earpiece to make sense of anything.

“Oh my gosh,” Lucy said, sitting down next to
her. “Do you think that was really him? He found us?”

“It was his build and height. It looked like
he had dark hair and he had the muscular shoulders. It was hard to
tell exactly because he was looking down, but I’m pretty sure it
was him.”

Kate waved for them to be quiet. “Shhh,
somebody’s coming.”

The girls knelt down, trying their best to
hide among the foliage. Vivian kept her face down and her eyes
squeezed shut.

“It’s Agent Cervantes,” Wendy said with a
sigh. “She’s by herself. I think it’s safe.”

“We’re over here,” Lucy called to Cervantes,
who made a beeline in their direction.

She patted Vivian on the shoulder. “False
alarm. The hiker you ran from is with Vail PD.”

“Oh Jesus,” Vivian said and wiped a tear of
relief from her eye.

“But he reached in his pocket to pull
something out,” Kate said. “What was it?”

“His walkie-talkie. He’s not mic’ed up like
the rest of us.”

Lucy took a deep breath and put her hand to
her chest. “He about scared the pee out of me.” She tapped her foot
for a moment. “Speaking of which, I gotta take a trail pee. Since
you’re here with us, can I take off this microphone so Nelson can’t
hear me?”

“NO!” Nelson answered before Cervantes could
answer.

Cervantes grinned. “Just cover it with your
hand. We’ll wait for you over there.” She indicated a spot a few
feet away.

Lucy walked behind some fir trees and started
singing to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

“Pee, pee coming out of me,

Into dirt and by the tree.

Down the trail so fast you go,

Where to, I don’t really know.

Agent Nelson, don’t you agree,

You’re glad you didn’t hear me pee.”

The girls cracked up at Lucy’s song.
Cervantes tried to keep a straight face but had a hard time with
it. Nelson, however, started coughing during the first line and
went completely silent after that. Vivian could only assume he was
either rolling on the ground laughing or completely horrified.
Judging by his response, it was the latter.

“Cervantes, get them back to the trail,
please,” he said evenly. “Girls, no more singing. I couldn’t hear
anything else, and that is unacceptable!”

Wendy wagged a finger at Lucy. “Ummmm, you
got in trouble.”

“Trail. Now!” Nelson barked.

The girls followed Cervantes through the
forest. She consulted with the team and got an all-clear before
leaving the girls. She went left to meet her lover-boy, Hayes, and
the girls went to the right, toward whatever awaited at the
cabin.

They hiked along without issue before coming
to another steep section on the path. The switchbacks kept them
huffing, and Vivian stopped to rest halfway up.

“I thought this was supposed to be one of the
easier trails around Vail,” she said after she had caught her
breath.

“It is,” Nelson said. “Can you keep
moving?”

“Yep.” Vivian took a swig out of the CamelBak
and they set off again.

At the top of the last switchback Vivian
paused, causing Kate to bump into her. Two hikers approached, one
brown-haired and about the same height as Craig. He looked up and
waved, and Vivian could breathe again.

“Hey,” he called as he got near. “It’s not
much farther to the top and it’s so worth it.”

“Thanks,” the girls said at the same time as
they walked past.

“Watch out for the two guys up there in the
cabin,” he called over his shoulder. “They’ve been hanging around
up there awhile, and it feels like they’re up to something.”

“Thanks,” the girls said again, and Vivian
had to work to hold in the laughter.