Lily’s feet scuffed as she marched at gunpoint down a rocky path to God only knew where. Their small group had been hiking for about thirty minutes. She wished she could turn around and exchange looks with Ethan, silently communicate some brilliant plan with him. However, their treacherous path was narrow, forcing them to walk single file. The guy wearing the red baseball cap led, while the other one took up the rear. Escape routes looked slim.
She wondered where they were being taken. Apparently, a camping spot in the middle of nowhere wasn’t isolated enough. The poachers needed to torture Ethan and Lily with another hike before they killed them.
Would they end up at the bottom of a secluded lake or buried in the gully they were now skirting? Or would they be left for animals to get fat on? Molly would be on her own, probably join a wolf pack and offer their bodies up as a gift.
Fear and despair overwhelmed her, and her knees buckled. She stumbled a few feet, bumping against Red Cap in front of her.
He wheeled on her, aiming the gun squarely on her chest. “What do you think you’re doing? I said no funny business.”
Her insides shriveled like a raisin, and she held up her hands. “I just tripped. I didn’t mean to.” Her voice was weaker than she wanted it to be.
His straw-colored goatee pulled down into a frown, but his eyes hid behind wraparound sunglasses. With a warning growl, he turned around again and continued their procession. Somehow, Lily convinced her legs to follow him.
The trail rose, and the trees parted to reveal Mount Rainier in the distance, its icy peak blending in with the low-lying clouds. Next to them, the slope into the gully fell away much sharper than before.
She glared at Red Cap’s back, wondering if she had the strength to shove him off the trail and down the drop-off. But that still left the other guy with a gun aimed squarely at Ethan’s back.
If she could signal Ethan somehow, they could each take on a poacher, catch them off guard. Then they’d sprint up the hill to their right, zigzagging between the thick trees to avoid the bullets and …
She mentally slapped herself. Considering she couldn’t complete a simple hike without nearly passing out, she doubted she’d make it very far. Besides, they had rifles, and Ethan was carrying Molly. Although the dachshund was already protective of them and had sharp teeth, she didn’t think a creature the size of a large yam could help much.
Red Cap suddenly veered off the path in front of her. Aiming the barrel of his rifle at Lily, he motioned with his square head to a rocky recess.
“In there.”
She took a tentative step forward. Erosion had washed away the land, forming a cave tall enough for them to stand up in and deep enough that she couldn’t see where it ended. Claustrophobia reared up inside her.
It felt as though her feet had rooted into the ground. The gun’s barrel nudged her in the back, and she lurched into the cave.
What would happen now? Even if someone was hiking nearby, the cave hid them from view. No one would find them until wild animals had picked their bodies clean. Her mother would have nothing to bury with the rest of her family back in Malvern.
She hugged herself. The walls felt like they were closing in on her, and her panicked breaths filled the cavern with its echoes. The noise drowned out the sound of her own racing heartbeat that thudded in her ears.
Something warm and fuzzy rubbed against her arm. Ethan handed Molly to her. She took the pup, wondering if she looked like she could use the furry support, but then she saw his hands clench into fists. Was he preparing to fight?
He gave her a steady look, and she focused on it until her breathing slowed. She regretted that their last conversation had been an argument. She wished there was time to fix it, to explain everything.
Red Cap entered the cave. The shorter guy in a camo vest blocked the narrow exit. She reached out and squeezed Ethan’s hand as though she could relay everything she wanted to say. Surely, he knew how she really felt. Right?
But she hadn’t said the words, hadn’t truly told him how much he meant to her. She wished she could say them now, but would they mean anything after what he’d read in the Live Boldly book?
As though he could read her mind—or at least the tears building in her eyes—his fists relaxed, and he interlaced his fingers with hers.
Red Cap slipped his sunglasses onto the top of his head. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“How did you find us?” Lily asked, thinking that if only they could distract them long enough … But then what? No one was coming. They were on their own.
“A GPS watch linked to my phone. Apparently, hunting gear isn’t just good for hunting animals. When we saw you go into the gas station, we duct-taped it under your car.”
Camo cracked up, his sharp laugh ricocheting off the walls. “We’ve been on your tail the whole way.”
Ethan took a half step forward. “Look, I don’t know what you want from us—”
Camo’s gun twitched. “What exactly did you see that day at Castle Crags? And who did you tell?”
Lily’s throat went dry. What was the right answer? If they said they went to the authorities, the men might kill them so they couldn’t testify in court. But if Lily and Ethan denied saying anything, the men might kill them so they wouldn’t have the chance to talk. It was lose-lose.
Ethan was the first to speak up. “We saw you about to shoot the bear, and we took plenty of photos. We handed them over to the sheriff in Dunsmuir. And ever since you followed us to Rattlesnake, they have your license plate. It’s only a matter of time before they catch up.”
Lily dared to look away from their two captors to widen her eyes at Ethan. Was this really the best route to take? She hoped his people-reading skills were sharp that morning.
He took another step forward and a little to the side so he was half blocking her. “They know you’ve been following us, harassing us. If we go missing, guess who they’ll question first. So, it’s up to you. Do you want a fine for poaching, or do you want twenty-five to life for murder?”
The poachers shared a silent exchange. Lily couldn’t tell what they were thinking behind those hardened expressions. Ethan had certainly picked a tactic and run with it. He was nothing if not bold. But that’s what she admired most about him. At least they’d both go down being true to themselves: Ethan the confident daredevil and “Lily the Lapdog,” who couldn’t even stand up to her mother much less two armed men. Even if she wanted to fight back, what would she use?
She suddenly remembered the weapon she’d bought earlier on the trip for something much scarier and deadlier than the two slimeballs in front of them.
The men took a few steps out of the cave mouth to speak in hushed tones. She pulled her hand out of Ethan’s and slipped it into her jacket pocket. Her fingers wrapped around the canister of bear spray.
When she popped the safety clip off inside her pocket to muffle the sound, Ethan eyed her. Understanding flickered over his features. She wondered if he would shake his head to tell her no. However, in true Ethan form, he gave her a slight nod, like “You can do this.”
The men finished their conversation and stepped back into the cave. She had to act, but not while they were looking straight at her. She needed a distraction.
“Wait,” she said. “Please, take the puppy outside. Her sensitive ears. You’ll deafen the poor thing. She’s just an innocent animal.”
She wasn’t sure if appealing to two men who killed animals illegally for a hobby would work, but it made them pause. Red Cap eyed the dog. Maybe they weren’t completely heartless, because he reached out for the puppy.
Praying her distraction wouldn’t get Molly hurt, Lily set the little furball into Red Cap’s big hand and stepped back again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a length of rope, then cut off a section with his knife. She wondered if the rope had been for them.
He tied it to Molly’s collar and then left the cave. Too soon, footsteps thudded outside as he returned. Camo glanced over his shoulder at his friend.
Lily tensed. If she had a chance, this was it.
She raised the canister and pressed the nozzle.
The spray hissed out, shooting a cloud straight at their captors. She dodged to the side in case they fired their guns. Ethan was beside her, urging her toward the cave mouth.
A peppery smell filled her nose and scratched at her eyeballs. Clamping her eyes shut, she held her breath as she charged for the exit. Camo was hacking and wheezing but remained on his feet. He blocked her path.
Bringing her foot back, she swung it with such force that David Beckham would’ve been proud and connected with something soft. He let out a warbling, pubescent cry and collapsed.
The gun clattered to the cave floor. She groped for it. When her fingers grazed cool metal, she picked it up.
Ethan grunted nearby. She swept the gun toward the sound, but the second she peered through her lashes, her eyelids resisted. She wasn’t sure she was even pointing the business end of the gun.
Unable to hold her breath any longer, she stumbled out of the cave’s opening and into the blissfully fresh air. She spun back to aim at the cave. Someone dashed out after her.
Her vision was too blurry to tell who it was. Afraid she’d accidentally hit Ethan, she brought up an arm to wipe the tears from her eyes. Suddenly, a hand gripped it and held it away from her face.
“Don’t,” came Ethan’s voice. “It will only make it worse. Let the tears do the work. Just try to keep crying.”
No problem there. “Okay, but only because you told me to.”
A breeze swept over them, carrying the worst of the spicy cloud away. She could breathe easier now, and her vision certainly wasn’t getting any worse. She did as Ethan had said, blinking rapidly, her eyelids like sandpaper scraping over her eyeballs.
Through her hazy vision, she could see the men writhing on the cave floor, coughing and holding their hands over their red faces as they wormed out into the open. Well, Camo had one hand on his face. His other hand clutched his groin.
Molly’s insistent bark sounded nearby. It bounced around the cave, amplified until she sounded as tough as she acted. Lemme at ’em! I’ll gnaw on their ankles and snack on their toes.
Lily followed the sound and found Molly twenty feet down the trail, tied to a sapling. Freeing the pup, she cradled her, whispering the soothing things Lily wanted to hear right then. The dog squirmed as she tried to cover every square inch of Lily with kisses.
“Looks like a yam can do a lot more than I thought. Cheers, Molly. We owe you one.”
The puppy’s furry eyebrows rose. You owe me a couple, actually. But who’s counting?
When they returned to Ethan’s side, he raised the rifle he must have taken from Red Cap and aimed it into the cave.
“Now it’s our turn to ask the questions,” he said.
Red Cap held up a hand and wiped the mixture of spittle and snot from his face. “We weren’t going to hurt you. We just wanted to get some info out of you and scare you away from the idea of going to the cops.”
“Scare us?” Ethan repeated incredulously. “You kidnapped us at gunpoint. That’s not scaring somebody. That’s a felony worth twenty years in prison.”
“Yeah,” Lily said, impressed by his lawyer-talk. “Not to mention you tried to kill us on two other occasions.”
Camo lifted his head toward the sound of their voices, but his red eyes were swollen shut. “What are you talking about?”
Although she couldn’t be certain the poachers had caused any of their misfortunes, this was her only opportunity to squeeze a confession out of them. “You sabotaged our raft so it would sink on the Rogue River, and you cut my climbing rope at Rattlesnake. I could have died.”
“We saw your truck in the parking lot,” Ethan said. “So don’t even try to deny it.”
Red Cap pushed himself up to lean against the cave’s rock wall. “We don’t know anything about that. I swear. We just wanted to talk.”
Ethan snorted. “‘Talk’ now, is it?” His chin rose as he stared down his nose at them. “About what? The fact that you were hunting out of season in a state park?”
Camo sneered as he readjusted the crotch of his jeans. “Yes. Do you have any idea how much the fine for that is?”
Ethan swept his cool gaze over the two of them. “I’m a lawyer, so I do know. And I hope I’m in that courtroom to watch you get dragged away to prison for all of this. I bet that fine is sounding pretty good right about now.”
Lily tried to wrap her head around this new information. “So you didn’t break into our motel room or steal our wallets?”
Red Cap rubbed his eyes. “No. We didn’t do any of that other stuff. You’ve got to believe us.”
“Actually,” Ethan said. “We don’t. You can try convincing the authorities, though. We’ll be calling them as soon as we get back to the campsite. Get up.”
“But we can barely see,” Camo griped.
“Then I guess you won’t give us any trouble on the way,” he shot back.
As they struggled to their feet, Lily leaned closer to Ethan. “Do you believe them?”
“I wish I didn’t, because that would mean the danger has passed.” He sighed. “But if they didn’t do all those things …”
She hugged Molly to her chest. “Then the Phantom really wants us dead.”