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THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Drake was already in the restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee and paging through an Arizona travel guide, when Allie came in.
“Good morning,” Allie said as she pulled out a chair and sat down. “Did you eat already?”
“No, I’ve been waiting for you. I knocked on your door about twenty minutes ago, but you didn’t answer.”
“This morning, I got out early and ran over to see Dr. Liz to check on how Jodi and Zach were doing. She wasn’t there, so I walked around town for a bit to clear my mind and get my blood moving.”
“I hope they’re okay,” Drake said.
A server came to the table, took breakfast orders, and left.
“I wonder how we did yesterday. Did you hear any rumors about the results?”
Drake shook his head. “No, after you left, I talked to the Beasley brothers for a while, then I headed for bed, too. I’m sure we’ll get them this morning before we take off for the day.”
The server returned with a plate of French toast for Drake and a Denver omelet and a side of raisin toast for Allie, along with a plate of bacon for them to share.
Drake opened a small bottle of warm syrup and poured it over the toast.
“That looks so good,” Allie said.
“Pass your plate over.”
Allie did, and Drake cut a slice in fourth, and slid the piece onto her plate. “Would you like more?”
Allie shook her head and took her plate back. She cut her piece in half and ate it. “Oh my, that is the most delicious French toast I’ve ever had.”
Drake was chewing a mouthful but nodded in agreement. He chased it down with a slurp of coffee. “It’s gotta be the fresh bread from the bakery. I’ll bet your cinnamon toast is the same way.”
“Let’s find out.” She picked up a toast triangle and passed it to Drake and picked one up for herself. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Perfect touch of cinnamon, fresh raisins. I believe that’s even home-churned butter on there. I’m pretty sure I want to move into that bakery.”
Drake smiled. “I hope they have room for both of us.”
As they ate, more teams shuffled into the restaurant for breakfast, a few looking fresh and ready to take on the world, a few obviously not morning people. Forty minutes later, Bruce and Andy entered. As Bruce moved from table to table to greet everyone, Andy set up his equipment for the morning’s presentation.
When Andy was ready to go, he pressed a button on the laptop and the spreadsheet appeared on the monitor. Andy had added the competitors’ names in the first column with each team’s color, so it was easy for Drake to determine his team was more than halfway down the sheet.
“Good morning, all,” Bruce said as he walked into the center of the room and attracted everyone’s attention. “Before we get started, I want to give you all an update on Zach and Jodi Collier, who were the blue team. As most of you know, they were involved in an accident yesterday. Jodi suffered a broken leg and blood loss. Zach had a concussion and stopped breathing for a while. I’m happy to report that both are doing well and are on their way to a full recovery in a Phoenix hospital.”
A smattering of applause started, and Bruce waited until it subsided.
“Now, back to the action. You can see on the monitor behind me the results of yesterday’s event, with the red team in the lead by a bunch. Out of a possible five thousand fifty points, they came in at just over forty-seven hundred. That puts them almost eight hundred points ahead of the second-place team. Don’t let that discourage you, though. There is still plenty of game to be played.”
Bruce paused for dramatic effect.
“Today’s event will be all about letterboxes. Did you know the concept of the letterbox goes all the way back to the 1850s in England? I didn’t until Andy here told me. I know you’re all used to the common letterbox-hybrids where you go to the coordinates and the cache is there with a stamp inside. These caches today will be a little different. The coordinates programmed into your units will take you to a container. Inside that container will be directions to either another stage or the final container, which may be close to the original coordinates, or may be far away. Either way, it will be up to you to use the clues to find the final cache. As usual, inside that cache, you must stamp the logbook. Also, in the container there will be a stamp that you should use to mark your cache list for today. There are only sixteen caches to find, and you’ll need to find them all to give you a leg up on a cache tomorrow. Anyone have questions?”
Tito had one. “Are the caches worth points like yesterday?”
“Good question. No. Today is a timed competition. The first team back with a completed stamped sheet will receive a thousand points. Each team to check in after that will get a hundred points less than the previous team to check in. So, the second team will get nine hundred, the third will get eight hundred, and on and on. Since the blue team is out, the last team in will get two hundred points. Any other questions?”
“Yesterday’s rules...” Andy whispered to Bruce.
“Oh, yes, of course. A reminder that all of yesterday’s rules are all still in effect. No teaming up, and you have to stay away from a team finding the cache, and all that. We have checked all the gear in your backpack out, the GPS units have today’s coordinates entered, and you have a new cache list in there. Since today’s a timed event, you can leave as soon as you grab your gear. Be safe, and have a great day.”
As soon as Bruce gave the word, several of the teams jumped up at once and headed to the front table to grab their backpacks and rushed out the door.
Drake stood and turned to Allie. “You grab the lunches, and I’ll get the backpack. Meet me back here at the table.”
Allie nodded and raced to the kitchen. By the time Drake reached the head table, only the green backpack and the brown backpacks remained. Drake grabbed his, returned to the table, and emptied the contents. He turned on the GPS and did his best to mark the starting geocache coordinates on the fresh paper map he had, then studied the map until Allie returned.
“Does this pattern look like anything to you?” Drake asked.
Allie set the lunch sacks on the table and turned the map around so she could see it better. The marks started out beyond the UTV barn and there were two rows of five, and the other six marks made an arc across the top of the map page. “It kind of looks like an arch to me.”
“That’s what I thought too. But look here. They staggered the caches in a way where, if you got the closest one, which is near the barn, the next closest one would be the one on the opposite side of the road, yet north of that. They’re out there in such a way that if you went in order down the sheet from one to sixteen, you’d be crisscrossing all over the property.”
“Hmm,” Allie said. “I get what you mean, but what if the final cache location is such that it’s closer to the start of the next cache on the list? After all, you don’t have the final coordinates on here, only the starting coords.”
“That’s true. I still think we should start at the cache by the barn, then go around the arch in a clockwise direction. But, to your point, we’ll capture the final coords as we go and we should know after that if we’ve got the right idea. If not, we’ll readjust the plan out there.”
“Works for me. Pack up and let’s go.”
Drake looked up and watched Bruce approaching the table. “I guess you two are in a hurry to get on the road, but before you do, I wanted to take a couple minutes and tell you how much I appreciate what you did for the Colliers. Liz told me had you not gotten there when you did, they both would have died.”
Allie put her hand on his arm. “There’s no need to thank us. It was the right thing to do. I’m grateful we got there in time.”
“One last thing, when you get in this afternoon, please stop off and talk to Taylor Rae, my security chief. She has some information she needs from you to write up her report. You can find her at the jail.”
“We will,” Drake said.
Bruce nodded. “You best be on your way. Have a great day.” Bruce turned, took two steps, then stopped, and turned back. “Oh, go counterclockwise.” He winked and walked away.
“You heard him,” Allie said, “let’s get going.”
Drake and Allie left the restaurant and walked over to the barn, where they found their UTV waiting for them.
“Got it all ready for us, I see,” Drake said as he reached for his helmet.
“It helped that you are the last ones to leave today,” Travis answered. “You’re all washed up and ready to go, and I replaced the first-aid kit with a new one.”
“Thanks,” Allie said. “Hopefully, we won’t have to use it again.”
“Yeah. I heard what you guys did out there. Amazing, I think. How did you learn to do first aid like that? I heard you jumped in the second you got there.”
“Easy,” Drake said. “I’m an ex-cop, and she was a medic in the Marine Corps.”
Travis gave Allie a skeptical look. “You were a Marine medic?”
“Well, technically, I was a corpsman. The Marines don’t have medics. We’re too tough.”
A grinned passed across Travis’s face. “Well oorah. How long did you serve?”
“Eight years. Hey, Travis, do you mind if we talk about this later? We’re in a competition, you know.”
“Oh, right, right? I’m sorry. When you get back later, we can trade stories. I was in the Navy, you know.”
“Sure thing. Drake, you ready?”
Allie looked over and saw Drake was already in the driver’s seat wearing his helmet, seatbelt, and sunglasses.
“I guess you are,” Allie said.
Allie put on her safety gear and picked up the GPS, map, and pen that Drake placed on her seat, and got in. Drake fired up the engine and pulled out of the building. Three hundred feet later, they came to a stop.
“It’s right there, over by that power pole,” Drake said.
“How do you know?”
“Because that box wasn’t on the pole yesterday.”
Drake and Allie got out of the UTV and approached the pole, where they found a plastic box that was an inch thick and a square foot in size. Allie spotted a clasp on the top, undid it, and the box opened, revealing a laminated card inside.
Drake read the card. “At three-fifteen you’ll find a tree, and that is where you want to be. Three-tenths at zero forty-five, and that is where you’ll find the hive. What do you suppose that means? We can’t get this one until this afternoon?”
“No, that makes no sense to me. Read it again a little slower.”
Drake did, while Allie thought about it.
“Compass points. Three-fifteen and zero forty-five are compass headings,” Allie said. “Easy. I’ll copy the clue and then we can go.”
“Don’t bother. That GPS unit has a built-in camera. It will be faster to snap a picture,” Drake said.
Allie fiddled with the buttons until she found the correct one to activate the camera, then took a couple of pictures of the card. She took a moment to check the images were clear, then she nodded, and they headed for the UTV.
“Hold on,” Allie said. “Let me get out the compass.”
Allie took a moment to retrieve the tool and set the direction arrow to three hundred and fifteen degrees.
“Let’s go that-away.”
Allie sat back and watched the compass and had Drake keep a slow, steady pace as he drove.
“There’s a tree ahead. Is that on a line with the heading?” Drake asked.
“Yep. Go for it.”
Drake sped up and parked when they got to a large mesquite tree. Once there, Allie stood as close to the tree trunk as she could and reset the direction for forty-five degrees.
“Okay, reset your odometer. We only need to go three-tenths of a mile from here,” Allie ordered.
“I already did that.”
It didn’t take long for Drake to drive the distance, and soon he spotted a wood box resembling a file cabinet sitting by itself in the open desert.
“I’m guessing that’s it,” Drake said as they got closer. Drake shut off the UTV as Allie jumped out. She lifted the lid on the top of the beehive, glanced inside, and extracted a plastic shoe box. She replaced the hive lid, placed the shoe box on top, and opened it. Inside there was a cache log and a self-inking stamp.
Allie took her team stamp and stamped the logbook with their clover, then used the stamp from the geocache to make the mark on the back of their cache list.
She looked at it for a moment, then shrugged. “This doesn’t seem right to me. What do you think?” Allie passed the paper over to Drake while she put the geocache back together and returned it to the beehive.
“I have no clue. It looks like a couple of random lines to me. Maybe it will make more sense when we get the rest of them.”
“I hope so,” Allie said. “Well, one down, fifteen to go.”
Allie looked at the map and set the GPS for the next cache. “Half a mile to the east for the starting coordinates.”
As Drake drove, Allie studied his face.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“What makes you think I’m thinking about anything?”
“Because you don’t hide your expressions, and that makes you easy to read. Is it the Colliers?”
“Indirectly. I’ve been reflecting about what Randy said about it not being an accident. If that’s true, it means there’s a team out here willing to kill people to win the prize money.”
“Are you sure that’s not just the suspicions of an ex-cop kicking in?”
“That could be. I wish I could have examined the Collier’s UTV a little closer. Or gotten out early enough to check the other UTVs. Perhaps I could have found some sort of clue, like a damaged front end, or paint chips, or something.”
“You’re not a cop anymore, detective. You’re out of that life, remember?”
“I get that, but I can’t help it. I don’t have the badge anymore, but I still have the instincts. Just like you when you jumped in and started doing CPR yesterday. We left those jobs, but the skills didn’t leave us.”
Allie sighed. “I get it. This afternoon when we meet with Taylor Rae, maybe she’ll have some answers to your questions.”
“I hope so.”
Drake spotted a flag waving from the back of a UTV in the distance and rolled to a stop. “Who do you think team pink is?”
“I’m guessing those guys from Texas. When I parked the UTV yesterday, the pink one was the only one in the barn, and we know they traveled out on horseback, so I guess it had to be theirs.”
Drake nodded. “That’s a pretty good assumption there. You’d make a good detective yourself.”
Allie laughed at the idea. “No way. Hey, they’re driving off. Let’s go.”
“Why bother? Why not just follow them?” Drake asked.
“We could, but what if they misinterpret the directions and get us off course?”
Drake couldn’t argue with her logic. “Good point.”
He drove to the coordinates and parked next to a cactus. Leaning against the far side was a plastic box, similar to the one they’d found before. Allie got out, took a picture of the clue inside, and returned to her seat.
“Well?”
“Go due north until you come to a wall, then turn right and drive until you reach the fall. Another right, go until you see the ridge, and what you seek is under the bridge.”
“This one seems even more vague than the previous one,” Drake said.
“True, but it least it still rhymes. North is that way.”
Drake drove until they came to a small mesa roughly the size of a two-story house, then turned right. As he drove along, he spotted a jackrabbit running across the ground, and followed it with his eyes as he drove forward.
“Stop!” Allie screamed suddenly.
Drake slammed on the brakes, and the UTV skidded to a halt.
Allie hit him on the shoulder. “Pay attention to where you’re going. You could have killed us.”
Drake looked forward and saw what Allie meant. Five feet in front of him was the edge of a cliff. He turned to Allie and gave him his best apologetic smile. “Sorry. I guess that’s the fall.”
“You guess that’s it? Really? Do you need me to drive?”
“No, I’m good. I’m getting even from when you almost killed us yesterday.”
Allie shook her head. “Just be careful.”
Drake backed away from the edge, put it in Drive, and turned right and followed the rim until he saw a ridge, and as he got closer, a bridge came into view. He moved close, then parked.
“I guess this is the place,” Drake said as he got out of the vehicle. He took off his helmet and went to the bridge. It was an ancient pedestrian bridge that spanned the thirty feet gap across the wash. The frame was rusted metal, and the deck comprised corrugated metal planks. Unlike the bridge from the day before, this one had waist-high rails all the way across.
Allie got to Drake’s side and surveyed the situation. “It’s under the bridge. You want to crawl under there and get it?”
Drake hesitated.
“You remember when I had to climb that tree yesterday?”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.”
Drake stepped closer to the bridge, crouched, grabbed a bridge brace, and leaned as far over as he could. Below him, he saw a small concrete ledge, so without letting go of the brace, he stepped down onto the ledge.
“Don’t look down,” Allie said.
Drake looked down. There was a straight twenty-five-foot drop to the ground. “Gee, thanks.”
He repositioned his hand on the deck and bent over to look under the bridge. Tucked under the bridge on a small stone ledge was a small plastic box. He removed the box and passed it to Allie.
“Do your thing, girl.”
Allie stamped the logbook and her cache sheet, closed everything up, and passed it back to Drake.
“Only two other teams have been to this one,” Allie said as Drake climbed back up to her.
“Does that mean we’re ahead of the pack, or behind it?”
Allie shrugged and got into the UTV.
