I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER BEEN so afraid of something so cute. I’ve faced down a lot of bad guys and girls before, and some of them even smelled like they could have used a shower. None of them made my knees quake the way that skunk did.
The sulfury odor filling Dr. K’s ransacked research station was potent enough to make my eyes tear up, and I had a feeling the skunk’s funk wasn’t even that recent—whatever it had sprayed was long gone by the time we got there. I didn’t want to find out what it smelled like freshly sprayed all over me.
The skunk looked around blindly like it knew we were there but couldn’t see us, even though it was a few feet away. From the way it was wiggling its pointy black nose and sniffing at the air, it could smell us, though. And we could definitely smell it.
Frank put his finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet, and slowly started backing out the door. I followed his lead, resisting the urge to turn and run screaming instead. About halfway down the stairs, I breathed a sigh of relief. The skunk hadn’t followed us. It looked like we were out of the blast zone and in the clear.
“Talk about a contaminated crime scene,” I said.
“Looks like it’s going to stay that way too,” Frank replied. “I don’t think we’re going to be doing much up-close investigating while that skunk is using Max’s place as a vacation rental.”
“I can imagine the online reviews now,” I said.
“Skunks are usually nocturnal, so I’m guessing we woke it up from its beauty sleep,” said Frank, slipping into junior naturalist mode again. “They have bad eyesight, but their sense of smell and hearing are great. I was afraid if we made any more noise, it might feel threatened and spray us. Thankfully, they usually only use their scent as a last resort.”
“From the smell up there, that skunk last-resorted someone recently,” I said as we reached terra firma.
“I hope it was the perp and not Max that got hit,” Frank said. “That smell can last up to two weeks or longer if you don’t have a special solution to remove it with.”
“At least we’ll smell them coming,” I said, giving myself a sniff as well to make sure I hadn’t accidentally picked up a free sample of Eau de Skunk cologne.
“What I want to know is why there’s a critter living in Dr. K’s outpost instead of Dr. K,” Frank said, staring back up at the station with concern.
“That skunk isn’t the only thing about this situation that stinks, that’s for sure.” I scanned the woods around the tower. “Let’s head for cover in case the burglar comes back. Whoever it is doesn’t mind using violence, and there are things worse than skunk spray we could be shot with.”
“It definitely wasn’t just four-legged animals that tore that place apart,” Frank noted as he followed me. “Someone was looking for something, and you can bet it’s the garnets.”
“I’m just hoping them taking the radio means they’re trying to hide it from Dr. K so he can’t call for help,” I said. “At least that way we’d know he was okay.”
“Or at least he was,” Frank replied ominously. “We don’t know what’s happened since then.”
I snapped my fingers—my brain must have wanted me to look on the bright side, because a mental lightbulb had just flicked on. “The missing radio reminds me of something. It’s not the only one Dr. K had access to.”
“The chopper!” Frank exclaimed.
I took off running, with Frank right behind.
“There it is,” I whispered, peering over a small hill not far from the ranger station.
“If the chopper’s still here, then we know Max didn’t just fly away and leave the mountain,” Frank whispered back. “He’s got to still be out here in the wilderness somewhere.”
We approached the chopper slowly, carefully looking around to make sure we were still alone. We were going to have to take every step like there was someone in the woods hunting us—because there probably was.
And it looked like whoever it was had already beaten us to Dr. K’s chopper. The radio had been smashed.
Groan. “Which means we can’t call for help, either.”
The radio wasn’t the only thing in pieces. The control panel had been pulled apart.
“There’s a reason Dr. K didn’t just fly away. He couldn’t.”
“So where do we go from here?” Frank asked as we moved off into the brush to get back out of sight. Always the nature nerd at heart, I could see him taking mental note of a showy shrub with little star-shaped yellow flowers.
“Where would Dr. K go is the better question,” I replied. I didn’t add the other part that crossed my mind: assuming he got away.
“This is one of the non-native species from the Ural Mountains that Aleksei planted from seeds he brought with him. They don’t grow in this part of the world normally,” Frank noted absently before returning to the topic at hand. “We know Aleksei had a few hideouts on the mountain where he lived all those years. If Max knows someone is after him, he could be lying low in one of them.”
“Only we have no way of knowing where they are. We also know he had secret hiding places for the demantoids, but we don’t know how to find those either.” I kicked at the dirt in frustration as we walked, sending pebbles skittering into another one of Aleksei’s Ural Mountain shrubs with the yellow star-shaped flowers.
When I looked up, Frank was running over to another yellow-flowered shrub about twenty feet away. I recognized the junior botanist gleam in his eyes right away as he knelt down to examine it. Leave it to my brother to get all excited about a plant while we’re imperiled on a remote mountaintop.
“Bro, you can fondle the flora later. We’ve kinda got an urgent mystery to solve, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I chastised him.
“Oh, that’s not all I noticed,” he said with a cocky grin. “I think Aleksei may have planted a clue to where his hideouts are.”
“I feel like there’s a bad pun in there, but I don’t quite catch it,” I said, wondering what Frank was up to. “I know those are one of the non-native flowers Aleksei brought with him from Siberia, but we already established that.”
“We know he planted a bunch of the seeds to make the mountain feel more like home when he first got here, but what if they’re not just decorative? What if…” Frank got up and dashed another few yards down the hill.
This time I ran after him. His destination? Another identical yellow-flowered shrub exactly twenty feet away.
“They’re trail markers!” I said.
“We’ve passed patches around the mountain with a variety of different Ural Mountain plants where Aleksei cultivated little flower gardens in the woods. And there are other places where they’ve gone wild and are scattered around randomly—” Frank began, but by this time I knew exactly where he was going.
“Only these are spaced at precise intervals with only regular native plants growing around them in between.”
“There’s so much other vegetation around here that to an untrained eye, it just looks like normal mountain forest. Only someone who already knew what to look for would notice the pattern in the anomalous specimens.” Frank grinned proudly. “That or an expertly attuned naturalist.”
“My apologies for ever doubting you, bro,” I said. “If I could give you an honorary doctorate in flower power, I would.”
“Let’s follow the Yellow Shrub Trail!” he said, marching ahead.
“Just please tell me Black Bear Mountain doesn’t have evil flying monkeys, because skunks and bears are bad enough,” I groaned. “Oh, and I refuse to skip.”
The trail grew harder to follow as the brush grew thicker, and there were some other, smaller baby shrubs here and there, where seeds must have fallen naturally. Sure enough, though, there was a bigger one of the same size every twenty feet.
I didn’t have to skip to follow the trail, but I did have to whack. The brush soon grew thick enough that the only option was to hack our way through with my hatchet.
“This job would be a lot easier with a machete,” I griped.
We’d planned the trip knowing we might have to do some bushwhacking, and we’d packed a machete for just that purpose—only we packed it in the bag the bear ran off with.
“I really hate that bear right about now,” Frank muttered as he disentangled himself from yet another thornbush.
Every so often we’d get a faint whiff of skunk. I couldn’t tell if the smell was just stuck up my nostrils or what. I know it’s not unusual for the woods—this was skunk home turf, after all—but it was still disconcerting after our recent Close Encounter of the Stinky Kind. Knowing our luck so far, there were probably skunks sleeping under every rock, just waiting for us to step on them so they could spray us.
Thankfully, if there were, we didn’t see them. The other thing we didn’t see was Aleksei’s hideout. We hadn’t seen much of anything except for trees and dense undergrowth.
“Talk about off the beaten path,” I groaned, my socks squishing inside my boots from the overgrown marsh we’d just trudged through.
We were covered in dirt, sweat, and scratches, and I was just about to toss down my hatchet and take a nap under one of Aleksei’s yellow-starred shrubs when we finally emerged from the brush.
“Finally, a change of scenery,” Frank said, picking one of the little yellow flowers from the trail-marking shrub at the edge of the brush.
Twenty feet later we found ourselves on the edge of a little ravine with a large fallen tree stretched across it like a bridge. What we didn’t find was another yellow, star-flowered shrub.
“Either the Yellow Shrub Trail is a dead end—” I began.
“Or Aleksei has a hideout on the other side of that ravine,” Frank finished optimistically. He pointed to a neat row of tall bushes. “See how those elder bushes are growing in a line? They wouldn’t grow that way naturally. Someone had to plant them. I bet what we’re looking for is on the other side!”
“Well, let’s go find out,” I said, stepping carefully onto the fallen tree. I’d had one tree almost fall on me today; I didn’t want to fall off another one.
When we pushed through the bushes on the other side, there was a tiny, vine-covered cabin. It was well enough camouflaged that you’d never see it from a distance, and even if you stumbled right upon it, you might not notice it unless you were already looking.
“That’s it!” Frank mouthed excitedly. We didn’t know what we would find inside, and it was best not to announce our presence.
Brush had grown up around it like it hadn’t been tended in a while. When we stepped closer, you could see where it had been recently stepped on and pushed aside by a large animal. Or a person. And from the way the disturbed brush led straight to the closed front door, I was betting on the latter. I tried peeking through one of the vine-covered windows, but the shutters were closed, blocking my view. We were going to have to go in blind.
I gently placed my hand on the door and looked at Frank, who nodded. Then I pushed, and the door opened with a groan.
And then… silence. The cabin was empty.
It was also itty-bitty. There was a stone fireplace against the back wall, a little built-in table on one side, a wooden sleeping loft barely large enough for someone Aleksei’s size to squeeze into on the other side, and a couple of bare shelves.
“I know tiny houses are all the rage, but this kinda makes me question the trend, especially for a dude as big as Aleksei,” I commented. Our burly friend had a big heart and an even bigger body. “This is barely bigger than a cubby for someone his size.”
“Judging by all the dust and mouse droppings, I don’t think anyone has used it for a long time,” Frank said, squatting down to examine one of the boot prints in the dust. “Until the last few days, that is. These prints are fresh.”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I puzzled over the trail in the dust. “And they lead in one direction. Straight to the fireplace. Whoever entered never left.”
I could feel the hairs on my arm rise from the weirdness of it.
“There aren’t exactly a lot of places they could have gone,” Frank observed, looking around the claustrophobic little space. “Not unless they climbed up the chimney.”
“Either that, or this tiny house isn’t as tiny as it seems,” I said, thinking about one of Aleksei’s other hobbies.
We both smiled as we pulled out our flashlights and knelt down by the fireplace to investigate the stone for anything that looked or felt out of place. I had to reach my arm as far up the chimney as it would go before I felt the chain.
I yanked. Stone creaked against stone as the fireplace floor rose.
We knew Aleksei was fond of traps and disguises. His tiny cabin in the woods contained both. The fireplace was really a trapdoor.