Chapter 27

 

When the two Daniels’ families got back to their hotel, everyone went into the restaurant except for Tanya. She told them to go ahead and order for her while she went to her room to put her cell phone on charge. Upon entering the room, she found an envelope had been slipped under the door. She picked it up and saw her name on it. “Hmm. What’s this?” She opened it, found $3000 in cash and a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone who’d received a letter to come there, as well as those who worked at the Beneford Lodge — including the Caudills. There was also a note attached.

 

Dear Tanya,

I overheard your two families talking in the hospital waiting room. I wish to assist you in your endeavor to help Tanika and all the others. I am taking a leap of faith in trusting you and hope this expedites your research. My own investigators have come up with no clues. It’s my hope you can do better. The money is to purchase the equipment you need. You may do your research where you please, however, for a more secure place to work, go to The Lost Haven Ski Lodge. It’s a well-known place and not far from the Beneford Lodge. You will have complete privacy. I’ve left your names with the manager if you decided to take me up on the offer.

Sincerely, Sam (Tanika’s friend, the bald guy from the road)

 

“Holy shit!” Tanya exclaimed. It made her slightly nervous that they’d been overheard. However, this list was exactly what they needed to give them a jump on the research. She quickly put her cell phone on charge, headed downstairs and found the others in a secluded corner of the restaurant.

“It took you long enough,” Mark said.

“We’re in luck!” Tanya sat down with a grin on her face that stretched from ear-to-ear. She set the list of names and addresses on the table.

Charles picked it up and looked it over. “Where in the hell did you get this?”

“We have an ally.” She passed the note around. “He gave us cash to buy equipment.”

“I’m beginning to get a little leery of this endeavor,” Charles said.

“Come on, Dad,” Regina pleaded. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Charles glared at her. “Its split between two hospital beds next to your friends.”

“That’s why I want to help,” Regina replied. “I don’t want any more of them in there. Besides, I’ve been miss goody two shoes all of my life.”

Charles gave her a loving smile. “And your mother and I are very proud of you.”

“Geez, Dad. I’m twenty-five and still live at home! I’ve always been too shy to do anything risky.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being shy,” Charles replied.

Regina rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point! I’m a coward. What better way to break out of my shell than with my parents by my side. What we’re going to do might be a little illegal, but it’s for a good cause.”

“Now, Regina,” said Lily. “If your father is uncomfortable, we don’t want to push him into it.” She gave her daughter a subtle wink. “He can stay here at this hotel and we can go to this Lost Haven Lodge.”

“Lily!” Charles exclaimed, surprised she was siding with the others. “You’re supposed to be the conservative one.”

“So this time I’ve flip-flopped,” Lily replied. “Politicians do it all the time.”

Charles shook his head and sighed. “Alright, I give. If we’re caught, I’ll see you in twenty years when I get out of Leavenworth.”

As the others tried to console Charles, Mark looked over the list of names until he came to the last thing on the list. “Oh man!”

“What is it, Mark?” Sharon asked.

He chuckled slightly. “Listen to this. The men who harassed you all on the road were paid to do it by Edgar Allen Poe.”

“Say what!” Tanya exclaimed.

Mark grinned. “Edgar Allen Poe, an alias of course, paid them via Paypal. This will call for some extreme measures. We find out who Poe really is, and we have our culprit.”

“I’m sure that’ll be one hell of a paper trail,” said Sharon.

“Well, the sooner we eat and get what we need, the sooner we can get started.”

Throughout dinner, they discussed the pros and cons of leaving the hotel and going to the suggested lodge. It was the consensus that they check out the lodge first, and if they decided to stay, they should still keep their rooms at the hotel just in case someone was keeping tabs on them.

When dinner was over, they went to the nearest electronics store, purchased what they needed and rented a mini-van to drive out to the Lost Haven Ski Lodge.

 

The Road

The sun was a large, orange ball in the sky as it was slowly starting to set behind one of the mountain peaks. It would be dark by the time Tanika and the others arrived at the Beneford Lodge.

Margo was driving, and before they pulled onto the highway exiting town, Jazy spotted a hamburger joint and had her pull into the drive-thru. Even though the food at the lodge was outstanding, her taste buds were craving a simpler fare.

As Margo pulled back on the road, Jazy took a bite of her hamburger. “Mmmm, nothing like a good ol’ burger ‘n fries.”

“You’re crazy!” Margo laughed. “I’ll take shrimp and lobster over barf in a bag any day.”

“I’m hungry for some of my mom’s kim-chee,” Chen said.

“Ewe!” Tanika and Jazmyn shivered.

“That spicy hot cabbage!” Tanika said. “Jazy and I had to eat some before we received our black belts. That stuff will grow hair on your chest!”

“You all just don’t know what’s good,” Chen laughed. “What do you say, Margo? Have you ever had kim-chee?” When she hesitated in answering, Chen called her name again. “Margo.”

But Margo’s attention was in the rearview mirror. “Umm, no. I’ve never tried it.”

Tanika noted the serious tone in her voice and then watched her check the mirrors for a second time. “What’s up? You seem a bit tense.”

“If I do, it’s because I am,” Margo said. “Look out the back window. I may be paranoid, but see that big black pick-up truck behind us. I think we’re being followed.”

All three of them turned around. “Are you sure it’s just not going in the same direction as us?” Tanika asked.

“No, I’m not sure, but when we pulled into the drive-thru, I saw one just like it pull in and park just after us. Now it’s there again.”

“There’s a good way to find out,” Tanika said. “Take the next right before we hit the highway and circle around to see if it still follows us. If it does, we can pull into that police station I saw a couple of blocks back. If it goes on, then you’re paranoid.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Margo replied.

Margo did as Tanika suggested, but the truck didn’t follow. Tanika watched as it went straight on down the road for about a block and then it pulled on to the highway in the opposite direction that they would be going. They all breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry for scaring you, guys,” Margo said.

“Girl!” Jazy replied. “I’ll take a hundred false alarms to the real thing any day of the week! Until we all get home, paranoid is a good thing.”

After circling the block, they pulled onto the highway for the almost fifty-mile trip back to the lodge. As they drove, Jazy, Chen and Margo chattered about one thing or another and Tanika put her seat back and closed her eyes. Around the halfway point, the few cars behind them turned off until they had the highway to themselves.

“We’ve got that long bridge coming up ahead that you love, Jazy,” Margo said with a chuckle.

“Love like a tooth ache,” she replied. “I hate bridges. They make me nervous.”

They were less than a mile from the bridge, when bright headlights from behind them suddenly appeared and reflected in Margo’s rearview mirror blinding her.

“Shit!” she shouted, batted the mirror away and blinked her eyes a moment to get her sight back.

Tanika immediately opened her eyes when she heard Margo swear, and then at the same time they felt something ram them hard in the back end. Everyone screamed as they were pitched forward. Tanika turned her head and saw what could have been that black truck from earlier, but its headlights were so bright, she had a hard time making it out. “Step on it, Margo!” Tanika shouted.

“It’s floored now!” she replied. “I think that hit screwed up something.”

But then they saw the black truck come up by the driver’s side; it rammed them. The SUV was bumped to the median, but Margo managed to get it back on the road.

“It’s trying to kill us!” Chen shouted.

“No shit!” Jazy exclaimed, as she yanked her seatbelt a little tighter.

“If you can’t go faster, break so it will go passed us, Margo!” Tanika shouted.

Margo stomped the breaks, but nothing. She mashed on them twice more. “No breaks! I think they’ve been sabotaged.”

“Everyone!” Tanika yelled. “Check for cell service.”

“I’ve got squat! I think were in a dead zone,” Chen said.

Jazmyn pursed her lips and glared at her. “Dead zone? Poor choice of words, Chen-Sun!”

The bridge was just before them, but on either side of it was a drop off into a gorge protected by flimsy, bent guard rails. They all prayed they could make it to the bridge where the sides were sturdy. The truck slammed into them again. Margo did her best to keep the vehicle on the road but was forced off once more. They were about fifty feet from the guard rail. Margo tried one last measure to stop the vehicle. “Hang on tight!” she shouted, and then shoved the gears into reverse. But just as she did, the truck rammed them again and they were flipped over the guard rail.

“We’re screwed!” Margo shouted, while everyone else screamed as they rolled over the cliff.

 

***

The driver of the truck pulled over at the bridge, got out and watched as the SUV rolled down the rocky face of the cliff bouncing off one boulder then another. But then its descent was stopped by two trees that jutted out from the face of the cliff midway down. “Damn it!” the driver exclaimed, hoping they’d crash to the bottom. That would have meant instantaneous death. As it was at the moment, there was still a probability that one or more of them could be alive. The driver listened carefully to hear if any screams or cries for help could be heard. There was nothing but silence. The driver chuckled and thought, That’s three more down. There was no cell phone reception, and the only way the vehicle would be seen was if someone stopped on the bridge and got out and looked. If any were still alive, they’d be stuck. Their chances of survival were slim to none. It would take a rescue squad to get them out.

After a few moments of watching, the driver, not wanting to take the chance of being spotted by an oncoming vehicle, got back in the truck, turned around and headed back to town.

 

Cliff Side

The four women closed their eyes and braced themselves as best they could. Jazmyn and Chen-Sun curled up in a ball in the seat holding onto their shoulder straps for dear life keeping their faces turn away from the windows as they shattered. The air bags deployed up front where Margo and Tanika were. They knew they were going to die. They screamed each time the vehicle bounced off a jutted-out boulder that jarred their insides. Suddenly they came to an abrupt stop upside down. Their hands instinctively went to the ceiling to brace themselves to relieve the pressure from the seat belts that held them. Other than that, no one dared move or breathe for a moment. Tanika then opened her eyes and looked out the cracked windshield after moving away the deflated airbag. Two trees jutting out from the rocks cradled them in place. She looked down and saw that the bottom of the rocky gorge was still a long way down. The top of the cliff face was equally as far. She looked around at the others. “Is everyone alright?”

Margo could feel something running down her face. She touched her nose and saw blood. “The airbag gave me a damn bloody nose.” She moved her jaw around and then felt one of her teeth with her tongue. “I think I also have a loose tooth.”

“Jazy and I bumped heads, but other than a few cuts from some flying glass, I don’t think anything’s broken,” Chen answered.

“What happened?” Jazmyn asked. “We’re not dead.”

“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place is what happened,” Tanika replied. “We’re precariously wedged between two trees. We could still keep falling if they give way.”

Margo sniffed the air. “I smell gasoline. We gotta get out of here. If that gas tank ignites, we’ll be blown to hell and back.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” Jazy said sarcastically. “Grow wings and fly?”

Chen started to feel queasy. “Girls, I don’t know about you, but hanging upside down is making me sick. If I don’t get out of this seat belt, I’m going to throw up.”

Everyone groaned. “Go ahead and unfasten — carefully,” Tanika said. “And try not to jar us. Jazy, see if you can help her out.”

Chen-Sun repositioned her hands against the ceiling to support her weight. When she was ready, she had Jazmyn unbuckled the seatbelt. Slowly, she lowered her body to the ceiling until she was laying on it. She, as the others, breathed a sigh of relief when the vehicle remained stable. One by one they helped each other out of the seat belts until they all were in a sitting position on the ceiling.

“Now what?” Margo asked. “Our options are somewhat bleak.”

Tanika carefully looked out her passenger’s side window. It was a straight drop down. She closed her eyes and shivered. Another look out the windshield showed a smooth rock face on Margo’s side providing them nothing to hold on to. “No way out on my side or up front.”

Margo carefully tried opening her door, but it was jammed up against a rock. “What about back there?”

Jazmyn looked out her window. “The first step on my side is a killer.”

Chen had been sitting in the back on the driver’s side and tried her door; it wouldn’t budge. But then she had a thought. She looked out the broken window. “It’s a tight squeeze, but I think I can climb out — if we can find something to break away some of these shards of glass.”

Tanika thought for a moment. “Jazy, can you make your way to the back and see if there’s a tire tool or something.”

“I don’t know if moving around too much is a good idea,” Jazy replied.

Margo then heard a sizzling noise and looked up front toward the engine. “Ahm, we better do something. I see smoke.”

Jazmyn then changed her mind. “Why don’t I just see if I can find that tire tool.” She slowly crawled across the ceiling to the back and opened the underneath storage compartment which was above her. But when she did, not only did the tire tool fall out, so did the jack, a bag marked jumper cables, a trailer hitch and the spare tire. “Shit!” Jazy yelled and rolled away to avoid getting hit. When the items landed on the ceiling, it caused their precarious perch to sway.

“You call that being careful!” Margo yelled.

Jazmyn picked up the tire tool and replied sarcastically, “I call it doing what ya’ll asked!”

She made her way back to Chen’s side of the vehicle and started busting out the remaining shards of glass so Chen wouldn’t cut herself to ribbons trying to get out.

Chen took a deep breath and then let it out. “Here goes!”

She sat on the window edge and snaked her arms up to grab onto the bottom of the door above her. Getting a good grip, she turned her head sideways and pushed herself up maneuvering between the rock wall and the door, scraping the side of her face in the process. It was a tight squeeze for her small frame, and she had to suck in her small stomach to fit. Once in a standing position, she lifted one leg then the other until she was on top.

“Made it!” she shouted.

Jazmyn put her head through the window and looked up. “I don’t think the rest of us will fit through there.”

Tanika and Margo both looked through the window at the small space. Margo then looked down at her chest. “I think the lower half of my body would fit, but the girls would get stuck.”

Chen chuckled slightly. “For once, being flat-chested has its advantages.”

Tanika smiled at their attempts at humor. She’d seen movies where there was always at least one woman who panicked in dire situations causing the heroin more trouble. Tanika was relieved to be in the company of a group of level-headed women who didn’t go into hysterics. She then called up to Chen. “Can you see a ledge or anything we can either climb up or down on?”

Chen squinted, but the sun had gone down and it was hard to see. “It’s too dark.”

“Hey, Chen,” Margo said after a moment. “Do you have a flashlight app on your phone?”

“Afraid not,” she replied.

“Well I do.”

Margo took her phone out of her pocket, turned on the app and passed it up to Chen. She scanned the area. There was nothing up front that she could see, but at the back, there was an opportunity. She bent down closer to the window to be heard better. “If we open the back hatch, you all can jump out and grab onto a tree branch. There’s a ledge that the tree is growing out of that we can make our way to.”

Tanika crawled to the back to see if there was an interior latch to the back hatch, but there was none. She then told Chen she would have to open it from the outside.

“Oh great!” Chen mumbled. The thought sent butterflies fluttering through her stomach. She would have to lean over the back end of the vehicle to get to the latch, which meant staring down into the dark gorge below with nothing to catch her if she fell. The branch they were to jump to was just a little far right for her to grab onto if she did fall.

Making her way to the back, she lay down parallel to the back hatch, reached her hand down and flicked the handle. It released from the latch, but the hatch only opened slightly. The back end had taken a beating during the attack from the truck and the tumble down the cliff face.

“It’s jammed!” Chen shouted.

Just then, they heard a whoosh sound and looked to the front of the vehicle. Flames were starting to come out from the engine.

“Holy crap!” Margo shouted.

As the three inside made their way to the back of the SUV, they felt the vehicle sway. But being stationary was not an option. Death was staring them in the face at all angles. Their only hope was to get that hatch open and get out. Tanika, Margo and Jazmyn, lay on their backs and then kicked the hatch as hard as they could at the same time. It budged slightly, but their perch also bounced. The women breathed a sigh of relief that the SUV remained stable. They hit it twice more and it opened just wide enough for them to squeeze out. They figured why tempt fate by trying to make the opening wider.

Margo and Jazmyn went out first with Chen’s help. Tanika was the last to go, but as an afterthought, she looked down, grabbed the jumper cable bag and stuffed the tire tool and trailer hitch in it before she was hauled up. The others gave her an odd look.

“What the hell do you want those for?” Margo asked.

“It’s the closest thing to a rope we have. And the other things might come in handy for something.” Tanika slipped the bag over her shoulder.

Margo nodded. “Quick thinking”.

With everyone out, Chen shined the light to the ledge where they were to jump to. The branch was about six feet down. “Who’s first?” Chen asked.

Jazmyn sighed. “I’ll go.” She focused on her target. “What I wouldn’t give for a wing-suit right now.” She leaped forward and caught the branch as she landed on her stomach. “Ugh!” she groaned.

“You alright?” Tanika called out.

“Just peachy! I bit my lip!” Jazy then crawled about three feet forward and made her way to the ledge.

Just then they heard a crackling noise. Chen shined the light toward the front of the vehicle. The branch holding the front end had caught fire and started to crack. “Let’s get out of here!”

There was enough room on the branch for two of them to jump together. Chen and Tanika made it and when they were clear, Margo started to launch herself, but the SUV slipped off its perch. “Margo!” the others shouted as she missed the spot on the branch she was aiming for. But to their relief, she caught the very end of it. They watched as her feet dangled over the gorge below.

Margo reaffirmed her grip and started to swing her body. When she got enough momentum, she caught the larger part of the branch with her legs and shimmied across to the ledge upside down. The others helped her up to the niche they were in and she leaned against the rock wall.

“We thought you were a goner,” Tanika said.

Margo closed her eyes and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. “All I can say is thank God, Mom insisted I take gymnastics in high school.”

They watched as the SUV slipped off the branch in flames. When it hit the ground, it exploded.

“What do we do now?” Jazmyn asked.

“The only thing we can do,” Tanika replied. “Wait till morning and assess our situation. I sure as hell don’t want to climb up or down in the dark.”

Chen watched below as a billow of smoke rose from the gorge below. “Hopefully someone saw that from the road.”

The four of them leaned against the rock and made themselves as comfortable as possible. Margo looked at the other three and started to giggle.

“I sure don’t see what you find so funny!” Jazmyn exclaimed.

“The four of us remind me of Mt. Rushmore. Four faces on a rock wall!” She then pointed to Jazy, Chen, Tanika and then herself in the order they sat as she said, “George, Tom, Teddy and Abe.”

“Margo, did anyone ever tell you, you’re weird?” Jazmyn said.

She grinned. “Yep!”

With that said, they each started to laugh with her, releasing the pent-up tension they felt.