She hesitated.
So you really want to go in this guy’s hot tub? Especially after that dream ... God only knows what’s gone on in it ... who might be in the water.
Yuck.
She picked up the cold bottle of beer and took a drink.
Maybe I should get the hell away from here, she thought, while the getting is good.
“Hey there!”
Gillian whirled around.
Chapter Eleven
“Why don’t we take a breather?” Rick suggested.
Bert grinned along with her frown. “You can’t be pooped again already ... a strong fellow like you.”
“Must be the aldtude.”
“Okay. Five minutes.”
He stepped backward to a waist-high boulder, eased his pack down, and sighed as the straps went loose on his shoulders. The sigh was for Bert’s sake. He’d found the hike rather easy so far and his occasional pleas for rest stops had nothing to do with the effort of lugging his pack up the trail. His only motive was to slow their progress, to avoid overtaking Jase, Luke, and Wally.
So far, fine. He hadn’t seen them since that morning.
The boys had had a fifteen-minute lead by the time the tent was rolled, the packs were ready, and they started out. Fifteen minutes, Rick quickly realized, was too short a gap. Bert didn’t hike with a leisurely stroll; she took long, sure strides that ate up the trail. Though Jase and Luke might be fast on their feet, Wally had seemed like the type who would hold them back. Rick felt sure that, without the frequent stops, they would’ve caught up with the boys by now.
There was also the possibility that the boys would take it slow or even stop and wait to make sure of another encounter with Bert. If that was their game, Rick’s delays would only postpone the meeting, not prevent it.
Rick opened a side pocket of his pack and took out his plastic water bottle. He unscrewed the cap and took a drink, then passed it to Bert. The shadow of her bush hat left her face as she tipped back her head. She shut her eyes and drank.
“I’m wondering if we really want to go over Dead Mule Pass,” he said. “Are we locked into that?”
“It’s the route I planned,” she said, and returned the bottle to him. “That’s how we’ll make a circle and get back to the car without backtracking. What’ve you got against Dead Mule Pass other than its name?”
“Sounds like a tough climb.”
“That’s a good one. All of a sudden you’re pooped at every turn and worried about a little climb. Aren’t you the same guy who did a lOK run last month?”
“That was different.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “I am onto you, y’know. You don’t have to pretend with me. Took a while, but I figured it out after about the third rest stop. You just don’t want us running into our friendly neighborhood teen trio.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, my ass.”
“It’s your ass I’m worried about,” he said, forcing a smile. “And other nearby areas.”
“You still think they want to jump my bones.”
“You think it hasn’t crossed their minds?”
Bert shrugged. “I suppose it probably has. That hardly means they’ll try it, though. There’s an enormous gap between wanting something like that and actually trying it.”
“Maybe. I just think we’re better off avoiding those guys. I mean, we’re out here in the middle of nowhere and they’ve got us out-numbered. Why tempt fate?”
“Rick, they’re three guys on a camping trip. They seemed perfectly normal to me.”
“Even Jase?”
She hesitated. Frowning, she said, “Jase I could do without. If I were alone out here and he showed up, I might be a little concerned. But you’re with me, and Jase has Burgher and Wally in tow. Those two guys wouldn’t try anything.”
“If they thought they could get away with it, they might.”
“Would you? Suppose the situation were reversed, and you’re out here with a couple of buddies and run into someone like me? Would you and your pals try to rape me?”
“Of course not.”
She put a hand on his thigh. “Sure about that? You’re talking as if it’s inevitable that all guys would try it in a situation like this.”
“It would occur to most guys. It would occur to me, I’m sure. But I wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
Rick shrugged. “Aside from being a decent guy with moral scruples, I suppose I’d be chicken.”
“Afraid the cops’d get you?”
“That’d be a major deterrent. Thing is, and why I’m so worried, this area isn’t exactly teeming with fuzz. We’re pretty much beyond the reach of the law out here. A guy could get away with most anything.” Rick went cold inside. “Especially if he didn’t leave witnesses.”
“Plot thickens,” Bert said. “Now we’re talking murder.”
“You rape someone, you don’t want a prison stretch, nobody knows you did it except you and the victim. Even if you’re not a cold-blooded killer, you’re scared. The thrill is over and you realize what you’ve done—the consequences if you get caught.”
Bert’s fingers tightened on his thigh.
“You take these three,” he went on. “Jase wouldn’t kill us out of panic. He’d be more likely to do it for kicks, or just to be on the safe side, or just for the hell of it.”
“You don’t even know the guy,” Bert muttered.
“I know his type. Burgher, he seemed aloof. The rational sort. He’d see the logic of eliminating us and that might override his qualms about it. Wally, he’d panic. He’d no sooner get his pants up than he’d start seeing himself getting gangraped in prison.”
Bert looked into his eyes. “You’re scaring me,” she said.
“I just think we need to realize the—”
“I mean you’re scaring me. What the hell is going on inside your head? We meet three guys who don’t give us any trouble at all. Next thing you know, you’ve got them raping me. Jase kills us for kicks, Burgher kills us because it makes good sense, and Wally kills us so he won’t get sodomized in prison. My Christ! Your imagination is revolting.”
“I read the newspapers,” he muttered, stunned by her reaction.
“Sounds to me like you’re projecting your own fantasies onto those guys.”
“My fears,” he said.
Her eyes seemed to soften. “Oh, Rick.” Her hand lifted to his face, gently stroked his cheek. “I shouldn’t have dragged you out here, should I?”
“I was doing all right till those three came along.”
“Doing all right? That’s why you got yourself shit-faced last night?” Her tone was sympathetic, not accusing.
“I didn’t get shit-faced.”
“Maybe we’d better hike on back to the car and get out of here.”
“Hell,” he muttered.
“It’s no good if you’re a basket-case the whole time. It isn’t fair to you.”
“I’m sorry. I promised myself that I wouldn’t ruin things. But I won’t get this stuff out of my head.”
“I’m the one who pushed you into this. I knew you hated the idea.” A comer of her mouth curled up. “Guess we should’ve gone to Maui after all.”
“I’d feel awful if we quit,” he said.
“You’d feel worse if we stayed. Besides, you might be right about those guys. I mean, I don’t really expect them to attack us or anything, but just the fact that they’re around—truth is, I’ve had some of the same thoughts as you.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “My thoughts didn’t go quite as far as yours. But it crossed my mind that Jase might talk the others into jumping us.” Her smile widened. “In my version, they thumped you on the head with a rock, but I fended them off with my knife.”
“Always the optimist.”
“That’s me. Anyway, all things considered, I won’t be too disappointed if we leave.”
“I guess we could head over to Lake Tahoe, check into
a nice hotel....”
“Nothing to wear.”
“They’ve got stores.”
“Sounds good to—”
Her voice stopped.
Rick heard faint, distant talking. Fear clamped his chest. He handed the water bottle to Bert. Standing, he slipped his arms from the pack straps. He turned to his pack, reached for the side pocket where he’d put his revolver, and pulled at the zipper with trembling fingers. It was half open when he realized that the voices were female.
He glanced at Bert. She was watching him. With a shake of his head as if he were confused, he shut the zipper. He took the water bottle from Bert and slipped it into the other pocket.
“Afraid they’ll try to bum our water?” Bert asked, grinning.
“Exactly. Wouldn’t be sanitary.” He rested against his pack again. He still heard the voices, but he saw nobody on the trail.
“From the sound of them,” Bert said, “they’re either girls or sissies.”
They were girls. They came striding, side by side, around a bend in the trail.
The one on the right looked up, saw them, smiled and said, “Howdy.” The other, flushed and panting, nodded a greeting.
“Hi there,” Bert said.
“Hi,” said Rick.
“Let’s take a load off,” the girl said to her haggard friend. She stepped to the side of the trail across from Rick and Bert, swung her pack down, and boosted herself onto a hip-high shelf of rock. The other girl kept her pack on. It scraped against the vertical block of stone as she sagged. Her rump met the trail and she stretched out her legs. She sighed.
Her slim legs were tanned, her shins mottled with trail dust that had turned dark on her sweaty skin. She wore faded blue gym shorts and a gray T-shirt that read UCSC. Her shirt had a wet V, wide at the crew neck and narrowing as it descended between her breasts. Her chest rose and fell as she fought to catch her breath. The bill of her ballcap was tipped upward. A fringe of blond hair clung to her forehead and glossy wisps curled around her ears. In spite of her grimace and sunglasses, Rick could see that she was a beauty.
“From Santa Cruz?” Bert asked.
“I shoulda boogerin’ stayed there,” said the one on the ground.
The one sitting on the rock laughed. “We just got done with final,” she said.
“Great way to start the summer break.”
“Andrea isn’t used to this sort of thing.”
“Neither am I,” Rick said.
“I love it.” The girl swept off her straw cowboy hat. Her thick, brown hair was pinned up except for bangs that fluttered in the breeze. Unlike Andrea, she looked cool and dry. She wore no sunglasses. Her brows were thick, her eyes bright green. Though she lacked Andrea’s delicate features, she had a fresh, athletic look that Rick found appealing.
She tossed her hat. It landed on her pack, slid off, and dropped onto the trail. Leaning back, she braced herself with straight arms. She was wearing a yellow blouse. The sleeves were cut off, and it was unbuttoned and tied below her breasts. From the yellow cord across the gap, Rick guessed that she was wearing a bikini. Her flat belly was tanned. She wore jeans, the legs cut off so high that the ends of her front pockets hung out white against her thighs.
The way her jeans looked disturbed Rick. For a moment, he didn’t know why. Then he remembered that Julie had worn jeans like these, cut so short the pockets showed. He’d been watching her instead of the trail.
My fault, he thought as a warm wave of shame swept through him. If I hadn’t been trying to see up her pants ...
It’s not my fault, he told himself. She shouldn’t have worn something like that if I wasn’t supposed to look. A guy will look. Any guy will look. It was her fault more than mine.
“... your car we parked next to this morning,” the girl in the cut-offs was saying. Rick realized he had missed some of the conversation.
“A blue Pontiac?” Bert asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“So you just got in this morning?” Rick asked.
“Seems like a century ago,” Andrea said. Still on the ground, she had slipped out of her pack straps without Rick noticing. Her gray T-shirt was dark around the armpits. She was no longer panting. “Bonnie doesn’t believe in resting. You ask me, I don’t know what’s the big rush.”
“I thought we’d make it over the pass today,” Bonnie said, “but that’s starting to look doubtful. There’s a lake just this side, though. Fern Lake? I suppose we’ll wind up there. What about you?”
Bert shrugged. “We’re not too sure at this point.”
“Are you going over the pass?” Bonnie asked.
“We might head back,” Bert told her. “I’m not feeling too swift.”
Bonnie frowned. “That’s too bad. You might just pack it in?”
“We’re considering it.”
“That’d be a shame, you came this far.”
“Sounds like a good move to me,” Andrea said. She raised one knee and folded her hands around it. Her other leg was still extended. Through the gaping leg-holes of her shorts, Rick saw her shadowed thigh. He looked away.
Bonnie had her ankles crossed.
“There are some guys up the trail,” Rick said. “You may run into them.”
“Guys?” Bonnie asked.
“Three of them,” Bert said. “They’re probably about your age.”
“Oh great,” Andrea muttered.
“What sort of guys?” Bonnie asked.
“How many kinds are there,” Andrea said.
Bonnie uncrossed her feet and swung a boot sideways as if to knock her friend in the head. She missed. “Did they seem all right?” she asked Bert.
“I guess so.”
“They’re not a contingent from Stanford,” Rick said, with a smile in Andrea’s direction. Bonnie threw him a challenging look. He could’ve been mistaken, but he thought it said, Get off my patch, master. And lay off Andrea. She’s mine.
Andrea looked up at Rick and wrinkled her nose. “They’re a contingent from like where?”
“The Youth Authority.”
“I’m gonna barf.”
“They aren’t that bad,” Bert said. “One of them did seem rather hard, but the others were okay. We had a chat with them back at our camp. They didn’t give us any trouble.”
“Sure they didn’t,” Andrea said. “You’ve got him.”
“Rick,” he told her, pleased that the girl believed his presence had prevented trouble.
“Yeah, you had Rick.”
“How far ahead are these guys?” Bonnie asked. Leaning forward, she hunched over and put her hands on her knees. The front of her blouse bunched outward. Rick saw the side of her left breast. The yellow bikini looked too small to hold it all.
“Who knows?” Bert said. “We’ve been stopping a lot. They might be half an hour up the trail, maybe farther.”
“Or they might be just around the bend,” Rick said.
“Just what we need,” Andrea muttered. “Hassled by a trio of cretinous thugs.”
“Who says they’ll hassle us?” Bonnie said.
“They’re guys, aren’t they? No offense, Rick,” she added, and grinned up at him with one side of her mouth. “I’m talking mostly your basic teenage toad. They got just one thing on their minds, and we all know what that is. Fuckywucky.”
“You’re gross,” Bonnie said.
“But perceptive.” Andrea twisted her head around and peered up at her friend. “You think these guys are gonna just ignore us, we meet up with them?”
“You can level them with your tongue.”
“Yeah, that’d be sure to save the day. Get the scrotes pissed at us.” She turned to Rick. “Maybe the four of us oughta stick together for a while. You mind us tagging along?”
“They’re leaving,” Bonnie reminded her.
“Oh, yeah. Shit soup. You guys sure about that?”
“It’s not definite,” Rick said.
Bert looked at him. “We’ll have
to discuss it,” she said. “If we change our minds, we won’t be far behind you.”
“Well,” Bonnie said. “We’d better get moving.” She leaped from her perch, picked up her hat and dusted it off. “If we don’t see you again, have a good trip back.”
“Thanks,” Bert told her. “You too.”
“I was just getting comfortable,” Andrea complained, reaching behind her for the pack straps.
Bonnie lifted her pack off the trail without apparent effort, swung it onto her back, and slipped her arms through the straps.
Andrea struggled with hers. First, she clutched both straps and tried to rise from a squatting position. That didn’t work, so she lurched forward onto her hands and knees, then thrust herself up.
“So graceful,” Bonnie said.
Grimacing, Andrea rubbed her hands on her shorts. They left dust smears on the faded blue fabric. She turned her palms up. “Never gonna be clean again,” she muttered.
“The pleasures of roughing it,” Bert told her.
“Yeah. You guys really serious about leaving?”
“We’ll see,” Bert said.
Andrea grinned at her. “Want to loan us Rick for a few days? We’ll make sure we get him back to you in good condition.”
She caught Bonnie’s sour look and rolled up her eyes in a gesture of mock despair.
What’s with the attitude all the time, Bonnie? Can’t take a joke? Loosen up for godsake, we’re on vacation here.
Rick laughed. “I could go for that.”
He was joking. Almost.
Bert slapped his leg. “Sorry,” she told Andrea, “I’m afraid I can’t do without him. He’s my love-slave.”
The girls, including Bert, laughed it up.
“Real cute,” Rick said, smiling but embarrassed.
Still laughing, Bonnie and Andrea raised hands in farewell, turned away, and began striding up the trail. Rick and Bert watched until the two girls disappeared around a bend in the trail.
“Nice kids,” Bert said.
“Yeah.”
“So what about it?” she asked. “Do you still want to split?”
“I don’t know,” Rick said. “Maybe not.”
Bert looked amused.
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