Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [48]
Zak was shocked and mortified by Scooter’s revelation. He had said that. He’d said it to his father and to nobody else, but he’d said it before he played tennis with Nadine the first time. His attitude had changed as soon as he got to know her, and he’d totally forgotten having made the cruel and stupid remark. The fact that his father had sold him out in casual conversation was overshadowed only by the disgrace of hearing his own thoughtless words repeated.
Sitting in the front passenger’s seat, Nadine peered at Zak’s face in the darkness. “Is that true?”
And then, before he could say anything, the SUV rolled down the hill, Nadine staring out the window at Zak until they rounded the corner and the Expedition became a distant glow on the hillside.
As they all turned to go their separate ways, Jennifer gave Zak a look that told him Scooter had just made a perhaps successful effort to scuttle Zak’s chances with Nadine. To make it worse, Scooter was grinning ear-to-ear. It was the closest Zak ever came to coldcocking someone.
20
Zak laid his sleeping bag alongside Muldaur’s, the bags situated on a bed of dry pine needles they’d prepared earlier. Giancarlo was on the other side of Muldaur, and twenty feet beyond him Stephens and Morse were on top of their sleeping bags reading with small trail lamps. The bags and other nonessential gear would be cached at this campsite tomorrow while they rode, then they would sleep here again tomorrow night. The last day would be the longest, when they would finally make the final push over the mountains and all the way to Salmon La Sac while Stephens’s factotum retrieved all their gear.
Zak said, “Their fire is starting to get huge.”
“They can’t see it from the city,” said Muldaur. “We can’t see it from here, either.”
“But these woods are tinder dry. And those idiots have no idea what they’re doing.”
“I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit,” Stephens said. “They’re basically intelligent, well-intentioned kids. They’re not going to do anything too, uh, too…you know…half-baked.”
“No, it’s going to be fully baked,” said Zak. “When they set fire to this mountain, all of us are going to be fully baked.”
As if to punctuate Zak’s fears, a gunshot went off in the camp below, followed by a chorus of whooping and then the dog barking.
“That had to be a rifle,” said Giancarlo, who had hunted with his father since he was a tyke. “I’m guessing a .30-30.”
“If they don’t burn us out,” said Zak, “they’ll brain one of us with a stray bullet.”
“They’re not going to shoot anybody,” Stephens said. “I mean, certainly, if you think about it, firing a gun indiscriminately isn’t the smartest thing anybody’s ever done. But there’s some ground between us. And of course, all these rocks, too. And uh, you know—”
Another gunshot split the night, followed by gales of laughter. Since sunset when the wind had died, any little sound on the mountain traveled. “So, Zak? What’s going on with you and those people?” asked Morse. “You seemed to know them.”
When the lingering silence blossomed into something akin to embarrassment, Muldaur replied for him. “Zak dated Kasey Newcastle’s sister, Nadine, for a few months this spring and summer.”
“So that’s how you know them?” Morse persisted.
“Scooter was her boyfriend before Zak,” Muldaur added. “There might have been some animosity between Scooter and Zak.”
“You were pretty thick tonight,” said Stephens. “For two people who aren’t going out anymore.”
“Zak and I met Nadine when we rescued her from a car wreck last winter,” continued Muldaur.
“Well, that certainly sounds…,” said Stephens. “I mean, if you looked at it the right way that could certainly be kind of romantic