Chaos Theory (Nerds of Paradise #2)(47)

Will balked, his frown drawing lines between his eyes.

“What?” she asked.

He shrugged and gestured for her to move on. “I never would have pegged you as the type who would kill and eat wildlife.”

She laughed. “Did you think I was a crunchy-granola vegetarian?”

“Actually, yes.”

She reached behind her and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. He held onto her for just a bit longer than he needed to. “I have a deep respect for Mother Nature, but I’m also hungry. And I’m not willing to give up and call for the helicopter when things that have provided food to humans for millennia are all around us.”

He was silent for a beat before saying, “Well, okay.”

Melody was just about to glance back to him with a grin when she spotted exactly the kind of nest she’d been looking for. “Ooh! Duck eggs, dead ahead.”

The eggs were easy to gather. Melody’s fantasy of catching a duck for lunch was much more of a pipe-dream. She took two out of the five eggs they found in the first nest and another two from a second next farther downstream, but the ducks that they ran into scattered and splashed and flew away before they could so much as blink in their direction.

“We’re going to need to plan much better if we’re going to catch one of those suckers,” she sighed as they made their way back to the rock where their clothes were.

“Maybe a trap of some sort,” Will said, his brow knit together in thought. “I’ve heard of catching birds using large nets. We might try that.”

Melody giggled low in her throat. “It’s too bad we’re trying to win a race here, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?” Will glanced up from his thoughts as they reached the rocks. He blinked. “Oh. Right. The race. We’ll probably have to stick to catching fish with the supplies we have in that case.”

“Unless you want to try eating grubs or other bugs,” she added.

Will made a face. “Let’s stick to things we might actually be able to buy in a supermarket.”

“Gotcha.” Melody held up the eggs. “So do you want to eat these babies raw or should we make a fire and scramble them?”

“Fire,” Will said. “Definitely fire.”

“Excellent choice, Darling. Now if you could be so kind as to fetch some dry-ish wood….”

There wasn’t much in the way of dry wood available, but they did find enough to get a tiny fire going on the rock. It was enough to cook the duck eggs into a runny mess. At least the baby ducks had hardly started growing yet and the gross part was easy to pick out.

“See, Clementine,” Melody said, pointing her fork at Will as they finished up their slightly disgusting morning feast. “A little cheating isn’t going to hold the two of us back.”

Will sighed, reaching over to test whether their clothes were dry yet. “I should have been paying attention. I should have protected our camp.”

Melody shrugged. “You did the best you could. No one but you is blaming you for anything.”

He sent her a wary, sideways look as he picked up one of his shirts and shook it out.

“So stop blaming yourself,” she finished up with what she was certain he was waiting for her to say. She meant it too.

They went to work cleaning up and repacking. Within a few minutes, the sound of a helicopter could be heard. It got closer, flew right over them, then veered toward the right, landing in the forest on the other side of the stream, only a few hundred yards away.

“Another one bites the dust,” Melody sighed as she hoisted her pack onto her shoulders and fastened the buckle around her middle. The pack was considerably lighter without all the horrible, dehydrated food packs. “But not us,” she finished, sending Will a smile.

“Right,” he said, only half convincingly. “We’re not giving up so easily.”





Chapter Thirteen





The only good thing Will could say about their hike through the rest of the morning, following the course of the stream, was that the air dried out quickly. But they’d packed up their clothes while they were still damp, and chances were that by the time they stopped that evening, everything would be as dank and uncomfortable as the guilt that continued to press down on him. The only way to dry their clothes out was to stop, and stopping would put them at a disadvantage in the competition. He had no idea how he would shake the sense that he’d failed Melody, failed himself.

“I bet everyone who called for the helicopter to rescue them is living it up at some mountain resort right now,” Melody said—entirely too cheerful for the situation—as she kept pace behind him.

Will had nothing to add to that, so he just grunted.

“That would be just the kind of thing Howie would do,” Melody went on. “He’s probably organized a charades competition with everyone who dropped out. The Haskells have been crazy about competitions of all sorts for generations.”

Will still didn’t feel the need to carry on a conversation. He switched directions and led them up a long incline into the woods so they could avoid a stretch of jagged rocks.

“I bet he’ll make all sorts of jokes about people not being able to handle a little rain or not being as clever as they thought they were once we get back.”