What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(39)

“Sure!”

“There’s one more thing. If I tell you to drop or hide or be small, do you know what to do?”

“Hide?”

“Drop means get flat on the ground, right away. Hide means look for someplace like our huckleberry bushes. Be small means get low and wrap yourself into the smallest ball you can be.”

Rae clutched her tiny square of blanket tighter. “Because those bad guys are all around?”

Okay, maybe Kellen shouldn’t have mentioned this now, when dusk slipped through the trees and the forest rustled with the movement of owls and bats and... “Right! Let’s take off your shoes and socks and put them way down at the bottom of the bag.”

“I thought we hung them on the branch of a tree.” Rae sounded suspicious, as if Kellen was arbitrarily changing the rules.

“No, because today you didn’t get them wet.”

“Why do we put them at the bottom of the bag?”

So snakes don’t climb in them. “To keep them warm for in the morning.” She helped Rae out of her clothes and into the sleeping bag. As they got ready to sleep at last, the sun disappeared behind the mountain. The cold descended to nip at their noses, and Kellen listened too hard for movements below.

Even Rae seemed to hear the quiet, for she whispered, “Mommy, it’s dark out here.” Rae shivered, pulled herself into a little ball and cuddled her tiny scrap of blankie.

“No, it’s not. Look up. Have you ever seen so many stars? The sky is nothing but light from all over the universe, coming directly to us.” There! That was comforting and mother-like. Wasn’t it?

Rae didn’t sound impressed. “Tell me a story.”

Right off the top of her head, the stories Kellen remembered involved wolves, lost children and wicked stepmothers. Out here in the wilderness, those seemed wrong. So she said, “My cousin was the bravest, strongest person I ever met.”

“What was her name?”

Kellen hesitated. “Kellen.”

“The same as you?”

“Exactly the same as me. Only I wasn’t like her. Not then. I was a big scaredy-cat. I married a mean man—”

“Like Bluebeard?”

“Yes. Like Bluebeard.” Who had told her the old scary fairy tale about the serial wife-killer Bluebeard? “My husband wanted to hurt me, but Kellen stood up to him and I escaped.”

“What happened to Kellen?”

“She died.” Such a horrible memory, not one to recount to a child. “But in her dying, she taught me to be strong and brave, too.”

“That’s why you’re ThunderFlash. I’m LightningBug, and I learned to be strong and brave from you.” Rae snuggled closer.

“I...I guess you’re right. Kellen lives on in both of us, and what goes around comes around, even in a good way.”



19


The next morning, Kellen gathered the yarn that had made up Rae’s blanket, rolled it into a ball and packed it at the bottom of her backpack. “The safest place,” she told Rae. She packed their jar of peanut butter and their apple core, and was folding their tarp when she heard a great rustling down the path, a rumbling of something large rolling up the slope. She heard grunts. She heard a rattle and a spontaneous curse. She looked at Rae and put her finger to her lips.

Rae mimicked her.

Keeping her head low, Kellen peeked over the edge of the stones and saw the first of a group of mountain bikers laboring up the slope and into the flat at the base of their hideout.

One of the women called, “I’ve got to stop here. That last ledge punctured my tire.”

The leader held up her hand. “Roberts needs a break. Looks like a good spot for a rest.”

Everyone nodded, gasping deep breaths.

The bikes ground to a halt.

MOUNTAIN BIKING GROUP:
FOUR MALES, SIX FEMALES, IN GOOD SHAPE. HELMETS, GOOD EQUIPMENT. LEADER IS SOFT-SPOKEN, EMPHATIC, COMMANDS WITHOUT BEING BOSSY.
They leaned their bikes against trees, pulled out bags of granola, rolls of dried fruit and energy bars, complained about their knees, the upkeep of the trail and swore they would never take this route again. They were grinning and obviously enjoying themselves.

Kellen slid down to sit on her rear and look at Rae. In a soft voice, she said, “Kid, we’ve got it made.” Standing, she called down to the bikers, “Hi. My daughter and I have been hiking this fabulous wilderness, and it’s great to see other people enjoying it, too!”

Startled, the bikers looked up as one entity. Two of the men and two of the women reached for tools and held them like weapons. Everyone studied her, wary and hostile.

Then Rae bobbed up and smiled. “Hi. My mommy and I are bonding!”

The tension oozed out of the group, but not all at once and not completely. Not from everyone. Uh-oh. “Is something wrong?” Kellen asked.

One of the guys, the one who still held a tool in his hand, said, “Come down and we’ll talk.”

Kellen studied them again. She didn’t think they were violent, but something was definitely going on. Yet she had committed when she spoke to them, so she said, “Let me finish packing and we’ll be down in a sec.”

“Can I go down now, Mommy? Can I? Can I?”

Max said Rae had never met a stranger; Kellen saw the truth of that, and the potential for trouble, right now. “Wait for me.”