Finding Carly (SEAL Team Hawaii #5)(64)

Carly closed her eyes and leaned into him.

“Are you all ready to go?” a cheerful voice asked from nearby, making Carly jerk in Jag’s arms.

“Easy, angel,” he murmured.

Feeling stupid, Carly turned to see two employees from the ranch standing near the group. They wore khaki pants, and T-shirts with “Kualoa Ranch” and a picture of a giant Tyrannosaurus rex on the front.

Mustang nodded and stepped forward. “We’ve broken ourselves into two groups like you asked,” he told the college-aged kids.

“Wait, what about Monica and Pid?” Carly asked. She just realized their names hadn’t been mentioned when they’d talked about breaking into groups.

“We’re gonna stay here,” Pid said easily.

“Oh, but—” Carly started, and Monica interrupted.

“It’s fine. Pid doesn’t want to risk anything happening with the baby.”

Carly wasn’t sure why they’d come all the way out to the ranch if they weren’t going to do the tour, but figured maybe she and Pid wanted to visit with Baker, since they didn’t get to see him very often.

“It’s fine,” Monica said gently at seeing the sad look on Carly’s face. “Honest.”

“Okay, but I’ll take a gazillion pictures so you can see everything when we get back.”

“Thanks.”

It wasn’t long before Carly found herself perched on an ATV. She had on a helmet and gloves and couldn’t believe how excited she was. At first she was nervous about driving the ATV, but she quickly got the hang of it and before she knew it, their group was off. They rode single file, so it was impossible to talk to anyone. They headed up a dirt-packed road and the views of the ocean were breathtaking.

Their guide eventually stopped and they all got off. He took a picture of their group with the ocean in the background, then led them into an old World War II bunker. It was built in 1943 and at one time, there were two cannons strategically located at the entrance and exit to protect the island from invasion. He stopped at a blueprint of the underground space, and Carly was amazed at how big the bunker really was.

They walked through, seeing posters of many of the shows and movies that were filmed at the ranch. Everything from the Jurassic Park movies—which Carly knew about—to 50 First Dates, George of the Jungle, Mighty Joe Young, and the most recent Jumanji movie. There were relics from the forties, as well as cheesy electronic dinosaurs. They probably spent close to an hour exploring the bunker, and Carly loved every second.

When they were finished touring the bunker, they continued around the mountain, and as they rode, their guide pointed at different things they passed. Carly would’ve liked to have stopped and learned more about certain items, but their guide looked as if he had a specific destination in mind. After crossing a small stream and going up a rather steep hill, he stopped in front of a tree lying on its side, with a Jurassic Park sign in front of it.

“Who knows what this is?” he asked once they were all stopped.

“A log,” Elodie quipped.

“Ten points to the lady,” the young man said without missing a beat. “But more specifically, it’s the tree Alan and the kids hid behind in the first Jurassic Park movie. You know, when they were trying to get out of the way of the stampede of Gallimimus?”

“Yes!” Elodie exclaimed. “Cool! Can we get off and look at it?”

“You can do more than that,” the guide said with a smile. “How good are your acting skills?”

Before Carly could blink, she, Elodie, and Kenna were standing twenty feet from the log. The guys refused to participate, but were watching with amused grins on their faces. The other group was nowhere in sight, so Carly assumed maybe they’d already been by the log.

“Okay, on the count of three, run toward the tree, but pretend there are huge dinosaurs behind you and you’re running for your life,” the guide told them. “Ready? One, two, three!”

Still laughing, but trying to control themselves, the three women took off toward the tree. Kenna jokingly pushed Carly back, so she was ahead of her, and ran for safety. Elodie really got into the spirit of the thing and kept looking behind her with a terrified expression on her face. Carly was laughing so hard it was almost impossible to run and she fell behind. Elodie and Kenna got to the tree first and leaped behind it.

Carly was a few seconds behind. She could hear their guys laughing hysterically now, and she vaguely wondered why. She was sure they looked funny, pretending there was a huge predator behind them, but did they really look that hilarious?

It wasn’t long before she realized why they were laughing so hard. Apparently, when the guide started filming with Elodie’s phone, he’d pulled out a hand puppet of a dinosaur head and it peeked into the left side of the frame while he was filming them.

When he played the video back in slow motion, it looked as if a dinosaur really was chasing them. And at the end, since she was last, Carly was “eaten” by the creature. Obviously, it was something the guide did for every group, but watching the video made Carly and the other women laugh until they were crying.

Afterward, they all posed on the tree for pictures, even the guys. And when the guide told them all to look to the left and pretend there was a dinosaur, Carly had a feeling the hand puppet would be coming into play again.