Wounded (a mystery and a sweet romance)

Wounded: Chapter 12

The pink convertible bumped and tilted as it made its way up the dirt road toward them, but it made it, pulling to a stop when Tara stepped out and waved. Jasmine left the headlights on and the keys in the ignition, then climbed out of the driver’s seat.

“It’s a relief to see you.” She gave Tara a hug. “We thought...” Her gaze shifted to take in Malcolm standing there, his shirtless brawn illuminated by the glow of the headlights. He wore a canvas satchel over his shoulder and had a big knife belted to his waist that hadn’t been there earlier in the night. “Yes.” Jasmine nodded. “That’s what we thought. Except we imagined you—” she faced Tara again and lowered her voice to a whisper, “—incapacitated somewhere.”

“I wasn’t so much kidnapped as I ran away to help Malcolm,” Tara explained. There was someone else in the passenger seat so she ducked down to take a closer look. “Hello, Mandy. Are you the moral support?”

Mandy yawned and waved. “I was dragged along to rescue Jasmine in case it turned out that Mr. Crusty had not only kidnapped you but had murdered you and was using your phone to text your contacts. You know, to lure other innocent women out here to their demises too.” Unlike Jasmine, she didn’t bother to lower her voice.

“Such a flattering reputation I’ve earned,” Malcolm murmured.

“They haven’t read your blog,” Tara said. “They don’t know you like I do.”

“You read it?” He cocked his head. “What did you think?”

Hm... were they at the stage in their relationship where he would prefer honesty over flattery? “I thought... it was very intellectual. And then I rewrote it.” When he looked like he might protest this cavalier treatment of his prose, she added, “Only so it would be accessible to your typical blue collar mushroom picker. Like Jason.”

“Jason has a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management,” Malcolm said. “From Berkley.”

“The Jason I met? Who bartered information for chocolate? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Why’s he biking around the woods, picking mushrooms?”

“It pays better, and he doesn’t have to work for an evil overlord.”

“An evil what?”

“His words. If he’d lived in the sixties, he would have called it working for the Man.”

Yes, Tara could see Jason as a hippie from that generation. “Ah.”

A knocking sound came from in the car—Mandy rapping at the windshield with her knuckles. “Are you two going to get in so we can finish our road trip to destination unknown, or is he going to stand there all night shirtless?”

Jasmine made a shushing motion and whispered something that sounded like, “Don’t rush them; I’m appreciating the view.”

Well, one of them might change her mind about Malcolm’s value anyway.

Tara opened the door to the back seat. “Your limousine has arrived, sir.”

Malcolm ducked and slid into the car.

Jasmine stepped away from the driver’s seat, a dark case tucked under her arm. “You should probably drive, Tara. Since it’s your car, and you know where we’re going.”

“I’ve actually never been to Forks.” Not to mention Tara would be hard-pressed to find her way off this hill if the dirt road branched many times before reaching a highway.

“You haven’t missed much,” Mandy said, “unless you want the vampire tour.”

“We’re more interested in the mushroom tour.”

Jasmine had already slid in beside Malcolm, so Tara had little choice but to drive. Her first thought was that Jasmine might have changed her mind about him and might want a chance to ogle his bare chest, but then saw she had already opened the case she had been clutching. It was her e-reader, She pulled out the attached light and returned to her book. Tara’s text message had probably caught her in the middle of her latest science fiction romance.

“Let’s do this,” Tara muttered and plopped down beside Mandy, throwing the heat onto high. “Are you my navigator?”

“If you explain what’s going on. And what we could possibly do in Forks at—it’ll be after one a.m. by the time we get there. Everything closes at six. Except for the bar. I think that’s open until nine.”

Tara glanced in the rearview mirror and found Malcolm watching her. “I think we’d rather explore this lab when it’s not open.”

“It’s doubtful they keep public hours anyway,” Malcolm said. “But if they can afford to pay that much for each sample, they may have some high-level security.”

“So standing on a box and peering in the window is out?”

“We won’t know until we get there.”

Tara started a careful three-point turn that shifted into a seven-point turn and headed the car back down the road. “Maybe it would be better to visit in the morning. We could pose as pickers with samples to sell.”

“That would be more believable if we actually had a sample,” Malcolm said.

“Well... maybe we could go get one. Has the craziness died down back at Salmon Creek?”

“We just went through all the effort of sneaking your vehicle out of there,” Mandy said, “and you want to go back?”

Jasmine lifted her head from her book. “They have Mr. Cru—er his—” she glanced at Malcolm, “—cabin staked out, but it had quieted down at the village when we left. There were a couple of sheriff’s department cars parked out on the street, but they’d left the property.”

“Anybody up for some midnight tree climbing?” Tara met Malcolm’s eyes in the mirror again.

“The lowest of those conks was forty feet up,” he said. “There’s a reason that guy was trying to scare you all off the property. He probably knew he couldn’t sneak an extendible ladder through your village in the middle of the night.”

“Was that a no?” Tara asked.

“I didn’t hear a no,” Mandy said.

“You look strong enough to climb that high without a ladder.” Jasmine smiled shyly at Malcolm.

“Don’t give him a choice,” Mandy said. “If he doesn’t agree, you can accidentally stop your convertible in front of one of those sheriff cars.”

Malcolm slumped back in the seat. “How is it that I’m being accused of kidnapping? You women are...”

“Forcefully persuasive?” Tara suggested.

“Admirably determined?” Mandy asked.

“Sweet and charming?” Jasmine put in.

“Nuts,” he said.

Mandy rolled down the window to fend off the blasts of heat blowing from the dashboard. “Are you sure he wrote an intellectual blog post?”

Malcolm faced his own window, and Tara almost missed his mutter of, “There’s no way I’m not going to end up in jail.”