He had the grace to look sheepish at the possible ramifications to his impetuousness, but only said, “Fine. I’m going to see if anything’s missing.”
As he poked around in the back of the van, I began plotting escape routes out of Prescott. For a touristy mountain town, it was a decent size, but not so big that I thought we’d be safe from anyone cruising along the roads, looking for a blue Vanagon.
“Bastards,” Simon grumbled, his voice muffled. He had his head stuck into the storage area under the long seat that pulled out into a bed.
“What’d they take?”
“The Dirt Viper.”
I groaned. “The we-have-to-spend-thousands-of-dollars-that-we-can’t-really-spare-to-get-a-quality-metal-detector Dirt Viper?”
“Yeah.”
I almost complained that we were having the worst luck ever, but the memory of the dead man flashed into my mind, the image more sobering than a gunshot wound. Someone had experienced much, much worse luck that day.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER 3
We drove toward our parking slot at the White Spar, an inexpensive campground outside of town that lacked electricity, water hookups, and anything one might classify as a scenic view. Behind a stand of trees, less than twenty meters from our spot, the highway traffic buzzed past. Not exactly posh, but the accommodations were perfect for penny-pinching entrepreneurs saving up for high-priced luxury items, such as gas and groceries. Simon’s tent was still set up next to the picnic table along with two lime-green folding lawn chairs a college friend had donated to our enterprise. They’d once been called easy chairs and had held prime real estate in front of the television in his dorm room.
Only one thing had changed since we left the campground that morning: a sleek silver Jaguar convertible with the top down sat in our spot. There was room for me to park in front of it, but I came to a stop without turning in. If not for our stuff set up to the side, I would have assumed I’d forgotten our lot number, but there was no way someone else in the campground had those chairs. Nor was there any way someone with a Jaguar would be caught dead with chairs like that.
“Simon?” I asked over my shoulder. “What do you think about this?”
After we’d spent two hours at the sheriff’s station—and given our phone numbers, lodging details, and sworn on our childhood pets’ graves that we wouldn’t leave town before they’d given us the okay—he’d set up at the table with his MacBook so he could “run calculations and see how much of our inventory we’ll have to sell to afford a new Dirt Viper.” As far as I could tell, this involved little more than sitting and sulking, but I wasn’t in a much better mood, so I didn’t argue. I had been vaguely amused that during our interrogation session—the deputies had called it “asking a few questions”—he’d spent more time pleading with them to hunt for his lost tool than relaying information about the dead man in the hills.
Simon plopped into the passenger seat beside me. “I think someone’s lost.”
“There’s a camp host.” I waved toward the big trailer and truck set up at the park entrance. “That’d be the place to go for directions.”
“Maybe they saw our chairs, were impressed with our taste, and figured we’d naturally be the ones to ask for advice.”
“Right.”
“New Mexico plates,” Simon observed. “Someone you know?”
“The people I know drive clunker trucks capable of hauling dozens of tires at a time.”
Simon snorted. He’d been to the off-grid community where my family lived, acres of scrubby high desert sporting a complex of quasi-subterranean homes based on Michael Reynolds’s Earthships. From a distance, one might think the walls were made from stucco or cob, but the homeowner-builders would happily inform a visitor that the insides were made from recycled tires, bottles, and cans. As far as I knew, I’d been born into the only community of Greek eco-hippies in the world, though I wasn’t sure if I, born and raised in America, truly counted as all that Greek. Thanks to Yaiyai and my college studies, I could read and speak the language, and I knew how to make some wicked good Loukoumades, but that was about it.
I climbed out so I could check the license plate for myself. With a car like that, I’d expect a vanity message, but it was simply the usual string of numbers and letters. I was on my way to inspect the interior when a door clanked. Someone had walked out of the little restroom building. I stared. It was someone I did know.