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  The “we” confirmed what I already suspected: Beard Face wasn’t acting alone.

  “Are you and your stinky partner so scared of a couple of teenagers that you have to hide behind a phony voice and a ridiculous mask?” I snapped.

  “This ridiculous disguise of mine is what’s keeping you alive. Being tied to a tree is better than being buried under one, which would have been the alternative if you’d seen my face.”

  So much for my plan to bait the perp into giving up his identity. For the time being, it looked like solving the mystery might mean burying the detectives.

  “As long as you sit tight and don’t try anything funny while I make my getaway, I’ll even call in a tip that you’re here,” Beard Face said, starting back up the hill.

  “How thoughtful of you,” Frank hissed. “You’re practically a hero.”

  Beard Face ignored his sarcasm. “Always did have a soft spot for helpless woodland creatures. Come on, Ricky. We’re gonna be rich.” Our perp turned his back to us one last time before disappearing from view. “Just try not to get yourselves eaten by anything while we’re gone.”

  14 LIVE BAIT

  FRANK

  THE SO-CALLED GHOST OF THE Wild Man stomped out of sight through the woods. The last thing we heard was the crackle of the two-way radio clicking to life and the mechanized voice saying something into it. He was moving fast and the wind had picked up, making it hard to decipher, but it sounded kind of like, “Rendezvous time. On… way… way. Get ready… take off.” Some of the words were garbled, but him telling his accomplice to get ready to leave the mountain made sense now that they had what they’d come for.

  Not that it did us much good, tied to a tree and totally at the mercy of the wilderness. And, judging from the giant paw prints we’d seen while tracking Dr. Kroopnik, that included a very large mountain lion. Attacks on humans may be rare, but what would an apex predator do if it came across three slabs of live steak tied to a maple tree like a giant shish kebab? It was one animal behavior field study I’m pretty sure no one had ever conducted, and I wasn’t thrilled about us being the test subjects.

  “I really hate that raccoon,” Joe griped. “And Beard Face is a close second.”

  “The detective in me wants to break this down and figure out who’s behind that mask, but I think getting out of here has to be our priority. Knowing whodunit won’t do us any good if we never make it off this mountain,” I said.

  “I for one don’t trust him to keep his promise to call for help,” Joe said.

  “Even if he does, it could be too late by the time the rescuers find us,” fretted Max. “We’ll be lucky to make it even four days without water.”

  “Four days? At the rate these bugs are eating me, there won’t be anything left in two,” Joe said as he tried to blow a mosquito off his cheek. “Ow!”

  “The zip ties are too tight to squeeze out of, but if I can reach deep enough into my pocket, I might be able to get my Swiss Army knife.”

  I strained to twist my arms around so my hands had access to my front pocket. The plastic zip tie cut painfully into my wrist, but I didn’t let it stop me. I was able to slide my fingers into my pocket just deep enough to touch the knife with a fingertip. So close. Not close enough. I had to try a different strategy. I pinched the seam of my pocket between my fingertips and tried to yank my pants pocket around so I could reach farther inside. “Almost… Got it!”

  “Way to go, bro!” Joe cheered.

  “Now I just have to get the blade or the saw open with my hands cuffed together behind my back,” I said. “Without dropping it or cutting myself.”

  It was a tall order. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that if I wasn’t careful, this situation could get a lot worse. A cut back home—where you can easily wash your finger and grab some antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid—is no big deal. In the middle of a remote wilderness with no way to clean or bandage it to stop the bleeding and prevent infection, it could turn deadly.

  I did my best to tune out the world around me and just focus. I was so focused I almost didn’t hear Joe when he spoke.

  “Dude… Dude!” he urged in a hushed voice. “I don’t want to rush you, but you might want to hurry up. I think there’s something out there.”

  Then I heard it too. Dead leaves crunching under a creature’s feet. And whatever was out there, it wasn’t a small animal.

  “Maybe the gunman’s come back to shoot us after all,” Dr. K whimpered.

  “Or maybe one of your mountain lions wants to sample some people jerky,” Joe suggested bleakly.

  I did my best to ignore my heart pounding in my chest as I gripped the knife in my left hand and tried to pinch one of the blades open with the fingers of my right.

  “It’s open!” I whispered. “It’s…”

  It was the wrong blade was what it was.

  Joe twisted his head around to look. “Bro, I think this is one mystery that detecting tool isn’t going to help us solve.”

  I’d accidentally opened the magnifying glass instead of the knife!

  CRUNCH.

  Another footstep on dead leaves. Whatever was stalking us was only a few yards away, close enough to burst out of the woods and strike. There’d be no running this time. No fighting. Not unless I got free. Our only hope literally rested in my bound hands.

  I frantically tried to feel for the right blade. But even if I got it open, I’d still have to somehow reposition the knife upside down with the blade facing outward and try to cut through the plastic. It was a delicate operation that required time, and time was something we had just run out of.

  My mouth dropped open as our stalker stepped into view. This creature wasn’t a mountain lion and definitely didn’t have a beard.

  “Jones!” I cried.

  15 A ROCKY REUNION

  JOE

  FRANK! JOE! YOU’RE ALIVE!” JONES shouted.

  She rushed out of the woods, dropped her pack and the GPS device she was holding, took out a pocketknife, and went straight to work cutting away the rope binding us to the tree.

  “I’m even happier to see you now than usual,” Frank gushed as the rope fell away.

  Jones managed to blush mid-rescue, though it was a little hard to tell. Her face was still red, puffy, and hive-speckled from yesterday’s allergic reaction. She was a shy, puffy-faced action heroine!

  “You’re not a villain!” I blurted as she sliced the zip tie off Frank’s wrists and looked at me like I’d lost it.

  “What are you talking about, Joe? Of course I’m not.”

  “It was, um, just a working theory,” I said sheepishly.

  “I told you.” Frank rolled his eyes at me and gave Jones a huge, grateful hug. “My younger and definitely not wiser brother thought you might have spiked your own iced tea with an allergen as part of a wacky ploy to steal the garnets for yourself.”

  This time it was me who blushed. From embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Jones. I didn’t really think you did it. We were just struggling to come up with logical suspects, and, well, I never should have doubted you. Um, could you uncuff me now?”

  “Hmm…” She tapped her knife against her thigh like she was contemplating what I’d asked, then grinned and cut me loose. “How many times do I have to save your skin before you just admit I’m as good of a detective as you?”

  “Um, maybe three or four more times,” I suggested.

  Jones gave me a playful shove and followed it with a hug.

  She sliced the cuffs off Max next. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Kroopnik. Frank told me a ton of good things about you and all the great research you’re doing.”

  “And I’ll get to do more of it now, thanks to you,” he said, rubbing his wrists where the plastic had cut into the skin. “I thought we were goners this time for sure.”

  “I did too,” Jones admitted. “When I saw the GPS tracker stop moving, I feared the worst.”

  “The GPS what?!” Frank and I blurted.

  Jones
looked down at my wrist, where the paracord survival bracelet Cherry had given me used to be. “Do you still have the survival bracelet with the compass on it?”

  “I have the compass,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “The bracelet saved our hides earlier today when one of the perps chased us off a cliff.”

  “Yeah, well, I think it’s also what led them to you in the first place,” she said, taking the compass from me and holding it up. “Because this thing has a tracking device hidden inside it.”

  “It what?!” Frank and I blurted again.

  I shook my head in disgust. “I’ve been a walking perp magnet. No wonder they kept finding us so easily.”

  Dr. K looked stricken. “Cherry did that?”

  Jones nodded. “Turns out my allergic reaction had a silver lining. If I hadn’t stayed behind, I never would have figured it out. I saw another guest at the lodge put one just like it on her daughter to keep track of her in case she got lost running around in the woods. When I asked the mom about it, she said she bought it at Last Chance General. It connects to an expensive GPS device like this one.”

  She picked up the unit she’d dropped. “Actually, exactly this one. Her daughter refused to wear the compass, so I was able to convince her to let me borrow this. With a few tweaks, I was able to program it to pick up your signal instead. I suspected I wasn’t the only one watching your signal move up Black Bear Mountain. The only reason they would have secretly given you an expensive tracking device and not told you about it is if they were using the GPS unit to monitor you.”

  “They’ve been tracking us all over the mountain with that bracelet, just like Dr. K tracks his mountain lions with radio collars!” Frank said.

  I pounded my fist into my palm. “It explains how both perps found us so easily. We heard Stinky say ‘it jammed’ on the radio while we were hiding on the ledge under Aleksei’s cave. He must have thought the tracker was frozen, otherwise our trick ruse never would have worked.”

  “But who are they?” Dr. K asked. “Are Cherry and Ken really involved in this?”

  “Cherry’s got to be, since she gave the bracelet to Joe, but I don’t know about Ken,” Jones answered. “I did some more detective work early this morning as soon as I figured it out, and Ken is working alone at the general store today without Cherry. My guess is she never went back to the store after dropping us off.”

  “Ricky isn’t there either,” Frank informed her. “He was here helping the Ghost of the Wild Man steal the garnets from us.”

  “The ghost?” Jones asked.

  “A guy in a fake beard and a mask with a voice changer to disguise his identity,” I explained. “At least he was pretending to be a guy. It could have been Cherry Fritwell in a mask the whole time!”

  Dr. K seethed. “I can’t believe Cherry or Ken would do this to me. I’ve been loyal customers of theirs for years.”

  “Greed can make some people do a lot of things they normally wouldn’t,” Frank said.

  “Cherry was pretty bitter about Aleksei hiding out here all those years, scaring the locals and chasing off business,” I added. “That gives her a personal motive, and she could have held it against you for being friends with him and keeping his secret too.”

  “We also don’t know that Ken is in on it,” Frank pointed out. “Just because they’re husband and wife doesn’t mean they’re working together.”

  “Like how Casey didn’t know anything about Steven and her sister trying to steal the garnets last time we were here,” I said.

  “What about Steven? I haven’t trusted him ever since,” Max said, cracking his knuckles like he was ready for a fight.

  “Beard Face wasn’t tall enough, but we still haven’t gotten a look at Stinky,” I said, turning back to Jones. “Stinky is the other perp running around the mountain. We haven’t seen him, but we sure have smelled him.”

  “We have to consider Dan, too. Both he and Cherry had the opportunity to bait our pack with honey. Plus, he’s the one who led us to the trap on the ATV ride, and him backing out of guiding us at the last minute is pretty suspicious. He was acting dodgy the whole ride there, too,” said Frank.

  I mulled it over. “It also could have been either one of them who stole the letter Dr. K gave to Dan to take to the post office. The post office is in the general store, after all.”

  “Drawes is another wild card. We can’t rule him or Dan out as accomplices,” Frank added.

  “I can,” Jones said. “The reason Dan was acting dodgy about ditching you guys is because he went behind the lodge’s back and booked a two-day fishing trip with Drawes on the other side of the mountain range. Dan didn’t tell Casey or Amina that Drawes booked him because he knew they’d make him cancel to guide you guys. They’re both apparently fly-fishing fanatics, and there’s some big bug hatch right now that’s really good for catching brook trout.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, smacking another mosquito. “Only I think it’s the bugs that are catching us.”

  “We know it’s not just a cover story?” Frank asked skeptically.

  “Yup. Dan had a guilty conscience about leaving you guys alone after the tree almost took you out. He called in later from his cell phone to tell Amina about it so she could report it to the rangers,” Jones explained. “He had cell phone service, so we know he couldn’t have been up there on Black Bear Mountain. Amina blew a fuse when she found out. She said Dan will be lucky to still have a job once Casey hears about it. She tried to get him to come right back, but Drawes got on the phone and threw a hissy fit. Said he paid good money for Dan to guide him, and he’d sue if he didn’t get his way.”

  “Sounds like Drawes, all right,” Dr. K said.

  “Amina tried calling the rangers and the state troopers to report it, but they’re all tied up fighting the fire, and all she got was a machine. She tried the local sheriff, too, but they didn’t take it seriously. Told her it sounded like kids playing a bad prank. I tried calling the sheriff again after I discovered Cherry was tracking you, but he said I was being paranoid. He said if you still hadn’t made it back in two days, I could file a missing persons report and they’d look into it. I wasn’t about to wait two days. I know you boys well enough to know the kind of pickles you like to get into.”

  Frank looked at her with concern. “But you’re still recovering! What if you have another allergic reaction?!”

  “That’s sweet of you to worry about me after everything you guys have just been through, Frank. I know I don’t look ready for a night on the town, but I feel all right, really. Almost as good as new.” Jones patted her bag. “And I borrowed another epinephrine injector from the lodge just in case. And, um, I kind of borrowed an ATV too. I had to sneak out when poor Amina wasn’t looking. This is her first time running the lodge by herself, and between my allergic reaction, you two being in trouble, and Dan playing hooky, she’s a total stress ball. When I told her I was going after you, she nearly fainted. She even called Dr. Feigelson and had her scold me. Sneaking out was really my only choice. I never would have taken the chance if I didn’t think your lives might depend on it. And I was right!”

  “We’re safe, thanks to you. Aleksei’s garnets aren’t, though,” I reminded them. “Cherry Beard Face or whoever’s behind that mask is getting away, and we still don’t know who he or she radioed or where they’re taking the gems.… Um, why are you grinning, Frank?”

  “I think they gave us a clue before they left. Did you hear what Beard Face said into the radio?”

  “It was something like ‘on the way to the rendezvous, get ready to go,’ I think,” Max offered. “But all that tells us is that they’re getting away, not where they’re going.”

  “It was garbled, but they definitely said the words ‘take off,’ not ‘ready to go,’ ” I corrected him, and I started to realize what Frank was getting at as I did.

  Max didn’t, though. “However they phrased it, of course they’re leaving now that they have the demantoids.”
r />   “They may have told us more than you realize, Dr. K. Not just that they’re leaving, but how they’re leaving. When I first heard it, I assumed they said ‘get ready to take off’ too, but I couldn’t hear the whole thing. What if they didn’t say ‘get ready to take off’—” Frank began to ask.

  “What if they said ‘get ready for takeoff’?” I interrupted to finish the question.

  Max gasped as the alternate meaning hit home. “They’re flying out!”

  “It’s just a hunch, but it’s the best one we’ve got,” said Frank.

  “They could be trying to steal my chopper!” Dr. K exclaimed.

  “They’d be trying to get away on a flightless bird if they are. I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky, though,” I said. “We know from how they busted the chopper’s radio that they’ve seen the dismantled control panel, so even if they knew how to fix it and how to fly it, they’d still need the part you took.”

  “The way they’ve planned everything else out, I’d wager they already had a getaway plan in place when they first came up here,” Jones speculated.

  “I don’t think ‘for takeoff’ was the only clue they gave us when they radioed their accomplice,” Frank said. “Saying ‘rendezvous’ indicates they’re meeting at a prearranged destination, and I only picked up fragmented pieces of what they said next, but I definitely heard the word ‘way’ twice.”

  I replayed the overheard snippets in my mind, filling in the part we’d already deduced. Rendezvous time. On… way… way. Get ready… takeoff. The gap before the first way had been really short, and the second one had been a bit longer, like there were a few words missing. I played a quick game of mental Wheel of Fortune and started filling in the blanks.

  “On the way…,” I began, thinking of a destination that matched up with aviation takeoff. The answer clicked right away. “To the runway!”

  “That’s my guess. We’ve taken a bush plane up to Black Bear Mountain before; they easily could have too.” Frank turned to Dr. K. “Is there another runway besides the one we flew in on last time?”