“I’m sorry,” Walter cut in, holding up a shaking hand, “but it sounds like you just said something about a week on a horse.”
“That’s why you’re here, precious. To be cowboys. We take you to the Outlaw Trail on horseback. You leave all your smartphones and loafers and smart toilets behind. There’ll be open sky and meals by the campfire. Games and puzzles and—if you’re lucky—real-life hidden treasure.”
“Games?” Terry asked gruffly. “Puzzles? What the fuck kind of operation is this?”
Unruffled, Nicole gave him a good once-over and then winked. “The kind that’s gonna keep you alive out here.”
* * *
A long day of travel rendered Leo too tired and cranky to make small talk, but as Terry droned on in the back seat about topographical maps, the formation of slot canyons, and God knew what else, Bradley eagerly peppered Nicole with questions.
“Where are we going?”
“To camp.”
“Who else will be there?”
“The boss is getting the horses situated.”
“You’re not the boss?”
“I am when Dub’s not around.”
“Are there cabins?”
“Tents.”
“Are you single?”
Ignoring this, Nicole slowly pulled a knife still wrapped in its leather sheath from her side and set it on her thigh.
Walt leaned in. “Just to clarify, will there be flushing toilets out on the trail?”
At this, Nicole laughed for a long time, but the answer was unfortunately no.
Unfazed, Bradley leaned back in his seat, face turned up to the wind. “Smell that air, ye lads. No pollution, no exhaust. This is the life of the adventurer, the life of the man out on the frontier.” He lifted his shirt, slapping his ribs. “My chest hair is growing. I can feel my fangs coming in.”
Walter stuck his head out the window and unleashed a trembly roar before ducking back in, coughing. “I inhaled a bug.”
“Some big ones out here,” Nicole confirmed.
“I’m telling you,” Bradley said, ignoring this and turning around in the front seat to face his friends, “this is going to be fucking awesome. A week with no responsibilities. I may never leave. Plus”—he motioned to himself—“you’ve got a real-life Howard Carter on your team.”
At Nicole’s questioning glance, Leo clarified, “The guy who found King Tut. Bradley’s a professor of archaeology.”
Terry scoffed and the wind whipped his wispy beard. “Yeah, but he doesn’t go out into the field. I’m the only one here who’s ever spent actual time in a slot canyon.”
“What’s a slot canyon again?” Walter asked.
Terry leaned back, happy to spout off to a captive audience. “They’re long, narrow gorges and channels caused by thousands of years of water penetrating cracks in soft sandstone.”
Bradley looked from Terry to Walter. “Did anyone else think that entire sentence was unnecessarily suggestive?”
Nicole met Walter’s eyes in the mirror and clarified, “Like a really long, skinny hallway carved into the rock.”
“Oh!” Walter said, satisfied. “That could be cool.”
Terry cleared his throat. “Anyway. Stick with me. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’ll stick with the guides,” Leo replied with quiet calm.
Nicole winked at him over her shoulder. “Smart man.”
Leo knew that even if Bradley had chosen a trip decidedly outside of Terry’s interests—treasure, canyoneering, and redneck Bear Grylls–style roughing it—Terry would still act like the resident expert. In the end, was it better or worse to hear him go on and on about something he knew a lot about or something he didn’t? Leo steadied his own anxiety and irritation with a deep breath.
And there was nothing else to do, anyway, but try to turn his horseback-related dread into the sweet anticipation of a week away from the office; they couldn’t see much as they raced through the dark. Leo thought he spotted a pair of glowing eyes in the brush as the headlights bounced and dipped, cutting a path of light through the empty road ahead. At a particularly high spot, his stomach soared and then dropped as the tires left the ground, connecting again with a bone-jarring clank that sprayed soil and gravel into the stillness behind them.
When the Bronco finally came to a clattering stop, the men climbed out with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Leo’s first step was a dizzy, dusty one; a cloud of dirt kicked up as his shoe met the ground. The breeze was cool and almost uncomfortably dry, the air heavy with the smells of sagebrush and woodsmoke, of earth cooling in the blissful absence of the sun.