Last Resort (3 page)

“Why's that?” Jake asked. I knew he didn't care about the medallion hunt but he didn't take too kindly to being told what to do. Or, in this case, what not to do.

Hackerman raised his chin and thrust out his chest. “I've won the medallion hunt six years running now. And there's no second place.”

“We,” Rhonda corrected. She patted at her hair. “We've won it six years in a row.”

“Right, sure, whatever,” Hackerman said. I couldn't see his eyes behind his sunglasses but I'm sure he was rolling them. “We.”

“Six years in a row?” I asked.

Hackerman nodded. “Most people have just given up on trying because I'm so good at it.” He tapped his temple. “I can figure out those clues pretty fast and the kids know this place like the back of their hands. Rhonda, here—she maps it all out for us.”

“Sounds like it really is a group effort,” I commented. “And not just you...”

His face darkened. “Ain't nowhere
we
can't find that thing.”

“Well, maybe your run will come to an end this year,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” I added. “Streaks are made to be broken.” I gave him a sweet smile.

Hackerman froze, then slowly pushed his glasses up so they sat on top of his head. His eyes were a pale, almost colorless blue. “You think you can take us down?”

“Take you down?” I chuckled. “It's a medallion hunt, not WWE.”

Jake shrugged. “I think it's certainly possible.”

“I'll take you down,” Rhonda murmured, her beer can poised below her lips as she stared at Jake.

I felt like I was in some sort of alternate universe. A man we'd just met was challenging us to a throw down over a campground medallion hunt and his wife was staring at my husband like she wanted to lick every inch of him. I was
not
going to get involved.

Hackerman stared at Jake, his mouth set in a thin line. “You and the little woman?” He gave me a pitying look, then turned back to Jake. “Really? Good luck with that.” He lowered his glasses again.

Screw not getting involved. “I think it's a certainty,” I said. I inched the golf cart forward, closer to where Jake and the Hackermans were standing. “Jake, let's go.”

Hackerman turned to me and gave me a long, hard stare. Maybe he thought I could see his eyes through his sunglasses or maybe he thought the mirrored lenses would paralyze me with fear. I managed to somehow withstand his optical assault.

Rhonda continued to undress Jake with her eyes. He ignored her and climbed back into the golf cart. I considered accidentally letting my foot slip off the brake and onto the accelerator and slamming the cart into her. Maybe the golf cart could inflict some damage, even if it was just deflating the balloon-like breasts stuffed inside of her tube top.

Wayne finally turned back to Jake. He finished his beer and crushed the can in his fist.

He dropped it to the ground and it clattered against the pavement. His voice was a growl. “Then let's get it on.”

FIVE

“We
will
stay here all summer if that's what it takes to beat that fat pig,” I said as we drove away from Hackerman and his black beauty. “And if that woman looks at you like that one more time, I'll shove the medallion down her throat.”

“Looks at me like what?” Jake asked.

“Oh, give me a break,” I said, my hands clutching at the steering wheel. “'The beds are amazing.' She practically asked you to have sex with her right there on the road.”

“You're exaggerating,” he said. “You have jealous tendencies.”

I did have jealous tendencies. I'd never denied that. With Thornton, my ex-husband, I could've cared less if anyone had showed interest in him. But Jake was mine and I didn't want anyone ogling him the way Rhonda had.

“I'm not exaggerating,” I said. “Her boobs were two inches from your face!”

“Well, you are speeding,” Jake said, ignoring my comment and staring pointedly at the golf cart's speedometer. “Slow down before we get a ticket from the campground police or something.”

“Fifteen minutes ago, you told me I wasn't driving fast enough! I think you just like to complain.”

“And I think you're rattled.” He tried stretching out his lanky frame.

“I'm going to get the clue list,” I said, ignoring him. “We're going to beat those people.”

“How about if we just stay away from them?”

“Or how about if we find the medallion and rub it in their faces?” I countered.

Jake sighed and shook his head.

We zoomed down the hill and I ignored the waves of the friendly campground dwellers, focusing purely on sticking it to Hackerman. We reached the bottom of the hill and made a sort of U-turn toward the clubhouse and the swimming pool.

We lurched to a stop and Jake slid forward on the seat. “I'm having flashbacks to the airport shuttle,” he said. “Wonder if it's PTSD or something.”

I ignored his jibe and slid off my seat. “The clues are in the clubhouse.”

“I gathered,” Jake said as he climbed out of the cart.

I pulled open the screen door to the clubhouse. It groaned in protest and slammed immediately behind us, the spring on the door either broken or nonexistent. The room looked like it had been lifted from a 70's movie shoot. The wood-paneled walls were chipped and peeling and the low-pile carpet was a cross between rust and orange. A wobbly ping pong table was parked in the middle of the room, the net stretched across the table sporting several holes. A pool table with a balding surface sat next to it. There were mismatched shelving units, all wood laminate, filled with games and well-read paperback books. A few card tables were set up near the windows that looked down the hill toward the entrance to the campground.

Jake's face lit up when he saw the ping pong table. “Ping pong!” He immediately began searching for paddles and a ball.

But I didn't care about any of that. I scanned the walls, looking for a bulletin board. And found it. I read all of the announcements tacked to the cork board—there were sheets offering campers and boats for sale, a note about the American Legion pancake breakfast and a reminder of campground rules. There was a bright pink flyer that listed upcoming activities, including Water Aerobics with Wendy (on Wednesdays) and Thirsty Thursdays, a sort of BYOB happy hour the resort hosted. And right next to that, there was a single sheet of paper labeled Medallion Hunt with a list of clues.

I peered at it. Actually, it was't a list, because only one clue was typed on the sheet of paper.

I snatched the sheet off the board and scanned the sheet. One clue. We had to solve this one in order to find the next clue.

“Don't scoff, this is where you'd go to cool off,” I read aloud.

“What are you talking about?” Jake asked, He'd found a ping pong ball and was bouncing it on the table top.

“That's the clue,” I said, shaking the sheet at him. “Don't scoff, this is where you'd go to cool off.”

“A bar?”

I made a face at him. “No. Here on the campground.”

“Oh,” he said, still bouncing the ball. “Right. Hey, you wanna play ping pong?”

“No, I want to find the medallion,” I said, already running short on patience. “So we need to go check out the pool.”

“I didn't put my trunks on. And it's not Wednesday.” He nodded his head at the Water Aerobics announcement.

“Not to swim,” I said. I tacked the sheet back on to the bulletin board. “And not to do aerobics. To find the next clue. Because that's where you'd go to cool off.”

He caught the ball and reluctantly placed it on the table. “Of course, Sherlock. Brilliant deduction.”

“I know,” I said. I pushed open the screen door. “And that makes you Watson.”

“I think I'd rather be Sherlock.”

He followed me over to the pool, a clean rectangle of blue water. Even though it was closed to swimmers—a faded sheet of paper announced it would absolutely be open in the morning—the gate was still unlocked. I unlatched it and walked on to the pool deck. There were a few tables with umbrellas and several reclining chairs stacked in the corner. A Lost and Found bin sat next to the gate, overflowing with towels and goggles and a couple of lone flip flops. The aroma of chlorine hung heavy in the air and dragonflies buzzed the surface of the water, pleased to have the aquatic oasis to themselves. It took two minutes for us to find the next clue, pinned to the fence, near the deep end.

Jake pulled it from the fence. “Your clothes or your body, it doesn't matter. Here's where you'll go to get off all the splatter.” He paused. “Okay, I'm guessing Hackerman has won this thing only because no one else participated. Because these clues are ridiculously easy.”

“Laundry!” I yelled, already jogging back to the cart. “The laundry building with the bathroom attached!”

Jake mumbled something behind me, but I didn't catch it.

We found the clue at the laundry building and then the one at the fire pits and the one at the sand volleyball court. They'd started to get a little bit more difficult and locating the one at the volleyball court took us nearly twenty minutes to figure out. We went back to the cabin for a quick snack—Delilah had stocked both the fridge and the pantry for us and we'd realized we hadn't eaten all day—and debated the location of the next clue. I saw the Hackermans zip by in their blinged-out black golf cart, Wayne driving, Rhonda seated next to him with her boobs still hanging out, and their two brats on the back seat. I bolted out of my chair and grabbed the golf cart key, yelling at Jake to bring the other half of his turkey sandwich with him so we didn't fall behind.

We solved the next two clues and found ourselves in a massive storage lot. There were old campers parked there, almost like a graveyard for decrepit RVs but there were boats there, too—pontoons and speed boats and shiny new canoes side-by-side up against the fence. The clue in the lot was tacked up to the door of an old trailer and the Hackermans were already there when we pulled up.

I ignored them and didn't look their way as I slid out from behind the wheel of the cart. I marched over to the trailer, my sandals kicking up clouds of dust. I read it quickly, then returned to the cart.

“You won't find it in Oregon or Appalachia,” I recited. “This one might not make you happy.”

Jake thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don't know. Let's go take a nap.”

I elbowed him and peered around him so I could see the Hackermans. Wayne and Rhonda were  leaning in close to one another, whispering as they discussed the clue. The two kids bickered in the back seat, their scowling faces almost exact replicas of their respective parents.

“No napping,” I whispered. “We need to figure this out.”

“Let's go on vacation, she said,” Jake mumbled. “It'll be fun. It'll be relaxing, she said.”

I elbowed him again. “Be quiet. And think.”

He sighed.

“Having a little trouble over there, are you?” Wayne Hackerman called out from his cart. “Not so easy is it now?”

“It's been easy so far,” I replied. “No problem at all. We're here, aren't we?”

His mouth twitched and he went back to conferring with his wife.

“What do you think?” I said to Jake. “Something about a map maybe?”

“I think I'd like to take a nap or go for a swim,” he said.

I punched him in the thigh. “Map, not nap. And we don't have time for those things! Now think!”

A cry of delight went up from the Hackerman's golf cart and the cart peeled out, gravel and rock spitting out from the back tires as they took off. I watched them leave the storage area and turn left, heading back up the hill toward the camp sites.

“Hurry!” I said, pounding on the steering wheel. “I don't want to lose to that creep!”

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. “Trail.”

“I know we are trailing!”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Oregon. Appalachia. Happy. It's talking about a trail.”

I recited it again. “Yes! You're right!”

“I know I am,” he said. “So I'm Sherlock. Not Watson.”

I thought for a moment. “But the Hackermans went back toward the camp sites. The wilderness trail is the opposite direction. It's down below the club house and goes the other way.”

“Are you sure?”

“I've pored over the map of this place,” I said. “Trust me. I know it like the back of my hand.”

“Okay,” Jake asked. “So he's wrong.”

“He's won it five years in a row,” I reminded him.

“Six,” Jake corrected. “And are you saying you think he's smarter than me?”

“I'm saying he's won it six years in a row. Maybe he knows something we don't.”

Jake folded his arms across his chest. “Okay. Fine. Why don't you follow Mr. Six Time Winner and see where it gets us?”

I thought hard. I needed to make a decision.

“You really think it's the trail?” I asked.

“Oregon. Appalachia. Happy,” he repeated. “It's trail.”

“Positive?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, then shrugged. “But why don't we follow Hackerman in his golf cart and see where he leads us? Maybe we can ask him if he's related to Ken. You know, since it looks like he inherited his driving skills from him.”

I frowned at him. “Who's Ken?”

“The shuttle driver,” he said. When I continued to stare at him blankly, he sighed. “It was a joke.”

“This is no time for jokes.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Slowly, he expelled the breath he was holding. “Okay. We can follow him if that's what you want to do.” He paused. “That way, when he finally figures it out and beats us to the medallion, I can say I told you so.”

I stared at my husband for a long moment, processing his words. What he'd just proposed sounded a heck of a lot worse than actually losing.

So I headed for the trail.