The Madman of Black Bear Mountain (10 page)

Which meant I had a pretty good idea how to find the cliff ledge with the zip line launch back to the lodge. I signaled to Dr. K to keep heading downstream, gave him a thumbs-up to let him know I had a plan, and took off running through the woods, using my memory of the topography from the zip line to guide me.

It didn't really hit me until I reached the zip line that I'd actually have to ride the dreadful thing again if I wanted to make it back to the lodge. It had been terrifying enough
while safely strapped in with a helmet on and a professional there to make sure everything went smoothly. This time I'd be on my own, rocketing across the valley at fifty miles per hour without even a harness to stop me from falling.

Fear gripped my gut as I stood there looking at the vastness below. I had to step back from the ledge. I couldn't go through with it.

But then an image of Joe dangling from the bridge flashed into my head . . . and our teacher, Jim, alone and hurt on Black Bear Mountain . . . and the rest of the Geccos, Melissa and Mandy and even Randall, still stranded at camp, fearing for their lives.

I grabbed hold of the handlebar and leaped off the cliff before I had a chance to second-guess myself. I gripped the bar so tightly I thought the metal might bend, and I screamed like a madman as the river sped closer. The lodge came into view on the other side, and for a second I thought I might actually make it. But then something else came into view as well—the blond Max imposter racing her horse along the riverbank upstream from the lodge.

The horse heard me before “Max” saw me. The poor animal spooked at the sound of me hurtling toward it and reared up, catching its rider off guard and bucking her into the river along with her rucksack.

The water was a lot calmer there by the lodge, but from the way she was splashing around frantically, you'd have thought she'd been the one tossed off a waterfall. I was
just about to zip right over her when I realized why—she couldn't swim!

She was a fraud and a thief and she'd put all our lives in danger, but it was our job to catch criminals, not punish them. I couldn't just watch another person drown.

I leaped from the zip line without thinking about it. Which, I quickly realized while plummeting toward the river for the second time in less than an hour, may not have been the smartest idea ever.

I
DON'T SEE THEM!” I
cried, hoping that meant Frank and the real Max had somehow survived the waterfall. “We have to go down there and look!”

“We can't. There is nowhere to land the chopper,” Aleksei said. “We must search from the air. They may have washed . . .”

The big Russian stopped in midsentence, but I already knew what he'd been thinking—if they didn't make it, we might find their bodies washed up downstream. I shoved the thought from my mind and kept searching the riverbank below.

I was so focused on the river, I almost didn't notice the valley opening up on either side.

“This is closest to the outside world I have been in thirty
years,” Aleksei reflected softly as the helicopter followed the river through the winding valley.

When I looked up from the water, I saw cabins and a small country road off to the right. We were still surrounded by beautiful mountains, but there were also signs of civilization—and I recognized them!

“Keep following the river!” I shouted. “We're not far from the lodge! We can get help there! They might even have made it back!”

The mobster-turned-hermit mumbled something to himself, his brow furrowed deep in thought. It suddenly struck me that I hadn't merely asked Aleksei to fly me back to the lodge. I'd asked him to risk blowing the cover he'd gone to such great lengths to protect—and maybe even go to prison for it.

“Aleksei, I know this is a lot to ask, but my brother . . .”

“Shhh,” he commanded, gripping my shoulder firmly. “I know what you are going to say.”

My whole body tensed. Who had I been kidding? There was no way the fugitive was going to take me to the lodge. It wasn't like he could just drop me off without anyone noticing a giant mountain man landing a helicopter in the backyard. What was I supposed to say when he left—that I called for a chopper? Even if I could somehow leave him out of it, Black Bear Mountain was going to be crawling with search teams as soon as I told everyone what had happened to Frank and the Geccos. Either way, taking me back to the lodge meant the possibility of Aleksei getting caught. If
Aleksei decided to turn the chopper around and save himself, there was nothing I could do. I didn't stand a chance against the big hermit, and I couldn't fly a helicopter myself even if I did. Aleksei's grip on my shoulder tightened.

“It is to great lengths I went to make Aleksei Orlov disappear. Nearly twice as long as you have been alive I have spent keeping my identity a secret,” he rumbled. “I have had much time to think. I did many bad things in my old life, but I am a different man now, and I do not want to give up my freedom.”

He paused, and my gut sank.

“But Max is my friend, and you too are now my friend,” he continued somberly. “I cannot allow more people to be hurt because of me. For Max and your brother, I will take you back. I will stay by your side until they are safe, even if it means I never get to see my beautiful mountain again.”

“Thank you, Aleksei!” I cheered. “That's a really heroic thing for you to do.”

“Hmm.” He grinned. “The Heroic Hermit of Black Bear Mountain. I like!”

Bear Foot Lodge came into view around the next bend. With horses grazing serenely in the pasture and Chief Olaf wading into the river to reel in a big fish, it looked like a picture straight out of a travel brochure. You'd never know it was the source of so much danger.

“There it is!” I said. “Can you put us down in the field behind the lodge?”

The propeller blast from the chopper pounded the river's surface with wind, sending Chief Olaf's fish flying off his hook. I had a feeling I was a lot happier to see the chief than he was going to be to see me.

The soaking-wet chief stomped up, holding his fishless line, as Aleksei landed the helicopter behind the lodge. “What in the world is going on here? Do you have any idea how long it took me to land that trout? I—” Then he saw me. “Joe? I should have figured . . .”

“Have you seen Frank?” I leaped out of the chopper, cutting him off.

He looked at me like I was nuts. “Why would I have seen Frank? I thought you boys were supposed to be camping up on Black Bear Mountain.”

“Something terrible has happened,” I explained. “We have to get a search team upriver now! Frank's raft went over the falls, Jim is hurt, and the rest of us are still stranded on the mountain!”

The chief's annoyance instantly turned to concern. “Slow down, son, and tell me exactly what happened.”

“I'm still trying to put the pieces together, Chief, but—”

A female voice cut in before I could finish.

“What is that helicopter doing on my property?” Casey came running out of the lodge, sleeves rolled up, exposing the bear-paw tattoo on her forearm. “Joe? What are you doing here? Who is this guy?”

She looked up at Aleksei, towering silently by my side.

“As if you don't know,” I spat before turning to Chief Olaf.

The chief looked just as stunned as Casey. “Her sister impersonated Dr. Kroopnik to deceive us as part of a conspiracy to commit theft,” I informed the chief. “And my brother and Dr. Kroopnik are still missing or maybe even worse because of it.”

“M-my sister?” Casey stammered. “Is this some kind of joke? I haven't seen Lana in weeks.”

“I saw your family crest tattooed on her arm right before she pushed me off a bridge,” I seethed.

Casey's jaw dropped, and she reflexively rubbed at the bear paw on her forearm. “But that's crazy! Lana's off camping somewhere out west. She isn't even in the state!”

“Let's slow down a second, Joe.” Chief Olaf put a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “Now, I've known you long enough to know you're being straight with me, but let's not be hasty. I'm out of my jurisdiction up here, but even if I wasn't, we need to gather more facts and make sure we're not just jumping to conclusions. And if you're right, I'll do what I can to step in until the local authorities get here.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. Seeing Frank's raft torn up like that had my emotions running high, and I'd let my heart do the detecting instead of my brain.

“You're right, Chief,” I conceded. “A good detective stays objective and doesn't rush to judgment, but I know for a fact that the woman responsible for this has an identical tattoo on her right arm.”

“I swear I don't know what you're talking about,” Casey pleaded. “My sister wouldn't want to hurt any of my guests. She knows how much the lodge means to me. Are you sure it wasn't a different tattoo? All kinds of people have tattoos up here.”

“Bear paws with squiggly lines down the center that match the path of the river through the valley?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said meekly. “But I don't understand.”

Either Casey was a great liar or she was genuinely clueless about my accusation.

“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked, wondering if the Geccos hadn't been the only ones duped by her sister.

“Maybe two, three weeks ago,” Casey said. “She's always off on some outdoor adventure somewhere or another. She was supposed to stop by the lodge for a visit after her last trip up Black Bear Mountain, but she called at the last minute to cancel. She said she found this great expedition she wanted to go on with some famous mountain man or something. I don't know why she would have lied to me.”

One of the things you learn in detective work is that sometimes the most believable lies also contain a bit of truth, and I had a pretty good idea which “famous mountain man” Casey's sister had been talking about. I glanced back at Aleksei, who had retreated to the helicopter in an attempt to eavesdrop without drawing attention to himself—and for a giant hermit with a woolly beard and buckskins, he was
doing a pretty good job. Casey seemed to have forgotten about him and the helicopter altogether. If she knew who he was, it sure didn't show.

She seemed totally bewildered and blindsided by everything I'd said. I thought about how cool of a host she'd been the day before and found myself wanting to believe she'd been conned by her sister along with the rest of us. But Frank had overheard someone at the lodge arguing on the radio about the crazy hermit in the woods before we left, and if it wasn't Casey, then who?

Chief Olaf continued to question Casey, but I was already searching for answers somewhere else. I rewound my memory to the day before. We'd been standing behind the lodge in pretty much the same place, getting ready to go meet Dr. Kroopnik, when Jim had freaked out about flying with Commander Gonzo—and the person who kept trying to talk us out of going to Black Bear Mountain hadn't been Casey. It had been her husband.

“Where is Steven?” I asked, interrupting the chief.

“Steven?” she repeated. “I . . . I'm not sure. He got a call on the radio earlier and said he had to go upstream to check on the fence in the north pasture, but he should have been back by now. Why do you . . . ?”

The sound of someone screaming like their hair was on fire reached us from upriver before she could finish. I knew that voice! I'd heard the same distressed cry yesterday after I'd talked my brother into riding the zip line.

“Frank!” I yelled, and took off running for the riverbank with Chief Olaf, Casey, and Aleksei right behind me.

A riderless horse stood on the bank farther upstream, watching as Frank struggled to pull Dr. Kroopnik's thrashing imposter to shore. My brother and I both had lifeguard training, but a panicking drowning victim can drag even a strong swimmer down with them.

“Lana?!” Casey gasped. “She never learned to swim! She's terrified of water!”

All four of us sprinted for the water's edge. Before we could reach it, we realized Frank and Lana weren't the only ones in the river. Steven was already swimming toward them.

L
EAPING OFF THE ZIP LINE
into the river turned out to be the easy part. I'd jumped in to save her on impulse, and it wasn't until I splashed down beside the flailing mystery woman that I remembered one of the basic rules of lifeguarding—don't let one drowning become two! You only approach a drowning swimmer in open water as a last resort, because of the risk that they'll unintentionally take you under. Which is exactly what was happening!

I tried to swim ahead of her so I could pull her back to shore, but she wouldn't stop trying to climb on top of me in a desperate attempt to escape the river. Even with my life vest still on, I had to fight to keep my head above water
as she struggled. I wanted to tell her I was trying to help, but it's hard to talk with a mouth full of river water.

I'd started to think we both might wind up as fish food when I saw a pair of long, skinny arms and a beard slicing through the water toward us. Steven! I was so happy for the help, I didn't stop to think what he was doing there. Max's imposter actually calmed down a little when she saw Steven, and together we were able to swim her back to the shallows.

What I hadn't been expecting was a welcoming committee waiting for us on the riverbank! Seeing Joe next to Aleksei “Mad Hermit” Orlov and Chief Olaf in his fishing getup had to be one of the most welcome, not to mention strangest, sights of my life.

I gave Joe a big, soggy bear hug. “Man, is it good to see you!”

“Likewise, bro,” he replied with a grin. “You've spent so much time in the water today, I think you're starting to sprout gills.”