Page 96 of Lady and the Camp
I faced him, faced this, us, and whatever this mess was really about. “Look, I don’t have anything of yours. If you’re looking for something, I don’t know what it is.”
Kristoff’s eyes flashed. He arranged his face to a neutral, disaffected expression, which I now understood signaled he was lying. “I won’t speak of it here. But you know what you have. And you’ll pay if you use it.”
Lucas broke free and moved within an inch of Kristoff, standing nose to nose. “Talk to her like that again, and I’ll put you back in that dirt. Where you belong.”
Kristoff blinked and attempted a smirk to cover his panic. “So, you found a new boy toy, Hudson, huh? A real mountain man.”
I marched over and hooked my arm through Lucas’. “He’smymountain man. And he’s more man than you’ll ever be.”
"Yeah!" the girls cheered. Twila angled for a better view for her video. Shetsked at Kristoff. “My girl Bianca tried to warn you, Krom. What you say is gonna be held against you. You and that nasty suit.”
Kristoff’s faux cool exterior cracked. One thing he couldn’t stand was to be made fun of. Once while hanging out at his mansion, he spent two solid hours combing gossip sites for snipes against him, then sent directives to his staff to file libel cases against every blog and tabloid.
Again, the red flags. So plentiful.
“Alright, stand back,” the agent told us. “My back-up support is headed into camp now. We’ll take care of this guy.”
“I need to know what this is all about,” I told Kristoff. “Whatever you believe I have, I don’t. I swear. We need to put an end to this. Now.”
He flashed a look at the new group arriving toward us on the path—the local sheriff and a couple of deputies. A woman in a suit and a buff guy who looked like a cousin to Vin Diesel. Definitely more A-Team.
Kristoff glared at me. “The key. You have it.”
Key…I for sure did not have a key. He’d never given me one. Not to his house or a car or a safe. Nothing. I shook my head. “I don’t.”
“On the chain.” He gave me a pointed look.
Frantically, I called up my memories like a search engine. Input:Key. Chain.A key chain? Nothing.
He patted his chest. Bare. He usually wore a long silver chain with a slim silver pendant. It looked like the long skinny Tetris block. I’d even said as much to him once and felt like an idiot for doing it.
“Your necklace? Was that a key? Why would I have it?” Still confused.
The new group closed in, directing the campers to move back.
“You have the spare,” he said as the new bodies filled in around us. “I put it in your jewelry bag. I didn’t think I’d need it. Until I did.”
My jewelry bag…I’d left it open once on the bathroom counter at his house. When I’d packed to come here, I’d tossed more jewelry and accessories into the bag. I didn’t take anything out.
The locker in the office. Where’d I’d stashed my extra things. It had to be there.
Twila sauntered forward. “You mean…this.” She pulled out the exact silver chain and pendant from beneath her shirt and vest, swinging the pendant back and forth like a pendulum.
“Twila!” I gasped.
“That’smine.” Kristoff lunged at her.
No fewer than six adults intervened, including Lucas, Nunchucks Guy, and all the new law enforcement.
“Sounds to me like yougaveit to Hudson,” Twila spoke over the commotion. She looked over her shoulder at Bianca who now had Twila’s phone, recording. She turned to me. “I was borrowing it, honey. It’s such an interesting piece with these little numbers etched into the silver. It was sitting so lonely in that locker…”
“The bitcoin account password,” Vera the camper announced in a daze. “That’s what the guys online were saying. The account password is the key. The key is the pendant, and it’s right there on that necklace!”
I pressed a hand to my throbbing forehead. Had these girls been doinganythingelse besides investigating Kristoff? “Your parents are going to murder us.”
No, they’d throw this on Lucas. They’d freak when news of Krom’s arrest went public. They’d demand Lucas step down—he’d have to. Lucas would lose out on the very thing he’d been working so hard toward.
No job reference. No dream job.
