Page 2 of Wild in the Woods
According to her informant and former college roommate, Olive Burns, Fox Mitchell lived deep in the forest and conducted his survival courses high in the mountains. He didn’t come into town all that often, and when he wasn’t working, he was in Alaska or Utah or some other Godforsaken place to do more outdoorsy stuff.
Ugh. The outdoors.
The outdoors had bugs in it. Her throat tightened with an involuntary gag.
She hoped Olive came through on her promise to introduce Lulu to Fox quickly, preferably at a restaurant or something and not the woods, so she could get this interview and get back to the city. She wasn’t even at Estes Park yet and she was ready to leave.
The drive took about an hour and by the time she arrived, her eye lids were heavy from the dregs of the early morning flight. She had purposely skipped coffee before her flight so she wouldn’t have to use the public bathroom, or, worse, the one on the plane.
The GPS said she was only a few minutes away, thankfully, so she could caffeinate and find her hotel for a quick check in before beginning her Fox hunt. She snickered.
Was Fox a fox? She’d looked him up online and had only found one very obscure photograph of him. His tall, broad body was surrounded by mist in the photo as he stood on the edge of a cliff. A hood covered his head and most of his face, showing only the tip of his nose and a bit of beard. Aside from that intriguing photo, the man was a ghost online. His website was basic and no frills, sporting a photo gallery of students building shelters, starting fires, and cooking something in a tin can. Something with thin, pokey-looking legs sticking straight up.
She gagged again.
There wasn’t enough money in the world to entice her to participate in half an hour of that nonsense, more less seven, fourteen, or twenty-one hellish days, depending on the outdoor survival package chosen. The more days you participated, the more gear you were allowed to take with you. It was a rope versus pocketknife-type decision. Screw that. She was staying in her hotel, with room service, and a full travel case of cosmetics thanks.
The landscape gradually changed from city to sparse population, to rising hills and mountain peaks. Clutching the wheel with both hands, Lulu leaned forward to peer out the windshield. The sun was out in full now, giving her a perfect view of the loss of civilization and the rise of wilderness.
Wilderness everywhere.
The road curved and the stretch of tree-lined nothingness emptied into the mouth of a town. A small, rustic town that she recognized from her internet research. Thanks to the hours spent looking at the satellite images on the map app on her phone, she recalled the layout of Estes Park pretty well. First stop, a charming bakery she’d bookmarked because they had the ‘Best Gluten-Free Donuts in the West!’
Gluten-free donuts? Yes, please. She started every morning off with a satisfying fried, sugar loaded treat from the local celiac-disease friendly bakery in Chicago and may have been a little more than excited that she didn’t have to skip that yummy tradition on this assignment.
Parking the sportscar at the curb outside Sticky Sweet Bakery, she searched for her hotel on her cellphone GPS before getting out. A slight breeze ruffled the ends of her overly curly brown hair. She tossed it back, mentally kicking herself for not wrangling it better before getting on the plane. Not that it would have mattered. Her hair did what it wanted to, period.
Slipping on her sunglasses, she felt better at the mere thought of coffee and something deep fried in oil and coated in sugar. The coffee had better be fresh ground and French pressed. They’d have a French press in a rustic town like this, right? Pour over wouldn’t cut it and coffee-turned-syrup from a carafe sitting on a heat plate for hours? Unacceptable.
The scent of something off-putting touched her nose as she stepped up onto the sidewalk. It mixed with the scents of coffee and pastries coming from the bakery and the smells collided in her brain.
“What is that smell?” She muttered the words to herself while looking around.
Glancing towards the large window at the front of the bakery, she spied two men peering out at her. It was hard to make them out thanks to sunlight glinting off the window, but one appeared to be smiling as if he’d just made some remark about her while the other tried to hide the fact that he was openly gawking behind a hand over his eyes.
Her foot suddenly slid across the sidewalk with a slopping, wet sound. Sucking in a surprised breath, she glanced down to find her shoe covered in something brown and squishy. Little piles of it dotted the sidewalk as if an animal had walked by and…oh, no.
“What the fu..”
Her shoe slid like she was on ice. Lulu lost her balance and fell backwards, landing on her butt.
Squish.
Arms out to her sides, she held her breath, hairline tingling as wet warmth seeped through the bottom of her Anne Kline trench coat and the skirt beneath.
Her pulse rang in her ears, her limbs frozen, as she tried to think of what to do. What. Was. She. Sitting. In?
“I’m sorry about that. Can I help you up?”
Wide-eyed and not sure she could speak, Lulu looked up at a huge dark-haired man extending a broad hand in her direction.
“The caribou came through a little earlier than normal and we haven’t had the chance to clean it up.”
Caribou? It took her a second to reconcile what he was implying.
“You’re telling me that I have caribou shit on my… on myAnne Kline?”
The man’s brows knit together. “If you’re referencing the fancy coat you’re wearing, then yes. Yes, you do.”
