Nessie drops her head back, giggling so loud the sound becomes cathartic, and before long, I join in.
“Shit!” Nessie yells, jumping up and down.
We’ve been wandering for what feels like days. The sun is beginning to set, which gives me hope that Cooper will soon start to question our whereabouts and start looking for us and also incredibly concerning as I try to recall all the nocturnal desert animals we learned about while visiting the natural science museum in Austin. I have no idea how Cooper will find us even if he knows where to start looking. And if we know he’s looking, do we stop and wait for him? Do we keep walking? Is it safe to walk at night in the desert?
Nessie jumps again.
“What?” I ask, looking around. “What?” I ask again, more concerned when she continues screaming and jumping.
She points at a rock where a giant tarantula sits, spanning far larger than any spider should. “Oh, God,” I cry as goosebumps reign across my skin. We back up, and that’s when I see it: a trail marker.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Nessie says as I point it out. She wraps her arms around me. “We did it!”
I laugh, half delirious with the realization we had a hard enough time sticking to the path in the light, and the sun has almost set, and the signs warned us there would be more snakes once it started to get dark.
“Which way do you think we should go?” she asks.
I swing my attention in both directions, hoping something will magically point us in the right direction.
“Wait, do you hear that?” I ask.
Nessie moves closer to me, and I hear it again, the faint sound of a voice yelling.
“Please be Cooper,” Nessie says, gripping my hand and pulling me to the left toward the direction of the voice.
“Watch for snakes,” I remind her as we hurry along what we hope is the path.
“Vanessa! Chloe!” the person yells.
“Cooper!” we yell back.
“Watch, it’s going to be like a forest ranger. We’re going to get ticketed for getting lost in the desert, and we’re never going to hear the end of it,” Nessie says. “If it’s not Cooper, and we get out of here, let’s never tell him.”
“If Cooper isn’t looking for us, he’s getting coal for Christmas.”
As if on cue, we hear our names being yelled again. “It’s him,” Nessie says, putting her hands on both sides of her mouth as she calls out his name again.
“Chloe!” Cooper hollers, coming into view.
“Cooper!” we practically scream.
A second figure joins Cooper’s, and my relief is so instantaneous, I nearly cry.
Vanessa releases my hand and starts running, and like some cheesy scene out of a movie, Cooper catches her, and they kiss, and it’s so perfect and romantic and ridiculous that I can’t tear my eyes away for a solid minute.
“What in the hell have you guys been doing?” Tyler’s words are a slap of accusation. “Where were you?”
I kind of want to punch him in the throat, but I’m so freaking glad I don’t have to spend the night out here I also kind of want to hug him. Instead, I laugh. I laugh so hard I probably sound crazy, and still, I laugh harder.
“Fucking hell,” he says, shaking his head.
13
Tyler
“Six snakes,” Vanessa corrects Chloe as she recounts their day in the desert. “A tarantula, a few enormous centipedes, and some black flying bug that we didn’t get close enough to see if it played nice.”
“Jesus,” Cooper says. “We had no idea where you guys were. We found Chloe’s phone in the back of the car, but your phone kept going directly to voicemail.”
“Dead battery,” Nessie admits.
“We didn’t know if you guys were lost or hurt or if you were…” Cooper releases a deep breath, refusing to say the word abducted—the suggestion from the head of security at our hotel when we discussed the situation with him, and he voiced his concerns about human trafficking and kidnappings.
Vanessa stops speaking, sensing the seriousness in Cooper’s tone. “Snake,” she finally says, pointing in the distance.
“I’m so over this hike,” Chloe says, taking another drink from the water bottle I handed her. I scan over her a third time.
“It’s moving,” Cooper says. “It’s just crossing the trail.”
Chloe looks at me, likely feeling my stare. The challenge is missing from her gaze. She looks exhausted, and try as I might, I can’t get the idea of her heart condition out of my thoughts, even though a cardiologist assured me her prognosis would be excellent and that later complications would be incredibly rare. I didn’t want to hear rare—I wanted to hear impossible. “Do you need to sit down for a few minutes?”
One side of her lips curl. “Is this one of those situations where you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your friend?”
Cooper chuckles.
Knobhead.
“It’s late. You guys have been out all day,” I say.
“I’m okay,” she says. “I might need like four showers to get all this sand out of my hair, though.”
“And food. You guys should have seen our first hike. We earned pasta, dessert, and double garlic bread all before noon,” Vanessa chimes in. “I don’t even know how that’s a trail, to be honest. Half of it was giant rocks we had to climb over, and the other half was a very steep and uneven hill with a railing.”
“Now you admit it,” Chloe says.
Vanessa laughs. “We should have gone to the spa.”
Chloe smiles. “But we decided the ghost tour was still scarier.”
Vanessa shakes her head. “No way. That snake was out for blood.”
“We don’t have much longer,” Cooper says. “Probably another half mile or so, and then you guys can sleep in the car tomorrow on our way to Vegas.”
A noise several kilometers from us has us all pausing for a second, but we continue until we finally hit the parking lot when we can’t find anything with our flashlights.
“Do you have a towel or something in
