Page 76 of Cherry Picked
Sweet Jesus. This rescue mission reallyhadbeen about a video?
I thought longingly of the 3.5 delightful minutes I could have had with Jack and tried to tamp down my annoyance. “Gracie, we need to get off the mountain before the rain comes. You’re shivering already—”
I unzipped my jacket and began removing my backpack so I could give it to her. It wasn’t particularly warm, but it was better than nothing.
“N-no, Hawk.” She glanced toward the path, then dragged me further back into the dense thicket of trees. “Evola ishere. Right now. The surveyors were messing around, I think, bringing their equipment upwayhigher than they were supposed to, a-and… just watch the video. Please? Then we need to… you know, collect evidence or whatever before the rain washes it away. I watch theMurder, Mystery, Makeupvideos on YouTube—”
I sighed impatiently, ready to cut her off, then stopped myself.
I fuckinghatedit when people made assumptions about my capabilities based on my age or what they thought they knew about me. I’d be livid if someone was that dismissive to Em. It would be quicker just to watch the video andthenstrong-arm her down the mountain to safety.
Besides, if she really had seen something, I could mention it to Simon at our meeting and make sure he took care of it.
“Fine. You put my jacket on, and I’ll watch,” I agreed.
Gracie handed me her phone and obediently took the jacket as I hit the Play icon.
The video was hard to follow at first, mostly bouncing trees while the phone was steadied, but then it zoomed in to a figure. It took me a few moments to recognize Simon Wentworth himself standing next to a muddy 4x4 vehicle—the kind that was used lower down the mountain by Evola’s surveying team but absolutely prohibited this high up the trails. The vehicle had clearly taken out the historic footbridge and now lay in the debris pile half submerged in the rapidly running Glassy Creek.
“Listen,” Gracie urged in a hushed voice.
In the video, Simon was holding a handheld radio, pacing behind the wrecked 4x4, and the voice that emerged from the speakers was tinny and partly covered by the rushing water but unmistakably his.
“… how the fuck does a vehicle like this wind up withtwoflat tires and you didn’t notice? And don’t give me shit about rocks, man. This is an all-terrain vehicle. It’s designed to— Look, enough with the bullshit. I asked you to take out the bridge quietly, not to leave your fucking 4x4 lying in the fucking creek like a big fucking neon sign that says ‘Evola was here.’”
He listened to the person on the other end for a few breaths. “Oh, really? And how do you expect me to haul it out of here by myself in the rain? You guys need to get back up here with the pickup and tow this— What do you mean the pickup has flat tires, too? Well, what about the… Motherfucker! All of them? Then bring the heavy equipment, for god’s sake, and— No, not now. Wait until full dark. Bring a whole crew if you need to. Their expenses will be paid. Everyone will be off the mountain because of the storm. If we can pull the vehicle out before morning, no one will know it was us. They’ll think the bad weather took out the bridge.”
He kicked a rock on the ground and sent it pinging into the side of the 4x4.
I scrambled to make sense of what I was watching and hearing.
Gracie must have seen me struggling because she paused the video and grabbed my arm, forcing me to meet her eyes. “Hawk. Evola sent their guys up here to take down the bridge to stop people from being able to get to the top of the mountain without having to go through the creek.”
“You were coming down from Glassy Ridge,” I realized, glancing at the screen and judging the camera angle.
She nodded. “Taking a couple more pictures of the storm clouds rolling in. I was heading back down, and I stepped off the trail for a second to… well, top-pee… and then I heard the engines and then his hugecrash, and I was scared, so I stayed out of sight in the bushes. And then I sawthatand t-texted Emma because I didn’t know what else to do. The creek is running really high after the last few rainstorms, and I had to go maybe half a mile downhill before I found a place to cross that was sh-shallow…” She glanced down at her wet shorts and corrected herself. “Shallow-ish. But no one’s gonna cross it going uphill while the b-bridge is out. Especially not after more rain falls tonight.”
“And if they can’t cross it, they can’t get to the top where the best views are,” I said, blowing out a breath. “And…”
“And we won’t be able to p-protest up there anymore,” she concluded. “Which means reaching fewer people with our message in the week before the vote.”
“Damn it.”
I was trying not to mourn the loss of the beloved bridge until we were back down the mountain and safe, but it was hard. If I’d thought I’d known what anger was a couple of weeks ago, it was only a pale ghost of what was rising in me now.
How fuckingdareSimon and his minions do something like this? The betrayal of it, the injustice of having someone come in and steal a piece of the Hollow’s heritage, was infuriating.
I suddenly wished I’d taken a jiujitsu class or two because I really,reallywanted to kick someone. Namely, Simon.
Gracie was still shivering violently in my jacket, so I fished the survival blanket from the First Aid kit out of my backpack along with my water bottle. I found a fallen log for her to sit on and focused on getting her warm and hydrated. Once I wrapped the blanket around her, I met her eyes. “You’re okay. You did good staying hidden.” I glanced back down at her phone. “What happens next? Is Simon still up here?”
“I think so? I haven’t seen him come in this direction, but he might have taken another trail. There’s m-more of the video, but it’s basically him talking about stuff I don’t understand.”
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one had come upon us without her notice. We were still alone. She hit the Play button again.
“Jesus Christ, I’m supposed to be on mydateright now, remember? After I spread the news around town, all it would have taken was a few blushes, a quick stolen kiss, and the two of us leaving the restaurant together, and everyone would believe Sunday was on our side.” Simon paused. “I don’t give a shit if you approve of my methods, asshole. It was working! And I was thisclose to getting Jack Wyatt to sign a contract that would have put him in the palm of my hand, too. Now I’m up here dealing with your fuckup.”
Simon argued back and forth with the other person, and when he paced away from the creek, I couldn’t make out his words. But he paced back in time for Gracie’s phone to pick up his next statement.“…don’t care what it costs. And no one tells Lacey or her father about this, do you understand? It never fucking happened. This project has already taken so long she’s started making noises about canceling the wedding.”
