Check out this installment of the thrilling chapters series, where we dive right in the middle of the action for a fun excerpt from one of my books.
This sample is from SHOCK COLLAR and it stars Micah Reed.
It’s about a quick tracking jaunt up a Colorado hiking trail to a confrontation that has a high flying end.
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MICAH FOLLOWED SQUASHED Nose Man and his two companions up the main trail at Chautauqua Park, panting and hot within minutes. It was way too early in the day to be this hot, but that was August in Boulder. Plus, Micah realized he’d only been hiking once this summer. If he still talked to people back in his native Oklahoma, he would have bragged about how great the hiking and the mountains were in the west. But, it’s not as if he enjoyed them regularly.
And, he didn’t talk to anyone from Oklahoma. Not by choice, for the most part. Anyone back there who still knew him thought he was dead.
Micah didn’t know the trail system at Chautauqua, but he kept a fair distance behind his three targets while not allowing them out of his sight. This proved tricky since they often ventured into switchbacks that turned them around and around, which made Micah have to keep his head down often. He trusted the baseball cap to do its job. Wished he hadn’t already returned the long hair wig and glasses to the costume shop.
They hiked like this for twenty minutes until the trio up ahead arrived at a trail crossing. They paused, sipping from water bottles, chatting. Micah dropped to a crouch in the grass, several hundred feet below them. Sun baking the back of his neck. His mouth dry, craving water.
Earlier this summer, Micah and Layne had embarked on a different hiking trail in this same park. They’d convened in the parking lot, Micah with a water bottle and a tube of sunscreen. Layne had worn technical pants and shirt, a fancy Camelbak backpack with a three-liter water bladder. Gadgets hanging off the backpack like a compass, crank flashlight, iodine tablets for water purification. Micah poked fun at Layne’s hyper-vigilant preparedness. Layne, always a good sport, took the ribbing well. Said nothing in his defense other than, “better prepared than lying dehydrated in a dry creek bed after tweaking your ankle.” And Micah couldn’t argue with that, even though they were only going on a five-mile hike.
But that was Layne. Thorough, detail-oriented, considerate. He’d been so many things Micah had always aspired to be.
“What are you doing?” said the meek voice of a small child.
Micah angled his head to see a boy, maybe ten years old. He was standing a few feet down the trail, a water bottle hanging from his fingertips. The kid was swinging the water bottle left and right, bouncing it off each of his skinny legs.
“I’m playing hide and seek,” Micah said.
The kid frowned at Micah’s hiding spot. “In the grass?”
“My friends aren’t good at hide and seek.”
The boy giggled. Held out his water bottle. “You look thirsty.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. You’re licking your lips. When I do that, my mom says it’s because I’m thirsty.”
Micah gazed at that extended water bottle, and for a second, considered leaving his hiding spot to take it.
From below them, a woman’s head appeared, coming up the hill. “There you are,” she said, scowling at the young boy. “I told you not to get too far ahead of me.”
The kid rolled his eyes. “I waited for you. I did.”
The woman flicked suspicious eyes at Micah and then put a hand on her son’s back. “Come on, let’s go.”
Micah lifted a hand to offer a little wave, and the woman averted her eyes. The boy, though, waved back. Good thing Micah hadn’t accepted the water. She probably would have pepper-sprayed him.
He turned his attention back up the hill.
In a couple of minutes, his trio of targets turned left, and Micah knew their choice of trail. Royal Arch, one of the toughest in Boulder, as far as Micah knew. A short and steep route ending in a natural arch with a view out onto Boulder Valley.
He hurried to catch up with them as they disappeared around a boulder and up a set of rock steps. By the time Micah reached the boulder, he only saw one of them on the trail ahead. A straggler?
Micah focused on keeping an even pace while maintaining his distance and trying to quiet the thirst throbbing in his head. He had to pause at the top of the stone steps. Glowered down at the ten pounds of extra belly pudge pushing against his t-shirt.
“This is your fault,” he said.
The stomach bulge made no reply, and Micah pressed on. After the stone steps, the trail morphed into a series of switchbacks and some light rock scrambling, and Micah still only found one of his targets in front of him.
The mundanity of it started to worry him. Maybe they were only out here for a regular hike. What if the two Squashed Nose had met weren’t the other two from the van last weekend? Maybe just some of Squashed Nose’s college friends, meeting up for a morning jaunt up to Royal Arch.
Micah wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. For them to rendezvous with some man in a trench coat, the one behind all this? For them to lead him to where Layne was buried?
As he paused to catch his breath, he thought of texting Roxanne to check on her progress with the flash drive. He whipped out his phone but had no service. One of the dead areas in the park. No matter, she might not even be awake yet. Had struck Micah as the night owl sort.
Up ahead, he spotted the false summit, a flat area that appeared to be the peak of the trail, but would actually lead on to another half hour of slogging. Up and down the steps and scrambling over rocks, and then all over again. He approached it carefully since he couldn’t see to the top. Maybe the other two would wait for Squashed Nose there. Micah didn’t want to stumble on them.
But when he closed in on the false summit, he could see it was empty. This whole trail was surprisingly empty, but that was because it was after nine on a weekday. The morning trail joggers had finished and gone home to shower before biking to their Boulder software startup jobs. The lunchtime hikers wouldn’t be here for another two hours.
Micah paused at the false summit, a circle of red dirt surrounded by boulders of varying sizes. About the size of a living room.
And from around those boulders, Squashed Nose emerged. “Hi, Micah. Did you think we didn’t see you back there? Good thing that woman with the little kid didn’t call the cops on you, right? Boulder moms can be so touchy about strangers.”
From behind him, Micah heard two sets of feet. He spun just as a fist popped him in the mouth, snapping his head to the side.
Micah stumbled and bumped against a tree, sending pine needles raining down onto his shoulders. The two men and one woman squared up against him. Squashed Nose was wearing a baseball cap, but the other two were wearing hoodies pulled down over their faces. Micah couldn’t get a good look.
He balled his fists, trying to seem fearless. No way in hell could he take on all three of them, though. Especially if any of them drew weapons. Surely, they wouldn’t do anything so stupid as to fire a gun in a state park, with rangers wandering around.
Then again, these three had attacked him with brazen pistols in broad daylight. Any assumptions Micah could make about them might be wrong.
“Bet you wish you’d chosen something else to do with your day,” Squashed Nose said.
“Like maybe slipping it in that hacker chick again?” said the man to his left.
The hairs on the back of Micah’s neck stood up. Hacker chick?
Roxanne was in danger.
Now, Micah did wish he’d done something else with his day. And the only choice he had would be to flee. If he could get away, maybe he could reach Roxanne before these three could.
Unless they’d already killed her.
“Is she dead?” Micah said.
They said nothing, but all three of them inched closer. Surrounding him.
He surveyed the area. To his right was the trail up, continuing on toward Royal Arch. To his left was the trail down, currently blocked by one of the three thugs opposing him. In front of him was a drop-off, covered with trees and rock scree. He wasn’t close enough to get a sense of how steep it was.
Micah craned his neck to survey the landscape behind him. But before he could scope the terrain, the three of them advanced again. The woman was limping, likely due to Eddard biting her in the back of the van.
Squashed Nose whipped out a folding knife, holding the point out as he raced toward Micah.
No time to ponder a route out of here. Micah crouched to avoid the swipe of the blade, and then he jabbed. Punched Squashed Nose in the gut, which sent him back a step.
This did nothing to stop the other two. The woman brought a closed fist down on top of Micah’s head, sending a blurry jolt into Micah’s brain. The other tried to rush around him to grab him from behind. Micah leaped up and backward to knock that man off his feet. Rammed his head into the man’s chest, connecting with his rib cage.
The man thudded into the red dirt. Micah heard his head smack against something.
Squashed Nose recovered, knife out.
“No more playing around. You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused already.”
Micah could hear the man he’d knocked down rising to his feet.
Had to escape. Now.
He tensed and raced toward the edge of the false summit, then jumped to clear a small tree stump at the edge of the cliff. He was in the air for only a split second before his feet landed awkwardly on an angled plane. Body lurching forward, off balance. He descended a steep field of rock scree and shrubs, trying not to keel over. The unstable surface made it impossible to run, and soon he found his body tumbling, spinning like a basketball. Hoping he wouldn’t impale himself on the spiky tree limbs sticking out as he descended the forty-five-degree angle of an unstable mountainside.
