Penny Hendrix swept her auburn hair off her shoulder so she could swat a mosquito. At this hour, at this elevation, she couldn’t believe she still had to fend off the little pests. But it was a small price to pay to stand in the presence of one of the earth’s wonders. She often got the feeling of “smallness” when compared to the grandeur of the depths of the Grand Canyon or Yosemite’s stark peaks. But this valley was otherworldly.
In Bryce Canyon National Park, millennia of snow and wind had shaped this valley landscape into an infinite field of rock formations called ‘hoodoos.’ From a distance, they looked like waves along the land. But, up close, the hoodoos were twenty-foot orange rock spires sprouting up from the earth like stalagmites, with thousands of them creating an intricate pincushion labyrinth across the park.
While she paused to sip from her water bottle, she turned in a slow circle to take in the view. She’d never seen anything with this sort of stupefying majesty before, like a carefully constructed diorama spreading along the curve of a bowl. Above her, the Utah sky was a perfect blue dome, lighter at the edges. Not a single cloud marred the view.
Behind her on the trail, Owen Sweeney came huffing and puffing. Her sticklike best friend wiped a tattooed forearm across his brow, then coughed.
“Doing okay?” she asked.
“Altitude’s getting to me a little.”
She spread a flat smile in sympathy. Three days ago, they had been at sea level in Texas, scouring the flatlands to find a particular pocket watch. That journey had led them here, eight thousand feet higher up. Penny felt more out of breath than usual, too.
“I hear that. It’ll be worth it, though.”
Owen nodded. “Right, because you’re buying me a fancy steak dinner when this is done. Don’t even try to pretend that you don’t remember our conversation in the desert.” He added a wry grin at the end.
“Well… fancy is a spectrum.”
He frowned. “Now you’re moving the goalposts. I see the machinations in your head, Penn.”
“Machinations?” she said, snickering. “We’ll get steak. Don’t you worry.”
She flicked her head at his hip, where his phone sat in his pocket. Since she didn’t own a cellular device of any kind, they’d installed the tracking app on Owen’s phone. He didn’t mind acting as the group’s cellular ambassador.
“On it,” he said as he drew it and held one hand over it to fight the glare. “Well, here’s the thing. When I checked the app five minutes ago, it said the GPS beacon was about a hundred feet that way.” He pointed along the trail, an eight-mile loop that dipped in and out of the park, down through the valley among the hoodoos. “But now, it’s not.”
“The watch is moving?”
Owen pursed his lips. “It appears so.”
Instinctively, Penny looked along the trail, hunting for a third party. Had someone arrived moments before them and stolen their prize? Their day had begun so early, they’d only seen a couple of other hikers so far.
She hustled along the gravelly ground toward where the beacon had previously been detected. A tiny alcove hid at the base of a hoodoo. Chipped pieces of the formation had settled into a pile of rocks.
She sifted through the pile as Owen stood over her.
“Think it was in the pile of rocks here and someone snatched it?” Owen asked.
“I sure do.” Penny stood. “It’s not here now, so let’s stay alert. Has to be nearby.”
As she squinted along the valley, an eerie buzzing sound filled her ears, like an incoming swarm of bees. She spun to see an airborne object, strangely hovering in place. A black drone with four whirring blades, zipping around in multiple random directions like a hummingbird.
“Damn,” Owen said, grunting at the pursuer they’d escaped earlier this morning. “I thought we lost that thing.”
“I did too, but it doesn’t matter now. We gotta run.”
****
As soon as they’d started to run, Penny heard the drone’s whine growing louder, coming closer. Drones weren’t allowed in national parks for various reasons, but this one’s owner didn’t seem to care. And there weren’t any park rangers around to do anything about it.
Owen barked with surprise and skidded to a stop, eyes locked on his phone. “I found it!”
Penny, who had been running flat out along the trail, almost fell as she tried to crane her neck back toward Owen. Bits of powdery rock kicked up underfoot. He was holding his phone out in front of his face as he ran, pointing down deeper into the terrain.
The drone on their tail had no trouble keeping pace with them. Bryce Canyon’s main valley was wide open, with few hiding spaces to be found along the winding routes through it. The hoodoos themselves were plentiful and gave cover, but not from above. Nowhere to hide from a machine that could instantly gain altitude whenever it wanted.
Penny slowed to join up with Owen. He showed his phone’s screen to her, and Penny followed the glowing blue dot. She looked up to see the trail descend deeper down a steep grade into the valley with a series of dog-leg switchbacks. And strolling along that trail was a chubby boy, about ten years old. He held something in his hand. The pocket watch.
Penny resisted the urge to shout or point, since the drone was hovering right above them, with its digital eyes watching everything they did. How could they do anything with surveillance on them constantly?
Penny turned to face the humming machine. “Leave us alone!”
The drone stayed in place, blades continually chopping the air to keep it aloft. Its lack of motion made her feel watched. Penny balled her fists and clenched her jaw, feeling raw anger course through her veins.
Without thinking about it, she bent down and snatched a handful of small rocks from the edge of the trail. She flung one at the drone, and it missed wide to the right. The second one also missed. By now, Owen had joined her, and one of his rocks zipped close enough to make the drone swerve out of the way.
Then Penny drew a deep breath and steadied herself. She pulled her arm back and hurled the rock with all the speed and might as she had. The little projectile zinged through the air and made contact with one of the drone’s rotors. As the rock severed the blade, the machine immediately launched into a screeching death spiral, crashing onto the trail twenty feet behind them.
She raced over to it and stomped on the drone until it had broken into a million pieces. The plastic and metal grinding under her heavy hiking boots both stoked her anger and gave her a sense of completion. She knew the assholes making her and Owen’s lives a living hell had more drones at their disposal, but destroying this one gave her the meager satisfaction of knowing they’d have to waste their money to replace it.
“Serves them right,” she said to the busted machine. “I hope that thing costs thousands of bucks.”
“Penny,” Owen said from behind her, pointing at his phone.
“Right.” She leaned over the trail to see the kid with the pocket watch ambling along, oblivious. But then, as Penny took in a breath to shout and hopefully catch the boy’s attention, someone else joined the trail below. A lone man, tall and thin, holding a device in one hand that looked like a drone remote control.
And he was on the same level as the young boy, headed straight for him.
***
Before Penny and Owen could even do anything about it, the man on the trail below caught up to the stocky child and ripped the pocket watch from his hands. The boy screamed and made a half-hearted attempt to swipe it back, but the man pushed the boy to the ground, kicking up a cloud of gravel dust.
Owen sneered, with livid fire in his eyes. “He hurt the kid. That piece of garbage hurt that kid!”
They didn’t wait. Penny ignored the switchbacks navigating down the trail and instead decided to go straight down the steep valley itself. Owen followed suit, and soon the two of them were leaping down the side of a treacherous angle. Penny hopped from position to position, her hiking boot heels digging into the earth each time to prevent her from leaning forward. If they tumbled, they could roll pretty far before the ground offered any chances to stop.
But a few seconds later, Penny made it to the section of trail where the boy stood, arms at his sides, tears streaming down his face. She landed and pivoted to race toward him.
“Are you okay?” she asked, sucking breaths.
The boy looked at her with horror and spoke in-between sniffles. “Why did he do that? I just found it. I wasn’t going to keep it.”
Owen landed a moment later, and she met his eyes. She didn’t have to say anything; he knew. He dropped to one knee and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. The adult looked the child in the eye and spoke in a soft voice. Within three seconds, the boy stopped crying and his shoulders stopped shaking. With their gazes locked, he seemed to settle.
With Owen protecting the boy and the situation seemingly under control, Penny turned back to the valley to hunt for the jerk who’d stolen the pocket watch. She caught a whiff of dark fabric rounding one of the switchbacks below, then also snagged a good look at him. Only a few seconds ahead of her.
Tall, thin, Caucasian, with a strange gait that made him lean forward as he ran. Penny didn’t recognize this guy, so it didn’t seem like he was part of the crew who had been pursuing her and Owen for some time now. But it seemed reasonable that this guy was some low-level criminal who had been hired by the people after her, no doubt about it. They often used disposable local thugs to carry out their dirty work, to keep them from getting their hands directly dirty.
She launched after the guy. Teeth gritted, hair on the back of her neck at full attention, she bore down and ran as fast as she could. She stayed on the trail itself instead of the riskier direct approach. But even when pushing herself as hard as she could, she still couldn’t gain on him and the long strides his long limbs granted.
So she had to do something drastic. Up ahead, the trail curved with the valley, and she could see her target had an unbeatable one-turn lead, only a few seconds ahead. At the next switchback, she decided to make her move. As she neared it, the man was now directly below her on a lower section of trail.
Penny let out a war cry. Then she leaped to her side, hurtling through the air to (hopefully) land safely on flat earth below. On the way down, she angled a leg, leading with her foot.
That foot sailed directly into the side of the man’s head, kicking him. He’d turned around a split second too late, and she had time to catch the surprise on his dumb face before her foot smashed into his nose. They both collapsed into piles on the trail. Dust everywhere.
Penny coughed, then sat up. Her lungs burned and her head throbbed, and her hip pulsed from being the first body part to touch the ground. As soon as she could think enough to move, she scooted back, away from where she thought the man had landed.
“Excuse me,” said a breathless voice from outside the dust cloud. In another moment, Penny could see a husky female park ranger standing just past the next bend, coming up from the lower part of the trail. The ranger held a walkie talkie in her hand, with a finger poised above the talk button. Shoulders heaving. “Is everything okay here?”
Penny shook her head to clear out the cobwebs, then her eyes focused. The pocket watch sat on the ground in front of her. She snatched it before anyone else could see, then immediately shoved it into her back pocket.
She stood and pointed at the man, wiping trail dirt out of his eyes. “He was flying drones in the park. His broken drone is about two minutes up the trail from here.”
The man looked at them both, then he stood, waving his arms in protest. But, as he did, the drone’s remote control came loose from his back pocket and landed on the ground in front of them.
The park ranger frowned at the device. “Were you flying a drone in the park, sir?”
He shook his head and spoke for the first time, in a deep Russian accent. “No fly. Only carry remote with me.”
“Drones are not allowed in the park,” the ranger said, clearly not buying it. “I’m going to ask you to take any unlicensed aerial materials back to your car and leave them there. Now, please.”
For a moment, he did nothing. Then the park ranger lifted the walkie talkie closer to her mouth, like a threat. “Now, sir.”
The man glowered at Penny. “Is not over, Hendrix.”
With that, he stormed off. The ranger again looked at Penny, giving her a wary eye. “You know that man?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Penny first let out an enormous sigh of exhaustion, and then let out another sigh of relief as she touched the pocket watch bump in her back pocket. “I am now. Thank you.”
While enduring the ranger’s curious expression, Penny bid the woman goodbye and then made her way back up the trail to where Owen stood alone. He was leaning against a hoodoo, arms crossed and chin up. Probably trying to look cool.
“Where’s the kid?”
Owen pointed back up the trail. “He was scouting ahead of his parents. He decided to run back and stick with them, and he actually asked me not to tell them about his little exciting episode. The kid’s okay, though. A little shaken up.”
“Smart choice to go back to his folks.”
“You get what we came for?”
Penny grinned and held up the antique watch, glinting in the light. “They keep coming for us, Owen, and we keep showing them why it’s a bad idea.”
“So far.”
She playfully socked him in the shoulder with a closed fist. “That’s not the attitude we need.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, fair enough. We live to fight another day.” He added a sarcastic fist pump to the end of his sentence.
“That’s a little better. We shouldn’t stay, though, because I’m sure he’ll be waiting for us in the parking lot.”
“That’s fine; it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before.”
“True.”
“So where are we fighting next?”
