Wilderness Pursuit

The foreman sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I wish you’d have come next week as you were supposed to, instead of showing up early.”

“What?” Kara narrowed her eyes at him and laughed. “No, I mean there really is something here. We should start the requisite procedures immediately. I can ask some of my team to come today instead of next Tuesday—”

“That won’t be necessary, Ms. Park.” Sam saw the foreman’s hand creep to a bulge beneath his coat before Kara did. Sam grabbed for his Taser—only to feel the pressure of a barrel between his shoulder blades. He raised his hands and prepared to flip around to incapacitate the person behind him, but the foreman’s gaze suddenly snapped to the side, meeting Sam’s eyes.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Officer.” The foreman pulled the edge of his coat back to reveal the handgun shoved into his waistband. “There are more of us than there are of you.”

Kara’s eyes widened and she swung her attention from the foreman to Sam and back again. “Wait, what? I don’t understand. What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” The foreman crossed his arms and sighed. “I’m doing my job, Ms. Park, which just so happens to be preventing you from doing yours.”

“But your injuries—”

“Weren’t as they appeared. Weapons on the ground, Officer. We didn’t count on your involvement, but now that you’re here, we’ll have to figure out what to do with the both of you.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Kara said. “You’re not serious. I’m here by government mandate. You need this survey completed and submitted by a registered professional.”

“And we will,” the foreman said, his voice growing hard. “It just won’t be you. If you’d arrived next week, you wouldn’t have found a thing and this would have been wrapped up within a few days, weeks at most. But now... I’m sorry, but Gaida Industries isn’t willing to sit around for years while the land is tied up in red tape. And we can’t have you running back to civilization and telling everyone about what you saw here. That goes for both of you.”

Sam’s mind raced. How could they get out of this? From the corner of his eye, he spotted at least three additional men trying to blend into the brush around the site. Undoubtedly they, too, were armed. He mentally kicked himself for not investigating the engine sound the moment he’d heard it. They must have come in on dirt bikes or ATVs...why didn’t I think of that?

“You don’t need to do this,” Sam said, hoping to buy time. Whatever the foreman had planned, it wasn’t going to turn out well for Gaida Industries. “A government contractor and an RCMP officer go missing, and more than a few people are bound to notice.”

The foreman turned to him with a smile, and Sam’s stomach sank at the confidence he saw reflected there. “Of course they are...but we’re out in the wilderness, Officer Thrace. And people go missing all the time for a variety of reasons. Thanks to Ms. Park’s insistence on invading our company’s space before we’d prepared for her arrival, you’ll both be joining those ranks.” This time, the foreman drew his weapon from his belt and leveled it at Kara. Slowly and deliberately, he pulled back the safety. “Permanently.”

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