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“Follow me.” Holden was already walking. Okay, maybe he was her compass.
She caught up.
Holden led her in a path that seemed unnecessarily curvy. Sure, it was dark out, but she couldn’t see what obstacles they were trying to avoid.
“Why can’t we walk in a straight line?” she asked.
“Not sure,” he said. “I’m following his trail.”
“You can see histrail?” She had no idea Holden was a tracker.
“It seems he made no effort to hide it, and Sundance’s trail helps.”
Of course. If they were following Sundance’s trail, they were going to do lots of zigging and zagging.
At least they weren’t plummeting in elevation. This would have been worrisome as she would’ve had to think about going back up to their base camp.
In fact, with all their switchbacks and loopy loops, it almost seemed as if ... “Holden?”
“Yeah?”
“Does it seem like Tucker was simply following ...” She couldn’t think of a way to phrase her question.
“The path of least resistance?”
She giggled. “Yeah. That.”
“It sure does. I’m not sure what the dude is up to.”
They forged on. At least all the movement was keeping her warm. Worried that she hadn’t heard from Tucker in a while, she said, “Is it still there?”
He answered quickly. “Yep.”
Without saying anything, Holden picked up the pace a little.
“I see your lights,” Tucker said a few minutes later.
She double clicked her mic, so he’d know she’d heard, and they kept walking.
“Over here.” Tucker’s voice traveled through the air without the help of a radio.
She swung her headlamp in his direction and nearly startled because he was so much closer than she’d expected. Her light blinded him, and his hand flew up to shield his eyes. She felt bad and quickly pulled her light away from him.
Wait.
Tucker had been holding something in his hand. Whatwasthat?
It had almost looked like a ...bouquet? No, he couldn’t have been standing in the middle of the forest with a bouquet of flowers?
Trying to be discreet, she looked at him again. And yes, his right hand held some bouquet-shaped thing, but his left hand was now pointing the same direction as his light. Her eyes followed to a broad, gently sloping treeless bank—where multiple scarlet stripes moved about. She gasped as tears warmed her eyes.
I should have brought more than one net.
She tried to count, lost count, and started forward. “Holden, can you take photos?” Her voice sounded like it was coming from someone else.
“Sure if you give me your phone.”
She was too mesmerized by the scene in front of her to be annoyed that he hadn’t brought a phone. She stopped to hand him hers, and then she moved forward with the net, bringing it down gently and trapping three western Blake toads. She expected the others to scatter. “What are they doing?” she whispered, mostly to herself.
