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‘Shut up,’ she said, feeling that she knew him well enough to be that candid.
‘Got it,’ he said as she reached the brow of the hill.
It was a mixed blessing. She could see the tip of the water and the trees to the east, but they were barely halfway across, and the trudging motion to get through the crop was already telling on her thigh muscles.
She had the sudden urge to rub at her eyes.
‘Keep moving,’ Ryan said, walking past her. ‘We need to get out of here.’
‘Why?’ Kim said, pointing in their general direction of travel.
‘Allergies, itchy eyes, coughing and breathlessness. I’m going to shut up now.’
Kim was thankful. With Ryan taking his turn in flattening the crop, they made it to the tip of the reservoir as her phone began to ring.
‘I’m fine,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Jeez, you sound rough. How far are you?’
‘Over the field.’
‘Is that all?’
Kim was tempted to give him a mouthful, but the energy was better spent trying to get her breath back.
Why the hell did Leyton Parks not just have a bloody phone?
‘Fifteen,’ she said to Bryant before ending the call. The ten minutes they’d agreed wasn’t long enough. She’d really hoped she was going to be further.
‘Right, that was the easy part,’ she said, entering the woods. It wasn’t going to be as straightforward keeping her bearings amongst the dense crab apple and bay trees.
‘Damn,’ Kim said as something wrapped itself around her ankle.
‘Blackberry thorns,’ Ryan said, stamping on it and holding it down so she could free her ankle.
She knew one of the little blighters had punctured the fabric of her trousers. She resisted the urge to rub it and carried on moving.
‘Be careful of those dwarf nettles as well. They sting like hell.’
‘Will do,’ Kim said, following where he pointed. She wasn’t sure how they were going to avoid them. Damn things were everywhere.
‘Did you know that thorns exist on plants to deter animals from eating them?’ Ryan asked.
‘Nope, and I’m sure it’s not a fact I’ll ever have cause to repeat.’
‘I notice that you’re prone to sarcasm,’ Ryan observed.
‘Really, and here I was thinking I hid it very well.’
‘See, you just did it—Oh, okay, you got me.’
Kim smiled. It wasn’t all that hard.
As they moved further in, she noted the change in trees as they became more coniferous, providing better cover.
‘I think we’re almost there,’ she said. The trees looked less dense twenty metres in front.
‘Oh shit,’ Ryan said, clutching his ankle. ‘One of those dwarf nettles stung me.’
