In the dead of night, Rick woke up because he was being squished against the wall by another body on the small cot.
"Get off my bed, A.J. You lost the coin toss." He snarled trying to sound menacing, but his face was pressed against the wall of logs making his voice muffled and ineffectual.
A.J. turned in his sleep, and his arm flung out landing on Rick's torso.
Pushing the arm away, Rick sat up on the creaky cot. "Hey, knock it off!"
Only then was he able to see the sleeping form next to him could not be A.J.; the mystery bedmate was about six-four, well over two hundred.
"Aaaarrgh!" He could not help letting out a high-pitched, unmanly scream though it might not be the wisest thing in this situation.
The man next to him abruptly sat up and screamed, "AIEEE!" His shriek was even higher than Rick's.
As the screaming match continued, A.J. stumbled into the room with a flashlight rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Hey, what's going on, Rick?"
When the beam from the flashlight spotlighted the stranger on the bed, he and A.J. cried out simultaneously.
"AIEEE!"
"Ach!"
By then Rick had fled to the far corner of the room and was pressing his back against the wall trying to put as much distance from the stranger as physically possible.
"What the hell's goin' on?"
Reacting to the voice coming from behind, A.J. whipped around and saw a tall, skinny old man rushing into the cabin with a shotgun.
"Agh!" His hands went skyward. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"
"P.J., you okay?"
Before the old man could finish the sentence, Rick's former bedmate was attacking him—or, so it seemed. It took Rick and A.J. a moment or two to realize he was clinging to the other man like a scared little kid.
The old man repositioned his shotgun to aim at A.J., who was unfortunately standing in front of him. "What the hell did you do to my daughter, boy?"
"Your…?" A.J. swallowed the rest as he heard the sound of the shotgun hammer cocking. "Nothing! I was sleeping in the other room when he…your daughter started screaming!"
"Is that true, girl?"
When P.J. nodded, the old man aimed the shotgun at Rick. "Then you must be the one who's done somethin' to my girl."
"I didn't do anything!" Rick declared. "I was in bed just sleeping…"
A.J. saw a drastic change in the old man's facial expression that he did not like and had barely enough time to grab the barrel of the shotgun to jerk it upward before he blasted it off.
P.J. jumped into action to help her father. She slugged A.J. so hard he wound up on the floor. She certainly did not hit like a girl, he painfully observed.
"Alone! I was sleeping alone!" Rick also hit the floor, his head cradled in his arms. "We got lost on our way to our lodge! We didn't know you own this cabin—we thought it was abandoned! When we turned in, I was sleeping alone! I'm telling you the truth, I swear!"
"That right, P.J.?"
She nodded her head again and pointed her finger at Rick, "I saw him sleeping in bed and thought it was you. I just wanted to snuggle 'cause I was really scared and didn't want to be alone."
It was almost surreal to hear her talk girlishly in her contralto voice. Long, dark hair tumbled out of the stocking cap when she took it off.
"Why didn'tcha say so in the first place?" The old man seemed to have somewhat calmed down but did not lower his shotgun.
Just when Rick and A.J. thought it was safe to get back up on their feet, two more men barged into the cabin. They were half a foot taller than the old man and built like a couple of heavyweight wrestlers.
"Hey, what were you shooting at, Pop?" asked one of them.
"Did you find the guy that's been botherin' P.J.?" asked the other one.
When they saw the Simon brothers on their hands and knees on the floor, they did not wait for their father to answer and descended on them.
Tweedledum, with a flashlight in one hand, yanked A.J. up from the floor with the other and started shaking him like a dog with a chew toy. Tweedledee pounced on Rick' back and started banging his head on the hardwood floor.
"Vance! Vaughn! Stop it! They're just strangers who got lost in the woods!" P.J. yelled at her brothers. "Besides, they don't look like the man who's been harassing me."
"Oh…" Tweedledum dropped A.J. on the floor unceremoniously.
Tweedledee lifted his crushing weight off Rick's back. "Then how come Pop fired a shot?"
"It was a slight misunderstanding," said P.J., who sounded embarrassed about the situation.
Pop glared down at the Simons, who were still hugging the floor, not yet ready to get intimately acquainted with the other fraternal pair. "Misunderstandin' or not, you're still trespassers and haven't told us who you are."
A.J. cautiously sat up and asked, "May I show you my ID?"
Seeing Pop nod his head, he slowly took out his wallet and offered it to him.
"Andrew Simon from San Diego..." Pop read the personal information on the driver's license.
A.J. nodded. "Yes, and that's my brother, Rick, over there."
"You're a private eye?" asked Pop looking at A.J.'s PI license.
"Yeah, we run a private investigation outfit down in San Diego," said Rick, rubbing the sore spot on the head.
"And you got lost hiking around here? You must be real lousy investigators," said Tweedledee, making his twin brother chuckle.
Rick and A.J. bit their tongues so as not to make any smart-alecky remarks under the circumstances. Their self-preservation instinct told them only one of the twins could easily beat both of them to a pulp.
"We're very sorry that we trespassed your property, but it was getting dark and cold, and we didn't have…"
"Hush, boy. I'm thinkin'," Pop cut A.J. off. After a few moments, he tossed the wallet back to him and asked, "You going to stay at Juniper Lodge?"
"Yes, sir," replied A.J.
"Man, that's on the other side of the mountain. You really are lost," smirked Tweedledum.
Pop shushed his son and asked A.J., "Where's your car?"
"At the bottom of the hill and out of gas."
Pop's sons started snickering again hearing the Simons' compounded misfortune.
The old man nodded absentmindedly. "All right, tell you what—we'll give you some gas and show you the way to the lodge."
"And what do we have to do in return?" asked Rick suspiciously.
"Oh, not much," answered Pop grinning. "I want you to be my daughter's bodyguards for a while. Till you go back to San Diego, or till she goes back to San Francisco; whichever comes first."
"What?" Rick could not help asking. "Why?"
"Someone's been stalkin' her for the last few days—ever since she got here for the holidays."
"Stalking? Have you seen him before? Is he from around here? And what exactly did he do to your…daughter?"
"I haven't seen 'im, but P.J. says she don't know 'im. He followed her to our place and trashed it. He then tried to kidnap her."
"Well, isn't that…"
A.J. gave his brother a warning look so he wouldn't make any disparaging remark on the stalking victim.
"…the local sheriff's duty?" Rick concluded. "Have you reported it to him?"
"'Course we did, but we have only one sheriff and two deputies to cover thousands of square miles, and it's a huntin' season, so they're too busy to keep an eye on her all the time."
"What if we refused to take up your offer?" asked Rick cautiously.
"Well," drawled Pop, scratching the back of his head. "I can't force you to do somethin' you don't want. In that case, I'll ask you to get the hell off my property and do nothin' else. And you'll stay lost, I reckon."
"We'll take it!" A.J. was desperate and pounced on the offer. "We're more than happy to be of your service, sir."
This time, Rick shot a glare of annoyance at his brother. He knew they had no choice but to accept the new assignment, but it didn't mean they'd have to kiss the old man's skinny heiny. A.J. was shamelessly submissive and acting like a lost kid at the fair, ready to cling to anyone offering a helping hand.
When Pop nodded his head, his sons picked up the Simon brothers from the floor with ease as though they were lifting a gym bag.
"You boys hafta ride in the back of my pickup with Vance. P.J., you ride in the cab with me, and Vaughn, you take your truck home and wait for us to come back," ordered Pop. He also informed the Simons, "I'll give you a coupla cans of gas at the bottom the hill, but I'll hitch your car to mine and tow it to the lodge."
It was a nice gesture on the surface, but Rick figured it was to keep him and A.J. from hightailing.
"Um, we have only one room reserved." He hesitantly informed the old man. "Just how many of you are planning to stay there?"
"Oh, just P.J."
Rick remembered the paralyzing fear he had felt when he had found her lying next to him and shuddered. "Our room doesn't have a separate bedroom—it's just a double-occupancy room."
Pop shrugged. "She grew up with her two brothers, so she don't mind sharin' a room with you. She's seen 'em naked." He cackled.
Mortified beyond words, P.J. groaned, as did the Simons.
"But if you lay a finger on her, so help me God…" Glowering, Pop left the sentence unfinished to let them fill in the blanks.
"That won't happen, I can assure you! We're committed and reputable professionals, sir!" squawked A.J. as Tweedledum shook him a few times for good measure to drive the point home.
Rick stole a quick peek at P.J. and was more concerned about his own safety, and in his opinion, so should A.J. After all, most women in general found his brother much more desirable than he.
"Good. Don't you forget that," said Pop. "'Cause I know who you are and where you live, Andrew Simon."
When he showed him a piece of ID, A.J. quickly checked his wallet and found his driver's license missing.
"I'll give this back to you before you go home." Pop grinned. "Now that we understand each other, let's get outa here."
He led his brood and the city slickers out of the cabin to his pickup with a swagger.