Chapter 4

Tim came awake suddenly.

Something very big was walking around near his bush.

...and it wasn't a person.

There was just enough light to tell him that sunrise was near. Maybe the sun was up but it hadn't filtered in through the trees yet. Tim stayed quiet as the big thing continued to move around. Then, he heard something snuffling at the bush. He shifted his head just enough to see what it was.

That was a big nose.

It pushed further into the bush and Tim tried to pull away. He could see, now, just what this was. A bear. A big bear. A really big bear. He swallowed hard and tried not to move.

There's a bear...and he smells me. Go away, bear. Go away. I'm not interesting at all. I don't taste good. I'm not worth it. Just move on.

Tim was terrified. Sure, he had the knife he'd taken off Brady, but he was pretty sure it would do him no good against a bear, particularly not one of this size. Was this a grizzly bear? He'd never actually seen one close to, but this was one big bear.

Suddenly, the bear's face was only a foot or two away from him. Tim could see the bear's eyes. His heart started thudding against his chest as he prayed that the bear would move on.

For far too long, the bear just sat there, breathing on him. Then, finally, after an eternity, the bear let out a noisy, smelly exhalation and pulled his face out of the bush. There were some snuffling sounds and then it moved on.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Tim thought. Still, he didn't move for a long time, making sure that the bear was really gone.

His heart was beating so quickly that he couldn't believe that it wasn't audible to the entire park. He tried to keep his breathing quiet.

"You're okay, Tim. You're fine. Nothing to worry about. The bear is gone. Just relax."

Still, when he finally crawled out of the bush, he was shaking. His first real encounter with Yellowstone wildlife. He was pretty sure that the bear had known he was in there and had simply been uninterested in getting pokies in his face to investigate more closely.

Thank goodness the bush had no berries on it. Tim hadn't thought of that.

Then, he felt something under his shirt. He pulled it off quickly and saw a number of bugs crawling around on his chest. He made an undignified sound and began brushing them off as fast as he possibly could. It didn't help his heart rate in the slightest.

Then, he shivered. He checked his shirt for more unwelcome denizens and then put it back on. Yuck. Gross. He wasn't afraid of bugs, but having them crawling all over him wasn't pleasant at all. He let out a loud whoosh of air and refocused on other things. Carefully, he opened the pack and did a more thorough check of what he had.

It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't what he'd hoped.

There were a couple of boxes of granola bars, a sealed package of jerky...and only one bottle of water. It was a fairly large bottle, but not big enough to get him through a full day of walking.

"Well, maybe I won't be walking all day. Maybe I'll find my way to a trail and I'll find someone who isn't trying to kill me. That would be nice."

Knowing his luck, though, Tim figured he didn't have much chance of that. He was more likely to run into the people who were surely coming after him than a kindly hiker or a park ranger.

"Am I even still in the park?" Tim asked himself.

He really had no way of knowing. No way of telling just how far they'd walked after capturing him and he didn't know what direction he'd gone after escaping. Oh, well. He couldn't worry about that. He needed to worry about getting away from the people likely wanting to kill him.

One last shiver and he repacked the backpack and started walking. He had a thought that if he could get up to a higher vantage point, he might be able to figure out a direction to head. That meant finding a mountain. ...and maybe if he found a mountain, he'd find people who could help him.

"Right."

He kept walking.

The trees were nice and all, but it was really frustrating to have no idea where he was going. He really wished that he could figure out which direction he should go.

After what felt like a couple of hours, he was relieved to find a meadow or something of that nature. An open space with no trees, anyway. He ran to it and looked up.

...and then, finally realized why it had never seemed very bright.

Clouds.

"Really?" he said to the sky. "Really?"

These weren't thin clouds that allowed one to see the sun. They were thick, dark clouds...maybe heralding a storm.

"Great."

Well, staying out in the open wasn't going to help him, and he remembered the safety tips from when he'd been in scouts. If there was a chance of a storm, it was stupid to go to high ground. Of course, he'd been taught to stay where he was so that he could be found more easily...but fat chance of that happening with a bunch of guys after him. Tim decided that he'd better try to make his way away from here. It wouldn't be a good idea to stay in one place for too long.

He started walking again. Things weren't great, but they weren't too bad. He could handle this.

Famous last words.

He took a wrong step.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Delilah stared at her computer screen without seeing a thing. While it was nice to know that other people were worrying about Tim, too, it also made it more obvious that this could be really serious.

"Delilah."

What if Tim was really hurt out there? What if he'd fallen into a geyser or something ridiculous like that? What if he'd got in an accident while driving around the park?

"Delilah!"

She jumped and looked up.

"What is it, Lauren?"

Lauren handed her a sheet of paper. Delilah looked at it.

A ticket to fly to Bozeman. She looked back up.

"Lauren..."

"Don't start protesting. I've already paid for the tickets. You have time to go home and pack. If there's nothing wrong with him, you can reimburse me." She smiled.

"Thanks, Lauren. I don't know what to say."

"You can say that you owe me big time and go catch your plane so that I haven't wasted my money."

Delilah grabbed Lauren's hand and squeezed it tightly before heading out of the building as fast as her wheelchair could take her.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Tim let out a string of swear words that would have made Tony proud. Then, he grimaced and looked at his leg...or rather, his ankle. One wrong step and he had ended up falling into a creek. So now, he was muddy and wet and even more dirty than he had been...and worse, his ankle ached like there was no tomorrow.

He massaged it a few times, hoping that it wasn't broken, that he'd just wrenched it and it would feel better after a few minutes.

"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!" he said through gritted teeth.

Of all the things that could make his situation worse, an injury was close to the top of the list.

"Is it broken?" he asked himself.

He wouldn't really know for sure unless he tried to put some weight on it. It hurt. He knew that much. Probably the best he could hope for was a bad sprain. He clenched his teeth and crawled out of the creek, back up onto the bank. He shivered a little in the breeze that had come up.

"Okay. I need to see if I can walk on this."

He knew it would hurt, but it was a matter of how much it would hurt.

He took a breath, got to his knees and then, pressed his left foot into the ground and stood. He leaned a little against a nearby tree and chanced putting some weight on his right foot.

It hurt like the dickens, but it wasn't broken. Cold comfort, but it was better than nothing. He would be in big trouble if his pursuers caught up with him. He wasn't running.

"Okay."

The breeze increased to a wind.

"No. No. No." Tim looked up through the trees, trying to find the sky. It was getting darker. "No rain. Please, no rain."

The wind continued to strengthen and there was a definite chill in the air...which didn't help Tim feel any warmer after landing in the creek. Instead of trying to keep moving, he decided to try to find someplace that would offer protection from the rain that looked to be coming.

Limping heavily, he started walking, much more slowly than he had been before. Each step hurt, but he persisted. It was probably still daytime, but it was getting darker as the clouds thickened. He'd read that storms could come up suddenly in Yellowstone. It looked as though it wasn't an exaggeration. This time, he wasn't looking for a clearing. He was looking for a good bush or an overhang or a cave...or a person who would take him to a cabin. That would be nice.

The first raindrops began to fall only a few minutes later. The wind was now whipping the trees around. That could be dangerous. Tim looked around for someplace safe and moderately protected.

He saw a bush? A tree? He wasn't sure, but the leaves looked like maple leaves. There were a lot of branches growing together. He thought he might be able to get some protection there. So he made his slow, painful way over to the tree/bush. He pushed his way in among the leaves as the rain began in earnest. He searched through the pack again and came up with an emergency rain poncho. Perfect. He spread the poncho up over his head, bracing it on the branches. Then, he pulled the thin blanket out and wrapped himself up in it as the rain and wind continued. He dug out a couple more granola bars and then, he realized that he would be out of water if he took one more swallow.

But there was all this water falling from the sky...and he was catching quite a bit of it on the poncho.

Carefully, he rearranged the poncho to funnel the water into the bottle. It worked pretty well if Tim said so himself. All in all, while he was miserable, aching, wet, in danger and alone, he wasn't too bad off at the moment. He had managed to keep the worst of the rain off him. He was starting to feel a little warmer than he had been. He'd eaten and his supply of water was slowly being replenished.

...and it was unlikely that those pursuing him would push on through the storm. They struck him as pretty practical. He'd be surprised if the man they had been dealing with was still alive. He was a danger and as long as they got their money, he was also extraneous. Tim himself would be killed if they could find him, and they'd try because he was a witness and he could identify them, but they also knew he was outnumbered and so it made more sense that they would take their time and do it right.

Tim just hoped that they hadn't been able to track him. He hadn't noticed any real tracking skills in the group, but that didn't mean they didn't have them. The rain would help obscure his path if they had been trying to follow him.

He shifted around and tried to get comfortable...or at least semi-comfortable. His ankle was still throbbing and he tried to get it into a position where it would hurt less. Really, he needed to elevate it, but there wasn't space in there to do anything like that. He'd rather stay dry than elevate his ankle.

After a while, he started to relax a little bit. His water bottle was almost full. He took a quick drink and then set it up again.

Tim tried to flex his ankle a little. It still hurt.

So he leaned back against the branches and looked up at the poncho, at the water pooling up in it and then running down into his bottle.

How am I going to get out of this?

That was the big question because there was no way he could keep this up, especially not with his ankle. So he had to make some kind of plan...and unfortunately, that plan couldn't really involve staying right here where he was. He wasn't on a trail. No one knew where he was. Someone was probably trying to find him, and not good people. Even if he could hunker down somewhere and wait, this would not be the place for it.

If the storm ended and the clouds went away during the night, Tim figured that he could at least figure out directions. In terms of finding someone who might have his best interests at heart, north was probably his best bet. In order to get north of the lake, they would have had to walk a long way east or west first since they hadn't seen anyone. That meant he was probably still south of the lake. Heading north would eventually get him to a road or something like that. It would be a slow trek if his ankle didn't feel any better, but it was better than waiting to be found by people who didn't have his best interests at heart.

He started feeling drowsy and his eyes closed.