Literally Offed Read online

  Literally Offed

  Eryn Scott

  Kristopherson Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Eryn Scott

  Published by Kristopherson Press

  All rights reserved.

  www.erynwrites.com

  [email protected]

  Facebook: @erynscottauthor

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Paper and Sage Designs

  For the real-life Hamburger.

  Rest in peace, Hammy.

  Your wonderful, stylish soul will be greatly missed.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Previous books in this series…

  Also by Eryn Scott

  About the Author

  1

  I sighed as I sank back into my camping chair and kicked my feet up onto the log next to me. Cracking open the book in my lap, I let my gaze settle onto the welcoming cream-colored pages, my attention wrapping around each wonderful word.

  Birds twittered songs of sun and fresh mountain air from the surrounding trees as a gentle rush of wind flowed through the branches of the tall pines which creaked and swayed. The almost-spicy, earthy smell of a pine needle-covered forest floor, dotted with moss and mushrooms, swirled around me, kicked up by the wind.

  In the echoing silence, a loud holler made me jump. I almost dropped my book when the sound was followed by a deep, bellowed, “Keg stand!”

  Heartbeat pounding in my ears from the surprise, I craned my neck to watch the guys in the campsite next to me lift a burley young man with curly brown hair onto a silver keg and chant for him to, “Chug, chug, chug!”

  A group of what looked to be a dozen, testosterone-filled troglodytes were taking up the two campsites to my right.

  Pulling in a deep breath, I rolled my eyes. College kids, ugh.

  Sure, I was only twenty-three and had graduated a mere year ago with my bachelor’s in English—not to mention I was technically still in college, in the midst of my first year of master’s course work—but these guys felt like an altogether different species. The only similarity between us appeared to be my alma mater, based on the NWU logo stamped on a few of their Tshirts.

  When I’d requested to move to a different camping spot upon our arrival a few hours before—which just happened to be in the middle of a wrestling match between two of the larger brutes—the local ranger told me the park was full up. Alas, it looked as though we were stuck with them for the foreseeable future.

  Turning back to my book, I slipped in my earbuds. Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s album, Into the Great Wide Open drowned out the noise from the next campsite. I sighed. Petty had been one of my dad’s favorites, and he’d played the music incessantly on our family camping and road trips during my childhood. I’d never appreciated Petty’s twangy charm as much as I did now Dad was gone. He’d passed away just about three years ago from a heart attack, and I missed him every single day.

  As Tom and the band settled into the chorus of “Learning to Fly,” I returned to the pages of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I smiled as I read a particularly imperious line describing how Thoreau was certain he’d never learned a single thing from an older person. While I didn’t agree with the author’s sentiment, I could picture my boyfriend, Alex, reading that line and using it as further proof of what a hack the man was.

  We were reading Walden together—it had been one of my dad’s favorites, alongside Civil Disobedience—and from the narrowed looks and mumbling I’d observed from my boyfriend so far, it was safe to say Alex was not enjoying the transcendentalist’s most famous work. Not that it was a huge surprise. My focused, practical, altruistic boyfriend didn’t have a self-serving bone in his body. In addition to being a sort of old soul, Alex also had an intense respect for the older generations, especially his father, a detective in our small college town of Pine Crest. It was going to be hard for him to look past Thoreau’s wording to see the same inspiring message about simplistic living that I saw, that my dad had seen. Which was all well and good. We’d disagreed on books before. But I loved him for continuing to read and discuss with me, even when he wasn’t thrilled about my selection.

  I was only partway into the next Petty song when my friends returned from their trip to the restrooms down the road. Plucking out my earbuds, I paused my music as Liv and Carson walked up.

  “We’re gone for two minutes and Pepper’s already reading,” Carson said. He tsked.

  Liv shook her head, not surprised. She and I had been roommates for five years now. The girl knew curling up with a good book was my go-to activity, no matter where I was.

  Raising one eyebrow, Carson glanced over at our rowdy neighbors. The curly-haired man who’d been upside down minutes before was now stumbling blearily through their camp, like a drunken bowling ball knocking over folding-chair pins. He caught my gaze and winked sloppily in my direction, before collapsing onto their picnic table.

  “Maybe we should head over there. Looks like a party.” Carson chuckled.

  Liv and I snorted in unison.

  “I’d rather chew the bark off all these trees,” Liv said flatly. “The rangers couldn’t move us, then?”

  I sighed. “Nope. The campground is full up because of Labor Day. They said some people only stay one night, so we might be able to move tomorrow, but until then, we’re stuck with the keg-stand crew.”

  “Let’s cross our fingers we get a new spot before Maggie, Josh, and the kids come out tomorrow night.” Liv eyed the group, now setting up a ping pong table.

  I seconded the sentiment. No way did I want my five-year-old niece and two-year-old nephew to witness college culture at its least refined until, well… until they went to college, if I could help it.

  “Where’s Valdez?” Carson asked, glancing around our two-tent campsite for Alex.

  Suppressing a smile, I said, “Went to buy firewood at the ranger’s station.” He’d been so cute, rolling up his sleeves and putting on some work gloves to go out searching for wood before I’d had a chance to tell him they sold bundles.

  Carson’s face fell a bit.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be back.” Liv patted Carson’s chest and chuckled.

  Alex and Carson had grown pretty close over the past year. And while they were very different—Carson was goofy and the life of most parties while Alex was more subdued and contemplative—they’d become the brother each had never had.

  Just then the crunching of tires on the pine cone-spotted gravel sounded behind us. I was about to put on my most narrow expression and yell at our neighbors for parking in one of our spots, when I recognized the old yellow Volvo being thrown into park.

  Liv sucked in a quick breath. “Oh no.”

  I looked back at her, shoving the words, “Liv, what did you do?” through clenched teeth.

  Nate Newton—or as many of my sister’s friends called him, Naked Newt—unfolded his lanky body from the old car. Nate owned the local café Liv and I frequen
ted, Bittersweet.

  My best friend pretended to smile and wave, but said, “I forgot I’d mentioned the trip to him,” keeping her mouth frozen so he wouldn’t see us talking.

  Carson sighed. “Babe, when are you going to learn the man takes everything you say seriously? Probably remembers it word for word or writes it down in some creepy journal after you leave the coffee shop.” Carson turned his hello nod into a shake of his head as he faced his girlfriend. “I’m gonna go help Alex with that firewood.”

  Just as Carson turned to leave, someone else climbed out of the Volvo, surprising us even more than the car’s arrival had.

  “Victoria?” I said aloud in my shock, recognizing one of Nate’s baristas.

  The meek young woman peeked out from behind her curtain of dark hair and flashed the briefest of smiles at me. Was it a smile? It could’ve just as easily been a painful grimace. Had Nate kidnapped her and brought her here against her will?

  I walked forward, looking for any signs of bonds or a struggle. Her hands were free, however, and she clutched her elbows as she wrapped her arms around her stomach, hunching forward in her normal posture.

  Seeing Victoria was unharmed, I turned to Nate. “How’d you guys…? What…” I bit my lip. “Hi.”

  Nate glanced at Liv, behind me, who began to explain. “I must’ve forgotten to mention it, Peps. I was in Bittersweet the other day grabbing a mocha from Nate when he told me the good news.”

  Beaming, Nate said, “I’m dating a younger woman.” He gestured to Victoria in a this one, here kind of creepy Vanna White way. Victoria blinked—happily?—at him through her hair. “I’m officially robbing the cradle,” Nate added, unnecessarily.

  Shaking my head, I said, “Nope. We don’t—let’s not…” I pulled in a deep breath. Talking to Nate about socially-acceptable ways to word things was a constant struggle. Plus, Victoria had just graduated from Northern Washington University, the college in our hometown of Pine Crest, which meant she was probably about twenty-two. Nate was my sister’s age, twenty-eight. “Six years difference between two adults is completely acceptable,” I finished.

  “I was so happy for them, I ended up telling Nate about our camping trip,” Liv chimed in.

  “And here we are.” Nate sidled next to Victoria, wrapping a spider-like arm around her. The girl wasn’t short, about the same height as me, but she only came up to Nate’s chest, he was so tall.

  We all stood there nodding silently for a few moments, looking around at the campsite. Feeling quite sure my fake smile was beginning to fade, I decided to ask some questions to fill the awkward void.

  “You just graduated, right? I asked Victoria. “Any plans?”

  She dipped her head. “Yeah.”

  We waited quietly for her to continue, but nothing came. I sighed and looked around at the trees. So much for conversation. Luckily, it was then—when the silence was growing thick and desperate—that I heard the guys’ voices as they returned.

  “Well, if you two want to unload your stuff, feel free to pull up a piece of forest.” I turned and walked over to the guys, Liv hot on my heels.

  Hamburger, my Boston Terrier, trotted alongside Alex, sticking close to his left heel. When she saw me, her mouth pulled into a big doggy grin and her stubby tail started to wiggle.

  “Heel, Ham,” Alex said, sternly.

  Hammy glanced up at Alex, but stayed with the walking master despite her excitement, just like he’d taught her.

  Frowning, I said, “Aww, you’re no fun.”

  He smirked over the bundle of wood he held, then gave me a wink. “I’m also the reason she can walk without a leash.”

  The man was right, he’d worked hard with Hamburger on her walking etiquette. I appreciated it, being an absolute pushover with training—anytime she looked at me with those big brown eyes, I folded. But every once in a while, I just wanted my dog to run to me as if she hadn’t seen me in years—even though it had only been half an hour.

  Reading my mind, Alex said, “Go get her, Hammy,” releasing the obedient dog.

  Ham’s muscles bunched up all at once and then she shot toward me, mouth open, tongue flying out the side. I met the black-and-white dog-bullet with wiggling fingers and kissy noises. She snorted and cut wild circles around me. Then, as if I had never existed, she pounced on a particularly large stick and began wrestling the bark from it. I laughed; I loved that dog. While she was distracted, I clipped her harness into the leash line we’d strung through our campsite.

  Alex dropped the firewood next to the stone pit then went to greet Nate and Victoria. He waved and said he was glad to see them. When he came back over, Alex eyed Liv, shaking his head at her. Carson must’ve filled him in on the reason we had company. Nate and Victoria were nice and all. I mean, Victoria had a reputation for being the girl who didn’t talk and Nate, well, he talked all too much and said all the wrong things, it seemed. But I decided their presence only made things merrier.

  The sun began to set, so we busied ourselves with making a fire and getting dinner ready. Nate pulled out a hunting knife which flipped open, revealing a blade three sizes larger than we needed to help cut the hotdog packaging. In a single snick, the blade flicked its way straight into my nightmares.

  We all shied away from the scary blade, then convinced Nate to fold it up and put it away. Once it was safely tucked back into his bag, we laughed and talked about our jobs and the quirky townspeople of Pine Crest. All the while, our rowdy neighbors played what seemed to be a full-on tournament-style drinking game.

  After roasting our own hotdogs over the fire we made S’mores, contesting who had browned the most perfect “mallow” before squashing them between graham crackers and gooey chocolate. Hammy’s leash turned out to be more of a weaponized clothesline than a convenient way for her to move around. Each time she ran from one end of the campsite to the other, she would either take someone’s legs out from under them, nearly decapitate someone, or knock over half the supplies we had stacked on the picnic table.

  So her shorter leash was wrapped around the leg of my camp chair and she was sitting in my lap by the time the sun had set, and we began telling scary stories. Carson started, with a creepy—and mostly plagiarized—tale of clowns nefariously luring children into dark spaces. Liv went next, with a chilling rendition of the time last spring when she’d been drugged, kidnapped, and almost drowned by a serial killer in our small town. I shivered and pulled Hammy close as I remembered the whole thing vividly. Victoria—not surprisingly—had nothing to say, so it was Nate who went next.

  “One night in an eerie, dark forest, a group of friends decided to have a campout.”

  Between the chill in the air now that the sun was gone and the dry, crackly way Nate’s voice mixed with the sounds of the fire, I pulled Hammy closer.

  Nate continued, the orange flickering light moving across his face like something alive. “But calling them friends may have been going too far. One of them was an outsider, a loner. The group only invited him so they wouldn’t feel bad, but everyone knew he wasn’t actually welcome.”

  My heartbeat sped up and began to hammer in my eardrums. I widened my eyes and met Liv’s mirrored expression across the fire. Her worried glances, flicking between Carson and me, told me she was wondering if Nate knew we hadn’t expected him to show up this weekend.

  “The outcast camper was tired of everyone always treating him like he didn’t deserve to know the truth, like he didn’t deserve to be part of the group. But the truth was, they were right to keep him at a distance. He was a sick and twisted soul and one night, in the middle of snores and deep, measured breaths, he snapped. Before any of them could bat an eye, he’d slashed every one of their throats.” Nate swished his hand through the air. “One, two, three, four.”

  Liv jumped at each one. Hammy yelped as I hugged her too tight. All I could picture was the firelight reflecting off the sharp blade of the switchblade I knew was tucked in Nate’s bag.

  Nate let
his head fall back in a sinister laugh, then he put a hand on each knee. “I love camping. Well, I’m beat. I think I’m going to hit the air mattress. Goodnight!” He stood and proffered his hand toward Victoria. “M’lady?” Victoria waved goodnight as they headed toward their tent.

  Audible gulps sounded around the fire: one, two, three, four.

  2

  Alex placed his hands behind his head as he lay back into his pillow. “So much for relaxing,” he said with a sigh as the sounds of the group next to us spilled into our tent. Hammy was already snoring away, nestled in her bed in the corner of our tent.

  I sat on the edge of the air mattress and pulled my socks off, shaking my head. “You almost have to laugh, really.”

  The group of guys in the next campsite picked that moment to let out a round of whoops and expletives. Even in the dim light of our small camp lantern, I could see Alex’s jaw tighten.

  “Or not…” I said with a grimace.

  As if they had heard Alex’s unhappy thoughts and were taking the warning seriously, our neighbors quieted down. I clicked off the lantern and snuggled into my sleeping bag next to Alex, laying my head on his chest. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me tighter. A twig snapped outside our tent and I jumped. I could feel Alex tense next to me. My eyes scanned the tent for any shadows, especially tall, lanky, Nate-shaped ones.

  “You don’t really think Nate’s story was about us, do you?” I whispered as a shadow danced across the fabric of our tent. It was definitely a person, and they definitely seemed to be sneaking, but it was hard to tell how far or close they were based on the distortion from the different light sources.

  “We’re fine, Peps.” Alex sniffed out a short laugh, but I caught how he had paused for a second, waiting until the shadow had moved away before responding.