Here’s the first chapter of The Cache: A Black Hawk Bend Mystery

My first novel, The Cache: A Black Hawk Bend Mystery, is on the cusp of publication. It will be one of the few bright spots at the end of a rotten 2020. I’m so excited to share the book with you all! In fact, here’s the first chapter to tide you over, or to help you decide whether you’d like to buy it. It will be available at Amazon first, but after about 90 days, I plan to publish wide to other stores.

Here’s to a better 2021!

Chapter 1

Renn hiked alone in the golden woods, and it annoyed her. A fluttering breeze rippled oak, maple, ash, and birch branches around her in various states of undress. Shadows played on the trail that stretched before her. Occasionally the sun twinkled through the leafy canopy.
She paused at the crest of a small rise in the trail and looked over her shoulder. Jack stood about twenty feet behind, arm extended and leaning against a slender birch trunk. His face, still tan even into October, tilted up to meet the sun, his eyes closed. He appeared to be absorbing the sun’s rays like a dog. Was he sniffing the wind, too? What a goof.
Renn brushed an orange leaf off her teal quilted vest and flipped her long ponytail behind her shoulder. Then she raised two fingers to her mouth, whistled, and turned to resume her trek. They were wasting time.
“Wait up, Renn,” called Jack.
His voice—pleading, cajoling, a little whiny—pressed a well-worn button in her psyche. Give him an inch and he would take a mile. “Catch up, Jack.”
And he did. She could hear his footfalls, crunching leaves and kicking stones on the trail, growing closer by the step.
“What about stopping to smell the roses? Ever hear of that?”
Now is when he would poke and prod, looking for a chink in her armor. He could be stubbornly persistent, but she was obliged to provide a token resistance. “Do you see any roses? There’s some moss you can sniff if you really want to.”
Jack’s stride fell into step beside hers, and she looked up to take in his sandy blond hair. Why had she invited him to come along today? Oh yes, to celebrate the milestone. This might be her last excursion for a long time. She had a strange desire to mark the occasion.
“This is kind of boring,” her friend remarked. “Have you really been doing these by yourself all year? Are we almost there?”
Renn laughed. “I knew you’d enjoy this, Jack.”
“I’m giving it a chance, I promise.” He ducked his head under a low-hanging branch, almost colliding with Renn’s in the process. “So you got your app, then you pick a …”
“Geocache.”
“Right, you pick geocache from the list. Then you just start hiking towards the GPS coordinates until you find the… geocache. I get it, you’re Captain Jack Sparrow.”
Renn pulled her phone out to check their heading. The compass on the geocaching app indicated they were right on target, about a mile away. She waved the phone at Jack before returning it to her jeans’ back pocket. “He would have gotten around a lot easier with one of these. Anyway, it’s about the journey, not the destination.”
The irony struck her even as the words left her mouth. Here she was, the most goal-oriented person either of them knew, talking about the journey. She found the first geocache in the spring of that year under a park bench a few blocks from her house. She knew, even then, that this day was inevitable. There were a dozen caches hidden around Black Hawk Bend, and this was the last one she had to find. There was a reason she hadn’t joined Jack and their friends during their Pokémon GO phase; she knew herself well enough to understand she’d have to catch ’em all.
But had she enjoyed the journey?
She slid quickly past another intruding branch and pulled it after her, releasing it like a whip into Jack’s torso. “Keep up Jack-o,” she called, daring him to keep pace with her sprint that could traverse a soccer field in mere seconds.
“No fair, Rennie,” Jack huffed as he sped up. “Wait. Up.”
She dashed through the woods, preferring the straightest path to the marked one. Autumn colors blurred around her, and branches slapped harmlessly off her body as she took shortcuts through the underbrush. She was enjoying herself, chasing this goal. In contrast to other parts of her life, responsibility didn’t weigh on her here. No checklist needed to be filled out, and no extra credit would be given. This goal was simple and raw, and she would miss it.
No sooner had Renn gotten her endorphins flowing, then she came to a sudden halt on the trail, panting with hands on hips and elbows out.
Jack barreled to a stop beside her and bent over, hands on knees. “I. Caught you. You’re slowing down.”
“You wish. Look.” Renn pointed at a tall, gleaming fence, slicing the woods in two as far as the eye could see in either direction.
And her goal lay on the other side.
She approached the fence and laced her fingers through its diamond-shaped mesh. She shook it, testing first its reality, and then its strength. This thing stood eight feet high, easy. How was she going to get to the cache?
“Come, look at this,” said Jack from a ways to her left. She stepped off the trail which wound on past the barrier and walked over to Jack. A sign, posted at eye level on the fence, read, ‘No Trespassing’.
“Who do you think put it here?” asked Jack.
Renn had not considered who; she didn’t really care.
Jack turned his back on the fence. “Good try. Let’s go back.”
Renn took out her phone as she walked back to the trail. The compass pointed right through the fence and the distance showed half a mile. She craned her neck and tried to see the bends in the trail through the colorful foliage. Stowing the phone, she tested the fence again with a shake. It was climbable. But what were the consequences? You shouldn’t have to climb fences while geocaching. Had someone bought the land after the cache was planted? If so, why was it still alive on the app? “I know, we probably should, but we’re so close.”
“It looks pretty new,” said Jack. “What if they have cameras or guards?”
He was prodding again, looking for a chink. And if he could get her to crack a smile, so much the better in his book. Annoying, but also a little endearing.
She glanced over towards Jack. He crawled, down on his hands and knees, looking over a bush.
“Someone’s coming.” He turned his head and hissed, “Let’s get out of here.”
Renn shook her head in wonder at his level of commitment to the farce. Then she started climbing the fence. It flexed back and forth as she shifted her weight, but the going wasn’t too bad. Soon, she stood with her arms thrown over the top. She just had to get her body over, but couldn’t figure out an elegant way to do it.
Something crashed through the bushes. “Ahhh, a bear!” Jack wailed.
Renn sighed and turned her head to pay him the attention he so obviously craved. He lay on his back, obscured by an enormous black and white furry shape. It licked him furiously.
“Renn, get your Bear off me, please.”
She fished a baggie from her vest pocket and tossed him a treat. “Try that. It might not compare to taste of Jack though.”
Getting over the fence was awkward, but quickly accomplished. From the other side, she fished out another treat and held it through the fence for Bear. Jack knelt on the trail, dusting himself off and wiping a plaid flannel sleeve across his face. “This is a bad idea, Renn. What about Bear? He can’t follow.”
“He’ll be fine here. Won’t you, Bear? Newfi’s are very loyal. It’s only half a mile more, Jack. Let’s go, in and out. Then I can put the caches behind me for a while.”
Jack grunted and lumbered to the fence. He climbed ponderously and complained loudly. Renn suppressed an urge to giggle. She had won this round. He landed with a thump beside her. She admonished Bear to stay and fed him a final treat.
“Let’s go, then. You’re getting a proper initiation into geocaching.”
The woods seemed different on this side of the fence. The shadows were longer, the colors more muted. An eerie silence blanketed them, and every crack of a branch under their feet pierced it like a needle. The day was getting away from her. They’d spent longer than planned on the hike, putting her schedule in danger. She’d planned for time to help mom with dinner, time for homework, and time to study for her biology test. Then half an hour to work on an ACT practice exam, if time allowed. They had about thirty minutes to find this cache and get back to their bikes.
They walked in silence now, as if a spoken word would further contaminate the space they invaded. Renn walked a few steps behind Jack, letting him blaze the trail. He might be in a bigger hurry than her to get out of here.
Jack was a true friend. They’d known each other since the second grade, rode the bus together for years. She even kissed him once after declaring that they would marry. Back then, he was one of the few kids who didn’t make fun of her Asian features, so exotic to the Midwestern kids. Boys eventually became gross, and she had her girlfriends. They lost touch for the rest of grade school. But when times got tough for her in junior high, and her friends revealed their true characters, Jack was there. And their friendship had continued on into high school.
They arrived at a small glade dominated by a tall majestic maple with burning orange leaves. Renn held her phone in front of her and turned all the way around. “We’re here. Start looking around.”
Jack kicked at piles of fallen leaves. “What are we looking for exactly?”
“Hard to say. It’s probably a small container, like a metal or plastic box, or maybe it’s a canister of some kind. Let’s check the base of this tree.”
She got down on her hands and knees and brushed away leaves all around the trunk of the maple. She found no recessed spaces to tuck away a cache, and it didn’t look like anything had been buried. Jack walked around the edge of the glade, checking the surrounding trees. Renn blew a strand of hair off her face, stood up and brushed herself off. She walked around the area again with her phone.
The GPS tracking on the app was only approximate. She’d found caches several feet away from where she thought they’d be. They might be easy to spot or well hidden. One was tucked into the blind side of an I-beam on a bridge. She found another one stuffed into the crack between boulders. One even hung in plain sight in an apple tree. Unfortunately, the container was a fake apple and they were in season, so she’d searched for an hour before noticing its glint, a little shinier than its neighbors. She hoped this wasn’t another one like that.
“I don’t think it’s here anymore,” Jack said. “Are they all this hard to find?”
“No, not all.” Renn stood in the clearing of the glade and let her gaze wander. “I guess it’s possible someone muggled it.”
“I’m sorry, are we role playing now? Is this the forest by Hogwarts with the spiders?”
Renn bent down, selected a small stick, and flung it at Jack. “Shut up, you. It’s a geocaching term. It just means that a non-geocacher stole it. I guess it came from Harry Potter, though.”
Her train of thought picked up some steam and she continued to muse, to no one in particular. “Or maybe it’s archived. No, then it wouldn’t be on the app anymore. It’s still an active cache, but there are a few DNFs.”
Jack was trying to carve something into a tree trunk with the stick she had provided. “You’re geeking out on me here, Renn. Earth to Renn.”
“Did not find, get it? And you’re calling me a geek? I’ve got three words for you Mr. Football Star.” She selected another branch, larger this time, and pointed it at him. “Kerbal. Space. Program.”
Jack clutched his heart with both hands and fell to his knees. “How could you? You wound me.”
Renn looked at Jack kneeling by a tree, then looked back to the burning maple. “Come here. I need to stand on your shoulders.”
“Oh, come on. How about I stand on your shoulders?”
“Because you’d crush my delicate bones. Now, please. I need to check the place up there where the trunk splits into three. See it?”
Jack sighed and nodded. “It’s worth a shot, I guess. But if it’s not there, we’re going, okay?”
Renn took a long look around the clearing. “Deal.”
Jack walked over to the big tree and knelt in front of it. Renn got a knee up on his shoulder, then a foot, then both feet, and finally shimmied her torso up the tree.
Jack writhed beneath her feet.
“Will you hold still?” she griped.
He muttered something about soccer cleats and stabilized enough for Renn to stand up straight. She barely stood tall enough to reach into the nook, much less see into it. She probed around blindly for something more substantial than loose leaves, stretching and pushing up onto tip-toes.
Jack howled and squirmed in pain, whether real or mock she couldn’t tell. Renn hugged the tree with her free arm, but soon lost her balance. She groped for some kind of handhold to climb up with, but the tree was too smooth and slipped under her hand. Wait. “Hang on, Jack, I got something.”
She lost her footing and started to fall back. Instinctively, she twisted to go down forwards, maybe even tuck and roll. It wasn’t pretty, but once she regained her wits, she found that she clutched a metal tin in her right hand.
Goal achieved.
Still lying on her back, she held the tin in the air and turned it around. It was gray, unadorned, and rusting in spots. Her year of geocaching was about to come to an end.
Jack yelled and leapt to his feet, frantically brushing off his jeans.
“You okay there?”
“Spider,” said Jack, checking his shirt and hair. “I hate spiders.”
“Just hang on, we’ll be out of here soon.” She sat up and worked the rusted lid off the tin. Even though Renn had found several caches so far, the excitement of opening a new one had not gone away. “Come, have a look.”
She dumped the contents onto the ground between them. Out tumbled an old Batman Pez dispenser, an Indian arrowhead, and a troll doll with wild orange hair. Renn’s experience with such things was admittedly limited, but these seemed a little more eclectic than usual.
Jack studied the troll doll and said, “We came out here for this junk?”
“It’s called swag,” said Renn. “People can bring a new item and exchange it for one in the cache. It’s a tradition. See, I brought one along.” She pulled from her pocket a set of dog tags. “These are from my old dog, Sparky. Remember her?” She ran the tags through her hands with tender care and placed them in the tin. “Now what should I take?”
Jack brushed his hand through the swag and picked up an item she hadn’t noticed. He held it up for them both to see. It was a small, blue, plastic cylinder a little over two inches long and not quite an inch in diameter. Close to one end were five rings, with numbers imprinted on them. It looked like a combination lock.
“What do you think about this?” he asked. “It looks like there might be something else inside it.”
Renn took the piece and tried to pull it open. “Yeah, but it’s locked. Well, I don’t want the ugly troll, and who knows how old that Pez is. What about the arrowhead? It’s cool, right?”
Jack’s attention fixed itself on the blue cylinder. “I vote for this. Don’t you want to know what it is?”
Renn shrugged. “Okay, we’ll take the mystery lock for the dog tags.” She brushed past the arrowhead and pulled a small notebook and pencil from among the swag. On the first available page, she signed it ‘Wren’ and added the date. “The last log entry is from about a year ago, signed by a ‘Unicorn’.” Renn showed the book to Jack, but he was still preoccupied with his new toy. She put Sparky’s dog tags in the tin with the notepad and pencil. “If you really want it, you can have it. I left my swag and signed my name. That’s all I need.” Renn resealed the container and tossed it up into the nook of the maple. On her first try, she heard it land neatly with a metallic thud.
Her thoughts turned to her dog, and then to her chores and homework. This had been a pretty good day, but it wasn’t over yet. She took a moment to redo her ponytail and check her clothes for stray leaves. “Ready to go?”
Jack had crossed to the far side of the glade and looked to be marching off in the wrong direction. She checked the compass on her app to make sure she wasn’t turned around. “Hey Jack, the fence is back this way.”
“I know, I want to see what’s over the ridge here,” he said as he hiked in the opposite direction of home.
What was this about? Wasn’t he bored with the whole geocache thing? She shrugged and followed. In about five minutes, they crested the ridge and came upon a deep ravine choked with brush and brambles. Beyond that lay a large, manicured lawn, and beyond the lawn sat a large building. She made out a loading dock and a couple of dumpsters. “What is it?”
Jack showed her the blue cylinder again, and now she could see it had an icon carved into one end.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked.
“Not a clue. Enlighten me.”
“That,” he said, pointing at the building, “is Silver Labs. And this,” he continued, pointing at the icon on the blue cylinder, “is Silver Labs, too.”