The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mark Harper had gone nearly an hour without flirting with Hannah, and it was starting to bug him. He hoped to get in several more clever bits of subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo before the day ended a few hours from now. Then he could head home and take his three kids out trick-or-treating. Later he could have sex with Chloe, since of course his wife was the only woman he would have sex with.

And of course, Hannah was not the only reason he lived for working on the Haunted Forest Tour. It wasn’t often that a cryptozoologist got such a high-profile, well-paying position. He thoroughly enjoyed cataloguing the new life forms they discovered inside the forest, and Hannah’s presence was a mere bonus.

God, he wanted to do her. It could be in a tender romantic manner or a rough animalistic manner, quietly or noisily, but he wanted to do her.

But as she stepped into their shared office, all thoughts of bending her over his desk and pounding away vanished. She looked more stressed out than he’d ever seen her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, standing up.

“The shit has hit a million different fans. Main control room. Now.”

He followed her out of the office. “Seriously, what happened?”

“Two of the cars haven’t returned. One lost power completely and the other one went out of control.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She turned around and glared at him. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“Whoa, calm down. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“We have eighty-four people unaccounted for. All we know is that the trams collided. After that, we lost contact with the second vehicle as well.”

“How is that possible?” Mark demanded. “Those things don’t just lose power. They’ve got backup generators, redundant communication systems, fail-safes out the ass… unless a nuclear missile plowed into one of them, there should be no way to completely lose track of them. There are military tanks that are less secure than our tram cars.”

“You’re preaching to the choir.”

“Is Booth flipping out?”

“Nobody knows where he is.”

“What?”

Hannah nodded. “Nobody can reach him.”

Mark was so dumbfounded that for a long moment he couldn’t even speak. How the hell did the head honcho of H. F. Enterprises go AWOL at a time like this? Unless…

“You think it’s sabotage? Maybe somebody kidnapped him?”

“I’m not even going to pretend to speculate.” She resumed walking down the hallway toward the main control room.

“So what’s Steve doing?”

Steve Bradford was second-in-command at H.F. Enterprises, and the guy who presided over most of the day-to-day operations of the company. Mark liked him a lot. He was basically the rich kid who liked to share his playground with his employees, and as corporate superiors went, Mark had never had a better one.

“He’s called in the Security Detail.”

Mark nodded his head. The Security Detail was a troop of heavily-armed soldiers with the best body armor around and enough firepower to take over a small nation, at least according to Steve. They were all familiar with the Haunted Forest and had done duty inside of it. They were the guys who kept the construction crews safe when it came time to put down more tracks. Screw the National Guard. He’d bank on the Security Detail every time. The guy who was in charge of them, Hal Ordover, was as scary as half the monsters Mark had seen. Only half of them, true, but still an intimidating man.

Mark and Hannah walked into the main control center. Steve sat there, his thinning hair soaked with sweat. The other H.F. Enterprises employees in the room spoke in hushed, panicked whispers, and several of them frantically typed on keyboards. At least half of the monitors were blank.

Moments later, Ordover came into the room dressed in his heavy armor and carrying what looked like a howitzer on his shoulder. Steve moved in his direction quickly, not even acknowledging that Mark had joined them. Mark might have been offended under some other wildly different circumstances, but not these.

“We’re ready to go in.” Hal’s voice was as gravelly as ever, as if he’d been gargling with hot sand. Every time the man spoke, Mark wanted to offer him a cough drop, but it was just his natural voice, which seemed to feel the need to be as harsh as the rest of him.

Steve nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders simultaneously in a gesture that looked uncomfortable as hell. “We’ve got to get those people out of there. Let’s do this. Be safe, Hal.”

Ordover nodded and turned away, already speaking into the com-link he wore on his head. As he walked, he slipped his helmet in place. The uniforms were red, white, and blue, not your standard-issue military olive. Made them stand out better while they stood guard over the workers in the forest, giving the often-reluctant but well-paid employees a better sense of security.

Mark watched the security team’s progress on one of the working monitors as they left the western side of the building and marched toward the three trucks meant to take them to the tram line.

The oversized trucks were gone from sight within four minutes.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Hannah’s voice was very small.

Mark looked at the entrance into the Haunted Forest and shook his head. He had his doubts. “Christ, I really hope so.”