Fifteen

The campfire, the ninja minstrels, the smoke in his eyes, the fire, Rich looked around him and added the sudden disappearance of Dave to his inventory. The brakes in his mind slammed his trip to a crushing halt. These two panicked ninja minstrels were in fact their maligned campground neighbors. They were the athletic looking couple they had been poking fun at eons ago – eons ago when Rich and his friends were setting up camp. The cycling couple they poked fun at eons ago before they came up to the cliff – eons ago when Dave started the roaring campfire. The roaring campfire Dave started eons ago. The roaring campfire next to which Dave set up the propane camp stove. Dave… he had completed the equation, solved for X and had the linear function laid out straight from their journey’s beginning in Tucson to an orange jumpsuit in Federal Prison.

Rich broke into a run, straight down the ridge, ignoring the switchbacks. Following close on his heels were the sooty ninja minstrel-cycling couple and Billy. Dave had undergone a separate similar deductive epiphany and took a different course of action.