It took them less than an hour to reach the car park from the river. In that time the sun had risen enough to clear the trees. Cat tossed her pack to the ground and pulled out the wet contents. She lay them on the front bonnet.

“Figure we can let them dry for a little bit,” she told Kass.

Kass nodded. “Did you have the keys?” she asked.

Cat dug through her pack. She paused, then frowned. “They should be in here somewhere. I literally tied them to it, just on the inside.”

Kass put her own pack down and walked over to join Cat. “Tied them to where?”

“Just to the elastic cord around the rim,” Cat replied. She gave up searching through and just tipped the whole thing upside down.

“You’re going to get everything dusty,” Kass observed.

“It’s already wet.”

“Yeah but . . .” Kass gave up. Cat didn’t seem to care.

“They’re not here,” Cat declared after a through study of the bag’s contents.

“Are you sure?”

“They must have come off when I was in the water, or afterwards in the forest. When I took everything out then maybe they ended up on the ground.”

“What knot did you use?” Kass asked.

Cat glared at her. “Just an overhand knot. I wasn’t expecting to go swimming okay.”

“Now what?” Kass worriedly scratched the back of one hand.

“No worries. I can fix this.” Cat replied without missing a beat. She grabbed a multi-purpose knife from the pile of her spilled out pack contents. She then looked around and found her second one. She placed one on the bonnet of the car and pulled one of the attachments out on the other one. Then she did the same with the first one. Each attachment was slightly different. One was a very long skinny rod, like a stretched out paper clip. The other had a skinny side and a wider flat side with what looked like teeth at the top.

“How many knives did you bring?” Kass asked.

“Four, counting my bigger one. I like having backups.” The bigger one that Cat was talking about was the one used for slashing branches out of the way. It was sized more like a small machete and strapped to the side of Cat’s pack, encased in a leather sheath. The other one Cat had was smaller and more like a flick knife, good for cutting food, or ropes if necessary. It was the one that got the most use. The multi-purpose knives were more useful for the tools on them. They weren’t usually as much use in the bush but they were small so Cat brought them along anyway. You never knew when you’d have to break into a car.

“It’s a good thing these are traditional locks.,” Cat mused as she got started on picking the driver’s lock.

“Is this really the best idea?” Kass asked.

Cat paused and gave her and expectant look. “You got a better one?”

Kass shook her head and Cat returned to picking the lock.

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“It’s a good thing she doesn’t have alarms either. Amanda’s stuff is always so old fashioned.” Cat smiled as the door opened.

“This is why I regularly get a new car,” Kass replied.

“Eh, an alarm might help but if someone really wants to steal your car there’s not a fancy lock that can stop them.” Cat unlocked the rest of the doors from the inside. “Worst case they’d just smash a window.”

“What about smash proof glass?”

“I’d just tow it. Deal with it at the shop. No one questions a tow truck driver.”

“Curses?”

Cat hesitated, then shrugged. “Probably costs more than most cars.”

“Well sure, okay, maybe nothing will stop a professional car thief for the average car but that’s usually not the point. Most people are more worried about a random person seeing an opportunity than planned theft.”

“In which case, a simple lock works just fine.”

“I’m sure there’s a linear scale there somewhere.”

Cat shrugged again. She shifted through Indi’s stuff which was all thrown around the boot. “I can’t see any sunscreen here.”

Kass groaned and leaned against the side of the car. “If we walked all this way . . .” she trailed off as she performed her own search of the boot.

Meanwhile Cat’s eye was caught by the pile of things she’d dumped on the ground from her own pack and it gave her another idea. She dropped to the ground and peered under the car.

“Hey Kass, seems like we didn’t need to break into the car after all.”

Kass got down on her hands and knees and peered under the car where Cat was looking. There on the ground, about an arms reach away, lay Indi’s other bottle of sunscreen. “Well you still wanted to grab some warm clothes.” Kass got back to her feet. “I’m just glad it’s actually here.”

Cat grabbed the bottle and got to her feet. She sat it down in the back of the boot. “I guess we should pack all this stuff up.”

Kass gave a soft laugh. “That mess is your job.” She paused then added, “You probably want to let the pack dry out a bit more anyway. I wonder if Amanda’s got any plastic bags in the car that you could use as a liner.”

Kass searched the car and found a couple of small bags under one of the seats. Cat grabbed some warm things from the boot and cleared her mess of stuff from the ground.

“We just have to make sure we don’t leave the sunscreen behind,” Kass commented.

“Yeah, well I’m not too keen on carrying Indi back out in the tent and I doubt she’s keen on walking out dressed like a northerner. It’s too bad we don’t have any teleporter friends. Hey, if you worked on your telekinesis you could probably lift her out pretty easily.”

Kass paused to think about it. “That’s a hell of a way. Bit tricky for a teleporter too, unless they’ve been there.”

“Yeah well, you hike in and teleport out.”

“What’s the percent of telelporter’s that can even carry another person?”

Cat shrugged. “I used to know a guy who robbed banks using teleportation.” Cat replied.

Kass frowned at her, not sure if she believed it. “Don’t most banks have visual security and facial recognition for that?”

“Not if you’re really fast.”

Kass still didn’t quite believe it. Nobody was that fast, nobody who could teleport at least. A quickfoot might be but two powers was unheard of.

They hung around for about an hour at the car then decided it was time they got going.

“Race you?” Cat teased playfully.

Kass laughed. “No.”

They locked the car and set off the same way they had originally gone when they’d first walked in.

“Wanna jog for a bit?” Cat asked Kass.

“Sure,” she agreed. It would save some time and they wouldn’t be able to move as fast later once they got into the bush again.

Cat kept a moderate pace so Kass could keep up with her long strides. If Kass was tired she didn’t say so and they jogged consistently for nearly an hour. They probably would have kept going but in order to save time they needed to take the direct route through the forest and back towards the cliffs. Kass suggested they head along the shore, downriver on the other side so that they could find the spot where they had crossed earlier. It would take longer but it meant they could set their path a lot easier.

They moved swiftly through the bush and it warmed up enough that Kass found the water next to them very tempting. She longed for another swim. By the time they found their old campsite it was almost lunchtime.

“I feel like we’ve wasted a lot of time,” Kass complained as she sat down to rest.

“We had a good pace going.”

Kass glanced skyward. “You think we’ll get back before dark?”

Cat nodded. “It took about half a day from the cliffs, and a couple hours the other side. We should get there around dinner. Most of yesterday morning was getting Indi to the cliffs.”

“We’ve gotta go back up the rope.” Kass reminded her. “And it’s still an incline.”

“Climbing up is easier. The rock may have been loose but there were decent handholds. It'll be a breeze, you'll see.”