Spy School Out West

Chapter 4

Writing romantic stuff or stuff where one of the characters is vulnerable (i,e knocked out) isn't really my wheelhouse and I've never done it before (this is my first time writing outside of my school Microsoft acc lol) so please bear with me in the future.

Next chapter's ETA is September 17th. Thank you for reading!

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Ben's POV
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Circle Z Ranch
Bozeman, MT
June 3
1745 hours
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It turned out that Balto wasn't completely alone. She'd brought along a very skittish-looking woman who took both of their bags to the office by the cattle grate. Balto started walking up to us, her hair bouncing behind her. She was dressed kind of like Erica: heavily trendy but still heavily cowgirl. She wore a sunny yellow shirt, a jean jacket, a huge belt with an ornate buckle, and blue jeans. Conspicuously absent was her cowboy hat, replaced by the same faded blue Pitt Panthers cap she'd been wearing in the picture. I found myself wishing I'd taken my cowboy hat and boots out so I could be prepared for her.

As she approached, Cyrus quickly went back into spy mode. "Remember, Ben's primary, so let him do the talking," he said, as though he hadn't yet rubbed it into everyone's face enough yet. "And Mike, quit sitting like that. It makes it look like you're in love with her, which you're not, right?" Mike muttered negatively and adjusted his posture. Cyrus motioned for me to start talking, so I gave spinning more school gossip my best shot.

She walked up to us all friendly, smiling widely. "Hey!" She said, sounding like she'd just caught an old friend at a baseball game, rather than approached a group of strangers who were secretly government agents-in-training plotting to flip her to work for justice.

I stopped describing my bro Ryan's most recent basketball game and pretended to notice her for the first time. "Um, hi," I said, doing my best to sound inviting and failing. And if that wasn't bad enough, I accidentally dropped my phone onto her cowboy boot. Then, it fell through the wood floors of the porch.

Smooth, Erica mouthed, and I knew she was upset despite looking about as concerned as a puppy upon discovering where the kibble was kept.

Balto is nicer than I could ever give her credit for, because, despite my social fumbling, she just laughed sweetly. "It's okay, we can just ask the staff to get it later! Are you guys here on vacation?"

This was an obvious question, but I still appreciated the effort she was going through to seem welcoming. "Yeah, we're staying in one of the cabins," I said, then grimaced at my own stupidity.

Balto nodded thoughtfully, like I just said something insightful about politics or science. "Oh my gosh, me too! I have that big one down there," she said, pointing to the behemoth at the end of the path.

"Wow, that looks really nice," I said, as if I was just seeing it for the first time. "Are you here with your family? Is that why you need that whole place?"

"No, just Courtney. She's like my mom. My dad wouldn't be caught dead this far north," she said.

Just then, two seven-year-old girls danced around the edge of the lodge and started to ring a massive bell. Everyone started pouring out of the cabins and stampeded towards the lodge. "Come on, I'll show you where we eat dinner!" Balto said excitedly. We all followed her, scared of getting caught up in the stampede of entitled rich people and their kids.

Dinner was served on big platters that were passed around the table. The teen table was off in its own little corner, and besides my friends and Balto, there were six other kids who I was pretty sure were siblings, or maybe cousins. Cyrus had struck up a conversation with another grandpa. When I passed them on the way to the bathroom, I heard them talking about the best way to bait a fly-fishing hook. I almost laughed. I was quite sure Cyrus had never baited a hook before, unless perhaps he was in a survival situation in the middle of hostile wilderness trying to rescue  political prisoners.