"So we'll be roughing it for four days."

"Not roughing it," Ned protests. "We have an air mattress. And a stove."

"And it is our seventh anniversary." She grins. "Should I be upset that you didn't just book us a hotel room?"

"Did you want to just get a hotel room?" He darts a glance at her, his eyebrows raised.

She chuckles. "They get boring," she admits, stretching in the passenger seat. "There's only so much room service and pay-per-view movie watching I can stand."

"See? This way we can focus on the really important stuff."

"You must mean the sex," she drawls.

They are on a long stretch of highway, have been on the highway for hours. At the lake, over the holiday weekend, there would be other couples, other distractions, but they are headed for wilderness. Wilderness and long hikes and tiring each other out with sex before sleeping, curled together, on an air mattress.

It sounds almost perfect.

"Can we get some chocolate bars and marshmallows before we completely leave civilization?"

He smiles at the windshield. "Sure."

--

"Ned."

"Five more minutes," he slurs, shoving his face back into the crook of his arm.

"Ned," Nancy hisses impatiently, again, and he's jolted back awake by the sound of her shoving the magazine back into her gun.

It's the first full morning of their long weekend and she's loading a gun.

Ned rolls onto his back, moving his arm up just a little, still blocking out most of the light, so he can see her. Her shoulder blades vanish under the wide straps of a blue tank top and he can see the band of flesh between its hem and the elastic of her panties. If not for their flight and the very long hike up here, and his utter exhaustion, she'd be wearing far less right now.

But, as she pointed out to him, they'd have plenty of time to have sex. There is no timetable, not really; they just have to keep track of where they are and make it back to the airport for their flight, four days from now.

Besides, they haven't ever tried out an air mattress before.

He's just reaching toward her, intent on changing that, when he hears the gunshots, the same gunshots that woke him.

Ned sits up, immediately, the sleeping bag falling to pool at his waist, exposing his bare chest to the cooler air. "What the hell is that? We're in the middle of nowhere and it isn't hunting season."

She shrugs. "Maybe not legally..."

"What, you think someone's up here playing Oregon Trail?"

She turns her face toward him for a moment, smirking a little, but her focus isn't lost on him. She's dying to go out there and see what's going on. Even in their dim little two-person tent, he can see that gleam in her eye.

"With an automatic? I don't remember that in the equipment on Oregon Trail."

Even so, even though Ned hasn't had so much as the first cup of coffee, he hears the branches snapping first, and motions Nancy to stay back. She sets her mouth, but obeys, keeping her gun at the ready while he reaches slowly for the zipper.

Which slides up of its own volition, a hand sliding in to pull the flap back and reveal a face.

"Frank?"

"Hardy?" Ned lets out a low, incredulous groan. "No fucking way."