Free Merit Badge Murder by Leslie Langtry Page A

us. Of course, almost all of them were men…
    I started to talk to the girls as they sat on the ground, waiting. But Lana interrupted me.
    "We need tinder, kindling, and fuel!" She bubbled enthusiastically as she held up examples of the three that were so perfect I had a hard time believing those twigs actually existed in nature.
    "And we need a lot of all three of them. Who wants to help me gather the tinder, kindling, and fuel?" Lana asked.
    Every single hand shot up into the air. And that included the parents who were with us. For a second, I thought I saw Kelly's hand twitching. I put my hand on her arm to keep it down, just in case.
    Lana divided the girls into teams, each with strict orders to bring back one of the three kinds of sticks. Then she marched them into the woods with storm trooper precision and led them off to collect the wood. I was not surprised to see the dads following her.
    "Who's that?" One of the Kaitlyn's moms asked. Her eyes were glazed, and she was certainly in Lana's thrall. No real shock there. Lana had that effect on women, if they didn't have their men around, that is. I tried to remember this mom's name, but to be honest, I really didn't interact with the parents much.
    "Her name is Lana." I looked at Kelly and she shrugged. "She's with WAGGS—the World Association of Girl Guides." Which wasn't totally a lie, necessarily. "She's in the U.S. to work with different scout troops."
    The mom nodded, her eyes still trained on the woods. "That's nice. Gives the girls access to someone from another country…" she said absently.
    I nodded, making the lie true. The mom stood there, gazing at the woods while Kelly and I set up the ropes for knot tying. To be fair, it was kind of nice having an extra pair of hands even if they were Lana's. Kelly and I usually felt like we were in over our heads. Fourteen girls was a lot to work with. Maybe between the three of us, we could actually get through a whole meeting minus the usual chaos and bleeding.
    "Come on girls!" Lana shouted cheerfully. She emerged from the woods, followed by the girls in two perfect lines, each carrying a load of wood.
    My jaw dropped open. The girls weren't chattering. They weren't goofing off and trying to hit each other. They didn't try to eat the sticks. They were listening. What alternate universe was this? Lana didn't even have to use the universal quiet sign. Not even once!
    We stared in awe as the girls followed Lana to the fire pit and unloaded their wood into three neat piles—one for each size stick. Then she selected two of the Kaitlins to fetch a bucket of water and find a rake. I noticed the mom next to me was grinning with pride that her daughter had been selected for this seemingly amazing honor.
    Lana somehow wordlessly got the girls to surround the fire pit in a perfect circle. No girl was left out. Every girl was spaced completely evenly. And none of them spoke. It was like watching a Soviet propaganda movie on manners.
    We watched in gaping silence, Kelly, the mom, the random dads, and me were all hypnotized by Lana's performance.
    "She's really good," the mom murmured to me.
    On a cue that I didn't see (or that happened under some sort of collective group mind control), every girl picked up in an orderly manner, a handful of tinder, kindling, and logs and took them to her spot in the circle. Each girl then knelt down and under Lana's instructions, built a perfect teepee-framed base.
    Kelly and I looked at each other in shock. We couldn't even speak.
    Lana reviewed fire safety with the girls as if she was Smokey the freakin' Bear. The girls listened in a way second grade girls never listen, and I wondered for a moment if they'd been secretly replaced with Russian little people. I've seen a lot of bizarre things throughout my career as a spy, from a man being killed by his own elbow to an otter that delivered secret messages, but I'd never seen anything like this.
    "Okay girls! Now we start the fire! Katelynn! You