The Novels of Nora Roberts Volume 5

Black Hills

The Search

Chasing Fire

Nora Roberts

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE - HEART

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

PART TWO - HEAD

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART THREE - SPIRIT

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

ALSO BY NORA ROBERTS

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

Sanctuary

Homeport

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

The Reef

River’s End

Jewels of the Sun

Carolina Moon

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

The Villa

From the Heart

Midnight Bayou

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

Chesapeake Blue

Birthright

Remember When

(with J. D. Robb)

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

Northern Lights

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Blue Smoke

Red Lily

Angels Fall

Morrigan’s Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

High Noon

Blood Brothers

The Hollow

The Pagan Stone

Tribute

Vision in White

WRITING AS J. D. ROBB

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © 2009 by Nora Roberts

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Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Nora.

Black Hills / Nora Roberts.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-08220-1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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To those who protect and defend the wild

PART ONE

HEART

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

—MATTHEW 6:21

1

SOUTH DAKOTA

June 1989

Cooper Sullivan’s life, as he’d known it, was over. Judge and jury—in the form of his parents—had not been swayed by pleas, reason, temper, threats, but instead had sentenced him and shipped him off, away from everything he knew and cared about to a world without video parlors or Big Macs.

The only thing that kept him from completely dying of boredom, or just going wacko, was his prized Game Boy.

As far as he could see, it would be him and Tetris for the duration of his prison term—two horrible, stupid months—in the Wild freaking West. He knew damn well the game, which his father had gotten pretty much right off the assembly line in Tokyo, was a kind of bribe.

Coop was eleven, and nobody’s fool.

Practically nobody in the whole U.S. of A. had the game, and that was definitely cool. But what was the point in having something everybody else wanted if you couldn’t show it off to your friends?

This way, you were just Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne, the lame alter egos of the cool guys.

All of his friends were back, a zillion miles back, in New York. They’d be hanging out for the summer, taking trips to the beaches of Long Island or down to the Jersey Shore. He’d been promised two weeks at baseball camp in July.

But that was before.

Now his parents were off to Italy and France and other stupid places on a second honeymoon. Which was code for last-ditch effort to save the marriage.

No, Coop was nobody’s fool.

Having their eleven-year-old son around wasn’t romantic or whatever, so they’d shipped him off to his grandparents and the boondockies of South holy crap Dakota.

Godforsaken South Dakota. He’d heard his mother call it that plenty of times—except when she’d smiled and smiled telling him he was going to have an adventure, get to know his roots. Godforsaken turned into pristine and pure and exciting. Like he didn’t know she’d run off from her parents and their crappy little farm the minute she’d turned eighteen?

So he was stuck back where she’d run from, and he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. It wasn’t his fault his father couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, or his mother compensated by buying up Madison Avenue. Information Coop had learned from expert and regular eavesdropping. They screwed things up and he was sentenced to a summer on a horseshit farm with grandparents he barely knew.

And they were really old.

He was supposed to help with the horses, who smelled and looked like they wanted to bite you. With the chickens who smelled and did bite.

They didn’t have a housekeeper who cooked egg white omelets and picked up his action figures. And they drove trucks instead of cars. Even his ancient grandmother.

He hadn’t seen a cab in days.

He had chores, and had to eat home-cooked meals with food he’d never seen in his life. And maybe the food was pretty good, but that wasn’t the point.

The one TV in the whole house barely got anything, and there was no McDonald’s. No Chinese or pizza place that delivered. No friends. No park, no movie theaters, no video arcades.

He might as well be in Russia or someplace.

He glanced up from the Game Boy to look out the car window at what he considered a lot of nothing. Stupid mountains, stupid prairie, stupid trees. The same view, as far as he could tell, that had been outside the window since they’d left the farm. At least his grandparents had stopped interrupting his game to tell him stuff about what was outside the window.

Like he cared about a lot of stupid settlers and Indians and soldiers who hung around out here before he was even born. Hell, before his prehistoric grandparents had been born.

Who gave a shit about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bullshit. He cared about the X-Men and the box scores.

The way Coop looked at it, the fact that the closest town to the farm was called Deadwood said it all.

He didn’t care about cowboys and horses and buffalo. He cared about baseball and video games. He wasn’t going to see a single game in Yankee Stadium all summer.

He might as well be dead, too.

He spotted a bunch of what looked like mutant deer clomping across the high grass, and a lot of trees and stupid hills that were really green. Why did they call them black when they were green? Because he was in South crappy Dakota where they didn’t know dick about squat.

What he didn’t see were buildings, people, streets, sidewalk vendors. What he didn’t see was home.

His grandmother shifted in her seat to look back at him. “Do you see the elk, Cooper?”

“I guess.”

“We’ll be getting to the Chance spread soon,” she told him. “It was nice of them to have us all over for supper. You’re going to like Lil. She’s nearly your age.”

He knew the rules. “Yes, ma’am.” As if he’d pal around with some girl. Some dumb farm girl who probably smelled like horse. And looked like one.

He bent his head and went back to Tetris so his grandmother would leave him alone. She looked sort of like his mother. If his mother was old and didn’t get her hair done blond and wavy, and didn’t wear makeup. But he could see his mother in this strange old woman with the lines around her blue eyes.

It was a little spooky.

Her name was Lucy, and he was supposed to call her Grandma.

She cooked and baked. A lot. And hung sheets and stuff out on a line in back of the farmhouse. She sewed and scrubbed, and sang when she did. Her voice was pretty, if you liked that sort of thing.

She helped with the horses, and Coop could admit, he’d been surprised and impressed when he’d seen her jump right on one without a saddle or anything.

She was old—probably at least fifty, for God’s sake. But she wasn’t creaky.

Mostly she wore boots and jeans and plaid shirts. Except for today she’d put a dress on and left the brown hair she usually braided loose.

He didn’t notice when they turned off the endless stretch of road, not until the ride turned bumpier. When he glanced out he saw more trees, less flat land, and the mountains roughed up behind them. Mostly, it looked like a lot of bumpy green hills topped over with bare rock.

He knew his grandparents raised horses and rented them at trail-heads to tourists who wanted to ride them. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get why anybody would want to sit on a horse and ride around rocks and trees.

His grandfather drove along the more-dirt-than-gravel road, and Coop saw cattle grazing on either side. He hoped it meant the drive was nearly over. He didn’t care about having dinner at the Chance farm or meeting dumb Lil.

But he had to pee.

His grandfather had to stop so his grandmother could hop out to open a cattle gate, then close it again when they’d gone through. As they bumped along his bladder began to protest.

He saw sheds and barns and stables, whatever they were didn’t matter. It was, as far as it went out here, a sign of civilization.

Something was growing in some fields, and horses were running around in others like they didn’t have anything better to do.

The house, when it came into view, didn’t look that different from the one his grandparents lived in. Two floors, windows, a big porch. Except the house was blue and his grandparents’ was white.

There were a lot of flowers around the house, which somebody who hadn’t had to learn to weed the ones around his grandparents’ house might think were okay to look at.

A woman came out on the porch and waved. She wore a dress, too. A long one that made him think of the pictures of hippies he’d seen. Her hair was really dark and pulled back in a ponytail. Outside the house sat two trucks and an old car.

His grandfather, who hardly said anything, stepped out of the car. “’Lo, Jenna.”

“It’s good to see you, Sam.” The woman gave his grandfather a kiss on the cheek, then turned to give his grandmother a big hug. “Lucy! Didn’t I say don’t bring a thing but yourselves?” she added when Lucy turned and took a basket from the car.

“I couldn’t help it. It’s cherry pie.”

“We sure won’t turn that down. And this is Cooper.” Jenna held out a hand as she would to an adult. “Welcome.”

“Thank you.”

She dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go on in. Lil’s been looking forward to meeting you, Cooper. She’s finishing up some chores with her dad, but they’ll be right along. How about some lemonade? I bet you’re thirsty after the drive.”

“Um. I guess. May I use the bathroom?”

“Sure. We have one right in the house.” She laughed when she said it, with a teasing look in her dark eyes that made the back of his neck hot.

It was like she knew he’d been thinking how old and dumpy everything looked.

She led him through, past a big living room, then a smaller one, and into a kitchen that smelled a lot like his grandmother’s.

Home cooking.

“There’s a washroom right through there.” She gave his shoulder a careless pat, which added to the heat on the back of his neck. “Why don’t we have that lemonade out on the back porch and visit awhile?” she said to his grandparents.

His mother would have called it a powder room. He relieved himself with some gratitude, then washed his hands at the tiny sink fixed in the corner. Beside it pale blue towels with a little pink rose hung on a rod.

At home, he mused, the powder room was twice as big, and fancy soaps sat in a crystal dish from Tiffany. The towels were a lot softer, too, and monogrammed.

Stalling, he poked a finger at the petals of some white daisies standing in a skinny wood pot thing on the sink. At home there would’ve been roses probably. He hadn’t really noticed that kind of thing until now.

He was thirsty. He wished he could take a gallon of lemonade, maybe a bag of Cheetos, and stretch out in the back of the car with his Game Boy. Anything would be better than being forced to sit with a bunch of strange people on the porch of some old farmhouse for probably hours.

He could still hear them talking and fooling around in the kitchen, and wondered how long he could stall before going back out.

He peeked out the little window, decided it was the same shit. Paddocks and corrals, barns and silos, dumb farm animals, weird-looking equipment.

It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to go to Italy and walk around looking at old stuff, but at least if his parents had taken him, there might be pizza.

The girl came out of the barn. She had dark hair like the hippie woman, so he figured it had to be Lil. She wore jeans rolled up at the cuffs, and high-top sneakers, and a red baseball cap over the hair done in two long braids.

She looked scruffy and stupid, and he immediately disliked her.

A moment later a man came out behind her. His hair was yellow, and worn in a long tail that enforced the hippie conclusion. He, too, wore a ball cap. He said something to the girl that made her laugh and shake her head. Whatever it was had her starting to run, but the man caught her.

Coop heard her squeal with laughter as the man tossed her in the air.

Had his father ever chased him? Coop wondered. Ever tossed him in the air, then swung him in giddy circles?

Not that he could remember. He and his father had discussions—when there was time. And time, Cooper knew, was always in short supply.

Country bumpkins had nothing but time, Cooper thought. They weren’t under the demands of business like a corporate lawyer of his father’s repute. They weren’t third-generation Sullivans like his father, with the responsibilities that came with the name.

So they could toss their kids around all day.

Because it made something hurt in his stomach to watch, he turned away from the window. With no other choice, he went out to be tortured for the rest of the day.

LIL GIGGLED as her father gave her another dizzying swing. When she could breathe again, she tried to give him a stern look. “He is not going to be my boyfriend.”

“That’s what you say now.” Josiah Chance gave his girl a quick tickle along the ribs. “But I’m going to keep my eye on that city slicker.”

“I don’t want any boyfriend.” Lil gave a lofty wave of her hand with her expertise as an almost-ten-year-old. “They’re too much trouble.”

Joe pulled her close, rubbed cheeks. “I’m going to remind you of that in a few years. Looks like they’re here. We’d better go say hello, and get cleaned up.”

She didn’t have anything against boys, Lil mused. And she knew how to mind her manners with company. But still . . . “If I don’t like him, do I have to play with him?”

“He’s a guest. And he’s a stranger in a strange land. Wouldn’t you want somebody your own age to be nice to you and show you around if you dropped down in New York City?”

She wrinkled her narrow nose. “I don’t want to go to New York City.”

“I bet he didn’t want to come here.”

She couldn’t understand why. Everything was there. Horses, dogs, cats, the mountains, the trees. But her parents had taught her that people were as different as they were the same.

“I’ll be nice to him.” At first, anyway.

“But you won’t run off and marry him.”

“Dad!”

She rolled her eyes just as the boy came out on the porch. Lil studied him as she might any new specimen.

He was taller than she’d expected, and his hair was the color of pine bark. He looked . . . mad or sad, she couldn’t decide which. But neither was promising. His clothes said city to her, dark jeans that hadn’t been worn or washed enough and a stiff white shirt. He took the glass of lemonade her mother offered and watched Lil as warily as she watched him.

He jolted at the cry of a hawk, and Lil caught herself before she sneered. Her mother wouldn’t like it if she sneered at company.

“Sam.” Grinning broadly, Joe stuck out a hand. “How are things?”

“Can’t complain.”

“And Lucy, don’t you look pretty?”

“We do what we can with what we’ve got. This is our grandson, Cooper.”

“Glad to meet you, Cooper. Welcome to the Black Hills. This is my Lil.”

“Hello.” She cocked her head. He had blue eyes—ice-on-the-mountain blue. He didn’t smile, nor did his eyes.

“Joe, you and Lil go clean up. We’re going to eat outside,” Jenna added. “We’ve got a fine day for it. Cooper, sit down here by me, and tell me what you like to do in New York. I’ve never been there.”

In Lil’s experience, her mother could get anybody to talk, make anybody smile. But Cooper Sullivan from New York City seemed to be the exception. He spoke when spoken to, minded his manners, but little more. They sat out at the picnic table, one of Lil’s favorite things, and feasted on fried chicken and biscuits, on potato salad and snap beans her mother had put up last harvest.

Conversation ranged from horses and cattle and crops, to weather and books and the status of other neighbors. All the things, in Lil’s world, that mattered.

Though Cooper struck Lil as stiff as his shirt, he managed to eat two helpings of everything, though he barely opened his mouth otherwise.

Until her father brought up baseball.

“Boston’s going to break the curse this year.”

Cooper snorted, then immediately hunched his shoulders.

In his easy way, Joe picked up the basket of biscuits, offered it to the boy. “Oh, yeah, Mr. New York. Yankees or Mets?”

“Yankees.”

“Not a prayer.” As if in sympathy, Joe shook his head. “Not this year, kid.”

“We’ve got a strong infield, good bats. Sir,” he added as if he’d just remembered to.

“Baltimore’s already killing you.”

“It’s a fluke. They died last year, and they’ll fade this year.”

“When they do, the Red Sox will pounce.”

“Crawl maybe.”

“Oh, a smart-ass.”

Cooper paled a little, but Joe continued as if he hadn’t noticed the reaction. “Let me just say, Wade Boggs, and toss in Nick Esasky. Then—”

“Don Mattingly, Steve Sax.”

“George Steinbrenner.”

For the first time, Coop grinned. “Well, you can’t have everything.”

“Let me consult my expert. Sox or Yankees, Lil?”

“Neither. It’s Baltimore. They’ve got the youth, the momentum. They’ve got Frank Robinson. Boston’s got a play, but they won’t pull it off. The Yankees? Not a chance, not this year.”

“My only child, and she wounds me.” Joe put a hand on his heart. “Do you play back home, Cooper?”

“Yes, sir. Second base.”

“Lil, take Cooper on around back of the barn. You can work off the meal with a little batting practice.”

“Okay.”

Coop slid off the bench. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Chance. It was very good.”

“You’re welcome.”

As the children walked away, Jenna looked over at Lucy. “Poor little boy,” she murmured.

The dogs raced ahead, and across the field. “I play third base,” Lil told Coop.

“Where? There’s nothing around here.”

“Right outside Deadwood. We have a field, and a league. I’m going to be the first woman to play major-league ball.”

Coop snorted again. “Women can’t play the bigs. That’s just the way it is.”

“The way it is isn’t the way it has to be. That’s what my mother says. And when I’m finished playing, I’m going to manage.”

He sneered, and though it brought her hackles up, she liked him better for it. At least he didn’t seem as stiff as his shirt anymore. “You don’t know dick.”

“Dick who?”

He laughed, and even though she knew he was laughing at her, she decided to give him one more chance before she clobbered him.

He was company. A stranger in a strange land.

“How do you play in New York? I thought there were buildings everywhere.”

“We play in Central Park, and sometimes in Queens.”

“What’s Queens?”

“It’s one of the boroughs.”

“It’s a mule?”

“No. Jesus. It’s a city, a place. Not a donkey.”

She stopped, set her fists on her hips, and fired at him out of dark, dark eyes. “When you try to make somebody feel stupid when they ask a question, you’re the stupid one.”

He shrugged, and rounded the side of the big red barn with her.

It smelled like animal, dusty and poopy at the same time. Coop couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to live with that smell, or the sounds of clucking, snuffling, and mooing all the damn time. He started to make a sneering remark about just that—she was only a kid, after all, and a girl at that—but then he saw the batting cage.

It wasn’t what he was used to, but it looked pretty sweet to him. Somebody, he supposed Lil’s father, had built the three-sided cage out of fencing. It stood with its back to a jumbled line of brush and bramble that gave way to a field where cattle stood around doing nothing. Beside the barn, under the shelter of one of the eaves, sat a weatherworn box. Lil opened it, pulled out gloves, bats, balls.

“My dad and I practice most nights after dinner. Mom pitches to me sometimes, but she’s got a rag arm. You can bat first if you want, ’cause you’re company, but you have to wear a batting helmet. It’s the rule.”

Coop put on the helmet she offered, then checked the weight of a couple of bats. Holding one was almost as good as the Game Boy. “Your dad practices with you?”

“Sure. He played minor-league for a couple seasons back east, so he’s pretty good.”

“Really?” All derision fled. “He played professional ball?”

“For a couple seasons. He did something to his rotator cuff, and that was that. He decided to see the country, and he ended up out here. He worked for my grandparents—this used to be their farm—and met my mother. That was that, too. You wanna bat?”

“Yeah.” Coop walked back to the cage, took a couple of practice swings. Set. She pitched one straight and slow, so he got the meat on it and slapped it into the field.

“Nice one. We’ve got six balls. So we’ll field them after you hit.” She gripped the next ball, took her position, pitched another easy one.

Coop felt the little lift inside as the ball sailed into the field. He smacked a third, then wiggled his hips and waited for the pitch.

She winged it, and blew it by him. “Nice cut,” was all she said as he narrowed his eyes at her.

He choked up on the bat a bit, scuffed his heels. She fooled him with one that curved low and inside. He caught a piece of the next pitch, fouling it off so it rang as it hit the cage.

“You can toss those three back if you want,” she told him. “I’ll pitch you some more.”

“That’s okay. You take a turn.” And he’d show her.

They switched places. Rather than soften her up, he burned one in. She caught enough of it to have it shooting foul. She caught the next, popped it up. But she got the fat of the bat on the third pitch. If there’d been a park, Coop was forced to admit, she’d have hit it out.

“You’re pretty good.”

“I like them high and inside.” After cocking the bat against the cage, Lil started toward the field. “We’ve got a game next Saturday. You could come.”

Some dumbass boondockie ball game. Would be, he thought, a lot better than nothing. “Maybe.”

“Do you get to go to real games? Like at Yankee Stadium?”

“Sure. My father’s got season tickets, box seats, right behind the third-base line.”

“No way!”

It felt good—a little—to impress her. And it didn’t suck to have somebody, even a farm girl, to talk ball with. Plus she could handle the ball and the bat, and that was a serious plus.

Still, Coop only shrugged, then watched Lil slip through the lines of barbed wire without mishap. He didn’t complain when she turned and held the lines wider for him.

“We watch on TV, or listen on the radio. And once we went all the way down to Omaha to watch a game. But I’ve never been to a major-league ballpark.”

And that reminded him just where he was. “You’re a million miles from one. From anything.”

“Dad says one day we’ll take a vacation and go back east. Maybe to Fenway Park because he’s a Red Sox fan.” She found a ball, stuck it in her back pocket. “He likes to root for the underdog.”

“My father says it’s smarter to root for a winner.”

“Everybody else does, mostly, so somebody has to root for the underdog.” She beamed a smile at him, fluttered long lashes over dark brown eyes. “That’s going to be New York this year.”

He grinned before he realized it. “So you say.”

He picked up a ball, tossed it hand to hand as they worked their way toward the trees. “What do you do with all these cows, anyway?”

“Beef cattle. We raise them, then sell them. People eat them. I bet even people in New York like steak.”

He thought that was gross, just the idea that the cow staring at him now would be on somebody’s plate—maybe even his—one day.

“Do you have any pets?” she asked him.

“No.”

She couldn’t imagine not having animals around, everywhere, all the time. And the idea of not having any brought a lump of genuine sympathy to her throat.

“I guess it’s harder in the city. Our dogs . . .” She paused to look around, then spotted them. “They’ve been out running, see, and now they’re back at the table, hoping for scraps. They’re good dogs. You can come over and play with them sometimes if you want, and use the batting cage.”

“Maybe.” He sneaked another glance at her. “Thanks.”

“Not many of the girls I know like baseball all that much. Or hiking and fishing. I do. Dad’s teaching me to track. My grandfather, my mom’s father, taught him. He’s really good.”

“Track?”

“Animals and people. For fun. There’s lots of trails, and lots to do.”

“If you say so.”

She cocked her head at the dismissive tone. “Have you ever been camping?”

“Why would I want to?”

She only smiled. “It’s going to be dark pretty soon. We’d better get the last ball and head back. If you come over again, maybe Dad will play or we can go riding. You like to ride?”

“You mean horses? I don’t know how. It looks stupid.”

She fired up at that, the way she’d fired up to hit the ball high and long. “It’s not stupid, and it’s stupid to say it is just because you don’t know how. Besides, it’s fun. When we—”

She stopped dead in her tracks. As she sucked in her breath, she grabbed Coop’s arm. “Don’t move.”

“What?” Because the hand on his arm shook, his heart slammed into his throat. “Is it a snake?”

Panicked, he scanned the grass.

“Cougar.” She barely breathed the word. She stood like a statue with that one trembling hand on his arm, and stared into the tangled brush.

“What? Where?” Suspicious, sure she was just screwing around and trying to scare him, he tried to pry her hand away. At first he saw nothing but that brush, the trees, the rise of rock and hill.

Then he saw the shadow. “Holy shit. Holy freaking shit!”

“Don’t run.” She stared as if mesmerized. “If you run, he’ll chase you, and he’s faster. No!” She yanked on his arm as Coop edged up, getting a firmer grip on the ball. “Don’t throw anything, not yet. Mom says . . .” She couldn’t remember everything her mother had told her. She’d never seen a cat before, not in real life, not near the farm. “You have to make noise, and, and make yourself look big.”

Quivering, Lil rose to her toes, lifted her arms over her head, and began to shout. “Get away! Get away from here.

“Yell!” she shouted to Cooper. “Look big and mean!”

Her eyes, keen and dark, measured the cougar from tip to tail. Even as her heart pounded with fear, something else moved through her.

Awe.

She could see his eyes glint in the oncoming dusk, glint as they seemed to look right into hers. Though her throat went dry, she thought: He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful.

He paced, powerful grace, watching them as if deciding whether to attack or retreat.

Beside her Coop shouted, his voice raw with fear. She watched the big cat slink toward deeper shadow. And then it leaped away, a blur of dull gold that dazzled her eyes.

“It ran away. It ran away.”

“It didn’t,” Lil murmured. “It flew.”

Through the roaring in her ears, she heard her father shouting for her, and turned. He charged across the field, scattering surprised cattle. Yards behind him Coop’s grandfather ran, carrying a rifle she realized he’d gotten from the house. The dogs raced with them, as did her mother, with a shotgun, and Coop’s grandmother.

“Cougar.” She managed to get the word out just before Joe swept her off her feet and into his arms. “There. Over there. It’s gone now.”

“Get in the house. Coop.” With his free arm, Joe pulled Coop against him. “Both of you, get inside. Now.”

“It’s gone, Dad. We scared it away.”

“Go! Cougar,” he said as Jenna sprinted past Sam and reached them.

“Oh, God. You’re all right.” She took Lil, giving Joe the shotgun. “You’re all right.” She kissed Lil’s face, her hair, then bent down to do the same to Coop.

“Get them in the house, Jenna. Take the kids and Lucy, and get inside.”

“Come on. Come on.” Jenna draped her arms around both children, looked up at Sam’s grim face as he reached them. “Be careful.”

“Don’t kill it, Dad!” Lil called out as her mother pulled her away. “It was so beautiful.” She searched the brush, the trees, hoping for just one more glimpse. “Don’t kill it.”

2

Coop had a couple of bad dreams. In one the mountain lion with its glinting yellow eyes jumped through his bedroom window and ate him in big greedy bites before he could even scream. In another, he was lost in the hills, in the green and the rock, in the miles of it. No one came to find him. No one, he thought, even noticed he was gone.

Lil’s father hadn’t killed the cougar. At least Coop hadn’t heard gunshots. When his grandfather and Mr. Chance had come back, they’d had cherry pie and homemade ice cream, and had talked of other things.

Deliberately. Coop knew all about that adult ploy. Nobody would talk about what had happened until after he and Lil were in bed, and couldn’t hear.

Resigned to and resentful of his prison, he did his chores, ate his meals, played his Game Boy. He hoped, if he did what he was told, he’d get a parole day and be able to go back to the Chance farm and use the batting cage.

Maybe Mr. Chance would play, too, then he could ask him about what it was like to play professional ball. Coop knew his father expected him to go to law school, to work in the family firm. To be a big-shot lawyer one day. But maybe, maybe, he could be a ballplayer instead.

If he was good enough.

With his thoughts on ball, on escape, on the misery of his summer sentence, the big yellow-eyed cat might’ve been just another dream.

He ate his breakfast of flapjacks, as his grandmother called them, in silence at the old kitchen table while she fiddled around at the stove. His grandfather was already outside doing some farm thing. Cooper ate slowly, even though the Game Boy was forbidden at the table, because when he finished he’d have to go outside for chores.

Lucy poured coffee into a thick white mug, then brought it with her to sit across from him. “Well, Cooper, you’ve been with us two weeks now.”

“I guess.”

“That’s about all the brooding time you’re going to get. You’re a good, bright boy. You do what you’re told and you don’t sass. At least not out loud.”

There was a look in her eyes—a smart look, not a mean one—that told him she knew he sassed in his head. A lot.

“Those are good qualities. You also tend to sulk and don’t say boo to a goat and drag around here like you’re in prison. Those aren’t such good qualities.”

He said nothing, but wished he’d eaten his breakfast faster and escaped. He hunched his shoulders, figuring they were going to have a discussion. Which meant, from his experience, she’d tell him all the things he did wrong, and how she expected more, and he was a disappointment.

“I know you’re mad, and you’ve got a right to be. That’s why you got these past two weeks.”

He blinked at his plate, and a line of confusion formed between his eyebrows.

“The fact is, Cooper, I’m mad for you. Your parents did a selfish thing, and didn’t take you into account when they did it.”

He brought his head up about an inch, but his eyes lifted and met hers. Maybe it was a trick, he thought, and she was saying that so he’d say something bad. So he could be grounded or punished. “They can do what they want.”

“Yes, they can.” She nodded briskly as she drank her coffee. “Doesn’t mean they should. I want you here, and so does your grandpa. I know he doesn’t say much, but I’m telling you the truth. But that’s a selfish thing, too, for us. We want you here, we want to get to know our only grandchild, have time with him we never got much of before. But you don’t want to be here, and I’m sorry for that.”

She was looking right at him, right at his face. And it didn’t feel like a trick. “I know you want to be home,” she continued, “with your friends. I know you wanted to go to baseball camp like they promised. Yeah, I know about that.”

She nodded again, and sipping coffee stared off hard out the window. It seemed she was mad, as she’d said. But not at him. She really was sort of mad for him.

And that was something he didn’t understand. That was something that had his chest getting all tight and achy.

“I know about that,” she repeated. “A boy your age doesn’t get a lot of say, a lot of choices. They’ll come, but at this stage you just don’t have them. You can make the best out of what you’ve got, or be miserable.”

“I just want to go home.” He hadn’t meant to say it, only to think it. But the words came right out, pushing out of that tight, achy chest.

She shifted her gaze back to his. “Honey, I know. I know you do. I wish I could do that for you. You may not believe me, you don’t know me very well so you may not, but I really want to give you what you want.”

It wasn’t a matter of belief, it was that she talked to him. Actually talked as if he mattered. So the words, and the misery with them, just bubbled out of him.

“They just sent me away, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” Tears rose into his voice. “They didn’t want me to go with them. They didn’t want me.”

“We do. I know that’s not much comfort to you right now. But you know that, you believe that. Maybe sometime later in your life, you’ll need a place. You know you’ll always have one here.”

He spoke the worst. The worst that hid inside him. “They’re going to get a divorce.”

“Yes, I expect you’re right about that.”

He blinked and stared, because he’d expected her to say that wasn’t true, he’d expected her to pretend everything would be fine. “Then what’ll happen to me?”

“You’ll get through it.”

“They don’t love me.”

“We do. We do,” she said, firmly, when he lowered his head again and shook it. “First because you’re blood. You’re kin. And second, just because.”

When two tears plopped on his plate, Lucy kept talking. “I can’t speak for what they feel, what they think. But I can say something about what they do. I’m so mad at them. I’m so mad at them for hurting you. People will say it’s just one summer, it’s not the end of the world. But people who say that don’t remember what it’s like to be eleven. I can’t make you happy to be here, Cooper, but I’m going to ask you for something. For just one thing, and maybe it’s a hard thing for you. I’m going to ask you to try.”

“Everything’s different here.”

“It sure is. But you might find something in the different you like. And the backside of August won’t seem so far away if you do. You do that, Cooper, you give it a real good try, and I’ll talk your grandpa into getting us a new television set. One that doesn’t need those rabbit ears.”

He sniffled. “What if I try and I still don’t like anything?”

“Trying’s enough, if you mean it.”

“How long do I have to try before the new TV?”

She laughed, full and hard, and for some reason the sound of it made his lips curve and his chest loosen up. “That’s a boy. Good for you. Two weeks, we’ll say. Two weeks of brooding, now two weeks of trying. You make a real effort, and you’ll have that new TV set in the parlor, you betcha. Is that a deal?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Why don’t you go out now, find your grandpa. He’s got some project going out there, and he might need a hand.”

“Okay.” He got to his feet. Later, he wouldn’t know why it spewed out. “They yell a lot, and they don’t even know I’m there when they do. He’s having sex with somebody else. I think he does that a lot.”

Lucy blew out a long breath. “Are you listening at keyholes, boy?”

“Sometimes. But sometimes they’re yelling about it, and I don’t have to try to hear. They never listen to me when I talk. They pretend to sometimes, and sometimes they don’t even pretend. They don’t care if I like anything, as long as I’m quiet and out of their way.”

“That’s different here, too.”

“I guess. Maybe.”

He didn’t know what to think as he walked outside. No adult had ever talked to him that way, or listened to him that way. He’d never heard anybody criticize his parents—well, except each other.

She’d said they wanted him. No one had ever said that to him before. She said it even when she knew he didn’t want them, and it didn’t feel like she’d said it to make him feel bad. It felt like she’d said it because it was true.

He stopped, looked around. He could try, sure, but what could he find to like around here? A bunch of horses and pigs and chickens. A bunch of fields and hills and nothing.

He liked her flapjacks, but he didn’t think that’s what she meant.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed around to the far side of the house where he heard banging. Now he was going to have to hang around with his strange, mostly silent grandfather. How was he supposed to like that?

He cut around, and saw Sam over by the big barn with the white silo. And what Sam was hammering into the ground with some kind of metal stakes had Coop speechless.

A batting cage.

He wanted to run, just fly across the dirt yard. But made himself walk. Maybe it just looked like a batting cage. It could be something for the animals.

Sam glanced up, took another whack at the stake. “Late on your chores.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fed the stock, but you’re going to need to get the eggs right soon.”

“Grandma said you needed help with a project.”

“Nope. ’Bout done.” With the little sledgehammer in hand, Sam straightened up, stepped back. He studied the fence cage in silence.

“Eggs aren’t going to jump in the pail on their own,” he said at length.

“No, sir.”

“Might be,” he drawled as Coop turned to go, “I could pitch you a few after chores are done.” Sam walked over, picked up a bat he’d leaned against the side of the barn. “You can use this. Just finished it last night.”

Baffled, Cooper took the bat, ran his hands along the smooth wood. “You made it?”

“Don’t see no reason for store-bought.”

“It . . . it has my name on it.” Reverently, Coop traced his fingers over the name etched in the wood.

“That’s how you know it’s yours. You plan on getting those eggs sometime today?”

“Yes, sir.” He handed the bat back to Sam. “Thank you.”

“You ever get tired of being so damn polite, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sam’s lips twitched. “Go on.”

Coop started to run toward the chicken house, stopped, turned back. “Grandpa? Will you teach me how to ride a horse?”

“Get your chores done. We’ll see.”

THERE WERE some things he liked, at least a little. He liked hitting the ball after supper, and the way his grandpa would surprise him every few pitches with crazy, exaggerated windups. He liked riding Dottie, the little mare, around the corral—at least once he’d gotten over being worried about being kicked or bitten.

Horses didn’t really smell after you got to like them a little, or ride them without being scared shitless.

He liked watching the lightning storm that came one night like an ambush and slashed and burned the sky. He even liked, sometimes, a little, sitting at his bedroom window and looking out. He still missed New York, and his friends, his life, but it was interesting to see so many stars, and to hear the house hum in the quiet.

He didn’t like the chickens, the way they smelled or sounded, or the evil glint in their eyes when he went in to gather eggs. But he liked the eggs just fine, whether they were cooked up for breakfast or stirred into batter and dough for cakes and cookies.

There were always cookies in his grandmother’s big glass jar.

He didn’t like when people came to visit, or he rode into town with his grandparents, the way they’d size him up and say things like, So, this is Missy’s boy! (his mother, christened Michelle, went by Chelle in New York). And they’d say how he was the spitting image of his grandfather. Who was old.

He liked seeing the Chance truck ramble toward the farmhouse, even if Lil was a girl.

She played ball, and didn’t spend all her time giggling like a lot of the girls he knew. She didn’t listen to New Kids on the Block all the time and make girly eyes over them. That was a plus.

She did better on a horse than he did, but she didn’t rag on him about it. Much. After a while, it wasn’t like hanging out with a girl. It was just hanging out with Lil.

And one week—not two—after the talk at the kitchen table, a brand-new TV showed up in the parlor.

“No point in waiting,” his grandmother said. “You held up your end just fine. I’m proud of you.”

In all of his life, he couldn’t remember anyone being proud of him, or saying so, just because he’d tried.

Once he’d been judged good enough, he and Lil were allowed to ride, as long as they stayed in the fields, within sight of the house.

“Well?” Lil asked as they walked the horses through the grass.

“What?”

“Is it stupid?”

“Maybe it’s not. She’s pretty cool.” He patted Dottie’s neck. “She likes apples.”

“I wish they’d let us ride up into the hills, really see stuff. I can only go with one of my parents. Except . . .” She looked around, as if to check for cocked ears. “I snuck out one morning, before sunrise. I tried to track the cougar.”

He actually felt his eyes bug out. “Are you crazy?”

“I read all about them. I got books from the library.” She wore a cowboy hat today, a brown one, and flipped a long braid over her shoulder. “They don’t bother people, hardly at all. And they don’t much come around a farm like ours unless they’re like migrating or something.”

Excitement poured off her as she shifted to turn more fully toward the speechless Coop. “It was so cool! It was just so cool! I found scat and tracks and everything. But then I lost the trail. I didn’t mean to stay out so long, and they were up when I got back. I had to pretend I was just coming out of the house.”

She pressed her lips together, gave him her fierce look. “You can’t tell.”

“I’m not a tattletale.” What an insult. “But you can’t go off by yourself like that. Holy shit, Lil.”

“I know how to track. Not as good as Dad, but I’m pretty good at it. And I know the trails. We hike a lot, and we camp out and everything. I had my compass, and my kit.”

“What if the cougar had been out there?”

“I’d have seen it again. It looked right at me that day, right at me. Like it knew me, and it felt like . . . It sort of felt like it did.”

“Come on.”

“Seriously. My mother’s grandfather was Sioux.”

“Like an Indian?”

“Yeah. Native American,” she corrected. “Lakota Sioux. His name was John Swiftwater, and his tribe—his, like, people—lived here for generations and stuff. They had animal spirits. Maybe the cougar was mine.”

“It wasn’t anybody’s spirit.”

She just continued to train her gaze on the hills. “I heard it that night. Late the night we saw it. I heard it scream.”

“Scream?”

“That’s the sound they make because they can’t roar. Only the big cats—like lions—can roar. Something in their throat. I forget. I’ll have to look it up again. Anyway, I just wanted to try to find it.”

He couldn’t help but admire what she’d done, even if it was crazy. No girl he knew would sneak out to track down a mountain lion. Except Lil. “If it’d found you, maybe you’d be breakfast.”

“You can’t tell.”

“I said I wouldn’t, but you can’t sneak out and go looking for it again either.”

“I think it would’ve come back by now if it was going to. I wonder where it went.” She looked off again, into the hills. “We could go camping. Dad really likes to. We take like a nature hike and camp overnight. Your grandparents would let you.”

“Like in a tent? In the mountains?” The idea was both terrifying and compelling.

“Yeah. We’d catch fish for supper and see the falls, and buffalo and all kinds of wildlife. Maybe even the cougar. When you get all the way to the peak, you can see clear to Montana.” She shifted to look back as the dinner bell rang. “Time to eat. We’ll go camping. I’ll ask my dad. It’ll be fun.”

HE WENT CAMPING and learned how to bait a hook. He knew the rush-up-the-spine thrill of sitting by a campfire and listening to the echoing howl of a wolf, and the shock of watching a fish he’d caught more through luck than design flash silver in the sunlight at the end of his rod.

His body toughened; his hands hardened. He knew an elk from a mule deer and how to care for tack.

He could ride at a gallop, and that was the biggest thrill of his life.

He earned a guest spot on Lil’s baseball team, and brought in a run with a strong double.

Years later, he’d look back and realize his life had turned that summer, and would never be the same again. But all Coop knew at the age of eleven was he was happy.

His grandfather taught him to carve and whittle, and to Coop’s utter joy, presented him with a pocketknife—to keep. His grandmother showed him how to groom a horse, top to bottom, how to check for injury or illness.

But his grandfather taught him how to talk to them.

“It’s in the eyes,” Sam told him. “In the body, the ears, the tail, but first it’s in the eyes. What he sees in yours, what you see in his.” He held a lead line on a fractious yearling colt who reared and pawed the air. “Doesn’t matter what you say so much, because they’ll see what you’re thinking in your eyes. This one wants to show he’s tough, but what he is is a little spooked. What do we want from him, what’re we going to do? Is he going to like it? Will it hurt?”

Even as he spoke to Coop, Sam looked into the colt’s eyes, kept his voice soft and soothing. “What we’re going to do is shorten up on the line here. A firm hand doesn’t have to be a hard one.”

Sam eased in, got that firm hand on the bridle. The colt quivered and danced. “Needs a name.” Sam stroked a hand over the colt’s neck. “Give him one.”

Coop took his eyes off the yearling to gawk at Sam. “Me?”

“What kind of a name’s Me for a horse?”

“I meant . . . Um. Jones? Can it be Jones, like Indiana Jones?”

“Ask him.”

“I think you’re Jones. Jones is smart and brave.” With a little help from Sam’s hand on the bridle, the colt gave a decisive nod. “He said yes! Did you see that?”

“Yeah, you betcha. Hold his head now, firm, not hard. I’m going to get the saddle blanket on him. He’s used to that. Remind him.”

“I . . . It’s just the blanket. You don’t mind the blanket, Jones. It doesn’t hurt. We’re not going to hurt you. You’ve had the blanket before. Grandpa says we’re just going to get you used to the saddle today. It doesn’t hurt either.”

Jones stared into Coop’s eyes, ears forward, and barely acknowledged the saddle pad.

“Maybe I can ride you some, after you’re used to the saddle. Because I don’t weigh enough to hurt you. Right, Grandpa?”

“We’ll see. Hold firm now, Cooper.”

Sam hefted the training saddle, eased it onto the horse. Jones jerked his head, gave a quick buck.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” He wasn’t mad, wasn’t mean, Coop thought. He was a little scared. He could feel it, he could see it in Jones’s eyes. “It’s just a saddle. I guess it feels funny at first.” Under the afternoon sun, with sweat he barely noticed dampening his T-shirt, Coop talked and talked while his grandfather cinched the saddle.

“Take him out on the lounge, like I showed you. Just like you did with him before the saddle. He’ll buck some.”

Sam stepped back to let the boy and the colt learn. He leaned on the fence, ready to intervene if need be. From behind him, Lucy laid a hand on his shoulder.

“That’s a sight, isn’t it?”

“He’s got the touch,” Sam acknowledged. “Got the heart and the head, too. The boy’s a natural with horses.”

“I don’t want to let him go. I know,” she said before Sam could respond. “Not ours to keep. But it’s going to break my heart a little. I know a true thing, and that’s they don’t love him like we do. So it breaks my heart knowing we have to send him back.”

“Might be next summer he’ll want to come.”

“Might be. But oh, it’s going to be quiet between times.” She heaved a sigh, then turned at the sound of a truck. “Farrier’s coming. I’ll go get a pitcher of lemonade.”

IT WAS the farrier’s son, a gangly towheaded boy of fourteen called Gull who, in the late-afternoon shadows of the barn, gave Coop his first—and last—chaw of tobacco.

Even after he’d finished puking up his breakfast, his lunch, and everything else still in his system, Coop remained what Gull assessed as green as a grasshopper. Alerted by the sounds of retching, Lucy left her work on her kitchen garden to hustle to the back of the barn. There Coop, on his hands and knees, continued to heave while Gull stood, scratching his head under his hat.

“Jesus, Coop, ain’t you done as yet?”

“What happened?” Lucy demanded. “What did you do?”

“He just wanted to try a chaw. I didn’t see the harm, Miss Lucy, ma’am.”

“Oh, for—Don’t you know better than to give a boy his age tobacco?”

“Sure can puke.”

Since he seemed to be done, Lucy reached down. “Come on, boy, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

Brisk and pragmatic, Lucy hauled him inside. Too weak to protest, Coop only groaned as she stripped him down to his jockeys. She bathed his face, gave him cool water to drink. After she’d lowered the shades against the sun, she sat on the side of the bed to lay a hand on his brow. He opened bleary eyes.

“It was awful.”

“There’s a lesson learned.” She bent over, brushed her lips on his forehead. “You’ll be all right. You’ll get through.” Not just today, she thought. And sat with him a little, while he slept off the lesson learned.

ON THE BIG flat rock by the stream, Coop stretched out with Lil.

“She didn’t yell or anything.”

“What did it taste like? Does it taste like it smells, because that’s gross. It looks gross, too.”

“It tastes . . . like shit,” he decided.

She snickered. “Did you ever taste shit?”

“I’ve smelled it enough this summer. Horse shit, pig shit, cow shit, chicken shit.”

She howled with laughter. “New York has shit, too.”

“Mostly from people. I don’t have to shovel it up.”

She rolled to her side, pillowing her head on her hands, and studied him with her big, brown eyes. “I wish you didn’t have to go back. This is the best summer of my whole life.”

“Me too.” He felt weird saying it, knowing it was true. Knowing the best friend of the best summer of his life was a girl.

“Maybe you can stay. If you asked, maybe your parents would let you live here.”

“They won’t.” He shifted to his back, watched a circling hawk. “They called last night, and said how they’d be home next week, and meet me at the airport and . . . Well, they won’t.”

“If they did, would you want to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want to go back?”

“I don’t know.” It was awful not to know. “I wish I could visit there and live here. I wish I could train Jones and ride Dottie and play baseball and catch more fish. But I want to see my room and go to the arcade and go to a Yankee game.” He rolled toward her again. “Maybe you could visit. We could go to the ballpark.”

“I don’t think they’d let me.” Her eyes turned sad, and her bottom lip quivered. “You probably won’t ever come back.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Do you swear?”

“I swear.” He offered his hand for a solemn pinky swear.

“If I write you, will you write me back?”

“Okay.”

“Every time?”

He smiled. “Every time.”

“Then you’ll come back. So will the cougar. We saw him the very first day, so he’s like our spirit guide. He’s like . . . I can’t remember the word, but it’s like good luck.”

HE THOUGHT about it, how she’d talked of the cougar all summer, had shown him pictures in the library books, and the books she’d bought herself with her allowance. She’d drawn pictures of her own and hung them in her room, among her baseball pennants.

In his last week on the farm, Coop worked with his penknife, and the carving tool his grandfather let him borrow. He said his goodbyes to Dottie and Jones and the other horses, bade a not very fond farewell to the chickens. He packed his clothes, along with the boots and work gloves his grandparents had bought him. And his beloved baseball bat.

As he had on the long-ago drive in, he sat in the backseat and stared out the window. He saw things differently now, the big sky, the dark hills that rose up in rocky needles and jagged towers and hid the forests and streams and canyons.

Maybe Lil’s cougar prowled in them.

They turned in the far road to the Chance land to say another goodbye.

Lil sat on the porch steps, so he knew she’d been watching for them. She wore red shorts and a blue shirt, with her hair looped through the back of her favorite ball cap. Her mother came out of the house as they pulled up, and the dogs raced from the back, barking and bumping their bodies together.

Lil stood, and her mother came down, laid a hand on her shoulder. Joe rounded the house, stuffing work gloves in his back pocket, and flanked Lil on the other side.

It etched an image in Cooper’s mind—mother, father, daughter—like an island in front of the old house, in the foreground of hills and valleys and sky, with a pair of dusty yellow dogs racing in madly happy circles.

Coop cleared his throat as he got out of the car. “I came to say goodbye.”

Joe moved first, stepping forward and offering a hand. He shook Coop’s and still holding it crouched to bring them eye-to-eye. “You come back and see us, Mr. New York.”

“I will. And I’ll send you a picture from Yankee Stadium when we clinch the pennant.”

Joe laughed. “Dream on, son.”

“You be safe.” Jenna turned his cap around to lean down, kiss his forehead. “And you be happy. Don’t forget us.”

“I won’t.” He turned, suddenly feeling a little shy, to Lil. “I made you something.”

“You did? What is it?”

He held out the box, shifting his feet when she pulled the lid off. “It’s kind of stupid. It’s not very good,” he said, as she stared at the small cougar he’d carved out of hickory. “I couldn’t get the face right or—”

He broke off, stunned, embarrassed, when she threw her arms around him. “It’s beautiful! I’ll always keep it. Wait!” Spinning around, she dashed into the house.

“That’s a good gift, Cooper.” Jenna studied him. “The cougar’s hers now, she won’t have it any other way. So you’ve put part of yourself into her symbol.”

Lil bolted out of the house, skidded to a stop in front of Coop. “This is my best thing—before the cougar. You take it. It’s an old coin,” she said, as she offered it. “We found it last spring when we were digging a new garden. It’s old, and somebody must’ve dropped it out of their pocket a long time ago. It’s all worn so you can hardly see.”

Cooper took the silver disk, so worn the outline of the woman stamped on it could hardly be seen. “It’s cool.”

“It’s for good luck. It’s a . . . what’s the word, Mom?”

“A talisman,” Jenna supplied.

“A talisman,” Lil repeated. “For good luck.”

“We’ve got to get on.” Sam gave Cooper’s shoulder a pat. “It’s a long drive to Rapid City.”

“Safe trip, Mr. New York.”

“I’ll write,” Lil called out. “But you have to write back.”

“I will.” Clutching the coin, Coop got into the car. He watched out the back, as long as he could, watched the island in front of the old house shrink and fade.

He didn’t cry. He was nearly twelve years old, after all. But he held the old silver coin all the way to Rapid City.

3

THE BLACK HILLS

June 1997

Lil walked her horse through the morning mists along the trail. They moved through high grass, crossed the sparkling waters of a narrow stream where tangled vines of poison ivy lurked before starting the upward climb. The air smelled of the pine and the water and the grass while the light shimmered with the delicacy of dawn.

Birds called and chattered. She heard the burry song of the mountain bluebird, the hoarse chee of a pine siskin in flight, the irritable warning of the pinyon jay.

It seemed the forest came to life around her, stirred by the streams and slants of misty light sliding through the canopy of trees.

There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be.

She spotted tracks, usually deer or elk, and noted them on the tape recorder in her jacket pocket. Earlier she’d found buffalo tracks, and of course, numerous signs of her father’s herd.

But so far in this three-day jaunt she’d given herself, she’d yet to track the cat.

She’d heard its call the night before. Its scream had ripped through the darkness, through the stars and the moonlight.

I’m here.

She studied the brush as the sturdy mare climbed, listened to the birdcalls that danced through the sheltering pine. A red squirrel burst out of a thicket of chokecherry, darted across the ground and up the trunk of a pine, and looking up, up, she spotted a hawk circle on his morning rounds.

This, as much as the majestic views from the clifftops, as much as the towering falls tumbling down canyons, was why, she believed, the Black Hills were sacred ground.

If you felt no magic here, to her mind, you would find it nowhere.

It was enough to be here, to have this time, to scout, to study. She’d be in the classroom soon, a college freshman (God!), away from everything she knew. And though she was hungry to learn, nothing could replace the sights, the sounds, the smells of home.

She’d seen cougar from time to time over the years. Not the same one, she thought. Very unlikely the same cougar she and Coop had spotted that summer eight years ago. She’d seen him camouflaged in the branches of a tree, leaping up a rock face, and once, while riding herd with her father, she’d spotted one through her field glasses as he took down a young elk.

In all of her life she’d never seen anything more powerful, more real.

She made note of the vegetation as well. The starry forget-me-nots, the delicate Rocky Mountain iris, the sunlight of yellow sweet clover. It was, after all, part of the environment, a link of the food chain. The rabbit, deer, elk ate the grasses, leaves, berries, and buds—and the gray wolf and her cats ate the rabbits, deer, and elk.

The red squirrel might end up lunch for the circling hawk.

The trail leveled off, and opened into grassland, already lush and green and spearing with wildflowers. A small herd of buffalo grazed there, so she added the bull, the four cows, and the two calves to her tally.

One of the calves dipped and shoved, and came up again with his head draped with flowers and grass. Grinning, she paused to pull out her camera, take a few pictures to add to her files.

She could title the calf Party Animal.

Maybe she’d send it, and copies of some of the shots she’d taken on the trail, to Coop. He’d said he might be coming out this summer, but he hadn’t answered the letter she’d sent three weeks before.

Then again, he wasn’t as reliable about letters and e-mails as she was. Especially since he was dating that coed he’d met at college.

CeeCee, Lil thought with a roll of her eye. Stupid name. She knew Coop was sleeping with her. He hadn’t said so, in fact had been pretty damn careful not to. But Lil wasn’t stupid. Just like she was sure—or nearly sure—he’d slept with that girl he’d talked about in high school.

Zoe.

Jeez, what happened to regular names?

It seemed to her that guys thought about sex all the time. Then again, she admitted, shifting in the saddle, she’d been thinking about it a lot lately.

Probably because she’d never had it.

She just wasn’t interested in boys—not the ones she knew, anyway. Maybe in college next fall . . .

It wasn’t as if she wanted to be a virgin, but she didn’t see the point in getting sweaty if she didn’t really like the guy—and if he didn’t heat her up on top of the like, then it was just a kind of exercise, wasn’t it?

Just something to be crossed off the life-experience list.

She wanted, she thought she wanted, more than that.

She shrugged it off, put her camera away, took out her canteen to drink. She’d probably be too busy studying and working in college for sex. Besides, her priority now was the summer, documenting her trails, the habitats, working on her models, her papers. And talking her father into culling out a few acres for the wildlife refuge she hoped to build one day.

The Chance Wildlife Refuge. She liked the name, not only because it was hers, but because the animals would have a chance there. And people would have a chance to see them, study them, care about them.

One day, she thought. But she had so much to learn first—and to learn, she had to leave what she loved best.

She hoped Coop came, even for a few weeks, before she had to leave for college. He’d come back, like her cougar. Not every summer, but often enough. Two weeks the year after his first visit, then the whole wonderful summer the year after, when his parents divorced.

A couple of weeks here, a month or so there, and they’d always just picked up where they left off. Even if he did spend time talking about the girls back home. But now it had been two whole years.

He just had to come this summer.

With a little sigh, she capped her canteen.

It happened fast.

Lil felt the mare quiver, start to shy. Even as she tightened her grip on the reins, the cat leaped out of the high grass. Like a blur—speed, muscle, silent death—he took down the calf with the flower headdress. The small herd scattered, the mother bugling. Lil fought to control the mare as the bull charged the cat.

It screamed in challenge, rising up to defend its kill. Lil locked her legs, gripping the reins with one hand as she dragged out her camera again.

Claws flashed. Across the meadow Lil scented blood. The mare scented it as well and wheeled in panic.

“Stop, easy! It’s not interested in us. It’s got what it wants.”

Gashes dripped from the bull’s side. Hooves thundered, and the calls sounded like grief. Then it all echoed away, and there was only the cat and her kill in the high meadow.

The sound it made was like a purr, a loud rumble, like triumph. Across the grass, its eyes met Lil’s, and held. Her hand trembled, but she couldn’t risk taking her other off the reins to steady the camera. She took two wobbly shots of the cat, the trampled, bloody grass, the kill.

With a warning hiss, the cat dragged the carcass into the brush, into the shadows of the pine and birch trees.

“She has kittens to feed,” Lil murmured, and her voice sounded thin and raw in the morning air. “Holy shit.” She pulled out her recorder, nearly fumbled it. “Calm down. Just calm down. Okay, document. Okay. Sighted female cougar, approximately two meters long, nose to tail. Jeez, weight about forty kilograms. Typical tawny color. Stalk-and-ambush kill. It took down a bison calf from a herd of seven grazing in high grass. Defended kill from bull. It dragged kill into the forest, potentially due to my presence, though if the female has a litter, they would be too young, probably, to visit kill sites with the mother. She’s taking her kids, who wouldn’t be fully weaned as yet, breakfast. Incident recorded . . . seven twenty-five A.M., June 12. Wow.”

As much as she wanted to, she knew better than to follow the track of the cat. If she had young, she might very well attack horse and rider to defend them, and her territory.

“We’re not going to top that,” she decided. “I guess it’s time to go home.”

She took the most direct route, anxious to get back and write up her notes. Still it was mid-afternoon before she saw her father and his part-time hand Jay mending a fence in a pasture.

Cattle scattered as she rode through them and whoaed the horse by the battered old Jeep.

“There’s my girl.” Joe walked over to give her leg, then the mare’s neck, a pat. “Home from the wilderness?”

“Safe and sound, as promised. Hi, Jay.”

Jay, who didn’t believe in using two words if one would do, tapped the brim of his hat in response.

“You need some help here?” Lil asked her father.

“No, we’ve got it. Elk came through.”

“I saw a couple herds myself, and some bison. I watched a cougar take down a calf in one of the high meadows.”

“Cat?”

She glanced at Jay. She knew the look on his face. Cougar equaled pest and predator.

“Half a day’s ride from here. With enough game to keep her and the litter I imagine she’s got fed. She doesn’t need to come down and go after our stock.”

“You’re all right?”

“She wasn’t interested in me,” she assured her father. “Remember, prey recognition is learned behavior in cougars. Humans aren’t prey.”

“Cat’ll eat anything, it’s hungry enough,” Jay muttered. “Sneaky bastards.”

“I’d say the bull leading that herd agrees with you. But I didn’t see any signs of her on the route back here. No sign she’s extended her territory down this far.”

When Jay just jerked a shoulder and turned back to the fence, Lil grinned at her father. “Anyway, if you don’t need me I’m going to head in. I’m ready for a shower and a cold drink.”

“Tell your mother we’ll be a couple hours out here yet.”

After she’d groomed and fed her horse and downed two glasses of sun tea, Lil joined her mother in the vegetable garden. She took the hoe from Jenna’s hands and set to work.

“I know I’m repeating myself, but it was the most amazing thing. The way it moved. And I know they’re secretive, skulky, but God knows how long it was back there, stalking that herd, choosing its prey, its moment, and I never saw a sign. I was looking, and I never saw a sign. I have to get better.”

“It didn’t bother you, to see it kill?”

“It was so fierce and fast. Clean, really. Just doing her job, you know? I think if I’d been expecting it, if I’d had time to think about it, I might’ve reacted differently.”

She sighed a little, tipped up the brim of her hat. “The calf was so damn cute, with those flowers dripping around its head. But it was life and death, in seconds. It . . . this is going to sound weird, but it was sort of religious.”

She paused to swipe at her sweaty forehead. “Being there, witnessing the moment, it just made me more sure of what I want to do, and what I need to learn so I can do it. I took pictures. Before, during, after.”

“Honey, it may be squeamish, especially coming from a beef farmer, but I don’t think I’d want to see that cougar chowing down on a buffalo calf.”

Grinning, Lil went back to hoeing. “Did you know what you wanted, what you wanted to do, to be, when you were my age?”

“I didn’t have a clue.” Squatting, Jenna plucked weeds from around the ferny green of carrots. Her hands were quick and capable, her body long and lithe like her daughter’s. “But a year or so after, your father came along. He gave me one cocky look, and I knew I wanted him, and he wasn’t going to have much choice in the matter.”

“What if he’d wanted to go back east?”

“I’d’ve gone back east. It wasn’t the land I loved, not back then. It was him, and I guess we fell in love with this place together.” Jenna pushed back her hat, looked over the rows of carrots and beans, the young tomatoes, and on to the fields of grain and soybeans, to the pastures. “I think you loved it with your first breath.”

“I don’t know where I’ll go. There’s so much I want to learn, and to see. But I’ll always come back.”

“I’m counting on it.” Jenna pushed to her feet. “Give me that hoe now, go in and clean up. I’ll be in in a bit, and you can help me start supper.”

Lil cut across toward the house, taking off her hat to slap it against her pants to dislodge some of the trail dust before going in. A long, hot shower sounded better than good. After she’d helped her mother in the kitchen, she could take some time to start writing up her notes and observations. And tomorrow, she had to get her film into town, get it developed.

On her list of things to save for was one of the new digital cameras. And a laptop computer, she thought. She’d earned a scholarship, and that would help with college expenses, but she knew it wouldn’t cover everything.

Tuition, housing, lab fees, books, transportation. It all added up.

She was nearly to the house when she heard the roar of an engine. Close, she determined, on their land. She walked around the house rather than inside to see who was coming and making such a racket out of it.

She set her hands on her hips when she saw the motorcycle roaring down the farm road. Bikers traveled the area regularly, and especially in the summer. Now and then one or more rode in looking for directions, or a couple days’ work. Most approached a little more cautiously, she thought, while this one barreled straight in as if he . . .

The helmet and visor hid his hair and most of his face. But the grin flashed, and she knew it. Letting out a whooping laugh, she raced forward. He stopped the bike behind her father’s truck, swung his leg over as he unhooked the helmet. He set the helmet on the seat, and turned in time to catch her in mid-flying leap.

“Coop!” She held on, tight, as he swung her in a circle. “You came.”

“I said I would.”

“Might.” Even as she gave him a squeeze, something trickled inside her, a little like heat. He felt different. Harder, tougher, in a way that made her think of man instead of boy.

“Might turned into did.” He dropped her on her feet, and still grinning, looked at her. “You got taller.”

“Some. I think I’m done now. So did you.”

Taller, and harder—and the scruff he hadn’t shaven off in a day or two, she judged, added sexy. His hair, longer than the last time she’d seen him, curled and waved around his face so his chilled blue eyes seemed even clearer, sharper.

The trickle inside her went warm.

He took her hand as he turned to study the house. “It looks the same. New paint on the shutters, but it looks the same.”

He didn’t, she thought. Not exactly. “How long have you been back? Nobody said you were here.”

“I’ve been back about ten seconds. I called my grandparents when I hit Sioux Falls, but I told them not to say.” He released her hand, but only to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“You did. You really did.”

“I stopped by here before I went there.”

And now, she realized, everything she wanted and loved most was here for the summer. “Come inside. There’s sun tea. When did you get that thing?”

He glanced back at the motorcycle. “Nearly a year ago. I figured if I could make it back this summer, it’d be fun to bike cross-country.”

He stopped at the base of the stairs, cocking his head as he scanned her face.

“What?”

“You look . . . good.”

“I do not.” She shoved at her hair, gone to tangles under her flat-brimmed hat. “I just got back from the trail. I smell. If you’d gotten here a half hour later, I’d be cleaned up.”

He just kept staring at her face. “You look good. I missed you, Lil.”

“I knew you’d come back.” Giving in, she went into his arms again, closed her eyes. “I should’ve known it would be today, when I saw the cougar.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you all about it. Come inside, Coop. Welcome home.”

Once her parents had come in, greeted Coop, settled down with him, Lil dashed upstairs. The long hot shower of her dreams became the fastest shower in history. Moving at light speed, she pulled out her small supply of makeup. Nothing too obvious, she ordered herself, and used a light hand with blush, added mascara and just a hint of lip gloss. Since it would take forever to dry her hair, she pulled it all back, still damp, into a tail.

She thought about earrings, told herself it was too obvious. Clean jeans, she decided, a fresh shirt. Natural, casual.

Her heart was beating like a marching band.

It was weird, it was strange, it was unexpected. But she had the hots for her best friend.

He looked so different—the same, but different. The hollows in his cheeks were new and fascinating. His hair was shaggy and sexy with the dark brown just starting to go streaky from the sun. He’d already started to tan a little—she remembered how he’d go brown in the sun. And his eyes, that glacier ice blue, just pierced some unexplored land inside her.

She wished she’d kissed him. Just a friendly hi-Coop sort of thing. Then she’d know what it was like, know what it felt like to have his mouth meet hers.

Calm down, she ordered herself. He’d probably laugh his head off if he knew what she was thinking. She took several deep breaths, then walked slowly downstairs.

She could hear them in the kitchen: her mother’s laugh, her father’s joking tones—and Coop’s voice. Deeper, wasn’t it deeper than it had been?

She had to stop and breathe again. Then fixing an easy smile on her face, she strolled back into the kitchen.

He stopped, in the middle of a sentence, and stared. Blinked. Just that instant, that surprise that flickered in his eyes, had her skin humming.

“So are you staying for supper?” Lil asked him.

“We were just trying to talk him into it. But Lucy and Sam are expecting him. Sunday,” Jenna said with a finger wag. “Everybody here for a picnic on Sunday.”

“Absolutely. I remember the first one. We can fit in some batting practice.”

“Bet I can still outhit you.” She leaned back against the counter and smiled in a way that had him blinking again.

“We’ll see about that.”

“I was hoping for a ride on that toy you’ve got out there.”

“A Harley,” he said in sober tones, “is nobody’s toy.”

“Why don’t you show me what it can do?”

“Sure. Sunday, I’ll—”

“I was thinking now. It’s all right, isn’t it?” She turned to her mother. “Just a half hour?”

“Ah . . . Do you have helmets, Cooper?”

“Yeah, ah, I bought a second one figuring . . . Yeah.”

“How many tickets have you racked up riding that?” Joe asked him.

“None in the last four months,” Cooper said with a grin.

“Bring my girl back like you took her.”

“I will. Thanks for the tea,” he said as he rose. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

Jenna watched them go out, then looked at her husband. “Oh,” she said.

He gave her a weak smile. “I was heading more toward: oh, shit.”

Outside, Lil studied the helmet he offered. “So are you going to teach me to drive this thing?”

“Maybe.”

She put the helmet on, watching him while she strapped it. “I can handle it.”

“Yeah, I bet you could.” He got on. “I thought about picking up a sissy seat, but—”

“I’m no sissy,” she said, and swung on behind him. She snugged her body behind his, wrapped her arms around his waist. Could he feel her heart thudding? she wondered. “Let her rip, Coop!”

When he did, zipping down the farm road, she let out a scream of delight. “It’s nearly as good as riding a horse,” she shouted.

“Better on the highway. Lean into the turns,” he told her, “and keep a good grip on me.”

Behind him, she smiled. She intended to.

COOP MEASURED OUT grain while the sun streamed through the loft windows. He could hear his grandmother singing as she fed the chickens, and their clucking accompaniment. In the stalls, horses chuffed and chewed.

It was funny how it all came back—the smells, the sounds, the quality of light and shadow. It had been two years since he’d fed a horse or groomed one, since he’d sat down at a big kitchen table at dawn to a plate of flapjacks.

It might have been yesterday.

The constant was a comfort, he supposed, when so much of his life was in flux. He remembered lying on a flat rock by the stream with Lil, years before, and how she’d known what she wanted. She still did.

He still didn’t.

The house, the fields, the hills, just the same as he’d left them. His grandparents, too, he thought. Had he really thought them old all those years before? They seemed so sturdy and steady to him now, as if the eight years since hadn’t touched them.

They’d sure as hell touched Lil.

When had she gotten so . . . well, prime?

Even two years before she’d just been Lil. Pretty, sure—she’d always been pretty. But he’d barely thought of her as a girl, much less a girl.

A girl with curves and lips, and eyes that put his blood on charge when she looked at him.

It wasn’t right to think of her that way. Probably. They were friends, best friends. He wasn’t supposed to notice she had breasts, much less obsess on what they’d felt like pressed into his back while they’d roared down the road on his bike.

Firm and soft and fascinating.

He sure as hell wasn’t supposed to have a sex dream about getting his hands on those breasts—and the rest of her.

But he had. Twice.

He bridled a yearling, as his grandfather had asked, and let the filly out to the corral to work her on the line.

With the stock fed and watered, the eggs gathered, Lucy walked over to sit on the fence and watch.

“She’s got some sass to her,” she said when the filly kicked up her hind legs.

“Energy to spare.” Coop switched leads, worked her in a circle.

“Picked her name yet?”

Coop smiled. Since Jones it had been tradition for him to name a yearling every season whether he made it out to the farm or not. “She’s got that pretty, dappled coat. I’m thinking Freckles.”

“Suits her. You’ve got a way, Cooper, with the naming, and the horses. You always did.”

“I miss them when I’m back east.”

“And when you’re here, you miss back east. It’s natural enough,” she continued when he didn’t speak. “You’re young. You haven’t settled yet.”

“I’m almost twenty, Grandma. It feels like I should know what I’m after. Hell, by my age you were married to Grandpa.”

“Different times, different place. Twenty’s younger in some ways than it once was, older in others. You’ve got time to do that settling.”

He looked back at her—sturdy, her hair shorter, with a bit of curl, the lines around her eyes deeper—but the same. Just as it was the same that he could say what was on his mind, or in his heart, and know she’d listen.

“Do you wish you’d taken more? More time?”

“Me? No, because I ended up right here, sitting on this fence watching my grandson train that pretty filly. But my way’s not yours. I married at eighteen, had my first baby before I was twenty, and barely been east of the Mississippi my whole life. That’s not you, Cooper.”

“I don’t know what me is. First?” He looked back at her. “You said first baby.”

“We lost two after your ma. That was hard. Still is. I think it’s why me and Jenna got close so quick. She had a stillbirth and then a miscarriage after Lil.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Things happen, and you go on. That’s all there is. If you’re lucky you get something out of it. I got you, didn’t I? And Jenna and Josiah, they got Lil.”

“Lil sure seems to know what she wants.”

“The girl does have her eyes forward.”

“So . . .” He aimed for casual. “Is she seeing anyone? A guy, I mean.”

“I took your meaning,” Lucy said drily. “Nobody in particular I’ve heard about. The Nodock boy did a lot of sniffing around in that direction, but it didn’t seem Lil was interested overmuch.”

“Nodock? Gull? But, Jesus, he’s twenty-two or -three. He’s too old to be hanging around Lil.”

“Not Gull, Jesse. His brother. Younger. He’d be about your age. Would you be sniffing in that direction, Cooper?”

“Me? Lil? No.” Crap, he thought. Just crap. “We’re friends, that’s all. She’s practically like a sister.”

Her face bland, Lucy tapped her boot heel on the fence. “Your grandfather and I were friendly when we were coming up. Though I don’t recall him ever thinking of me as a sister. Still, that Lil, she’s got her eyes forward, like I said. Girl’s got plans.”

“She always did.”

When work was done for the day, Coop thought about saddling one of the horses for a long, hard ride. He wished it could be Jones, but the yearling he’d once helped train had become one of the stars of his grandparents’ tourist trade.

He considered his options, had just about settled on the big roan gelding named Tick, when he saw Lil walking toward the corral.

It was lowering to admit, but his mouth went dry.

She wore jeans and a bright red shirt, scuffed boots, and a worn-in gray hat with a wide, flat brim, and her long black hair loose under it.

When she got to the fence, she tapped the saddlebag slung over her shoulder. “I’ve got a picnic in here I’m looking to share. Anybody interested?”

“Might be.”

“The thing is, I need to borrow a horse. I’ll barter this cold fried chicken for a ride.”

“Take your pick.”

Angling her head, she gestured with her chin. “I like the look of that piebald mare.”

“I’ll get you a saddle, and let my grandparents know.”

“I stopped in the house first. They’re fine with it. We’ve got a lot of day left. Might as well take advantage.” She draped the saddlebag over the fence. “I know where the tack is. Go ahead, get your own horse saddled.”

Friends or not, he didn’t see the harm in watching her walk away, or noticing how her jeans fit as she did.

They set to work, with a rhythm both of them knew well. When Coop lifted her saddlebag, he winced. “That’s a lot of chicken.”

“I’ve got my recorder and camera, and . . . stuff. You know I like to make a record when I’m out on a trail. I was thinking we could head for the creek, then take one of the spur trails through the forest. Get a good gallop on the way there, then it’s pretty scenery.”

He shot her a knowing look. “Cougar territory?”

“The couple I’ve tracked this year cover that area. But that’s not why.” She smiled as she swung into the saddle. “It’s just a pretty ride, and there’s a stream where the forest opens up. It’s a nice spot for a picnic. It’s a good hour from here though, if you’d rather something closer.”

“I can work up a good appetite in an hour.” He vaulted onto his horse, settled his hat more securely on his head. “Which way?”

“Southwest.”

“Race ya.”

He gave the gelding a light kick. They galloped across the farmyard and through the fields.

There’d been a time, Lil thought, when she’d been the better rider, and by a long shot. Now she had to admit they were on level ground. The mare was her advantage, being light and quick, so with the wind in her hair, Lil reached the thin line of trees less than a length in the lead.

Laughing, eyes bright, she leaned forward to give the mare a congratulatory pat on the neck. “Where do you ride in New York?”

“I don’t.”

She straightened in the saddle. “You’re saying you haven’t sat a horse in two years?”

He shrugged. “It’s like riding a bike.”

“No, it’s like riding a horse. How do you . . .” She trailed off, shook her head, and began to walk the horse into the pines.

“How do I what?”

“Well, how do you stand not doing something you love?”

“I do other stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Ride a motorcycle, hang out, listen to music.”

“Chase girls.”

He gave her a grin. “They don’t run very fast.”

She let out a hoot. “I bet they don’t. How does CeeCee feel about you being out here all summer.”

He shrugged again as they crossed a flat bordered by trees and boulders. “We’re not serious. She’s got her thing, I’ve got mine.”

“I thought you two were tight.”

“Not especially. I heard you were hooking up with Jesse Nodock.”

“God, no!” Tossing back her head, she laughed. “He’s nice enough, but kind of dopey. Plus all he really wants to do is wrestle.”

“Wrestle? Why . . .” Something dark crept into his eyes. “You mean with you? You’ve been doing it with Nodock?”

“I have not. I went out with him a couple times. I don’t much like the way he kisses. A little on the sloppy side of things, to my taste. He needs to practice his technique.”

“You know a lot about technique?”

She slanted him a look, a slow smile. “I’m doing an informal study. Look.” As they were riding abreast, she reached out to touch his arm, then pointed. In the far edges of the trees, a herd of deer stopped to stare back at them. Lil dug out her recorder.

“Six white-tail, four doe, two fawns. Aren’t they sweet? A buck’s been through here, too, not long ago.”

“How do you know that, Tonto?”

“Look at the bark. Scrape marks from a buck rubbing his antlers. Some of that’s fresh, Mr. New York.”

This, too, was familiar, he thought. Riding with her, listening to her point out the tracks, the wildlife, the signs. He’d missed that.

“What else do you see?”

“Marmot tracks, and mule deer. There’s a red squirrel up in that tree. You’ve got eyes.”

“Not like yours.”

“Cat’s been through here, but not recently.”

He watched her, only her. He couldn’t seem to do otherwise, not when the sunlight dappled on her face, and those dark eyes were so alive, so intent. “Okay, how do you know?”

“Those scrape marks? That’s cougar, but they’re old, probably from a male marking his territory last mating season. He’s moved on, at least for now. They don’t stay with the female or the family. Screw and hit the road. That’s a guy for you.”

“About this informal poll.”

She laughed, and clucked to the mare.

4

It was easy to fall into a routine, into the comfortable zone of it. Hot days, hard work, and sudden storms. Lil spent nearly every free moment with Coop, on horseback or hiking, batting balls, or on fast rides on his bike. She lay in the grass with him and counted stars, sat on the banks of a stream and shared picnics.

And he never made a move.

She didn’t understand it. She’d barely looked cross-eyed at Jesse and he’d been all over her. Dirk Pleasant, too, when all she’d done was take a couple of spins on the Ferris wheel with him at the carnival last summer.

She knew the look a boy got in his eye now when he thought about a girl that way. She’d swear she’d seen that look in Coop’s aimed in her direction.

So why wasn’t he all over her?

Obviously it was time to take the bull by the horns.

She drove the bike, carefully, nearly to the end of the farm road. Concentrated, muttering instructions to herself on the turn, then drove it back to where Coop stood, watching her.

She kept the speed dignified, only because the couple of times she’d burned it, he’d gotten really mad.

“Okay, I’ve driven back and forth six times today.” Though her hand twitched, she resisted gunning the engine. “You’ve got to let me take it out on the road, Coop. Get on, let’s take a ride.”

“You almost ditched it on the turn.”

“Almost doesn’t count.”

“It does on my bike. I’m still paying for it. You want a ride, I’ll drive.”

“Come on.” She got off, took off her helmet. Deliberately shook back her hair before taking the Coke bottle from him to drink. She tried on the sultry look she’d practiced in the mirror. “One mile up, one mile back.” Smiling, she traced a finger down his throat, moved in a little closer. “It’s a straight shot, and . . . I’ll make it worth your while.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’re you doing?”

She cocked her head. “If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right.”

He didn’t step back; she didn’t move the hand that rested lightly on his chest. His heartbeat speeded up a little. Surely that was a good sign.

“You need to be careful how you come on to guys, Lil. They’re not all me.”

“You’re the only one I’m coming on to.”

Temper—hardly the reaction she’d been after—lit in his eyes. “I’m not your practice dummy.”

“I wasn’t practicing. But I guess you’re not interested.” With a shrug, she set the Coke on the seat of the bike. “Thanks for the lesson.” Insulted, embarrassed, she started for the first cattle gate.

She supposed he just went for city girls, with their city ways. Mr. New York City. Well, that was fine, that was just fine, she didn’t need him to—

His hand gripped her arm, and he spun her around so fast her body plowed into his. Temper sparked off him just as it did her.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? You don’t trust me to drive your stupid bike for a couple of miles, you don’t want to kiss me. You act like I’m still nine years old. If you’re not interested that way, then you should just say so instead of—”

He yanked her up to her toes, and his mouth was on hers. So hard, so fast. Nothing like the others, she thought, dizzy. Nothing like the other boys.

His lips were hot, his tongue quick. Something inside her went loose, as if a knot gave way, and every inch of her—inside and out—flashed with light, with heat.

It felt as if her heart would beat its way right out of her chest.

She shoved him back, trying to catch her breath. “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

Everything went bright and sharp. Dazzling. Who needed to breathe, she thought, and leaped back into his arms with a force that knocked them both to the ground.

She stopped his heart. He’d have sworn it stopped beating when he’d gone crazy and kissed her. For that instant, it had been like death—and then everything blasted back to life.

Now, somehow, he was rolling with her on the dirt road, over the prickly grass on its edge. He was hard, brutally hard, so when she pressed her hips up, pressed against him, he groaned in pleasure and torment.

“Does it hurt? What does it feel like?” Her words tore on ragged breaths. “Let me feel—”

“Jesus. Don’t.” He gripped her hand and pulled it back from its sudden and fierce exploration. Another minute of that and he knew he’d go off, and embarrass them both.

He pushed back to sit on the old road with his heart knocking between his ears. “What are we doing?”

“You wanted to kiss me.” She sat up with him. Her eyes were huge, deep and dark. “You want more.”

“Look, Lil—”

“So do I. You’re going to be my first.” She smiled as he stared at her. “It’ll be right with you. I’ve been waiting until I knew it’d be right.”

Something, she thought it might be panic, streaked across his face. “That’s not something you can take back once it’s done.”

“You want me. I want you back. We’ll figure it out.” She leaned forward, laid her lips gently, experimentally on his. “I liked the way you kissed me, so we’ll figure it out.”

He shook his head, and the panic turned into a kind of baffled amusement. “I’m supposed to be the one talking you into having sex.”

“You couldn’t talk me into anything if I didn’t want it.”

“That’s for damn sure.”

She smiled again, started to lean her head on his shoulder. And was on her feet in a flash. “Oh, God, look at the sky. Look north.”

It boiled. Coop pushed to his feet to grab her hand. “Let’s get inside.”

“It’s miles off. Miles. It’s going to spawn though. It’s—There!”

The funnel whirled out of the churning mass, twisting its way to the ground like a deadly black finger. “My grandparents.”

“No, it’s miles off, and it’s heading west, heading to Wyoming. We’ve barely even got wind here.”

“They can turn.” As he spoke he saw it simply eat through a line of trees.

“Yeah, but it’s not. It won’t. Look, look, Coop, can you see the rain wall? There’s a rainbow.”

She saw the rainbow, he thought, and he saw the black funnel storming its way across the plains.

He supposed that said something about both of them.

OUTSIDE LIL’S BEDROOM, Jenna took several bracing breaths. The light under the door told her Lil was still up. She’d half hoped that by the time she’d finished stalling, the light would be off.

She knocked, opened the door when Lil called out to come in.

Her daughter sat up in bed, her hair spilling around her shoulders, her face scrubbed for the night, and a thick book in her hands.

“Studying already?”

“It’s on wildlife ecology and management. I want to be ready when I start classes. No, I want to be ahead,” Lil admitted. “A freshman has to be really good to have a chance at any serious fieldwork. So I’m going to be really good. I’m already feeling competitive.”

“Your grandfather was the same. Horseshoes or horse trading, politics or pinochle, he wanted to come in first.” Jenna sat on the side of the bed. So young, she thought, looking at her daughter. Still a baby in so many ways. And yet . . .

“Did you have a good time tonight?”

“Sure. I know a lot of people my age think barn dances are hokey, but they’re fun. It’s nice to see everybody. And I like watching you and Dad dance.”

“The music was good. Gets the feet moving.” She glanced at the open book, saw what looked like some sort of strange algebra. “What in the world is that?”

“Oh, it’s explaining equations for measuring population density of species. See, this is a formula for finding the merged estimate, that’s the mean of the individual estates. And its variance is the mean of . . .” She stopped, grinned at her mother’s face. “Do you really want to know?”

“Do you remember me helping you with math after you got through long division.”

“No.”

“That would be your answer. Anyway, you didn’t dance much tonight.”

“We liked listening to the music, and it was so nice out.”

And whenever you came back in, Jenna thought, you had that dazed and smug look of a girl who’d done some serious kissing.

Please, God, let that be all.

“You and Cooper aren’t just friends anymore.”

Lil sat up a little straighter. “Not just. Mom—”

“You know we love him. He’s a good young man, and I know you care about each other. I also know that you’re not children anymore, and when you feel more than friendship, things happen. Sex happens,” Jenna corrected, ordering herself to stop being a coward.

“It hasn’t. Yet.”

“Good. That’s good, because if it does, I want both of you to be prepared, to be safe.” She reached in her pocket and took out a box of condoms. “To be protected.”

“Oh.” Lil just stared at them, as dumbfounded as her mother had been by the equations. “Oh. Um.”

“Some girls consider this the boy’s responsibility. My girl is smart and self-aware, and will always look after herself, rely on herself. I wish you’d wait, I can’t help wishing you’d wait. But if you don’t, I want you to promise me you’ll use protection.”

“I will. I promise. I want to be with him, Mom. When I am—I mean just with him, I feel all this . . . this,” she said lamely. “In my heart, and in my stomach, in my head. Everything’s fluttering around so I can barely breathe. And when he kisses me, it’s like, Oh, that’s what’s it supposed to be. I want to be with him,” she repeated. “He pulls back because he’s not sure I’m really ready. But I am.”

“You’ve just made me feel a lot better about him. A lot better knowing he’s not pressuring you.”

“I think it might be, sort of, the other way around.”

Jenna managed a weak laugh. “Lil, we’ve talked before, about sex, safety, responsibility, those feelings. And you’ve grown up on a farm. But if there’s anything you’re not sure of, or want to talk about, you know you can talk to me.”

“Okay. Mom, does Dad know you’re giving me condoms?”

“Yes. We talked about it. You know you can talk to him, too, but—”

“Oh, yeah, big but. It’d feel really weird.”

“On both sides.” Jenna patted Lil’s thigh as she rose. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t. Mom? Thanks for loving me.”

“Never a problem.”

RELY ON YOURSELF, Lil thought. Her mother was right, as usual, she decided as she packed provisions. A woman had to have a plan, that was the key. What to do, when and how to do it. She’d made the arrangements. Maybe Coop didn’t know all of them, but the element of surprise was also key.

She put the packs in the truck, grateful that her parents had gone to town, so there didn’t have to be any awkward be carefuls, even if they were unspoken.

She wondered if Coop’s grandparents knew what was going on. Really going on. She’d opted not to ask her mother that one. Talk about awkward.

Didn’t matter, don’t care, she thought as she drove with the wind shooting through the open windows. She had three days free. Probably her last in a row for the summer. In another few weeks she’d be on her way north, on her way to college. And another phase of her life would begin.

She wasn’t leaving until she’d finished this phase.

She’d thought she’d be nervous, but she wasn’t. Excited, happy, but not nervous. She knew what she was doing—in theory—and was ready to put it into practice.

She turned the radio up and sang along as she drove through the hills, passed tidy farms and pastures. She saw men mending fences, and clothes flapping on lines. She stopped—she couldn’t help herself—to take pictures and some quick notes when she spotted a good-sized herd of buffalo.

She arrived at the farm in time to see Coop saddling up. She hitched on her pack, grabbed the second, then gave a whistle.

“What’s all that?”

“Some surprises,” she called out as he walked over to help her.

“Jesus, Lil, it looks like enough for a week. We’re only going to be a few hours.”

“You’ll thank me later. Where is everybody?”

“My grandparents had to run into town. They should be on their way back, but they said not to wait if we were ready before.”

“Believe me, I’m ready.” She hugged that exciting secret inside. “Oh, I talked to my college roommate today.” Lil checked the cinches on the mare’s saddle. “We got our dorm assignments, and she called, just to touch base. She’s from Chicago, and she’ll be studying animal husbandry and zoology. I think we’re going to get along. I hope. I’ve never shared a room before.”

“Not much longer now.”

“No.” She mounted. “Not much longer. Do you like your roommate?”

“He stayed stoned pretty much through two years. He didn’t bother me.”

“I’m hoping to make friends. Some people make friends in college that stay friends all the rest of their lives.” They moved at an easy pace, all the time in the world, under the wide blue plate of sky. “Did you get stoned?”

“A couple of times and that was enough. It seemed like the thing to do, and the grass was right there. He’s all, Dude, fire one up,” Coop said in an exaggerated stoner’s tone that made her laugh. “So why not? Everything seemed pretty funny—and mellow—for a while. Then I was starving and had a headache. It didn’t seem worth it.”

“Is he going to be your roommate again this term?”

“He flunked out, big surprise.”

“You’ll have to break in a new one.”

“I’m not going back.”

“What?” She jerked her mount to a halt to gape, but Coop kept going. She nudged the mare into a trot to catch up. “What do you mean, you’re not going back? Back east?”

“No, back to college. I’m done.”

“But you’ve only—you’ve barely . . . What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s pretty much the point. I’m not getting anywhere, and it’s not where I want to get, anyway. The whole prelaw shit was my father’s deal. He’ll pay as long as I do it his way. I’m not doing it his way anymore.”

She knew the signs—the tightening of his jaw, the flare in his eyes. She knew the temper, and the bracing for a fight.

“I don’t want to be a lawyer, especially not the kind of corporate stooge in an Italian suit he’s pushing on me. Goddamn it, Lil, I spent the first half of my life trying to please him, trying to get him to notice me, to fucking care. What did it get me? The only reason he’s paid the freight on college is because he has to, but it had to be his way. And he was pissed I didn’t get into Harvard. Jesus, as if.”

“You could’ve gotten into Harvard if you wanted.”

“No, Lil.” Exasperated he scowled at her. “You could. You’re the genius, the straight-A student.”

“You’re smart.”

“Not like that. Not with school, or not that way. I do okay, I do fine. And I fucking hate it, Lil.”

Sad and mad, she realized. The sad and mad was back in his eyes. “You never said—”

“What was the point? I felt stuck. He can make you feel like you don’t have a choice, like he’s right, you’re wrong. And Christ, he knows how to make you toe the line. That’s why he’s good at what he does. But I don’t want to do what he does. Be what he is. I started thinking of all the years I’d have to put into becoming what I didn’t want to become. I’m done with it.”

“I wish you’d told me before. I just wish you’d told me you were so unhappy with all this. We could’ve talked about it.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know this whole deal’s about him, not me. Him and my mother, and their endless war, and endless pursuit of the right appearances. I’m finished with it, too.”

Her heart broke a little for him. “Did you have a fight with your parents before you left?”

“I wouldn’t call it a fight. I said some things I wanted to say, and I got an ultimatum. I could stay and work in the family firm this summer or he’d cut me off. Financially, as he’s cut me off in every other way since I was a kid.”

They forded a stream in silence, just the splash of hooves through water. She couldn’t imagine her parents stepping away from her, not in any way. “So you came here.”

“It’s what I’d planned to do, what I wanted to do. I’ve got enough money to get my own place. I don’t need much. I was never going back to live with my mother anyway. Just never going there again.”

A little bubble of hope swelled inside her. “You could stay here, with your grandparents. You know you could. Help out at the farm. You could go to school out here, and—”

He turned his head toward her, and she felt that little bubble pop and dissolve. “I’m not going back to college, Lil. It’s not for me. It’s different for you. You’ve been planning what you were going to study, what you were going to do, ever since you saw that cougar. And decided to chase cats instead of pop flies.”

“I didn’t know you were so unhappy. I get law wasn’t your choice, and it was unfair of your father to push you there, but—”

“Fair’s not the point.” He shrugged, a gesture of a young man too used to unfair to be bothered by it. “It’s not about that, and from now on it’s not about him. It’s about me. The whole college scene? That’s not about me.”

“Neither is staying here, is it?”

“It doesn’t feel like it, not yet or not now anyway. I don’t know what I want, for sure. Staying would be easy. I’ve got a place to stay, three squares, work I’m pretty good at. I’ve got family, and you.”

“But.”

“It feels like settling, before I know. Before I do something. Out here, I’m Sam and Lucy’s grandson. I want to be me. I enrolled in the police academy.”

“Police?” If he’d leaned over and shoved her off her horse she’d have been less stunned. “Where did that come from? You’ve never said anything about wanting to be a cop.”

“I took a couple of courses in law enforcement, and one in criminology. They were the only things I liked about the whole pile of crap these last two years. The only things I was any good in. I’ve already applied. I’ve got enough course credits to get in, and I’ll be twenty when I start. It’s six months’ training, and it just feels like I’d be good at it. So I’m going to try it. I need something that’s mine. I don’t know how to explain it.”

She thought, I’m yours, but kept the words to herself. “Have you told your grandparents?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ll be working in New York.”

“I’d’ve been going to school back east,” he reminded her. “And if everyone but me had their way, working in legal in my father’s company back there. Wearing a suit every fricking day. Now I’ll be doing something for me, or at least trying to. I figured you’d understand that.”

“I do.” She wished she didn’t. She wanted him there, with her. “It’s just . . . so far away.”

“I’ll come out when I can. As soon as I can. Maybe Christmas.”

“I could come to New York, maybe on semester break, or . . . next summer.”

Some of that sad lifted from his face. “I’ll show you around. There’s a lot to do, to see. I’ll have my own place. It’s not going to be much, but—”

“It won’t matter.” They’d make it work, somehow, she told herself. She couldn’t feel this way about him, about them, and not make it work. “They have cops in South Dakota, too.” She tried out a bright smile. “You could be sheriff of Deadwood one day.”

He laughed at the idea. “First I have to get through the academy. A lot of people wash out.”

“You won’t. You’ll be great. You’ll help people and solve crimes, and I’ll study and get my degree and save wildlife.”

And they’d find a way, she thought.

SHE LED the way to the spot she’d chosen. She’d wanted it perfect—the day, the place, the moment. She couldn’t let the future, the uncertainty of it interfere.

They had the sun, and it filtered through the trees to sparkle on the waters of the fast-running stream where purple dame’s rockets danced in the light breeze. More wildflowers bloomed in the light, and in the shadows, and the birdcall was music enough.

They dismounted, tethered the horses. Lil unstrapped her pack. “We should set up the tent first.”

“Tent?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise. We’ve got two days. It’s okay with your grandparents, with my parents.” She set the pack down, laid her hands on his chest. “Is it okay with you?”

“It’s been a while since we camped. Last time your father and I shared a tent.” Searching her face, he rubbed her arms. “Things have changed, Lil.”

“I know. That’s why we’re here, with one tent and one sleeping bag.” She leaned in, keeping her eyes open as she brushed her lips over his. “Do you want me, Cooper?”

“You know I do.” He pulled her closer, took her mouth with a sudden and fierce possession that arrowed heat straight to her belly. “Jesus, Lil, you know I do. No point in asking if you’re sure, if you’re ready. You’re always sure. But . . . We’re not prepared. A tent’s not enough for what we’re talking about. At least, the kind of tent you’ve got in that pack.”

It made her laugh, and hug him tight. “I have a box of tents.”

“Sorry?”

“Condoms. I have a box of condoms. I never go camping unprepared.”

“A box. That makes the one I’m carrying in my wallet kind of unnecessary—and okay, thank you, God—but where the hell did you get condoms?”

“My mother gave them to me.”

“Your . . .” He closed his eyes, then gave up and sat on a rock. “Your mother gave you a box of condoms, then let you come out here with me?”

“Actually, she gave them to me a week ago, and asked me to promise to be sure and to be careful. I did, I am. I will.”

A little pale, Coop rubbed his hands on the knees of his jeans. “Your father knows?”

“Sure. He’s not home loading up the shotgun, Coop.”

“It’s weird. It’s just weird. And now I’m nervous, damn it.”

“I’m not. Help me set up the tent.”

He rose. They worked quickly, efficiently, securing the small, lightweight tent.

“You’ve done this before, right?”

He glanced over at her. “You don’t mean camping. Yeah. But I’ve never done this before with someone who hasn’t—done it before. It’s probably going to hurt you, and I don’t know if it’s even any good for a girl the first time.”

“I’ll let you know.” She reached out, laid a hand over his heart. All she could think was it was beating for her now. It had to be. “We could start now.”

“Now?”

“Well, I’m hoping you’ll get me warmed up first. I brought an extra blanket to spread out.” She pulled it out of the pack. “And since you’ve got that condom in your wallet, we could start with that. Otherwise, it’s all we’re going to think about.” Steady and sure, she took his hand. “Maybe you could lie down here with me, and kiss me awhile.”

“There’s nobody else like you in the world.”

“Show me, will you? You’re the only one I want to show me.”

He kissed her first, as they stood in the sunlight beside the blanket, and put everything he had that was soft and gentle into it.

He knew she was right. It should be here, in the world that belonged to the two of them, the world that had brought them together, and linked them together forever.

They lowered to kneel, face-to-face, and she sighed against his lips.

He stroked her, her hair, her back, her face, and finally her breasts. He’d felt them before, felt her heart kick against his palm when he touched her. But this was different. This was prelude.

He drew off her shirt, and saw the smile in her eyes as she drew off his. Her breath caught when he unhooked her bra. Then her eyes fluttered closed as for the time he touched her there skin to skin.

“Oh. Well. That’s definitely warming me up.”

“You’re like . . .” He searched for the right words as he cupped her breasts, used his thumbs to tease her nipples. “Gold dust, all over.”

“You haven’t seen all over yet.” She opened her eyes, looked into his. “Things are coming to life inside me I didn’t even know were there. Everything’s all jumpy and hot.” She reached out, rubbed her palms over his chest. “Is it like that for you?”

“Except I knew they were there. Lil.” He bent his head and took her breast into his mouth. The flavor of her flooded him, the sound of her shock and delight raced wild through his blood.

Her arms came around him, urging him, and stayed around him when they collapsed on the blanket.

She hadn’t known there would be so much. Storms and waves and shudders. Nothing she’d read—not the texts, not the novels—had prepared her for what happened to her own body.

Her mind seemed to lift out of it, release it, so there was nothing but feeling.

She raced her lips over his shoulder, his throat, his face, giving in to the urge to feed on him. When his hand stroked down her torso, fought open the button of her jeans, she quivered. And thought: Yes. Please, yes.

When she tried to do the same for him, he drew back.

“I need to . . .” His breath came ragged as he dragged his wallet out. “I might forget, just stop thinking.”

“Okay.” She lay back, touched her own breasts. “Everything feels different already. I think . . . Oh.” Her eyes widened as he yanked off his jeans. “Wow.”

Elemental male pride at her reaction had him slanting a glance at her as he ripped open the condom. “It’ll fit.”

“I know how it works, but . . . let me.” Before he could sheath himself she sat up to touch him.

“Holy shit, Lil.”

“It’s smooth,” she murmured as another wave of heat rolled through her. “Hard and smooth. Will it feel like that inside me?”

“Keep that up, you’re not going to know for a while.” His breathing fast and shallow, he caught her wrist, pulled her hand away.

He struggled to focus, concentrated on the protection. “Let me,” he said as he lowered to her. “Just let me this first time.”

He kissed her, long, slow, deep, and hoped his instincts ran true. She seemed to soften under him, and then as he stroked his hand down, quivered.

She was already wet, and that nearly undid him. Praying for control, he slipped a finger into her. Her hips arched up as her fingers dug into his back.

“Oh, God, oh, God.”

“It’s good.” Hot, soft, wet. Lil. “Is it good?”

“Yes. Yes. It’s . . .”

She felt something rise up, fly off, and take her breath with it. He was kissing her, kissing her, anchoring her, letting her go. She arched again, to find more. Then again, again.

This, she thought, this.

Swimming in the heat, she felt him shift, felt him press at the core of her. She opened her eyes, struggled to focus, watched his face, the intensity of those crystal blue eyes.

It hurt. For a moment the pain was so shocking through the pleasure she went stiff with denial.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know if he intended to stop or go on, but knew she was on the brink of something unimagined. She gripped his hips, and reared up to find it, to know it.

The pain struck again, another shock and burn—and he was inside her. With her.

“It fit,” she managed.

He dropped his head on her shoulder with a breathless and choked laugh. “Oh, God, Lil. Oh, God. I don’t think I can stop now.”

“Who asked you to?” She dug her fingers in, lifted her hips again, then felt him move in her.

He trembled above her, and it seemed to her the ground trembled beneath. Inside her, everything opened, everything filled, and she knew.

She cried out with pleasure as she hadn’t with the pain, and rode the crest of it with him.

5

They played in the stream, washing in the cool water, teasing and tormenting each other’s bodies until they were breathless.

Wet and half naked, they fell on the food Lil had brought like a pair of starving wolves. With the horses tethered and dozing, they donned light packs to hike a short way along the trail.

Everything seemed brighter to her, clearer and stronger.

She paused among the shelter of the pines, pointed at tracks. “Wolf pack. The cats compete with them for prey. Mostly they leave each other alone. There’s a lot of game, so . . .”

He gave her a poke in the belly. “I should’ve known there was a reason you picked this way.”

“I wondered if the female I spotted covered this ground. She’s probably more west of here, but it’s good territory, as the wolves would tell you. We’re going to build a refuge.”

“For what?”

“All of them. For endangered and injured and abused. For the ones people buy or capture as exotic pets then realize they can’t possibly keep. I’m still talking my father into it, but I will.”

“Here? In the hills?”

She gave a decisive nod. “Paha Sapa—Lakota for Hills of Black, a sacred place. It seems right. Especially right for what I want to do.”

“It’s your place,” he agreed. “So yeah, it seems right. But it seems like a lot.”

“I know. I’ve been studying how other refuges are built, set up, how they run, what it takes. I have a lot more to learn. We’ve got some overlap with the National Park, and that could work in our favor. We’ll need some funding, a plan, some help. Probably a lot of help,” she admitted.

They stood on the trail of a world they both knew, but it felt to him as if they stood at some kind of crossroads. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too.”

“Yeah. I have. I’m going to work on it in school. Build a model, I hope. Learn enough to make it happen. It’s what I want to do. I want to be a part of protecting all this, learning and educating. Dad knows I’m never going to be a beef farmer. I guess he’s always known.”

“That’s where you’re lucky.”

“I know it.” She ran her hand down his arm until their fingers linked. “If you decide being one of New York’s Finest doesn’t suit you, you could come back and give us a hand with it.”

He shook his head. “Or sheriff of Deadwood.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Cooper.” She turned into his arms.

So she felt it, too, he realized, and he only held her tighter. “You couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone but you. I don’t want anyone but you.”

He turned his head to rest his cheek on top of her head. Looked at the tracks they’d left behind. “I’ll come back. I always come back.”

She had him now, and tried to hold on to that as tightly as she held on to him. She would will him back if need be. Back to her, back to where he was happy.

One day they’d walk through this forest again, years from now. Together.

As they walked back to camp, she put everything between now and then out of her mind.

That night, while the stars seared the sky overhead, she lay in his arms, and heard the cry of the cat.

Her talisman, she thought. Her good-luck charm.

Because she couldn’t understand why she felt so weepy, she turned her face into his shoulder and lay quiet until she could sleep.

JENNA WATCHED OUT the window. The hard, hot day threatened storms with a mottled bruising in the eastern sky. There would be other storms, and more bruising, she thought as she watched her girl and the boy she loved ride back from checking fences with Joe and Sam.

Even at that distance she could see what they were. Lovers now, so young, so fresh. All they could see were the summer blue skies, and not the storms blowing in.

“He’ll break her heart.”

“I wish I could say otherwise.” Behind her, Lucy put a hand on Jenna’s shoulder and watched as she watched.

“She thinks it’ll all fall into place, the way she wants, the way she plans. That it’ll be what it is now forever. I can’t tell her different. She wouldn’t believe me.”

“He loves her.”

“Oh, I know. I know. But he’ll go, just as she will. They have to. And she’ll never be quite the same again. There’s no stopping that either.”

“We hoped he’d stay. When he told us he wasn’t going back to college, I thought, Well, that’s all right. You’ll stay here, and take over the farm one day. I had just enough time to think it—and to think how he might’ve given his education a better try if his father hadn’t pushed so hard. Then he told us what he aimed to do.”

“The police force.” She turned from the window to study her friend. “How do you feel about that, Lucy?”

“Scared some, that’s a fact. Hopeful he’ll find his feet, and some real pride in himself. I can’t tell him any more than you can tell Lil.”

“My biggest fear is he’ll ask her to go back with him, and she will. She’s young and in love and, well, fearless. The way you are at that age.” Jenna walked over to get out the pitcher of lemonade to give her hands something to do. “She’d just let her heart pull her along. It’s so far away. Not just the miles.”

“I know. I know what it was like when my Missy lit out, like there was a fire under her feet.” At home in Jenna’s kitchen as she was in her own, Lucy went to the cupboard for glasses. “He’s not like his mother, not a bit. Neither’s your girl. Missy, she never had a thought for anybody but herself. Just seemed to be born that way. Not mean, not even hard, just careless. She wanted anything but here.”

She took her drink back to the window, sipping as she looked out. “Those two might want different things, but here’s a part of it. Your girl has plans, Jenna. My boy there? He’s trying to make some.”

“I don’t know if you ever get over your first love. Joe was mine, so I never had to get over him. I just hate knowing she’s going to hurt. Both of them are going to hurt.”

“They’ll never let loose of each other, not all the way. Too much there. But, well, nothing we can do about it in the meantime but be here. Storm’s coming in.”

“I know.”

THE WIND KICKED high and hard, ahead of the rain. Lightning slashed over the hills in whips of eerie blue, blinding white. It struck a cotton-wood in the near pasture, cleaving it like an ax. Ozone burned the air like a sorcerer’s potion.

“It’s a mean one.” Lil stood on the back porch scenting the air. Inside the kitchen, the dogs whined, and were, she imagined, huddled under the table.

It could pass, she knew, as quickly as it came. Or it could beat and strike and wreak destruction. Hail to batter the crops and the stock, twisting winds to shred them. In the hills, in the canyons, animals would take shelter in lairs and dens, in caves and thickets and high grass. Just as people took it in houses, in cars.

The feeding chain meant nothing to nature.

The cannon blast of thunder boomed, rolled, echoed, and shook the valley.

“You won’t get this in New York.”

“We have thunderstorms back east.”

Lil just shook her head as she watched the show. “Not like this. City storms are inconveniences. This is drama, and adventure.”

“Try hailing a cab in Midtown during a storm. Baby, that’s an adventure.” Still, he laughed and took her hand. “But you’ve got a point. This is E Ticket.”

“Here comes the rain.”

It swept in, fast-moving curtains. She watched the wall rush through, and the world went a little mad. Pounding, roaring, slashing in one titanic roar.

She turned to him, clamped around him, and took his mouth with as much fury and power as the storm. Rain dashed them, hard pebbled drops the wind shoved under the porch roof. Thunder crashed, an ear-ringing explosion. The wind chimes and dinner bells clanged and rang insanely.

She drew back, but not before she’d added a quick, teasing bite. “Every time you hear thunder, you’re going to remember that.”

“I need to be alone with you. Somewhere. Anywhere.”

She glanced toward the kitchen window. Her parents and the Wilkses stood watch on the front porch as she and Coop had chosen the back.

“Quick. Run!” Laughing, she pulled him off the porch, into the wild rain and wind. Instantly soaked, they raced for the barn.

Lightning forked the sky, electric sizzle. Together they dragged the door open to stumble inside, breathless and drenched. In the stalls, horses shifted restlessly as the rain pounded, as thunder rolled.

In the hayloft, they stripped off wet clothes, and took each other eagerly.

IT WOULD BE their last day together. When it was over he would say his goodbyes to Joe and Jenna, and then somehow to Lil.

He’d said goodbye before, but he knew it would be harder this time. This time, more than ever before, they were each taking different directions at that crossroads.

They walked their horses as they had so many times before, to the place that had become theirs. The fast-running stream at the verge of the pines where the wildflowers danced.

“Let’s keep going. We’ll come back,” she said, “but when we stop, it’ll be the last time. So let’s keep going for a while.”

“I might be able to come out for Thanksgiving. It’s not that far away.”

“No, it’s not that far away.”

“Christmas for sure.”

“Christmas for sure. I’m leaving in eight more days.” She hadn’t started to pack, not yet. She’d wait until Coop had gone. It was a kind of symbol. As long as he was here, everything stayed. Everything was solid and familiar.

“Nervous yet? About college.”

“No, not nervous. Curious, I guess. Part of me wants to go, get started, find out. The other part wants everything to stop. I don’t want to think about it today. Let’s just be.”

She reached out, took his hand for a moment. They walked in a silence full of questions neither knew how to answer.

They passed a little falls engorged from summer storms, crossed a grassland green with summer. Determined not to drop into a brood, she took out her camera. “Hey!” He grinned when she aimed it at him. Then, with their horses close abreast, she leaned over, held the camera out.

“You probably cut off our heads.”

“Bet I didn’t. I’ll send you a print. Coop and Lil in the backcountry. See what your new cop friends think about that.”

“They’ll take one look at you and think I’m a lucky guy.”

They took a spur trail through tall trees and hefty boulders, with views that swept to forever. Lil pulled up. “Cougar’s been through here. The rains washed most of the tracks away, but there’re markings on the trees.”

“Your female?”

“Maybe. We’re not far from where I spotted her that day.” Two months before, she thought. The kittens would be weaned by now, and big enough for their ma to take them with her when she hunted.

“You want to try to track her.”

“Just a little ways. I’m not sure I can anyway. We’ve had a lot of rain in the last few days. But if she’s territorial, she could be in the area where I first saw her. It’d be good luck,” she decided on the spot. “For us both to see her on your last day, the way I did on your first.”

He had the rifle if he needed it, though he didn’t mention it. Lil wouldn’t approve. “Let’s go.”

She led the way, searching for signs as the horses picked and plodded. “I wish I was better at tracking.”

“You’re as good as your father now. Maybe even better.”

“I don’t know about that. I was going to practice a lot more this summer.” She sent him a smile. “But I’ve been distracted. The brush, the boulders. That’s what she’d stick to if she was hunting. And I’m not sure . . .” She stopped, and eased her horse to the right. “Scat. It’s cougar.”

“I think it’s good tracking to be able to tell one pile of shit from another.”

“Tracking 101. It’s not real fresh. Yesterday, the day before. But this is part of her territory. Or if not hers, probably another female. Their territories can overlap.”

“Why not a male?”

“Mostly they steer clear of females, until mating season. Then it’s all, Hey, baby, you know you want it. Of course, I love you. Sure, I’ll respect you in the morning. Get it, then get gone.”

He narrowed his eyes as she grinned. “You have no respect for our species.”

“Oh, I don’t know, some of you are okay. Besides, you love me.” The minute the words were out, she straightened in the saddle. Couldn’t take them back, she realized, and shifted to look him in the eye. “Don’t you?”

“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I do about you.” He gave her an easy smile. “And I always respect you in the morning.”

There was a nagging thought at the back of her brain that it wasn’t enough. She wanted the words, just the power of those words. But she’d be damned if she’d ask for them.

She continued on, aiming for the high grass shelf where she’d seen the cat take down the calf. She found other signs, more scrapings. Cougar and buck. Brush trampled down by a herd of mule deer.

But when they reached the grass, nothing roamed or grazed.

“Nice spot,” Coop observed. “Is this still your land?”

“Yeah, just,” she replied as she gazed across the vista.

She started across the grass toward the trees where she’d once watched the cougar drag her kill. “My mother said there used to be bear, but they got hunted out, driven out. The cougar and the wolf stay, but you have to look to find them. The Hills are a mixing bowl, biologically speaking. We get species here that are common to areas in every direction.”

“Like a singles bar.”

She laughed at him. “I’ll take your word. Still, we lost the bear. If we could . . . There’s blood.”

“Where?”

“On that tree. On the ground, too. It looks dry.”

She swung her leg across the saddle.

“Wait. If this is a kill site, she could be close. If she’s got a litter she won’t be happy to see you.”

“Why is it on the tree? So high on the tree.” Drawing out her camera, Lil walked closer. “She could’ve taken out an elk or deer, I guess, and it fought, or it hit the tree. But it just doesn’t look like that.”

“And you know how that would look?”

“In my head I do.” She glanced back, saw he had the rifle. “I don’t want you to shoot her.”

“Neither do I.” He’d shot nothing but targets, and didn’t want to shoot the living, especially her cat.

Frowning, Lil turned back to the tree, studied it, the ground. “It looks like she dragged the kill off that way. See how the brush looks? And there’s more blood.” She crouched, poked at the ground. “There’s blood on the ground, on the brush. I thought she took the buffalo calf that way. More east. Maybe she had to move her den, or it’s another cat altogether. Keep talking and stay alert. As long as we don’t surprise her or threaten her or her young, she won’t be interested in us.”

She inched her way, trying to follow the signs. As she’d said, the trail was rough here, steep, rocky. It didn’t surprise her to see some signs of hikers, and she wondered if the cat had moved to avoid them.

“There’s more scat. Fresher.” She looked over and just beamed. “We’re tracking her.”

“Whoopee.”

“If I could get a shot of her and her young . . .” She stopped, sniffed. “Do you smell that?”

“Now I do. Something’s dead.” When she started forward, he took her arm. “I can follow it from here. You stay behind me.”

“But—”

“Behind me and the rifle, or we turn back. I’m stronger than you are, Lil, so believe me when I say we’ll turn back.”

“Well, if you’re going to get all macho.”

“I guess I am.” He walked forward, following the stench.

“West,” she directed, “a little more west. It’s off the trail.” She scanned brush, trees, rocks as they moved. “God, you wonder how she can stomach anything that smells like that. Maybe they abandoned the kill. Chowed down, moved on. Nothing picked clean is going to smell like that. It looks like a lot of blood around here, and then into the brush.”

She stepped over. She didn’t move in front of him, but beside him. It wasn’t her fault the signs were on her side. “I see something in there. Definitely something there.” She strained to see. “If she still considers it hers, and she’s around, she’ll let us know quick. I can’t see what it is, can you?”

“Dead is what it is.”

“Yes, but what was the prey? I like to know what . . . Oh, my God. Cooper. Oh, my God.”

He saw it as she did. The prey had been human.

LIL WASN’T PROUD of the way she’d handled herself, the way her legs had buckled, the way her head had gone light. She’d damn near fainted, and certainly would’ve gone down if Coop hadn’t gotten hold of her.

She managed to help him mark the spot, but only because he’d ordered her to keep back. She made herself look, forced herself to see and remember what had been done before she’d gone back to her mount for her canteen to drink deeply.

She’d been steadier, and able to think clearly enough to mark the trail for those who would have to come for the remains. Coop kept the rifle out as they rode back home.

There’d be no final tryst by the stream.

“You can put the rifle away. It wasn’t a cat that killed him.”

“Her, I think,” Coop said. “The size and the style of the boots, and what was left of the hair. I think it was a woman. You think wolves, then?”

“No, I didn’t see any signs of wolves near there. It’s the cougar’s habitat, and they’d leave her alone. It wasn’t an animal who killed her.”

“Lil, you saw what I saw.”

“Yeah.” It was etched in her mind. “That was after. They fed after. But the blood on the tree, it was high, and there weren’t any cat tracks there. No tracks until a good ten yards off. I think someone killed her, Coop. Killed her and left her there. Then the animals got at her.”

“Either way, she’s dead. We have to get back.”

When the trail opened enough, they spurred to a gallop.

HER FATHER GAVE them whiskey, just a swallow each. It burned straight down to the sickness in her belly. By the time the police arrived, the idea of being sick had passed.

“I marked the trail.” She sat with Coop and her parents and a county deputy named Bates. She used the map he’d brought, highlighting the route.

“Is that the way you went?”

“No, we took scenic.” She showed him. “We weren’t in a hurry. We came back this way. I saw the blood on the tree here.” She made a mark on the map. “Drag marks, more blood. A lot probably washed away in the rain, but there was enough cover so you can see there’s blood. Whoever killed her did it there, at the tree, because the blood’s a good five feet up—close to five and a half, I’d say. Then he dragged her off the trail to about here. That’s where the cougar found her. She must’ve dragged her from there, to better cover.”

He made notes, nodded. He had a weathered and quiet look about him, almost soothing.

“Any reason you think she was murdered, Miss Chance? What you’re describing sounds like a cougar attack.”

“When’s the last time we had a cougar attack a person around here?” Lil demanded.

“It happens.”

“Cats go for the throat.” Bates shifted his gaze to Coop. “Isn’t that right, Lil?”

“Yeah, their typical kill method is the neck bite. It takes the prey down, often breaking the neck. Quick and clean.”

“You rip out somebody’s throat, there’s going to be all kinds of blood. It’d gush, wouldn’t it? This was more like a smear. It wasn’t . . . spatter.”

Bates lifted his eyebrows. “So, we’ve got a cougar expert and a forensic specialist.” He smiled when he said it, kept the remark friendly. “I appreciate the input. We’ll be going up, and we’ll look into all that.”

“You’ll have to do an autopsy, determine cause of death.”

“That’s right,” Bates said to Coop. “If it was a cougar attack, we’ll handle it. If it wasn’t, we’ll handle that. Don’t worry.”

“Lil said it wasn’t a cougar that killed her. So it wasn’t.”

“Has a woman gone missing? In the last few days?” Lil asked.

“Might be.” Bates rose. “We’ll head on up now. I’m going to want to talk to you again.”

Lil sat silent until Bates went out to mount up with his two-man team. “He thinks we’re wrong. That we saw what was left of a mule deer or something and got spooked.”

“He’ll find out different soon.”

“You didn’t tell him you were leaving in the morning.”

“I can take another day. They should know who she is and what happened to her in another day. Maybe two.”

“Can you eat?” Jenna asked.

When Lil shook her head, Jenna wrapped an arm around her, stroking when Lil turned her face to her mother’s breast. “It was awful. So awful. To be left like that. To be nothing but meat.”

“Let’s go up for a while. I’m going to draw you a hot bath. Come on with me.”

Joe waited, then got up and poured two mugs of coffee. He sat, looked Coop in the eye. “You took care of my girl today. She can take care of herself, I know that’s true, most ways, most times. But I know you saw to her today. You got her back here. I won’t forget it.”

“I didn’t want her to see it. I’ve never seen anything like it, and hope I never do again. But I couldn’t stop her from seeing it.”

Joe nodded. “You did what you could, and that’s enough. I’m going to ask you for something, Cooper. I have to ask that you don’t make her any promises you’re not sure you can keep. She can take care of herself, my girl, but I don’t want her holding on to a promise that has to be broken.”

Coop stared into the coffee. “I don’t know what I could promise her. I’ve got enough to rent an apartment, as long as it’s cheap, for a few months. I’ve got to try to make the grade at the academy. Even if I do, a cop doesn’t make a lot. I come into some money when I’m twenty-one. A trust fund thing. I get more when I’m twenty-five, then thirty, and like that. My father can tie it up some, and he threatened to, until I’m forty.”

Joe smiled a little. “And that’s worlds away.”

“Well, I’ll be living pretty thin for a while, but I’m okay with that.” He looked up again, met Joe’s eyes. “I can’t ask her to come to New York. I thought about it, a lot. I can’t give her anything there, and I’d be taking away what she wants. I’ve got no promises to give her. It’s not because she doesn’t matter.”

“No, I’d say it’s because she does. That’s enough for me. You’ve had a hell of a day, haven’t you?”

“I feel like pieces of me are coming apart. I don’t know how they’re going to go together again. She wanted to see the cougar—for us to see it together. For luck. It doesn’t feel like we have any right now. And whoever that is up there, she had it a lot worse.”

HER NAME WAS Melinda Barrett. She’d been twenty when she’d set out to hike the Black Hills, a treat for herself for the summer. She was from Oregon. A student, a daughter, a sister. She’d wanted to be a ranger.

Her parents had reported her missing the same day she’d been found, because she’d been two days late checking in.

Before the cougar had gotten to her, someone had fractured her skull, then stabbed her violently enough to nick her ribs with the blade. Her pack, her watch, the compass her father had given her, the one his father had given him, weren’t found.

Because she’d asked, Coop drove his bike to the start of the Chance farm road at dawn. Melinda Barrett’s murder had delayed his start by two days, and he couldn’t delay it longer.

He saw her standing in the early light, the dogs milling around her, the hills at her back. He’d remember that, he thought. Remember Lil just like that until he saw her again.

When he stopped and got off the bike, the dogs raced and leaped. Lil simply went into his arms.

“Would you call, when you get to New York?”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“It’s so much. I thought we’d have more time alone. Just alone to be. Then we found her. They don’t have any idea who did that to her, or if they do, they’re not saying. She just walked that trail, and someone killed her. For her pack? Her watch? For no reason? I can’t get it out of my mind, and we haven’t had our time.” She tipped her face up, met his lips with hers. “It’s just for a while.”

“For a while.”

“I know you have to go, but . . . did you eat? Do you need anything?” She tried to smile as tears drenched her throat. “Watch how I stall.”

“I had flapjacks. Grandma knows my weakness. They gave me five thousand dollars, Lil. They wouldn’t let me say no.”

“Good.” She kissed him again. “Good. Then I won’t worry about you starving to death in some gutter. I’ll miss you. God, I miss you already. Go. You need to go.”

“I’ll call. I’ll miss you.”

“Kick ass at the academy, Coop.”

He got on the bike, took one last long look. “I’ll come back.”

“To me,” she murmured when he gunned the engine. “Come back to me.”

She watched until he was out of sight, until she was sure he was gone. In the soft, early light, she sat on the ground, and gathering the dogs to her, wept her heart out.

6

SOUTH DAKOTA

February 2009

The little Cessna shuddered, then gave a couple of quick, annoyed bucks as it buzzed over the hills, the plains and valleys. Lil shifted in her seat. Not from nerves—she’d been through worse air than this and come out fine. She shifted for a better view. Her Black Hills were white with February, a snow globe of rises, ridges, and flats, rib-boned by frozen streams, laced by shivering pines.

She imagined the wind on the ground was nearly as raw and mean as it could be up here, so a good, strong inhale would be like gulping down broken glass.

She couldn’t have been happier.

She was nearly home.

The last six months had been incredible, an experience she’d never forget. She’d been drenched, had sweltered, been frozen, been bitten and stung—all while studying pumas in the Andes.

She’d earned every penny of the research grant, and hoped to earn more with the papers and articles she’d written, and would write.

Money aside—though in her position that was a luxury she couldn’t afford—every mile she’d hiked, every bruise, every sore muscle had been worth the sight of a golden puma stalking prey in the rain forest, or perched like an idol on a cliffside.

But now she was ready for home. Back to her own habitat.

Work waited, and plenty of it. Six months equaled her longest field trip, and even keeping in touch when she could, she’d face mountains of work.

The Chance Wildlife Refuge was her baby, after all.

But before she dived in, she wanted a day, even a day to wallow in home.

She stretched out her legs as best she could in the confines of the cabin, crossed her hiking boots at the ankles. She’d been traveling, one way or the other, for a day and a half, but this last leg washed away any travel fatigue.

“Gonna get bumpy.”

She glanced over at Dave, the pilot. “And it’s been smooth as a lake so far.”

He grinned, winked. “Gonna seem like it.”

She gave her seat belt an extra tug, but wasn’t worried. Dave had gotten her home before. “I appreciate you making the detour.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll buy you a meal before you head up to Twin Forks.”

“I’ll rain-check that.” He turned his Minnesota Twins fielder’s cap bill-back as he always did for luck before a landing. “I figure I’ll take off as soon as I refuel. You’ve been gone awhile this time. Must be anxious to get home.”

“I am.”

The wind slapped and yanked at the little plane on the descent. It rocked and kicked like a bad-tempered child in mid-tantrum. Lil grinned when she saw the runway of the municipal airport.

“You call me when you’re back this way, Dave. My mother will fix you the prince of home-cooked meals.”

“I’m on that.”

She shoved her thick braid off her shoulder, peering down, her dark eyes searching. She spotted the blop of red. Her mother’s car, she thought. Had to be. She braced against the turbulence, keeping that spot of red as her focal point.

The landing gear rumbled down, the red became a Yukon, and the plane dipped toward the runway. When the wheels touched, her heart lifted.

The minute Dave gave her the nod, she unbuckled to grab her duffel, her pack, her laptop case. Loaded, she turned to her pilot, managed to get a hand on his beard-grizzled face, and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Almost as good as a home-cooked meal,” he said.

As she clanged her way down the short steps to the tarmac, Jenna rushed out of the tiny terminal. Lil dumped her gear, and met her mother on the run.

“There you are. There you are,” Jenna murmured as they gripped each other in rib-crushers. “Welcome back, welcome home. Oh, I missed you! Let me look at you!”

“In a minute.” Lil held on, breathed in the scents of lemon and vanilla that said Mom. “Okay.”

She eased back, and the two women studied each other. “You look so beautiful.” Lil reached out, flicked her fingers over her mother’s hair. “I still can’t get used to it short. Sassy.”

“You look . . . amazing. How can you look amazing after six months of tramping around the Andes? After spending nearly two days on planes, trains, and God knows what else to get home? But you look amazing, and ready for anything. Let’s get your stuff, get you out of the cold. Dave!”

Jenna hurried toward the pilot, caught his face, as Lil had, kissed him, as Lil had. “Thanks for bringing my girl home.”

“Best detour I ever took.”

Lil hefted her pack, her duffel, let her mother take the laptop. “Safe skies, Dave.”

“I’m so happy to see you.” Jenna wrapped an arm around Lil’s waist as they walked against the wind. “Your dad wanted to come, but one of the horses is sick.”

“Bad?”

“I don’t think so. Hope not. But he wanted to stay close, keep an eye on her. So I get you all to myself for a while.”

Once the gear was loaded, they settled into the car. The hybrid her green-minded parents used was neat as a parlor, and roomier than the Cessna’s cabin. Lil stretched out her legs, let out a long sigh. “I’m dreaming of an endless bubble bath, with a bottomless glass of wine. Then the biggest damn steak this side of the Missouri.”

“We happen to have all those in stock.”

To cut the glare from the snowpack, Lil dug out her sunglasses. “I want to stay at the house tonight, catch up with you guys before I go to the cabin, get back to work.”

“I’d kick your butt if you planned to do anything else.”

“Yay. Tell me everything,” Lil insisted as they drove out of the lot. “How is everybody, what’s been going on, who’s ahead in the Joe v. Farley Never-Ending Chess Tournament? Who’s fighting, who’s having sex? Note I’m trying not to ask specifically about the refuge, because once I get started I won’t be able to stop.”

“Then I’ll just say everything’s fine in the area you’re not asking about. I want to hear all about your adventures. The journal entries you e-mailed were so rich, so interesting. You need to write that book, honey.”

“One of these days. I have enough already put together for a couple more solid articles. Got some great photos, more than I sent you guys. I looked out of my tent one morning, not fully awake, really, just glanced out, and I saw a puma up in a tree, maybe twenty yards away. Just sitting up there, studying the camp, like she was thinking, What the hell do they think they’re doing here?

“There were mists rising, and the birds had just started to chatter. Everyone else was asleep. It was just the two of us. She took my breath, Mom. I didn’t get a picture. I had to force myself to ease back and get my camera. It only took seconds, but when I looked back out, she was gone. Like smoke. But I’ll never forget how she looked.”

Lil laughed and shook her head. “See, you got me started. I want to hear about here. About home.” She flipped open her old sheepskin jacket as the car’s heater pumped out blissful warmth. “Oh, look at the snow. You’ve all been hammered. Two days ago I was sweltering in Peru. Tell me something new.”

“I didn’t tell you when you were gone. Didn’t want to worry you. Sam fell and broke his leg.”

“Oh, God.” Instantly the pleasure on her face, in her heart, dissolved. “When? How bad?”

“About four months ago. His horse shied, reared—we’re not quite sure—but he fell, and the horse tromped on his leg. Broke it in two places. He was alone, Lil. The horse headed back without him, and that’s what alerted Lucy.”

“Is he all right? Mom—”

“He’s doing better. We were all scared for a while there. He’s fit, but he’s seventy-six, and they were bad breaks. They put pins in, and he was in the hospital for over a week, then in a cast, and then therapy. He’s just starting to get around again, with a cane. If he wasn’t so tough . . . The doctors say he’s remarkable, and he’ll do fine. But it’s slowed him down, no question.”

“What about Lucy? Is she doing all right? The farm, the business? If Sam’s been laid up all this time, have they got enough help?”

“Yes. It was a little rough at first, but yes, they’re doing okay.” Jenna took a quick breath, which told Lil more tough news was coming. “Lil, Cooper’s back.”

It was a sucker punch to the heart. Just reflex, she told herself. Just old memories taking a cheap shot. “Good, that’s good. He’d be a lot of help. How long is he staying?”

“He’s back, Lil.” Jenna reached over to rub her hand on her daughter’s thigh. Both the tone and the touch were gentle. “He’s living at the farm now.”

“Well, sure.” Something inside her jittered, but she ignored it. “Where else would he stay while he’s helping them out?”

“He came out as soon as Lucy called him, stayed a few days, stayed until we were all sure Sam wasn’t going to need more surgery. Then he went back east, settled whatever he had to settle, and came back. He’s staying.”

“But . . . He has his business in New York.” That something inside squeezed her sternum now, making it hard to breathe. “I mean, after he quit the police force and went private, he . . . I thought he was doing okay there.”

“I think he was. But . . . Lucy told me he sold the agency, packed up, and told her he’d be staying. And he has. I’m not sure what they’d have done without him, truth be told. Everyone would’ve pitched in to help, you know how it is. But there’s nothing like family. I didn’t want to tell you about it on the phone, or by e-mail. Baby, I know it might be hard for you.”

“No. Of course not.” Once her heart stopped aching, once she could take a deep breath without pain, she’d be fine. “That was a long time ago. We’re still friendly. I saw him, what, three or four years ago, when he came out to visit Sam and Lucy.”

“You saw him for less than an hour, before you suddenly had to go to Florida, for the full two weeks he was here.”

“I did have to go, or the opportunity came up. Florida panthers are endangered.” She stared out the window, grateful for the sunglasses. Even with them everything seemed too bright, too much. “I’m fine about Coop. I’m glad he’s here for Sam and Lucy.”

“You loved him.”

“Yes, I did. Past tense. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t as if she’d run into him every five minutes, see him everywhere. She had her work, her place. He, apparently, had his. Plus, no hard feelings, she reminded herself. They’d been children; they’d grown up.

She ordered herself to put it away, all away, when her mother turned onto the farm road. She could see smoke puffing out of the chimney—a homey welcome—and a pair of dogs racing from the back to see what was up.

She had a quick and poignant memory of weeping into the comfort of another pair of dogs on a hot summer morning. Twelve years ago this summer for that first miserable goodbye, she reminded herself. And really, if she was honest, that had been the end. Twelve years was long enough, plenty long enough, to get over it.

She saw her father coming from the barn to greet them, and pushed all thoughts of Cooper Sullivan away.

SHE WAS HUGGED, kissed, plied with hot chocolate and cookies, slobbered on by the pair of hounds her parents had named Lois and Clark. Out the kitchen window the familiar view spread. The fields, the hills, the pines, the bright wink of the stream. Jenna insisted on washing the clothes stuffed in the duffel.

“I’d like to. Makes me feel like Mommy for the day.”

“Far be it from me to deprive you, Mommy.”

“I’m not a fussy woman,” Jenna observed as she took the load Lil gave her. “But I don’t know how you can get by with so little for so long.”

“Planning, and the willingness to wear dirty socks when choices are limited. That’s actually still clean,” Lil began when her mother pulled another shirt out of the duffel. Jenna only lifted her eyebrows. “Okay, not so much clean as not filthy.”

“I’ll bring you a sweater, some jeans. That’ll hold you until these are clean and dry. Take your bath, drink your wine. Relax.”

She sank into the tub her mother had drawn. It was, Lil thought with a long, nearly orgasmic groan, nice to have someone fuss over her a little. Working in the field usually meant living rough, and in some cases close to primitive. She didn’t mind it. But she sure as hell didn’t mind having her mom draw her the Jenna Chance special bubble bath, and knowing she could indulge in it until the water went cold.

Now that she was alone, now that there was plenty of time, she let Coop back into her head.

He’d come back when his grandparents needed him—she had to give him credit for that. The fact was, no one could question his love or loyalty in that direction.

How could she hate the man, one who had, apparently, changed his life to see that his grandparents’ home and their business were protected?

Besides, she had nothing to hate him for.

Just because he’d broken her heart, then squeezed the still dripping juices of it onto the ground so they had clung to his boot heels when he’d walked away from her—really, was that a reason to hate anyone?

She sank in a little more, sipped her wine.

But he hadn’t lied, she had to give him that one, too.

He’d come back. Not at Thanksgiving, but at Christmas. Only for two days, but he’d come. And when he hadn’t been able to come that summer, she’d accepted an offer to work in a refuge in California. She’d learned a lot over those weeks, and she and Coop had kept in touch as much as possible.

But things had already started to change. Hadn’t she felt it even then? she asked herself. Hadn’t some part of her known?

He hadn’t been able to come out the next Christmas, and she’d cut her own winter break short for a field study.

When they’d met at a halfway-between point the following spring, it had been the end. He’d changed, she could see it. He’d been harder, tougher—and yes, colder. Still, she couldn’t claim he’d been cruel. Just clear.

She had her life west, he had his east. Time to toss it in and admit they’d never make it work.

Your friendship matters to me. You matter. But, Lil, we’ve got to get on with what we are. We’ve got to accept who we are.

No, he hadn’t been cruel, but he’d shattered her. All she’d had left was pride. The cold pride that had allowed her to say he was right, and to look him in the eye when she’d said it.

“Thank God I did,” she muttered. Otherwise his coming back would be both mortification and misery.

The best way to deal with it, to get everything off on the right foot, was to face it head-on. As soon as she could manage it, she’d go over to see Sam and Lucy, and Coop. Hell, she’d buy him a beer and play catch-up there, too.

She wasn’t a teenager with a fluttering heart and raging hormones anymore. As of the previous summer she was Dr. Lillian Chance, thank you very much. She was cofounder of the Chance Wildlife Refuge right here in her own corner of the world.

She’d traveled to, studied and worked in other corners of the world. She’d had a long-term, monogamous, serious relationship with a man. A couple of others not so long-term, not so serious, but she’d basically lived with Jean-Paul for nearly two years. Not counting the times she’d been traveling—or he’d been traveling—in different directions.

So she could handle sharing her corner of the world with a childhood sweetheart. Really, that’s what they’d been, all they’d been. It was simple, even sweet, she decided.

And they’d keep it that way.

She dressed in the borrowed sweater and jeans, and lulled by the bath, the wine, her old room, opted to take a power nap. Twenty minutes, she told herself as she stretched out.

She slept like the dead for three hours.

THE NEXT MORNING, she woke in the hour before dawn, rested and ready. Because she hit the kitchen before her parents, she made breakfast—her specialty. When her father walked in for coffee, she had bacon and home fries in the skillet, and eggs already whisked in a bowl.

Handsome, his hair still full and thick, Joe sniffed the air like one of his hounds. He pointed a finger at her. “I knew there was a reason I was glad you’re back. I figured I’d be eating instant oatmeal for breakfast.”

“Not when I’m around. And since when have you had to eat instant anything in this house?”

“Since your mother and I compromised a couple months ago and I agreed to eat oatmeal twice a week.” He gave her a mournful look. “It’s healthy.”

“Ah, and this was oatmeal day.”

He grinned and gave her long ponytail a tug. “Not when you’re around.”

“Okay, full cholesterol plate for you, then I’ll help you with the stock before I ride over to the refuge. I made enough for Farley, assuming he’d be here. Does oatmeal put him off ?”

“Nothing puts Farley off, but he’ll be grateful to get the bacon and eggs. I’ll ride over with you this morning.”

“Great. Depending on how things go, I’m going to try to drive over and see Sam and Lucy. If you need anything from town I can head in, take care of it.”

“I’ll put a list together.”

Lil forked out bacon to drain as her mother came in. “Just in time.”

Jenna eyed the bacon, eyed her husband.

“She made it.” Joe pointed at Lil. “I can’t hurt her feelings.”

“Oatmeal tomorrow.” Jenna gave Joe a finger-drill in the belly.

Lil heard the stomp of boots out on the back porch, and thought: Farley.

She’d been in college when her parents had taken him on—taken him in was more accurate, she thought. He’d been sixteen, and on his own since his mother took off and left him, owing two months’ back rent in Abilene. His father, neither he nor his mother had known. He’d only known the series of men his mother had slept with.

With some vague idea of going to Canada, young Farley Pucket ducked out on the rent, hit the road, and stuck out his thumb. By the time Josiah Chance pulled over and picked him up on a road outside of Rapid City, the boy had thirty-eight cents in his pocket and was wearing only a Houston Rockets windbreaker against the wicked March winds.

They’d given him a meal, some chores to work it off, and a place to sleep for the night. They’d listened, they’d discussed, they’d checked his story as best they could. In the end, they’d given him a job, and a room in the old bunkhouse until he could make his way.

Nearly ten years later, he was still there.

Gangly, straw-colored hair poking out from under his hat, his pale blue eyes still sleepy, Farley came in with a blast of winter cold.

“Whoo! Cold enough to freeze the balls off—” He broke off when he saw Jenna, and his cheeks pinked from cold flushed deeper. “Didn’t see you there.” He sniffed. “Bacon? It’s oatmeal day.”

“Special dispensation,” Joe told him.

Farley spotted Lil and broke out in a mile-wide grin. “Hey, Lil. Didn’t figure you’d be up yet, all jet-lagged and stuff.”

“’Morning, Farley. Coffee’s hot.”

“It sure smells good. Gonna be clear today, Joe. That storm front tracked east.”

So as it often did, morning talk turned to weather, stock, chores. Lil settled down with her breakfast, and thought in some ways it was as if she’d never been away.

Within the hour, she was mounted beside her father and riding the trail to the refuge.

“Tansy tells me Farley’s been putting in a lot of volunteer hours at the refuge.”

“We all try to lend a hand, especially when you’re away.”

“Dad, he’s got a crush on her,” Lil said, speaking of her college roommate and the zoologist on staff.

“On Tansy? No.” He laughed it off. Then sobered. “Really?”

“I got the vibe when he started volunteering regularly last year. I didn’t think much of it. She’s my age.”

“Old lady.”

“Well, she’s got some years on him. I can see it from his end. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. What I didn’t expect was to get the vibe—which I did reading between the lines of her e-mails—that she may have one on him.”

“Tansy’s interested in Farley? Our Farley?”

“Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the vibe. Our Farley,” she repeated, taking a deep breath of the snow-tinged air. “You know, in my world-weary phase of twenty, I thought the two of you were insane to take him in. I figured he’d rob you blind—at the least—steal your truck and that would be that.”

“He wouldn’t steal a nickel. It’s not in him. You could see it, right from the start.”

“You could. Mom could. And you were right. I think I’m right about my college pal, the dedicated zoologist, having eyes for our own goofy, sweet-natured Farley.”

They followed the track at an easy trot, the horses kicking up snow, their breath steaming out like smoke.

As they approached the gate that separated the farm from the refuge, Lil let out a laugh. Her coworkers had hung a huge banner across the gate.

WELCOME HOME, LIL!

She saw the tracks as well—from snowmobiles and horses, animals and men. Through January and February, the refuge saw little in the way of tourists and visitors. But the staff was always busy.

She dismounted to open the gate. When they could afford it, she thought, they’d replace the old thing with electric. But for now, she waded through the snow to work the latch. It squealed as she dragged it clear so her father could lead her horse through.

“Nobody’s been bothering you, have they?” she asked as she remounted. “I mean the public.”

“Oh, we get somebody comes by every now and then, who can’t find the public entrance. We just send them around.”

“I hear we had good turnout, and good feedback, from the school field trips in the fall.”

“Kids love the place, Lil. It’s a good thing you’ve done here.”

“We’ve done.”

She scented animal before she saw them, that touch of wild in the air. Inside the first stretch of habitat a Canadian lynx sat on a boulder. Tansy had brought him in from Canada, where he’d been captured and wounded. In the wild, his maimed leg was a death sentence. Here, he had sanctuary. They called him Rocco, and he flicked his tufted ears as they passed.

The refuge gave homes to bobcat and cougar, to an old, circus tiger they called Boris, to a lioness who had once, inexplicably, been kept as a pet. There were bear and wolf, fox and leopard.

A smaller area held a petting zoo, what she thought of as hands-on education for kids. Rabbits, lambs, a pygmy goat, a donkey.

And the humans, bundled in cold-weather gear, who worked to feed them, shelter them, treat them.

Tansy spotted her first, and gave a whoop before racing over from the big-cat area. A pink flush from cold and pleasure bloomed on the cheeks of her pretty, caramel-colored face.

“You’re back.” She gave Lil’s knee a squeeze. “Get on down here and give me a hug! Hey, Joe, I bet you’re happy to have your girl back.”

“And then some.”

Lil slid off the horse and embraced her friend, who swayed side-to-side making a happy mmmm sound. “It’s so good, so good, so good to see you!”

“Likewise.” Lil pressed her cheek to the soft spring of Tansy’s dark hair.

“We heard you’d caught Dave and managed to get back a day early, so we’ve been scrambling.” Tansy leaned back and grinned. “To hide the evidence of all the drunken parties and fat-assing we’ve had going on since you left.”

“Aha. I knew it. And that’s why you’re the only member of the senior staff out and about?”

“Naturally. Everyone else is nursing hangovers.” She laughed and gave Lil another squeeze. “Okay, truth. Matt is in Medical. Bill tried to eat a towel.”

Bill, a young bobcat, was renowned for his eclectic appetite.

Lil glanced back at the pair of cabins, one housing her quarters, the other offices and Medical. “Did he get much?”

“No, but Matt wants to check him out. Lucius is chained to his computer, and Mary’s at the dentist. Or going to. Hey, Eric, come take the horses, will you? Eric’s one of our winter-term interns. We’ll make the introductions later. Let’s—” She broke off at the harsh, bright call of a cougar. “Somebody smells Mama,” Tansy said. “Go ahead. We’ll meet you in Medical when you’re done.”

Lil wound her way, following the trail formed by feet trampling through the snow.

He was waiting for her, pacing, watching, calling. At her approach, the cat rubbed its body against the fencing, then stood, bracing his fore-paws against it. And purred.

Six months since he’d seen her—scented her, Lil thought. But he hadn’t forgotten her. “Hello, Baby.”

She reached through to stroke the tawny fur, and he bumped his head affectionately to hers.

“I missed you, too.”

He was four now, full-grown, lithe and magnificent. He hadn’t been fully weaned when she’d found him, and his two littermates, orphaned and half starved. She’d hand-fed them, tended them, guarded them. And when they’d been old enough, strong enough, had reintroduced them to the wild.

But he’d kept coming back.

She’d named him Ramses, for power and dignity, but he was Baby.

And her one true love.

“Have you been good? Of course, you have. You’re the best. Keeping everybody in line? I knew I could count on you.”

As she spoke and stroked, Baby purred, hummed in his throat, and looked at her with golden eyes full of love.

She heard movement behind her, glanced back. The one Tansy had called Eric stood staring. “They said he was like that with you, but . . . I didn’t believe it.”

“You’re new?”

“Um, yeah. I’m interning. Eric. I’m Eric Silverstone, Dr. Chance.”

“Lil. What are you looking to do?”

“Wildlife management.”

“Learning anything here?”

“A lot.”

“Let me give you another quick lesson. This adult male cougar, Felis concolor, is approximately eight feet long from nose to tail and weighs about one-fifty. He can outjump a lion, a tiger, a leopard, both vertically and horizontally. Despite that, he’s not considered a ‘big cat.’ ”

“He lacks the specialized larynx and hyoid apparatus. He can’t roar.”

“Correct. He’ll purr like your aunt Edith’s tabby. But he’s not tame. You can’t tame the wild, can you, Baby?” He chirped at her as if in agreement. “He loves me. He imprinted on me as a kitten—about four months of age—and he’s been in the refuge, among people, since. Learned behavior, not tame. We’re not prey. But if you made some move he sensed as attack, he’d respond. They’re beautiful, and they’re fascinating, but they’re not pets. Not even this one.”

Still, to please herself and Baby, she pressed her lips in one of the small openings of the fence, and he butted his mouth to hers. “See you later.”

She turned and walked with Eric toward the cabin. “Tansy said you found him and two other orphans.”

“Their mother got into it with a lone wolf—at least that’s how it looked to me. She killed it, must have or it would have taken the litter. But she didn’t survive. I found the corpses, and the litter. They were the first cougar kittens we had here.”

And she had a scar near her right elbow from the other male in that litter. “We fed them, sheltered them for about six weeks, until they were old enough to hunt on their own. Limited human contact as much as possible. We tagged them and released them and we’ve been tracking them ever since. But Baby? He wanted to stay.”

She glanced back to where he’d joined his companions in his habitat. “His littermates reacclimated, but he kept coming back here.” To me, she thought. “They’re solitary and secretive and cover a vast range, but he chose to come back. That’s the thing. You can study and learn the patterns, the biology, the taxonomy, the behavior. But you’ll never know everything.”

She looked back as Baby leaped on one of his boulders and let out a long, triumphant scream.

Inside, she shed her outer gear. She could hear her father talking to Matt through the open door of Medical. In the offices, a man with Coke-bottle glasses and an infectious grin hammered away at a keyboard.

Lucius Gamble looked up, said, “Yeah!” and tossed his hands in the air. “Back from the trenches.” He jumped up to give her a hug, and she smelled the red licorice he was addicted to on his breath.

“How’s it going, Lucius?”

“Good. Just updating the Web page. We’ve got some new pictures. We had an injured wolf brought in a couple weeks ago. Clipped by a car. Matt saved it. We’ve gotten a lot of hits on the pictures there, and the column Tansy wrote for it.”

“Were we able to release it?”

“It’s still gimpy. Matt doesn’t think it’ll make it out there in the world. She’s an old girl. We’re calling her Xena, because she looks like a warrior.”

“I’ll take a look at her. I haven’t done the tour yet.”

“I put your shots from the trip on here.” Lucius tapped his computer monitor. He wore ancient high-tops rather than the boots most of the staff favored, and jeans that bagged over his flat ass. “Dr. Lillian’s Excellent Adventure. We’ve been getting beaucoup hits.”

As he spoke, Lil glanced around the familiar space. The exposed log walls, the posters of wildlife, the cheap, plastic visitors’ chairs, the stacks of colorful brochures. The second desk—Mary’s—stood like a trim, organized island in the chaos Lucius generated.

“Any of the hits come with . . .” She lifted her hand, rubbed her thumb and fingers together.

“We’ve been going pretty steady there. We added a new webcam, like you wanted, and Mary’s been working on an updated brochure. She had a dentist deal this morning, but she’s going to try to make it in this afternoon.”

“Let’s see if we can get together for a meeting this afternoon. Full staff, including interns, and any of the volunteers who can attend.”

She walked back and peeked into Medical. “Where’s Bill?”

Matt turned. “I cleared him. Tansy’s taking him back. Good to see you, Lil.”

They didn’t hug—it wasn’t Matt’s style—but shook hands, and warmly. He was about her father’s age, with thinning hair streaked with gray, and wire-rimmed glasses over brown eyes.

He was no idealist, as she suspected Eric was, but he was a damn fine vet, and one willing to work for pitiful pay.

“I’d better get back. I’ll try to cut Farley loose some tomorrow, so he can give you a couple hours.” Joe tapped a finger on Lil’s nose. “You need anything, you call.”

“I will. I’ll pick up the stuff on your list later, drop it off.”

He went out the back.

“Meeting later,” she told Matt, and leaned on a counter that held trays and bins of medical supplies. The air smelled, familiarly, of antiseptic and animal. “I’d like you to brief me, and the rest, on the health and medical needs of the animals. Lunchtime would be best. Then I can do a supply run.”

“Can do.”

“Tell me about our newest resident. Xena?”

Matt smiled, and the amusement lightened his often serious face. “Lucius named her that. It seems to have stuck. She’s an old girl. A good eight years old.”

“Top of the scale for the wild,” Lil commented.

“Tough girl. Scars to prove it. She took a pretty hard hit. The driver did more than most people do. She called us, and stayed in the car until we got there, even followed us back here. Xena was too injured to move. We immobilized and transported, got her in here, into surgery.” He shook his head, removing his glasses to polish the lenses on his lab coat. “It was touch and go, given her age.”

Lil thought of Sam. “But she’s recovering.”

“Like I said, tough girl. At her age, and given the leg’s never going to be a hundred percent, I wouldn’t recommend releasing her. I don’t think she’d last a month.”

“Well, she can consider this her retirement home.”

“Listen, Lil, you know at least one of us has been staying at night while you were in the field. I was on a couple nights ago. Just as well, as I’d had to extract a tooth that morning from the queen mum.”

Lil thought of their ancient lion. “Poor grandma. She’s not going to have a tooth left at this rate. How’d she do?”

“She’s the Energizer Bunny of lions. But the thing is, there was something out there.”

“Sorry?”

“Something or someone was out there, around the habitats. I checked the webcam, and didn’t see anything. But hell, it’s pretty damn dark at two in the morning, even with the security lights. But something had the animals stirred up. A lot of screaming and roaring and howling.”

“Not the usual nocturnal business?”

“No. I went out, but I couldn’t find anything.”

“Any tracks?”

“I don’t have your eye, but we looked the next morning. No animal tracks, no new ones. We thought—we think—there were human ones. Not ours. No way to be sure, but there were tracks around some of the cages, and we’d had some snow after the last feeding of the day, so I don’t know how else there’d have been fresh tracks.”

“None of the animals were hurt? Any locks tampered with?” she added when he shook his head.

“We couldn’t find anything, nothing touched, taken. I know how it sounds, Lil, but when I went out, it felt like someone was there. Watching me. I just want you to keep an eye out, make sure you lock your doors.”

“Okay. Thanks, Matt. Let’s all be careful.”

There were strange people out there, she thought as she put her coat back on. From the No Animal Should Be in Prison—as some thought of a refuge—to Animals Are Meant to Be Hunted and Killed. And everything in between.

They got calls, letters, e-mails from both ends of the spectrum. Some with threats. And they’d had the occasional trespasser. But so far, there’d been no trouble.

She wanted to keep it that way.

She’d go have a look around herself. Odds were, after a couple of days there would be nothing for her to find. But she had to look.

She shot a wave to Lucius, opened the door.

And nearly walked straight into Cooper.

7

It was a toss-up who was more surprised, and disconcerted. But it was Lil who jolted back, even if she recovered quickly. She plastered on a smile and put a friendly laugh in her voice.

“Well, hi, Coop.”

“Lil. I didn’t know you were back.”

“Yesterday.” She couldn’t read his face, his eyes. Both, so familiar, simply didn’t speak to her. “Coming in?”

“Ah, no. You got a package—your place got a package,” he corrected, and handed it to her. He wasn’t wearing gloves, she noted, and his heavy jacket was carelessly open to the cold.

“I was sending something off for my grandmother, and since I was heading back to the farm, they asked if I’d mind dropping it off.”

“Thanks.” She set it aside, then stepped out and closed the door rather than let the heat pump out. She fixed her hat on her head, the same flat-brimmed style she’d always favored. Standing on the porch, she pulled on one of her gloves. It gave her something to do as he watched her in silence. “How’s Sam? I just heard yesterday that he’d gotten hurt.”

“Good, physically. It’s hard on him, not being able to do everything he wants, get around the way he did.”

“I’m going by later.”

“He’ll like that. They both will.” He slid his hands into his pockets, kept those cool blue eyes on her face. “How was South America?”

“Busy, and fascinating.” She pulled on her other glove as they walked down the steps. “Mom said you’d sold your detective agency.”

“I was done with it.”

“You did a lot, left a lot, to help two people who needed you.” The finality in his voice, the flatness in it had her stopping. “It counts, Cooper.”

He only shrugged. “I was ready for a change anyway. This is one.” He glanced around. “You’ve added more since I was here.”

She sent him a puzzled look. “When were you here?”

“I came by when I was out last year. You were . . . somewhere.” He stood at ease in the cold, while the brisk wind kicked through the already disordered waves of his dense brown hair. “Your friend gave me the tour.”

“She didn’t mention it.”

“He. French guy. I heard you were engaged.”

Guilt balled in her belly. “Not exactly.”

“Well. You look good, Lil.”

She forced her lips to curve, forced the same casualness he projected into her voice. “You too.”

“I’d better get going. I’ll tell my grandparents you’re going to try to come by.”

“I’ll see you later.” And with an easy smile, she turned to walk to the small-cat area. She circled around until she heard his truck start, until she heard it drive away. Then she stopped.

There, she thought, not so bad. The first time would be the hardest, and it wasn’t so bad.

A few aches, a few bumps. Nothing fatal.

He did look good, she thought. Older, tougher. Sharper in the face, harder around the eyes. Sexier.

She could live through that. They might be friends again. Not the way they’d been, even before they’d become lovers. But they might be friendly. His grandparents and her parents were good friends, close friends. She and Coop would never be able to avoid each other gracefully, so they’d just have to get along as best they could. Be friendly.

She could do it if he could.

Satisfied, she began to scout around the habitats for signs of trespass—animal or human.

COOP LOOKED INTO the rearview mirror as he drove away, but she didn’t glance back. Just kept going.

That’s the way it was. He wasn’t looking to change it.

He’d caught her off-guard. They’d caught each other off-guard, he corrected, but her surprise had shown on her face, just for a beat or two, but clearly. Surprise, and a shadow of annoyance.

Both gone in a blink.

She’d gotten beautiful.

She’d always been so, to him, but objectively he could look back now and see that she’d been poised for beauty at seventeen. Touched by beauty at the cusp of twenty. But she hadn’t crossed the finish line then, not like now.

For a second there, those big, dark, sultry eyes had taken his breath away.

For a second.

Then she’d smiled, and maybe his heart had twisted, just for another second, over what had been. What was gone.

Everything easy, everything casual between them. That’s the way it should be. He didn’t want anything from her, and had nothing to give back. It was good to know that, since he was back for good.

Oddly enough, he’d been considering coming back for several months. He’d even looked into what steps he’d need to take to sell his private investigator’s business, close his office, sell his apartment. He hadn’t moved on it, had simply continued his work, his life—because not moving was easier.

Then his grandmother had called.

With all the research done and filed in Maybe Someday, it had been a simple matter to make the move. And maybe, if he’d made the damn move earlier, his grandfather wouldn’t have been alone, and in pain after his fall.

And that kind of thinking was useless, he knew it.

Things just happened because they did. He knew that, too.

The point was he was back now. He liked the work—he always had—and God knew he could use a little serenity. Long days, plenty of physical labor, the horses, the routine. And the only real home he’d ever known.

The Maybe Someday might have come before but for Lil. The obstacle, the regret, the uncertainty of Lil. But that was done now, and they could both get back to their lives.

She’d created something so solid and real, so Lil, with her refuge. He hadn’t known how to tell her that, how to tell her that it was a source of pride for him, too. He didn’t know how to tell her he remembered when she’d told him she would build this place, he remembered the look on her face, the light on it, the sound of her voice.

He remembered everything.

Years ago, he thought. A lifetime ago. She’d studied and worked and planned, and made it happen. She’d done exactly what she’d set out to do.

He’d known she would. She wouldn’t have settled for less.

He’d made something. It had taken a lot of time, a lot of mistakes, but he’d made something of himself, and for himself. And he could walk away from that because the point had been to make it.

Now the point was here. He turned onto the farm road. Right here, he thought, right now.

When he went inside, Lucy was in the kitchen, baking.

“Smells good.”

“Thought I’d do a couple of pies.” She offered a smile, strained around the edges. “Everybody get off all right?”

“Group of four. Gull’s got them.” The blacksmith’s son hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps, but served as trail guide and man-of-work for Wilks’s Stables. “Weather’s clear, and he’s keeping them to a couple of easy rides.” Since it was there, he poured himself some coffee. “I’m going to go out and check on the new foals and their mas.”

She nodded, looked in on her pies, though they both knew she could time them by instinct to the minute. “Maybe, if you don’t mind, you could ask Sam to go out with you. He’s having a mood today.”

“Sure. He upstairs?”

“Last I checked.” She flicked her fingers at the hair she now wore short as a boy’s and had let go a stunning and shining silver. “Checking’s one of the things, I expect, put him in the mood.”

Rather than speak, he just put an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

She would’ve checked, Coop thought, several times. Just as he had no doubt she’d been out to the barn to check on the foals. She’d have seen to the chickens and the pigs, getting all the chores done she could manage before Sam could try to do them.

And she’d have fixed his breakfast, just as she’d fixed Coop’s. Seen to the house, the laundry.

She was wearing herself out, even with him there.

He went upstairs.

For the first couple of months after his grandfather had been released from the hospital, he’d stayed in the parlor they’d outfitted as a bedroom. He’d needed a wheelchair and help with the most personal functions.

And he’d hated it.

The minute he’d been able to manage the stairs, however long it took, however hard it had been, he’d insisted on moving back to the room he shared with his wife.

The door was open. Inside Coop saw his grandfather sitting in a chair, scowling at the television and rubbing his leg.

There were lines in his face that hadn’t been there two years before, grooves dug by pain and frustration more than age. And maybe, Coop thought, some fear along with it.

“Hey, Grandpa.”

Sam turned the scowl toward Coop. “Not a damn thing worth looking at on the television. If she sent you up here to check on me, to see if I need something to drink, something to eat, something to read, somebody to burp me like a baby, I don’t.”

“Actually, I’m heading out to check on the horses and thought you could give me a hand. But if you’d rather watch TV . . .”

“Don’t think that kind of psychology holds water with me. I wasn’t born yesterday. Just get me my damn boots.”

“Yes, sir.”

He got the boots, one of the pairs set neatly on the closet floor. He didn’t offer to help, something his practical and insightful grandmother couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing. But Coop judged that came from fear, too.

Instead he talked about the business, the current trail ride, then his stop at the refuge.

“Lil said she’d stop by and see you today.”

“Be pleased to see her, long as it’s not a sick call.” Sam levered himself up, bracing a hand on the back of the chair as he got his cane. “What did she have to say about running around in those foreign mountains?”

“I didn’t ask. I was only there a couple minutes.”

Sam shook his head. He moved well, Coop thought, for a man who’d busted himself up four short months before. But the stiffness was there, the awkwardness, enough to remind Coop just how easy and economic Sam’s gait had once been.

“Gotta wonder about your brain, boy.”

“Sorry?”

“Pretty girl like that, and one everybody knows you had a hankering for once upon a time, and you can’t spare more than a couple minutes?”

“She was busy,” Coop said as they started toward the stairs. “I was busy. Plus, that was once upon a time. Another plus, she’s involved with someone.”

Sam snorted as he clumped downstairs, with Coop positioned to catch him if he lost balance. “Some foreigner.”

“Have you developed a prejudice against things foreign just recently?”

Though his mouth was tight from the effort to negotiate the stairs, humor twinkled into Sam’s eyes. “I’m an old man. I’m allowed, even expected, to be crotchety. ’Sides, involved ain’t nothing. You young people today don’t have the gumption to go after a woman because she’s involved.”

“ ‘You young people’? That would be part of the new and expected crotchety?”

“Sass.” But he didn’t complain when Coop helped him into his outdoor gear. “We’re going out the front. She’s back in the kitchen, and I don’t want her raining all her worries and don’t-do’s down on my head.”

“Okay.”

Sam let out a little sigh, and put on his old, rolled-brimmed hat. “You’re a good boy, Cooper, even if you are stupid about women.”

“I’m stupid about women?” Coop led Sam outside. He’d shoveled the porch, the steps, a path to the trucks, others to outbuildings. “You’re the one who has his wife nagging at him. Maybe if you did more in that bed at night than snore, she’d leave you alone in the daytime.”

“Sass,” Sam repeated, but he wheezed out a laugh. “I oughta give you a good whack with this cane.”

“Then I’d just have to help you up when you fell on your ass.”

“I can stand long enough to get the job done. That’s what she won’t get through her head.”

“She loves you. You scared her. And now neither one of you will give the other one a break. You’re pissed off because you can’t do everything you want, the way you want to do it. You’ve got to walk with a stick, and might have to for the rest of it. So what?” he said without letting a drop of sympathy escape. “You’re walking, aren’t you?”

“Won’t let me step out of my own house, on my own land. I don’t need a nursemaid.”

“I’m not your nursemaid,” Coop said flatly. “She fusses around you, and at you, because she’s scared. And you snap and slap back at her. You never used to.”

“She never used to dog me like I was a toddler,” Sam said with some heat.

“You shattered your goddamn leg, Grandpa. The fact is you’re not steady enough to walk around in the damn snow by yourself. You will be, because you’re too stubborn not to get where you want to go. It’s going to take more time. You just have to deal with it.”

“Easier to say when you’re still eyeball-to-eyeball with thirty than when you’re getting a glimpse of eighty.”

“Then you should appreciate time more, and stop wasting it complaining about the woman who loves every crotchety inch of you.”

“You’ve got a lot to say all of a sudden.”

“I’ve been saving it up.”

Sam lifted his weathered face to the air. “A man needs his pride.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They made their slow, laborious way to the barn. Inside, Coop ignored the fact Sam was out of breath. He could catch it while they looked at the horses.

They’d had three foalings that winter. Two had gone smooth and one had been breech. Coop and his grandmother had helped bring that one into the world, and Coop had slept in the barn that night and the next.

He stopped at the stall where the mare and the filly stayed, and slid over the door to go inside. Under Sam’s watchful eye, Coop murmured to the mare, ran his hands over her to check for heat, for strain. Carefully, he examined her udder, her teats. She stood placidly under the familiar touch while the filly butted her head to Coop’s ass to get his attention.

He turned, rubbed her pretty buckskin coat.

“That one’s yours as much as hers,” Sam told him. “You named her yet?”

“Could be Lucky, because God knows. But it doesn’t suit her.” Coop checked the filly’s mouth, her teeth. He studied the big doe eyes. “It’s clichéd, but this one’s a princess. She sure thinks of herself that way.”

“We’ll put it down that way. Cooper’s Princess. The rest is yours, too. You know that.”

“Grandpa.”

“I’ll have my say here. Your grandmother and I talked about it over the years. We couldn’t be sure you wanted it or not, but in the end, we made that legal. It’s yours when we’re gone. I want you to tell me if you want it or you don’t.”

Cooper rose, and immediately the filly deserted him to nurse. “Yes, I want it.”

“Good.” Sam gave a quick nod. “Now, are you going to play with those horses all day or see to the others?”

Coop stepped out, secured the gate, then moved on to the next.

“I got something else.” Sam’s cane rang on the concrete as he followed. “Man your age needs a place of his own. He’s got no business living with a couple of old people.”

“You sure are into ‘old’ these days.”

“That’s just right. I know you moved in to help out. That’s what kin does. I’m grateful nonetheless. But you can’t stay in the house this way.”

“You kicking me out?”

“I guess I am. Now, we can build something. Pick out a spot that suits you.”

“I don’t see using the land to plant a house when we could be using it to plant crops or graze horses.”

“You think like a farmer,” Sam said, with pride. “But still in all, a man needs his place. You can pick out some land and go that way. Or if that’s not what suits you, at least not right yet, you can fix the bunkhouse up. It’s a good size. Few walls in it, better floor. Might use a new roof. We can do that for you.”

Coop checked the next mare, the next foal. “The bunkhouse would work for me. I’ll get it fixed up. I won’t take your money for it, Grandpa. That’s the line. A man has to have his pride,” he said. “I’ve got money. More than I need now.”

Which was something he wanted to talk to his grandparents about. But not quite yet.

“So I’ll look into it.”

“That’s settled then.” Sam leaned on his cane and reached out to stroke the mare’s cheek. “There’s Lolly, there’s a girl. Given us three fine foals over the years. Sweet as a lollipop, aren’t you? Born to be a ma, and to take a rider up and give him a good, gentle ride.”

Lolly blew at him, affectionately.

“I need to sit a horse again, Cooper. Not being able to makes it feel like I lost this leg steada busting it.”

“Okay. I’ll saddle a couple up.”

Sam’s head snapped up, and in his eyes shone both shock and hope. “Your grandma’ll skin us.”

“She’ll have to catch us first. A walk, Grandpa. Not even a trot. Deal?”

“Yeah.” Sam’s voice quavered before he strengthened it. “Yeah, that suits me.”

Coop saddled two of the oldest and quietest mounts. He’d thought he’d known, thought he’d understood how hard this enforced convalescence was on his grandfather. The look on Sam’s face when he’d said they’d ride told him he hadn’t. Not nearly.

If he was making a mistake, he was making it for the right reasons. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He helped Sam mount, and knew the motion and effort caused some pain. But what he saw in his grandfather’s eyes was pleasure, and relief.

He swung into the saddle himself.

A plod, Coop supposed. A couple of old horses wading through snow, and going nowhere in particular. But by God, Sam Wilks looked right on horseback. Years fell away—he could watch them slide off his grandfather’s face. In the saddle his movements were smooth and easy. Economic, Coop thought again.

In the saddle, Sam was home.

White stretched out and gleamed under the sun. It trimmed the forests that climbed the hills, tucked outcroppings of rocks under its icy blanket.

But for the whisper of wind, the jingle of bridle, the world was as still as a painting in a frame.

“Pretty land we got here, Cooper.”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“I’ve lived in this valley my whole life, working the land, working with horses. It’s all I ever wanted in this world except for your grandma. It’s what I know. I feel I’ve done something, knowing I can pass it to you.”

They rode nearly an hour, going nowhere in particular, and mostly in silence. Under the strong blue sky, the hills, the plains, the valley were white and cold. The melt would come, Coop knew, and the mud. The spring rains and the hail. But the green would come with it, and the young foals would dance in the pastures.

And that, Coop thought, was what he wanted now. To see the green come again, and watch the dance of horses. To live his life.

As they approached the house, Sam whistled under his breath.

“There’s your grandma, standing on the back porch, hands on her hips. We’re in for it now.”

Coop sent Sam a mild glance. “We, hell. You’re on your own.”

Deliberately, Sam led his horse into the yard.

“Well, don’t the pair of you look smug and stupid, riding around on horseback in the cold like a couple of idiots. I reckon now you want coffee and pie, like a reward.”

“I could do with pie. Nobody bakes a pie like my Lucille.”

She huffed, sniffed, then turned her back. “He breaks his leg getting off that horse, you’ll be tending to him, Cooper Sullivan.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Coop waited until she stalked into the kitchen, then dismounted to help Sam down. “I’ll deal with the horses. You deal with her. You’ve got the dirty end of the stick on this one.”

He helped Sam to the door, then deserted the field.

He tended to the horses and the tack. Because there was no real need for him to go back to town, he dealt with a few minor repairs that had piled up. He wasn’t as good with his hands as his grandfather, but he was competent enough. At least he rarely smashed his thumb with a hammer.

When he finished, he walked over to take a look at the bunkhouse. It was no more than a long, low—and rough—cabin, in sight of the farmhouse and the paddocks.

But with enough distance, Cooper judged, for everyone to have their privacy. And he could admit, he missed his privacy.

Its use was primarily storage now, though it got put to use seasonally, or when there was a need, or enough money, to warrant a hand or two living on the premises.

The way he saw it there was more money now—his—and more need—his grandparents’. After he fixed up the bunkhouse, it might be time to consider refiguring the tack room in the barn and making it into quarters for a permanent farmhand.

He’d have to take that kind of change slowly, Coop knew. One step at a time.

He went inside the old bunkhouse. Nearly as cold in as out, he thought, and wondered when the potbellied stove had last been fired up. There were a couple of bunks, an old table, a few chairs. The kitchen would serve for frying up a meal and little else.

The floors were scarred, the walls rough. There was a lingering scent of grease and possibly sweat in the air.

A far cry from his apartment in New York, he thought. But then, he was done with that. He’d have to see what could be done to make this habitable.

It could work, and with enough room for a small office. He’d need one here, as well as the one in town. He didn’t want to have to go over to the house and share his grandparents’ office every time he had something to do.

Bedroom, bathroom—and that needed serious updating—galley kitchen, office. That would do. It wasn’t as if he’d be doing any entertaining.

By the time he’d finished poking around, outlining basic plans, he began to think about the pie. He hoped his grandmother had cooled off by now.

He walked over, stomped his boots, and went in.

And there was Lil, Goddamn it, eating pie at the kitchen table. His grandmother gave him the beady eye but rose to get a plate. “Go on and sit. Might as well spoil your supper. Your grandfather’s up taking a nap, seeing as he’s worn out from riding the range. Lil had to make do with me, and she came all the way out to see Sam.”

“Well,” was all Coop said. He took off his coat and hat.

“You keep Lil company. I need to go up and check on him.” She slapped the pie and a mug of coffee down, then flounced out.

“Shit.”

“She’s not as mad as she’s acting.” Lil forked up some pie. “She told me the ride did Sam a world of good, but she’s pissed the two of you went off without telling her. Anyway, it’s good pie.”

He sat, took the first bite. “Yeah.”

“She looks tired.”

“She won’t stop; she won’t even slow down. If she’s got ten minutes to sit down, she finds something else to do. They bicker day and night like a couple of ten-year-olds. Then . . .” He caught himself, caught himself talking to her as he might have done years before.

Before it ended.

He jerked a shoulder, forked up more pie. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I care about them, too. So you’re going to fix up the bunkhouse.”

“Word travels fast, since I only decided on that a couple hours ago.”

“I’ve been here nearly a half hour. Long enough to catch up on current events. You really mean to stay, then?”

“That’s right. Is that a problem?”

She lifted her brows. “Why would it be?”

He shrugged, went back to his pie.

“Not looking to be sheriff of Deadwood, are you?”

He glanced up, met her eyes. “No.”

“We were surprised when you quit the police force.” She waited a moment, but he didn’t respond. “I guess being a private investigator’s more exciting, and pays better than police work.”

“Pays better. Most of the time.”

She nudged the pie plate away to pick up her coffee. Settling in, he knew, to talk. Her lips curved, just a little. He knew the taste of them—exactly—the feel of them on his.

And the knowing was next to unbearable.

“It must’ve been interesting. The work.”

“It had moments.”

“So is it like it is on TV?”

“No.”

“You know, Cooper, you used to be able to actually hold a conversation.”

“I moved here,” he said shortly. “I’m helping run the farm and the horse business. That’s it.”

“If you want me to mind my own business, just say so.”

“Mind your own business.”

“Fine.” She slapped her coffee down and rose. “We used to be friends. I figured we could get back there. Apparently not.”

“I’m not looking to get back to anything.”

“Clear enough. Tell Lucy I said thanks for the pie, and I’ll be around to see Sam when I can. I’ll try to make sure I stay out of your way when I do.”

When she stomped out, he scooped up another bite of pie, glad to be alone again.

8

It took little time for Lil to swing back into routine. She had everything she wanted—her place, her work, like-minded people to work with, the animals. She caught up with the mail and phone calls best dealt with personally, spent time working on proposals for grants.

There was never enough money.

She needed time to get to know the new crop of interns who’d come on while she’d been in the Andes, and to look over the reports of animals they’d treated and released—the injured wild brought to them.

She fed animals, cleaned them and their enclosures, assisted Matt in treating them. Days filled to bursting with the sheer physical demands. Evenings she reserved for writing—articles, papers, grant proposals, the bits of behind-the-scenes color that could influence a browser on the website to click on Donations.

Every night, alone, she checked the scope for Baby’s siblings, and other cats and wildlife they’d tagged over the years.

They’d lost some, to hunting season, to other animals, or just to age or accident. But she currently had six cougars who had originated in the Black Hills, tagged by her or one of the staff. One, a young male when tagged, had traveled to Iowa, another had ranged into Minnesota. The female from Baby’s litter had localized in the southwest of the Black Hills, occasionally roaming over into Wyoming during mating season.

She plotted locations, calculated dispersal distances, and speculated on behavior and choice of territory.

She thought it was time to buy a new horse, and go tracking. She had time before the spring season to capture and evaluate, tag and release.

In any case, she wanted some time in her own territory.

“You should take one of the interns with you,” Tansy insisted.

She should, she should. Education and training were essential arms of the refuge. But . . .

“I’ll be quicker in and out on my own.” Lil checked a radio transmitter, then packed it. “I’ve waited until late in the season for this. I don’t want to dawdle. Everything’s under control here,” she added. “Plus someone’s got to check on the camera up there. It’s a good time for me to take a few days, deal with that and maybe get a capture and release.”

“And if weather comes in?”

“I’m not going that far, Tansy. We’re losing data with that camera out, so it has to be checked. If weather comes in, I’ll head back, or wait it out.”

She added a second transmitter. She could get lucky.

“I’ll have the radio phone.” She swung the tranquilizer gun over her shoulder by the strap, hefted her pack.

“You’re leaving now?”

“Plenty of day left. With luck, I might have a capture tonight or tomorrow, tag it, and be on my way back.”

“But—”

“Stop worrying. Now I’m going to go buy a good horse from a former friend. That works out, I’ll leave from there. I’ll stay in touch.”

She hoped the former friend was in town or at the trailhead, dealing with his rental stock, customers, whatever he did with his days. She could horse-trade with Sam or Lucy, and avoid the annoyance of doing business with Coop.

Especially since he’d made it clear he wanted her to mind her own.

And to think she’d made a sincere effort to be friendly, to let bygones be. Well, screw that. If he wanted to be pissy, she’d be pissy right back.

But she wanted a good horse. Annoyance didn’t mean taking chances on the trail, and her usual mount was getting too old for this kind of trip.

Odds were, Lil thought as she drove to the neighboring farm, she’d be able to do no more than verify territory and activity on this little trip. She might get a sighting, but an actual capture and tag was a long shot. Worth it though, to add to her proposed ten-year study.

And it would give her the chance to see what, if any, human activity there might be.

When she arrived, she noted the ring and buzz—hammer and saw—from the bunkhouse. She recognized one of the trucks parked by the building as belonging to a local carpenter. Curiosity had her heading in that direction.

A mistake, she realized when Coop stepped out.

Business, she told herself. Just do the business.

“I need to buy a horse.”

“Something happen to yours?”

“No. I’m looking for one experienced on the trail. Mine’s getting on. I’d be looking for one between five and eight, say. Steady, mature, sound.”

“We don’t sell horses that aren’t sound. Going somewhere?”

She angled her head, spoke coolly. “Do you want to sell me a horse, Cooper?”

“Sure. I figure we both want me to sell you the right horse. Makes a difference if you want one for some pleasure riding on the trail, or one for working.”

“I work, so I need a horse who’ll work with me. And I want it today.”

“You’re planning on heading up today?”

“That’s right. Look, I’m going to try for a quick trap-and-tag. I need a reliable mount who can handle rough ground and has some nerve.”

“Have you spotted any cats near your place?”

“For somebody who wants me to mind my business, you sure are hell-bent on minding mine.”

“My horse,” he said.

“I haven’t seen anything within the sanctuary. We’ve got a camera out, and I want to check on it. Since I’m doing that, I’m going to set up a live trap and see if I get lucky. I’m planning on two days, three at most. Satisfied?”

“I thought you took a team for tagging.”

“If that’s the primary goal. I’ve handled it myself before. I’d like to buy that horse, Cooper, before spring. If it’s all the same to you.”

“I’ve got a six-year-old gelding that might suit you. I’ll bring him out so you can take a look.”

She started to say she’d just go with him, then changed her mind. She’d stay put. Less need for conversation. Less chance she’d give in and ask if she could see what was going on inside the old bunkhouse.

She liked the look of the gelding right off. He was a handsome brown-and-white piebald with a long slash down to his nose. His ears and eyes stayed alert as Coop led him over to the paddock fence.

The sturdy build told her he’d carry her and her gear without trouble.

He didn’t shy or sidestep when she checked his legs, his hooves. He jerked his head some when she checked his mouth, his teeth, but didn’t try any nip.

“He handles well. Got some spunk so we don’t use him unless the rider’s experienced. He likes to move.” Coop gave the gelding a rub. “He’s steady, he just gets bored if he’s doing nothing but plodding along in a line of others. Tends to stir up trouble. Likes to be in the lead.”

“What are you asking?”

“Since you’re buying a horse, you’ve got your saddle with you. Saddle him up, ride him around some. Take your time. I’ve got a couple things to see to.”

She did just that. The gelding gave her one curious look, as if to say, This isn’t usual. Then stood patiently while she saddled him, switched the tack for her own. When she mounted, he did a little shift and quiver in place.

Are we going? Are we?

She clucked her tongue and sent him into a quick, happy trot. She used sounds, her knees and heels, her hands to test him on commands. Well-trained, she concluded, but she’d expected no less from Wilks’s stock.

She figured her high end, and the price she’d like to pay, while she worked the gelding through paces and turns.

He’d do, she thought. He’d do just fine.

She slowed to a walk when Coop came back, leading a bay mare already saddled. “Has this one got a name?”

“We call him Rocky. Because he just keeps going.”

That got a laugh out of her. “He fits the bill. What are you asking?”

He named a price, right at her high end, then walked toward the house to retrieve a pack he’d set on the porch.

“That’s a little steeper than I’m looking for.”

“We can dicker on the trail.”

“I’ll give you . . . what?”

“I’m going with you.”

Flustered, she nearly stuttered. “No you’re not.”

“My horse.”

“Listen, Cooper.” She cut herself off, took a breath. “Why do you think, mistakenly, you’re going with me?”

“My grandparents could use some time without me underfoot. I’m tired of hearing the banging. We’re slow right now, so Gull can handle things for a day or two. And I feel like a little camping.”

“Then camp somewhere else.”

“I’m going with the horse. You’d better get your gear.”

She dismounted, looped the reins around the fence. “I’ll give you a fair price for him. Then he’s my horse.”

“You’ll give me a fair price when we get back. Consider it a test drive. If you’re not happy with him after, no charge for the rental.”

“I don’t want company.”

“I’m not looking to be company. I’m just going with the horse.”

She swore, shoved at her hat. The longer this went on, she realized, the more she wanted that damn horse. “Fine. You keep up or I leave you behind. You’d better have your own tent, your own gear, your own food, because I’m not sharing. And keep your hands to yourself, this isn’t a ride down memory lane.”

“Same goes.”

HE DIDN’T KNOW why he was doing it. All the reasons he gave were true enough, but they weren’t the why. The simple fact was he didn’t particularly want to be with her for an hour, much less a day or two—it was just easier to steer clear.

But he didn’t like the idea of her going by herself.

Stupid reason, he admitted as they rode in silence. She could go where she wanted and when. He couldn’t stop her if he’d wanted to. And she could have gone without him knowing about it, and if he hadn’t known about it he wouldn’t have thought about it. And wondered if she was okay.

So when he looked at it that way, it was easier to go than to stay.

In any case, the impulsive trip had some clear advantage. The first was the blessed quiet. He could hear the wind whisper through the trees, and the clomp of hooves on snowy ground, the creak of leather.

For a day or two he wouldn’t have to think. About payroll, overhead, grooming, feeding, his grandfather’s health, his grandmother’s mood.

He could do what he hadn’t had the time, and maybe not the inclination, to do since he’d come back to South Dakota.

He could just be.

They rode for a full hour without a word between them before she pulled up and he came up alongside her.

“This is stupid. You’re stupid. Go away.”

“Have you got a problem breathing the same air as I do?”

“You can breathe all the air you want.” She waved a hand in a circle. “There are miles of air. I just don’t see the point in this.”

“There is no point. We’re just going in the same direction.”

“You don’t know where I’m going.”

“You’re going up to the grassland where you saw the cougar take down the buffalo calf. The same place, more or less, we found the body.”

Her eyes sharpened. “How do you know that?”

“People talk to me whether I want them to or not. They talk to me about you whether I want them to or not. That’s where you usually go when you go on your own.”

She shifted, seemed to struggle. “Have you been back since?”

“Yeah, I’ve been back.”

She clucked to Rocky to get him moving again. “I guess you know they never found whoever did it.”

“He might’ve done others.”

“What? What others?”

“Two in Wyoming, one in Idaho. Solo female hikers. The second one two years after Melinda Barrett. Another thirteen months later. The last six months after that.”

“How do you know?”

“I was a cop.” He shrugged. “I looked into it. Ran like crimes, did some work on it. Blow to the head, stabbing, remote areas. He takes their pack, ID, jewelry. Leaves them for the animals. The others are open and unsolved. Then it stopped, after four killings, it stopped. Which means he’s moved on to other types of kill, or he got busted for something else and he’s inside. Or he’s dead.”

“Four,” she said. “Four women. There must’ve been suspects or leads.”

“Nothing that panned out, or stuck. I think he’s inside, or dead. It’s a long stretch without anything that matches his pattern.”

“And people don’t change that much. Not the basics,” she added when he looked at her. “That’s what killing is. It’s basic. If it’s the same killer, it’s not because he knows the victim, right? Not especially. It’s the type of victim—or prey. Female, alone, in a specific environment. His territory might range, but his prey didn’t. When a predator is successful in its hunting, it continues.”

She rode in silence for a moment, then went on when he didn’t respond. “I thought, or convinced myself, that Melinda Barrett was some sort of accident. Or at least a onetime thing. Someone she knew, or someone who knew her, targeted her.”

“You put a marker where we found her.”

“It seemed there should be one. There should be something. I tagged a young male up there four years ago. He’s moved on to Wyoming. That’s where the camera went down a couple days ago. It’s infrared, motion. We get a lot of hits. The animal cams, on the refuge and in the field, are popular on the website.”

She caught herself. She hadn’t meant to get into conversation with him. Not that it was, really. More of a monologue.

“You’ve sure gotten chatty over the years,” she commented.

“You said you didn’t want company.”

“I didn’t. Don’t. But you’re here.”

So he’d make an attempt. “Do the cameras go out often?”

“They require regular maintenance. Weather, wildlife, the occasional hiker play hell with them.” She stopped when they reached the stream. Snow lay in drifts and piles, crisscrossed with the tracks of animals who came to hunt or to drink.

“It’s not memory lane,” she repeated. “Just a good campsite. I’m going to unload before heading up.”

It was upriver from the spot where they’d often had picnics. From where they’d first become lovers. He didn’t mention it, as she knew it. Lillian Chance knew every foot of this territory as well as other women knew the contents of their closet.

Probably better than most. He unloaded as she did, making quick work of setting up his tent a good five yards from where she set hers.

The deliberate distance might have been the reason for the smirk on her face, but he didn’t comment on it.

“So how’s it going with the bunkhouse?” she asked when they were riding again. “Or does that fall into the area of none of my business?”

“It’s coming along. I should be able to move in there real soon.”

“Your valley condo?”

“Everybody gets their space, that’s all.”

“I know how that is. Before we built the cabin, anytime I’d come home for a stretch I’d start to feel like I was sixteen again. No matter how much room they give you, after a certain age, living with your parents—or grandparents—is just weird.”

“What’s weird is hearing the bed squeak and knowing your grandparents are having sex.”

She choked and snorted laughter. “Oh, jeez. Thanks for that.”

“Makeup sex,” he added and made her choke again.

“Okay, stop.” She looked over, and her quick, full-of-fun smile arrowed straight to his gut.

“You meant it that time.”

“What? To stop?”

“The smile. You’ve been holding back.”

“Maybe.” She looked away, keeping those dark, seductive eyes straight ahead. “I’d say we don’t know what to make of each other these days. It’s awkward. Visiting’s one thing, and we’ve hardly been in the same state at the same time since. Now we live in the same place, deal with some of the same people. I’m not used to living and working in close proximity with exes.”

“Had many?”

She flicked him the quickest and coolest of glances from under the brim of her hat. “That would come under the heading of mind your own.”

“Maybe we should make a list.”

“Maybe we should.”

They wound through the pines and birch as they had years before. But now the air was bright and bitter cold, and what they thought of was in the past, not in tomorrows.

“Cat’s been through.”

She pulled up her mount, as she had before. Coop had a flash of déjà vu—Lil in a red T-shirt and jeans, her hair loose under her hat. Her hand reaching out for his as they rode abreast.

This Lil with the long braid and the sheepskin jacket didn’t reach for him. Instead she leaned over, studying the ground. But he caught a whiff of her hair, of the wild forest scent of her. “Deer, too. She’s hunting.”

“You’re good, but you can’t tell what sex the cat is by the tracks.”

“Just playing the odds.” All business now, she straightened in the saddle, those eyes keen as they scanned. “Lots of scratches on the trees. It’s her area. We caught her on camera a few times before it went down. She’s young. I’d say she hasn’t had her mating season yet.”

“So we’re tracking a virgin cougar.”

“She’s probably about a year.” Lil continued on, slowly now. “Subadult, just beginning to venture out without her mother. She lacks experience. I could get lucky with her. She’s just what I’m looking for. She might be a descendant of the one I saw all those years ago. Maybe Baby’s cousin.”

“Baby.”

“The cougar at the refuge. I found him and his littermates in this sector. It’d be interesting if their mothers were littermates.”

“I’m sure there’s family resemblance.”

“DNA, Coop, the same as cops use. It’s an interest of mine. How they range, cross paths, come together to mate. How the females might be drawn back to their old lairs, birthplaces. It’s interesting.”

She stopped again, on the verge of the grassland. “Deer, elk, buffalo. It’s like a smorgasbord,” she said, gesturing at the tracks in the snow. “Which is why I might get lucky.”

She swung off the horse and approached a rough wood box. Coop heard her muttering and cursing as he tethered his own horse. “The camera’s not broken.” She picked a smashed padlock out of the snow. “And it wasn’t the weather or the fauna. Some joker.” She shoved the broken lock in her pocket and crouched to open the top of the box.

“Playing tricks. Smash the lock, open it up, and turn off the camera.”

Coop studied the box, the camera in it. “How much does one of those run?”

“This one? About six hundred. And yeah, I don’t know why he didn’t take it either. Just screwing around.”

Maybe, Coop thought. But it had gotten her up here, and would’ve gotten her up here alone if he hadn’t impulsively come along.

He wandered away as she reset the camera, then called her base on her radio phone.

He couldn’t track or read signs with her skill, no point in pretending otherwise. But he could see the boot prints, coming and going. Crossing the grassland, going into the trees on the other side.

From the size of the boot, the length of the stride, he’d estimate the vandal—if that’s what he was—at about six feet, with a boot size between ten and twelve. But he’d need more than eyeballing to be sure he was even in the ballpark.

He scanned the flatland, the trees, the brush, the rocks. There was, he knew, a lot of backcountry, some park, some private. A lot of places someone could camp without crossing paths with anyone else.

Cats weren’t the only species who stalked and ambushed.

“Camera’s back up.” She studied the tracks as Cooper had. “He’s at home up here,” she commented, then turned to walk to a weathered green tarp staked to the ground. “I hope he didn’t mess with the cage.”

She unhooked the tarp, flung it back. The cage was intact, but for the door she’d packed on the horse. “We remove the door, just in case somebody tries to use it, or an animal’s curious enough to get in, then can’t get out. I leave one up here because I’ve had luck in this section. Easier than hauling the cage up every time. Not much human traffic up here through the winter.”

She jerked her chin. “He came from the same direction we did, on foot, at least for the last half mile.”

“I got that much myself. From behind the camera.”

“I guess he’s shy. Since you’re here, you might as well help me set this up.”

He hauled the cage while she retrieved the door. On the edge of the grassland he watched her attach it with quick, practiced efficiency. She checked the trap several times, then baited it with bloody hunks of beef.

She noted the time, nodded. “A little more than two hours before dusk. If she’s hunting here, the bait should bring her in.”

She washed the blood off her hands with snow, put her gloves on. “We can watch from camp.”

“Can we?”

She grinned. “I have the technology.”

They started back toward the campsite, but she veered off—as he’d suspected she would—to follow the human trail.

“He’s crossing into the park,” she said. “If he keeps going in this direction, he’s going to hit the trailhead. Alone and on foot.”

“We can follow it in, but eventually you’re going to lose the origin in other traffic.”

“No point anyway. He didn’t go back this way. He went on. Probably one of those survivalist types, or extreme hikers. Search and Rescue’s pulled two small groups out this winter. Dad told me. People think they know what it is—the wilderness, the winter. But they don’t. Most just don’t. He does, I think. Even stride, steady pace. He knows.”

“You should report the camera.”

“For what? Officer, somebody broke my ten-dollar padlock and turned off my camera. Organize a posse.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have it on record.”

“You’ve been away too long. By the time I get back home, my staff would’ve told the delivery guy and the volunteers, who’ll mention it to their boss, neighbor, coworker, and so on. It’s already on record. South Dakota-style.”

But she turned in the saddle, looked back the way they’d come.

Back at camp she unpacked a small laptop, sat on her pop-up stool, and set to work. Coop stayed in his area, turned on his camp stove, and made coffee. He’d forgotten the small pleasure of that, of brewing a pot of coffee over a camp stove, the extra kick from the taste of it. He sat enjoying it, watching while the water in the stream fought and shoved its way over rocks and ice.

From Lil’s neighborhood it was business, as far as he could tell. She spoke on the radio phone, working with someone on coordinates and data.

“If you share that coffee so I don’t have to make some right this minute, I’ll share my beef stew.” She glanced over his way. “It’s not from a can. It’s my mother’s.”

He sipped his coffee, glanced her way, and said nothing.

“I know what I said, but it’s stupid. Plus, I’m finished being annoyed with you. For now.”

She set the laptop on the stool after she rose, and went to her saddle-bags for the sealed bag of stew. “It’s a good trade.”

He couldn’t argue with that. In any case, he wanted to see what she was doing on the computer. He poured a second cup of coffee, doctored it as he remembered she liked it, then walked it over to her campsite.

They drank coffee standing on the snowy banks of the stream.

“The computer’s linked with the camera. I’ll get a signal and a picture when and if it activates.”

“Fancy.”

“Lucius rigged it. He’s our resident nerd genius. He can get a message to your grandparents if you want to check on them. But I told him to call them, or have Tansy call, and let them know we’re camped. Weather’s holding, so we should be good.”

She turned her head. Their eyes met, held. Something knocked hard and loud in his heart before she turned away. “It’s good coffee,” she said. “I’m going to settle my horse, then I’ll heat up that stew.”

She walked away and left him by the stream.

SHE DIDN’T WANT to feel this way. It annoyed her, frustrated her that she couldn’t just block what she didn’t want, just refuse it.

What was it about him? That hint of sad and mad, still there, still under the surface of him, just pulled at her.

Her feelings, she reminded herself. Her problem.

Was this how Jean-Paul felt? she wondered. Wanting, needing, and never quite getting the real thing in return? She should have every square inch of her ass kicked for making anyone else feel this helpless.

Maybe knowing she was still in love with Cooper Sullivan was her ass-kicking. God knew, it was painful.

A pity she didn’t have Jean-Paul’s option to go, just leave. Her life was here, roots, work, heart. So she’d just have to deal with it.

With her horse fed and watered, she heated the stew.

Dusk floated down as she carried the plate over to him.

“Should be hot enough. I’ve got work, so . . .”

“Fine. Thanks.” He took the plate, went back to reading his book by the dying light and the glow of his stove.

In the twilight, mule deer came to drink downstream. Lil could see their movements and shadows, hear the rustles and hoof strikes. She glanced at the computer, but there was no movement—yet—on the grassland.

When the moon rose, she took the computer and her lantern into her tent. Alone—she felt more alone with Coop there than she would have by herself—she listened to the night, to the wild. With the night music came the call of the hunter, the scream of the hunted. She heard her horse blow, whinny lightly to Coop’s.

The air was full of sound, she thought. But the two humans in it exchanged not a single word.

SHE AWOKE JUST before dawn, sure the computer had signaled. But a glance showed her only a blank screen. She sat up slowly, ears tuned. There was movement outside the tent, stealthy and human. In the dark, Lil visualized her drug gun and her rifle. She made the decision, and reached out to take the drug gun.

She opened her tent slowly, scanned through the opening. Even in the dark, she recognized the shadow as Cooper. Still, she kept the gun as she slid out of the tent.

“What is it?”

He held up a hand to silence her, used it to gesture her back into her tent. Ignoring that, she moved toward him.

“What?” she said again.

“Somebody was out here. That direction.”

“Could’ve been an animal.”

“It wasn’t. He must’ve heard me inside the tent, opening it. He took off, and fast. What the hell is that for?”

She glanced down at the tranquilizer gun. “For immunizing. Including humans, if necessary. I heard you out here, but I couldn’t be sure it was you.”

“Could’ve been an animal.”

She hissed out a breath. “Okay, yes, you probably know the difference as well as I do. What the hell is that for?” she demanded, pointing at the 9mm in his hand.

“For immunizing.”

“Jesus, Cooper.”

Rather than respond, he went back to his tent, came out with a flashlight. He handed it to her. “Read the tracks.”

She shone the light on the snow. “Okay, that’s you, likely moving off from the campsite to empty your bladder.”

“You’d be right about that.”

“And that’s another set of tracks, coming from across the stream, cutting this way. Walking. Heading north, that’s at a run, or at least a good lope.” She huffed out a breath. “Poacher, maybe. Somebody looking to set up a hunting stand, spotted the campsite. But hell, the tracks look like the ones up by the cage. Could still be a poacher. Just one who likes to screw around.”

“Maybe.”

“You probably still think like a cop, or a PI, so everyone’s a suspect. And you’re probably thinking I’d have had trouble if you weren’t here.”

“Wow, now you’re a mind reader.”

“I know how it goes. Believe me, you wouldn’t be thrilled to take a hit with one of these tranqs. And believe me, I can handle myself. I’ve been handling myself for a long time.” She paused just long enough to make sure that sank in. “But I appreciate the advantage of numbers. I’m not a fool.”

“Then you’re asking yourself how he moved so fast, and straight for the trail, in the dark. Moon’s set. It’s getting lighter now, but it was pitch.”

“His eyes adjusted or he has infrared. Probably the latter if he’s scouting a hunting site in the dark. He knows what he’s doing. I’ll report it, but—”

She broke off at the beep inside her tent. Forgetting everything else, she dashed back, dived inside. “There she is! Son of a bitch. You must be my good-luck charm. I didn’t expect to get a look, not really. There’s that beauty,” she murmured as she watched the young cougar scenting the air at the far end of the grassland. “Coop, come see this. Come on.”

She shifted to give him an angle on the screen when he eased in. “She’s got the scent of the bait. Stalking, keeping to the shadows and the brush. Secretive. She can see in the dark, keen eyes. The cage is an unknown, but inside it? That scent. God, she’s beautiful. Look at her.”

She seemed to swim across the snow, bellying down.

Then she was up, and Lil caught her breath at the flash of speed, the power. Leap, bound, streak. Even as the trap sprang, the cat had the bait in her jaws.

“We got her. We got her!” On a triumphant laugh, Lil grabbed Coop’s arm. “Did you see how—”

She turned her head. Her mouth nearly collided with his in the close confines of the tent. She felt the heat from him, saw the glint of his eyes, those ice blue eyes. For an instant, just an instant, the memory of him, of them, flooded her.

Then she moved back, out of the danger zone. “I need to get my gear. It’s nearly dawn. It’ll be light enough to see the trail soon.”

She picked up the radio phone. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to make a call.”

9

Since she had more to pack up and deal with than he did, Coop fried up some bacon, made coffee. By the time she’d made her calls, gotten her gear, he’d put a trail breakfast together and set his campsite to rights. He was saddling his horse when she came over to saddle her own.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“Immobilize. With the drug gun I brought, I can get within two feet of her, inject a dart into her without hurting her. I’ll take blood and hair samples, gauge her weight, age, size, and so on. Fit her with a radio collar. Thanks,” she added, obviously distracted when he handed her a mug of coffee. “I plan on giving her a small dose, but it’ll keep her out a couple of hours, so I’ll have to stand by until she comes out of it, recovers. Until she’s recovered fully from the drug, she’s vulnerable. It’s a good day’s work, but if things go well, by noon she’ll be on her way, and I’ll have what I came for.”

“And what does all that give you?”

“You mean besides satisfaction?” As the sun pinked the rims of the eastern hills, she swung into the saddle. “Information. The cougar’s listed as a near-threatened species. Most people, I’m talking people who live and travel in known cougar territories, never see one.”

“Most people wouldn’t be you.” He mounted, offered her one of the bacon biscuits he’d put together.

“No, they wouldn’t.” She looked at the biscuit, then at him. “You made breakfast. Now I feel guilty about bitching about you coming along.”

“That’s a nice side benefit.”

“Anyway”—she took a bite as they turned the horses toward the trail—“most of the sightings reported turn out to be bobcat, or the occasional pet. People buy exotic cats—and we get calls every month from someone who did, and doesn’t know what the hell to do now that Fuzzy isn’t a cute little kitten anymore.” She took another bite. “But mostly, people see a bobcat and think—holy shit, cougar. And even on the rare occasion it is holy shit, cougar, most people don’t understand it isn’t looking for man meat.”

“There was a woman right in Deadwood a year or so ago who almost had one join her in her hot tub.”

“Yeah, that was cool.” Lil polished off the biscuit. “The point that might be missed is it wasn’t interested in her—didn’t attack. It was stalking deer and ended up on her back deck at the same time she was having her soak. It took a look at her, probably thought, Not dinner—went away. We encroach, Coop, and you don’t want to get me started on my conservation riff, believe me. But we do. So we have to learn how to live with them, protect the species. They don’t want to be around us. They don’t want to be around one another unless it’s time to mate. They’re solitary, and while they interact with others higher on the apex in some habitats, we’re their only predator once they reach maturity.”

“Might make me think twice about putting in a hot tub.”

She laughed. “One’s unlikely to join you. They can swim, but they don’t much care for it. The girl up there’s wondering how the hell she got trapped? She’s got about another eight, nine years if she hits the average life span for a female in the wild. She’ll mate every couple of years, have a litter, again on average of three. Two of those three will likely die before their first year. She’ll feed them, defend them to the death, teach them to hunt. She’ll love them until it’s time to let them go. She might range a hundred and fifty square miles of territory during her life span.”

“And you’ll track that with the radio collar.”

“Where she goes, and when, how she gets there, how long it takes. When she mates. I’m doing a generational study. I’ve already tagged two generations through Baby’s littermate and a subadult male I captured and tagged last year in the canyon. I’ll start another with this one.”

They moved into an easy trot when the trail allowed. “Don’t you already know everything there is to know about cougars by this point?”

“You never know it all. Biology and behavior, ecological role, distribution and habitat, even mythology. It adds to the wealth, and the more there is, the better we know how to preserve the species. Plus, funding. Contributors like to see and hear and know cool stuff. I give the new girl up there a name, put a shot of her on the Web page, and add her to the Track-A-Cat section. Funding. And by exploiting her, in a sense, I add to the coffers going to protect, study, and understand her and her kind. Plus, I want to know.”

She looked his way. “And tell the truth, it’s a great way to start the morning.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Fresh air, a good horse under you, miles of what people pay good money for in art books, and an interesting job to do. It’s a good deal.” She cocked her head. “Even for an urbanite.”

“The city’s not better or worse. It’s just different.”

“Do you miss it? Your work there?”

“I’m doing what I want. Just like you.”

“It counts. Being able to do what you want. You’re good at it. The horses,” she added. “You always were.” She leaned over to stroke her gelding’s neck. “We’re still going to dicker over the price for this one, but you were right. Rocky suits me.”

She frowned, slowed. “There’s our friend again.” She gestured at the tracks. “He cut across, picked up the trail here. Long strides. Not running but moving fast. What the hell is he up to?” Something tripped in her heart. “He’s heading toward the grassland. Toward the cougar.”

Even as she spoke, the scream ripped and echoed. “He’s there. He’s up there.” She pushed the horse into a gallop.

The scream echoed again, full of fury. And the third, high and sharp, cut off with the snapping report of a gunshot.

“No!” She rode half blind, dragging at the reins to steer around trees, clinging, pushing as her mount raced through the snowpack.

She slapped out at Coop when he pulled up alongside and grabbed her reins. “Let go. Get off! He shot her. He shot her.”

“If he did you can’t change it.” Shortening Rocky’s reins, he kept his voice low to calm the horses. “There’s somebody up there, armed. You’re not rushing up, risking breaking that horse’s leg and your neck in the bargain. Stop. Think.”

“He’s already got a good fifteen, twenty minutes on us. She’s trapped. I have to—”

“Stop. Think. Use your phone. Call this in.”

“If you think I’m just going to sit here while—”

“You’re going to call it in.” His voice was as cold and flat as his eyes. “And we’re going to follow the tracks. We’re going to take it one step at a time. Call your people, see if the camera’s still up. Have them report the gunshot. Then you’re going to stay behind me, because I’m the one with a real gun. That’s it. Do it now.”

She might have argued with the tone, she might have argued with the orders. But he was right about the camera. She pulled her phone out while Coop took the lead. “I’ve got a rifle if I need it,” she told him.

She reached a sleepy-voiced Tansy. “Hey, Lil. Where—”

“Check the camera. Number eleven. The one I fixed yesterday. Check it now.”

“Sure. I’ve been watching since you called. I went out to check on the animals, brought Eric back with me so. . . . Hell, it’s down again. Are—”

“Listen to me. Cooper and I are about twenty minutes from the site. Somebody’s up there, been up there. There was a shot.”

“Oh, my God. You don’t think—”

“I need you to put the police and game warden on alert. We’ll know in about twenty minutes. Get Matt on call. If she’s wounded I’ll get her in. We may need an airlift for that.”

“I’ll take care of it. Stay in contact, Lil, and be careful.” The line clicked dead before Lil could respond.

“We can move faster than this,” Lil insisted.

“Yeah, and we can move right into the crosshairs. It’s not how I want to spend my morning. We don’t know who’s up there, or what he has in mind. What we know is he has a weapon, and he’s had time to run, or find cover and lie in wait.”

Or he could have doubled back, Coop thought, and even now could be setting himself up for some human target practice. He couldn’t be sure, so he couldn’t follow the urge to immobilize Lil and tie her to a damn tree while he went on without her.

“We’d better go on foot from here.” He turned his head, met her eyes. “It’ll be quieter, and we make smaller targets. Take your knife, the drug gun, the phone. Anything happens, you run. You know the territory better than anyone else. Get lost, call for help, and stay lost until it comes. Clear?”

“This isn’t New York. You’re not a cop anymore.”

His gaze was frigid. “And this isn’t a bag-and-tag anymore either. How much time do you want to waste arguing with somebody who’s bigger than you are?”

She dismounted because he was right, and loaded a small pack with what she felt she needed. She kept the tranquilizer gun in her hand.

“Behind me,” he ordered. “Single file.”

He moved quickly, covering ground. She kept pace as he knew she would. Then he stopped, pulled out his field glasses, and using the brush for cover, scanned the grassland up ahead.

“Can you see the cage?”

“Hold on.”

He could see trampled snow, the line of trees, the jut of boulders. Countless opportunities for cover.

He scanned over. The angle was poor, but he could see part of the cage, part of the cat. And the blood on the snow.

“I can’t get a good look from here. But she’s down.”

Lil closed her eyes for a moment. Even so, he watched grief rush over her face. “We’ll cut over, come up behind the cage. It’s better cover.”

“Okay.”

It took longer, and the way was a battle with incline, knee-deep snow, rough and slippery ground.

She shoved through brush, accepted Coop’s hand for a boost when she needed it.

And on the bright, crisp air, she scented blood. She scented death.

“I’m going out to her.” Lil’s voice held calm and nothing else. “He’d have heard us coming if he stuck around. He’d have had time to circle around, take cover, and pick us off if that’s what he wanted. He shot a trapped animal. He’s a coward. He’s gone.”

“Can you help her?”

“I doubt it, but I’m going out to her. He could’ve shot you last night, the minute you stepped out of the tent.”

“I go first. Nonnegotiable.”

“I don’t care. Go on, then. I need to get to her.”

Stupid, he told himself. A risk that solved nothing. But he thought of helping Lil set up the cage, how he’d watched with her as the trap sprang.

He couldn’t leave the cat there.

“Maybe you should fire a couple of rounds, so he knows we’re armed, too.”

“He might take that as a challenge.” He glanced back at her. “You’re thinking it’s easier to kill a trapped animal, or an animal anyway, than it is a human being. It’s a mistake to think that. It depends on who’s doing the shooting. Stay back, and stay down until I tell you.”

He stepped into the open.

For a moment his skin was alive, his muscles tight and tensed. He’d been shot once, and it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.

Overhead a hawk circled and cried. He watched the trees. A movement brought his weapon up. The mule deer waded through the snow, leading the way for the herd that came behind.

He turned and walked to the cage.

He hadn’t expected her to stay once he moved, and of course, she didn’t. She stepped around him, knelt on the frozen ground.

“Would you turn the camera on? If he didn’t wreck it, that is. We need to document this.”

In the cage, the cat lay on her side. Blood and gore from the heat of the shot soiled the ground. She buried the urge to open the cage, to stroke, to mourn, to weep. Instead, she contacted her base.

“Tansy, we’re bringing the camera back up. The female’s been shot. A head wound. She’s gone.”

“Oh, Lil.”

“Make the calls, and make a copy of the video. We need the authorities here, and transportation to get her out.”

“I’ll take care of it right now. I’m so sorry, Lil.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

She clicked off, looked over at Coop. “The camera?”

“Just turned off, like before.”

“There’s a short, restricted hunting season on cougar. We’re outside that now. And this is private land, posted land. He had no right.”

Though her voice remained steady, firm, she’d gone very pale, so her eyes shone like black pools.

“Even if she hadn’t been caged, defenseless, he had no right. I understand hunting. For food, as a sport, the arguments for ecological balance as we take over more and more habitat areas. But this wasn’t hunting. This was murder. He shot a caged animal. And I put her in the cage. I put her there.”

“You’re not stupid enough to blame yourself.”

“No.” Those eyes kindled now with pure rage. “The bastard who walked up to the cage and put a bullet in her head’s to blame. But I’m a factor. I’m the reason he could.”

She sat back on her haunches, took a breath. “It looks like he came up the trail, crossed to the camera, disabled it. He circled the cage, took a look at her, stirred her up. She gave her warning call. He kept her stirred up. Maybe it was more exciting that way, who knows. Then he shot her. Fairly close range, I’d guess. But I don’t know for sure. Can’t tell. We’ll do an autopsy, recover the bullet. The police will take it and tell us what kind of gun he used.”

“A handgun from the sound of it. Small-caliber from the look of the wound.”

“You’d know more about that, I suppose.”

She did what she needed to do now, and he said nothing about the integrity of a crime scene when she opened the cage. She laid her hand on the ruined head of the young female who by her estimation had lived only one full year. Who’d learned to hunt and ranged free. Who kept to her secret places and avoided company.

She stroked. And when her shoulders began to tremble she rose to walk out of camera range. Because he had nothing else to offer, Coop went to her, turned her, held her while she wept. And wept.

She was dry-eyed and professional when the authorities arrived. He knew the county sheriff slightly, but imagined Lil had known him most of her life.

He’d be in his early thirties, Coop judged. Tough-bodied, tough-faced, sturdy in his Wolverines as he assessed. His name was William Johannsen, but like most who knew him, Lil called him Willy.

While he spoke to Lil, Coop watched a deputy take pictures of the scene, the cage, the tracks. He saw, too, Willy lay a hand on Lil’s shoulder, give it a pat before he stepped away and headed in Coop’s direction.

“Mr. Sullivan.” Willy paused, stood beside Coop and looked at the dead cat. “That’s a terrible, cowardly thing. You hunt?”

“No. Never got the taste for it.”

“I get a buck every season. I like being outdoors, pitting myself against their instincts. My wife makes a good venison stew. Never hunted cougar. My pa, he’s a hunt-it-eat-it man, and taught me the same. Don’t fancy chowing down on cougar. Well, cold out here. Got some wind going. Lil says you’ve got horses standing down yonder.”

“Yeah. I’d like to get to them.”

“I’ll walk you down a ways. Said she called her pa, and he’s on his way to meet you back where the two of you camped last night. Help you load up.”

“She needs to go with the cougar.”

“Yeah.” Willy nodded. “I’ll walk down some with you and you can tell me what’s what. I need more, I’ll get it from you later on, after you’ve had a chance to get back. Warmed up.”

“All right. Give me a minute.”

Without waiting for assent, Coop went back to Lil. Unlike Willy, he didn’t give her a comforting pat. Her eyes were dry when they met his. Dry, and a little distant. “I’ll get the horses, meet Joe back at the campsite. We’ll get your gear to you.”

“I’m grateful, Coop. I don’t know what I’d’ve done if you hadn’t been along.”

“Handled it. I’ll be by later.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I’ll be by later.”

With that, he walked away, and Willy fell into step with him.

“So you were with the police back east.”

“I was.”

“Went into private, I hear.”

“I did.”

“I recall when you used to come out as a boy, visit with your grand-folks. Good people.”

“They are.”

Willy’s lips twitched, and his stride was steady on the trail. “I heard how Gull Nodock, who works for you now, gave you a chaw one day and you about puked yourself inside out.”

The faintest hint of humor touched Coop’s mouth. “Gull never gets tired of telling that one.”

“It’s a good one. Why don’t you just give me the run-down, Mr. Sullivan. You don’t need me telling you what I need to know, seeing as you were police.”

“Cooper, or Coop. Lil and I started out yesterday morning. Around eight, maybe just after eight. We unloaded some of the gear at the campsite, by the stream, and got up here before eleven. Close to eleven, I think.”

“Good time.”

“Good horses, and she knows the trail. She’s got that camera up there. Somebody broke the lock on its cover, switched it off. She said it went down a couple days ago. She reset it. We saw the tracks left by whoever did it. Looks like around a size eleven to me.”

Willy nodded, adjusted his Stetson. “We’ll be checking on that.”

“We set up the cage, and baited it, and we were back at camp before two. She worked, I read, we had a meal, turned in. Five-twenty this morning, I heard somebody moving around. I got my gun. He was already running when I got out of the tent. I heard him more than saw him, but I got a glimpse. I’d guess about six feet tall, male. Most likely male just from the way he moved, the basic shape. He had on a backpack, and a cap. Gimme cap style. Couldn’t tell you age, race, hair color. I just got the shape, the movement as he ran, then he was in the trees. He moved fast.”

“Black as ink that time of day.”

“Yeah. Maybe he had infrared goggles. I only saw him from behind, but he moved like a fucking gazelle. Fast, fluid. Between the two of us, Lil woke up. Not long after, she got the signal the trap had sprung. It took us a good thirty minutes, maybe closer to forty to pack up, for her to contact her base. And we spent some time looking at the cat on her computer. He had a good lead on us. Neither one of us considered he’d head up there, do that.”

“Why would you?”

They’d reached the horses, and Willy gave Coop’s mare a friendly rub.

“We had light by then, but we didn’t hurry. Then she spotted the tracks. We were about halfway between the camp and the cage, and she spotted them.”

“Got an eye for it, Lil does,” Willy commented in his mild way.

“He’d circled around, crossed back to the trail, and headed up. We heard the cat scream, the way they do.”

“Hell of a sound.”

“Third time it screamed, we heard the shot.” He detailed the rest, adding the times.

“There’s no exit wound,” Coop added. “It’s going to be small-caliber. Compact handgun, maybe a thirty-eight. The kind somebody could carry easily under his jacket. Wouldn’t weigh him down on a hike, wouldn’t show if he ran into anybody on the trail. Just another guy out loving nature.”

“We take something like this serious around here. You can count on that. I’m going to let you get on. If I need to talk to you again, I know where to find you. You keep an eye out on the way down, Coop.”

“You can count on that.” Coop mounted, took the reins of Lil’s horse from Willy.

The trip back alone gave him time to think.

It was no coincidence that the camera had been tampered with, an intruder had chosen their campsite, the cougar Lil had trapped had been shot.

Common denominator? Lillian Chance.

She needed to have that spelled out for her, and she needed to take whatever precautions she could.

She assumed it was easier for a man to kill a caged animal than a human.

Coop didn’t agree.

He didn’t know William Johannsen well, and prior to now hadn’t had any professional dealings with him. But his impression had been one of competence and a cool head. He expected the man would do all that could and should be done in the investigation.

And Coop figured unless Willy was really lucky, he’d get nowhere.

Whoever had killed Lil’s cougar knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how to do it. The question was why.

Someone with a grudge against Lil personally, or with a vendetta against the refuge? Maybe both, as Lil was the refuge in most people’s minds. An extremist on either side of the environmental/conservation issue was a possibility.

Someone who knew the area, knew how to live in the wild for stretches, go unnoticed. A local maybe, Coop mused, or someone with local ties.

Maybe he’d tug on a few old connections and see if there’d been any similar incidents in the last few years. Or, he admitted, he could just ask Lil. No doubt she’d know or could find out faster than he could.

Of course that blew to hell the idea of keeping his distance. He’d already blown that, he admitted, when he’d jumped on going with her on this trip. So who was he kidding?

He wasn’t going to stay away from her. He’d known that, however much he’d tried to deny it, the minute she’d opened the door to that cabin. The instant he’d seen her again.

Maybe it was just unfinished business. He wasn’t one for leaving things unresolved. Lil was . . . a loose end, he decided. If he couldn’t cut it off, he had to tie it off. Screw the guy she wasn’t exactly engaged to.

There was still something there. He’d felt it from her. He’d seen it in her eyes. However long it had been since he’d seen her, been with her, he knew her eyes.

He dreamed of them.

He knew what he’d seen in them that morning in her tent, while on the computer screen the young cougar hissed in the cage. If he’d touched her then, he’d have taken her then. As simple as that.

They weren’t going to get through this new phase of their lives, whatever the hell it was, until they’d gotten past the old feelings, the old connection, the old needs. Maybe once they had, they could be friends again. Maybe they couldn’t. But standing in place wasn’t going to cut it.

And she was in trouble. She might not believe it, or admit it, but somebody meant to hurt her. Whatever they were to each other, whatever they weren’t, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

As the camp came into view, Coop slowed. He flicked back his coat and rested a hand on the butt of his gun.

Long precise slashes ran down the length of both tents. Bedrolls lay sodden in the icy stream, along with the cookstove he’d used that morning to fry bacon, make coffee. The shirt Lil had worn the day before lay spread out on the snow. Coop would’ve made book that the blood that smeared it had come from the cougar.

He dismounted, tethered the horses, then opened Lil’s saddlebag to find the camera he’d seen her put in that morning.

He documented the scene from various angles, took close-ups of the shirt, the tents, the items in the stream, the boot prints that weren’t his, weren’t Lil’s.

Best he could do, he thought before digging out a plastic bag that would stand for an evidence bag. With his gloves on, he bagged Lil’s shirt, sealed the bag, and wished only for a pen or marker to note down the time, date, and his initials.

He heard the approach of a horse, thought of Joe. Coop stowed the shirt in his own saddlebag, laid a hand back on his weapon. He let it drop when the horse and rider came into view.

“She’s fine.” Coop called it out first. “She’s with the county sheriff. She’s fine, Joe.”

“Okay.” Still mounted, Joe surveyed the campsite. “You two didn’t have a drunken party and do this.”

“He had to come back, double around again while we were up above. It’s quick work. Down and dirty. Probably took him ten minutes tops.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s a question.”

“It’s one I’m asking you, Cooper.” Joe slid off the saddle, held the reins in a hand Coop imagined was white at the knuckles under his riding gloves. “I’m not an idealist. I know people do fuck-all. But I don’t understand this. You’d have a better idea on it. You’d have thought about it.”

Lies often served a purpose, Coop knew. But he wouldn’t lie to Joe. “Somebody’s got it in for Lil, but I don’t have the answers. You’d have a better idea, or she would. I haven’t been part of her life for a long time. I don’t know what’s going on with her, not under the surface.”

“But you’ll find out.”

“The police are on this, Joe. Willy strikes me as somebody who gets things done. I took pictures of all this, and I’ll turn them over.” He thought of the bloodstained shirt, but kept that to himself. A father, already scared, already sick with worry, didn’t need more.

“Willy will do his job, and he’ll do his best. But he’s not going to be thinking about this, and about Lil, every minute of the day. I’m asking you, Coop. I’m asking you to help me. To help Lil. To look out for her.”

“I’ll talk to her. I’ll do what I can.”

Satisfied, Joe nodded. “I guess we’d better clean this up.”

“No. We’ll call it in, and leave it. He probably didn’t leave anything behind, but we’ll leave it for the cops to go through.”

“You’d know best.” On a shaky breath, Joe pulled off his hat, ran a gloved hand through his hair once, twice. “Jesus, Cooper. Jesus. I’m worried about my girl.”

So am I, Coop thought. So am I.

10

Lil shut down her emotions to assist Matt in the autopsy. One of the deputies stood by, going clammy green during the procedure. Under other circumstances, the poor man’s reaction would have amused her a little.

But the blood on her hands was partially her fault. No one would ever be able to convince her otherwise.

Still, the scientist in her collected blood and hair samples from the dead as she’d planned to from the living. She’d analyze, and have the data for her files, for her papers, for the program.

When the vet removed the bullet, she held out the stainless-steel dish. It rang, almost cheerfully, when Matt dropped it in. The deputy bagged it, sealed it, logged it in their presence.

“Looks like a thirty-two,” he said, and swallowed. “I’m going to see that this gets to Sheriff Johannsen. Ah, you verify this as cause of death, right, Dr. Wainwright?”

“A bullet in the brain usually is. No other injuries or insults. I’m going to open her up, complete the exam. But you’re holding what killed this animal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll send a full report to the sheriff’s office,” Lil told him. “All the documentation.”

“I’ll go on, then.” He bolted.

Matt exchanged forceps for scalpel. “Given her weight, height, her teeth, I’d put the age of this female between twelve and fifteen months.” He looked to Lil for confirmation.

“Yes. She’s not pregnant—though you’ll verify—nor does she show signs of having given birth recently. It’s unlikely she mated this fall, being too young at that time to come into season. All visual indications are she was in good health.”

“Lil, you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to be in here for this.”

“Yes I do.” She made herself cold, and watched Matt make the first precise line of the Y cut.

When it was done, all the data recorded, all the conclusions made, her eyes were gritty, her throat raw. Stress and grief made an uneasy marriage in her stomach. She washed her hands thoroughly, repeatedly, before going into the office.

The minute he saw her, Lucius’s eyes filled.

“I’m sorry. I can’t seem to pull it together.”

“It’s all right. It’s a hard day.”

“I didn’t know if you’d want me to put anything up on the site. Any sort of statement or . . .”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands over her face. Her mind simply hadn’t gone there. “Maybe we should. Yes, maybe we should. She was murdered. People should know about her, what happened to her.”

“I can write something up for you to look over.”

“Yeah, do that, Lucius.”

Mary Blunt, sturdy of body, sensible of mind, rose from her desk to pour hot water into a mug. “It’s tea. Drink it,” she ordered, and she pushed it into Lil’s hand. “Then go home for a while. There’s nothing you have to do. It’s nearly closing time. Why don’t I come over, fix you something to eat?”

“Couldn’t right now, Mary, but thanks. Matt’s doing the paperwork, putting the file together. Can you take it to Willy on your way home?”

“Sure I can.” Mary, hazel eyes full of concern over the silver rims of her cheaters, gave Lil a brief one-armed hug. “They’ll find that motherless coward, Lil. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m counting on it.” She drank the tea because it was there, and because Mary was watching to see that she did.

“We’ve got that Boy Scout field trip coming in next week. I can reschedule if you want more time.”

“No, let’s try to keep it business as usual.”

“All right, then. I did some grant research, and put some possibilities together. You can look them over, see if you want me to take any of them further.”

“All right.”

“Tomorrow,” Mary said firmly, and took the empty mug. “Now, go home. We’ll close up.”

“I’m going to check on everybody first.”

“Tansy and the interns, some volunteers saw to the feedings.”

“I’ll just . . . check. Go on home.” She glanced over at Lucius to include him. “As soon as Matt’s finished, close up and go home.”

When she stepped outside, she saw Farley coming from the direction of the stables. He raised a hand in salute. “I brought your new horse, and your gear. Gave her a good rubdown, some extra grain.”

“Farley, you’re a godsend.”

“You’d do the same.” He stopped in front of her, gave her arm a little pat and rub. “Hell of a thing, Lil.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Anything need doing?” He squinted into the gathering twilight. “Your dad said I should stay as long as you need. He thought maybe I should bunk down here for the night.”

“You don’t need to do that, Farley.”

“Well, I’d say it was more he said I’d be bunking down here for the night rather than I should.” Farley gave her his appealingly goofy grin. “I’ll use the cot back in the stables.”

“There’s a better one in the offices. Use that. I’ll talk to your boss, but we’ll let this ride tonight.”

“He’ll sleep better.”

“That’s why we’re letting it ride. The fact is, I’ll probably sleep better, too, knowing you’re close by. I’ll make you some supper.”

“No need. Your ma packed me plenty. Wouldn’t hurt to give them a call.” He shifted in his worn-at-the-heels boots. “Just saying.”

“I will.”

“Ah, is Tansy inside?”

“No. She must be out here somewhere.” The little light in his eye made her want to sigh again. It was so damn sweet. “Maybe you could take a look around for her, tell her we’re going to close a little early. If the animals have been checked, she can go on home.”

“I’ll do that. You take it easy, now, Lil. If you need anything tonight, you just give me a holler.”

“I will.”

She turned toward the small-cat area. She stopped by each habitat to help remind herself why she was doing this, what she hoped to do. Most of the animals they sheltered, they studied, would be dead otherwise. Euthanized or disposed of by owners, killed in the wild they were too old or handicapped to survive. They had a life here, protection, and as much freedom as could be allowed. They served to educate, to fascinate, to draw funds to help maintain the whole.

It mattered. Intellectually she knew it mattered. But her heart was so sore it wasn’t the intellect that needed reinforcement.

Baby waited for her, the engine purr in his throat. She crouched, leaning her head against the cage so he could bump his to it in greeting.

She looked beyond him to where the two other cougars they’d taken in tore into their evening meal. Only Baby would leave his favorite chicken dinner for her.

And in his brilliant eyes, she took comfort.

IT TOOK FARLEY a while to find her, but his heart gave a few extra beats when he did. Tansy sat on one of the benches—and for once she was alone, watching the big old tiger (imagine a tiger living right in the valley!) wash his face.

Just like a house cat would, Farley thought, licking at his paws, rubbing them on his face.

He wanted to think of something clever to say, something smart and funny. He didn’t think he was clever when it came to words mostwise anyhow. And he got his tongue tangled and stuck when he was within speaking distance of Tansy Spurge.

She was about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted her for his own so bad it hurt in the belly.

He knew all that dark, curly hair of hers was soft, and kinda springy to the touch. He’d managed to get his hands on it once. He knew the skin of her hands was smooth and soft, but he wondered if her face would be the same. That pretty, golden brown face. He hadn’t had the nerve to try to touch that yet.

But he was working up to it.

She was smarter than he was, no question. He’d finished high school because Joe and Jenna laid that down as law. But Tansy had all kinds of education on him and those fancy college degrees. He liked that about her, too, how the smart of her showed in her eyes. The goodness in them right there with it.

He’d seen how she was with animals. Gentle. Farley didn’t hold with causing an animal harm.

And with all that, she was so damn sexy his blood started humming in his head—and other places—whenever he got within ten feet of her.

Like right now.

He squared his shoulders, wished he wasn’t so damned skinny.

“He sure keeps himself clean and tidy, doesn’t he?” While he was building up the gumption to sit beside her, Farley stopped by the cage to watch the old boy wash.

He’d touched Boris once, too, when Tansy’d had him under to help Matt clean what was left of his teeth. It sure was a big experience, letting your hands walk right over a jungle cat.

“He’s feeling good today. Had a good appetite. I worried if he’d last the winter, sweet old thing, when he had that kidney infection. But he just keeps going.”

The words were easy, casual-like, but he knew—had made a study on—her tones. He heard the tears before he saw them.

“Ah, now.”

“Sorry.” She waved a hand. “We’re all having a rough day. I was mad, just mad, for most of it. Then I sat down here, and . . .” She shrugged, waved again.

He didn’t need gumption to sit beside her. He’d only needed the tears. “I had a dog run over about five years ago. Hadn’t had him long either. Just a few months. I cried like a baby right on the side of the road.”

He put his arm around her shoulders and just sat with her, watching the tiger.

“I didn’t want to see Lil again until I settled down. She doesn’t need me crying on her shoulder.”

“Mine’s right here.”

Though he’d offered, sincerely, in the spirit of friendship, his heart took that extra beat again when she tipped her head to his shoulder.

“I saw Lil.” He spoke quickly now before his mind went blank with the thrill. “She said to tell you she’s closing a little early, sending everybody on.”

“She shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m staying tonight. I’ll bunk in the second cabin.”

“Good. That’s good. I’ll feel better knowing that. It’s nice of you, Farley, to—”

She tipped her face up and his tipped over. And in that moment, lost in her eyes, the comfort became an embrace. “Holy God, Tansy,” he managed, and pressed his mouth to hers.

Soft. Sweet. He thought she tasted like warm cherries, and now that he was close enough he could smell her skin, and that had warm in it, too.

He thought a man would never be cold, not a day in his life, if he could kiss her.

She leaned into him, he felt her come in. It made him feel strong and sure.

Then she pulled away, fast. “Farley, this isn’t—We can’t do this.”

“Didn’t mean to. Not just that way.” He couldn’t help himself and stroked a hand over her hair. “I didn’t mean to take advantage of the situation.”

“It’s all right. It’s fine.”

Her voice was jumpy, and her eyes were wide. It made him smile. “It was fine. I’ve been thinking about kissing you for so long I can’t remember how long it is. Now I guess I’ll be thinking about kissing you again.”

“Well, don’t.” Her voice jumped again, as if he’d poked her with a stick. “You can’t. We can’t.”

She got to her feet. So did he, but more slowly. “I think you like me.”

She flushed—God that was pretty—and started twisting the buttons on her coat. “Of course I like you.”

“What I mean to say is, I think you think about kissing me sometimes, too. I’ve got a powerful yen for you, Tansy. Maybe you don’t have the same, but I think you’ve got a little one any way.”

She pulled her coat together, still twisting at buttons. “I’m not . . . that isn’t . . .”

“It’s about the first time I’ve seen you all flustered up. Maybe I should kiss you again.”

The button-twisting hand slapped right out onto his chest. “We’re not going to do this. You have to accept that. You should be looking at—having a yen for—girls your own age.”

His smile widened. “You didn’t say you didn’t have one for me. What we need to do is for me to take you out to dinner. Dancing maybe. Do this proper.”

“We’re not doing anything.”

She got a line between her eyebrows—he’d liked to have kissed it—and her voice firmed up. He just kept smiling.

“I mean it.” Exasperated now, she pointed the index fingers of both hands at him. “I’m going to check in with Lil, then I’m going home. And—Oh, wipe that stupid smile off your face.”

She spun around, stalked away.

Her temper turned his smile into a mile-wide grin.

He’d kissed Tansy Spurge, he thought. And before she’d gotten her dander up, she’d kissed him right back.

LIL TOOK THREE extra-strength Tylenol for the stress headache and topped it off with a long, blistering shower. Dressed in flannels, thick socks, and a comfortably tattered University of North Dakota sweatshirt, she added logs to the flames in her compact fireplace.

Heat, she thought. She couldn’t seem to get enough of it. She kept the lights blazing, too. She wasn’t ready for the dark yet. She gave some thought to food, but couldn’t work up the energy or the appetite.

She’d called her parents, so that was crossed off the list. She’d reassured them, promised to lock her doors, and reminded them she had a refuge loaded with early warning signals.

She’d work. She had articles to write, grant proposals to complete. No, she’d do laundry. No point in letting it pile up.

Maybe she should upload her photos. Or check the webcams.

Or, or, or.

She paced like a cat in a cage.

The sound of the truck had her pivoting toward the door. The staff had been gone nearly two hours now, and Mary would have locked the gate across the access road behind her. They all had keys, but . . . given the circumstances, wouldn’t whoever might have forgotten something, wanted something, needed something have called first to alert her?

Baby gave a warning cry, and in the big-cat area, the old lioness roared. Lil grabbed her rifle. Farley beat her outside by a step.

In contrast to her thudding heart, his voice was calm as a spring breeze. “Why don’t you go on back inside, Lil, while I see who . . . Okay.” He shifted the shotgun he’d carried out, angled the barrel down. “That’s Coop’s rig.”

Farley lifted a hand in greeting as the truck eased to a stop, and Coop climbed out.

“This is a hell of a welcoming committee.” Coop glanced at the guns, then over to where the animals let the newcomer know they were on alert.

“They set up a ruckus,” Farley commented. “Sure is something hearing those big jungle cats carry on, isn’t it? Well.” He gave Coop a nod. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“How did you get in the gate?” Lil demanded when Farley had slipped back inside.

“Your father gave me his key. Lot of keys floating around, from what I understand. A lock’s not much good if everybody’s got a key.”

“Staff members have keys.” She knew her voice lashed out in defense because she’d been frightened. Really frightened for a moment. “Otherwise somebody’d have to open it every damn morning before anybody else could get in. You should’ve called. If you came by to check on me, I could’ve told you and saved you the trip.”

“It’s not that long a trip.” He stepped up on the porch, handed her a covered dish. “My grandmother sent it. Chicken and dumplings.” He picked up the rifle she’d leaned against the rail and walked into the cabin without invitation.

Setting her teeth, Lil went in behind him. “It was nice of her to trouble, and I appreciate you bringing it by, but—”

“Jesus, Lil, it’s like a furnace in here.”

“I was cold.” It was warmer than it needed to be now, but it was her damn house. “Hey look, there’s no need for you to stay,” she began as he stripped off his coat. “I’m covered here, as you can plainly see. It’s been a long day for both of us.”

“Yeah. And I’m hungry.” He took the dish back from her, then strolled toward the back of the cabin to her kitchen.

She hissed under her breath, but hospitality had been ingrained since childhood. Visitors, even unwelcome ones, were to be given food and drink.

He’d already turned on her oven, and he stuck the dish inside as she came in. As if, she thought, she were the guest.

“It’s still warm. Won’t take long to heat it through. Got a beer?”

And visitors, she thought resentfully, should wait to be offered food and drink. She yanked open the refrigerator, pulled out two bottles of Coors.

Coop twisted off the cap, handed it to her. “Nice place.” He leaned back, enjoying the first cold sip as he took a quick survey. Though the kitchen was compact, there were plenty of glass-fronted cabinets and open shelves, a good section of slate-colored counter. A little table tucked in the corner in front of a built-in bench provided eating space.

“You do any cooking?”

“When I want to eat.”

He nodded. “That’s about how it is for me. The kitchen in the bunkhouse’ll be about this size when it’s done.”

“What are you doing here, Cooper?”

“Having a beer. In about twenty minutes, I’ll be having a bowl of chicken and dumplings.”

“Don’t be thick.”

Watching her, he lifted his beer. “There’s two things. Maybe it’s three. After what happened today I wanted to see how you were, and how you were set up here. Next, Joe asked me to look out for you, and I told him I would.”

“For God’s sake.”

“I told him I would,” Coop repeated, “so we’ll both have to deal with that. Last—maybe last—you might think because of the way things turned out with us, you don’t matter. You’d be wrong.”

“The way things turned out isn’t the point. It’s the way things are.” That, she thought, was essential to remember. “If thinking you’re looking out for me eases my parents’ minds, that’s fine, that’s good. But I don’t need you looking out for me. That rifle out there’s loaded, and I know how to use it.”

“Ever aimed a gun at a man?”

“Not so far. Have you?”

“It’s a different matter when you have,” he said by way of answer. “It’s a different matter than that when you know you can pull the trigger. You’re in trouble, Lil.”

“What happened today doesn’t mean—”

“He’d been back to the campsite while we were up with the cougar. He used a knife on the tents, tossed some of the gear in the stream.”

She took a breath, long and slow, so fear didn’t get through again. “Nobody told me.”

“I said I would. He dug out the shirt you’d had on the day before and smeared blood on it. That’s personal.”

Her legs jellied on her, so she stepped back, lowered to the bench. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. We’re going to sit here, eat some of Lucy’s famous chicken and dumplings. I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer them.”

“Why isn’t Willy asking me questions?”

“He will. But I’ll be asking them tonight. Where’s the French guy?”

“Who?” Struggling to take it in, she scooped the fingers of both hands through her hair. “Jean-Paul? He’s . . . in India. I think. Why?”

“Any trouble between the two of you?”

She stared at him. It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t asking out of personal interest, but as a kind of de facto cop. “If you’re fishing around, thinking Jean-Paul had anything to do with this, you need to cut bait. He’d never kill a caged animal, and he’d never do anything to hurt me. He’s a good man, and he loves me. Or did.”

“Did?”

“We’re not together anymore.” Reminding herself it wasn’t personal, she pressed her fingers to her eyes. “We haven’t been since right before I left for South America. It wasn’t acrimonious, and he’s in India, on assignment.”

“All right.” It was easy enough to verify. “Is there anyone else? Someone you’re involved with, or who wants to be involved?”

“I’m not sleeping with anyone,” she said flatly, “and no one’s made any moves on me. I don’t see why this is about me, personally.”

“Your camera, your cougar, your shirt.”

“The camera is refuge property, the cougar wasn’t mine. She wasn’t anyone’s but herself. And the shirt could’ve been yours just as easily.”

“But it wasn’t. Have you pissed off anyone lately?”

She angled her head, raised her eyebrows. “Only you.”

“I’ve got a solid alibi.” He turned, got bowls down.

It annoyed her, the way he took over, the way he made himself at home. So she sat where she was and let him hunt for hot pads, for spoons. He didn’t seem annoyed, she realized. He just found what he needed then went about the business of getting the meal in bowls.

“You had to go through some red tape to put this place together,” he continued. “Licenses, zoning.”

“Paperwork, politicking, paying fees. I had the land, thanks to my father, and was able to buy a little more after we were set up.”

“Not everybody wanted you to succeed. Who bucked you?”

“There was some resistance on every level, local, county, state. But I’d done all the research. I’d been laying the groundwork for years. I spoke at town meetings, went to Rapid City, and into Pierre. I spoke to National Park reps and rangers. I know how to glad-hand when I have to, and I’m good at it.”

“No doubt.” He set the bowls on the table, joined her on the bench. “But—”

“We had to deal with people who worried about one of the exotic cats getting loose, and diseases. We allayed that by letting people come in, watch the process when we were laying it out, building it. And we gave them a chance to ask questions. We work with the schools and with 4-H, with other youth groups, and offer educational programs, on-site and on the Internet. We offer incentives. It works.”

“Not arguing. But?”

She sighed. “There are always some, and you have extremes on both sides. People who think an animal is either domesticated or prey. And people who think of animals in the wild as gods. Untouchable. That it’s wrong to interfere with what they see as the natural order.”

“Star Trek’s prime directive.”

He got a smile out of her for the first time that evening. “Yeah, in a way. Some who see a zoo as a prison rather than a habitat. And some are. I’ve seen terrible conditions. Animals living in filth, with disease, and horribly mistreated. But most are run well, with very strong protocols. We’re a refuge, and a refuge must be just that. A safe place. And that means the people who run it are responsible for the health and well-being of the animals in it—and are responsible for their safety and the safety of the community.”

“You get threats?”

“We report, and keep a file, on the more extreme letters and e-mails. We screen the website. And yeah, we’ve had a few incidents here over the years with people who came to start trouble.”

“Which you documented?”

“Yes.”

“You can get me a copy of the file then.”

“What is this, Coop, a busman’s holiday?”

He turned his head until their eyes met. “I caged that cougar, too.”

She nodded, poked at a dumpling. “You were right about the gun. It looks like it was a thirty-two. And I didn’t think that much of it at the time, but Matt—our vet—he said he thought somebody was on the property one night while I was in Peru, when he bunked here. Someone always stays on-site through the night, so while I was gone, they switched off. The animals got riled up, middle of the night. He came out to check, but he didn’t see anything.”

“When was this?”

“A couple nights before I got back. It could’ve been an animal, and probably was. The fencing is primarily to keep our animals contained, but it also keeps other animals out. They can be a source of contamination, so we’re careful.”

“Okay, but they’d be around other animals in the wild so—”

“They’re not in the wild,” she said shortly. “We re-create, but they’re enclosed. We’ve changed their environment. Other animals—birds, rodents, insects—all potentially carry parasites or disease. It’s why all the food is so carefully processed before feeding, why we clean and disinfect the enclosures, why we do regular physical exams, take samples routinely. Vaccinate, treat, add nutrients to their diet. They’re not in the wild,” she repeated. “And that makes us responsible for them, in every way.”

“All right.” He’d thought he’d understood what she was doing here, but saw now he only understood the more obvious pieces. “Did you find anything off the night the vet thought someone—or something—was out there?”

“No. None of the animals, the equipment, the cages were messed with. I looked around, but it had snowed since, and my people had been all over, so there was no real chance of finding tracks or a trail—human or animal.”

“Do you have a list of all your staff, the volunteers?”

“Sure. But it’s not one of ours.”

“Lil, you were gone for six months. Do you know, personally, every volunteer who comes in here to toss raw meat at the cats?”

“We don’t toss—” She broke off, shook her head. “We screen. We use locals as much as we can, and have a volunteer program. Levels,” she explained. “Most of the volunteers do grunt work. Help with the food, the cleaning, shelve supplies. Unless they’ve had some experience, reached the top level, other than the petting zoo, volunteers don’t handle the animals. The exception would be the veterinary assistants, who donate their time and help with exams and surgeries.”

“I’ve seen the kids around here handling them.”

“Interns, not volunteers. We take interns from universities, students who are going into the field. We help train, help teach. They’re here for some hands-on experience.”

“You keep drugs.”

Weary, she rubbed the back of her neck. “Yes. The drugs are in Medical, locked in the drug cabinet. Matt, Mary, Tansy, and I have keys. Even the vet assistants don’t have access to them. Though you’d have to be jonesing pretty hard to want anything in there, we inventory weekly.”

It was enough for now, he thought. She’d had enough for now. “It’s good chicken,” he said, and took another bite.

“It really is.”

“Want another beer?”

“No.”

He rose, poured them both tall glasses of water.

“Were you a good cop?” she asked him.

“I did okay.”

“Why’d you quit? And don’t tell me to mind my own business when you’re trashing around in the middle of mine.”

“I needed a change.” He considered a moment, then decided to tell her. “There was a woman in my squad. Dory. A good cop, a good friend. A friend,” he repeated. “There was never anything between us but that. She was married, for one thing, and for another, there just wasn’t anything like that. But when the marriage went south, her husband decided there was.”

He paused, and when she said nothing, drank, then continued. “We were working a case, and one night after shift we grabbed a meal together to talk it through. I guess he was watching, waiting for his moment. I never felt it coming,” he said quietly. “Never got that hum, and she never let on how bad it was, not even to me.”

“What happened?”

“He came around the corner, firing. She went down so fast, fell against me. Maybe saved my life because of the way she fell back against me. He caught me in the side, barely caught me. In and out.”

“Shot? You were shot?”

“In and out, not much more than a graze.” He didn’t dismiss it. No, he never dismissed it. A few inches the other way, a whole different story. “She was taking me down with her. People were screaming, scattering, diving for cover. The glass shattered. A bullet hit the window of the restaurant.

“I remember what it sounded like, when the bullets were going into her, into the glass. I got to my weapon. I got to it as we were going down, as she was taking me down with her. She was already dead, and he kept putting bullets into her. I put five into him.”

His eyes met Lil’s now, and they were ice blue in color, in expression. She thought: This is the change. More than anything else, this is what marked him.

“I remember every one of them. Two mid-body as I was falling, three more—right hip, leg, abdomen—after I hit the sidewalk. It all took less than thirty seconds. Some asshole recorded it on his cell phone.”

It had seemed so much longer, eons longer. And the jumpy video hadn’t captured the way Dory’s body had jerked against his, or the feel of her blood flooding over his hands.

“He emptied his clip. Two bullets went through the glass, one went into me. The rest, he put into her.”

Coop paused, drank some water. “So I needed a change.”

Her chest was full to aching as she put her hand over his. She could see it, so clearly. Hear it—the shots, the screams, the breaking glass. “Your grandparents don’t know. They never said anything about this, so they don’t know.”

“No. I wasn’t hurt that bad. Treat and release. A few stitches. They didn’t know Dory, so why tell them? It was a good shoot. I didn’t get any trouble over it, not with Dory dead on the sidewalk, all the witnesses, and that asshole’s phone recording. But I couldn’t be a cop anymore, couldn’t work out of the squad, couldn’t do it. Besides”—he shrugged now—“there’s more money in private.”

She’d said that, hadn’t she? Casually, carelessly when she’d seen him again. How she wished she could take it back. “Did you have someone? When it happened, did you have someone there for you?”

“I didn’t want anyone for a while.”

Because she understood, she nodded, said nothing. Then he turned his hand over, laced his fingers with hers. “And when I did, I thought about calling you.”

Her hand flexed, a little jerk of surprise. “You could have.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe, Coop. I’d have listened. I’d’ve come to New York to listen if you’d needed or wanted it.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s why I didn’t call you.”

“How does that make sense?” she wondered.

“There are a lot of contradictions and twists when it comes to you and me, Lil.” He brushed his thumb, lightly, over the inside of her wrist. “I thought about staying here tonight, talking you into bed.”

“You couldn’t.”

“We both know I could.” He tightened his grip on her hand until she looked at him. “Sooner or later, I will. But tonight, the timing’s off. Timing counts.”

All her softer feelings hardened. “I’m not here for your convenience, Cooper.”

“There’s nothing convenient about you, Lil.” His free hand snaked up, gripped the back of her neck. And his mouth, hot, desperate, familiar, captured hers.

For the moment he held her, panic, excitement, need fought a short and vicious little war inside her.

“There’s nothing convenient about that,” he muttered when he released her.

He rose, took their empty bowls to the sink.

“Lock up after me,” he ordered, and left her.

PART TWO

HEAD

The head is always the dupe of the heart.

—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

11

March bit like a tiger, stalking from the north to spring in a killing leap over the hills and valleys. Snow and ice plunged out of the sky, cracking tree limbs with their weight, downing power lines, and turning roads into treachery.

At the refuge, Lil and any of the staff or volunteers who could make it trudged, plowed, and shoveled while the relentless wind blew mountainous drifts into frigid ranges.

The animals retired to their dens, wandering out when the mood struck them to watch the humans shiver and swear. Bundled to the eyeballs, Lil crossed paths with Tansy.

“How’s our girl?” Lil asked, thinking of the lioness.

“Weathering this better than I am. I want a hot, tropical beach. I want the smell of sea and sunscreen. I want a mai tai.”

“Will you settle for hot coffee and a cookie?”

“Sold.” As they plodded their way toward Lil’s cabin, Tansy gave her friend a sidelong look. “You don’t smell like sea and sunscreen.”

“Neither would you if you’d been shoveling snow and shit.”

“And we’re the smart girls,” Tansy commented. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Even smart girls shovel shit. It should be a bumper sticker.” Lil stomped and scraped off snow, and felt her muscles quiver in response when the first shot of warmth inside the cabin hit her. “We got through the worst of it,” she said as she and Tansy stripped off gloves, hats, coats, scarves. “We’ll haul the dung over to the farm first chance. Nothing like shit for farming. And I’m going to insist this is the last ice storm of the season. Spring, with its flash flooding and acres of mud, can’t be far off.”

“Joy.”

Lil headed back to the kitchen to start coffee. “You’ve been Miss Cranky Scientist the last few days.”

“I’m tired of winter.” Scowling, Tansy dug a tube of ChapStick out of her pocket and smeared it on.

“I hear that. But I hear something else, too.” Lil opened a cupboard, pulled out her stash of Milano cookies, handed Tansy the bag. “And call me crazy, but I suspect the something else has a penis.”

Tansy gave her a droll look, and took a cookie. “I know a lot of some-things with penises.”

“Me too. They’re freaking everywhere.” Warm, and happy for a cookie break, Lil leaned back while the coffee brewed. “I have this theory. Want to hear it?”

“I’m eating your cookies, so I guess I’m obligated to.”

“Good. The penis is here to stay, so those of us without them must learn to appreciate, exploit, ignore, and/or utilize them, depending on our own needs and goals.”

Tansy poked out her bottom lip as she nodded. “It’s a good theory.”

“It is.” Lil got down mugs, poured the coffee for both of them. “As we’ve elected to work in what is still a male-dominated field, the ratio of us v. them may demand that we appreciate, exploit, ignore, and/or utilize more often than those of our species who have not elected to work in this field.”

“Are you correlating hard data or will you conduct an empirical study?”

“At this point, it’s still in the observation/speculation phase. However, I do have, on some authority, the identity of the penis which is, I believe, playing a part in making you Miss Cranky Scientist.”

“Oh, really?” Tansy got a spoon and dumped three doses of sugar in her coffee. “Who would the authority be?”

“My mom. She misses little. I’m informed that while I was away the spark quotient between you and a certain Farley Pucket increased.”

“Farley’s barely twenty-five.”

“That would make you a cougar,” Lil said and grinned.

“Oh, shut up. I’m not dating him, sleeping with him, encouraging him.”

“Because he’s twenty-five? Actually, I think he’s twenty-six. And that makes him—good God—four years younger than you are.” In wild reaction—and with some theatrics—Lil pressed the back of her hand to her lips. “Horrors! You’re a cradle robber!”

“It’s not funny.”

Sobering, Lil lifted her eyebrows. She didn’t mind the embarrassed flush on Tansy’s cheeks—what were friends for if not to embarrass friends?—but she did mind, very much, the unhappiness in those big, dark eyes.

“No, apparently it’s not. Tans, you’re seriously unwrapped because you’re a few years older? If the ages were reversed you wouldn’t blink.”

“But they’re not, and I don’t care if it’s not logical. I’m the older woman. The older black woman, for God’s sake, Lil. In South Dakota. It’s not going to happen.”

“So no problem if Farley was thirty-something and black?”

Tansy pointed a finger. “I told you I didn’t care if it was logical.”

Lil pointed a finger right back. “Good thing, because it just isn’t. Let’s put that aside for a minute.”

“It’s key.”

“I’m putting away the key for a minute. Do you have feelings for him? Because I admit I thought it was just a little lusty deal. Long winter, close quarters, healthy, consenting adults. I figured the two of you just had a maybe-we-should-fool-around thing going. Which I was going to rag you about mercilessly because, well, it’s Farley. He’s sort of my honorary lit—brother.”

“See, you were going to say little brother.” Tansy shook her fingers in the air. “Little brother!”

“Key is put away, Tansy. Obviously, this is more than a you’ve-got-a-nice-ass-on-you-cowboy-and-I’m-looking-for-a-little-tussle.”

“I checked out his ass, sure. It’s my inalienable right as a female. But never with the idea of a tussle. What a stupid word.”

“Oh, I see, you never thought about having—insert stupid word—with Farley. Excuse me while I get the fire extinguisher. Your pants are smoking.”

“I may have speculated on stupid wording with Farley, but never with any intent to follow through. It’s another inalienable right.” Exasperated, Tansy tossed up her hands. “We both checked out the ass of Greg the Adonis Grad Student when he volunteered for a month last summer. We didn’t jump that fine ass.”

“It was fine,” Lil said, remembering. “Plus he had that whole six-pack ab thing going. And the shoulders.”

“Yeah. Shoulders.”

They both fell into reverent silence for a moment.

“God, I miss sex,” Lil said with a sigh.

“Tell me.”

“Aha! So why aren’t you having it with Farley?”

“You won’t trap me that way, Dr. Chance.”

“Oh, won’t I? You’re not having it with Farley because he’s not just another hot body like Greg the Adonis Grad Student. You’re not having it with Farley because you have feelings involved.”

“I . . .” Tansy opened her mouth, then hissed. “Damn it. Okay. All right, I do have them. I don’t even know how it started. He’d come around to help out sometimes, and sure I’d think, Cute guy. He is a cute guy, and sweet. Cute and sweet and funny, so we’d talk or he’d give me a hand, and somewhere along the line I started feeling this buzz. He’d come around and, whew, lots of buzzing in there. And . . . well, I’m not stupid, but an experienced woman of thirty years.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I caught the way he’d look at me. So I knew he had the buzz going on, too. I didn’t think much of it at first. Just: What do you know, I’ve got the hots for the cute cowboy. But it wouldn’t go away, and it got buzz ier. Then last week, the bad day,” she said, and Lil nodded, “I was feeling sad and sorry, and he sat with me. He kissed me. I kissed him right back before I realized what I was doing. I stopped, and I told him it wasn’t going to happen again. He just kept grinning at me. He says, and I quote, he’s got ‘a powerful yen’ for me. Who talks like that? It’s put me in a mood.”

She dug for another cookie. “I can’t get that damn grin out of my head.”

“Okay. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but . . .” Lil put her index finger against her thumb, and flicked it sharply dead center of Tansy’s forehead.

“Ow!”

“Stupid. You’re taking the path of stupid, so get off of it. A handful of years and a skin color aren’t reasons to turn away from someone you care about, and who cares about you.”

“People who say skin color doesn’t matter are usually white.”

“Well, ow right back at you.”

“I mean it, Lil. Mixed relationships are still difficult in a lot of the world.”

“News flash. Relationships are still difficult in all of the world.”

“Exactly. So why add layers to the difficulty?”

“Because love’s precious. That part’s simple. It’s getting it and keeping it that’s hard. You’ve never been in a serious relationship.”

“Not fair. I was with Thomas for more than a year.”

“You liked, respected, and lusted for each other. You spoke the same language, but you were never serious, Tansy. Not this-is-the-one sort of serious. I know what it’s like to be with a nice guy you’re comfortable with and never think of him as the one. And I know what it’s like to know the one. I had that with Coop, and he broke my heart. Still, I’d rather have my heart broken than never look and know.”

“You say that, but you’re not the only one with theories. Mine is you’ve never gotten over him.”

“No, I never have.”

Tansy lifted her hands. “How can you handle it?”

“I’m still figuring that out. The bad day was, apparently, a day for a shift in status. He brought me chicken and dumplings. And he kissed me. It’s not a buzz with me, Tansy. It’s a flood, that pours in and fills me up.” She laid a hand on her heart, rubbed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I sleep with him again, will it help me tread water until I can finally get to solid ground? Or will it just take me under? I don’t know, but I’m not going to pretend the odds aren’t strong that I’ll be finding out.”

Steadier for having said it out loud, Lil set her mug down, smiled. “I’ve got a powerful yen for him.”

“You’re—what was your word? Unwrapped. You’re unwrapped over the man who walked away from you and broke your heart. And I’m unwrapped over a farmhand with a rubber-band grin.”

“And we’re the smart girls.”

“Yeah. We’re the smart girls,” Tansy agreed. “Even when we’re idiots.”

COOP WORKED WITH the pretty buckskin mare he’d trained over the winter. She had, in his estimation, a sweet heart, a strong back, and a lazy disposition. She’d be happy to snooze in the stall, paddock, or field most of the day. She’d go if you insisted, if she was sure you really meant it.

She didn’t nip, she didn’t kick, and she would eat an apple out of your hand with a polite delicacy that was undeniably female.

He thought she’d do well with children. He named her Little Sis.

Business was slow in these last stubborn weeks of bitter winter. It gave him time—too much of it—to catch up on paperwork, clean the stalls, organize his new home.

And think about Lil.

He knew she had her hands full. Word got back to him through his grandparents—from her parents, from Farley, from Gull.

She’d come by once, he’d heard, to return his grandmother’s dish, and visit awhile. And she’d come by when he’d been in town, doing a stint in the storefront office.

He wondered if that had been accident or design on her part.

He’d given her space, but he was about done with that now. Those loose ends were still dangling. The time was coming to knot them off.

He started to walk Little Sis toward the barn. “You worked good today,” he told her. “We’ll get you brushed down, and maybe there’ll be an apple in it for you.”

He’d have sworn her ears twitched at the word “apple.” Just as he’d have sworn he heard her sigh when he changed direction and steered her toward the house when he saw the county sheriff step out of the back door.

“That’s a pretty girl.”

“She is.”

Standing, legs spread, Willy squinted up at the sky. “The way the weather’s clearing up, you’ll have her and the rest under the tourists and on the trails before long.”

Coop had to smile. “This is one of the few places I know where eighteen inches of snowpack and drifts taller than me would be considered clearing up, weather-wise.”

“Yeah, haven’t gotten anything falling since the last storm. Clearing up. Spare me a minute, Coop?”

“Sure.” Coop dismounted, looped the mare’s reins around the porch rail. Hardly necessary, he thought. She wouldn’t go anywhere she wasn’t told to go.

“I’ve just come from seeing Lil over at the refuge, and figured I owed you a stop-by.”

Coop could see it clearly enough in the man’s face. “To tell me you’re hitting dead ends.”

“To tell you that. Fact is, what we got is a dead cougar, a thirty-two slug, a buncha tracks in the snow, and a vague description of someone you saw in the dark. We’ve been giving it a push, but there’s not much to move along.”

“You got copies of her threat file?”

“Yeah, and we’ve been following up on that. I rode out and spoke personal to a couple of men who went by the refuge a few months back and gave them some trouble. Don’t fit the physical, either of them. One’s got a wife swears he was home that night, and through the morning—and he was at work nine on the dot in Sturgis. That’s verified. The other runs damn near three hundred pounds. I don’t think you’d’ve mistaken him.”

“No.”

“I talked to a couple rangers I know, and they’ll be keeping an eye out at the park, spreading the word. But I’m going to tell you like I had to tell Lil, we’re going to need a serious run of luck to tie this up. I gotta figure whoever it was is gone. Nobody with a lick of sense would’ve stayed up there when that storm came in. We’ll keep doing what we can do, but I wanted to tell her straight. And you, too.”

“There are a lot of places a man could wait out a storm. In the hills and in the valley. If he had some experience, some provisions, or some luck.”

“That’s a fact. We made some calls, checking if somebody who looked like they’d come off the trail moved into one of the motels or hotels around here. We didn’t get anything. Her camera’s been up and running since, and nobody’s seen anybody around the refuge—or the Chance place—who shouldn’t be around.”

“It sounds like you’ve covered everything you could cover.”

“Doesn’t close the book on it, though. Open book keeps my palms itchy.” Willy stood a moment, looking out at the snow, the sky. “Well. Good to see Sam up and around. I hope I’m tough as him when I get his age. If you think of anything I need to know, I’ll be around to hear it.”

“I appreciate you coming by.”

Willy nodded, gave Little Sis a pat on her flank. “Pretty girl. You take care, Coop.”

He would, Coop thought. But what he needed to take care of was at the refuge.

He dealt with the horse, so Little Sis got her rubdown and her apple. He took care of the rest of the chores, ones as routine to him now as dressing every morning. Because there would be coffee hot and fresh, he went into his grandmother’s kitchen.

His grandfather walked in, without his cane. Coop fought down the urge to comment, especially when Sam gave him a quick scowl.

“I’m still going to use it when I go outside, or if my leg gives me trouble. I’m just testing things, that’s all.”

“Stubborn old goat,” Lucy said as she came out of the laundry room with a basket full of whites.

“That makes two of us.” Sam limped over, took the basket, and while Coop held his breath limped away again to set it on a chair. “Now.” His face actually flushed with pleasure as he turned, winked at Coop. “Why don’t you get the menfolks some coffee, woman?”

Lucy folded her lips, but not before the quick smile escaped. “Oh, sit down.”

Sam let out a quiet sigh as he sat. “I smell a chicken roasting.” He scented the air like a wolf. “Heard a rumor about mashed potatoes. You ought to help me eat that, Coop, before this woman fattens me up like a pig before the roast.”

“Actually, I have something to do. But if you hear somebody sneaking around in here later tonight, you’ll know it’s me coming after the leftovers.”

“I can make you up some, put it over next door for you,” Lucy offered.

The bunkhouse had become “next door.”

“Don’t worry about that. I can fend for myself.”

“Well.” She set coffee in front of both of them, then ran her hand along Coop’s shoulder. “It looks nice over there, but I wish you’d take another look up in the attic. I know you could use more furniture.”

“I can only sit in one chair at a time, Grandma. I wanted to tell you the mare—Little Sis—is coming along.”

“I saw you working her.” Lucy poured the water she had simmering in the kettle to make the tea she preferred that time of day. “She’s got a sweet way.”

“I think she’ll be good with kids, especially if they don’t want to get anywhere fast. I was hoping you’d take her out a couple times, Grandma. See how she feels to you.”

“I’ll take her out tomorrow.” She hesitated a moment before turning to her husband. “Why don’t you ride out with me, Sam? We haven’t had a ride in a while.”

“If the boy can spare the pair of us.”

“I think I can manage,” Coop told him. He finished off his coffee and pushed to his feet. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Do you need anything before I go?”

“I think we can manage,” Lucy said with a smile. “You going out?”

“Yeah. I’ve got something to take care of.”

Lucy lifted her eyebrows at Sam when the door closed behind Coop. “I’ll give you two to one that something has big brown eyes.”

“Lucille, I don’t take sucker bets.”

STREAKS AND SMEARS of red shimmered over the western sky, and the light dipped soft into twilight. The world was vast and white, a land caught in the clutched fist of winter.

He’d heard people talking about spring—his grandparents, Gull, people in town, but nothing he saw gave any indication they’d turned a corner toward daffodils and robins. Then again, he thought, as he pulled up to the gates of the refuge, he’d never spent a winter in the Black Hills before this one.

A few days at Christmas didn’t come close to the whole shot, he mused, as he got out to unlock the gate with the copy of the key he’d had made from Joe’s. The wind whistled and skipped along the road and sent the pines whooshing. The scent of pine and snow and horse would forever say winter in the hills to him.

He got back into the truck, drove through the gate. Stopped, got out to close and relock it. And wondered how much an automatic gate with a frigging keypad ran. Plus a couple of security cameras for the entrance.

He’d have to check on what kind of alarm system she had installed.

If he could make a copy of the key, so could half the county. The other half could just hike around, circle back, and stroll onto refuge land on a whim.

Fences and gates didn’t keep people out if they wanted in.

He followed the road back and slowed at the first turn, the turn that brought the cabins into view. Smoke pumped out of Lil’s chimney, and lights glowed against the window glass. Paths leading from the split-log cabin led to the second cabin, to the habitat areas, to the education center and commissary, and around to where he understood they stored equipment, dry feed, supplies.

He assumed she had enough sense to lock her doors, just as he assumed she was smart and aware enough to understand there were countless ways onto the land, to those doors, for anyone who had the skills and patience to travel the hills and trails.

He skirted the small visitors’ parking area and pulled up by her truck.

The animals announced him, but their calls seemed almost casual to his ear. It wasn’t full dark yet, and from what he could see of the habitat most of the inhabitants had chosen their dens.

Casual or not, Lil was at the door before he’d gained the cabin porch. She stood in a black sweater and worn jeans, scarred boots, with her hair pulled back in a thick black waterfall. He wouldn’t have described her stance or her expression as friendly.

“You’re going to have to give my father back his key.”

“I did.” He stepped onto the porch, looked into her very annoyed eyes. “Which should give you a slice of clue on just how much security that gate gives you.”

“It’s served its purpose up till now.”

“Now’s the point. You need a more secure, automatic gate with a code and camera.”

“Oh, really? Well, I’ll get right on that as soon as I have a few thousand extra piled up, and nothing else to do with it but beef up a gate that is essentially a symbol and a deterrent. Unless you’re going to suggest I build a security wall around more than two dozen acres of land while I’m at it. Maybe post sentries.”

“If you’re going to have a deterrent, it might as well deter. Since I’m standing here, yours didn’t do such a good job. Listen, I’ve been outside most of the day, and I’m tired of freezing my ass off.”

He stepped forward, and since she didn’t move out of the doorway simply cupped his hands under her elbows, lifted her up, over. Inside, he plunked her down again and closed the door.

“Jesus, Cooper.” It was hard to form actual words when her jaw kept wanting to drop. “What’s with you?”

“I want a beer.”

“I bet you have some back at your own place. If not, there are several places to buy beer in town. Go there. Do that.”

“And despite the fact you’re bitchy and unfriendly, I want to talk to you. You’re here, and there’s probably beer.”

He started back to the kitchen. “Why are you here alone?”

“Because this is my house, this is my place, because I wanted to be alone.”

He glanced at the table, noted the laptop, a scatter of files, and a glass of red wine. He picked up the bottle on the counter, approved the label, and allowed himself a change of mind.

He got a wineglass out of one of her cabinets.

“Just make yourself the hell at home.”

“Willy came by to see me.” He poured himself a glass of wine, sampled it, then set the glass down to strip off his coat.

“Then I assume we both got the same information, and there’s nothing to talk about. I’m working, Coop.”

“You’re frustrated and you’re pissed off. I don’t blame you. The fact is, they don’t have much to work with, and none of the lines of investigation are going anywhere. That doesn’t mean they stop, just that they might have to change the angle.”

He picked up the wine again, glanced around the room while he drank. “Don’t you eat?”

“Yes, often when I’m hungry. Let’s just say I appreciate you coming by to reassure me the wheels of justice are turning, and add that I’m aware Willy is doing and will do his best. There. We talked.”

“Do you have a reason to be pissed at me, or is it just in general?”

“We’ve had some long and very physical days around here. I’m on deadline on an article I’m writing. Writing articles helps pay for that wine you’re drinking, among other things. I’ve just been told that it’s very unlikely that whoever shot a cougar that I caged will be identified or apprehended. You waltz in here when I’m trying to work and help yourself to the wine this article will help replace. So we’ll say it’s in general with a special section just for you.”

“I didn’t waltz.” He turned and opened the refrigerator. “Shit, Lil,” he said after a short exam, “even I do better than this.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Finding something to fix for dinner.”

“Get out of my refrigerator.”

In response, he simply opened the freezer. “Figures. Bunch of girl frozen meals. Well, at least there’s frozen pizza.”

He thought he could hear her teeth grinding all the way across the room. It was, he admitted, oddly satisfying.

“In about two minutes I’m going to get my rifle and shoot you in the ass.”

“No you’re not. But in about fifteen minutes, according to the directions on this box, you’ll be eating pizza. It might help your mood. You get some itinerant volunteers,” he continued as he switched on the oven. “Some one- or two-timers.”

Annoyance didn’t seem to work. She tried sulking. “So?”

“It’s a good way to scope out the setup here, the staff, the routines, the layout. A lot of the farms and businesses around here do the same. Hire somebody on in season, a few days, a few weeks, whatever works. I’m going to do the same in another month or so.”

He put the unboxed pizza in, set the timer.

“What difference does it make? Willy thinks he’s done and gone.”

“Willy could be right. Or he could be wrong. If a man knew what he was doing, and wanted to, he could make a nice shelter for himself in the hills. They’re pocketed with caves.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

“I want you to be careful. If you feel too much better, you won’t be.” He brought the bottle over, topped off her wine. “What’s the article about?”

She picked up the wine, scowled into it, then sipped. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“You’re writing about that? Can I read it?”

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she repeated, “until when and if I decide otherwise. Tossing a frozen pizza in the oven isn’t going to make me feel warm and fuzzy about you.”

“If I was after warm and fuzzy, I’d get a puppy. I’m going to sleep with you, Lil. But you can take some time to get used to the idea.”

“You had me once, Cooper, and you could’ve kept me. You dumped me.”

His expression flattened out. “We remember it different.”

“If you think we can just go back—”

“I don’t. I don’t want to go back. But I’m looking at you, Lil, and I know we’re not done. You know it, too.”

He sat on the bench with her, sipped his wine, and poked at the photos she had fanned out beside the files. “Is this South America?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like going places like that?”

“Exciting. Challenging.”

He nodded. “And now you’ll write a story about going to the Andes to track cougar.”

“Yeah.”

“Then where?”

“Where what?”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any plans right now. This trip was the big one for me. What I got out of it personally, professionally, what I can generate from it with articles, papers, lectures. The research, the findings.” She moved her shoulders. “I can channel a lot of that into benefits for the refuge. The refuge is the priority.”

He set the photos back down to look at her. “It’s good to have priorities.”

He moved in slowly, giving her time—this time—to resist or decide. She didn’t speak, didn’t try to stop him, only watched him the way she might a coiled snake.

Warily.

He caught her chin in a light grip, and took her mouth.

She wouldn’t have said he was gentle, or tender. No, she wouldn’t have called the kiss, the tone, the intent either of those. But there wasn’t the rough fire he’d shown her before. This time, he kissed her like a man who’d decided to take his time. Who was confident he could.

And though his fingers were easy on her face, she knew—didn’t he intend she would?—that they could tighten at his whim. That he could plunder instead of seduce.

And knowing it sparked excitement in her blood.

Hadn’t she always preferred the wild to the tame?

He felt her give, just a little. Just a little more. Her lips moved against his, warmed and softened, and her breath hummed low in her throat.

He eased away as slowly as he’d eased to her. “No,” he said, “we’re not done.” The oven timer dinged, and he smiled. “But the pizza is.”

12

He’d spent worse nights, Coop thought, as he added logs to the fire in Lil’s living room. But it had been a lot of years since he’d made do with a chilly room and a lumpy sofa. And even then, he hadn’t had the additional discomfort of knowing the woman he wanted slept one floor above.

His choice, he reminded himself. She’d told him to go; he’d refused. So he’d gotten a blanket, a pillow, and a sofa six inches too short for him. And it had very likely been for nothing.

She was probably right. She was perfectly safe on her own, in her cabin. Locked doors and a loaded rifle were solid safety factors.

But once he’d told her he intended to stay, he hadn’t been able to back down.

And it was damn weird, he mused, as he walked back to the kitchen to put on coffee, to be wakened in the dark by a jungle cat’s roar.

Damn weird.

He supposed she was used to it, as he hadn’t heard her stir, even when he’d been compelled to pull on his boots and go out to check.

The only things he’d discovered were she needed more security lights, and that even if a man knew there were sturdy barriers, the roars and growls in the dark could send an atavistic finger of fear up his spine.

She was stirring now, he thought. He’d heard her footsteps above, and the clink of the pipes as she turned on the shower.

It would be light soon, another frigid, white-drenched dawn. Her people would be heading in, and he had his own work to see to.

He hunted up eggs and bread, a frying pan. She might not agree, but he figured she owed him a hot breakfast for the guard duty. He was slapping a couple of fried egg sandwiches together when she walked in. She’d bundled her hair up, wore a flannel shirt over a thermal. And looked no more pleased to see him this morning than she had the night before.

“We need some ground rules,” she began.

“Fine. Write me up a list. I’ve got to get to work. I made two if you want the other,” he added as he wrapped his sandwich in a napkin.

“You can’t just come here and take over.”

“Put that at the top of the list,” he suggested as she followed him into the living room. He passed the sandwich from hand to hand as he shrugged on his coat. “You smell good.”

“You need to respect my privacy, and get it through your head I don’t need or want a guard dog.”

“Uh-huh.” He settled his hat on his head. “You’re going to need to bring in more firewood. I’ll see you later.”

“Coop. Damn it!”

He turned at the door. “You matter. Deal with it.”

He bit into his sandwich as he strode to his truck.

She was right about the ground rules, he thought. Most things worked better with rules, or guidelines anyway. There was right and there was wrong, and a big, wide mass of gray between them. Still, it was best to know which shades of gray worked for any particular situation.

She was entitled to set some rules, as long as she understood he’d be exploring the gray.

He ate his egg sandwich as he drove the looping road to the gate, and setting rules, guidelines, and the mystery of just what he wanted from Lil aside, he mentally arranged what he had to do that day.

Stock to be fed, stalls mucked out. Then getting his grandparents out on horseback would be an accomplishment. He needed to get into town for some supplies, do some paperwork at the storefront. If they didn’t have customers who wanted a trail guide, he’d get Gull to work on some of the tack.

He wanted to work out a basic plan, cost analysis, and feasibility of adding pony rides to the business. Take a few horses like Little Sis, he mused, walk them around a fenced track for a half hour, and you could . . .

His mind switched off business and to alert.

The corpse was draped over the gate. Below it, blood stained the hardpack of snow. A couple of vultures were already pecking for breakfast while more circled overhead.

Coop hit the horn to scatter the birds as he slowed to scan the trees and brush, the road beyond the gate. In the dim, early light, his headlights washed over the dead wolf, turned its dead eyes eerily green.

Coop leaned over, opened his glove compartment, and took out his 9mm and his flashlight. Climbing out of the truck, he shined the light on the ground. There were footprints, of course. His own would be among them from the night before, when he’d opened the gate.

He saw none he judged as newer than his own on the inside. That, he supposed was something. Still, he walked in his own tracks to reach the wolf.

It had taken two shots—one mid-body, one head—to bring the wolf down, as far as Coop could see on a visual. The body was cold to the touch, and the small blood pool frozen.

It told him the message had been delivered several hours before.

He flipped the safety back on his gun, pushed it into his pocket. As he dug for his phone he heard the hum of an approaching car. Though he doubted the messenger would be back so soon, or travel in a vehicle, Coop slid his hand into his pocket and over the grip of his gun.

The light had gone misty gray with dawn, and in the eastern sky the red rose and spread. He walked back, cut his headlights, and standing at the gate saw his instinct had been right. The four-wheel drive slowed. He held up a hand to stop them, to keep them as far back from the gate as he could manage when they made the turn.

He recognized the man who got out the passenger side by sight, but not name. “Keep back from the gate,” Coop ordered.

Tansy climbed out the other side and stood holding the door handle as if for support. “Oh, my God.”

“You want to keep back,” he repeated.

“Lil.”

“She’s fine,” Coop told Tansy. “I just left her up at the cabin. I need you to call the sheriff—Willy. Get back in the car and call. Tell him somebody left a dead wolf at the gate. Two bullet holes that I can see. I want you to wait in the car, don’t touch anything. You.” He pointed to the man.

“Uh, Eric. I’m an intern. I just—”

“In the car, stay. The vultures come back, hit the horn. I’m going to go get Lil.”

“We’ve got some volunteers coming in this morning.” Tansy took a breath that huffed out a fog, then another, shorter, smoother. “And the other interns. They should be here soon.”

“If they come before I get back, keep them away from the gate.”

He got back into his truck, backed up until he came to one of the pull-offs. He did a quick three-point turn and pushed for speed.

She was already outside, standing on the path that led from her cabin to the offices. Her hands moved to her hips even as the scowl moved over her face.

“What now? Mornings are busy times around here.”

“You need to come with me.”

The scowl faded. She didn’t question him. There was enough in the tone, in his eyes to tell her there was trouble.

“Get a camera,” he called out when she started toward the truck. “Digital. Make it fast.”

Again, she asked no questions but set off toward the cabin at a run. She was back in under two minutes, with the camera and her rifle.

“Tell me,” she said when she jumped in the truck.

“There’s a dead wolf hanging over your gate.”

She sucked in a breath, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her hand tighten on the barrel of the rifle. But her voice stayed calm.

“Shot? Like the cougar?”

“It took two shots, that I can see. Not much blood, and it’s cold. He killed it somewhere else, hauled it down. It doesn’t look like he got in, or tried. But I didn’t look that close. A couple of your people pulled up right after I found it. They’re calling the sheriff.”

“Son of a bitch. What’s the damn point in—Wait!” Alarm ringing in her words, she pushed up straight in the seat. “Go back, go back. What if he’s using this to lure us away? If he got inside? The animals, they’re helpless. Go back, Coop.”

“Nearly at the gate. I’ll drop you off. I’ll go back.”

“Hurry. Hurry.” When he braked at the gate, she turned. “Wait for me,” she demanded and jumped out. “Eric!”

She circled wide of the wolf—smart girl—and Coop watched Eric get out of the car on the other side. “Catch this! Catch it. Get the best pictures you can of the wolf, the gate, of everything. Wait for the sheriff.”

“Where are you—”

She scrambled back in Coop’s truck, slammed the door on Eric’s question. “Move!”

He punched the gas, shot back in reverse, and went with the fishtail when he whipped into the turn. When he blasted the horn, she jumped, then stared at him. “On the off chance you’re right, and he hears us coming, he’ll book. This isn’t about confrontation.” Not yet, Coop thought. Not yet. “It’s about harassment.”

“Why off chance?”

“It’s unlikely he knew I was here last night, or I’d be leaving before your people got here. Otherwise, they’d be the ones to find the wolf, and they’d have come in, come up to tell you. Everybody’d be here, not at the gate.”

“Okay, okay, that’s a point.” But she didn’t breathe easily until she saw the first habitats, heard the usual calls and clamor of morning.

“I need to check them, all of them. If you take that direction, just follow the path, I’ll take this side and circle around, then we—”

“No.” He pulled up, stopped. “Off chance,” he repeated. “And I’m not risking him getting you alone.”

She lifted the rifle she had across her knees, but Cooper shook his head.

“Together.” And when they’d finished, he thought, he’d check both cabins, all the outbuildings.

“They’ll think I’m coming to visit, so there’s going to be some annoyance when I don’t.”

There were grumbles and hisses, and a few protesting calls as they walked by. She moved briskly as each visual confirmation eased the painful thud of her heart. That heart stuttered a moment when she scanned Baby’s enclosure. Then she looked up—she knew his games—and found him standing on the thick branch of his tree.

His leap down was gorgeous and full of fun. When he purred, she gave in and ducked under the barrier. “Soon,” she murmured. “We’ll play a little soon.” She stroked his fur through the fence, then laughed when he rose on high hind legs, pressed closer so she could use her fingers to tickle his belly. “Soon,” she repeated.

His disappointment rumbled in his throat as she stepped back behind the rail. She shrugged when Coop stared at her.

“He’s a special case.”

“Didn’t I hear disapproval, even some derision, in your voice when you talked about people who buy exotic pets?”

“He’s not a pet. Do you see me fitting him with a jeweled collar and leading him around on a leash?”

“That would be the one you call Baby.”

“You pay more attention than I think. He’s been at the refuge since he was a kitten, by his own choice. They’re okay,” she added. “If someone unknown was around they’d make some noise. But I have to check anyway. We’ve got a group coming in this morning, a youth group. And we’ve got two cats with ingrown claws that need to be seen to. Plus the interns have a few hundred pounds of meat to process in the commissary. We’ve got a routine, Coop. We can’t let this interfere with the health of the animals or the running of the refuge. If we don’t have tours, our budget dips. And you’ve got a business to run, animals to feed.”

“Check the rest on your cameras. Let’s go through the offices. If they’re clear, you can set up there, check your animals.”

“Willy’s going to let us open the gates, isn’t he? Let my people in.”

“Shouldn’t be long.”

“I didn’t get a good look at the wolf. It was good size, so I’d say full-grown. To take one down like that . . . Maybe it wasn’t with a pack. A lone wolf’s easier prey. He wants me upset, off-balance, to throw this place into upheaval. I took my share of psych courses,” she said when Coop only studied her face. “I know what he’s doing. Not why, but what. I could lose some volunteers, even some interns over this sort of thing. Our intern program is essential, so I’m going to be doing some fast, hard talking at our emergency staff meeting today.”

She unlocked the cabin that held the offices. Coop nudged her aside, pushed the door open. The area appeared to be clear. He stepped in, swept it, then moved from space to space to do the same.

“Stay in here, use the computer. I’ll check the other buildings. Give me the keys.”

She said nothing, only passed them to him. When he left her she sat and waited for the computer to boot up.

She’d known he’d been a cop. But she’d never seen him be one until today.

He’d thought he understood what went on in the refuge. But he realized he hadn’t considered the full extent of the work even after Lil had given him an overview. The commissary alone was an eye-opener, with its enormous coolers and freezers, its massive amounts of meat, and the equipment required for processing it, handling it, hauling it.

The stables held three horses, including the one he’d sold her. Since he was there, he saw to their feeding and watering, and marked off both chores on the chart posted on the wall.

He checked the equipment shed, the garage, and the long, low cabin posted as the education center. He took a quick scan of the displays inside, the photographs, the pelts, teeth, skulls, bones—where the hell did she get those?

Fascinating, he thought as he checked both restrooms, and each stall inside. He walked through the small attached gift shop with its stuffed animals, T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, postcards, and posters. Everything tidy and organized.

She’d built something here. Saw to the details, the angles. And all of it, he knew, all of it, for the animals.

As he backtracked he heard the sound of cars, and headed around to meet the sheriff.

“Everything’s fine here. She’s in the offices,” he said to Tansy, then turned to Willy.

“Looks like he decided to hole up after all,” Willy said. “We can’t be sure it wasn’t somebody else, and they just happened to pick that gate. Or somebody got the bright idea because of the cougar. But the fact is hunting wolves is illegal around here, and people know it. Know the trouble they’ll get into for it. Now, a farmer shooting one that’s after his lifestock’s one thing. But I know every farmer in this county, and I can’t see any one of them hauling the body up here like this. Even the ones who think Lil’s a little on the odd side.”

“The bullets in that wolf are going to be from the same gun that shot the cougar.”

“Yeah, I expect they are.” With a nod, Willy folded his lips tight. “I’m going to be talking to the Park Service, and the state boys. You might do some talking yourself. Maybe somebody going on the trail, using your outfit or one of the others, saw somebody, saw something.”

He looked over as Lil came out. “Morning. Sorry about this trouble. Your vet around?”

“He’ll be here shortly.”

“I’m going to leave a man, same as before. We’re going to do what we can, Lil.”

“I know, but there’s not much you can do.” She came down the steps. “One cougar, one wolf. It’s bad, but it’s a hard world. And those two species may be romanticized in other places, but not here, not where they might wander down from the hills and take down a man’s cattle or ravage a henhouse. I understand that, Willy, I live in reality. My reality is I have thirty-six animals, not including the horses, spread over about thirty-two acres of habitat and facilities. And I’m afraid he’s going to decide to bring it here, that’s what he hinted at today. And he’s going to kill one of the animals that live here, that I brought here. Or worse, one of the people who work here, who I brought here.”

“I don’t know what I can say to ease your mind.”

“There’s nothing, that’s where he’s holding the advantage right now. My mind can’t be eased. But we have work to do here. We’ll keep doing it. I’ve got six interns who need to finish our program. There’s a group of eight- to twelve-year-olds coming in this morning, in about two hours, to take the tour and a session in the education center. If you tell me you don’t think those kids will be safe, I’ll cancel.”

“I’ve got no reason to think a man who kills a wild animal’s going to start taking potshots at kids, Lil.”

“Okay. Then we’ll all just do whatever we can do. You should go,” she said to Coop. “You have your own business, your own animals to see to.”

“I’ll be back. You may want to make up that list.”

She looked blank for a moment, then shook her head. “That’s not my top priority just now.”

“Your choice.”

“Yes. It will be. Thanks, Willy.”

Willy pursed his lips as she went back in the office. “I have a feeling the two of you were talking about something other than a dead wolf. Since I do, I’m thinking you’ll be staying here tonight.”

“That’s right.”

“I feel better knowing that. Meanwhile, I’m going to have some men scout around the area, check the other gates, look for weak spots. He’s holed up somewhere,” Willy muttered, looking out toward the hills.

LIL KNEW word would spread, and quickly, so it didn’t surprise her when her parents arrived. She walked away from the immobilized tiger to the habitat fence. “Just an ingrown claw. It’s a common problem.” She reached up to touch the fingers her mother slid through the fence. “I’m sorry you have to be worried.”

“You talked about going down to Florida for a couple weeks, working with that panther refuge. You should do that.”

“For a few days,” Lil corrected. “Next winter. I can’t go now. I especially can’t go now.”

“You could come back home until they find him.”

“Who do I put here in my place? Mom, who do I tell I’m too afraid to stay here, so you do it?”

“Anybody who isn’t my baby.” Jenna gave Lil’s fingers a squeeze. “But you can’t, and you won’t.”

“Cooper stayed here last night?” Joe asked her.

“He slept on the living room sofa. He wouldn’t leave, and now I’m forced to be grateful he wouldn’t let me kick him out of my own house. I have any number of people pushing to stay. We’re taking all the precautions we can, I promise. I’m going to order more cameras, use them for security. I’ve looked at alarm systems, but we just can’t afford the type that would cover the place. No,” she said even as Joe started to speak. “You know you can’t afford it either.”

“What I can’t afford is anything happening to my daughter.”

“I’m going to make sure nothing does.” She glanced back to where Matt worked on the tiger. “I need to finish up here.”

“We’ll go back to the compound, see if anyone can use some extra hands.”

“Always.”

FROM HIS POSITION on high ground, through the lenses of his field glasses, he watched the family group. Observing prey was essential, learning the habits, the territory, the dynamics, strengths. Weaknesses.

Patience was another essential. He could admit that the—occasional—lack of it was one of his weaknesses. Temper had been another. Temper had cost him eighteen months inside when it had pushed him to beat a man half to death in a bar.

But he’d learned to control his temper, to remain calm and objective. To use the kill for personal satisfaction.

Never in heat, never in rage. Cold and cool.

The cougar had been impulse. It was there, and he’d wanted to know what it was like to kill the wild thing eye-to-eye. He’d been disappointed. The lack of challenge, the lack of the hunt equaled no personal satisfaction.

It had, he was forced to admit, brought him a mild sense of shame.

He’d had to offset that by letting his temper out—just a little—and destroying the camp. But he’d done so precisely, and that was important. He’d done so in a way that sent a message.

Lil. Lillian. Dr. Chance. She was so interesting. He’d always thought so. Look at her with her family unit—there, a definite weakness.

It might be satisfying to use that against her. Fear added to the thrill of the hunt. He wanted her to fear. He’d learned how much more it meant when the fear came with it. And he believed it would be more exciting to scent hers, as he’d seen she didn’t fear easily.

He would make her fear.

He respected her, and her bloodline. Even if she did not respect her ancestry. She defiled it with this place, these cages where the free and wild were imprisoned. This sacred place of his people—and hers.

Yes, he would make her fear.

She’d be an excellent addition to his count. His biggest prize to date.

He replaced his binoculars, shimmied back from the ridge before he rose. He hefted his light pack, and stood in the late-winter sunlight, fingering the necklace of bear teeth around his neck. The single thing he’d kept of his father’s.

His father had taught him of the ancestry, and the betrayals. He’d taught him how to hunt and how to live on the holy land. How to take what he needed without remorse, without regret.

He wondered what he would take, and keep, from Lil after the kill.

Satisfied with the day’s scouting, he began his hike back to his den, where he would plan the next step of the game.

13

Lil was about to prep for the evening feeding when Farley arrived. He came on horseback, looking like a man who could sit easy all day in the saddle if that was required.

It struck her, as it never had before, how alike he and Coop were in that single area. A couple of city kids who’d morphed into cowboys. Who looked, when they were in the saddle, as if they’d been born there.

And there, she supposed, the similarity ended. Farley was open and easygoing, Coop closed and difficult.

Or maybe that was just her perspective on them.

She turned to Lucius.

“Why don’t you go keep an eye on things in the commissary? I’ll be right along.”

She walked over to meet Farley and give his horse Hobo a pat on the cheek. “Hello, boys.”

“Hi there, Lil. Got ya something.” He pulled the clutch of pink-and-white daisies peeking their tops out of his saddlebag.

Pleasure and surprise bloomed in equal parts. “You brought me flowers?”

“I thought maybe you could use a little brightening up.”

She looked at them—sweet, fresh, and yes, bright. And she smiled. Smiling, she crooked her finger to signal him to lean over.

His rubber grin stretched when she planted a loud kiss on his cheek. Then she cocked an eyebrow. “Are those daffodils I see sticking out of your saddlebag?”

“Sure look like daffodils to me.”

Lil patted his ankle affectionately. “She’s touring a group who came in a while ago. The father’s a big fan of Deadwood. The TV thing. So they made the trip to see it, after doing Rushmore, and heard about us in town. He thought the kids would get a charge.”

“Bet they will.”

“They’d be about halfway around now, if you want to catch up.”

“Guess I will. Lil, I can bunk here tonight if you want.”

“Thanks, Farley, but I’m covered.”

“Yeah, I heard.” His cheeks pinked a little when she stared at him. “I mean to say Joe said how Coop was likely staying around. To keep an eye out. It eases your pa’s mind knowing that,” he added.

“Which is why I’m allowing it. Tell Tansy we’re about to start the evening feeding. The family from Omaha is going to get more bang for their buck.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Farley?” She gave Hobo another rub as she looked up into Farley’s face. “You and Tansy are two of my favorite people in the world. You’re family to me, so I’m going to say what I think.”

His face went carefully blank. “All right, Lil.”

“Good luck.”

His smile flickered, then expanded. “I guess I need it.”

He trotted off, bolstered. He set store by Lil’s opinion, so her approval—it seemed approval to him—meant a lot. Whistling a little, he traveled the loop of the path out of the compound and around the first enclosures.

The ground rose and fell as nature would have it. Outcroppings of rocks jutted up—some had been there since God knew, and some Lil had put in. Trees speared and spread, offering shade and opportunities for climbing, for scratching. Even as he rode by, one of the bobcats stretched out, sharpening his claws on the bark of a pine.

He spotted the trolley they used for groups around the bend and across the flat, but resisted the urge to nudge Hobo into a gallop. When he reached them they stood outside the tiger habitat watching the big cat yawn, roll, and stretch in a way that told Farley he’d just awakened from a nap.

Probably knew it was coming on suppertime.

“Howdy, folks.” He tapped a finger to the brim of his hat. “Lil said I should tell you it’s feeding time,” he told Tansy.

“Thank you, Farley. Excluding those in the petting zoo, the animals here at the refuge are nocturnal. We feed them in the evening, as it reinforces their natural hunting instincts.”

She used what Farley thought of as her “official” voice. He could listen to it all day long.

“We process hundreds of pounds of meat every week in our commissary. The staff and interns prepare the meat, primarily chicken, which is generously donated by Hanson’s Foods. You really timed your visit well today, because watching feeding time is an experience. You’ll see first-hand the power of the animals here at Chance Wildlife Refuge.”

“Mister? Can I ride on your horse?”

Farley looked down at a girl of about eight, pretty as a sunbeam in her pink hooded coat.

“If your folks say so, you can sit up here with me, and I’ll walk you around. Hobo’s a gentle one, ma’am,” he said to the mother.

“Please! Please! I’d rather ride on the horse than watch the lions and stuff eat chicken.”

There was a short debate. Farley stayed out of it and gave himself the pleasure of watching Tansy tell the boy—about twelve, Farley supposed—how tigers stalked and ambushed.

In the end, the girl had her way and squeezed onto Hobo in front of Farley. “This is a lot more fun. Can you make him go really fast?”

“I could. But I expect if I did your ma would have my hide.”

“What’s a hide?”

He chuckled. “My skin. She’d skin me if I did that after I promised to go easy.”

“I wish I had a horse.” She leaned forward to brush her hand over Hobo’s mane. “Do you get to ride all the time? Every day?”

“I guess I do.”

The little girl sighed. “You’re so lucky.”

Behind her, Farley nodded. “I am. I’m lucky all right.”

Since the girl—Cassie—couldn’t have been less interested in the feeding, Farley got the okay to show her around on the horse. Hobo, steady as Gibraltar, placidly clopped the path while the animals screamed, growled, roared, and howled.

As twilight fell, Farley waved goodbye.

“That was nice of you, Farley.” Tansy watched the minivan head down the road. “Taking the time and trouble to entertain her.”

“It wasn’t any trouble. Easier to walk a horse around than haul all that meat, which I’d’ve felt obliged to help do if I hadn’t been occupied.”

He pulled the daffodils out of his bag. “These are for you.”

She stared at the bright yellow trumpets. He wondered if she knew how clearly everything showed on her face, the surprise and the pleasure—and the worry. “Oh, Farley. You shouldn’t—”

“You had a rough start this morning. I’m hoping you let me give you a better end to the day. Why don’t you come out with me, Tansy?”

“Farley, I told you we’re not going to get involved like that. We’re friends, and that’s all. We’re not going to date.”

It took some effort not to smile. She was still using her “official” voice. “Then why don’t you let me buy you a burger, like a friend would when his friend has a hard day. Just take your mind off things, that’s all.”

“I’m not sure that’s—”

“Just a hamburger, Tansy, to save you from having to fix a meal or figure out where to get one for yourself. Nothing more than that.”

She gave him a long look, with that line digging in between her eyebrows. “Just a burger?”

“Well, maybe some fries. Doesn’t seem like a burger without the fries.”

“Okay. Okay, Farley, I’ll meet you in town. In about an hour. How about Mustang Sally’s?”

“That’s fine.” Since he didn’t want to push his luck, he swung into the saddle. “I’ll see you later.”

He rode away, with a big grin on his face and a loud yee-haw in his heart.

In the office she shared with Tansy, Lil sat with her foot on the desk and her eyes on the ceiling. She glanced over when Tansy came in, smiled at the daffodils. “Pretty.”

“I don’t want any remarks.” She clipped out the words. “It was just a nice gesture from a friend. Something to cheer me up.”

Lil debated for a moment, then decided if you couldn’t screw with your friends, who could you screw with? “I know. He brought me daisies.”

Tansy’s face fell. “He did?” She recovered, smiled toothily. “Well, there, you see? Just a nice gesture. It doesn’t mean anything but that.”

“Absolutely not. You ought to put them in water. The wet paper towels and plastic wrap only hold them for so long.”

“I will. I’m going to go home, if there’s nothing urgent. Long day. The interns are finishing up, so I’ll give Eric—and whoever needs it—a lift back to town.”

“Sure. Lucius is working on something. He said he’d probably be another twenty minutes, which in Lucius time means another hour. He can lock up.”

“After this morning that doesn’t seem good enough.”

“I know, but it’s what we can do.”

Worry clouded her eyes. “Cooper’s coming back, staying the night?”

“Apparently I’m outvoted on that. And no comments there, either. Tit for tat.”

Tansy held up her free hand. “Not a word.”

“I can hear what you’re thinking, and will ignore it. Meanwhile, one thing. I just got off the phone with a woman outside of Butte. She has an eighteen-month-old melanistic jaguar, born in captivity and purchased by her as an exotic pet.”

“Spotted or black?”

“Black. She’s had it since it was a kit. A female, named Cleopatra. A couple of days ago, Cleo was, apparently, feeling both frisky and peckish and ate Pierre, a teacup poodle.”

“Oops.”

“Yes, big oops for little Pierre. The owner is hysterical, her husband is furious. Pierre belonged to his mother, who was visiting from Phoenix. He’s laid down the law, and Cleo must go.”

“Where would we put her?”

“There’s a question. I’m working on it. We could provide a temporary habitat by fencing off a section of Sheba’s area. She’s not using all her area anyway. Rarely leaves the den or the immediate vicinity.”

“Can we afford it?”

“I’m working on that, too.” Leaning back, Lil tapped a pencil on the edge of her desk. “I think Cleo’s owner can be persuaded to make a nice, fat donation to ensure Cleo’s happiness and well-being.”

“Define ‘nice and fat.’”

“I’m hoping for ten thousand.”

“I like the way you hope.”

“It’s not an impossible dream,” Lil told her. “I just Googled the owners. They’re rolling in it. They’re ready to pay all expenses and fees to get her here, the transportation, the cost of sending a team to Montana for her—and indicated there would be a prize in the box if we could move quickly. I asked her to give me a day to consider the logistics.”

Lil’s eyes lit up as she tossed the pencil down. “A black jaguar, Tansy. Young, healthy. We could breed her. And God knows she’d be happier and better off here than on some ranch in Montana. We have most of the materials we need for a temporary habitat. In the spring, when the ground’s thawed, we can expand, put in a permanent one.”

“You’ve already decided.”

“I don’t see how we can resist. I think I can get the cat and five figures out of this. I think I can make this woman so happy and grateful we may end up with a valuable supporter. I’m going to think about it more. You do the same. We’ll talk about it in the morning, and decide.”

“Okay. I bet she’s beautiful.”

Lil tapped her computer screen, so Tansy skirted around the desk. “She e-mailed me pictures. We’ll get the rhinestone collar off her. She’s gorgeous. Look at those eyes. I’ve seen them in the wild. They’re dramatic and mysterious and a little spooky. She’d be an amazing addition. She needs a refuge. She can’t be introduced to the wild. We can give her a good home here.”

Tansy patted Lil’s shoulder. “Oh, yeah, you think about it more. See you in the morning.”

It was full dark by the time Lil left the office. When she stepped out and spotted Coop’s truck, she hunched her shoulders. She hadn’t heard him drive up. Too involved, she admitted as she crossed the compound, with refreshing herself on jaguars, working out the logistics of transportation and habitat. They’d need a vet to clear her, Lil thought. She couldn’t trust the word of the owner on that. Still, if the cat had any medical problems it might be even more important to give her sanctuary.

She’d wheedle money out of Cleo’s owner. She was good at wheedling donations. It might have been far from her favorite part of the job, but she was good at it.

She stepped inside.

A fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. Coop sat on the sofa, his feet on her coffee table, a beer in his hand. With the other he worked on a notebook computer on his lap.

She shut the front door with a little more force than necessary. He didn’t bother to look up.

“Your mother sent over a chunk of ham, some sort of potatoes, and I think it might be artichokes.”

“I can make my own food, you know. I just haven’t had a chance to get to the store for supplies in the last few days.”

“Uh-huh. I brought over a six-pack if you want a beer.”

“Coop, this can’t . . . This is wrong in so many ways.” She pulled off her coat, tossed it aside. “You can’t just live here.”

“I’m not. I’ve got my own place. I’m just sleeping here for a while.”

“And how long is a while? How long do you plan to sleep on my sofa?”

He sent her a lazy glance as he took a pull of his beer. “Until you loosen up and let me into your bed.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all, let’s go. Come on, let’s hit the sheets. Then we can both get back to our regularly scheduled lives.”

“Okay. Just give me a minute to finish this up.”

She clamped her hands on her head, paced a circle. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“I might’ve put it more delicately than that.”

She stopped, then squatted on the other side of the coffee table. “Cooper.”

He took another sip of his beer. “Lillian.”

She shut her eyes a moment because there had to be some sense, some shade of sanity in the chaos murking up her brain. “This arrangement is awkward and unnecessary, and just weird.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Because we have a history, because we had a . . . thing. You do realize that everyone in the damn county figures we’re sleeping together again.”

“I don’t think everyone in the county knows either one of us, or cares. And so what?”

She had to scramble for an answer to that. “Maybe I want to sleep with somebody else, and you’re in the way.”

Coop took a long, slow pull from the beer this time. “Then where is he?”

“Okay, forget that one. Just forget that one.”

“Happy to. It’s got to be your turn to put the meal on.”

“See?” She jabbed a finger in the air. “There. What is this ‘turn’ crap? This is my house. Mine, mine, mine. And I come in to find you on my sofa, with your feet on my coffee table, drinking my beer—”

“I bought the beer.”

“You’re deliberately missing the point.”

“I got the point. You don’t like me being here. The point you’re missing is I don’t care. You’re not staying here alone until this trouble is resolved. I told Joe I’d look out for you. That’s it, Lil.”

“If it makes you feel any better I can arrange for an intern to stay in the next cabin.”

The faintest trace of impatience flickered over his face. “Would the average age of your interns be maybe twenty? I wonder why the idea of some skinny college kid as your backup doesn’t ease my mind. You’d save yourself from aggravation if you just accept that I’m going to be around until this is settled. Did you make that list?”

“Until” was the sticking point, wasn’t it? she thought. He’d be around until . . . he was finished, he decided to move on again, he found something or someone else.

“Lil?”

“What?”

“Did you make that list?”

“What list?” When he smirked, it came back to her. “No, I didn’t make any damn list. I had a few other minor things on my mind today.” Though she knew it was a kind of surrender, she dropped down to sit on the floor. “We took two thirty-two slugs out of the gray wolf.”

“I heard.”

“They have to run ballistics, but we all know it was the same gun, used by the same man.”

“That’s your good news. You’d have more to worry about if you had two shooters.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. Well, whoopee.”

“You need better security.”

“I’m working on it. More cameras, lights, alarms. The health and safety of my animals is priority, but I can’t just reach in my pocket and pull out the money to pay for all that.”

He hitched up, reached in his pocket, and took out a check. “Donation.”

She smiled a little. Damn it, he was being considerate and kind—and she was being nothing but bitchy. “And all are gratefully accepted, but I priced some of the equipment and systems today so . . .”

She glanced at the check. Her brain simply froze. She blinked, blinked again, but the number of zeros remained the same. “What the hell is this?”

“I thought we’d established it’s a donation. Are you going to heat up that food your mother sent?”

“Where the hell did you get this kind of money? And you can’t just give it away like this. Is this a real check?”

“It’s family money. Trust fund. My father’s kept it locked down as much as he could, but it’s been trickling in every five years or so.”

“Trickle.” She whispered the word. “In my world this is a lot more than a trickle.”

“He’ll have to let loose of another payment when I hit thirty-five. He can hold the rest back until I’m forty, and he will. It pisses him off he can’t break the trust altogether and stiff me. I’m a big disappointment to him, on every level. But since that’s mutual, we deal with it.”

The gleam the donation put in her eyes dulled into sympathy. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry things never got any better between you and your father. I haven’t even asked about that, or your mother.”

“She’s married again. Third time. This one seems solid. He’s a decent guy, and from the outside, anyway, it looks like she’s happy.”

“I know they came out to visit. I was doing fieldwork so I wasn’t here. I know it meant a lot to Sam and Lucy.”

“She flew out when he got hurt. Surprised me,” Coop admitted. “I think it surprised everyone, including her.”

“I didn’t know. So much has been going on since I got back from Peru. I’ve missed a lot of details. It’s better, then? You and your mother?”

“It’s never going to be Norman Rockwell, but we deal with each other when we see each other.”

“That’s good.” She looked back at the check. “I want this. We could really use this. But it’s a lot. More than I was going to pry out of the jaguar lady, and that was going to give me happy dreams tonight.”

“Jaguar lady?”

Lil just shook her head. “This is a major contribution. The sort I usually have to go begging for.”

“I have a lot of money. More than I need. You’re a tax write-off, which’ll make my accountant happy.”

“Well, if it makes your accountant happy. Thank you, more than I can say.” She gave his boot, still resting on her table, a friendly pat. “You’re entitled to a number of fabulous prizes. A stuffed cougar, an official Chance Wildlife Refuge T-shirt, and mug. A subscription to our newslet ter, and free admission to the refuge, the education center, and all facilities for . . . with this amount the rest of your natural life.”

“Wrap ’em up. You can use the strings attached to the check.”

“Uh-oh.”

“They’re simple. You use it for security. I’ll help you pick the system. It’s something I know. If there’s anything left after that, go crazy. But you use that to secure the compound, and as much of the refuge as possible.”

“Since I didn’t have this in my hand five minutes ago, I can live with those strings. I do need a new habitat. A home for the panther. Melanistic jaguar from Butte.”

“What the hell is ‘melanistic,’ and when did they get jaguars, unless you’re talking about ones with engines, in Montana?”

“‘Melanistic’means black or nearly black pigmentation, though black jaguars can produce spotted young. And there are no jaguars in the wild in Montana anymore. They may be making a comeback, but in the U.S. jaguars are bred in captivity. I have a woman in Butte who wants us to adopt her cat because it ate the dog.”

Coop studied Lil’s face for a long moment. “I think I need another beer.”

She sighed. “I’ll heat up dinner and explain.” She pushed to her feet, then stopped herself. She waved the check in the air. “See? I’m heating up dinner.”

“No, you’re just standing there talking about it.”

“You give me a big, fat donation and I’m heating up dinner, forgetting to be annoyed that you’re squatting like a homesteader in my living room.”

“There aren’t those kinds of strings on that check, Lil. I told you clearly the ones that were.”

“You don’t have to put strings on it for them to be there. Damn it.”

“Here, give it back. I’ll tear it up.”

“No way in hell.” She stuffed it in her back pocket. “But we do have to set boundaries, Coop. Ground rules. I can’t live like this. It’s too unsettled and stressful.”

“Write them up. We’ll negotiate.”

“Here’s one. If you’re going to eat here, whoever makes the food or heats up the food or whatever, the other cleans up after. That’s basic roommate dynamic.”

“Fine.”

“Did you ever have one? After college and the academy, I mean.”

“You want to know if I ever lived with a woman. No. Not officially.”

Because he’d seen through her very thin smoke screen, she said nothing else, but went back to heat up her mother’s care package.

Since it made for easy conversation, she told him about Cleo while they ate.

“She’s lucky it ate a dog and not a toddler.”

“Actually, that’s true enough. Cleo may—and probably did—start out playing. Then instinct took over. Wild can be trained, and they can learn, but they can’t and won’t be tamed. Rhinestone collars and satin pillows don’t make a pet out of the wild, even when they’re born and raised in captivity. We’ll bring her in, give her a big splash on the website. A new animal always generates more hits, more donations.”

“Will you include her taste for pups in her bio?”

“I think we’ll leave that out. What were you working on? On your laptop?”

“Spreadsheets. Just basic outlay, income, projections.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised I’d know what a spreadsheet is. I ran my own business for five years.”

“I know. I guess it’s one of those gaps I still haven’t jumped. Private investigating. Is it anything like TV? I know I asked before, but you were being snotty when you answered.”

“I recall being honest. No, it’s not like TV, or not much. It’s a lot of legwork and sitting-on-your-ass work. Talking to people, computer checks, documenting.”

“But still, solving crimes?”

Amusement at her hopeful tone warmed those ice blue eyes. “That’s TV. We handled a lot of insurance claims, checking them for fraud. Divorces. Surveilling cheating spouses. Missing persons.”

“You found missing people? That’s important, Coop.”

“Not everyone who’s missing wants to be found. So it’s relative. And it’s done. Now it’s horses, feed, vet bills, farrier bills, tack, insurance, crops. They need a full-time hand at the farm. They need a Farley.”

She jabbed her fork at him. “You can’t have Farley.”

“If I tried to take him, he’d turn me down anyway. He’s in love with your parents.”

“Among others. He’s got his eye on Tansy.”

“Tansy?” Coop considered it. “She’s hot. Farley’s . . .”—he searched for a word—“affable.”

“And charming and reliable, and very, very cute. He flusters her. I’ve known Tansy since we were eighteen. I’ve never seen her flustered by a man.”

Intrigued, Coop angled his head. “You’re rooting for Farley.”

“Mentally I’m shaking pom-poms and doing C jumps.”

“Interesting image.” He drew his loosely closed fist down her braid. “When’s the last time you were flustered, Lil?”

Since the answer was right now, she slid off the bench, and took the plates to the sink. “I’ve got too much going on to be flustered. Dishes are yours. I’m going up. I need to finish my article.”

He caught her hand as she passed, yanked enough to throw her off balance so he could pull her across his lap. He took her braid again—no loose fist this time—and tugged so her lips lined with his. Took her mouth.

Irritated at being caught off-guard, she pushed, twisted. He was much stronger, his body a lot tougher than it had been once upon a time.

And his mouth, his hands, considerably more skilled.

Lust wrapped around irritation. Need lit a fire to the mix.

Then he softened the kiss, enough to add a layer of sweetness that bruised her heart.

“’Night, Lil.” He murmured it against her mouth before drawing back.

She pushed to her feet. “No physical or sexual contact. That’s a rule.”

“I’m not going to agree to that one. Pick another.”

“It’s not right, Coop. It’s not fair.”

“I don’t know if it’s right or not. I don’t care if it’s fair.” His tone was the equivalent of a shrug. “I want you. I know how to do without what I want, and I know how to go after what I want. It’s about deciding.”

“And where am I in this decision?”

“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”

“You’re not going to do this to me. You’re not going to break my heart again.”

“I never broke your heart.”

“If you believe that you’re either seriously stupid or emotionally stunted. Don’t bother me anymore tonight. Don’t bother me.”

She strode away, up the stairs, into her bedroom, where she shut—and locked—the door.

14

Lil waited until she heard Coop start his truck in the morning before she came downstairs. The delay put her a little behind, but the lack of stress made it worthwhile.

She’d done a lot of work, and a lot of thinking, locked in her room through the night. Clearheaded work, she decided. Clearheaded thinking.

She smelled the coffee before she reached the kitchen, and could—clearheadedly—consider that a benefit of having him stay overnight. There were benefits, and she’d weighed them against the difficulties.

Her kitchen was clean. The man was no slob. And the coffee was hot and strong, just as she liked it. Alone in the quiet, she zapped a bowl of instant oatmeal, shoveled it in. Dawn lifted the light when she’d finished, and interns and staff began to arrive for the day’s work.

Enclosures and stalls needed to be mucked out, and the enclosures disinfected. Interns would collect samples of scat from each animal, which would be tested for parasites.

Always, Lil mused as she manned a hose, a fun job.

According to her daily chart, it was time for Xena’s leg to be examined, which meant immobilizing the old wolf and transporting her to Medical. While she was out, they’d give her a full exam and take blood samples.

The little zoo animals required feeding and tending, and fresh hay laid. Horses needed feed and water, exercise, and grooming. The sheer physical labor of a routine morning at the refuge sweated out any lingering tension.

By mid-morning she had assigned some interns to inventory the fencing, the poles, and other materials needed to create a viable temporary habitat for the jaguar before Lil went into the office to contact Butte.

When she’d done all the plans and preparations she could, she went out to find Tansy.

“Elementary school field trip,” Tansy told her, gesturing to the kids being herded down the path. “I put Eric and Jolie on them. They work well together. The fact is, Lil, Eric’s one of the best interns we’ve had in the program.”

“I agree. He’s smart, willing to work, and he’s not afraid to ask questions.”

“He wants to stay another term. He’s already contacted his professors to ask if they’d clear it.”

“We’ve never had a second-term intern. Could be useful.” Lil considered. “He could help with training the newbies, and we could put his own training up a notch or two. If he can make it work with the university, I’ll clear it.”

“Good. We’ll be switching over very soon. Lose this group, start over with the next.” Tansy tipped her head. “You don’t look like you got much sleep.”

“I didn’t. Because I was working, fiddling and finagling, plotting and planning. I’ve got to head into town shortly, and deposit this.”

She pulled the check out of her pocket, held it by the corners, tipped it back and forth as if it danced.

“What—is that—Holy shit!”

Tansy threw her arms around Lil, and the two of them bounced in a circle. “Lil, this is amazing and wonderful and out of the blue. Coop? How many sexual favors did you have to offer and/or provide? Does he have that kind of money?”

“I didn’t offer and/or provide any sexual favors. But for this kind of dough, I would have. And yes, apparently he does have this kind of money. Who knew?”

“Does he have more? We can both offer and/or provide. I’m in.”

“We’ll keep that in reserve.” Because it still dazzled her, Lil studied all the zeros again. “I’ve spent this about ten times in my head overnight. I’ve got prices on security systems, security lights, cameras. New gates. We’ll see how far it goes. And to add to it, Montana is donating ten grand, with the stipulation we use at least part of it to build Cleo a spiffy new home in the spring.”

“When it rains, it freaking monsoons.”

“My mother always says life’s made up of cycles, of checks and balances. I like to think this is to balance out the horrible. Matt spoke with the vet in Butte, and we’re good there. I’m dealing with the permits, documentation, the paperwork, the logistics.”

“Jesus, Lil, we’re getting a jag. We’re actually getting a black jaguar.”

“And I need you to go to Montana and bring Cleo to her new home.”

“Sure, but you always go to check out the animals.”

“I can’t leave now, Tans, not even for the two or three days this’ll take.” She scanned the compound, the humans and animals. “I can’t take the chance that something could happen while I was gone. And since this is moving so quickly, I want to be here to help with the temporary habitat, and finalize plans for the permanent one. I’ve arranged for the crate and the box truck.”

“Problem there would be I’ve never driven one of those rigs.”

“You won’t be driving. You’ll be in charge of the cat. Her safety—public safety—her health. It’s about a seven-hour drive—eight, tops. Farley will handle the rig.”

“Oh, Lil.”

“Big picture, Tansy. He can handle the truck, and he’s a top-level volunteer. He’s the best one for it, and he’s got enough experience helping around here to assist you in any way you might need. I don’t anticipate any problems.”

“Your big picture’s logical. But what about the yen? What about that?”

Lil knew exactly how to play it. She widened her eyes. “Are you telling me you can’t handle Farley and his yen?”

“No. Not exactly.” Trapped, Tansy hissed out a breath. “Damn it.”

“You could be there in six hours if it goes well,” Lil continued, talking fast, “check out Cleo, charm and reassure the owner. Spend the night, load her up the next morning, and be back here before feeding time.”

Now, shamelessly, Lil added the big guns. “I can’t do it myself, Tansy, so I need you to do me this really big favor.”

“Of course I will. But it’s a situation.”

“Then why did you have dinner with him last night?”

Scowling, Tansy stuffed her hands in her coat pockets. “How do you know I did?”

“Because interns eat, too, and talk.”

“It was just a burger.”

“And this is just transport. I’ll put everything together for you before the end of the day, and you can go over any medical stuff you feel you might need to with Matt. You can leave in the morning. If you get here by six, you can get an early start.”

“You’ve already talked to Farley.”

“Yeah. He’s bringing the rig over here tonight.”

“Tell him to plan on leaving at five A.M. It’ll give us a good jump on the day.”

“Done. God, Tansy, you’re bringing home a jag. Now I’m going into town to swell our coffers before I deplete them.”

SHE HAD a number of errands to run in Deadwood. The bank, the store, the contractor, the post office. Since it would save time later, she loaded up at the feed-and-grain.

She saved Coop for last, since she saw his truck outside the stables they kept on the edge of town.

She took the folder with the information and specs she’d gotten off the Internet and went into the smell of horses and leather and hay.

She found him in the third stall, sitting on a stool as he wrapped the right foreleg of a chestnut gelding.

“Is he all right?”

Coop nodded, his hands steady and competent. “Just a little strain.”

“I had some business in town, and thought I’d drop this off when I saw your truck. I got information on a couple of security systems I think would work for us. I’ll leave it on the bench out here.”

“Go ahead. I made a call earlier. Contact I have in the business. I like their system, and he’d shave a little off the cost for me.” He named the system.

“That’s one of the two I have in the folder.”

“It’s a good one. If you go with that, he’ll give us the contact for the closest rep out here. They’ll come out, help you design and install.”

“All right. Let’s just go with them.”

“I’ll give him a call when I’m done here, have him contact you.”

“I appreciate it. I’ve also got an official letter of thanks from the refuge acknowledging your generous donation. Your accountant may want that on file. And Farley will be staying overnight in the compound.”

He looked over then. “Okay.”

“I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Lil. We have more to talk about.”

“I guess we do. Sooner or later.”

SHE WAS UP to see Tansy and Farley off in the cold dark. Farley’s easy cheer started her day with a smile, despite the occasional dirty look from Tansy.

“Try to avoid speeding tickets, especially coming back.”

“Don’t worry.”

“And call me when you get there, or if you run into any problems, or—”

“Maybe you should remind me not to leave the keys in the rig and to chew my food thoroughly before swallowing.”

She poked a finger in his belly. “Don’t speed—too much—and stay in contact. That’s all I have to say.”

“Then let’s roll. You all set, Tansy?”

“Yes.” She sent him a brisk, businesslike nod.

And he sent Lil a grin and a wink.

Knowing both of them, Lil would’ve laid odds the wink would cut through the businesslike before the first sixty miles.

Waving, she stood and listened to the diminishing sound of the truck as it curved toward the main road.

It occurred to her that for the first time since she and Coop had camped she was fully alone in the compound. For another two hours—give or take—she had it all to herself.

“Just you and me, guys,” she murmured.

She listened to the carol of her old lion, who often called out to the night before dawn struck. In those acres of sanctuary, the wild was awake and alive.

And hers, she thought, as much as they could be.

She looked up, happy to see the night sky brilliant with stars. The air was apple-crisp, the stars like jewels, and Boris’s roar joined Sheba’s.

In that moment, Lil, realized, she couldn’t have been more content.

A sane woman would go back to bed for an hour—or at least go inside in the warmth and have another cup of coffee, maybe a leisurely breakfast. But she didn’t want bed, or indoors. No, she wanted the night, the stars, her animals, and this small slice of solitude.

She went in to fill a go-cup with coffee, grabbed a flashlight, shoved her cell phone in her pocket out of habit.

She’d walk her land, she decided, her place. Wander the habitat trails before the sun rose, before it wasn’t all hers again.

As she stepped outside, a sudden, high beep-beep-beep stopped her in her tracks. Cage door alarm, she thought, as her pulse jumped. The coffee splattered when she dropped it to streak down the steps, to race to the other cabin.

“Which one, which one?” She booted up Lucius’s computer on the run, grabbed a drug gun and darts from Medical. Afraid of what she might find—or not find—she stuffed extra tranquilizers into her pocket.

She hit the switch for the path lights, the emergency lights, then rushed to the computer to call up a camera scan.

“Could be a blip, could be nothing. Could be . . . Oh, God.”

The tiger’s cage stood wide open. In the yellow glare of the emergency lights she saw a blood trail across the path and into the brush. And there the shadow of the cat, the glint of his eyes against the dark.

Go now, go fast, she ordered herself. If she waited she might lose him. Even at his age, he could travel fast, travel far. Across the valley, into the hills, into the forest, where there were people, hikers, farmers, campers.

Go now.

She sucked in her breath like a diver about to take the plunge, then stepped outside.

The alone, so appealing only moments before, now pulsed with fear. The air beat with it, matching the pounding of her heart, and stabbed at her throat like tiny, vicious needles with each breath. The steady beep of the cage alarm stirred the other animals, so roars, howls, screams broke across the compound and echoed toward the sky. That would help, she told herself, help mask the sound of her approach.

The cat knew her, but that made no difference. He was a wild and dangerous thing, more so out of containment and on a blood trail. More, the blood trail meant the cat wasn’t the only predator who could spring. She knew she might be stalked even as she stalked the cat.

She had to shut down the fear and ordered herself to ignore the rush of blood in her ears, the knock of her own heart, the snake of sweat slithering down her back. Her job—her responsibility—was to immobilize the cat. Quickly, cleanly.

She called on every instinct, every hour of training and experience. She knew the ground—better, in fact, than her quarry did. She forced herself to move slowly, to use caution, to listen.

She shifted direction. The route would take longer but would bring her upwind. If, as she believed, her tiger was busy with the bait that had drawn him from his cage, the route, the noise would be to her advantage.

She moved through the backwash of the lights, into shadows and back again. Gauging her ground, the distance, shutting her mind to everything but reaching the cat, immobilizing him.

She heard, under the calls from the habitats, a sound she knew well. Fang and claw rending flesh, the crunch of bone, and the low rumble of the cat as it tore through the meat.

Sweat slid down her temples, wormed down her sides as she angled again. The cat lay low, feasting. For a clear shot, one that injected the dart into large muscle, she’d have to step out into the open, stand in his line of sight.

Lil gripped the drug gun, moved sideways, and came out of the trees a bare six feet from him.

The cat lifted its head, and he growled. Blood from the nearly decimated elk calf smeared his snout, dripped from fangs. Eyes glinted at her, gold and feral.

She fired, struck him behind the shoulder, and prepared to fire again as he roared in rage. He twitched and shook, trying to dislodge the dart. She took a step back, and another, testing the placement of each foot before giving it her weight.

And he watched her, dipping his head back to the bloody meat while she counted off the time in her mind, while she listened to the thunder rumbling in his throat.

Though her fear screamed Run!, she knew running would spark his instinct to chase, to attack. So slowly, her muscles quivering, she continued the careful retreat. Get in his enclosure, she thought still ticking off the seconds in her mind, close the door. Inside, too far to make the shot, but close enough, maybe, to reach safety until the drug took him under.

Or to take a second shot if he went for her.

He should be under, going under. Goddamn it, go down. Don’t make me give you another dose. She heard the ragged whoosh of her own breath as he snarled again at her inching retreat, and readied to squeeze her trembling finger on the trigger as he bunched to spring.

Terror was bright. Bright and cold. She’d never make the cage.

But even as he gathered himself, his front legs buckled. Lil eased back a step, then another, maintaining distance, seeing the enclosure in her mind, as the tiger staggered. It sprawled, the feral glint fading from its eyes. She kept the drug gun aimed as she changed her angle and moved back into the shadows, the cover of trees.

She wouldn’t retreat to the enclosure now. The tiger was no longer the threat.

Nothing moved. The night birds had gone quiet, and the morning calls had yet to begin. She scented animal, and blood and her own clammy sweat.

If another hunted, she prayed he’d gone to ground. Though she crouched, made herself small, she knew if he was there, if he was armed, she was vulnerable.

But she wouldn’t, couldn’t leave her defenseless tiger alone. With her free hand she dug in her pocket for her cell phone.

Following instinct again, she called Coop.

“Yeah?”

“There’s been a break-in here. I need you to come, quick as you can. Don’t call my parents.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. It’s under control, but I need you to come.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, and hung up.

She made a second call to the sheriff, then went to check the big cat. Satisfied his respiration was normal, she went into the light again, and down to the path. She checked the cage door, studied the damaged lock, the baited trail.

She pivoted at a sound, searched the path, the brush, the trees for movement before she realized the sound came from her. Her breath was whooshing in and out, short, hard gasps, and the hand that held the drug gun shook violently.

“Okay, okay, good thing I waited until it was done to fall apart. Okay.”

She bent from the waist, braced her hands on her knees to try to get her breath back. Even her legs were quivering, she realized, and tipping her wrist, she saw with some shock that only sixteen minutes had passed since the alarm sounded.

Minutes, not hours, not days. A handful of minutes only.

She made herself straighten. Whoever had broken the lock, baited the tiger out of containment would be gone now. Logic demanded it. If he’d stayed to watch, he’d have seen her immobilize the cat, make the calls. If he was smart, and he was, he’d know she’d called for help, called the police. He’d want to be well away before that help arrived.

Back to his hole, back to his lair.

“Stay away from what’s mine,” she called out, more in fury than in any hopes he would hear. “I’ll find you. I swear to God I’ll find you.”

She paced the path, checking the near cages, and counted off the minutes. When another ten had passed, she risked leaving the unconscious cat. She made the dash back to the compound, into the equipment shed to load the harness and sling into one of the carts. Even as she backed the cart out of the shed, she heard the truck roaring on the road. Lil leaped out of the cart, waved her arms to signal Coop when his headlights slashed over her.

“I want to move fast. I’ll explain. Just get in the cart.”

He didn’t waste time, didn’t ask questions until they were both back in the cart and she was speeding toward the habitats. “What happened?”

“Somebody got inside, compromised the lock on the tiger’s cage, baited a trail to lure him out. He’s okay. I tranquilized him.”

“He’s okay?”

“Yes. My priority right now is to get him back inside, to get him contained and the door secured. I called Willy, but let’s not get into all the whys and hows. I want the cat back inside before the interns get here, if possible. I don’t want a bunch of college kids freaking on me.”

She stopped the cart, jumped out. “I can’t move him by myself. He weighs close to five hundred pounds. I’m going to rig up this harness, and we’ll back the cart up as close to him as we can. The two of us should be able to lift him on.”

“How long will he be out?”

“About four hours. I gave him a strong dose. Coop, it’ll be easier to tell the interns if he’s secured than if they start coming in and see this.”

He looked as she did at what remained of the young elk, at the blood smearing the tiger’s muzzle.

“Let’s get it done. Then, Lil, I’ve got a lot to say to you.”

They worked to rig the harness on the unconscious tiger. “I bet this is something you’d never thought you’d be doing.”

“There are a lot of things I never thought I’d do. I’ll get the cart.”

He backed it over the plantings that lined the far end of the path, over the river rock, into brush. “We could rig these cables to drag him across.”

“I’m not dragging him.” She checked his respiration, his pupils. “He’s old and it’s rough ground. He didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not having him hurt. We’ve used this method before, for transferring them from the habitat to Medical, but it takes two people.”

Three or four, she thought, would’ve been a hell of a lot easier and faster.

“A tiger is the biggest of the four big cats,” she said as she hooked the cables to the harness. “He’s Siberian, he’s protected. He’s twelve, and did time in a circus, in a second-rate zoo. He was sick when we got him, four years ago. Okay, okay, you’re sure the brake’s locked.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Sorry. You need to run that winch while I run this one. Try to keep him level, Coop. When he’s up, I can maneuver him on the cart. Ready?”

When he nodded, they both began to crank. As the harness lifted, she watched, eagle-eyed—to be sure the cat was secure, the harness holding. “A little more, just a little more. I’m going to lock my side down, move him in. I may need you to give me more play. There you go, there you go,” she muttered as she guided the harness over the cart. “Ease your side down, Coop, ease it down a few inches.”

It took time, and some finesse, but they transferred the cat to the cart, drove it into the enclosure. The first streaks of dawn bloomed as they lowered the tiger to the mouth of his den.

“His respiration’s good, and his pupils are reactive,” she stated as she crouched to do another quick exam. “I want Matt to run a full diagnostic on him. The bait might have been doctored.”

“You need a new lock, Lil.”

“I got one out of the equipment shed. I’ve got one in my pocket. It’ll do for now.”

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” She stroked a hand over the cat’s head, down its flank, then rose. Outside, she snapped a new lock on the chain securing the cage door. “The interns and staff are going to be coming along soon. So will the police. I need, really need, coffee. Coffee and a minute to breathe.”

He said nothing while she drove the cart back to the shed. As he started toward the cabin with her, he lifted his chin toward the headlights far down her road. “You’re not going to get that chance to breathe.”

“I still want the coffee, which is smarter than the three fingers of whiskey I really want. Did you relock the gate?”

“No, it wasn’t at the top of my to-do list this morning.”

“I guess not. I think it’s the law.” She nearly managed a smile with it. “One more favor? Will you wait for him while I get that coffee? I’ll get you one, too.”

“Make it quick.”

Funny, she thought, as she paused inside her own kitchen, her hands were shaking again. She took a moment to splash cold water on her face in the kitchen sink before filling two insulated mugs with black coffee.

When she went back out Coop was standing with Willy and two deputies.

“You doing all right, Lil?” Willy asked her.

“Better now. But Jesus, Willy, this son of a bitch has to be crazy. If that cat had gotten away from here, away from me . . . God knows.”

“I need to take a look at things. What time did the alarm go off?”

“About a quarter after five. I’d just glanced at the clock before I left my cabin, and I’d only gotten as far as the porch when it sounded.” She walked with them, leading the way. “Tansy and Farley left pretty much on the dot of five, maybe a minute or two after. Tansy was anxious to get started.”

“You’re sure on that? It was about five-thirty when you called me, and that was after you’d put the tiger down.”

“I’m sure. I knew where to find him. I’d switched on the computer, the cameras when I went in for the drug gun. I saw the cage open, I saw the cat, so I knew where to go. It didn’t take long, only seemed like a year or two.”

“Did you maybe give a passing thought to calling me first?” Willy demanded.

“I had to move fast. I couldn’t wait, risk losing the cat. If he’d left the compound . . . They can move damn fast when they want, and by the time you’d have gotten here . . . He needed to be contained as quickly as possible.”

“All the same, Lil, any more trouble, I want you to call me before you do anything else. And I’d think you’d know better than to go walking all over a crime scene, Coop.”

“You’re right.”

Willy puffed out his cheeks. “It’d be more satisfying if you’d argue a little.” Willy paused before they hit the blood trail. “Get some pictures,” he told one of the deputies. “Of the broken lock over there, too.”

“I left it where I found it,” Lil said. “And kept out of the tracks as much as I could. We didn’t touch the bait. The tiger’d only had ten minutes or so on it when I got to him, but he’d torn in pretty good from what I could see. It was a small elk.”

“You’ll do me a favor and stay here.” He signaled to his men and moved into the brush in the tracks of the cart.

“He’s a little bit pissed.” Lil sighed. “I guess you are, too.”

“Good guess.”

“I did exactly what I thought had to be done, what I still think had to be done. Know had to be. But . . . The interns are coming,” she said as she heard the trucks. “I need to go deal with them. I appreciate you coming so fast, Coop. Appreciate everything you did.”

“Save it, and see how grateful you are once you and I are finished with this. I’ll wait for Willy here.”

“Okay.” She’d handled an escaped tiger, Lil thought, as she headed back. She could handle an angry man.

BY SEVEN-THIRTY in the morning, Lil felt as though she’d put in a full and brutal day. The emergency staff meeting left her with a headache and a clutch of uneasy interns. She had no doubt that if turnover hadn’t been only days away, some would have quit and walked away. Though she wanted to assist Matt with his exam of Boris, and the tests, she assigned interns. The work would keep them busy and focused. And reinforce the fact that everything was under control. Others she put to work on the temporary enclosure, and had no doubt there would be several pairs of eyes tracking warily over habitats throughout the day.

“A couple of them are going to be calling in sick tomorrow,” Lucius said when he and Lil were alone.

“Yeah. And the ones who do will never make it in the field. In research, labs, classrooms, but not fieldwork.”

With a sheepish smile, Lucius raised his hand.

“You’re planning to be sick tomorrow?”

“No, but I spend most of my time right in here. I can guarantee I wouldn’t have gone out armed with a drug gun to hunt me down a Siberian tiger. You had to be scared fully shitless, Lil. I know you relayed all this at the meeting as if it was almost routine, but this is me.”

“Fully shitless,” she acknowledged. “But more scared I wouldn’t get him tranquilized and contained. My God, Lucius, the damage he might have done if he’d gotten away from us. I’d never be able to live with it.”

“You weren’t the one who let him out, Lil.”

Didn’t matter, she thought as she went back outside. She’d learned a lesson, a vital one. Whatever the cost, she’d have the very best security available, and as quickly as it could be arranged.

She met Willy and Coop on their way back from what she supposed they considered a crime scene.

“We’ve got what’s left of that carcass bagged, and we’ll test it, in case it was doctored,” Willy said. “I’ve sent the men to follow the tracks. I’ll be calling in more.”

“Good.”

“I’m going to need a full statement from you, both of you,” he added to Coop. “Why don’t we talk in your place, Lil?”

“All right.”

At her kitchen table, over more mugs of coffee, she went over every detail.

“Who knew you were going to be here alone once Farley left this morning?”

“I don’t know, Will. I’d guess word got out that he was driving with Tansy to Montana this morning. I had arrangements to make, and I didn’t make them on the down low. But I don’t know if that’s relevant. If Farley had been here, everything would’ve gone about the same way it did. Except I wouldn’t have had to call Coop to help me get Boris back in his enclosure.”

“The fact is the cage door opened a few minutes after they left, and almost two hours before any of your people were scheduled to get here. Now, maybe that was just luck, or maybe somebody’s keeping track.”

She’d thought of that, of exactly that. “He’d have to know we have alarm signals on the cages we keep activated unless we’re working in them. Otherwise, it would be getting the tiger out, baiting him out that was the goal here. It could’ve been another two hours, easily, before anyone noticed the door was open, and by that time, Boris might have roamed off, or just as easily gone back inside, to his den. His home. If I can’t be sure, and this is an animal I’ve worked with—this is what I know—whoever’s doing this couldn’t know.”

“You’ve been here for about five years now,” Willy said. “I’ve never had a report from you on anyone trying to get one of your animals out.”

“No. It’s never happened before. I’m not saying it’s a coincidence, just that the purpose might have been to get one of the big cats out and cause havoc.”

Willy nodded, assured she understood him. “I’m going to coordinate a manhunt with the park service. I can’t tell you what to do, as sheriff, Lil, but I’m telling you as your friend I don’t want you here alone. Not even for an hour.”

“She won’t be,” Coop put in.

“I won’t argue that. I don’t intend for anyone, including me, to be alone here until this man’s found and put away. I’m going to contact a security company this morning and arrange for the best system I can manage. Willy, my parents live less than a mile from here. Believe me when I say I’m not taking any chances, any, on this ever happening again.”

“I do believe you. But you’re a lot closer than a mile to those enclosures, and I’ve got a fondness for you. I had a painful crush on her when I was sixteen,” he said to Coop. “If you tell my wife I said that I’ll say you’re a dirty liar.”

He pushed to his feet. “I went around, took a good look. All your enclosures are secure. I’m not going to shut you down. I could,” he added when Lil made a strangled sound in her throat. “And you could try to get that overturned, and we’d end up on opposite sides here. I want you to make that call about the new security, and I want you to keep me updated on it. I got a fondness for you, Lil, but I’ve also got people to protect.”

“Understood. We haven’t violated a single ordinance or safety measure since we brought in the first cat.”

“I know that, honey. I do. And I bring my kids here two or three times a year. I want to keep bringing them.” The gesture both casual and affectionate, he reached out to pat her head. “I’m going to go. I want you to remember I’m the first call you make from here on out.”

She sat where she was, stewing. “I suppose you have plenty to say now,” she suggested when she and Coop were alone.

“You should’ve stayed inside and waited for help. Two people with drug guns are better than one. And you’re going to say there wasn’t time for that.”

“There wasn’t. How much do you know about tigers as a species, and Siberians as a subspecies?”

“They’re big, have stripes, and I’d have to assume come from Siberia.”

“Actually, the correct name for the subspecies is Amur—Siberian’s the name commonly used, and it’s misleading, as they live in the far east of Russia.”

“Well, now that we’ve cleared that up.”

“I’m just trying to make you see it. It’s fiercely territorial. It stalks and ambushes, and can reach a speed of thirty-five miles an hour, maybe forty.”

She took a breath, easy in and out as the idea still made her belly quake. “Even an old guy like Boris can book when he wants. It’s strong, and can carry a prey of, say, a hundred pounds and still leap a six-foot fence. Man isn’t its usual prey, but according to most accepted records, tigers have killed more humans than any other cat.”

“You seem to be making my point for me, Lil.”

“No. No. Listen.” She dragged at her hair. “Most man-eaters are older—which Boris is—often going for a man because they’re easier to take down than larger prey. It’s solitary and secretive, like most cats, and if interested in man meat would hunt in sparsely populated areas. Its size and its strength mean it can kill smaller prey instantly.”

Desperate to make him understand, she squeezed her hand on his on the table. “If I’d waited, that cat could’ve been miles away, or it could’ve wandered into my parents’ backyard. Your grandparents’ front pasture. It could’ve roamed to where the Silverson kids catch the bus for school. All while I was sitting inside, waiting for someone to help.”

“You wouldn’t have had to wait if you hadn’t been alone.”

“Do you want me to admit I underestimated this bastard? I did.” Both passion and apology shone in her eyes. “I was wrong. Horribly wrong, and that mistake could’ve cost lives. I never expected anything like this, never anticipated it. Damn it, Coop, did you? You know damn well I was taking precautions, because I made a point of telling you about the security systems I’d looked at.”

“That’s right, when you came by to make sure I knew you’d have Farley here, so I wasn’t needed.”

As her head started to pound, she dropped her gaze. “It made sense for Farley to be here, since they were leaving from here this morning. That’s all there was to it.”

“Bullshit. For Christsake, Lil, do you think I’d put wanting you in bed above wanting you safe?”

“No. Of course I don’t.” She looked at him again. “I don’t. Coop, I called you. I called you even before I called Willy.”

“Because I was closer, handier, and you didn’t want your parents scared.”

She heard the bitterness, and couldn’t blame him for it. “That’s all true, but also because I knew I could count on you. I knew, without any question, I could count on you to help me.”

“You can, and to make sure you don’t forget it, sex is now off the table.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re sorry?” Some of the temper—at least its sharp, leading edge—seemed to have dulled when he shook his head at her.

“Yes. No. I mean I don’t know what you mean.”

“Simple. Sex is out of the equation. I won’t touch you. I won’t ask you. And I’ll be here from dusk to dawn, every day. If I can’t be, someone else will be. I’ve got to go get caught up,” he said as he rose. “You’d better talk to your parents about this before someone else does.”

15

He could’ve taken her out as easily as he had the elk calf, just aim and down she’d go. The tiger would’ve gone for her then, oh, yeah. A shot in the leg, he mused, playing it out in his head. Not a kill shot, just something to take her down. Would the tiger have traded elk for woman?

He’d put money on it.

And wouldn’t that have been something to see?

But it wasn’t the game of choice. Plus it had been so interesting and entertaining to watch her. She’d surprised him, he had to admit it, even with what he knew of her. What he’d observed. He hadn’t expected her to act so quickly, so decisively, or to stalk the cat so expertly.

He’d left her—life and death—and the rest of the game up to fate. And the cat.

She’d shown courage, which he admired, and a cool head. If for no other reason, those traits, and his interest in them, had kept her alive for another day.

Most of the others he’d hunted had been pathetically easy. The first had been an accident really. Just an impulse, just circumstances. But the incident had, in a very real sense, defined him. Given him a purpose he’d never had, and a means to honor his bloodline.

He’d found his life with death.

Now this last phase of the hunt raised the stakes considerably. This added such a zing. When the time came, she’d give him some real competition, some real satisfaction. No question about it. Better, certainly, than the couple of countrified deputies tromping around trying to follow his trail.

He could take them out, too. So easily. He’d backtracked, circled around behind, and studied them as he might study some deer strayed from the herd. He could take them both out and be a mile away before anyone knew the difference.

It had tempted him.

He had sighted one, then the other, in the scope of the rifle he carried with him today, and made little popping sounds to mime the shot. He’d killed men before, but he preferred the female.

Females were, in nearly every species, the fiercer hunter.

He had let them live, primarily because two dead deputies would bring others swarming over the hills. That could spoil the main hunt. He didn’t want to lose his primary target or be forced to leave his territory before he was done.

Patience, he reminded himself, and he slipped away as silently as a shadow from the sun.

TELLING HER PARENTS and allaying their fears—or trying to—left Lil exhausted. When she contacted the security company, from her parents’ kitchen in a further attempt to calm those waters, the receptionist put her through, immediately, to the head of the company.

Ten minutes later, she hung up, turned to her parents. “Did you get any of that?”

“Someone’s coming out to work with you on a security system.”

“Not someone,” she corrected her father—“the head guy. He was expecting my call because Coop contacted him a half hour ago and gave him the rundown. He’s getting on a plane today. He’ll be here this afternoon.”

“How soon can they install what you need?” her mother demanded.

“I don’t know. We’ll find out. Meanwhile, there are cops and rangers out looking for this guy. I’m not going to be careless, and I promise, I won’t be alone in the compound again. Not even for ten minutes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t consider he might do something like this. I thought he might try to hurt one of the animals, but I never thought he’d risk letting one out. I need to get back to the compound. The interns and staff need to see me there, need to see me going through the daily routines.”

“Joe, go with her.”

“Mom—”

Jenna’s eyes flashed. It took no more than that to have Lil swallowing her protest. “Lillian, I haven’t told you what to do in a long time. But I’m telling you now. Your father’s going with you, and he’s staying with you until he’s satisfied that I’ll be satisfied you’re as safe as possible. That’s the final word on it.”

“It’s just . . . I’ve already stolen Farley from you for two days.”

“I’m perfectly capable of handling this farm. I said it’s my final word. Look at my face.” Narrowing those heated eyes, Jenna pointed a finger at her jaw. “This is my final-word face.”

“Let’s go, Lil. Your mother’s final word is law. You know that as well as I do.” He leaned down, kissed his wife. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ll worry less now.”

Giving up, Lil waited while her father got his coat, and said nothing when he unlocked his rifle from its case. She got behind the wheel of her truck, sent him a look before she turned to drive away. “How come you don’t have to go with me every time I head out to the field? Did I see you in Nepal? You know I’ve tracked tigers, in the wild, for collaring programs.”

“Somebody wasn’t trying to arrange it so the tiger was tracking you, were they?”

“Okay, your point. Anyway, I could use you with the construction of the new enclosure.” With a sniff, Lil pushed her sunglasses on, then folded her arms. “Don’t think you’re getting a free lunch out of this.”

“I’ll remind you about lunch around noon. If I’m working, I’d better get a sandwich.”

It made her laugh, and when she reached over, Joe took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

COOP HELPED OUTFIT a group of eight men for a scheduled three-day trip. The group from Fargo put the package together as a bachelor’s party. Which, Coop reflected, made a change from a strip club. They ragged on each other constantly in the way of old friends, and were hauling enough beer to float down the trail. Since the horses were his, he checked their camping gear, their kits and supplies—and satisfied himself that everything was in good order.

With Gull, he watched them trot to the trailhead, and wondered how they’d have reacted if he’d mentioned there might be a psychopath roaming the hills. He suspected they’d have gone on their merry way regardless, and took some relief that their plans would take them well away from the refuge.

“They’d do fine,” Gull told him. “That Jake? He’s been coming around every year for the six years I’ve been working the outfit with your grandpa. He knows what he’s doing.”

“They’re going to get shit-faced tonight.”

“Yah,” Gull said, mimicking their accent. “You betcha. Anyhow, we could use more groups like that.” Gull watched their progress from under the brim of his battered brown hat. “We’ll be getting them now that it’s coming on spring.”

“It may be coming on spring, but those boys are going to freeze their dicks off tonight pissing out that beer.”

Gull grinned. “Well, yeah. Hope it thaws out for the groom before the honeymoon. So, boss, I got that guided in another hour. Family trail ride. The pa runs a good two-eighty. I was going to put him up on Sasquash.”

“He’s good to go. Do you have any plans for tonight, Gull?”

“Can’t say I do.” Gull’s grin widened with his wink. “You asking me on a date, boss?”

“I’m too shy,” Coop said, and it made Gull guffaw. “Lil’s had some trouble over at her place.”

“I heard about it.”

“She could use some help, if a man didn’t mind freezing his dick off.”

Gull gave his crotch a subtle pat. “South Dakota peckers don’t freeze so easy as a drunk’s from Fargo.”

“Must be from all the jerking off,” Coop mused, and put Gull in stitches again. “Can you take a turn at guard duty over there tonight? Say two to six?”

“Sure, boss, I can do that. Need anybody else?”

No hesitation, Coop thought. No complaint. “I could use two more men who you trust not to shoot themselves, or anybody else.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that. I’ll think on it. I guess I’ll go see about getting those box lunches for this guided.”

“I’ll check them in when they get here.”

When they parted ways, Coop went to the storefront. The old desk faced the window and gave him a view of Deadwood that wasn’t quite what he imagined Calamity Jane and Wild Bill had seen in their day. Still, it maintained its Western flavor, with its awnings and architecture and old-timey lampposts. Its feel, he supposed, as the town spread and climbed its way up the hills. Cowboys mixed with the tourists; saloons cozied up to souvenir shops.

And a man could find a game of poker or blackjack day or night if he wanted to gamble. But the proprietors weren’t likely to murder a man in the back room and feed him to the pigs.

Progress.

He dealt with the paperwork, the forms and waivers, so he could move the family group along when they arrived. And so he could carve some time for his own devices.

He pulled a ginger ale out of the cold box, since he’d buzzed his blood on coffee that morning. People passed by, and some likely glanced in. They’d see a man going about his business, keyboarding on a computer that, to Coop’s mind, desperately needed replacing.

He opened Lil’s file. He might not be an investigator anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to investigate. He’d have preferred being sure her list of staff, interns, and volunteers was complete. But he had enough to keep him busy. The staff, past and current, hadn’t netted him a thing. He probably knew more about all of them now than some would be comfortable with, but he knew more about a lot of people than most were comfortable with.

Though Jean-Paul had not technically been staff, Coop had done a run on him. Broken relationships were petri dishes waiting to brew trouble. He knew the French guy had been married and divorced in his early twenties. It was likely Lil had that information, and since it didn’t seem to be relevant, Coop simply filed it away. He found no criminal, and a current address in Los Angeles.

Stay there, Coop thought.

He’d uncovered a few criminal brushes on staff, but nothing more violent than the vet having a scuffle during a protest on animal testing fifteen years earlier.

The former interns comprised a bigger chunk. They were a diverse group, economically, geographically, academically. He followed some through college, grad school, into careers. A quick scan showed Coop that a high percentage of interns Lil had trained pursued careers somewhere in the field.

He found some scrapes with the law as he picked his way through. Drugs, DUIs, a couple of assaults and/or destruction of property—usually connected to drugs or alcohol.

Those would earn a closer look.

He did the same with the volunteers—any whose names actually made it into the files, he thought, annoyed.

He culled out any who’d lived in or moved to the Dakotas. Proximity could be a factor, and he believed whoever was harassing Lil knew the hills as well as she did.

In the tedious way it demanded, he cross-referenced the assaults, the drug busts, the DUIs with geography, and got a single hit.

Ethan Richard Howe, age thirty-one. A trespassing hit in Sturgis, and that was close, when he’d been twenty, charges dropped. Carrying a concealed weapon—.22 revolver—without a license two years later in Wyoming. And an assault that looked like a bar fight and had put him inside for a year and a half in Montana at the ripe old age of twenty-five.

Early release, time off for good behavior. And, thought the former cop, to move inmates out as others moved in.

Three hits, Coop mused, one for being where he didn’t belong, one for a weapon, and the last for violence. He’d give Howe a closer look.

He started to move on, then had to break as the Dobsons arrived—Tom, Sherry, and their two teenage daughters—for check-in.

He knew his job and it was more than getting forms signed, more than making sure the customers could actually sit a horse. He chatted with the father, gave little back stories on each of the horses. Took time as if he had an endless supply of it in his pockets.

“It’s a good, easy trail,” he assured Sherry, who seemed more nervous than excited. “There’s nothing like seeing the hills on horseback.”

“But we’ll be back well before dark.”

“Gull will have you back by four.”

“You hear about people getting lost.”

“Now, Sherry,” Tom began.

“Gull grew up here,” Coop assured her. “He knows the trails, and so do the horses. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I haven’t been on horseback in ten years.” Sherry stepped onto the mounting block Coop provided. “I’m going to ache in places I forgot I had.”

“You can get a good massage right here in town, if you’re interested.”

She glanced back at Coop, and for the first time a little light gleamed in her eyes. “Really?”

“I can book you one, if you’re interested. Maybe for five o’clock?”

“You can do that?”

“Happy to.”

“Five o’clock massage. I don’t suppose I could get a hot stone?”

“Sure. Fifty or eighty minutes?”

“Eighty. My day just got a lot better. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. You have a nice ride.”

He went in, booked the massage, wrote up the particulars. The business would get a referral fee, which didn’t hurt. Then he shifted gears and went back to Lil’s file.

He started a new run on the women. He leaned toward a man in this case, but he knew better than to discount the female. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look that early morning to be absolutely certain. In any case, a woman might be the connection.

He worked his way through the ginger ale and half the ham sandwich his grandmother had packed him. He couldn’t stop her from packing his lunch, and had to admit he didn’t try very hard.

It was nice to have someone who’d take the time, take the trouble.

Marriages, divorces, kids, degrees. One of the earlier interns in the program now lived in Nairobi, another was a vet specializing in exotic animals in L.A.

And another, he noted as his instincts hummed, had vanished.

Carolyn Lee Roderick, age twenty-three, missing for eight months and a handful of days. Last seen in Denali National Park, where she’d been doing fieldwork.

He followed the hum and dug out what he could on Carolyn Roderick.

AT THE REFUGE, Lil shook hands with Brad Dromburg, the owner of Safe and Secure. He was a beanpole of a man, obviously comfortable in his Levi’s and Rockports, with a close-cropped head of dark blond hair and green eyes. He had an easy smile, a firm hand, and a voice with just a hint of Brooklyn.

“I appreciate you coming all this way, and so quickly.”

“Coop tugged the line. Is he around?”

“No. I—”

“He said he’d try to make it by. Some place you’ve got here, Ms. Chance.” He stood, hands on his hips, studying the habitats, the compound. “Some place. How long have you been in operation?”

“Six years this May.”

He gestured over where some of her interns had set the poles for the new habitat. “Expanding?”

“We’re acquiring a melanistic jaguar.”

“Is that so? Coop said you’ve had a little trouble. Someone compromised one of the cages?”

“The tiger enclosure, yes.”

“That would be a little trouble, all right. Maybe you could walk me around, give me a feel for the place. And what you have in mind.”

He asked questions, made notes on a PDA, and showed no particular nerves when he walked up to the enclosures to study the doors, the locks.

“That’s a big boy there,” he said when Boris rolled over to stretch in front of his den.

“Yes. All four hundred and eighty-six pounds of him.”

“It took a lot of balls or stupidity to open that cage, middle of the night, gamble that big boy’s going to go after the bait and not the live meal.”

“It would, but the fresh kill would be more appealing. Boris was trapped, illegally from what I can dig up, when he was around a year old. He’s been in captivity ever since, and he’s used to the scent of human. He’s fed in the evening, to continue to stimulate the hunt by night instincts, but he’s used to being fed.”

“And he didn’t go far.”

“No, fortunately. He followed the blood trail to the bait and settled in for his unexpected predawn snack.”

“Takes some balls to come out here and shoot a mickey into him.”

“Necessity is often the mother of balls, so to speak.”

He smiled, stepped back. “I don’t mind saying I’m glad he’s in there and I’m out here. So that’s four gates, including the one for public access during operating hours. And a lot of open land.”

“I can’t fence off the entire property. Even if I could, it would be a logistical nightmare. There are trails running through the hills that cross this land, my father’s, others’. We’re posted private around the perimeter, and the gates tend to stop people. My priority is securing the compound, the habitats. I need to keep my animals safe, Mr. Dromburg, and keep everyone safe from my animals.”

“That’s Brad. I’ve got some ideas on that, and I’m going to work something up. One of the things I’m going to recommend are motion sensors set outside the enclosures. Far enough that the animals won’t set them off, but anyone approaching the enclosure would.”

She felt her budget wince in pain. “How many would I need?”

“I’ll figure that for you. You want more lights. Sensor goes off, alarm kicks on, lights flood this place. An intruder’s going to think twice about trying for a cage at that point. Then there’s the locks themselves, and that goes for your gates as well as your cages. Interesting situation,” he added. “Challenging.”

“And—sorry I have to be crass here—expensive.”

“I’m going to work out two or three systems I think would work for you, and I’ll give you an estimate on each. It’ll be a chunk of change, I won’t lie to you, but getting it at cost’s going to save you some serious moolah.”

“At cost? I’m confused.”

“It’s for Coop.”

“No, it’s for me.”

“Coop made the call. He wants this place wired up, we wire it up. At cost.”

“Brad, this place runs on donations, funding, charity, generosity. I’m not going to turn yours down, but why would you do all this and not make a profit?”

“I wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for Coop. He calls, it’s cost. And speak of the devil.” Brad’s face lit up as Coop started down the path toward them.

They didn’t shake hands. Instead they greeted each other with the one-armed, backslapping hug men favored. “I wanted to be here sooner, but I got hung up. How was the flight?”

“It’s a long one. Jesus, Coop, it’s good to see you.”

“And I have to give you a job before you come out. Have you been around?”

“Yeah, your lady gave me the tour.”

Lil opened her mouth, then shut it. No point in breaking up the reunion by pointing out she wasn’t Coop’s “lady.”

“You’ll have to excuse me. It’s feeding time.”

“Seriously?” Brad asked.

He looked like a kid, she thought, who’d just been shown the biggest cookie in the jar. “Why don’t I get you both a beer, and you can watch the show?”

Brad rocked on his heels as Lil walked away. “She’s sexier than her picture.”

“It was an old picture.”

“Seeing her in the flesh, I’d say the chances of you coming back to New York are slim to none.”

“They started out slim to none, and she wasn’t why I moved here.”

“Maybe not, but I haven’t seen many better reasons to stay.” Brad looked over the habitats, up to the hills. “Hell of a long way from New York.”

“How long can you stay?”

“I’ve got to fly back tonight, so we’ll have to keep it to the one beer. I had to shuffle some things to get out here today. But I’ll draw up a couple of options in the next day or two. I’ll get them to you, and I’ll make sure I’m back when we do the install. We’ll lock it down for you, Coop.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Lil stayed busy, and out of Coop’s way. Old friends, to her way of thinking, needed time to catch up.

She and Coop had been friends once. Maybe they could be again. Maybe this pang she felt was just missing him, just missing her friend.

If they couldn’t go back, they could move forward. It seemed he was making the effort, so how could she do less?

She finished up in her office just as Coop walked in. “Brad had to go. He said to tell you goodbye, and he’d have plans for you to look over within the next few days.”

“Well. For a day that started out as bad as this one, it’s ending well. I just got off the phone with Tansy. Cleo is as advertised. Gorgeous, healthy, and she’ll be ready to travel tomorrow. Cooper, Brad said he’d be doing the security system at cost.”

“Yeah, that’s the deal.”

“We should all have such generous friends.”

“He likes to think he owes me. I like to let him.”

“My IOUs are piling up in your hat.”

“No they’re not. I don’t want an accounting.” Irritation darkened his face as he took another step toward her desk. “You were the best friend I ever had. For a good part of my life you were one of the few people I could trust or count on. It made a difference to me. In me. Don’t,” he said when her eyes welled.

“I won’t.” But she rose and walked to the window to look out until she had control. “You made a difference, too. I’ve missed you, missed having you for a friend. And here you are. I’m in trouble and I don’t know why, and here you are.”

“I have a possible line on that. On the trouble.”

She turned. “What? What line?”

“An intern named Carolyn Roderick. Do you remember her?”

“Ah, wait.” Lil closed her eyes, tried to think. “Yes, yes, I think . . . Two years ago. I think nearly two years ago. A summer session—after she’d graduated? Maybe after, I’m not sure. She was bright and motivated. I’d have to pull the records for more detail, but I remember she was a hard worker, serious conservationist disciple. Pretty.”

“She’s missing,” he said flatly. “She’s been missing for about eight months.”

“Missing? What happened? Where? Do you know?”

“Alaska. Denali National Park. She was doing fieldwork with a group of grad students. One morning, she just wasn’t in camp. Initially they thought she’d just wandered off a little to take some pictures. But she didn’t come back. They looked for her. They called in the rangers and Search and Rescue. They never found a trace of her.”

“I did fieldwork in Denali my senior year. It’s extraordinary, and it’s immense. A lot of places to get lost if you’re careless.”

“A lot of places to be taken.”

“Taken?”

“When they started to worry, her teammates looked in her tent more carefully. Her camera was there, her notebooks, her tape recorder, her GPS. None of them believed she’d wander off that way, with nothing but her jacket and boots and the clothes on her back.”

“You think she was abducted.”

“She had a boyfriend, someone she met while she was here, in South Dakota. According to the friends I’ve managed to track down so far, nobody really knew him. He kept to himself. But they shared a passion for the wilderness, for hiking, for camping. It went sour and she broke things off a couple months before the Alaska trip. Ugly breakup, reportedly. She called the cops; he skipped. His name is Ethan Howe, and he volunteered here. He also did a little time for an assault. I’m checking on that.”

It crowded in her mind, beat there until she rubbed her temple to quiet it. “Why do you think this connects to what’s happening here, now?”

“He used to brag about how he’d lived on the land for months at a time. He liked to claim he was a direct descendant of a Sioux chief, one who lived in the Black Hills. Sacred ground to his people.”

“If half the people who claimed to be a direct descendant of a Sioux chief or ‘princess’ actually were . . .” Lil rubbed her forehead now. She knew this, something about this. “I remember him, vaguely. I think. I just can’t get a clear picture.”

“He talked about this place, how he’d helped out here when Carolyn was an intern. She’s missing, and I can’t find anything on him. Nobody’s seen him since the breakup.”

She dropped her hand, and in one moment of weakness wished she didn’t understand him. “You think she’s dead. You think he abducted her, and killed her. And he’s come back here, because of the refuge. Or me.”

He didn’t soften it. Soft wouldn’t help her. “I think she’s dead, and he’s responsible. I think he’s here, living off the land. Your land. It’s the only solid connection I’ve been able to make. We’ll run him down, get a line on him. Then we’ll know who we’re dealing with.”

16

Tansy took another sip of truly crappy wine while a debatably crappy band slammed out what she thought of as “Ye-haw Coun try” from behind a barrier of chicken wire.

The clientele—a mix of bikers and cowboys and the women who loved them—looked perfectly capable of throwing beer bottles and plastic dishes of indigestible nachos at the stage but so far hadn’t worked up the energy.

A number of people were dancing, which she supposed boded well for the band, and their laundry bill.

She’d lived in what she, affectionately, thought of as the Wild West for a full five years now, not counting her years in college. And there were moments, such as these, when she still felt like a tourist.

“You sure you don’t want a beer?”

She glanced over at Farley, and thought he looked perfectly at home here. In fact, she’d never seen him anywhere he didn’t look perfectly at home.

“I should’ve listened to you and opted for beer in the first place.” She took another tiny sip of wine. “But it’s too late now. Besides, I’m going to head back.”

“One dance.”

“You said one drink.”

“One drink, one dance,” he said as he took her hand, tugged her off the bar stool.

“One.” She agreed because they were already on the dance floor. In any case, they’d both put in a long day, so one drink, one dance seemed reasonable.

Until he put his arms around her. Until her body was locked tight to his, and his eyes smiled down at her. “I’ve been wanting to dance with you a long time.”

Keep it light, she warned herself, even as her insides went soft and jittery at the same time. Keep it nice and easy. “Well, you’re good at it.”

“Jenna taught me.”

“Really?”

“When I was about seventeen, I guess, she told me most girls like to dance, and a smart guy learned how to move on the dance floor. So she taught me.”

“She did a good job.” He could move all right, she thought. Smooth as butter. And he had her heart doing a little flip when he spun her out, and back again. He did a quick turn, slid her under his raised arm, leading her around until her back was to him, pressed close again.

She knew she fumbled some—he was a hell of a lot better than she was—but she let out a breathless laugh as he turned her again so they were face-to-face and she was shuffling backward.

Damn it, the guy had moves. “I guess I need Jenna lessons.”

“She’s a good teacher. I think we dance pretty well together, seeing it’s the first time out.”

“Maybe.”

“You come dancing with me back home, Tansy, and we’ll do better.”

Her answer was the slightest shake of her head, and when the music stopped, she deliberately stepped back to break the contact before the next song started. “I really need to get back, and make sure I’ve got everything in order. We’re getting an early start tomorrow.”

“Okay.” He took her hand as they returned to the table.

“You don’t have to go. You should stay, enjoy the music.” And I should go, she thought, and take a long, cold shower.

“Even if you weren’t the prettiest woman in the room, I’d be walking you back just like I walked you over.”

It was only a few minutes at a brisk walk from the bar to the motel they were using, but she knew him well enough not to argue. He had, Tansy knew, an unbendable code about certain things—undoubtedly Jenna-taught as well. A man walked a woman to her door, and that was that.

But she stuck her hands in her jacket pockets before one of them ended up caught in his.

“Lil’s going to be happy when she sees that big cat,” Farley commented.

“She’s going to be ecstatic. She’s a beauty, no question about it. I hope she handles the drive without any trouble. Anyway, Lil said the temporary enclosure will be ready for her, and the permanent one’s already started.”

“Lil doesn’t wait for flies to land.”

“Never has.” She hunched inside her coat, as the short walk was still a cold one. Farley’s arm came around her shoulders, easing her against him.

“You’re shivering some.”

Not just from the cold now, she thought. “Ah . . . I think if we plan to pick up Cleo by seven, that’s early enough.”

“We’ll get gassed up first. Cut back on stops. We head out of here ’round six, that’d give us time to fuel up, get us some breakfast.”

“Works for me.” She spoke brightly while waging a small, violent war against her own hormones. “I can meet you at the diner. We’ll check out first, and go right from there?”

“We could do that.” He skimmed a hand down her back as they crossed the motel parking lot on foot. “Or we could walk over to breakfast together.”

“You can knock on my door in the morning,” she said as she dug out her room key.

“I don’t want to knock on your door. I want you to let me come in.” When she looked up, he turned her as smoothly as he had when they’d danced, so she was caught between him and the door. “Let me come in, Tansy, and be with you.”

“Farley, that’s not—”

His mouth found hers. He had a way of kissing her that had common sense, good intentions, firm resolve all slipping away. Despite sense, intention, and resolve, she was kissing him back.

Oh, hell, oh, damn, she thought, even as her arms locked around him. That rubber-band mouth of his was so good at kissing.

“It can’t go anywhere,” she told him.

“It could go to the other side of this door for right now. Let me come in.” He took the key from her, slid it into the lock, and kept his eyes on hers. “Say yes.”

No formed solidly in her mind, but it didn’t come out of her mouth. “It’s going to be like the drink and the dance. One time. You have to understand that.”

He smiled at her, turned the knob.

LATER, AFTER MORE than one time, Tansy stared up at the dark ceiling. Okay, she told herself, she’d just had sex with Farley Pucket—twice. What the hell was she going to do now?

Best, she decided, to think of it as an out-of-town exception. Just something that happened. She was, after all, a mature, sophisticated, and experienced woman.

All she had to do was ignore that the sex had been incredible, both times. That he had a way of making her feel as if she were the only woman who existed. And that it wasn’t just her hormones losing the battle, but her heart.

No, she had to remember she was older and wiser, and it was up to her to put things right.

“Farley, we need to talk about this. We need to understand that when we get back, this isn’t going to happen again.”

He linked his fingers with hers, brought them to his lips. Rubbed them there. “Well now, Tansy, I guess I need to be honest and tell you I’m going to do what I can to see it does. I’ve had a lot of good things happen to me, but being with you? It’s the best.”

She made herself sit up, cautiously bringing the sheet with her so he didn’t get any ideas. “We don’t exactly work together, but you do volunteer at the refuge. Lil’s my closest friend.”

“That’s all true.” He sat up, too, his eyes quiet on her face. “But what’s that got to do with me being in love with you?”

“Oh. Love. Don’t say love.” Panic ticked at the back of her throat.

“But I do love you.” Reaching out, he brushed his hand over her hair. “And I know you have feelings for me.”

“Of course I do. We wouldn’t be here, like this, if I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean—”

“I think they’re strong feelings.”

“All right, yes. I’ll cop to that. But Farley, let’s be realistic. I’m several years older than you are. We’re in different decades, for God’s sake.”

“In a few years we’ll be in the same decade for a while.” Amusement showed clearly on his face. “But I don’t want to wait that long to be with you.”

On a huff of breath, she reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. “Farley, look at me. I’m a thirty-year-old black woman.”

He cocked his head, studied her as she’d asked. “More caramel. Jenna makes these caramel apples in the fall. They’re all golden brown and sweet on the outside, and just a little tart in. I love those caramel apples. I love the color of your skin, Tansy, but the color of your skin’s not why I love you.”

It made her shiver. It made her weak. Not just the words, but the look of him when he said them.

“You’re smarter than me.”

“No, Farley.”

“Sure you are. It was the smarter that made me nervous around you for a while. Too nervous to ask you to come out with me. I like that you’re smart, and how sometimes you and Lil will get talking about things and I can’t understand the half of it. Then I thought, Well hell, it’s not like I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” she murmured, undone by him. “Not anywhere near stupid. You’re steady and clever and kind. If things were different—”

“Some things you can’t change.” He took her hand again, so the contrasting tones showed in the light. “And some things, Tansy, make the different not mean one damn. Like this.”

He drew her to him, laid his lips on hers, and showed her.

IT FELT STRANGE knowing people with guns patrolled the edges of her compound. Strange even, at her own insistence, knowing she was one of them. Her animals prowled and called. The night was their time. And more, the scent of man, the glow of the lights kept them stirred up.

She spent more time with Baby, to his obvious delight, and the love in his eyes when he looked at her steadied her nerves. When she stood or paced or drank yet another mug of coffee, she outlined long- and short-range plans to keep her mind occupied and off the reason she stood and paced and drank yet another mug of coffee.

They would get through this, and that was that as far as she was concerned. If the person causing the trouble was this Ethan Howe, they’d find him, and they’d stop him.

She remembered him a little better now. She’d had to go back, look up Carolyn’s files, refresh herself on the reports and data in order to get a clear picture of the student. But once she had, she’d been able to reform one of the men who’d come around a few times to lend a hand, to flirt with Carolyn.

Above average height, she thought, slim build, strong back. Nothing special about him that she could recall. Not a lot to say, other than his claim to be descended not just from any warrior but from Crazy Horse himself.

Lil remembered being mildly amused by his insistence on that, and largely dismissing it, and him. She didn’t think she and this Ethan had exchanged over two dozen words. Still, hadn’t most of them had to do with the land, the sanctity of it, and their duty to honor it because of their bloodline?

She’d dismissed that, too, had considered him just another harmless oddball. But she remembered now that she’d felt him watching her. Or did she remember that because of hindsight, because of nerves? Was she projecting?

Maybe Tansy would remember him more clearly.

And maybe he had nothing to do with what was happening. But Coop’s instincts said he did. She trusted those instincts. Whatever problems they had with their personal lives, she trusted Coop’s instincts absolutely.

That, she supposed, was also a matter of her own instincts.

She shifted her stance, rolled her shoulders, as they wanted to stiffen up from her stint in the cold. At least the overcast sky kept some of the heat in, she mused. But she’d have preferred the stars and the moon.

In the harsh glow of the emergency lights, she watched Gull head in her direction. He gave her a wide salute. She expected the gesture was a precaution, to make certain she recognized him.

“Hey there, Gull.”

“Lil. Coop said I should take over for you here.”

“I’m grateful, Gull, for what you’re doing.”

“You’d do the same for me. Never been out here at night like this.” He scanned the habitats. “It’s kind of cool, I guess. Doesn’t look like those animals are getting much sleep.”

“They’re nocturnal. And they’re curious what all the people are doing out here in the dark. Losing sleep and drinking too much coffee mostly. He’s not coming back around here tonight.”

“Maybe he’s not because all these people are out here losing sleep and drinking too much coffee.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Go on, get inside, Lil. I’ve got this now. Unless you want to wander over and visit with Jesse. Like old times.”

She gave him a light punch in the arm. “I don’t think Rae would like that,” she said, referring to her old sort-of boyfriend’s wife.

“What happens at the refuge,” Gull deadpanned, “stays at the refuge.”

She headed back, chuckling. She saw others moving toward their trucks or cars as friends and neighbors came to stand in their places. Voices carried, so she heard jokes, sleepy laughs, calls of good night.

She quickened her pace when she spotted her parents. “You said you were going to use the cabin and get some sleep,” she said to her mother.

“I said that so you’d stop nagging me. Now I’m going home to get some sleep. You do the same.” She gave Lil a pat on the cheek with a gloved hand. “I know this is a bad reason, but it’s good to see people come out to help this way. Take me home, Joe. I’m tired.”

“You get some sleep.” Joe tapped a finger on Lil’s nose. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

No doubt about that, Lil thought as they separated. They’d keep close tabs on her until this was resolved. It’s the way they worked. And if the situation were reversed, it would be the way she’d work.

Inside, she stowed her rifle, then peeled off her outdoor gear. She glanced at the steps, thought about bed. Too restless, she decided. Too much coffee in the bloodstream.

She set a fire in the hearth, got it going. If Coop didn’t want one, he could bank it down. But at least it added more warmth and cheer to his temporary sleeping arrangements.

She wandered back to the kitchen, thought about making some tea. And decided she was too impatient to wait for the water to boil. Instead she poured half a glass of wine, hoping it would counteract the caffeine.

She could work, she considered. She could spend an hour at the computer until the edge wore off. But the idea of sitting still didn’t appeal either.

Then she heard the front door open and knew she’d been waiting for that. For him.

When she came back into the living room he was sitting down, pulling off his boots. He looked, she thought, alert, awake, his eyes clear as they met hers.

“I figured you’d be upstairs by now.”

“Too much coffee.”

He made a vague sound of agreement, and took off the second boot.

“Maybe I’m feeling as restless as the animals. I’m not used to having people around this time of night either. I can’t settle.” She walked to the window, stared out.

“I’d suggest a couple hands of gin rummy, but I’m not in the mood.”

She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “And I’m in your way. I could try solitaire.”

“You could also try turning off the lights and closing your eyes.”

“That would be the sensible thing.” She swallowed the last of the wine, set the glass aside. “I’ll go up, let you get some sleep.” She started toward the stairs, stopped, turned back. He hadn’t moved. “What if I want sex on the table?”

“You want to have sex on the table?”

“You said sex was off the table. Maybe I want it back on. Maybe I don’t want to sleep alone tonight. You’re here; I’m here. We’re friends. That’s established, right? We’re friends.”

“We always were.”

“So that’s all it is. Friends, and not being alone. Giving each other something to take the edge off.”

“Reasonable. Maybe I’m too tired.”

Her lips curved. “Like hell.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

But he stayed where he was, watching her. Waiting.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me. I’m asking you to set that rule or provision, or however you think of it, aside. Come up with me, come to bed with me, stay with me. I need to shut my mind off, Coop, that’s the God’s truth. I need some peace of mind. A few hours of it. Do me a favor.”

He stepped to her. “Doing you a favor’s standing out in the cold until two in the morning. Taking you to bed?” He reached up, ran his hand down her braid. “Doesn’t qualify. Don’t tell me you need peace of mind, Lil. Tell me you want me.”

“I do. I do want you. I’ll probably regret it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be too late.” He pulled her in, captured her mouth with his. “It’s already too late.”

He turned toward the steps, then gripped her hips, boosting her up so she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.

Maybe it had always been too late, she thought as he carted her upstairs, and she let her lips roam his face as she had once, long before. Back in time, the familiar. Like closing a circle, she told herself. It didn’t have to be any more than that.

She pressed her cheek to his, sighed. “Feel better already.”

At the bedroom he turned, pressing her back to the door. And those eyes, the ice blue that had always snagged her heart, caught hers. “A hot bath makes you feel better. This is more, Lil. We’ll both have to deal with that.”

When his mouth took hers it wasn’t for comfort, or to soothe, but to ignite. So that slow simmer, never fully banked, came roaring back to full, furious flame.

Peace of mind? Had she thought she would find peace here, with him? There would be no peace with the war raging between them, inside her. Engulfed, she gave herself to it, and to him.

Maybe this time the battle would be done, and that constant flame inside her finally, finally burned out.

The need rose up, riding along her skin, filling her breasts, her belly with heat. Familiar, perhaps. But more and less than what had been. Had his hands been so sure, his mouth so urgent?

She was still wound around him when he strode to the bed. The lights from the compound slanted through the slats of her blinds, thin bars of light that fell over the bed, over her when he set her on the edge. A kind of cage, she supposed. Well, she walked into it willingly.

He gripped her boot, tugged. She heard herself laugh, nervous joy, as he pulled off the other. Then he reached down to unbutton her flannel shirt.

“Unbraid your hair.” He drew the shirt off. “Please.”

She lifted her arms, slid the tie at the end of her braid onto her wrist out of habit, and loosened her braid as he took off his shirt.

“No, I’ll do that,” he said as she started to comb her fingers through her hair.

“I’d think about your hair, the way it feels and smells, the way it looks after I’ve had my hands in it. All that midnight hair.”

He wrapped her hair around his fist, tugged so that her face tipped up to his. The gesture, the flare of heat in his eyes spoke as much of temper as passion. “I’d see you when you weren’t there. Like a damn ghost. A glimpse in a crowd, a tease out of the corner of my eye, disappearing around a corner. You were everywhere.”

She started to shake her head, but he tightened his grip. For an instant she saw that anger flash, then he released her hair. “Now you’re here,” he said, and drew the thermal shirt over her head.

“I’ve been here.”

No, he thought. No. But she was here now. Aroused, a little annoyed, just as he was. To please himself, to pleasure her, he traced his fingers down her collarbone, over the subtle swell of her breasts. The girl he’d known had been a willow stem. She’d bloomed without him.

She shivered at his touch; he’d wanted her to.

Then he pressed the heel of his hand to her forehead, gave her a light shove onto her back. And made her laugh again.

“Mr. Smooth,” she said, then he was on her, his body pressing her into the mattress. “You’ve put on a few pounds.”

“You too.”

“Really?”

“In interesting places.”

She smiled a little, and combed her fingers through his hair as he had with hers. “Well, it’s been a while.”

“I think I remember how everything works. How you work.”

He brushed his lips to hers, a teasing, then a sinking, sinking until it was drowning deep. His hands were on her, reminding her what it had been, confusing her with what it was now.

Strong, hard, working hands, sliding over her, pressing, molding until her breath quickened, until past and present were one brilliant blur over her senses.

He flipped open her bra, tugged it aside, and had her—hands and mouth, teeth and tongue—so quickened breaths became gasps, gasps became moans. She dragged at his thermal, yanking it up and away, impatient now to feel him. Strong back, ridges of muscle. New and fascinating.

He’d been a boy, just a boy really, when last she’d touched him like this. It was a man under her hands now, a man whose body pressed down on hers.

In the dark, barred with light, they rediscovered each other. A curve, an angle, a new point of pleasure. Her fingers skimmed over a scar that hadn’t been there before. And she whispered his name as his lips raced frantically down her body.

She quivered when he unbuttoned her jeans, hitched her hips up to help him pull them away. Rolled with him over the bed as they hurried to strip off every barrier.

Outside one of the cats called out, a wild thing prowling the dark. He took her there, into the dark, and what was wild in her cried out, released in harsh and primitive pleasure.

She moved for him, and with him, her eyes a gleam in the shadows. Everything he’d found and lost, everything he’d lived without was here. Right here. His senses swam with her, a rush of woman, all scent and skin, all wet and warm. The beat of her heart against his hungry mouth, the slide of her skin under his desperate hands.

He pushed her over, felt her rise and break, then gather again.

His name. She said his name over and over.

His name when he drove into her. He held, held himself on that whippy edge, filled and surrounded, entrapped until they were both trembling. Then it was all movement, mad, mindless. And when she broke again, he shattered with her.

She wanted to curl up against him, just fit her body against his like two pieces of a puzzle. Instead she lay quiet, willing herself to hold on to the pleasure, and the peace that had finally come with it.

She could sleep. If she closed her eyes, let her mind shut down, she could sleep. Whatever needed to be said or dealt with could be said or dealt with in the morning.

“You’re cold.”

Was she?

Before her brain could connect with her body he’d shifted her up and over. When had he packed on all the muscle? she wondered. He tugged the sheet and comforter over her, then drew her against him.

She started to stiffen—to ease away, a little at least. Didn’t she need some room, some sort of distance? But he held her there, curled her in exactly where she’d wanted to be.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

And too tired, too undone, to argue, she did just that.

SHE WOKE BEFORE SUNRISE, stayed very still. His arms had stayed around her, and hers had gone around him in the brief hours of the night.

Why, she wondered, did something that basic, that human, break her heart?

Comfort, she reminded herself. In the end, he’d given her the comfort she’d needed. And maybe she’d given him some in return.

It didn’t have to be more than that.

She’d loved him all of her life, and there was no point in trying to convince herself that would ever change. But sex was just an elemental act, and in their case a kind of gift between friends.

Single, consenting, healthy adult friends.

She was strong, smart, and self-aware enough to accept that—and keep it that way. The first step, she thought, was to untangle herself from him and get out of bed.

She started to ease away, as cautiously as she might if she’d been wrapped around a sleeping cobra. She’d barely gained an inch when his eyes opened and beamed straight into hers.

“Sorry.” She wasn’t sure why she whispered—it just seemed the reasonable thing to do. “Didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve got to get started.”

He kept her close, only lifted her hand, turning her wrist to look at the luminous dial of her watch. “Yeah, I guess we both do. In a couple minutes.”

Before she could react he rolled over, and was inside her.

He took his time. After that first shock of possession, he went slow. Long, lazy strokes that left her both weak and giddy. Helpless she floated up, felt herself all but shimmer. Pressing her face to the side of his throat, she let go.

She sighed, lingering longer than was wise.

“I guess I owe you breakfast.”

“I never argue with breakfast.”

She made herself turn away, made the effort to keep her voice light. “I’ll go start the coffee if you want to grab the shower first.”

“Sure.”

She grabbed a robe, pulling it on as she hurried out.

She avoided looking at herself in the mirror and concentrated on the practicalities. Strong black coffee and what she thought of as a full farm breakfast. Maybe she didn’t have any appetite, but she would damn well eat. No one would know she was sick with love. Again.

Better to focus on the positive, she reminded herself. She’d gotten more rest in four hours than she’d had in days. And surely that buzzing sexual tension between her and Coop would diminish now.

The deed was done. They’d both survived. They’d both move on.

Bacon sizzled in the cast-iron skillet while she warmed biscuits in the oven. He liked his eggs over easy, she remembered. At least he had.

By the time he came down, smelling of her soap, she was breaking eggs into the pan. He poured his coffee, topped her mug off, then leaned against the counter and watched her.

“What?”

“You look good. It’s nice to look at you over my morning coffee.” He glanced at the bacon she had draining, then the hash browns sizzling with the eggs. “Guess you’re hungry.”

“I figured I owed you the full shot.”

“I appreciate the breakfast, but I’m not looking for payment.”

“All the same. Anyway, I hope I can get that alarm system installed soon. I can’t expect people to keep guarding the place like it was Fort Apache. Everyone’s got their own to see to, including you.”

“Look at me.”

She glanced over as she flipped the eggs. “Why don’t you sit down? This is about ready.”

“If you’re thinking about stepping back, think again.”

With hands remarkably steady, she scooped out the hash browns. “Sex isn’t a ball and chain, Coop. I step where I want.”

“No, you don’t. Not anymore.”

“Anymore? I never—” She put up a hand as if to stop herself. “I’m not getting into this. I’ve got too much to deal with today.”

“It’s not going away, Lil, and neither am I.”

“You were gone for over ten years. You’ve been back for a few months. Do you think, really think, everything just picks up where you want it to, for as long as you want it?”

“Do you want to hear what I think and what I want? Are you ready to hear it?”

“No, actually, I don’t, and I’m not.” She didn’t think her heart could bear it. Not now. “I’m not interested in a discussion, debate, or rehash. We can be friends, or you can push until we’re not. That’s up to you. If what happened between us ruins our friendship, Cooper, I’ll be sorry. Really sorry.”

“I’m not looking for a fuck buddy, Lil.”

She let out a breath. “Okay, then.”

He took a step toward her, she took one back. And the door opened.

“’Morning. I wanted to let you know . . .” Gull wasn’t the quickest off the mark, but even he could sense bad timing. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“You’re not,” Lil said quickly. “In fact, you’re right on time. Coop was about to have breakfast. You can keep him company and have some yourself.”

“Oh, well, I don’t want to—”

“Grab some coffee.” She began dishing up two plates. “I’ve got to go up and get dressed. Everybody okay out there?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Um . . .”

“Have a seat and dig in. I’ll be back down in a few minutes.” She picked up her coffee, walked out without looking back.

Gull cleared his throat. “Sorry, boss.”

“Not your fault,” Coop muttered.

17

She didn’t come back down in a few minutes. In fact, she didn’t go back to the kitchen at all. She showered, dressed, then let herself out the front of the cabin.

Avoidance? No question, Lil admitted. But she couldn’t afford to bog down her mind, her heart, her spirit. The interns were her full responsibility until Tansy got back—and when she did, they’d have another cat.

She kept herself busy checking the temporary enclosure and working with the crew on the permanent habitat.

Sunny skies and rising temperatures meant she could work in shirt-sleeves for a change. It also meant more snowmelt, more mud. As fickle March headed for capricious April, the dawning of spring would bring more patrons—and more on-site donations.

For her morning break, she visited Baby, pleasing them both with a long play period with lots of scratching, rubbing, and petting.

“I swear, that one’s just a big house cat.” Mary shook her head as Lil came out of the enclosure, double-checked the locks. “Less arrogant than my tabby, come to it.”

“Your tabby couldn’t rip out your jugular if he turned.”

“Got me there. Can’t see that one turning. He’s been a sweetheart since day one. Pretty day, isn’t it?” With her hands on her hips, Mary turned her face up to the bold blue of the sky. “I got bulbs sprouting up in my yard. Crocus blooming, too.”

“I’m ready for spring. Good and ready.”

Lil took the path around, wanting to check all the animals. Mary fell into step beside her.

In their yard, the bobcats rolled and wrestled together like a couple of boys on holiday, while perched in her tree, the lynx watched them with what might have been disdain.

“I know the jaguar and the new security system are going to take a big bite out of the budget. We’re okay, aren’t we, Mary?”

“We’re okay. Donations were a little slow this winter, except for that whopper Coop gave us. That one put us far and away over last year’s first quarter.”

“Now we worry about the second quarter.”

“Lucius and I are brainstorming on some fundraising ploys. And we’ll start clicking along here with the warmer weather.”

“I’m worried the trouble we’ve been having will keep people away, and cut hard into entrance fees and on-site donations. Word gets around.” Reality, Lil knew, came in dollars and cents. “We’ll have two new animals, with Xena and Cleo, to feed, house, and care for. I’d hoped to be able to hire at least a part-time veterinary assistant for Matt this summer. I’m not sure we’ll be able to stretch the budget for it now.”

“Willy needs to catch that son of a bitch, and soon. Matt’s overworked, but so is everybody else around here. That’s the way it is. We’re okay, Lil, and we’re going to stay okay. Now, how are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m good.”

“Well, if you ask me—which you didn’t, but I’m telling you anyway—you look stressed. And speaking of overworked, what you need is a day off. A real day off. And a date.”

“A date?”

“Yes, a date.” Clearly exasperated, Mary rolled her eyes. “You remember what a date is. Dinner, the movies, dancing. You haven’t taken a full day off since you got back, and however much you enjoyed that trip to South America, I know you worked every damn day there, too.”

“I like to work.”

“That may be, but a day off and a date would do you good. You ought to get your ma and drive into Rapid City for the day. Do some shopping, get your nails done, then come back and have that good-looking Cooper Sullivan buy you a steak dinner, take you dancing, then parking afterward.”

“Mary.”

“If I were thirty years younger and single, I’d damn well see to it he bought me a steak dinner, and the rest of it.” Mary gave Lil a hard, somewhat impatient squeeze. “I worry about you, honey.”

“Don’t. Don’t worry.”

“Take a day off. Well, break’s over.” She checked her watch. “Tansy and Farley ought to be rolling up in a couple hours. Then we’ll have some excitement.”

She didn’t want a day off, Lil thought when Mary walked away. She didn’t want to go shopping—very much. Or to get her nails done. She looked at her nails, winced. Okay, maybe she could use a manicure, but she didn’t have any lectures, appearances, or events scheduled. No fundraising drums to beat. When she needed to, she cleaned up very well.

And if she wanted a steak dinner, she could buy her own. The last thing she needed was a date with Coop, which would complicate a situation she’d already complicated with sex.

Completely her fault, she admitted.

He’d been right about one thing that morning. She had to deal with it.

Why hadn’t she made that list?

She stopped in front of the tiger’s enclosure. He lay at the entrance of his den, eyes half shut. Not dozing, not yet, Lil thought. His tail switched lazily, and Lil could see awareness in those slitted eyes.

“Not still mad at me, are you?” Lil leaned on the rail, watched Boris’s ears flick. “I had to do it. I don’t want anything to happen to you, or for anything to happen because of you. Not our fault, Boris, but we’d be responsible.”

Boris made a rumbling that sounded so much like reluctant agreement, Lil smiled. “You’re beautiful. Big, beautiful boy.” Lil let out a sigh. “I guess my break’s over, too.”

She straightened to stare out across the enclosures, the trees, the hills. And she thought it didn’t seem as if there could be a thing wrong in the world on a day like this.

HE MUNCHED ON his second Ho Ho. He could live off the land, but didn’t see any reason to deny himself a few pleasures from the Outside. In any case, he’d stolen the box of snack cakes from a campsite, so technically he was living off the land as he ate them. He’d also confiscated a bag of potato rolls and a six-pack of Heineken.

He limited himself to one beer every two days. A hunter couldn’t let alcohol slow his brain, even for an hour. So he only drank the single beer at bedtime.

Drinking had been his weak spot—he could admit it—just like it had been his daddy’s. Just, as his daddy had often said, like it was for their people. Liquor was only one more weapon the white man had used against them.

Drinking had gotten him in trouble, brought him to the attention of the white man’s law.

But he did love the taste of a cold beer.

He wouldn’t deny himself. He would simply control himself.

He’d learned that on his own. Of all the things his father had taught him, control hadn’t been one of them.

It was a matter of control, he thought. Just as letting the campers live had been a matter of control, and power. Killing them would have been fish-in-barrel time, and that wasn’t worth his skill. He had considered killing three of the four, then hunting down the last.

It never hurt to practice.

But taking out four campers would have the cops and rangers covering the hills like ants. Not that he couldn’t evade them, as his forefathers had for so long. One day he would be a one-man war party, hunting and killing those who desecrated the land at his whim and his will.

One day they would speak his name with fear and reverence.

But for now he had bigger fish to fry, fish that weren’t in the barrel.

He took out his field glasses to scan the compound below. His pride still surged from his observation of the guards placed around the perimeters through the night.

Because of him.

His prey scented him, and feared. Nothing he’d done before had given him such satisfaction.

How easy, and how exciting, it would have been to have taken them out. All of them. Moving silent as a ghost, slitting throats, one by one, blood warm and wet on his hands.

All that game bagged in one night.

And what would his prize have felt in the morning, when she’d come out of the cabin to see the carnage he’d left behind?

Would she have run, run screaming in terror?

He loved it when they ran, when they screamed. And more, when they had no breath left to scream.

But he’d snapped control firmly into place. It wasn’t time.

He could send her a message, he considered. Yes, he could. Something that made it very personal. The more there was at stake, the deeper the competition when the time came.

He didn’t just want her fear—fear was easy to come by.

He watched her for another moment as she crossed the compound toward the cabin that held the offices.

No, not just her fear, he thought, lowering the glasses, licking chocolate off his fingers. He wanted her involved as none of the others had been. As none of the others had deserved.

He turned away, and hitching his pack on his shoulders, began a circular hike back to his den, whistling a tune.

When the lone hiker, puffing a bit, crossed his path, he smiled.

“Lost?” he asked.

“No. Not exactly. Glad to see a friendly face, though. I was on Crow Peak, heading toward the summit. I think I got off the mark a little.” He pulled a bottle of water out of his belt harness. “I guess I should’ve stuck with one of the easier trails. It’s been a while.”

“Mmm-hmm.” This one looked healthy enough, fit enough. And lost, just enough. “You’re making the trip alone?”

“Yeah. The wife headed back at the junction. I’da done the same except she said I couldn’t do the seven miles. You know how it is. Gotta prove them wrong.”

“I’m heading that way myself. I can get you back on track.”

“That’d be great. Wouldn’t mind the company either. Jim Tyler,” he said, offering a hand. “From St. Paul.”

“Ethan Swift Cat.”

“Nice to meet you. You from around here?”

“That’s right, I’m from around.”

He started off, leading Jim Tyler from St. Paul farther off the trail, away from the blazes on pines, the signs, the posts, and deeper into the wilderness. He kept the pace moderate. Didn’t want to wear Jim out before the games began. He watched for signs of others, and listened to the man talk about his wife, his kids, his business—real estate—back in St. Paul.

He pointed out tracks to keep the man entertained, waited while Jim took pictures with a nice little digital Canon.

“You’re better than my guidebook,” Jim said with real pleasure. “Wait until I show off these pictures, and my wife sees what she missed. I’m lucky I ran into you.”

“Lucky.” He gave Jim a big smile as he pulled out his revolver.

“Run, rabbit,” he said, grinning. “Run.”

LIL RUSHED OUT of the cabin when Farley pulled in. Staff, volunteers, interns dropped what they were doing to hurry over. Before Farley came to a full stop, Lil boosted herself onto the running board on Tansy’s side and grinned at her friend.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine. Good. She’s getting a little restless back there. As if she knew we were getting close. You’re going to be very happy with her, Lil. She’s a beauty.”

“You have all her medical records?” Matt asked her.

“Yeah, and I spoke with her vet personally. She’s got a clean bill of health. She’d had some intestinal problems a few months ago. Her owner liked to feed her chocolate truffles—I swear. Godiva truffles, and Beluga caviar on special occasions. Apparently Cleo’s very fond of dark chocolate with hazelnut filling, and caviar on lightly browned toast points.”

“Good God,” was Matt’s response.

“She’s left the high life, but I think she’ll adjust.” Lil forced herself not to climb right on in and take a look. “Take her on over to the temporary, Farley. Let’s get her out of the cage, and into her new home. I bet she’d like to stretch her legs.”

She glanced over to where two of the interns continued a tour for a small group. “Annie,” she said to the young woman at her shoulder. “Why don’t you go tell that group to head over toward the enclosure. This should be a real treat for them.”

She rode with them, standing on the running board. “We were expecting you about an hour ago,” she commented.

Tansy shifted in her seat. “We, ah, left a little later than we’d planned.”

“No problems?”

“No. No.” Tansy stared straight ahead. “No problems. Cleo handled the drive just fine. Slept through most of it. I’ve got all the paperwork if you want to go over it after she’s settled.”

Lil’s first look at the cat took her breath away. Sleek, muscular, her eyes tawny glints, Cleo sat in her travel cage like royalty on a throne.

She eyed the humans, with what struck Lil as a gaze of pure superiority, and let out her coughing roar in case they didn’t fully understand who was boss.

Lil approached the cage so the jaguar could get her scent. “Hello, Cleo. Yes, you’re gorgeous. Strong, powerful, and you know it. But I’m alpha here. No more Godivas or poodles on the menu.”

The cat tracked her with those exotic eyes as she circled. “Let’s get her out. Keep your hands away from the bars. Her favored killing method may be to pierce the skull, but she won’t quibble at taking a good swipe of a careless hand or arm. I don’t want any trips to the infirmary. And don’t let her taste for chocolate fool you. She’s got powerful jaws, arguably the most powerful of all felids.”

They lowered the cage by the lift, and as the tourist group took snapshots, positioned it at the entrance to the enclosure.

Cleo grumbled in her throat, displeased, Lil concluded, with the crowd, the scent of them, the scent of other animals. Across the compound the lion roared.

Lil lifted the cage door, locked it open, stepped back.

The cat sniffed the air as she scanned the space, the tree, the boulders, the fencing. And the other animals beyond.

Her tail switched as the lioness prowled along their shared fenceline and marked her territory.

“This melanistic, or black, female jaguar hasn’t reached maturity,” Lil began for the benefit of the tourists. “She gets her color from a dominant allele—a unique pairing of genes. But she does have rosettes—spots—that can be seen if you’re close enough. She’s one of the four big cats, along with the lion, the tiger, and the leopard.”

As she spoke, she studied Cleo’s reactions.

“As you can see, while young, she has a compact, muscular body.”

“It looks sort of like a leopard.”

Lil nodded at one of the men in the group. “You’re right. Physically she looks like a leopard, though she’ll be bigger and stockier in build. Behaviorally, she’s more like the tiger—and like the tiger, actually enjoys swimming.”

Cleo inched toward the opening of the cage. Lil stayed where she was, kept very still, and continued to talk. “And like the tiger, the female kicks the male to the curb after giving birth.”

That got a little laugh from the tour group as they angled for more pictures.

“She’s a stalk-and-ambush hunter, and no other species comes close to her abilities there. In the wild, she’s an apex predator, top of the food chain. Only man preys on her. Because of deforestation and encroachment and fragmentation of its habitats and poaching, jaguar populations are declining. The species is considered Near Threatened. Conservation efforts will help preserve her species, which in turn will help preserve other, smaller-range species.”

Crouched, the jaguar stepped out, nosing both ground and air. When she’d cleared it, Lil lowered the door on the enclosure, locked it.

The crowd applauded.

“She’ll be protected here,” Lil added. “Cared for by the staff, interns, and volunteers of Chance Wildlife Refuge, and through,” lest they forget, Lil thought, “the donations of our patrons and visitors. She’ll have a good life here, and may have it for over twenty years.”

She watched the black cat belly through the grass, nosing it, nosing the air, then rising to stalk. Squatting to pee, marking her territory as the lion marked hers.

She paced and circled, and even when she stopped to drink from her trough, Lil saw her muscles quivering.

She continued to pace, to prowl, sending out that hoarse roar. When she rose on her hind legs to sharpen her front claws on her tree, Lil felt her own muscles quiver at the beauty of the cat’s lines, the power of her build.

She watched, even when the others drifted away, she watched for nearly an hour. And smiled when Cleo leaped into the tree to spread her muscular body over a thick branch.

“Welcome home, Cleo,” she said aloud.

She left the new guest alone and went back to the office to check the paperwork.

She looked in on Matt first to find him reading the new addition’s medical records. “Everything as advertised?”

“Healthy female melanistic jaguar, who has not yet come into estrus. She’s had regular exams, the proper inoculations. Her diet has been somewhat suspect. Tansy brought blood samples, but I’ll want to examine her myself.”

“Understood. Let’s give her a day or two to adjust to her new environment before we put any more stress on her. I can get you some scat and urine without too much trouble if you want to start sooner.”

“Sooner the better.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Lil walked to the office she shared with Tansy, and shut the door.

Tansy looked up from the keyboard. “Everything okay?”

“We’ll get into that in a minute. First, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it now. I want to talk about it later,” Tansy decided. “With alcohol.”

“Okay, after tonight’s feeding. We’ll have some wine and a debriefing. But here’s what you have to know now.”

Lil sat and filled Tansy in on what had happened during her trip.

“My God, Lil. My God. You could’ve been seriously hurt. You could’ve been killed.” Tansy shut her eyes. “If one of the kids—”

“Middle of the night. The kids aren’t here. We’re taking steps. Every step we can. With the new alarm system the animals, the staff, everyone will be protected. I should’ve dug into the coffers for an updated system before.”

“It did the job, Lil. It did the job until some crazy person came around. You have to be crazy to open the enclosure that way. Whoever did it could’ve ended up as fresh meat just as easily as that elk. The cops can’t find him? Any trace of him?”

“Not so far. Coop thinks he has a line on who it is. Tansy, Carolyn Roderick—you remember her?”

“Sure. What does she have to do with this?”

“She’s missing. She’s been missing for months, disappeared from a group working in Alaska.”

“Missing? Oh, no. Her family. I talked to her mother a couple of times when Carolyn was here.”

“She had a boyfriend—an ex. He came around here when she interned.”

“The mountain-man type—Ed? No, not Ed.”

“Ethan.”

“Right, Ethan, of the I’m-descended-from-Crazy-Horse blather.”

“You remembered that faster than I did,” Lil replied.

“I had dinner with Carolyn and some of the other interns a few times, and he’d come along or show up. Full of himself and his proud heritage, which came off as bullshit to me. But she liked it, liked him. He brought her wildflowers, did some volunteering. Took her dancing. She was smitten.

“It went bad between them. She broke it off, and people Coop contacted said they thought he was violent.” Lil got them both bottles of water. “I remembered, after I looked through her file, how he’d gone around claiming to be Sioux, and how he bragged about living in the wild for long stretches of time, like—well—Crazy Horse. Had a hard-on for the Park Service. Claimed this area was sacred ground.”

“You think it’s him? The one who killed the cougar and wolf? Why would he come back here and harass you?”

“I don’t know. But he’s vanished, too. Coop hasn’t been able to locate him. Yet. If there’s anything more you can remember about him, anything at all, you should tell Coop and Willy.”

“I will. I’ll think about it. God, you think he did something to Carolyn?”

“I wish I didn’t think that.” Thinking it made her feel sick and sad, and guilty. “I’m not sure if I’m actually remembering or if I just have the heebies, but I feel like he was a little spooky. Like I’m remembering him watching me. A lot. And maybe didn’t think anything of it at the time, as some of the volunteers and interns tend to watch me. They want to see what I’m doing, and how I do it. You know.”

“Sure.”

“And now I’m feeling like that wasn’t the feeling I got when he watched me. That maybe I felt something slightly off, but dismissed it.”

“I don’t remember him that well. I just thought he was a bullshitter, but he helped out around here and seemed focused on charming Carolyn.”

“Okay.”

“What else can I do?”

“Talk to the interns, keep them steady. I’ve told them everything I can, and I’ve contacted the universities for the incomings. I figured full disclosure. I don’t believe any of them are in any danger, and we have to keep the refuge running normally. Still, full disclosure. And that’s bound to make some of them jumpy.”

“Okay. Most of them are going to be over at the commissary, processing for the evening feeding. I’ll go over, get a gauge.”

“That’d be good.”

“We’ll talk later.” Tansy rose. “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”

Coward, Lil told herself when she nearly agreed. But the agreement wouldn’t be due to fear of some maniac prowling the hills. It would be due to avoidance of Cooper Sullivan.

“No. We’re covered here. I’d rather stick with routine as much as we can.”

Lucius tapped on her doorjamb as Tansy went out. “I e-mailed you pictures of Cleo, and a kind of montage we took as we were transferring her. I can get them on the Web page whenever you approve.”

“I’ll take a look.” Focus, she ordered herself, and she shifted gears into work mode. “I’ll write something up to go with the montage. We’ll want something on her specifically, the jag in general, and some behind-the-scenes stuff. Then put her up on the Adopt page. Did Mary see about getting the black jag toy for that donation, and for the gift shop?”

“I think she’s got some possibles e-mailed to you.”

“Okay. I’ll get on it.”

“Want the door shut?”

“No, open is fine.”

She dug up a soft drink for the hit of caffeine, then dug into work.

It took her through feeding time, and she still wasn’t quite satisfied. She copied the work and photos to a thumb drive, stuck it in her pocket. She’d give it another pass at home, after a solid break. Come to it fresh.

Contributors, she knew, wanted info, but they also wanted a story. A new animal meant new interest, and she intended to exploit that. She cleaned up other paperwork while twilight filled with the sounds of feeding.

She came out, locked up as the last of the interns left for the day. Eventually, she thought, she’d have enough in the budget to build the dorm. Housing for the interns, their own kitchen. Two years down the road, by her estimation, with the hit on the budget with the proposed security system, the expense of building a new enclosure.

She found Tansy in the living room with a bottle of wine and a bag of corn chips. “Alcohol and salt.” Tansy toasted her. “It’s what I need.”

“Food of the gods.” Lil tossed her jacket, her hat aside, poured her own glass. “You look tired.”

“I guess I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Tansy took a long gulp of wine. “Because I was busy having sex with Farley.”

“Oh.” Lil decided that bulletin required sitting down. “Okay. Yes, this is news best served with adult beverages. Wow.”

“Really, really good sex.” Brows knit, Tansy bit into a chip. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Ah, have more?”

“Oh, good God, Lil, what have I done? I knew better, but it just happened.” She knocked back a slug of wine. “Four times.”

“Four? Four times in one night. Jeez. Here’s to Farley.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“No, it’s a serious accomplishment.”

“Lil.”

“Tansy. You’re a grown-up, he’s a grown-up.”

“He thinks he’s in love with me.” Tansy crunched on chips. “Do you know what he said to me last night?”

“Before or after sex?”

“After, damn it. And also before. I’m trying, really trying to be sensible and fair and realistic.”

“And naked.”

“Shut up. Then he looks at me. Man, he sure can look at me.”

Tansy told her everything Farley said, nearly word for word.

“Oh.” She couldn’t help it. Lil pressed a hand to her heart. “That’s beautiful. And so Farley, so completely and beautifully Farley.”

“I know it. I know, but Lil, this morning, over breakfast in this diner, I’m fumbling around, trying to . . . I don’t know slow it down, calm it down. Be sensible. He just keeps smiling at me.”

“Well, four times puts a smile on a guy’s face.”

“Stop it! He says, ‘I’m going to marry you, Tansy, but you can take some time to get used to it first.’”

“Wow.” Lil’s jaw dropped before she managed to close it and take another drink. “Well. I repeat, Wow.”

“It doesn’t matter what I say. He just smiles and nods, and when we go outside, he gets ahold of me again and kisses my brains out. I felt them leak out of my ears. I think I lost half my brain in Montana.”

“Have you set the date?”

“Will you stop it! You’re not helping.”

“Sorry, Tans, but you’re sitting there, stress-eating Fritos and telling me a good man, a really good man, loves you and wants you. A man you had multiple orgasms with—I assume.”

“Yes, multiple was a factor. He’s very . . . attentive and energetic.”

“Now you’re just bragging.”

“Some. God, Lil, he’s sincere and sweet and just a little scary. I’m messed up over this, over him.”

“Which would be a first. I like that you’re in love with him, and all I can think is good. It’s good. All I can be is happy, and a little bit jealous.”

“I shouldn’t have slept with him,” Tansy continued. “Now I’ve complicated it even more, because before I could think I just had the hots for him, but now I know I have the hots for him, and I’m crazy about him. Why do we do that? Why do we end up sleeping with them?”

“I don’t know. I slept with Coop.”

Tansy ate another chip, washed it down with wine. “I thought you’d hold out longer.”

“So did I,” Lil admitted. “Now we’re mad at each other. I think. Or I snapped and snarled at him this morning. Which I knew, even as I was doing it, was ninety percent defense and ten percent truth.”

“He broke your heart.”

“Into countless pieces. Farley’s incapable of doing that to you.”

Tansy’s deep, dark eyes went soft. “I could break his.”

“Yes, you could. Will you?”

“I don’t know, that’s the problem. I don’t want to. He’s not what I was looking for. When I thought about what I might be looking for, down the road, it sure wasn’t a skinny white cowboy.”

“I don’t think we get to choose as much as we tell ourselves we choose.” Thoughtfully, Lil dug into the bag of chips. “If I could pick, it would be Jean-Paul. He’s a better choice for me. But he wasn’t the one, and I couldn’t make him the one. So I ended up hurting him even though I didn’t want to.”

“Now I’m depressed.”

“Sorry. No more talk of broken hearts.” Deliberately Lil shook herself as if shedding a weight. “Let’s talk about sex with Farley. Spare no details.”

“No.” Amused, Tansy pointed at her. “At least not on one glass of wine. And since I’m driving, no more for me. I’m going home and I’m going to think about something else. Anything else. You’ll be all right here?”

“There’s half a dozen armed men outside.”

“Good. But I meant regarding Cooper.”

Lil blew out a breath. “I’m going to take the late shift, thereby avoiding that problem, as he’ll take first duty. It’s not a solution but it’s a plan. Tansy, just one question. Don’t think first, just answer. Are you in love with Farley? Not just crazy about, but in love with.”

“I think I am. Now I’m even more depressed.” She pushed to her feet. “I’m going home to brood.”

“Good luck with that. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Alone, Lil fixed herself a sandwich and a short pot of coffee. She sat at her kitchen table, eating her dinner and polishing her pieces for the website.

She braced, every muscle on alert, when the door opened. Then relaxed again when her mother came in. “I told you not to come tonight.”

“Your father’s here, I’m here. Live with it.” At home, Jenna opened the fridge, sighed once at the contents, then took out a bottle of water. “You’re working, and I’m interrupting.”

“It’s all right. I’m just fine-tuning some articles for the Web page, on our new princess.”

“I saw her. Lil, she’s beautiful. So elegant and mysterious. She’ll be a huge draw for you.”

“I think so. And she’ll be happy here. Plenty of room once we finish her permanent habitat. The right diet, the right care. I’m going to look into breeding her next year.”

Jenna nodded, sat. “This is probably nothing.”

“Oh-oh.”

“You know Alan Tobias, the ranger.”

“Sure. He brings his kids here.”

“He’s helping out tonight.”

“That’s nice of him. I should go out and thank him.”

“Yes, at some point. He told us there’s a hiker missing.”

“For how long?”

“He was due back around four. His wife didn’t start worrying, seriously, until five.”

“Well, it’s barely eight.”

“And dark. He’s not answering his cell phone.”

Nerves jangled, but she spoke calmly. “Reception’s spotty. You know that.”

“I do, and it’s probably nothing. He probably got turned around a little, and he may end up having a lousy night if he doesn’t make it back to a trailhead soon. But Lil, he was hiking Crow Peak, and that’s not all that far from where you trapped the cougar with Coop.”

“It’s a full-day hike to the summit and back, and it’s not an easy trail. If he’s not experienced, it would take longer, probably longer than he allowed. Why was he hiking alone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have all the details.” Jenna glanced toward the window, and the dark. “They’re looking for him.”

“I’m sure they’ll find him.”

“They’ve looked for the man who shot your cougar, the man who came here. They haven’t found him.”

“He doesn’t want to be found,” Lil pointed out. “This hiker does.”

“They’re calling for rain before morning. Hard rain.” Jenna looked back toward the window. “You can smell it coming. I have a sick feeling about this, Lil. A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that more than hard rain’s coming.”

18

The rain came, and came hard. At dawn, Lil dragged herself back into the house, hung her slicker up to dry, pulled off her soaked and muddy boots.

She wanted to grab another hour’s sleep. Two if she could manage it, then spend a couple days in a hot shower and eat like a lum berjack.

As of dawn, the hiker—James Tyler of St. Paul, according to her sources—hadn’t been found. She hoped the worst that happened was he’d spent an even more miserable night than she had.

She moved quietly in her bare feet out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. But when she glanced at the living room, the sofa was empty. Gone home, she assumed. She hadn’t seen his truck, but then in the driving rain she hadn’t seen much of anything. Relaxing, she climbed the stairs.

Set the alarm, she told herself. Ninety minutes would be a good compromise. Then bed. Warm, soft, dry bed.

When she stepped into her room she saw that warm, soft, dry bed was already occupied.

She gritted her teeth against the curse that sprang to her tongue, but when she started to back out, Coop’s eyes opened.

“I’m not sleeping on the damn couch.”

“Fine. It’s morning, so you can get up and go. You can make coffee if you want it, but be quiet. I need some sleep.” She stalked across the bedroom to the bath, and shut the door, firmly.

So, shower first, she thought. She’d sleep better for it. Nice hot shower, then bed. No big deal. And no reason the man shouldn’t make use of the bed after standing out in the dark for several hours.

She stripped off, leaving her clothes in a puddle on the floor, then switched the shower on, full and hot as she could stand. She actually moaned when she stepped in and felt the heat beat through her chilled skin to her chilled bones.

She hissed when the curtain flicked back. “Goddamn it!”

“I want a shower.”

“It’s my shower.”

He simply stepped in behind her. “Plenty of room, plenty of water.”

She shoved her wet hair out of her face. “You go too far, Cooper.”

“Too far would be putting my hands on you, which I won’t.”

“I’m tired. I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Good. I’m not in the mood for an argument.” He pumped out some of the shower gel, soaped up. “We’re going to get some flooding with this rain.”

She just let the water beat over her head. She didn’t want conversation either.

She stepped out first, wrapped her body in a towel, wrapped her hair in another. In the bedroom she pulled on flannel pants and a T-shirt, then sat on the side of the bed to set her alarm.

He came out, damp hair, jeans, and a shirt he hadn’t bothered to button. “Did they find the hiker?”

“No. Not yet. Not when I came in.”

He nodded, then sat to pull on socks, watching as she slid into the bed he’d left warm for her. “Your hair’s wet.”

“I don’t care. I’m tired.”

“I know.” He rose, went to the bed. Leaning over, he pressed his lips to hers, as gently as he might to a sleepy child. “I’ll be back later.”

He trailed a finger down her cheek before he walked to the door. “It wasn’t just sex, Lil. It never was.”

She kept her eyes closed, listened to him go down. Waited until she’d heard the front door open, then shut behind him.

And gave in to the turmoil he managed to set off inside her. As the rain pounded, she cried herself to sleep.

IT RAINED THROUGH the morning, canceling scheduled trail rides and rentals. Coop dealt with the stock at the farm, and gave up cursing the rain and wind after the first hour.

No point.

With his grandfather set cleaning and repairing tack, and his grandmother hip-deep in paperwork—both in the warm and dry—he loaded two more horses into the trailer.

“Plenty of shelter in the hills,” Lucy said as she packed up a lunch for Coop. “I pray that poor man found some. God knows how they’ll find him in this weather.”

“We’ve got six horses out with volunteers. I’ll take these into town in case they want more. Flash floods are going to be a problem.”

“So much trouble. Too much. It comes down like the rain.”

“It’ll clear. If they need more men on the search, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“You’ll be staying at Lil’s again tonight.”

He stopped, one hand on the door. “Yes. Until this is settled.”

“And you and Lil?” She gave him her keen, no-nonsense look. “Are you going to settle that, too?”

“Working on it.”

“I don’t know what happened between you all those years ago, and I’m not asking. But if you love that girl, stop wasting time. I’d like to see you settled and happy. And, damn it, I’d like some babies around here.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “That might be jumping the gun.”

“Not from where I’m standing. If you go with the search party, you take a rifle.”

She handed him the sack holding his lunch, then laid her hands on his cheeks. “You take care of my boy, because he’s precious to me.”

“Don’t worry.”

Nothing to worry about, he thought as he dealt with the miserable drive into Deadwood. He wasn’t the one being stalked, or the one lost somewhere in the hills. All he was doing was what came next. Provide the horses, and another pair of eyes if they were needed. And for Lil? All he could do was be there.

Did he love her?

He’d always loved her. He’d done what came next there, too, and lived without her. And look where she’d landed. Exactly where she wanted to be—needed to be. Doing what she’d dreamed of doing. She’d made her mark, and in his way so had he.

Now, well, he’d just keep doing what came next. The problem was, he didn’t know where he stood with her.

Friend? Occasional lover? A port in the storm?

Screw that. It wasn’t enough this time around, not for him. So he’d push, because that came next as he saw it. Then both of them would see where he stood.

In the meantime, he’d do whatever it took to protect her. She’d just have to deal with it.

Gull came out of the stables as Coop pulled up. Water poured off the brim of his hat, sluiced down the shine of his slicker as he helped unload the horses.

“Haven’t found him yet,” Gull shouted over the thunder of the rain. “No way to track in this mess. Got flooding between the snowmelt and the rain. It’s bad up there, boss.”

“They’re going to need more horses.” Coop looked toward the black and angry sky. Even if choppers could go up, what the hell could they see in this? Ground search, such as it was, would be the best bet.

“They’re working on coordinating or some such on his cell phone. Trying to find the signal.” Gull led his horse into a dry stall. “I don’t know how they’re doing there. But if you don’t need me, I figure I can replace somebody who’s been out in this long enough.”

“Take whichever mount you want and check in. You keep in touch with me, Gull.”

“Will do. He’s got any sense he’s holed up in a cave on high ground. Don’t know if he’s got any sense. Everybody else, so I hear, who was up on a trail or camping, they’re accounted for. Just this guy from St. Paul.”

“It’s a long time to be lost in this weather.”

“Damn right. Word is they haven’t found the first sign of him yet.” As he spoke, Gull saddled a big bay gelding. “Couple day-trippers saw him, even had a word or two with him at the junction on Crow Peak. They took the spur trail south, and he was headed north to the summit, so he said. But that was before noon yesterday.”

“Did they see anybody else?”

“At the junction, yeah, and on the spur trail. But not heading to the summit. He went on his own.”

“Then let’s hope he has sense. If they need more relief, you let them know I’m around. And you keep in touch.”

Coop drove over to the office, brewed a pot of coffee. Until he was called on, he intended to find out more about Ethan Howe.

He booted up the computer and picked up the phone.

He spent the next hour bouncing between cops and investigators in Alaska, North Dakota, New York, slowly, tediously filling in a few blanks. He talked to Howe’s parole officer and former landlords and added a few names to his call list.

As far as known companions, they were few and far between. The man was a loner, a drifter, preferred low-population areas, and as far as Coop could discern, had rarely stayed in one place more than six months at a time. Usually camping. Occasionally motels or weekly rooms. Paid in cash.

Employment sketchy. Day laborer, ranch hand, trail guide.

Kept to himself. Quiet. Hard worker, but unreliable. Came and went.

Coop dug deeper, followed the dots to a bar in Wise River, Montana.

Spinning wheels, he thought as he made the call. Chasing my own tail. Might as well throw a dart at a map.

“Bender’s.”

“I’m looking for the owner or manager.”

“I’m Charlie Bender. This is my place.”

“Was it your place four years ago, July and August?”

“Been my place sixteen years. What’s the problem?”

“Mr. Bender, I’m Cooper Sullivan. I’m a private investigator licensed in New York.”

“Then why are you calling from South Dakota? I got caller ID, buddy.”

“I’m in South Dakota. I’ll give you my license number if you want to check it out.” He might’ve sold his business, but his license was still good. “I’m trying to find someone who worked for you for a couple months the summer of ’05.”

“Who?”

“Ethan Howe.”

“Don’t ring, right off. Four years is a space of time, and I get a lot of people in and out of here. Why do you want him?”

“He may be connected to a missing-person’s case I’m working on. He’d’ve been late twenties,” Coop began and gave a description.

“Sounds like everybody else.”

“He’d have been fresh out of prison for assault.”

“Still not cutting him out of the herd.”

“He claims he’s part Sioux, likes to brag about his mountain-man skills. Keeps to himself, but he’s very polite and charming with the ladies. At least initially.”

“Chief. We called him Chief mostly because he talked about being blood kin to Crazy Horse after he’d had a couple beers. Just another asshole. I recollect he wore what he said was a bear-tooth necklace—talked about how he and his pa hunted bear and other bullshit. He worked good enough when he was here, but it wasn’t for long. Then he took off with my best waitress.”

“Got a name on her?”

“Yeah. Molly Pickens. She worked for me four years before Chief came along. Then she lit out with him, and I was short two people. Had to drag my wife in to wait tables, and I heard about it for weeks. So I remember.”

“Do you know how I can get in touch with Molly?”

“Haven’t seen or heard of her since that August.”

Coop felt a buzz at the back of his skull. “Does she have family? Friends? Someone I can get in touch with?”

“Look, buddy, I don’t keep tabs on people. She came in here looking for work. I gave her work. She got on fine with the rest, the customers. Minded her own business, and I minded mine.”

“Where was she from?”

“Christ, you’re a nosy bastard. Back east somewhere. Said once she’d had enough of her old man—couldn’t say if that was husband or father—and hit the road. She never gave me any trouble, till she took up with Chief.”

“She left you without notice. Did she take her things?”

“Didn’t have much. Packed up some clothes and such, cleared out her bank account, and took off in her old Ford Bronco.”

“Did she like the outdoors? Hiking, camping?”

“What the fuck? Are you looking for him or her?”

“Right now? Both of them.”

Bender heaved out an audible breath. “Now that you mention it, she liked being out and about. She was a good, strong girl. Liked to go off, take photographs in the park on her days off. Wanted to be a photographer, she said. She picked up some extra money selling photographs to tourists. I expect she landed on her feet somewhere.”

Coop wasn’t so sure of it. He worked Bender for more details, scrawling notes.

When he’d compiled everything, he sat back, shut his eyes, let his mind turn it over. Patterns, he thought. Patterns and circles and cycles. They were always there if you looked for them.

He shut everything down and went to see Willy.

The sheriff’s face was pasty with exhaustion, his eyes bloodshot, and his voice like the bottom of a gravel pit. “Caught something.” He sneezed heroically into a red bandanna. “Goddamn spring. Came back down from the search about a half hour ago.” He lifted a thick white mug. “Cup-a-Soup. Can’t taste a damn thing, but my ma always says you down chicken soup for a cold. I’m downing.”

“You haven’t found him.”

Willy shook his head. “A man can barely find his own pecker out in this mess. Supposed to let up tomorrow. That poor bastard’s alive, he’s miserable.” He drank, wincing. “Throat feels like my tonsils took sandpaper to it. It’s only been a day. He didn’t get hurt or dead, and he holed up out of the rain, he’ll do okay. He had pack food. Energy bars, water, trail mix, and the like. Wouldn’t starve. We’re mostly worried he’d get caught in a flash and drown.”

“Do you need more hands up there?”

“We got it covered. The fact is I’m worried somebody else is going to drown or fall off a damn cliff. Two on the search team had to be brought out. Got a broken ankle and what we thought was a heart attack. Just indigestion, it turns out. If we need to go up again tomorrow, we’ll need fresh horses.”

“You’ll have them. Willy—”

He broke off when a woman came to the door. “Sheriff.”

“Mrs. Tyler. Come right in here and sit down.” Wheezing, Willy got to his feet to lead her to a chair. “Now, you shouldn’t oughta be out in this weather.”

“I can’t just sit in the hotel room. I’m going crazy. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know something.”

“We’re doing everything we can. We’ve got a lot of men looking for your husband, Mrs. Tyler. Men who know the trails, who’ve done plenty of search-and-rescues before. You told me your husband was a sensible man.”

“Usually.”

She dashed a hand over her brimming eyes. From the look of them, Coop doubted she’d closed them for more than an hour since her husband had gone missing.

“He should’ve had more sense than to insist on making that hike.” She rocked in the chair as if the movement would help keep her calm. “He hasn’t hiked on much more than his own treadmill in five years.”

“Kept in shape, you said.”

“Yes. I should’ve gone with him.” Biting her lip, she rocked a little faster, a little harder. “I shouldn’t have let him go by himself. I just didn’t want to spend all day tromping around. I wanted to rent horses, but Jim, he’s nervous around horses. I thought I could talk him into coming back with me when we got to that junction. I was so annoyed when he wouldn’t. I snapped at him. The last thing I did was snap at him. Oh, my God.”

Willy let her weep, signaling Coop to stay and pulling up a chair so he could pat the woman’s arm.

“I know you’re scared, and I wish I had more to tell you, more that would ease your mind.”

“His phone. You said they’d try to track his cell phone.”

“I did. They did. We can’t find the signal. Could be the battery’s dead.”

“He’d have called. He’d have tried to call.” While her voice trembled, she mopped at her face with a tissue. “He wouldn’t want me worried. We charged our phones full before we started that morning. They said there’s flooding. On the news, they said.”

“He’s a sensible man. A sensible man sticks to high ground. We haven’t found him, Mrs. Tyler, but we haven’t found any signs to indicate anything happened to him. Let’s hold on to that for now.”

“I’m trying.”

“I’m going to have somebody take you back to the hotel. If you want, I can have someone stay with you, if you don’t want to be alone.”

“No. No, I’ll be all right. I haven’t called my boys—our sons. I was so sure he’d be back this morning, and now . . . it’s twenty-four hours since he should’ve been back. I think I have to call our boys.”

“You know best.”

“Jim just got it into his head he wanted to make this trip. Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, the Black Hills. We’ve got a three-year-old grandson, and another coming. He said we should practice taking them on hikes. He bought all new gear.”

“And you said he’d packed everything the guides recommended,” Will began as he led her out. “He had a map, a flashlight . . .”

Coop walked to the window to watch the rain hammer the ground. He waited until Willy came back and then shut the office door.

“Another night up there isn’t going to do Jim Tyler any good.”

Coop turned around. “If he ran into Ethan Howe, he might not have a second night.”

“Who’s Ethan Howe?”

Coop told him everything he knew, giving the information in a quick, concise report as he’d been trained to do as a cop, as an investigator.

“It’s a loose connection to Lil and her animals, but it’s a connection,” Willy allowed. “But as far as you know, or she remembers, this Howe and Lil never had any trouble, any hard words?”

“She barely remembered him, and then only because of the intern. He’s trouble, Willy. A drifter, a loner, stays off the grid—except for one serious bust. He’d been drinking. Slipped up there. Otherwise, he keeps his head down when he’s around people. He likes to talk about his Native American connection, but he blends. He’s got that temper, and that self-importance, his weak points.”

“I know a lot of people who have both of those.”

“Enough of a temper, according to her friends and family, to scare off this Carolyn Roderick,” Coop added. “She was a type, like the one from Montana. Athletic, pretty, strong, single. Molly Pickens emptied her bank account and left with him.”

Willy sat back with his white mug of soup, nodded as he sipped. “Of her own free will.”

“And that’s the last I can find her, when she left with him, of her own free will. There’s no credit card activity since that August, and up until then she used a MasterCard, regularly. She’s never renewed her driver’s license. Hasn’t filed taxes. She left Columbus, Ohio, in ’96. She was eighteen. Rumors of an abusive father, who didn’t file a missing-person’s report. She left a paper trail. I’ve picked up some of it. But when she left with Ethan Howe, nothing. No trail.”

Willy took a thoughtful breath that came out as a wheeze. “You think he killed that waitress, and the intern.”

“Damn right I do.”

“And you think he’s the same one who’s been causing this trouble for Lil.”

“He connects, and she fits his type.”

“And if Tyler crossed paths with him . . .”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen, doesn’t want some guy going back and talking about this man he met on the trail. Or Tyler stumbled over his campsite, found him poaching. Or maybe he just likes to kill. There’s more.”

“Jesus.” Willy pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Melinda Barrett. Age twenty.”

Willy’s forehead creased. “That’s the girl you and Lil found.”

“Strong, pretty, athletic. Alone on the trail. I’m betting she was his first. He’d’ve been about the same age. There’ve been others.” Coop dropped a folder on Willy’s desk. “I copied my file for you.”

Willy stared, not at the file, but at Cooper. “Jumping Jesus, Coop, you’re talking serial killer. You’re talking about a dozen years of killing.”

“Which stopped, as far as I’ve been able to determine, during the year and a half Howe was in prison. The problem with tying the first killing to the others I tracked, the like crimes, was the wide time lag between. But when you add in missing persons, bodies that weren’t found, by chance or by his design? It plays then.”

Willy looked down at the file, started to speak, then broke into a hacking cough. He waved his hand until he’d caught his breath. “Goddamn spring,” he complained. “I’ll look at what you’ve got. I’ll read through it, and I’m going to want to talk to you about it after—one way or the other.”

He took a last swallow of his now lukewarm soup. “Want a job?”

“I’ve got one, thanks.”

Willy smiled. “Cop’s in the blood.”

“I just want my horses, that’s the fact. But in this case, I’ve got a vested interest. He doesn’t get a chance to touch Lil. He doesn’t get that chance.” Coop got to his feet. “That’s where I’ll be, most likely, when you’re ready to talk this through.”

He went home to toss fresh clothes in a duffel. He glanced around the converted bunkhouse and figured he’d spent less time sleeping there than he had on Lil’s couch. Or in her bed.

That’s the way it had to be, he decided, and trudged through the relentless rain to toss the duffel in his truck before going back to the farmhouse.

He sat his grandparents down at the kitchen table and told them everything.

When he’d finished, Lucy rose, went to the cupboard, and got out a bottle of whiskey. She poured three short glasses.

Sitting, she tossed hers back without a blink or hiss.

“Have you told Jenna and Joe?”

“I’m going by there on the way to Lil’s. I can’t prove—”

“You don’t have to prove,” Sam said before he could finish. “It’s what you believe. That’s enough. We’ll pray you’re wrong about this man they’re looking for. We’ll pray you’re wrong about that, and he just got lost, got himself a good soaking and a good scare.”

“While you’re praying I want you to stay inside. The stock’s fed and bedded down. I’ll be back around first light. You stay in, doors and windows locked, and the shotgun close. I need you to promise.” He pressed, and pressed hard when he recognized the stubborn set of his grandfather’s jaw. “If you don’t give me your word on that, I can’t leave. I can’t look after Lil.”

“Putting the squeeze on me,” Sam muttered.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“You got my word on it, if that’s what it takes.”

“All right. If you hear anything, feel anything off, you call me, and you call the police. You don’t think twice, you just call, and don’t worry about false alarms. I need your word on that, too, your promise, or I’m getting a couple of men to guard the place.”

“You think he’ll come here?” Lucy demanded.

“No, I don’t. I think he’s on a mission. I don’t think he’s going to come here because here isn’t part of the plan. But I’m not leaving without your word. Maybe he’ll want some supplies, or a dry place to sleep. He’s a psychopath. I’m not going to try to predict what he might do. I’m not taking any chances with either of you.”

“You go on to Lil’s,” Sam told him. “You’ve got our word on all of it.” He looked at his wife, and she nodded. “Joe and Jenna are probably on their way over there, or will be soon enough. You can talk to them over there. Meanwhile I’ll call them myself, in case they’re home. I’ll tell them what you told us.”

Nodding, Coop picked up the whiskey and drank. And stared into the glass. “Everything that means anything to me is here. In this house, with Joe and Jenna, at Lil’s. That’s everything there is.”

Lucy reached over, laid her hand over his. “Tell her.”

He looked up, looked at her and thought about the morning conversation. He smiled a little, and gave her the same answer. “Working on it.”

BY THE TIME he got to Lil’s, feeding time was in full swing. He’d watched the process before, but never in a violent rain. Staff hustled around in black slickers, hauling and carting enormous hampers of food—whole chickens, slabs of beef, tubs of game, all processed in the commissary. Hundreds of pounds of it, he estimated, all cleaned, prepared, transported every evening.

Tons of fortified feed, grain, bales of hay, hauled, poured and spread night after night, whatever the weather.

He considered offering a hand, but he wouldn’t know what the hell he was doing. Besides, he’d had enough of the wet for now, and would have more than his share of it later.

He carried the tub of beef stew his grandmother had pressed on him into the cabin. He’d be more useful, he decided, putting a meal on the table.

He opened a bottle of red, let it sit to breathe while he heated the stew and buttermilk biscuits.

It was oddly relaxing, to work in the cozy kitchen with the rain beating on the roof and windows, with the sound of the wild rising with the dark. He took two candles from her living room, set them on the table, lit them.

By the time she came in, drenched and surly of eye, he’d set the table and heated the stew and biscuits through and was pouring a glass of wine.

“I can cook my own damn dinner.”

“Go ahead. More stew for me.”

“They’re going to start installing the new security tomorrow, weather permitting. Then we can stop this insanity.”

“That’s good. Want some wine?”

“It’s my wine.”

“Actually, I brought it with me.”

“I have my own.”

“Suit yourself.” He watched her as he took the first sip. “This is pretty nice.”

She dropped down on the bench, gave the candles the evil eye. “Is this supposed to be romantic?”

“No. It’s supposed to be a backup if the power goes out.”

“We have a generator.”

“Takes a minute to kick on. Blow them out if they bother you.”

She huffed, but not at the flames. “I hate that you can do this. Be all casual and reasonable when I’m feeling bitchy.”

He poured a second glass of wine, took it over, and set it on the table. “Drink the damn wine, bitch. Is that better?”

She sighed, nearly smiled. “Maybe a little.”

“It’s some job, feeding that zoo in this rain.”

“They have to eat. And, yes, it is.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I’m tired. I’m edgy. And I’m hungry, so that stew—which I’m assuming is Lucy’s doing—is welcome. I haven’t written out a list, but I have it in my head, and we need to discuss things. I changed things. My choice, my move, my doing. I’m sorry if it was a mistake, if it affects our friendship. I don’t want that.”

“You changed things the first time around, too. Your choice, your move, your doing.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“It can’t always be your way, Lil.”

“I’m not talking about my way, or your way. Besides, it sure as hell hasn’t been all my way. I just want to put us back on solid ground, Coop. So—”

“We may need to wait to get into all of that. I need to tell you what else I’ve found out about Ethan Howe.”

“The man you think abducted Carolyn Roderick.”

“Yeah. And the man I think abducted other women, killed other women. The man I think killed Melinda Barrett.”

She went very still. “Why do you think he killed her? That was nearly twelve years ago.”

“We’re going to eat, and I’m going to tell you. And Lil? If there’s anything on that mental list of yours that gets in the way of me being here, of me making sure nothing happens to you, you’d better scratch it off now.”

“I’m not about to refuse any help that protects me, my staff, my family, my animals. Any of it. But you’re not responsible for me, Cooper.”

“Responsibility has nothing to do with it.”

He set the stew, the biscuits on the table. Candlelight flickered between them as he sat and told her of murder.

19

She heard him out, saying little as he related facts, wove them into theory. She tried, again, to get a clear picture in her mind of the man Coop spoke of. But all she could form was vague outlines, smudged details, like a faded pencil sketch.

He’d meant nothing to her, made no real impression. They’d had only a few conversations when he’d come to volunteer or see Carolyn.

“I remember him asking me about my ancestry, the Lakota Sioux bloodline. It’s the sort of thing people I don’t know ask fairly regularly. We use it in my bio because it sparks interest, and it shows that my family’s lived here, in the hills, for generations. But he wanted more specifics, and told me he was Sioux, descended from Crazy Horse.”

She lifted her hands. “You get that, too. Some people want to claim the heritage, and since they do, why not go for the gold, so to speak? I didn’t pay that much attention, because the Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull claim is usually an eye-roller for me.”

“So you dismissed that, and him.”

“I was probably polite. I don’t make a habit of insulting people, especially volunteers or potential donors. But I didn’t offer to buy him a beer and talk about our ancestors.”

“You dismissed him,” Coop repeated. “Politely.”

She blew out an annoyed breath. “Probably. I just don’t remember that well. He was ordinary, mildly irritating but only because he seemed more interested in asking me about that sort of thing than about the refuge. Coop, I have dozens of conversations any given week with people I don’t know and don’t remember well.”

“Most of them don’t kill people. Try harder.”

She pressed her fingers to her eyes, thinking, thinking, trying to put herself back to that summer, that brief period. Hot, she thought. It was hot that summer, and insects—the parasites and diseases they could carry—were something they battled constantly.

Cleaning, disinfecting. They’d had an injured marmot. Or was that the summer before?

The smells. Sweat, dung, sunscreen.

Lots of tourists. The summer was prime for that.

She got a vague picture of standing in an enclosure, giving it a second rinsing after cleaning and disinfecting. Explaining to him? Yes, explaining to him about the procedures and protocols for providing safe, clean, healthy environments for the animals.

“The cougar’s enclosure,” she murmured. “I’d cleaned their toys. The blue ball Baby especially liked, the orange pylon, the red ball. All cleaned and stacked while I rinsed, and I explained all the steps to the daily cleanings. And . . .”

She struggled, but still couldn’t really see him. Just another guy in boots, cowboy hat, jeans. But . . .

“At some point he asked if I thought I was reclaiming sacred land for my people and their spirit guides—the animals. I was busy. I’m not sure exactly what I said. Probably that I was more interested in protecting the actual animals, and educating people, than spirit guides.”

Coop nodded. “So you dismissed him again.”

“Damn it.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Now I sound like a bitch. I wasn’t bitchy about it. He was helping out. I wouldn’t have been bitchy. And what I said isn’t even entirely true. The cougar’s mine. Spirit guide or talisman, or whatever you choose to call it. But it’s private, it’s personal. I don’t trade off it.”

“Do you remember anything else? What he said, or did? How he reacted?”

“We were busy. Chichi was sick—the leopard we lost that fall. She was old and sick, and I was distracted. I don’t know, honestly, whether it’s hindsight or I’m projecting now that I know all this, but I didn’t particularly like him. He’d just sort of pop up out of nowhere. Just be there. He spent a lot of time around the enclosures, watching the animals, and me.”

“You? Specifically?”

“It feels like that now. But people do—it’s my place. I’m in charge and the refuge carries my name. Except . . . Baby didn’t like him. I’d forgotten that. Baby likes attention, but he wouldn’t come to the fence when this guy was around. He wouldn’t purr. In fact, a couple of times he charged the enclosure fence when Ethan was around. And that’s not Baby’s normal behavior. He’s not aggressive, and he likes people.”

“But he didn’t like this one.”

“I guess not. Otherwise, Ethan wasn’t here that much or that long, and we didn’t interact much. He didn’t wear a bear-tooth necklace or anything like that. I would’ve noticed, and remembered.”

“It would’ve stood out in a place like this. Animal refuge. You’d have noted it, commented.” Coop studied her face. “You wouldn’t have liked it.”

“You’re right about that. Coop, do you seriously think this man has killed all these people? That he’s the one who killed Melinda Barrett?”

“No proof. All of this is circumstantial. It’s speculation.”

“That’s not what I asked. Is it what you really think?”

“Yeah. Why aren’t you afraid?”

“I am.” The shudder caught her unexpectedly as if to prove it. “But being afraid doesn’t help. I need to talk to my parents. They need to know.”

“My grandfather’s taking care of that. I thought they’d be here.”

“I asked them to stay home tonight. I used guilt,” she added with a tight smile. “You’re worried about me? How about me being worried about you? I’ll worry if you don’t get a decent night’s sleep, and so on. My father put in six hours on the search today. My mother rode fence, they brought Jerry Tobias in to ride with her, and he hasn’t ridden fence in five years. Now I wish I hadn’t said anything. If they were here, they’d be tired, but I’d know they were okay.”

“Call them. You’ll feel better.”

She nodded. “If you’re right, he’s been killing since he was basically a boy. I can’t understand what drives someone to that, to make death his life’s work.”

Coop sat back, scanning her face. “That’s exactly what it is. His life’s work. You may not understand what makes him, but you understand that. I got some background. He spent some time in the system as a kid. Bounced from his parents to foster homes and back again. His father did some time, small time. Knocked him and his mother around off and on. She never pressed charges. They moved around a lot. Then he’s off the grid for a while. It looks like they did itinerant work, around here, in Wyoming, Montana. His old man got busted for poaching right here in the national forest.”

“Here?”

“When Ethan would’ve been about fifteen. No record of the mother at that time.”

“I could have met him,” she murmured. “I don’t remember him, but it’s possible. Or passed him in town or on the trail when we went hiking.”

“Or he might’ve seen you. Your family. Maybe he and his father came by looking for work.”

“I don’t remember.” She sighed, irritated with herself, and got up to dig up some crackers. She pulled a hunk of cheddar out of the fridge while she talked. “My parents don’t hire drifters as a rule. I think that policy was mostly because of me. They’re generous, but they’re protective. They wouldn’t have hired strangers, especially not when I was about thirteen and we’re talking about a man and his mid-teenage boy.”

She paused, worked up a smile as she set the quick snack on the table. “And I’d remember a fifteen-year-old boy who worked around the farm when I was that age. I was just really starting to find boys interesting.”

“In any case, from what I’ve been able to put together Ethan took off right around that time, and that’s when I lose him for a couple years. I picked him up when he got work as a trail guide in Wyoming. He’d’ve been eighteen. He lasted six months. Took off with one of the horses, some gear and provisions.”

“A man doesn’t steal a horse when he’s going to hit the road. He steals it when he’s going to hit the trail.”

With a nod that might’ve been approval, Coop topped a cracker with cheese, then handed it to her. “You might’ve made a half-decent cop.”

“It’s just plain logic, but what about his parents? Maybe if we were able to talk to them we’d get a clearer picture.”

“His father died eight years ago in Oshoto. Complications from a lifetime of alcohol abuse. I can’t find anything on the mother. Nothing for the last seventeen years. The last I had, she cashed her paycheck in Cody, Wyoming, where she worked as kitchen help in a diner. Nobody remembers her. Seventeen years,” he said with a shrug. “But up until then she worked. A few weeks, a few months, some space between jobs. But she picked up jobs wherever they were. Then she didn’t.”

“You think she’s dead.”

“People who are motivated enough, afraid enough, figure out how to hide. She could’ve changed her name. Hell, she could’ve moved to Mexico and gotten remarried and is at this moment bouncing a fat, happy grandkid on her knee. But I figure, yeah, she’s dead. Had an accident, or maybe her husband tuned her up once too often.”

“He’d have been just a boy. This Ethan. If that happened, if he saw that happen . . .”

His face went hard, went cold. “That’s what his lawyer will say. The poor, abused boy, damaged, broken by an alcoholic father and a passive mother. Sure, he killed all those people, but he’s not responsible. Screw that.”

“Learned behavior isn’t just for animals. I’m not arguing the point, Coop. In my head, killing is a clear choice. But everything you’re telling me says he was predisposed, then he made choices that brought him his life’s work. If all this is true, a lot of people are dead, and those who loved them grieving because of those choices. I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“Good,” he said shortly. “Don’t.”

“I don’t feel sorry for him,” she repeated, “but I think I understand him better. Do you think he stalked the others, taunted them the way he is me?”

“Barrett looked like a killing of opportunity, of impulse. Molly Pickens, by her boss’s account, went off with him of her own volition. But Carolyn Roderick? I think there was some stalking, some taunting there. I’m going to say I think it depends on how well he knows his quarry. And how invested he is.”

“If Jim Tyler’s dead, at his hand, that would be another impulse killing.”

“Or a form of release. None of the women whose bodies were discovered had been raped. No sign of sexual assault, no torture or mutilation. It’s the kill that gets him off.”

“I can’t quite see that as the glass is half full. Anyway, what he’s been doing has put me, put everyone on alert. It’s made it close to impossible for him to get to me, or to mine. So . . .” She read Coop’s face perfectly. “Which makes it—me—more of a challenge?”

“Maybe. If I’m right, this is at least his fourth time here, in this area. He may have been here other times. When he didn’t make contact with you, or when you were away. He could’ve picked up work around here, on one of the farms, one of the outfits. He knows the territory.”

“So do I.”

“He knows that, too. If he just wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

The cool, flat way he said it brought on another shudder. “Now that boosts my confidence.”

“He could’ve picked you off the night he let the tiger out. Or any other time you were here alone, he could’ve kicked in the door, and taken you out. You ride over to your parents, he ambushes you. Lots of scenarios, but he doesn’t do any of that. Yet.”

She picked up her wine, took a slow sip. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Damn right I am.”

“Unnecessary. I’m scared enough, and I intend to be careful.”

“You could take another trip. There has to be somewhere else you could work for a few weeks, a couple months.”

“Sure. I’m practically renowned. And he could find out where I am, follow me, go after me somewhere I’m not as familiar with my territory. Or he could just wait me out, wait until I start to relax. And you’ve already thought of all that, too.”

“Maybe a better than halfway decent cop,” he acknowledged. “Yeah, I’ve thought of it. But I’ve also thought of the odds of tracking him down while you’re somewhere else. I like the odds.”

“I’m not leaving, Coop.”

“What if I could arrange for your parents to be somewhere else for a few weeks, too.”

She set her wine down, tapped her fingers on the table. “That’s low, using them.”

“I’ll use whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

She rose then, walked over to start a pot of coffee. “I’m not leaving,” she repeated. “I won’t be run off my own place, one I built. I won’t leave my staff, my animals vulnerable while I hide out. You know that, or you don’t know me.”

“It was worth a try.”

“You put a lot of time and work into this.”

“You want a bill?”

She glanced back. “I’m not trying to make you mad. I was before, hoping you’d get pissed off and go, give me some space. I don’t know what to do about you, Coop, that’s a fact. I just don’t. I know we need to have all that out, but it’s not the time. Not enough time,” she corrected. “I need to call my parents, and take my shift outside.”

“There are enough people out there. You don’t need to take a shift. You’re worn out, Lil. It shows.”

“First you boost my confidence, now my ego.” She got out a thermos. “I guess that’s what friends are for.”

“Take the night off.”

“Would you? Could you, in my place? I’m not going to get any sleep anyway.”

“I could shoot you with the drug gun. That’d get you a few hours.”

“What are friends for?” he said when she laughed.

She filled the thermos, took it to him. “Here you go. I’ll be out after I call home.”

He got up, set the thermos on the table to take her arms. “Look at me. I’m never going to let anything happen to you.”

“Then we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

He laid his lips on hers, a brush, a rub. And her heart rolled over in her chest. “Or given that we’ve got other things to worry about. Take the coffee.”

He pulled on his rain gear first, then picked up the thermos. “I’m not sleeping on the couch.”

“No.”

She sighed when he went out. Choices, she thought again. It seemed she was making hers.

LIL STATIONED HERSELF and wandered along the fenceline of the small-cat area. Despite the rain, Baby and his companions played stalk-and-ambush with the big red ball. The bobcats raced each other up a tree, making a lot of mock growls and snarls. She suspected if it hadn’t been for the floodlights, the sounds, scents, sights of humans, the cats would have settled down out of the rain.

Across the habitat, the newest addition sent out the occasional barking roar, as if to say she didn’t know where the hell she was, as yet, but she was pretty damn important.

“It’s like they’re having a party.”

She smiled at Farley as he stepped up beside her to watch. “I guess they are. They appreciate an audience. I feel stupid out here tonight,” she told him. “Nobody’s going to troop down here in all this mess to bother me.”

“Seems to me that’s just when you have to be most careful. When you figure you’re safe.”

“Oh, well. Want some coffee?” She offered her thermos.

“I had some already, but I can’t say no.” He poured himself a little. “I’m figuring Tansy told you about things.”

“She did.” She waited until he’d glanced over. “I think she’s pretty lucky.”

His smile spread slowly. “Feels good you’d say so.”

“Two of my favorite people become each other’s favorite people? There’s no downside for me.”

“She thinks I’m going through a phase. Well, she wants to think that. Maybe she’ll keep thinking it until we have a couple of kids.”

She choked on a gulp of coffee. “Jesus, Farley, when you finally move, you move like a damn cheetah.”

“When you find what you want, what’s right, you might as well get going. I love her, Lil. She’s all flustered up about it, and how she feels about me. I don’t mind that so much. It’s kind of flattering, really.”

He drank coffee while the rain dripped from the brim of his hat. “Anyways, I’m hoping you’ll do me a favor.”

“I talked to her, Farley. Told her I thought you were perfect for her.”

“That’s nice to hear, too. But that’s not the favor. I was hoping you’d go with me and help me pick out a ring. I don’t know anything about that kind of thing. I don’t want to get the wrong kind.”

For a moment Lil could only stare. “Farley, I . . . Just like that? Seriously? You’re going to buy a ring and ask her to marry you? Just like that?”

“I already told her I love her and I’m going to marry her. I got her into bed.” Even in the dark she could see he flushed a little. “I don’t mean to talk out of school on that, but you said she told you. I want to get her what she’d like, and you’d have a good idea. Wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I would. I’ve never shopped for an engagement ring, but I think I know what she’d like if I saw it. Holy shit, Farley.”

“You think we could find the right one in Deadwood? Otherwise, I could drive us on into Rapid City.”

“Let’s try Deadwood. We should . . . I can’t get over it.” She studied him through the curtain of rain. “Farley.” With a laugh, she boosted up to her toes and gave him a smacking kiss. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”

“Jenna cried. The good kind of crying. She’s the one who said I should ask you to go with me for the ring. I made them promise not to say anything until it’s all done. You won’t say anything, Lil?”

“Lips. Sealed.”

“I wanted to talk to them first. Sort of—I don’t know . . . it sounds dumbass.”

“What?”

He shifted on his long, grasshopper legs. “Get their blessing, I guess.”

“It doesn’t sound dumbass. You’re a prize, Farley, I swear to God. How come you didn’t fall for me?”

He grinned, ducked his head a little. “Lil. You’re all but practically my sister.”

“Can I ask you something, Farley?”

“Sure.”

She began to walk with him, at a pace that would’ve been a stroll in the rain but for the guns both carried. “You had it rough as a kid.”

“Plenty do.”

“I know. I think I’m more aware of that because I didn’t. I had it pretty damn perfect. When you took off on your own, you were still a kid.”

“I can’t say I felt like one.”

“Why did you? Decide to leave, I mean. It’s a big, scary step. Even when the familiar’s crap, it’s still the familiar.”

“She was a hard woman to live with, and I got tired of living with strangers, then being put back with her and whoever she’d taken up with. I can’t remember many nights there wasn’t yelling or fighting going on. Sometimes she’d start it up, sometimes the man she was with would. Either way, I’d end up bleeding sooner or later. I thought about taking a bat to this one guy once, after he slapped us both around. But he was a big man, and I was afraid he’d get it away from me and bash me with it.”

He pulled up short. “God, Lil, you’re not thinking I’d hurt Tansy, that I’d do her that way?”

“Not in a million years, Farley. It’s something else I’m trying to figure out, trying to get a handle on. You were broke when you got out here, and hungry and just a boy. But there was no meanness in you. My parents would’ve seen it. They may be soft touches, but they have good instincts. You didn’t steal or brawl or cheat your way here. You could have.”

“I’d’ve been no better than what I left, then, would I?”

“You chose to be better than what you left.”

“God’s truth is, Lil, Jenna and Joe saved me. I don’t know where I’d’ve ended up, or if I’d’ve made it there in one piece without them taking me in.”

“I guess we were all lucky that day you stuck out your thumb and my father drove by. This man, the one we think is out there, he had it rough as a kid.”

“So what? He’s not a kid now, is he?”

She shook her head. It was simple Farley logic—and while she appreciated it, Lil knew people were a lot more complicated as a rule.

Just after two, she went inside. She stowed her rifle and went upstairs. She still had some nice lingerie from her Jean-Paul days. But it seemed wrong to wear for Coop what she’d worn for another man.

Instead she changed into her usual sleeping garb of flannel pants and a T-shirt, then sat on the side of the bed to brush out her hair.

Tired? she thought. Yes, she was tired, but also aware. She wanted him to come to her, wanted to be with him after a long and difficult day. To make love with him while the rain drummed and night crept toward morning.

She wanted something bright in her life, and if it was a complicated shine, it was better than the dull and the dark.

She heard him come in, and rose to put her brush back on her dresser. Letting her mind drift, she walked back to turn down the bed. And turned to face him as he came in.

“We need to talk,” she said. “A lot has to be said. But it’s two in the morning. Talk’s for the daylight. I just want to go to bed with you. I just want to feel, to know there’s something good and strong after a day that’s been so bleak.”

“Then we’ll talk in the daylight.”

He came to her then, tunneled his fingers through her hair, tipped her head back. His lips met hers with a tenderness, a patience she’d forgotten he could give.

Here was the sweet they’d once shared.

She lay down with him on cool, smooth sheets, and opened body, mind, and heart. Slow and soft, as if he knew she needed . . . tending. Tension slipped away, swept back by pleasure. His hands glided over her, hard palms, a gentle touch. On a contented sigh, she turned her head as his lips explored her throat, her jaw.

No need to rush, to take and take, not this time. This was silk and velvet, warm and smooth. Not just sensation now, not just desires met, but feelings. She slid his shirt away, traced her fingers over the scar at his side.

“I don’t know if I could have stood it if—”

“Shh.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers, then her mouth. “Don’t think. Don’t worry.”

Tonight he could give her peace, and take some for himself. Tonight he wanted to show her love as much as passion. More. Tonight they would savor each other. Skin, sighs, scents.

She smelled of the rain, somehow both dark and fresh. Tasted of it. He drew her clothes away, touching, tasting the newly exposed flesh, lingering when she shivered.

Scars crossed her, too. Scars that hadn’t been there when they’d first become lovers and all that lovely skin had been unmarred. Now she bore the marks of her work. Just as, he supposed, the scar left by a bullet had been a mark of his.

They were not what they had been, either of them. And yet she was still the only woman he’d ever wanted.

How many times had he dreamed of this, of loving Lil through the night? Of having her hands run over him, of having her body move with his.

She rolled, shifted to trail her lips over his chest, to bring them back to his and sink, sink, sink into the kiss while her hair fell around him in dark curtains. Beneath her hands, her lips, his heart tripped and stumbled. He rose up to wrap his arms around her, to rock and hold as his mouth found her breast.

Here pleasure was thick, movement slow, and every nerve alive.

She watched him as she took him into her, watched as her breath caught, then shuddered out again. Her lips came to his, trembling in the kiss. Then her body bowed, her eyes drifted shut.

She rode, gently, gently, drawing out every drop of pleasure. Slow and silky, so the beauty of it had tears rising in her throat. Even as her body released, her heart filled.

She let her head rest on his shoulder as she drifted down again. He turned his face into the side of her throat. “Lil,” he said. “God, Lil.”

“Don’t say anything. Please don’t.” If he did, she might say too much. She had no defenses now. She eased back to touch his cheek. “Talk’s for daylight,” she repeated.

“All right. There’ll be daylight soon enough.”

He lay down with her, drew her close. “I need to leave before dawn,” he told her. “But I’ll be back. We need to have some alone time, Lil. Uninterrupted time.”

“There’s so much going on. I can’t think straight.”

“Not true. You think straighter than anyone I know.”

Not about you, she admitted silently. Never about you. “The rain’s slowing down. Tomorrow’s supposed to be clear. We’ll work things out tomorrow. In the daylight.”

But the daylight brought death.

20

Gull found Jim Tyler. It was more luck than skill that brought him, his brother Jesse, and one of the greener deputies to the bend of the swollen waters of Spearfish Creek. They were walking their horses through the mud on a morning hazed with fog like a window steamed from a shower. The water, churning from the rain and snowmelt, beat like a drum, and above its rush thick tendrils of mist wound in long gray ribbons.

They were well off the logical route Tyler would have taken to the summit of Crow Peak and back to the trailhead. But the search had spread out through the tree-covered slopes of the canyon, with small groups combing the rocky high ground and the brown, deadwood shale of the low.

Gull hadn’t expected to find anything, and felt a little guilty about enjoying the meandering ride. Spring was beginning to show her skirts, and the rain teased out the green he loved in the hills. A jay shot—a blue bullet through the mists—while the chickadees chattered like children in a playground.

Rain had stirred up the waters, enlivened them, but there were still places the creek was as clear as gin in a short glass.

He hoped he got himself a tour group soon who wanted to fish so he could spend some time reeling in trout. Gull figured he had the best job in the whole damn world.

“That man got himself all the way over here from the marked trail, he’s got no more sense of direction than a blind woodpecker,” Jesse said. “Wasting our time.”

Gull glanced over at his brother. “Nice day to waste it. Besides, could be he got turned around in the storm, in the dark. Zig insteada zag, and he kept going the wrong way, he might’ve come this far off.”

“Maybe if the idiot’d find a rock and sit still somebody’d find his sorry ass.” Jesse shifted in the saddle. He spent a lot more time shoeing horses than riding them, and his sorry ass was sore. “I can’t take much more time riding around looking for somebody hasn’t got the sense to get found.”

The deputy, Cy Fletcher—the baby brother of the girl who owned the first pair of breasts Gull had ever got his hands on—scratched his belly. “I say we follow the creek another little while, then we’ll circle back around.”

“Fine by me.” Gull agreed.

“Can’t see shit on a stick in this fog,” Jesse complained.

“Sun’ll burn it off.” Gull shrugged. “It’s breaking through here and there already. What the hell better you got to do, Jesse?”

“Got a living to earn, don’t I? I don’t got some lazy-ass job where I ride around with numbnut tourists all damn day.”

It was a bone of contention between the brothers, and they poked each other about it as the sun strengthened and the fog thinned. As they approached one of the little falls, the drop and tumble of water made shouting insults at his brother over the noise too much trouble.

Gull settled down to enjoy the ride again, and thought about the whitewater outfits who’d start gearing up soon. Weather might turn again, he thought, more snow was every bit as likely as daffodils, but people sure did like to strap themselves into rubber rafts and shoot down the creek.

He didn’t get the appeal.

Riding now, or fishing, that made sense. If he could find a woman who appreciated both, and had a nice pair on her, he’d marry her in a New York minute.

He took a deep, satisfied breath of the fresh and warming air, and grinned happily as a trout leaped. It flashed, shiny as the good silver his ma used for Christmas dinner, then plopped back into the busy water.

His eye followed the ripples all the way to the foaming white of the falls. He squinted, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“I think there’s something down there, down in the falls there.”

“I don’t see dick.”

“You don’t see dick doesn’t mean I don’t.” Ignoring his brother, Gull guided his mount closer to the bank.

“You end up in that water, I ain’t coming in after you.”

It was probably just a rock, Gull thought, and then he’d feel like a numbnut and have to suffer Jesse’s ragging for the rest of the ride. But it didn’t look like a rock. It looked like the front half of a boot.

“I think that’s a boot. You see that, Cy?”

“I can’t tell.” Cy peered with eyes shaded by his hat and not especially interested. “Probably a rock.”

“I think it’s a boot.”

“Alert the freaking media,” Jesse proclaimed, boosting up a little to rub at his worn-out ass. “Some asshole camper lost a boot in Spearfish Creek.”

“If some asshole camper lost a boot in the creek, why’s it just there? How come it’s not floating off, pushed along by the falls? Asshole,” Gull muttered as he dug out his binoculars.

“’Cause it’s a freaking rock. Or it’s some asshole’s boot that’s stuck on a freaking rock. Hell with this. I gotta piss.”

As he stared through the glasses, Gull’s face went pale as wax. “Oh, Jesus. Mother of God. I think there’s somebody in that boot. Holy shit, Jess. I can see something under the water.”

“Oh, bullshit, Gull.”

Gull lowered the glasses, stared at his brother. “Do I look like I’m bullshitting?”

Studying his brother’s face, Jesse set his teeth. “I guess we’d better get a closer look.”

They tethered the horses.

Gull looked at the deputy—the scrawny build of him—and wished he didn’t feel obliged. “I’m the best swimmer here. I’ll go.”

The breath Cy let out held both resignation and nerves. “It’s my job.”

“Might be your job,” Jesse said, as he got his rope, “but Gull swims like a damn otter. Water’s pretty rough, so we’re going to get you secure. You’re an asshole, Gull, but you’re my brother and I’m not going to watch you drown.”

Fighting off nerves, Gull stripped down to his jockeys, let his brother secure the rope around his waist. “I bet that water’s pretty fucking cold.”

“You’re the one who had to go see something.”

Since he couldn’t argue with that one, Gull eased over the bank, picked his way over the rocks and shale, and stared at the fast water. He glanced back, reassured himself that his brother had the rope secured.

He went in. “Pretty fucking cold!” he shouted. “Give me some slack.”

He swam against the fast water, imagined his toes going blue and just falling off. Even with the rope, he banged against the rocks, but pushed off them again.

He went under, pushing, pushing against the current, and in that gin-clear water, he saw he’d been right. Somebody was in the boots.

He surfaced again, choking, flailing. “Pull me back. Oh, holy bleeding Christ, pull me back.”

Panic buzzed in his head, nausea churned in his belly. Slapping and clawing at the water, swallowing it, choking it out again, he relied on his brother to get him back to the bank.

He crawled onto a rock, heaved up water and his breakfast until he could only lie panting. “I saw him. I saw him. Oh, God, the fish’ve been at him. At his face.”

“Call it in, Cy. Call it in.” Jesse slid and slipped his way down to wrap a saddle blanket over his brother.

WORD SPREAD AS word did. Coop heard about Gull’s discovery from three sources, with varying details, before Willy hunted him down at the stables.

“You’d’ve heard.”

“Yeah. I’m going by to check up on Gull.”

Willy nodded. His voice was still rough, but he was feeling better. “He’s pretty shaken up. I’m going over to his place, get a formal statement down if you want to come along. The fact is, Coop, I’d appreciate if you did. Not just because he works for you. I’ve worked killings before, but nothing like this. We’re going to have a lot of fingers in this pie. I’d like to have yours—unofficially.”

“I’ll follow you over. Did you notify Tyler’s wife?”

Willy’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. Worst part of it. I guess you did your share of notifications back east.”

“Worst part of it,” Coop agreed. “I’ve heard different versions. Do you have the cause of death?”

“Coroner has to give us that. He’d been in the water awhile—you know what happens. But it wasn’t a fall, and it wasn’t the damn fish that slit his throat. It wasn’t either that weighed the body down. Flooding hadn’t stirred it up, and Gull didn’t have eyes like a damn hawk, God knows when we’d’ve found him.”

“What did he use?”

“Nylon rope, rocks. Thing is, the way it was situated, it looked to me like the bastard had to get in the water to do it. Sick son of a bitch. Took his wallet, watch, pack, jacket, shirt. Left him with his pants and his boots.”

“Must’ve been the wrong size. He’d have taken them otherwise. No point in wasting anything.”

Gull had a little place on the other side of town, over a bar and grill. The narrow apartment smelled like him—horses and leather—and was furnished like a college dorm. With castoffs from his parents, his brother, and anyone else who wanted to upgrade a chair or table.

Jesse, despite his bitching about having to earn a living, answered the door. He hadn’t been ten feet from his brother since he’d come out of Spearfish Creek.

“He’s still a little shaky. I was thinking I’d haul him over to our ma, have her pat his head awhile.”

“That might be just the thing,” Willy said. “I’m going to get his statement now. I got yours, but could be you’ll think of more.”

“We got coffee on. He’s been sucking on that Mountain Dew of his. Christ knows how he chokes that down, but that’s what we’ve got.”

“Wouldn’t say no to coffee.” Willy crossed over to where Gull sat on a saggy plaid couch, his head in his hands.

“I still see it in my head. Can’t get it out.”

“You did a hard thing today, Gull. You did the right thing.”

“Can’t help wishing somebody else’d seen that damn boot poking out of the water.” He lifted his head, looked at Coop. “Hey, boss. I was going to come by, but . . .”

“Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you tell Willy everything. Just say it straight through. You’ll feel steadier after.”

“I told you,” he said to Willy. “And the rangers, too.” He blew out a breath, rubbed his face. “Okay. We were following the creek,” he began.

Coop kept quiet, letting Willy ask the questions when they needed to be asked. He drank cowboy coffee while Gull purged himself of the details.

“You know how clear that water is. Even after the storm, it’s good and clear. I went under, because I couldn’t get a good look with the way the falls were beating down, foaming up. I got a good look then. His one leg had come up, you know. I guess the rain, the churning, worked it up. He didn’t have a shirt on, just his pants and his boots. And the fish had been at him. His face . . .”

Gull’s eyes watered up as he looked back at Coop. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not like the movies. It’s not like anything else. I couldn’t even say, for certain, it was him—the one we were looking for. Not from the picture we had. Because of the fish. I came up, but I swallowed a bunch of water. I guess I screamed like a girl under there and took a bunch in. I couldn’t get my legs to move. Jesse and Cy had to pull me in with the rope.”

He gave his brother a weak smile. “I got sick as two dogs—maybe not as sick as you did on a chaw, boss, but pretty damn sick. I guess I was pitiful enough Jesse didn’t even rag me about it.”

“I wanted to turn around,” Jesse said. “Bitching and complaining. I said how that guy, the one Gull found dead, was an asshole. I’m sorry for it.”

Outside, Willy puffed out his cheeks. “There’s some distance between the trail and where Tyler ended up. A lot of area where he could’ve run into his killer.”

“Do you think he got that far off the trail?”

“No, I don’t. Not on his own if that’s your meaning. Some, sure, but he had a map, he had his phone. I think he was driven that far, that’s what I think.”

“I’d agree with you. He didn’t want the body found too soon, and he didn’t want it found near his own territory. Drive the quarry away from your . . . habitat,” he said, thinking of Lil. “Do the kill, the disposal, then go back to your own area.”

“It would’ve taken time. Hours probably. The bastard got lucky with the rain.”

“He can’t stay lucky.”

“Right now, we’re looking for an unidentified subject. We can’t tie Tyler’s murder to what’s happened at Lil’s, or with the other murders you dug up. What I’m going to do is get Ethan Howe’s picture out, as a Person of Interest. My boy Cy kept that scene preserved as best he could. He’s green as a leaf of iceberg, but he’s not stupid. We got pictures, and I don’t think you’ll squawk if I happen to slip you copies.”

“I won’t.”

“Criminal Investigation Division’s combing that scene now. They’re not stupid either. If that bastard dropped so much as a toothpick, they’ll find it. When we get a ballpark on the time of death, that’ll help. We can do a couple of reconstruct scenarios. I’ll listen to any thoughts you’ve got on it. I’m damned if somebody’s going to get away with terrorizing one of my friends, and killing tourists.”

“Then I’ll give you a couple now. He’s holed up. He’s got a place, probably more than one, but one where he keeps the bulk of his supplies. He won’t have much. He needs to travel light and often. When he needs something, or wants something, he steals it. Campers, vacation homes, empty houses. We know he’s got at least one gun, so he needs ammo. He hunts for food, or pilfers campsites. And I think he keeps his ear to the ground. He’s going to find out you found the body. The sensible thing to do would be to pull up stakes, head over into Wyoming, get lost for a while. But I don’t think he’s going to do that. He’s got an agenda, and he isn’t finished.”

“We’ll be searching, ground and air. If he shows the tip of his dick, we’ll pull him in.”

“Have you had any reports of anything stolen from campers, hikers, houses, stores?”

“There’s always some. I’ll look over everything for the last six months. Maybe you’d let me deputize you, for the short term.”

“No. I don’t want a badge again.”

“One of these days, Coop, you and I are going to have to sit down over a beer so you can tell me why that is.”

“Maybe. I need to get to Lil’s.”

“You swing by, pick up those pictures. Badge or not, I’m going to use you.”

This time when Coop arrived at Lil’s he wore his 9mm under his jacket. He carted his laptop, the files Willy had given him, and three spare clips into her cabin. After some debate, he shoved one of the clips into his pocket and stowed the other two in one of her dresser drawers.

And with an eyebrow cocked, drew out a short, silky black gown with very sheer lace in interesting places.

He wondered why she always seemed to wear flannel.

He poked at something red and virtually transparent, shook his head, and dropped the black number back into the drawer.

In the kitchen he set up his laptop on her table, dug a couple of bottles of water out of her supply, then went out to take a look at the progress on her security system.

He spent a little time with the head installer out of Rapid City, and made his escape after the man figured out he knew something about security—and before he could get roped into helping with the wiring.

The good weather brought people out, he noted. He counted three groups making the rounds of the habitat. And the big yellow school bus indicated there were more on the property. Education center, he surmised.

She was keeping busy, and that was good. It was also too bad, or so she might think. But there were only a few hours of daylight left—and they had an appointment.

He hooked her horse trailer to his truck, loaded the horse he’d sold her onto it. He chose the younger and larger of the horses left in the stable, then secured that one in the trailer.

It amused him that no one questioned him. Either he was too familiar or too forbidding, but the interns went about their business—and from across the compound, Tansy sent him a friendly wave.

A single question to a passing staff member gave him Lil’s location as her office. He drove the trailer over to the cabin, then went in to get her.

“Coop.” Mary gave him an absent nod of greeting from her desk. “She’s on the phone, but I think she’s wrapping it up.” She glanced toward the office, lowered her voice. “Have you heard about the murder? Do you know if it’s true?”

“Yeah, it’s true.”

“That poor man. His poor wife. Come out here for a little holiday, and go home a widow. Every time I think people are basically good and decent, something happens that convinces me too many of them are no damn good.”

“You’re right, both ways.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Oh, your friend—the alarm system man—he’s been in touch.”

“I talked to him. He should have you fully secured in another two days.”

“Glad to hear it, and that’s a shame, too. That we have to go to all this trouble and expense because some people are no damn good.”

“It’s the right investment.”

“Well. There, she’s off the line. Better get in there before she calls somebody else.”

“Mary, do you have any problem with me taking Lil off for a couple hours?”

“Not if it’s somewhere that doesn’t involve work and worry, which is all she’s been doing the last few weeks.”

“That’s a deal.”

“Don’t let her say no,” Mary ordered, as he walked to Lil’s office.

She sat angled toward her monitor, fingers on her keyboard.

He wondered if she had any idea how pale she was, or how shadowed her eyes.

“I’ve got a line on a tiger.”

“Not a sentence you hear every day.”

“Boris is lonely. Strip joint in Sioux City used a Bengal as part of an act.”

“Did she strip?”

“Ha ha. No, they kept her caged, or chained. Finally got shut down for animal abuse. She’s been declawed and drugged, and God knows. We’re going to take her.”

“Good, go get her.”

“I’m working on having her brought to us. A lot of red tape to wind through. I’m pushing for donations. She’s made some media outlets, and I can use it to beef things up. I just need to—”

“Come with me.”

He watched her tense. “Is something wrong? Something else?”

“For the next hour or two, no. The tiger can wait. Everything can wait. We’ve got daylight.”

“Cooper, I’m working. There’s a busload of middle-schoolers in the ed center, a bunch of people roaming around hooking up alarms. Matt just finished sewing up a fawn that got clipped by a car, and I’m working on getting Delilah here by early next week.”

“I assume Delilah’s the tiger, not one of the dancers. I’ve got work of my own, Lil, and it’ll be here when we get back. Let’s go.”

“Where? God, Coop, some poor man was killed and dumped in the Spearfish. I can’t think about taking a walk with you and discussing . . . whatever.”

“We’re not walking. And I guess we do this the hard way.” He came around the desk, pulled her up out of the chair, and boosted her over his shoulder.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She gave his back a thump with her fist. “Cut it out. This is ridiculous. Don’t! Don’t you walk out of here with . . .”

He grabbed her hat on the way. “We’ll be a few hours, Mary.”

With her eyes laughing, Mary gave them a sober nod. “All right.”

“You okay to close up if we’re not back?”

“Not a problem.”

“Stop it. This is my place. You don’t tell my staff—Don’t you step outside this building. Cooper, you’re embarrassing both of us.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” He walked outside, continued toward the truck. “But you will be if you don’t sit where I put you, because I’ll just catch you and put you back again.”

“You’re just making me mad.”

“I can live with that.” He pulled open the passenger door, dumped her on the seat. “I mean it, Lil, I’ll just haul you back.” He reached across, hooked her seat belt, then dropped her hat in her lap. Ice-blue eyes met molten brown. “Stay where I put you.”

“Oh, I’ll stay. I’ll stay because we’re not having this out here. I’m not having more of a scene here.”

“Good enough.” He slammed the door, skirted the hood of the truck, then got behind the wheel. “We’re going riding. We’re not coming back until you’ve got some color back in your cheeks.” He glanced over. “I’m not talking pissed-off color.”

“Pissed-off is all you’re going to get.”

“We’ll see.” He headed down the road. “We’ll drive to Rimrock. We could consider that neutral ground.” And miles away from where Tyler’s body had been found.

“What’s the point of this?”

“The point is you need a break, and so do I. And Lil, we’ve put this off long enough.”

“I decide when I need a break. Damn it, Coop, I don’t know why you’d want to make me so mad. I’ve got enough going on without working in a fight with you—and we were fine. Just last night we were fine.”

“You were too worn-out to get into this last night. I’d rather have you mad than almost in tears with the idea of talking to me.”

“I’ve been talking to you plenty.” She leaned her head back, shut her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Cooper, a man is dead. Dead. And you’re pushing this? Talking about what? What’s over and done?”

“That’s right, a man’s dead. And the one who did it has you in the crosshairs. You need help, but you don’t trust me.”

With sharp, jerky movements, she plucked the hat off her lap, set it on her head. “That’s not true.”

“You trust me to help you protect your place. You trust me enough to sleep with me. But you don’t trust me down in the deep. We both know that.”

He parked at the campground. Together, in silence, they unloaded the horses. “We can take the lower loop from here. It’s shorter.”

“I don’t like being handled this way.”

“I don’t blame you. And I don’t care.”

She mounted, turned her horse toward the trailhead. “Maybe the women you got used to tolerate this kind of thing. I don’t. I won’t. You’ll get your two hours because you’re bigger and you’re stronger—and because I’m not having this out in front of my staff, my interns, my guests. Then that’s it, Cooper. That’s it between us.”

“You get some color in your cheeks, some worry out of your eyes, and we clear the air between us. After that, if you say that’s it, that’ll be it.” He opened the cattle gate for her to pass through, then closed it behind them.

“You can tell me everything you know about what happened to James Tyler. I can’t think about much else. I don’t know how you could expect me to.”

“Okay, we’ll get that out of the way.”

He laid it out for her, every detail he remembered, as they rode toward the rim of the canyon. He spoke of murder and death as the trail leveled out to wind through pines and quaking aspen where flickers swooped and darted among the trees.

“Is Gull all right?”

“He’s going to see Tyler, the way he found him, every time he closes his eyes for a while. He’ll lose sleep over it, have nightmares when he does sleep. Then it’ll pass.”

“Is that the way it was for you?”

“I saw Melinda Barrett for a long time. The first time I saw a body when I was in uniform, it was just as horrible. And then . . .” He shrugged.

“It becomes routine?”

“No. It becomes the job, but it’s never routine.”

“I still see her sometimes. Even before all this started up. I’d think it had gone away, then I’d wake up, cold and sweating, with her in my head.” Calmer, she turned to look at him, so their eyes met. “We shared a hard thing at an early age. We shared a lot of things. You’re wrong when you say I don’t trust you. And you’re wrong to think manhandling me is the way to get whatever it is you want.”

“You’re what I want, Lil. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Color did indeed rush into her face as she whipped her head toward him. “Go to hell.”

She kicked her horse into a trot.

PART THREE

SPIRIT

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

21

He thought: Shit. And let her take her distance. Maybe she’d blow off the steam of temper, maybe she wouldn’t, but temper was better than exhaustion. She needed to ride, he thought, needed to just breathe awhile. The air filled with the scents of sage and juniper, while overhead an eagle circled on the hunt. He heard what he thought was the drumming of a grouse from a thicket of buckbrush that looked like it wanted to open its tight buds and bloom.

Mad or not, he knew she’d take it all in and be better for it.

She might not look up and watch the eagle, but she knew it was there.

When she finally slowed, he caught up with her. No, he decided, she hadn’t blown off the steam. She rode on it every bit as much as she rode on Rocky.

“How can you say that to me?” she demanded. “All you’ve ever wanted? You left me. You broke my heart.”

“We’re remembering it differently, because I don’t remember anybody leaving anybody. And you sure didn’t act brokenhearted when we decided the long-distance deal wasn’t working.”

“When you decided. I came halfway to New York to see you, to be with you. I’d wanted to go all the way, to spend real time with you on your turf. In your place. But you wouldn’t have that.” Those dark eyes stabbed at him, lethal as knives. “I guess you figured it would be harder to dump me if I was sitting in your New York apartment.”

“Jesus Christ, Lil, I didn’t dump you.” They wounded him, those eyes, spilled blood she couldn’t see. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What the hell was it like, from your perspective? You told me you couldn’t keep doing it, that you needed to concentrate on your own life, your own career.”

“I said we couldn’t, we needed.”

“Oh, bullshit!” Rocky shied a bit, disturbed by the tone, the temper. She controlled him with no sign of effort or concern. “You had no right to speak for me or my feelings. Not then, not now.”

“You sure as hell didn’t say so at the time.” His horse danced, as uneasy as Rocky. Coop steadied him, and would have turned so he and Lil were face-to-face. But she trotted off. Again. Setting his teeth, Coop nudged his mount to follow. “You agreed with me,” he added, annoyed with the defensiveness in his tone once he’d caught up.

“What the hell was I supposed to do? Fling myself into your arms and beg you to stay with me, to love me?”

“Actually—”

“I drove all the way to that damn motel in Illinois, so excited. It felt like years since we’d seen each other, and I was worried you wouldn’t like my hair, or my outfit. Stupid things. And I was aching to see you. Literally aching. Even my damn toes hurt.”

“Lil—”

“And I knew the minute I saw you that something was wrong. You got there before I did—remember? I saw you crossing the parking lot, coming from that little diner.”

Her voice changed. The anger leaked out of it as misery pushed in. Where the anger wounded him, the misery simply destroyed.

He said nothing, let her finish. Though he could’ve told her yes, he remembered. He remembered crossing that pothole of a parking lot, remembered the first instant he became aware of her. He remembered the thrill, the need, the despair.

All of it.

“You didn’t see me, at first. And I knew. I tried to tell myself it was just nerves, seeing you again. It was just . . . you looked different. Tougher, harder.”

“I was different. We both were by then.”

“My feelings hadn’t changed, not like yours.”

“Wait a minute.” He reached out to snag her bridle. “Wait a minute.”

“We made love, almost the minute we closed the door of that motel room. And I knew you were going to end it. Do you think I couldn’t tell you’d pulled away, pulled back?”

“I pulled back? How many times had you? Why had it been so long since we’d seen each other? There was always a project, a field trip, a—”

“You’re blaming me?”

“There’s no blame,” he began, but she swung off her horse, stalked away.

Struggling for patience, he dismounted to tether both the horses. “You need to listen.”

“I loved you. I loved you. You were the one, the only one. I’d have done anything for you, for us.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

“Loving you was a problem?”

“That you’d have done anything. Lil, just—hold still, damn it.” He gripped her shoulders when she would have walked away from him again. “You knew what you wanted to do with your life. You knew what you wanted, and you were doing it. Top of your class, honors and opportunities. You came alive, Lil. You were exactly where you needed to be, doing exactly what you needed to do. I couldn’t be a part of that, and I sure as hell couldn’t get in the way of it.”

“Now you’re claiming you dumped me and ripped my heart out for my own good? Is that how you choose to look at it?”

“That’s how it was, how it is.”

“I never got over you, you bastard.” Anger and insult in every part of her—face, body, voice—she shoved at him. “You ruined me. You took something from me, and I could never get it back, never give it to anyone else. I hurt a good man, a very good man, because I couldn’t love him, because I couldn’t give him what he deserved to have and you’d thrown away. I tried. Jean-Paul was perfect for me, and I should’ve been able to make it work. But I couldn’t, because he wasn’t you. And he knew, he always knew. Now you want to stand there and tell me you left for my sake?”

“We were children, Lil. We were just kids.”

“I didn’t love you any less, or hurt any less, because I was nineteen.”

“You were going somewhere. You were making a mark. I needed to make mine. So yeah, I did it for you, and for me. I had nothing to give you.”

“Bullshit.” She started to wrench away, but he yanked her back.

“I had nothing. I was nothing. I was broke, living from paycheck to paycheck—if I was lucky. Living in a dump because it was all I could afford, and moonlighting when I could get the extra work. I didn’t get out here often because I didn’t have the money for the trip.”

“You said—”

“I lied. I said I was busy, or couldn’t get time off. Mostly true, since I was working two jobs if I could get the extra work, and angling for overtime when I could get it. But that wasn’t why I didn’t come back more than I did. I sold the bike because I couldn’t afford it. I sold blood to make rent some months.”

“For God’s sake, Coop, if things were that bad why didn’t you—”

“Tap my grandparents? Because they’d already given me a start, and I wasn’t going to take more money from them.”

“You could’ve come home. You—”

“Come back here a failure, with barely enough to pay for a bus ticket? I needed to make myself into something, and you should understand that. There should’ve been money, a cut from my trust, when I turned twenty-one. I needed it, to get a decent place to live, to have a breather so I could work on the job and make that mark. My father tied it up. He was so pissed that I’d gone against his decisions, his plan for me. I had some money, what my grandparents gave me—what was left of it—my savings. He got my accounts frozen.”

“How?”

“It’s what he does. He knows people, he knows the system. Add that to the fact I’d screwed up in college, tossing money around like it was confetti. That’s my fault, nobody else’s, but I was young, stupid, in debt, and he had me by the balls. He figured I’d fall in line.”

“Are you telling me your father cut you off financially, cut you off from even what was yours, because he wanted you to be a lawyer?”

“No.” Maybe she’d never understand. “He did it because he wanted control, because he wouldn’t—can’t—tolerate anyone defying that control.”

Since she was listening, Coop eased back. “Money’s a weapon, and he knows how to use it. He’d release some of the funds if I . . . well, he had a list of conditions, and it doesn’t matter now. I had to get a lawyer, and it took a lot of time and money. So even when I got what was mine, I owed a lot of it in legal fees. I couldn’t let you come to New York and see the way I was living back then. I needed to put everything I had into the job. I needed to make detective, to prove I was good enough. And, Lil, you were flying. Getting articles published, traveling, making the dean’s list. You were amazing.”

“You should’ve told me. I had a right to know what was going on.”

“And if I had? You’d have wanted me to come back, and maybe I would have. With nothing. I’d’ve hated it. And I’d have blamed you sooner or later. Or you’d have given it all up and come to New York. And we’d have hated each other sooner. If I’d told you, Lil, if I’d ask you to stick with me until I made something, there wouldn’t be a Chance Wildlife Refuge. You wouldn’t be who you are now. Neither would I.”

“You made all the decisions.”

“I’ll cop to that. You agreed with them at the time.”

“I said I did because all I had left was pride.”

“Then you should understand that’s all I had.”

“You had me.”

He wanted to touch her, just his fingertips on her face, something to smooth away the hurt in her eyes. But it wasn’t the way.

“I needed to be someone, for myself. I needed something to be proud of. I spent the first twenty years of my life wanting my father to love me, to be proud of me. Just like my mother, I guess. He’s got a way of making you want that approval, then withholding it so you want it more, and feel . . . less, because it never really comes. You don’t know what that’s like.”

“No, I don’t.” She saw, so clearly, the boy she’d first met. Those eyes, those sad and mad eyes.

“I never knew what it was like to have someone care about me, for me, feel pride in me for anything until I came out here that summer to stay with my grandparents. After that, in some ways, it was even more important to get it from my own parents. From my father most of all. But I was never going to get it.”

He shrugged that off, something over, something no longer important. “Realizing that changed things. Changed me. Maybe I did get harder, Lil, but I started going after what I wanted, not what he wanted. I was a good cop, and that mattered. When I couldn’t be a cop anymore, I built up a business, and I was a good investigator. It was never about the money, though let me tell you it’s damn, fucking hard not to have any, to be afraid you won’t make the rent the second month running.”

She stared out over the canyon where the rocks rose in silent power toward the deepening blue of the sky. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand any of this?”

“I didn’t understand half of it, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I loved you, Lil. I’ve loved you every day of my life since I was eleven years old.” He reached in his pocket, drew out the coin she’d given him at the end of their first summer. “I’ve carried you with me, every day of my life. But there was a time I didn’t think I deserved you. You can blame me for that, but the fact is we both had to make our way. We wouldn’t have made it if we hadn’t let each other go.”

“You don’t know that. And you didn’t have the right to decide for me.”

“I decided for me.”

“And you can come back now, a decade later, when you’re ready? I’m supposed to go along?”

“I thought you were happy—and believe me it sliced up a part of me when I’d think about you going on, doing what you wanted to do, without me. Every time I’d hear about you, it was about the name you were making for yourself, how you were building the refuge, or off to Africa or Alaska. The few times I saw you, you were always busy. Heading off somewhere.”

“Because I couldn’t stand being around you. It hurt. Goddamn it.”

“You were engaged.”

“I was never engaged. People assumed we were engaged. I lived with Jean-Paul, and we traveled together sometimes if our work coincided. I wanted to make a life. I wanted a family. But I couldn’t make it work. Not with him, not with anyone.”

“If it makes you feel any better, anytime I heard about him, or about you seeing someone else, it killed me. I had a lot of miserable nights and days, hours, years, wishing I hadn’t done what I thought—still think—was the right thing. I figured you’d moved on, and half the time I hated you for it.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, want me to do.”

“Neither do I. But I’m saying to you I know who I am now, what I am, and I’m okay with it. I did what I needed to do, and now? I’m doing what I want to do. I’m going to give my grandparents the best I have, because that’s what they always gave me. I’m going to give you the best I have, because I’m not letting you go again.”

“You don’t have me, Coop.”

“Then I’ll fix that until I do. If for now all I can do is help you, keep you safe, sleep with you, and make sure you know I’m not going anywhere, that’s okay. Sooner or later you’re going to be mine again.”

“We’re not who we were.”

“We’re more than we were. And who we are, Lil? Still fits.”

“It’s not all your decision this time.”

“You still love me.”

“Yes, I do.” She faced him again, studied him with eyes that were both clear and unfathomable. “And I’ve lived a long time knowing love isn’t enough. You hurt me, more than anyone else ever has, more than anyone else ever could. Knowing why? I’m not sure if it makes it better or worse. That’s not an easy fix.”

“I’m not looking for easy. I came out here because my grandparents needed me. And I was ready to let go. I expected to find you the next thing to married. I told myself I’d have to suck that up. I’d had my chance. The way I look at it, Lil, you had yours, too. Take your time if you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”

“So you keep saying.” She stepped back, started to turn toward the horses, but he took her arm, swung her back.

“I guess I’ll have to, until you believe me. Here’s one for you, Lil. Do you know how many ways love can hit you? So it makes you happy, or miserable? It makes you sick in the belly or hurt in the heart. It makes everything brighter and sharper, or blurs all the edges. It makes you feel like a king or a fool. Every way love can hit, it’s hit me when it comes to you.”

He drew her in to take her mouth, to give in to that endless ache while the wind swept the air with the perfume of sage.

“Loving you made a man out of me,” he said when he let her go. “It’s the man who came back for you.”

“You still make my knees weak, and I still want your hands on me. But that’s all I’m sure of.”

“That’s a start.”

“I have to get back.”

“You’ve got color in your cheeks, and you don’t look so tired now.”

“Well, yippee. That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off at the way you got me out here.” She mounted her horse. “I’m pissed off at you in so many ways right now, on so many levels.”

He studied her face as he swung into the saddle. “We never fought all that much the first time around. Too young and horny.”

“No, we didn’t fight so much because you weren’t such an asshole.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“You’re probably right. You were probably just as much of an asshole back then.”

“You liked flowers. You always liked it when we’d go hiking or riding and the wildflowers were blooming. I’ll have to get you some flowers.”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll make everything just fine.” Her tone was as brittle as juniper in a drought. “I’m not one of your city women who can be bought off with a bunch of fancy roses.”

“You don’t know anything about my city women. Which probably sticks in your craw.”

“Why should it? I’ve had plenty of men . . . bring me flowers since you.”

“Okay, point for you on that.”

“This isn’t a game, or a joke, or a competition.”

“No.” But she was talking to him, and he considered that a check in the win column. “At this point, I have to believe it’s just destiny. I worked pretty hard on my life without you. And here I am, right back where I started.”

She said nothing while their horses waded through the high grass and back to the trailhead.

He waited until they’d loaded the horses, secured the tailgate. Behind the wheel, he started the engine and glanced at her profile. “I brought some of my things over. I’m going to be staying there, at least until they have Howe in custody. I’m going to bring some other things over tomorrow. I need a drawer, some closet space.”

“You can have a drawer and the closet space. Just don’t assume it means anything but that I’m willing to make it convenient for you, as I’m grateful for your help.”

“And you like the sex.”

“And I like the sex,” she said, very coolly.

“I’ll need to do some work while I’m staying at the cabin. If using the kitchen table doesn’t work for you, I need somewhere else to set up my laptop.”

“You can use the living room.”

“All right.”

“Are you not mentioning how James Tyler was killed because you think I can’t handle it?”

“There were other things I wanted to talk about.”

“I’m not fragile.”

“No, but it’s wearing on you. They’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but from what Willy said, his throat was slit. He was stripped down to his pants and boots—so I figure his killer thought he could use the shirt and jacket, the cap he’d been wearing. His watch, his wallet. He probably destroyed the cell phone, or Tyler lost it along the way. The killer must have had the cord he used on him. He weighed the body down with rocks. Went to some time and trouble to get it in the river, in that spot, secure it. But the rain shifted things enough to bring it up to the point Gull spotted it.”

“He’s probably disposed of other bodies with more luck.”

“Yeah, that would be my take.”

“So if he’s the one who killed Molly Pickens, he wasn’t dead or in prison like you thought, or not in prison for the length of time you thought. He’s just been mixing it up. Leaving some bodies for the animals, bodies that can be found or have been found. Hiding others.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

She nodded slowly, the way he knew she did when she was reasoning something out. “And killers who do this, serial types, who troll and travel, who know how to hide and blend, who have some measure of control, they aren’t always caught.”

“You’ve been reading up.”

“It’s what I do when I need information. They end up with creative names—and maybe a feature film. Zodiac, Green River. Still, they usually need to taunt the police, or use the media. He doesn’t.”

“It’s not about glory or acknowledgment. It’s about the work. It’s personal, and he gets his satisfaction from that. Every kill is proof he’s better than the victim. Better than his father. He’s proving something. I know what that’s like.”

“Did you become a cop to be a hero, Coop?”

His lips curved. “In the beginning? Yeah, probably. I was completely out of place during my short stint in college. Not just trying to find my place, but out of it. The only things I learned about the law were—I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but the law itself was fascinating. So, law enforcement.”

“Fighting crime in the urban canyons.”

“I loved New York. Still do,” he said easily. “And sure, I imagined I’d be hunting down bad guys, protecting the populace. I found out, fast, I’d be standing around a lot, sitting around, knocking on doors and doing paperwork. There’s so much tedium in proportion to moments of absolute terror. I learned to be patient. I learned how to wait, and what it means to protect and serve. Then on 9/11, everything shifted.”

She reached out, laid a hand over his, lightly, briefly. But it was all there in the touch. Comfort, sympathy, understanding. “We were all terrified until we knew you were safe.”

“I wasn’t on the roll that day. By the time I got down there, the second tower was gone. You just did what you had to, what you could.”

“I was in class when we heard a plane had hit one of the towers. Nobody knew, not at first, what was happening. And then . . . everything stopped. There was nothing else but that.”

He shook his head, because if he let them, the pictures would form in his mind again, of what he’d seen and done, and hadn’t been able to do.

“I knew some of the cops who went in, some of the firefighters. People I’d worked with, or hung out with, played ball with. Gone. After that, I never thought I’d leave the job. It was like a mission then. My people, my city. But when Dory was killed, it switched off for me. Just like somebody cut the wire. I couldn’t do it anymore. Losing that was the worst thing in my life next to losing you.”

“You could’ve transferred to another place.”

“That’s what I did, in my own way. I needed to build something back, I guess. To make something out of the death and the grief. I don’t know, Lil. I did what came next. It worked for me.”

“You’d still be there if Sam hadn’t had the accident.”

“I don’t know. The city came back, and so did I. I was done there, and I’d already put plans in place to come back before the accident.”

“Before?”

“Yeah. I wanted the quiet.”

“Considering what’s happened, you haven’t gotten what you wanted.”

He looked over at her. “Not yet.”

It was nearing dark by the time he turned onto her road. Long shadows at the end of a long day.

“I’m going to help with the feeding,” she said. “Then I have some work to finish up.”

“I’ve got some of my own.” He reached over before she could open the door, and cupped the back of her neck in his hand. “I could say I’m sorry, but I’m not, because here you are. I could tell you I’ll never hurt you again, but I will. What I can tell you is I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s not enough, but right now it’s what I’ve got.”

“And I’ll tell you I need time to think, time to settle, and time to figure out what it is I want this time.”

“I’ve got time. I have to run into town. Do you need any supplies?”

“No, we’re good.”

“I’ll be back in an hour.” He tugged her over, pressed his mouth to hers.

MAYBE WORK WAS a crutch, Lil admitted. Something to lean on, to help her limp along after a hard knock. It still had to be done. So she hauled food while the animals chorused. She watched Boris pounce on his dinner, rip at it. And thought, If things go well, he’ll have company within the week.

Another notch in the refuge’s belt, true enough, she mused. But more important, to her, another abused animal given sanctuary, freedom—as far as she could manage—and care.

“So how was your adventure?”

From the smile on Tansy’s face, Lil concluded her friend had wit nessed her humiliating exit earlier. And those who hadn’t actually seen it had certainly heard of it.

She owed Coop for that one.

“Men are idiots.”

“Often true, but we love them for it.”

“He decided to do the caveman routine so he could tell me why he stabbed me in the heart back in the day. Manly pride and for my own good, and other bullshit reasons, which—natch—I was too young and starry-eyed to consider or understand at the time. Better to rip me to bloody pieces than to actually talk to me, right? Stupid bastard man.”

“Wow.”

“Did he ever consider what it did to me? How much it hurt? That I thought I wasn’t enough for him, that he’d found someone else? That I’ve spent damn near half of my life trying to get the hell over him. And now he’s back and, gee, Lil, it was all for you. I’m supposed to just jump and cheer, and be what, grateful?”

“I couldn’t say. And probably shouldn’t if I could.”

“He’s always loved me. Always will love me, and tra-la-la. So he hauls me off like I’m some package he can drop off and pick up on his whim, again for my own good, and dumps all this in my lap. If I were less civilized, I’d kick his ass for it.”

“You don’t look very civilized right at the moment.”

She heaved out a breath. “Well, I am, so I can’t. Plus, it would be sinking to his Neanderthal level. I’m a scientist. I have a doctorate. And you know what?”

“What, Dr. Chance?”

“Shut up. I was dealing with all this, with him, with me, with it before this. Now I don’t know what the hell to think.”

“He told you he loves you.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is? You love him. You told me when you and Jean-Paul called it a day it was because you were still in love with Coop.”

“He hurt me, Tansy. He ripped me to pieces, again, just by telling me why he did it in the first place. And he doesn’t see that. He doesn’t get that.”

Tansy put her arm around Lil, drew her against her side. “I do, honey. I really do.”

“I can even understand, intellectually. If I step back and look at everything he said, objectively, I can nod sagely. Yes, of course, that’s reasonable on this particular level. But I’m not objective. I can’t be. I don’t care about reasonable. I was so pitifully in love.”

“You don’t have to care about reasonable. You only have to care about how you feel. And if you love him, you’ll forgive him, after he suffers.”

“He should suffer,” Lil stated. “I don’t want to be fair and forgiving.”

“Hell no. Why don’t we go inside? I can make Men Suck margaritas. I can stay tonight, thereby avoiding my own idiot man. We’ll get drunk and plot female world domination.”

“That sounds so good. I could really use all of that. But he’s coming back. Until we’re secure here, that’s the way it’s going to be. I need to deal with it, somehow. Plus, I can’t get drunk on Men Suck margaritas—though you do make the champions—because I have to work. I have to work because some asshole hauled me off for two hours.”

She turned, wrapped her arms around Tansy. “God, God, there’s a man dead, and his wife must be destroyed. And I’m standing here, feeling sorry for myself.”

“You can’t change what happened. None of it’s your fault.”

“I can think that, intellectually again. Not my fault, not my responsibility. But Tansy, my gut says differently. James Tyler was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it was the wrong place and time because this maniac’s focused on me. Not my fault, no. But.”

“When you think like that, he scores points.” Firmly, Tansy drew her away so their eyes met. “It’s terrorism. It’s psychological warfare. He’s pushing at you. For him, Tyler wasn’t any different than that cougar or that wolf. Just another animal to be bagged and used to get to you. Don’t let him get to you.”

“I know you’re right.” She wanted to say “but” again. Instead, she gave Tansy another hug. “You’re awfully good for me. Even margarita-free.”

“We’re the smart girls.”

“We are. Go on home, and deal with your own idiot man.”

“I guess I have to.”

Lil checked on the injured fawn—treated, fed, and secured in an area of the petting zoo. If she healed clean, they’d release her to the wild. If not . . . well, she’d have sanctuary here.

Time would tell.

She spent another hour in her office. She heard trucks leaving, trucks coming. Staff heading home, volunteer guards coming. Soon, she thought, the security system would be finished and she could stop imposing on neighbors and friends. Now she could only be grateful for them.

She went out, and spotted Gull immediately. “Gull, nobody expected you to come here tonight.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. It’s better to be doing something.” He might’ve looked a little peaked yet, but his eyes were healthy enough to be lethal. “I half hope that son of a bitch comes around here tonight.”

“I know it’s terrible, but because of you, his wife knows. She’s not wondering anymore. If you hadn’t found him, it would be worse. She’d still not know.”

“Willy told me her boys came.” His lips pressed together as he looked off and away. “Her sons came, so she’s not alone.”

“That’s good. She shouldn’t be alone.” She gave his arm a rub before she walked on.

When she stepped inside the cabin, Coop was on the couch, his laptop on the coffee table. He turned something over, casually—too casually—as she stepped in.

A photograph, she thought, from the brief glimpse.

“I can make a sandwich,” she said. “That’s about all I have time for. I want to go take my shift outside.”

“I picked up a pizza in town. It’s in the oven on warm.”

“Okay. That works, too.”

“I’ll finish up here. We’ll grab a slice together, and take first shift.”

“What are you working on?”

“Couple of things.”

Annoyed with the nonresponse, she simply walked back to the kitchen.

There, on her table was a vase filled with yellow tulips. Because they made her eyes sting and her heart soften, she turned away to get plates down. She heard him come in as she dealt with the pizza.

“The flowers are pretty, thank you. They don’t fix things.”

“Pretty’s good enough.” He’d had to nag the woman who owned the flower shop to open back up and sell them to him. But pretty was good enough. “Do you want a beer?”

“No, I’ll stick with water.” She turned with two plates and nearly rammed him. “What?”

“We could take a break tomorrow. I could take you out to dinner, maybe a movie.”

“Dates won’t fix things either. And I don’t feel right being away too long. Not now.”

“Okay. Once the system’s up and running, you can make dinner, and I’ll rent a movie.”

He took the plates, carried them to the table.

“Doesn’t it matter how mad I am at you?”

“No. Or it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that I love you. I’ve waited this long. I can wait until you stop being mad at me.”

“It might be a really long wait.”

“Well.” He sat, picked up a slice. “Like I keep saying. I’m not going anywhere.”

She sat down, picked up a slice of her own. “I’m still mad—plenty—but I’m too hungry to bother about it right now.”

He smiled. “It’s good pizza.”

It was, she thought.

And, damn it, the tulips really were pretty.

22

In his cave, deep in the hills, he studied his take. He imagined the watch—decent, high middle-range—had been a birthday or Christmas present. He liked to imagine good old Jim opening it, expressing his pleasure and surprise, giving his wife—also very decent if she looked like the photo in the wallet—a thank-you kiss.

Six months, maybe a year down the road, he could pawn it if he needed some cash. Right now, thanks to good old Jim, he was flush with the $122.86 he’d taken out of Jim’s pockets.

He’d also scored a Swiss Army knife—you could never have too many—a hotel key card, a half pack of Big Red gum, and a Canon Pow ershot digital camera.

He spent some time figuring out how to work it, then scrolling through the pictures Jim had taken that day. Mostly scenery, with a few shots of Deadwood, and a couple of the not-shabby Mrs. Jim.

He shut it off to preserve the battery, though Jim had considerately brought along a spare in his pack.

It was a good-quality pack, and brand-spanking-new. That would be handy down the road. Then there were the trail snacks, extra water, first-aid kit. He imagined Jim reading a hiking guide, making himself a checklist for what he should take on a day trip. Matches, bandages and gauze, Tylenol, a little notebook, a whistle, a trail map, and the hiking guide, of course.

None of that had done Jim any good, because he was an amateur. An intruder.

He’d been meat.

Spry though, he mused as he munched on some of Jim’s trail mix. The fucker could run. Still, it had been so easy to herd the bastard along, to push him farther off the trail, to move him toward the river.

Good times.

He’d gotten a good shirt and a new jacket out of the match, too. A shame about the boots. The bastard had good Timberlands. And really small feet.

All in all, it had been a good hunt. He’d give Jim six out of ten. And the take was prime.

He’d considered the rain a bonus. No way the half-assed cops and rangers, the hayseed local yokels, would find any sign of good old Jim with the rain washing out the tracks.

He could have, he and those who’d come before him. Those who owned the holy ground.

It had saved him the time and trouble of backtracking, brushing out tracks, laying false trails. Not that he minded doing all that. It was part of the job, after all, and carried some satisfaction.

But when Nature offered you a gift, you took it with thanks.

The problem was, sometimes the gift was a booby prize.

Without the rain, the flooding, old Jim would’ve stayed where he’d been put—and for a good long while, too. He hadn’t made a mistake there, no sir. Mistakes could cost you your life in the wild. That’s why the old man had beat him bloody whenever he’d made one. He hadn’t made a mistake. He’d loaded Jim down good and proper and tied him down strong under those falls. He’d taken his time. (Maybe not enough time, he thought in the secret part of his mind. Maybe he’d hurried it up because the hunt made him hungry. Maybe . . .)

He pushed those thoughts away. He didn’t make mistakes.

So they’d found him.

He frowned at the handset he’d stolen weeks before. He’d heard them on their radios, scattered all over hell and back. He’d gotten a good laugh out of it, too.

Until that asshole got lucky.

Gull Nodock. Maybe he’d look up asshole Gull one of these days. He wouldn’t be so damn lucky then.

But that would have to wait, unless the opportunity jumped up and bit him. It was thinking time now.

What he should likely do was pack it up, move on. Cross over into Wyoming and set up for a few weeks. Let things cool off. Asshole cops would take a dead tourist more seriously than a dead wolf or cat.

To his mind the wolf and the cat were worth a hell of a lot more than some fucker from St. Paul. The wolf, now, that had been a fair hunt. But the cat, he had had some bad moments over that cougar. Bad dreams about the cougar’s spirit coming back and hunting him.

He’d just wanted to know what it was like, that’s all, to kill something wild and free while it was caged up. He hadn’t known it would feel so bad, or the spirit of the cat would haunt him.

Hunt him. In the dreams, under a full moon, it stalked him, and screamed as it leaped for his throat.

In dreams the spirit of the cougar he’d killed stared at him with cold eyes that left him shaking with sweat and waking with his heart pounding.

Like a baby, his father would’ve said. Like a girl. Sniveling and shaking and afraid of the dark.

Didn’t matter, over and done, he reminded himself. And he’d given pretty Lil a good scare, hadn’t he? Have to weigh the good against the bad there.

They’d be looking for him hard now, over good old Jim. It’d be prudent—like his old man used to say—it’d be prudent to put some miles between himself and the hunting ground.

He could come back for Lil, for their contest, a month from now, six months if the heat stayed on. Leave those cops and rangers chasing their tails.

The trouble was, he wouldn’t be around to see it. No fun in that, no kick, no punch.

No point.

If he stayed, he’d feel them hunting him. Maybe he’d hunt them, too. Take a couple out along the way. Now, that would be worth the risk. And it was the risk that got the blood moving, wasn’t it?

It was the risk that proved you weren’t a baby, you weren’t a girl. You weren’t afraid of any goddamn thing. The risk, the hunt, the kill, they proved you were a man.

He didn’t want to wait six months for Lil. He’d waited so long already.

He’d stay. This was his land now, as it was the land of his ancestors. No one would run him off it. He’d take his stand here. If he couldn’t beat a bunch of uniforms, he wasn’t worthy of the contest.

Here was his destiny, and whether she knew it or not, he was Lil’s.

WORK IN THE compound moved efficiently, even more so to Lil’s eye when Brad Dromburg arrived. He cracked no whips, pointed no fingers, but everything seemed to move faster when he was on-site.

Lil’s only problem with the nearly completed system was the learning curve.

“You’ll have some false alarms,” Brad told her as he walked the paths with her. “My advice would be to limit access to the controls to your head staff, at least for now. The fewer people have your codes, know the routine, the less margin for error.”

“We’ll be fully operational by the end of the day?”

“Should be.”

“That’s fast work. Faster, I know, than usual—and smoother because you came out to oversee. It’s a lot, Brad. I’m grateful.”

“All part of the service. Plus I’ve had a few days of what we’ll call a working vacation, a little time to catch up with a friend, and the best damn chicken and dumplings this side of heaven.”

“Lucy’s masterpiece.” She stopped to stroke the sweet-eyed donkey who called to her before moving on again. “I have to say I was surprised you stayed at Coop’s instead of a hotel.”

“I can stay in a hotel anytime. Too many times. But how often does a city boy get to stay in a refitted bunkhouse on a horse farm?”

She glanced at him and laughed because he sounded very much like a kid who’d been given an unexpected holiday. “I guess not often.”

“And it’s given me some insight on why my friend and fellow urbanite traded the concrete canyons for the Black Hills. It’s just like he always described,” Brad added, looking off to the hills, green with the burgeoning spring.

“So he talked about it, about coming out here as a boy?”

“About how it looked, felt, smelled. What it was like to work with horses, fish with your father. It was clear that while he lived in New York, he considered this his home.”

“Odd. I always thought he considered New York home.”

“My take? New York was something Coop had to conquer. This was where he always felt . . . well, at peace. That sounds a little strong. The way he talked about out here, I thought he was romanticizing, putting the pretty touches on it the way you do when you remember something from childhood. I have to say I thought he was doing the same when he talked about you. I was wrong, in both cases.”

“That’s a nice compliment, but I imagine everyone romanticizes or demonizes their childhood to some extent. I can’t imagine Coop had that much to say about me. And, wow, that was such obvious fishing,” she added quickly. “Picture me packing up my rod and reel.”

“He had plenty to say about you, when you were kids—when you weren’t exactly kids anymore. He’d show me articles you’d written.”

“Well.” Baffled, Lil simply stared. “That must’ve been fascinating for the layman.”

“Actually, they were. Into the Alaskan wilderness, deep in the Ever-glades, on the plains of Africa, the American West, the mysteries of Nepal. You’ve covered a lot of the world. And your articles on this place helped me with the security design.”

He walked another moment in silence. “It’s probably a violation of a buddy rule to tell you, but he carries a picture of you in his wallet.”

“He stayed away. That was his choice.”

“Can’t argue with that. You never met his father, did you?”

“No.”

“He’s a cold son of a bitch. Hard and cold. I had some issues with my father off and on. But under that? I always knew I mattered to him. Just as Coop always knew the only part of him that mattered to his father was the name. Takes a while to build up self-esteem when the person who should love you unconditionally continually chips away at it.”

Sad and mad, she thought. It would make you sad and mad. “I know it was hard for him. And hard for me, who has the best parents in the history of parents, to fully understand what it’s like to go through it.”

Still, she thought, damn it.

“But tell me, is it a guy thing? Separating yourself from people who love and value you, and fighting it out alone, continually butting head to head with those who don’t love and value you?”

“How do you know you deserve to be loved and valued if you don’t prove yourself?”

“A guy thing then.”

“Could be. Then again, I’m standing here talking to a woman who recently spent six months in the Andes, a long way from the home fires. Work, sure,” he said before she could respond. “Work you’re dedicated to. But you don’t travel with a safety net, do you? I imagine you’ve taken a lot of trips, spent a lot of time on your own because you needed to prove you’d earned your spot.”

“That’s annoyingly true.”

“After his partner was killed and he was shot, he made an effort to reconcile with his mother.”

Oh, she thought, then. Of course, then. It was perfectly Cooper Sullivan.

“It worked out pretty well,” Brad continued. “He tried to mend some fences with his father.”

“Did he?” she asked. “Yes, of course, he would have.”

“That didn’t work out. After, he built a very solid business for himself. It was a way to prove, if you ask me, that he didn’t need the money from the trust to make his way.”

“That would be something his father would say to him, I imagine. I’ve never met him, no, but I imagine him saying, when Coop tried to mend those fences, that he was nothing without the money. The family money. Money that had come from his father. Yes, I can hear him say that. Can imagine Cooper bound and determined to, again, prove him wrong.”

“He did prove him wrong. More than once. But I’d say that was the point where Coop stopped needing his father’s approval, on any level, in any way. He’s never said, and probably wouldn’t admit it, but I know him. And he’s never stopped needing yours.”

“He’s never asked me what I thought, if I approved.”

“Hasn’t he?” Brad said lightly.

“I don’t—” She turned at the shout, watched the van ease up in front of the first cabin. “That’s our tiger.”

“No shit, the strip-club tiger? Can I watch?”

“Sure, but she won’t do a lap dance. We’ll start her out in the enclosure,” Lil began as they walked toward the van. “On the other side of the fencing we put up in Boris’s. He’s old, but he’s feisty. She’s young, but she’s been declawed. And she’s been chained or caged, drugged most of her life. She hasn’t been around her own kind. We’ll watch how they react to each other. I don’t want either one of them hurt.”

She stopped to introduce herself and shake hands with the driver and the wrangler. “Our office manager, Mary Blunt. Mary will take the paperwork. I’d like to see her.”

Lil climbed into the cargo area, crouched so the dull eyes of the tiger met hers. Defeated, Lil thought, resigned. All the pride and ferocity sheared away by years of mistreatment.

“Hello, pretty girl,” she murmured. “Hello, Delilah. Welcome to a whole new world. Let’s take her home,” she called out. “I’ll ride back here with her.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor of the van, cautiously pressed her palm to the bars. Delilah barely moved. “No one’s ever going to hurt you again, or humiliate you. You have family now.”

As they had with the pampered Cleo, they set the cage, locked open the door to the opening of the enclosure. Unlike Cleo, the tiger made no attempt to leave the cage.

Boris, on the other hand, prowled back to the fenceline, scenting the air. He marked his line, preening, Lil noted, as he hadn’t done in a very long time. And puffing out his chest, he roared.

In her cage, Delilah’s muscles twitched.

“Let’s back off. She’s nervous. There’s food and water in the enclosure. And Boris is talking to her. She’ll go in, in her own good time.”

Lucius lowered his camera. “She looks kind of beaten down. You know, emotionally.”

“We’ll get Tansy to work with her. And if we need to, we’ll bring in the shrink.”

“You have a tiger shrink?” Brad asked, astonished.

“A behavioral psychologist. We’ve worked with him before, in extreme cases. I guess you could call him an exotic animal whisperer.” She smiled. “Check him out on Animal Planet. But I think we’ll be able to take care of her. She’s tired and . . . her self-esteem’s an issue. We’ll just make sure she knows she’s loved, valued, and safe here.”

“I think the big guy there is smitten,” Brad observed as Boris rubbed himself against the fence.

“He’s been lonely. A male tiger mingles well with females. They’re more chivalrous than lions.” She moved back, sat on a bench. “I’ll just keep an eye on them for a while.”

“I’ll go check on the progress on your gates. We should be able to test the system in another couple of hours.”

After about a half hour, Tansy came to join her, and offer one of the two bottles of Diet Pepsi she’d brought out.

“They used cattle prods and Tasers on her,” Tansy said.

“I know.” Still watching the motionless cat, Lil sipped her soft drink. “She expects to be punished if she steps out of the cage. Sooner or later, she’ll go after the food. If she doesn’t, by tomorrow, we’ll have to get her out. I’m hoping we won’t. She needs to leave the cage on her own, and not be punished.”

“Boris already has stars in his eyes.”

“Yeah. It’s sweet. She may respond to him, to the alpha, before she gives in to hunger. And she’ll need to void. She’s probably had to void in her cage before, but she won’t want to, since there’s a choice.”

“The vet working with animal abuse treated her for an infected bladder, and had to pull two of her teeth. Matt’s going over all the reports, and wants to examine her himself. But he feels, as you do, that she needs to be left alone for a while first. How are things between you and Coop?”

“We’re in a kind of moratorium, I guess. We need to get this security up and running. Plus I think he’s working with the police. He has files he doesn’t want me to see. I’m leaving it alone for now.”

“Like the tiger.”

“As a metaphor for my relationship with Coop, it’s not bad. It’s fairly shaky, with the potential for a feral strike. I found two clips for his handgun in my lingerie drawer. Why the hell would he put them there?”

“I guess it’s hard to forget where you put them. Your everyday stuff, or the fuck-me stuff?”

“The fuck-me stuff. It’s mortifying. I was going to get rid of most of it. It’s weird having it around. The Jean-Paul factor. He bought most of it, and enjoyed all of it.”

“Clean it out. Buy your own.”

“Yeah, I’m just not sure I want to invest in that area right now. It sends a signal.”

“It does. I bought two extreme rip-this-off-me-big-boy nighties the other day. Online shopping is my friend. I’m still wondering why I didn’t stop myself.”

“Farley’s going to swallow his tongue.”

“I keep telling myself I’m going to break this off before it gets any deeper. Then I’m scoping out the spring line from Victoria’s Secret. I am not well, Lil.”

“You’re in love, honey.”

“I think it’s just lust. Lust is good. No harm done. And it passes.”

“Uh-huh. Just lust. You bet.”

“All right, stop badgering me, you fiend. I know it’s more than lust. I just haven’t figured out how to handle it. So stop your insidious torture.”

“All right, since you begged. Look. Look.” Lil clamped a hand on Tansy’s knee. “She’s moving.”

As they watched, Delilah bellied forward an inch, then another. Boris growled his encouragement. When she was halfway out, she went still as a statue again, and Lil feared she’d retreat. Then she quivered, bunched, and leaped on the whole chicken left on her concrete pad.

She gripped it in her paws, her head shifting as she scanned right, left, forward. Her eyes met Lil’s.

Go on and eat, Lil thought. Go on, now.

She cocked her head, and still watching, sank her teeth into the meat.

She ripped and bolted the food. Lil squeezed her hand on Tansy. “Waiting for someone to lay into her. God, I wish I could take a cattle prod to those bastards in Sioux City.”

“Right there with you. Poor girl. She could make herself sick.”

But she kept it down. Rather than clean her paws, she slunk over to the trough, drank and drank.

On the other side of the fence, Boris rose on his hind legs, called to her. She kept low, kept subservient, but approached the fence to sniff at him. When he lowered, she scurried back to stand at the entrance to her cage.

To what, Lil knew, she thought of as safety. He called her again, insistently, until she bellied over to the fence, quivering, trembling as he sniffed her nose, her front paws.

When he licked her, Lil smiled. “We should’ve called him Romeo. Let’s get the cage away, close her in. Boris will take it from here.”

She checked her watch as she rose. “Excellent timing. I need to run into town.”

“I thought we had our supply run.”

“I’ve got to do some errands. And I want to swing by and see my parents. I’ll be back before sundown.”

SHE DIDN’T INTEND to stop by the Wilkses’ stables, but she was early, and they were right there. In any case, it was irresistible when she spotted Coop leading a little girl around the paddock on a sturdy bay pony.

The kid looked as though she’d just been given the keys to the universe’s biggest toy store. She bounced in the saddle, obviously incapable of being still, and her face under her pink cowgirl hat glowed like the summer sun.

As she stepped out of her truck, Lil heard the kid chattering away at Coop while her mother laughed and her father took pictures. Charmed, Lil walked over to the fence and leaned against it to watch.

Coop looked pretty damn pleased himself, she noted, giving the kid his attention, answering endless questions while the little horse plodded along patiently.

How old was the kid? she wondered. Four maybe? Long sunny pigtails twined down under the hat, and her jeans had colorful flowers embroidered on the hem.

Impossibly cute, Lil concluded. Then felt a hard, deep tug as Coop reached up to lift the girl out of the saddle.

She’d never really thought of him as a father. At one time she’d simply assumed they’d have a family together, but it had all been vague and silver-edged. Pretty dreams of “one day.”

She thought of all the years between. They might have had a little girl.

He let the girl stroke and pet the horse, then fished a carrot out of a sack. He showed her how to hold it, and put the frothy icing on the kid’s happy cake by allowing her to feed the pony.

Lil waited while he spoke with the parents, and saw him grin when the girl flung her arms around his legs in a hug.

“She’ll remember you for the rest of her life,” Lil commented when Coop came her way.

“The horse anyway. Nobody forgets their first.”

“I didn’t know you offered pony rides.”

“It just happened. The kid was dying for it. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about opening that area up. Low overhead, nice profit. The father insisted on giving me a ten-dollar tip.” He grinned again as he dug it out of his pocket. “Want to help me spend it?”

“Tempting, but I’m meeting somebody. You were good with the kid.”

“She made it easy. And yeah, I’ve thought about it.” When she lifted her brows in question, he laid his hands over hers on the top of the fence. “What kind of kids we might have made.” He tightened his grip when she would have pulled back. “Your eyes. I’ve always been a sucker for your eyes. I wondered what kind of a father I’d make. I think I’d be okay. Now.”

“I’m not going dewy-eyed over dream children, Coop.”

“This is a good place to raise kids, the real kind. We both know that.”

“You’re taking a lot of big leaps. I’m sleeping with you because I want to sleep with you. But I have a lot of things to resolve, a lot to think through before it can be anything more than that, and what’s turning out to be a tenuous friendship.”

“I said I’d wait, and I will. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to use whatever comes along to get you back. It occurs to me, Lil, I never had to work for you before. Could be interesting.”

“I didn’t come by to talk about this. God, you frustrate me.” She yanked her hands from under his. “I wanted to tell you Brad thinks we’ll have the security up and running by the end of the day.”

“Okay. Good.”

“I’m going to let everyone know we won’t need patrols. That includes you.”

“I’m there until Howe’s in a cell.”

“That’s your choice. And I won’t pretend I’d rather not stay in the compound alone at night. You can keep your drawer and your share of the closet. I’ll sleep with you. For the rest, I don’t know.” She started to walk away, then stopped. “I want to know everything Willy’s shared with you, because I know he’s kept you up on the investigation, the manhunt. I want to see those files you’ve been so careful to keep away from me. You want a chance with me this time around, Coop? Then you’d better understand I expect to be trusted and respected. On every level. Good sex and yellow tulips aren’t nearly enough.”

FARLEY WAS PACING a trough in the sidewalk in front of the jewelry store when Lil arrived. “I didn’t want to go in without you.”

“I’m sorry I’m late. I got hung up.”

“No problem.” The hands in his pockets jingled loose change. “You’re not late. I got here early.”

“Nervous?”

“Some. I just want to make sure it’s exactly the right one.”

“Let’s go find it.”

There were a scatter of customers and a lot of glitter inside. Lil raised a hand in a wave to the clerk she knew, then hooked her arm through Farley’s. “What did you have in mind?”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“No, just tell me what you think.”

“I . . . Well, it’s gotta be special, and kind of different. I don’t mean fussy or . . .”

“Unique.”

“Yeah, unique. Like she is.”

“So far, you’re exactly right, according to her best friend.” She drew him over to a display of engagement rings. “White or yellow gold?”

“Oh, shit, Lil.” And he looked as panicked as if she’d asked if he’d prefer cyanide or arsenic in his coffee.

“Okay, that was a trick question. Given her coloring and her personality—and her appreciation for the unique—I think you should go with rose gold.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Like this.” She gestured to a band. “See, it’s warm, and a little soft. Glows, I think, rather than glitters.”

“It’s still gold, right? I mean, it’s good—it’s not less, I don’t know, important? It’s got to be important.”

“It’s still gold. If you don’t like it, then I’d go with yellow gold.”

“I do like it. It’s different, and it’s, yeah, warm. Kinda rosy. Rose gold, ha, that’s why.”

“Relax, Farley, it’s all good.”

“Right.”

“Just take a quick scan, pick the one that pops out to you first.”

“Ah . . . That one? It’s got that pretty round diamond in it.”

“It’s beautiful, but the trouble with that one is how it sticks up from the band.” Lil held her thumb and index finger a little apart to show him what she meant. “Tansy works with her hands a lot, with the animals. That’s going to catch.”

“That makes sense. So she’ll want something that doesn’t stick up so high.” He shoved up his hat to scratch his head. “There’s not so many with this color, but still a lot to figure from. That one’s nice, with the working on the band, but the diamond’s kind of puny. I don’t want to go on the cheap.”

As Lil leaned forward for a better look, the clerk bounced up.

“Hey! Do you two have something to tell me?”

“We can’t keep our great love for each other a secret any longer,” Lil said and made Farley blush. “How are you, Ella?”

“Just fine. So you’ve dragged Farley in here for your cover? If you see what you want, I’ll be glad to steer Coop to it when he comes in.”

“What? No. No, no.”

“Everybody’s just waiting for the two of you to make an announcement.”

“There is no announcement. Everybody’s just . . . off.” Flustered, she felt her own color rise. “I’m just here as consultant. Farley’s in the market.”

“Really?” Ella all but squealed it. “It’s always the quiet types who run deep. Who’s the lucky lady?”

“I haven’t asked her yet, so . . .”

“It wouldn’t be a certain exotic beauty I’ve seen you dancing with a time or two? The one who lives a couple blocks down, where your truck’s been parked pretty regularly these past weeks?”

“Ah . . .” This time he shifted his feet.

“Oh, my God, it is! This is huge. Wait until I tell—”

“You can’t. You can’t tell anybody, Ella. I haven’t asked her yet.”

Ella laid a hand on her heart, held the other up to swear. “Not a word. We’re experts at keeping secrets here. Though I may just pee my pants with this one if you don’t ask her quick. Let’s get down to business. Tell me what you have in mind.”

“Lil thinks this rose gold.”

“Oh, lovely choice for her.” Ella unlocked the case, and began to set a small selection on a velvet pad.

They discussed, debated, with Lil helpfully trying on each contender. After considerable time and worry, he gave Lil a pained look. “You have to tell me if I’m wrong. I like this one here. I like how the band’s wide—looks substantial, you know? And how the little diamond things ride up against the round one in the middle. She’ll know she’s got it on. She’ll know I put it there.”

Lil rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, as Ella stood behind the counter and sighed. “I was hoping you’d pick that one. She’ll love it, Farley. It’s just exactly right.”

“Thank the Lord, ’cause I was starting to sweat.”

“It’s beautiful, Farley. Unusual, contemporary, and still romantic.” Ella replaced the other rings. “What size does she wear?”

“Oh, well, hell.”

“Around a six,” Lil told her. “I’m a five, and we’ve traded rings before. Hers are a little bigger than mine. I wear hers on my middle finger. I think . . .” She picked up the ring and slid it on her middle finger. “This is about right.”

“Must be fate. If it needs to be sized, you just bring her in with it, and we’ll take care of it. Or she can exchange it if she sees something she likes better. I’m going to get the paperwork on it, Farley, and we’ll do the deal.”

Ella crooked her finger so he’d lean down. “And because I once let you kiss me behind the bleachers, I’m giving you fifteen percent off. You make sure you come back to me for the wedding bands.”

“I wouldn’t go anywhere else.” He looked over at Lil, his eyes dazed. “I’m buying Tansy a ring. Don’t do that,” he said when Lil’s eyes filled. “I’m afraid I’m going to water up myself.”

She put her arms around him, laid her head on his chest while he patted her back. Choices, she thought, and chances. Some made the right choices, and made the best of their chances.

23

Farley followed her to the farm, so Lil experienced the sweetness of watching him show off the ring to her parents. There was backslap ping, a few tears, and the promise to bring Tansy over for a family celebration once she’d accepted.

When Farley asked Joe to take a walk, undoubtedly to ask for man-to-man advice, Lil sat down with her mother.

“My God, he was a boy five minutes ago,” Jenna said.

“You made a man out of him.”

Jenna dabbed at her eyes. Again. “We gave him access to the tools so he could make a man out of himself. If Tansy breaks his heart I’m going to kick her ass to Pierre and back.”

“Get in line. But I don’t think she will. I don’t think he’ll let her. Farley’s got a plan, some of which I imagine he’s running by Dad right now. She’s cooked.”

“Think of the babies they’ll make together. I know, I know.” With a laugh, Jenna waved a hand. “Typical reaction. But I would love some babies around here. I’ve got the cradle your grandfather made for me, and I used for you, in the attic, just waiting. And I need to put all that on the back burner and think about wedding plans. I hope they let us throw the wedding. I’d love to get my hands into all that. Flowers and dresses and cakes and . . .” She trailed off.

“I haven’t given you that.”

“I made it sound just like that, and I didn’t mean to. I don’t have to tell you how proud we are of you, do I?”

“No, you don’t. I had a plan once, and it didn’t work out. So I made another plan, and it did. Now? I’m in a strange and complicated place. I could use some input.”

“Cooper.”

“It’s always been Cooper. But it stopped being just that simple a long time ago.”

“He hurt you so much.” Leaning over, she cupped Lil’s hand in both of hers. “Baby, I know.”

“He took a piece out of me. Now he wants me to put it back, and I don’t know if it can fit the way it did.”

“It won’t. It can’t.” Jenna gave her hand a squeeze before she leaned back. “That doesn’t mean it won’t fit another way. A better way. You love him, Lil. I know that, too.”

“Love wasn’t enough before. He told me—took his sweet time about telling me—why it wasn’t enough.”

As she related the story, she had to push out of her chair, walk to the window, open the front door for air. Move, just move while her mother sat quietly.

“For my own good, because he had something to prove, because he was broke, because he felt like a failure. What difference did any of that make? And besides all that, I deserved to know the reasons. I was part of that relationship. It’s not a relationship if one person makes all the choices. Is it?”

“No, or not a balanced one. I understand what you’re feeling, why you’re angry.”

“It’s more than being angry, though. One of the biggest decisions of my life was made for me. And the reasons it was made kept from me? How can I believe that won’t happen again? And I won’t build my life with someone who’d do that. I can’t.”

“No, you can’t. Not you. And now I’m going to tell you something that may disappoint you. I’m sorry, so sorry, you were hurt. I hurt for you, Lil. I did. I felt your heartbreak inside my own. But I’m so grateful he did what he did.”

Lil flinched, jerking back from the shock. “How can you say that? How can you mean that?”

“If he hadn’t, you’d have given up everything you wanted—every passion you had—but him. If it had come down to him or your personal and professional goals, you were much too much in love to choose anything but him.”

“Who’s to say I couldn’t have had both? Damn it! Where’s the compromise, the working together?”

“Maybe you’d have made it, but the odds were so stacked against you. Oh, Lil,” she said with such compassion Lil felt her eyes burn and tear. “You, not quite twenty and with the world opening up for you. Him almost two years older with his world narrowing and harsh. He needed to fight, and you needed to grow.”

“So we were young. You were young when you and Dad married.”

“Yes, and we were lucky. But we also wanted the same thing, even then. What we wanted was right here, and that gave us a better chance.”

“So you think I should just shrug off the last ten years. All is forgiven, Coop, I’m yours?”

“I think you should take as much time as you need, and see if you can forgive him.”

Lil let out a long breath as some of the pressure on her chest lifted.

“And I think while he had something to prove to himself before, this time he has to prove something to you. Make him. And while you’re taking that time, ask yourself if you want to live the next ten years without him.”

“He’s changed, and who he’s changed into . . . If I’d just met him, if there wasn’t any history between us? I’d fall flat on my face. Knowing that is very scary. Knowing if I let myself fall flat, I’m giving him the power to rip another piece of me away.”

“Aren’t you tired, honey, of only getting close to men you know can’t?”

“I don’t know, honestly, if I did that deliberately or if it’s because he’s the only one who can.” Lil rubbed her own arms as if to warm them. “Either way, it’s another scary choice. And a lot to think about. I need to get back. I didn’t mean to be gone this long.”

“Important business.” Jenna rose, laid her hands on Lil’s shoulders. “You’ll find your way, Lil. I know that absolutely. I need you to tell me if you’re sure you don’t need us to be there tonight.”

“The system was nearly done when I left. If they ran into any glitches, I’ll call. I promise. I may be confused about myself, about Coop, but I’m clear on the refuge. No chances taken.”

“Good enough. Most people think he’s gone. That he wouldn’t stay in this area with the manhunt.”

“I hope most people are right.” She laid her cheek on Jenna’s. “And I know we’re not going to relax, not all the way, until he’s caught. Don’t you take chances either.”

She stepped out on the porch, saw Farley and her father circling one of the outbuildings with the dogs pacing around them. “Tell Farley I’m pulling for him.” She started for her truck, turned, walking backward as she studied how pretty her mother looked standing there on the porch of the old farmhouse. “He gave me yellow tulips.”

And prettier yet, Lil thought, when she smiled.

“Did they work?”

“Better than I let him know. Talk about your typical reaction.”

SHE GOT BACK before closing and found the new gate open. Still she glanced at the security camera, at the key swipe and code pad. They would, she thought, stop anyone from entering, in a vehicle, after closing. But you couldn’t secure the hills.

She drove the road slowly, scanning the land, the trees.

She could find a way in, she mused. She knew every inch of the section, and could find a way to elude the security if she wanted to take the time and trouble.

But knowing that only made her more aware.

She let her gaze skim up as she drove. More cameras, positioned to pan the compound, the road. It would be hard to elude all of them. And the new lights would wash everything. No hiding in the dark, not once you were inside.

She pulled up in front of the cabin, pleased to see there were three separate groups making the tour of the habitats. She spotted Brad at the far western corner, talking to one of his installers. But her attention moved toward the newest member of the Chance family.

Everything in her lifted. Delilah lay against the fencing with Boris stretched on the other side. She made that her first stop.

The female didn’t lift her head when Lil stepped up. She was crouched down, but her eyes opened. Still wary, Lil noted. She may very well always be wary of the human. But still, she’d found comfort in her own kind.

“I guess we’ll be taking that barrier out sooner rather than later.” She kept her voice easy, her movements slow. “Nice job, Boris. She needs a friend, so I’m counting on you to show her the ropes.”

“Excuse me, miss?”

She glanced around to the group of four who stood behind the safety rail. “Yes?”

“You’re really not supposed to be on that side.”

She straightened, walked over to speak to the man who’d addressed her. “I’m Lil Chance.” She offered a hand. “This is my place.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No need. I was just checking on our newest addition. We don’t have her plaque up yet. This is Delilah, and it’s her first full day here. She’s a Bengal,” she began, and indulged in one of her rare guided tours.

By the time she’d finished and passed the new group on to a pair of interns, Brad was ready for her.

“You’re online, Lil. Fully operational. I want to go over the whole system with you and your senior staff.”

“I’ve let them know they may need to stay late tonight. I’d rather wait until closing, if that’s okay with you.”

“Not a problem, especially since Lucius said I could help with tonight’s feeding—if you cleared it.”

“It’s a lot of work.”

“I’d like to go back to New York and say I’ve fed a lion. I can dine out on that for a long time.”

“Then you’re on. I’ll walk you through that, then you can walk us through the system.” She turned back toward the habitat. “Even though I saw the design, I was afraid it was going to look intrusive, high-techy, and well, institutional. It doesn’t. Everything’s nicely camouflaged. It doesn’t intrude.”

“Aesthetics count, but so does efficiency. I think you’re going to find we delivered both.”

“I already do. Let me take you to the commissary.”

AFTER FEEDING, AFTER closing, Lil worked through the controls of the security system, under Brad’s tutelage. For the late staff meeting, she’d broken out the beer, provided a bucket of chicken and some sides. It might’ve been serious business, but there was no reason her people shouldn’t enjoy it.

There’d been enough stress.

She went through sectors, then elements, switching on lights, alarms, locks, cutting them again, varying the camera view on the monitor.

“Aced it,” Brad told her. “Not as fast as Lucius. He still holds the record.”

“Geek,” Tansy accused.

“And proud of it. Split screen, Lil, four views.” Lucius bit into a drumstick, pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

“You think I can’t do it?”

“I’ve got a buck says you can’t first time out.”

“I’ve got two she can,” Tansy countered.

Lil rubbed her hands together, and quickly ran over the codes and sequence in her head. When four images appeared on-screen, she took a bow.

“Luck. I’ll put five down Mary can’t run the sequence.”

Mary only sighed at Lucius. “I’d bet against me. Key cards, security codes. Next thing it’ll be retinal scans.” But she stepped up gamely. Inside thirty seconds, she had the alarms shrilling. “Damn it!”

“Thank God.” Matt swiped a hand over his forehead. “That takes the pressure off me.”

As Brad walked a frustrated Mary back through the drill, Lil eased over to Tansy. “You’ve got it. You can cut out any time.”

“I want to run through it one more time. Besides”—she held up her paper plate—“potato salad. I’m not in a rush. What?” she said when Lil frowned at her.

“Nothing. Sorry. I was thinking of something else.” Which would be the ring burning a hole in Farley’s pocket. “You know, it’s going to be quiet around here tonight. No guard duty.”

“Well.” Tansy wiggled her eyebrows when Coop came in. “In a manner of speaking. Maybe you should break out the sexy lingerie and give it one more wear.”

Lil gave her an elbow bump. “Quiet.”

She muffled a laugh as Mary managed to shut down the monitor. “It’s going to be a while.”

“If he could put the security on a spreadsheet, she’d kick ass.”

“Meanwhile . . .” Lil eased a hip onto Lucius’s desk, and nursed her beer.

It was full dark, with the three-quarter moon on the rise, when she saw off the last of her staff. She hoped they all managed the key card on the gate in the morning, but for now, she wanted a quick pass at some of the work she’d had to neglect during the day.

“I’ll be by tomorrow,” Brad told her. He lingered on the porch while Coop sat on the rail. “Work with Mary a little more, and make sure we don’t have any glitches.”

“I appreciate all you’ve done.” She looked out toward the habitats, the streams of lights, the red blink of motion detectors. “It’s a relief to know the animals are secure.”

“You’ve got the local number if you have any problems. And you’ve got mine.”

“I hope you’ll come back, even if there aren’t any problems.”

“You can count on it.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She went to her own cabin. Considering the time, she opted to make a pot of tea to get her through the hour or so of work she hoped to put in.

In the kitchen, on her rugged table, stood a vase of painted daisies. Pretty as a rainbow.

“Damn it.”

Was she weak, was she simple, for going a little gooey inside? But really, was there any more direct hit than flowers on a woman’s table put there by a man?

Just enjoy them, she ordered herself, as she put the kettle on. Just accept them for what they are. A nice gesture.

She made the tea, got a couple of cookies from her stash, then sat at the table with her laptop and the flowers.

She brought up her refuge e-mail first, as always amused by the letters from children, and pleased by the ones from potential donors asking for more details about certain programs.

She answered each in turn, and with equal attention.

She opened the next, caught her breath. Then slowly read it through a second time.

hello lil. long time no see at least for you. you’ve sure been doing a lot around the place, it gives me a good laugh to watch. i figure we’ll get reacwainted. i figured on it being a surprize but seems like the locals figured out i was around. i’m haveing fun watching them chase there fat asses in the hills and will be leving a present for them soon. i have to say im sorry about the cougar but you never should of caged in that way so it’s your fault it’s dead. you think about that animels are free spirits and our ancesters knew it and respected them. you vialated the sacred trust i thougt about killing you for that back aways but i got sweet on carolyn. she was fine and she gave me a good game and died well. diing well is what counts. i think you will. when we are finished i will free all the animels you have put in prison. if you give me good game i will do it in your honer. stay well and strong so when we meet we will meet as equels. good old jim was good practise but you will be the mane event. i hope this gets to you ok i am not good with computers and have only borrowd this to send you this messag. yours truely ethan swift cat

Carefully she saved the post, copied it. She took a moment to make sure she had her breath, and her calm, before she walked out to get Coop.

She saw the taillights of Brad’s rental car as Coop strolled toward the cabin porch. “Brad wanted to get back to the farm in time to sweet-talk my grandmother out of a piece of pie. He’ll—” He broke off as she stepped into the light. “What happened?”

“He sent me an e-mail. You need to see it.”

He moved fast, shifting her aside to go through the door and straight back to the kitchen, where he angled the laptop around to stand and read the message.

“Did you copy it?”

“Yes. It’s saved to the hard drive and the thumb drive.”

“We’ll need hard copies, too. Do you recognize the e-mail address?”

“No.”

“Should be easy to trace.” He crossed over, picked up the phone. Within a moment, she heard him giving Willy the details in a flat, expressionless voice that went with his face. “I’m going to forward it to you. Give me your e-mail.” He scrawled it on the pad by the phone. “Got it.”

He passed the phone to Lil on his way to the computer.

“Willy? Yes, I’m all right. Would you arrange for a drive-by? My parents.” She glanced over at Coop as he tapped keys. “Coop’s grandparents. I’d feel better if . . . Thanks. Yes, we will. Okay.”

She hung up, barely stopped herself from twisting her hands together. “He said he’ll trace the e-mail and check it out right away. He’s going to call or come by as soon as he knows something.”

“He knows he made a mistake with Tyler.” Coop muttered it as if speaking to himself. “He knows we’ve identified him. How does he know? He’s got a way to get information. A radio maybe. Or he risks coming into town to hear the local gossip.”

Eyes narrowed, Coop reread the message. “Several places in town you can buy comp time, but . . . That’s a stupid risk. We’d find the source, then find someone who’d seen him, talked to him. That gives us too much more. So a break-in’s more likely. He sent it at nineteen thirty-eight. Waited for dark. Scoped out a house. Maybe one with a kid or a teenager. They tend to leave their computers on.”

“He may have killed someone else. He may have murdered someone, more than one, just to send me that. Oh, God, Coop.”

“We don’t go there until we have to. Put it outside,” he ordered, and coldly. “Focus on what we know, and what we know is he made another mistake. He came out of the shadows because he was compelled to connect with you. He learned we know who he is, so he felt free to make that connection, to communicate with you.”

“But it’s not me. It’s his warped idea of me. He’s talking to himself.”

“That’s exactly right. Keep going.”

“He, ah . . .” She pressed a hand to her forehead, shoved it back through her hair. “He’s uneducated, and unfamiliar with computers. It had to take him some time to write that much. He wanted me—his version of me—to know he’s watching. He wanted to brag a little. He said he laughed at what we’ve done here. The new security. At the manhunt. He’s confident neither will stop him from the goal. The game. He said Carolyn gave him a good game.”

“And Tyler was practice. Everything points to his driving Tyler off the trail, way off, pushing him toward the river. Tyler was a healthy man, in good shape. And bigger, heftier than Howe. The conclusion would be Howe had a weapon. A knife doesn’t work, not if Tyler managed to get any distance away. What’s the game if you force-march some guy miles?”

She could see it now, the steps and the layers. And seeing it helped her stay calm. “We know he has a gun, and he knows the hills. He can track. He . . . he hunts.”

“Yeah, you’d’ve held your own on the job. That’s the game—the hunt. Pick the prey, stalk the prey, make the kill.”

“And he’s picked me because he believes I’ve violated sacred ground, sacred trust by building the refuge here. Because we share, in his head, the cougar as spirit guide. It’s crazy.”

“He also picked you because you know the land. You can track and hunt and elude. So you’re a major prize.”

“He might have come here before, for me, but Carolyn distracted him. She was young and pretty and attracted to him. She listened to his theories, certainly slept with him. And when she saw through enough to be afraid, or concerned, to break things off, he went after her instead. She became his prey.”

Shaken, she lowered to the bench.

“It’s not you, Lil. Not your fault.”

“I know that, but she’s still dead. Almost certainly dead. And there may be someone else dead tonight just so he could get his hands on a computer to send that to me. If he goes after anyone else, any of my people, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know.”

“I’m less worried about that than I was.

“He’s put you on notice,” Coop said when she looked up at him. “He doesn’t have to show you any more. Doesn’t have to bait you or taunt you.”

She took a breath. “Tell me. Is Brad staying at your grandparents’ just because he likes Lucy’s cooking, or did you ask him to so he could keep an eye on things there?”

“The cooking’s a bonus.” He got out a bottle of water, twisted the top off, and handed it to her.

She drank. “He’s a good friend.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“I think . . .” She steadied herself with another long breath. “I think you can get an idea about someone by their friends.”

“You need an idea when it comes to me, Lil?”

“I need an idea when it comes to ten years of you.” She glanced toward the phone, wishing she could make it ring, make Willy call and tell her no one was hurt. No more death. “How do you stand waiting like this?”

“Because it’s what comes next. This place is locked down. If he tries to come here, he’ll trip an alarm. You’re safe. You’re with me. So I can wait.”

Trying to keep her calm, she reached out, smoothed a finger over the petals of a daisy. “You brought me more flowers. What’s that about?”

“I figure I owe you about a decade’s worth of flowers. For fights, birthdays, whatever.”

She studied his face, then went with impulse. “Give me your wallet.”

“Why?”

She held out a hand. “You want to get back in my good graces? Hand it over.”

Caught between amusement and puzzlement, he reached back to pull it out of his pocket. And she saw the gun at his hip.

“You’re carrying a gun.”

“I’m licensed.” He passed her his wallet.

“You had clips in my drawer. They’re not there anymore.”

“Because I have a drawer all of my own now. Nice underwear, Lil. How come you never wear it?”

“Another man bought it for me.” She smiled humorlessly when annoyance flickered over his face. “Or some of it. It didn’t seem quite appropriate to use it on you.”

“I’m here. He’s not.”

“And now, if I slipped that little red number on, for instance, it wouldn’t pass through your mind as you’re slipping it off me again, how he’d done the same?”

“Throw it out.”

For very small, smug reasons, his clipped suggestion made her smile and mean it. “If I do, you’ll know I’m ready to take you back—all the way back. What will you toss out for me, Coop?”

“Name it.”

She shook her head and opened the wallet. For a time, for her own satisfaction, she studied his driver’s license, the PI license. “You always took a good picture. Those Viking eyes, and the hints of trouble in them. Do you miss New York?”

“Yankee Stadium. I’ll take you back for a game sometime. Then you’ll see some real baseball.”

With a shrug, she flipped through, and found the picture. She remembered when he’d taken it, the summer they’d become lovers. God, how young, she thought. How open and wildly happy. She sat by the stream, wildflowers spreading around her, the verdant green hills behind her. Her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped around them, and her hair free and tumbled over her shoulders.

“It’s a favorite of mine. A memory of a perfect day, a perfect spot, the perfect girl. I loved you, Lil, with everything I had. I just didn’t have enough.”

“It was enough for her,” she said quietly.

And the phone rang.

24

Willy followed up the phone call with a personal visit. Lil opened the gate for him by remote, and had a moment to think, At least, this is safer and easier. She’d switched from tea to coffee, and poured Willy a cup even as Coop went to the door to let him in.

She carried it to the living room, offered it to him.

“Thanks, Lil. I figured you’d want to hear the details in person. He used Mac Goodwin’s account. You know the Goodwins, Lil, have the farm on 34.”

“Yes, I went to school with Lisa.” Lisa Greenwald then, she thought, a cheerleader, whom she’d disliked intensely because of Lisa’s constant state of “perk.” It made Lil’s stomach twist just to think of how often she’d sneered at Lisa behind her back.

“I got a call from Mac not five minutes after I got yours. Reporting a break-in.”

“Are they—”

“They’re all right,” he said, anticipating her. “They’d gone out for dinner and to their oldest boy’s spring band concert. They got back and found the back door broken in. Did the smart thing, went right back out again and called me from the cell phone. Anyway, it seemed like too much coincidence, so I asked him if they had an e-mail account that matched the one I got from you. Sure enough.”

“They weren’t home. They weren’t hurt.” She sat then as her knees went shaky.

“They’re fine. They’ve got a new pup since their old dog passed a few months back, and he was closed up in the laundry room. He’s fine, too. I went by to talk to them, take a look at things. Left a deputy there to help Mac board up that door. It looks like he busted in, found the computer. Mac didn’t shut it down before they left. Kids carrying on, he said, and just forgot. People do.”

“Yes. People do. They went together all through high school. Mac and Lisa, Lisa and Mac. And got married the spring after graduation. They have two boys and a girl. The girl’s still a baby.”

Wasn’t it funny, Lil thought, dazed, how much she knew about the once-detested Lisa.

“That’s right, and they’re all fine. The best they could tell on first look was he took some food supplies. Bread, canned goods, Pop-Tarts of all things, some beer and juice boxes. Left the kitchen in a state. Got the two hundred in cash Mac kept in his desk, and the money the kids had in their banks, and the hundred Lisa kept in the freezer.”

He watched Lil’s face, glanced at Coop, then just kept talking in that same easy way. “People don’t seem to realize those are the first places any thief worth his salt is going to check. They need to take a second look when they’re not so upset, to see if anything else is missing.”

“Weapons?” Coop asked.

“Mac keeps his guns in a gun safe. Locked up tight. So that’s a blessing. We got prints. We’ll eliminate the Goodwins’, and I’ll go out on what I think’s a damn sturdy limb and say we’ll match the others to Ethan Howe. I’m planning to call the FBI in the morning.”

He cocked his head at the expression that ran over Coop’s face. “I don’t much relish the idea of working with the feds, or having them take this investigation over, either. But the fact is it looks like we’ve got evidence that points to serial murder, and Lil got an e-mail threat. That’s cybercrime. Added to it, it’s a given that this fucker’s—sorry, Lil—that his territory includes the national park. I’m going to fight for my stake in this, but I’m not going to worry about pecking order.”

“When you match the prints, you need to plaster Howe’s photo all over the media,” Coop said. “Anybody coming into the area, using the trails, any of the locals, need to be able to ID him on sight.”

“That’s on the list.”

“If he’s using this aka, this Swift Cat, we might find something on it.”

“Thirty-five miles per hour,” Lil mumbled, then shook her head when Coop turned to her. “That’s the peak for a cougar, and on a sprint. They can’t run at that speed for any real distance. There are swifter cats. Much faster cats than the cougar. What I mean is . . .” She paused, pressed her fingers to her eyes to help line up her thoughts. “He doesn’t really know the animal he claims is his spirit guide. And I think he gave me the name he’s chosen because he believes we share that guide. I doubt he’s used it before, or often.”

“We’ll do a little checking on it anyway.” Willy set his coffee aside. “Lil, I know you’ve got your new alarms here, and the ex-New York City detective, but I can arrange for protection.”

“Where? How? Willy, this guy covers ground fast, and he can and will go to ground and wait it out if I leave. He’s watching this place, and he knows what’s going on. The only chance you have of tracking him down is if he thinks I’m accessible.”

“Lil gets volunteers and interns,” Coop began. “There’s no reason you couldn’t put a couple of officers in soft clothes and have them go to work around here.”

“I could fix that.” Willy nodded. “Work with the state boys, with the park service. I think we could get a couple of men on-site.”

“I’ll take them,” Lil agreed immediately. “I’m not being brave, Willy. I just don’t want to go hide out, then have to face this all over again in six months, a year. Ever. I want it over.”

“There’ll be two men here in the morning. I’m going to start setting up what I can tonight. I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

Lil caught the glance that passed between the men.

“I’ll walk you out,” Coop said.

“No you won’t.” Lil took his arm, held on. “If the two of you have something else to say about this, I’m entitled to know. Keeping information from me isn’t protecting me. It’s just pissing me off.”

“I’ve placed Howe in Alaska at the time Carolyn Roderick went missing.” Coop glanced at Lil. “It’s just added weight. I tracked down a sporting goods store where the owner remembered him, and ID’d him through the picture I faxed him. He remembers him because Howe bought a Stryker crossbow, the full package with scope, carbon bolts, sling, and ammo for a thirty-two. He spent nearly two thousand, and paid cash. He talked about taking his girl hunting.”

Lil made a little sound, thinking of Carolyn.

“I expanded my like-crime search after Tyler,” Coop continued. “A body found in Montana four months later, male, mid-twenties, was left for the animals, and in bad shape. But the autopsy showed a leg wound—into the bone—the ME there concluded was from a bolt strike. If he still has the bow . . .”

“We could tie him up on the Roderick disappearance and the Montana murder,” Willy concluded. “Odds are he does. That’s a lot of cash.”

“He got over three hundred from tonight’s break-in, and what he took off of Tyler. It wouldn’t take long, the way he works, to build up a cash supply.”

“I’ll add the bow and bolts to the APB. That’s nice work, Coop.”

“If you make enough calls, you can get lucky.”

When they were alone, Lil went over to poke at the fire until the flames kicked up. She saw he’d brought his baseball bat, the one Sam had made him a lifetime ago. It stood propped against the wall.

Because this is home now, she thought. At least until we’re done with this, he’s home here.

And she couldn’t think of that, not yet.

“It’s harder to hide a crossbow than a handgun.” She stood there, watching the flames rise. “He’d be more likely to carry the bow when he’s specifically hunting. Maybe toward evening, or before dawn.”

“Maybe.”

“He didn’t use a bow on the cougar. If he had it, if he’d used it, it would’ve given him more time to get away, cover his tracks. But he didn’t use the bow.”

“Because you wouldn’t have heard the shot,” Coop concluded. “Which is probably why he chose the gun.”

“So I would hear it, and panic for the cat.” She turned now, put her back to the light and the heat. “How much more do you know you haven’t told me?”

“It’s speculation.”

“I want to see the files, the ones you put away whenever I come in.”

“There’s no point.”

“There’s every point.”

“Damn it, Lil, what good is it going to do for you to look at photos of Tyler before and after they dragged him out of the river, after the fish had been at him? Or to read the details of an autopsy? What’s the point in having that in your head?”

“Tyler was practice. I’m the main event,” she said, quoting the e-mail. “If you’re worried about my sensibilities, don’t. No, I’ve never seen pictures of a body. But have you seen a lion spring out of the bush and take down an antelope? Not human, but take my word, it’s not for the faint of heart. Stop protecting me, Coop.”

“That’s never going to happen, but I’ll show you the files.”

He unlocked a case, drew them out. “The photos won’t help you. The ME determined the time of death somewhere between fifteen and eighteen hundred.”

Lil sat, opened the file, and stared at the stark black-and-white photograph of James Tyler. “I hope to God his wife didn’t see him like this.”

“They’d have done what they could beforehand.”

“Slitting his throat. That’s personal, isn’t it? From my vast police knowledge from CSI and so on.”

“You have to get in close, make contact, get blood on your hands. A knife’s generally more intimate than a bullet. He took Tyler from behind, going left to right. The body had cuts and bruises incurred perimortem, most likely from stumbling and slipping. The knees, hands, elbows.”

“You said he died between three and six. Daylight hours, or just going to dusk on the later side of that. To get from the trail Tyler was seen on to that point of the river has to take several hours. Probably more if we agree he’d have driven Tyler over the roughest ground, the least likely areas where he’d have found help or another hiker. Tyler had a day pack. If you’re running for your life, you’d shed weight, wouldn’t you?”

“They didn’t find his pack.”

“I bet Ethan did.”

“Agreed.”

“And when he maneuvers Tyler to the right position, he doesn’t shoot him. Not sporting. He comes in close for the personal kill.”

She flipped through to the list of what the victim’s wife stated Tyler had on him when he’d started for the summit. “It’s a good haul,” she added. “Victory spoils. He won’t need the watch. He knows how to tell the time by the sky, by the feel of the air. Maybe he’ll keep it as a trophy, or pawn it later on, a few states away, when he wants more cash.”

She looked over. “He took something, some things from every victim you think he’s responsible for, didn’t he?”

“That’s the way it looks. Jewelry, cash, supplies, articles of clothing. He’s a scavenger. But not stupid enough to use any victim’s credit cards or IDs. None of the MPs have had any account activity on their credit cards since they disappeared.”

“No paper trail. Plus maybe he considers credit cards a white man’s invention, a white man’s weakness. I wonder if his parents had any credit cards. I’d bet not.”

“You’d bet right. You’re a smart one, Lil.”

“We’re the smart girls,” she said absently. “But he buys a crossbow, not traditional Native American weaponry. He picks and chooses. He’s full of shit, basically. Sacred ground, but he defiles it by hunting an unarmed man. For sport. For practice. If he really has Sioux blood, he’s defiled that, too. He has no honor.”

“The Sioux considered the Black Hills the sacred center of the world.”

“Axis mundi,” Lil confirmed. “They considered—and still consider—the Black Hills the heart of all that is. Paha Sapa. Sacred ceremonies started in the spring. They’d follow the buffalo through the hills, forming a trail in the shape of a buffalo head. Sixty million acres of the hills were promised in treaty. But then they found gold. The treaty meant nothing, because the white man wanted the land, and the gold on it. The gold was worth more than honor, than the treaty, than the promise to respect what was sacred.”

“But it’s still under dispute.”

“Been boning up on your history?” she asked. “Yeah, the U.S. took the land in 1877, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and the Teton Sioux, the Lakota, never accepted that. Fast-forward a hundred years, and the Supreme Court ruled the Black Hills had been taken illegally, and ordered the government to pay the initial promised price plus interest. Over a hundred million, and they refused the settlement. They wanted the land back.”

“It’s accrued interest since then, and now stands at more than seven hundred million. I did my research.”

“They won’t take the money. It’s a matter of honor. My great-grandfather was Sioux. My great-grandmother was white. I’m a product of that blending, and the generations since have certainly diluted the Sioux in me.”

“But you understand honor, you understand refusing a hundred million dollars.”

“Money isn’t land, and land was taken.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you think Ethan is into this because it’s some sort of revenge for broken treaties, for the theft of sacred ground, I don’t. It’s not that deep. It’s an excuse, and one that might make him think of himself as a warrior or a rebel. I doubt he knows the entire history. Bits and pieces maybe, and probably bastardized ones at that.”

“No, he kills because he likes it. But he’s chosen you, and this place, because it fits his idea of payback. That makes it more exciting, more satisfying. And his definition of honor’s warped, but he has his own version. He won’t pick you off when you’re crossing the compound. It’s not the game, it’s not satisfying, and it doesn’t complete the purpose.”

“That’s comforting.”

“If I didn’t believe that, you’d be locked up a thousand miles from here. Trying to be honest,” he added when she frowned at him. “I’ve got a picture of him, a kind of profile, and it assures me he wants you to understand him, to face him, then to give him real competition. He’ll wait for an opportunity, but he’s getting impatient. The e-mail pushes it forward.”

“It’s a dare.”

“Of sorts, and a declaration. I need your word, Lil, you won’t let him goad you into that opportunity.”

“You’ve got it.”

“No argument? No qualifications?”

“No. I don’t like hunting, and I know I wouldn’t like being hunted. I don’t need to prove anything to him, certainly not to myself by going out and doing a one-on-one with a homicidal maniac.”

She went deeper into the files. “Maps. Okay, okay, we can work with this.”

She rose, cleared everything else off the coffee table. “You’ve been busy,” she said, noting he’d marked the map with incidents ascribed to Ethan Howe. “You’re trying to triangulate locations where he might have his den.”

“The sectors that seemed most likely have been searched.”

“Next to impossible to cover every square foot, especially when you’re looking for someone who knows how to move, and cover his trail. Here. We found Melinda Barrett. Nearly twelve years ago. In that case, there was no indication he’d hunted her. No signs she’d run or been chased. The signs pointed to him following her up the trail. Stalking her, maybe. Or as likely just running into her. What set him off, made him kill her?”

“If the kill wasn’t the goal, he might’ve wanted money or sex. They found some bruising on her biceps, the kind you’d get if someone gripped you hard and you tried to pull away. He knocks her back into the tree, with enough force to bash her head, open a wound. Bleeding.”

“Blood. Maybe blood was enough. The wild scents blood, it spurs them.” Lil nodded because she could see it, see how it might have been. “She fights, maybe screams, maybe insults him or his manhood in some way. He kills her—the knife, close-in, personal. If it was his first, it would have been a tremendous rush—and he was so young. A rush and a panic. Drag her off, leave her for the animals. He might have thought, probably thought, her death would be blamed on a cougar or a wolf attack.”

“The next time we can confirm he came back, it was here. The refuge.” Coop laid a finger on the map. “He made contact with you, tried to play on a shared heritage.”

“And he met Carolyn.”

“She finds him attractive, interesting, feeds his ego. And could probably tell him more about you, about the refuge. She meets a need, sex and pride, so he goes into her world. But it’s not a good fit, and she begins to see him for what he is when he’s out of his element. He follows her to Alaska, to close that door, to fulfill that need—stronger than sex—then winds his way back to you.”

“And I’m in Peru. He has to wait.”

“While he’s waiting, he comes down at night, pays at least one visit.”

“When Matt was here alone. Yes. And he disabled the camera, here. Only a few days before I was due back.”

“Because he knew you were coming back. If someone else had gone to check it out, he’d have disabled it again. Until he got you.”

“He assumed I’d come alone,” she continued. “I like to go into the hills and camp alone. I’d planned to. He’d have been able to start the game if I had done that, and he might have won it. So I owe you.”

“He probably thought he could take me out once he saw you had company. Eliminate me, take you. So I’d say we both owe countless nights on stakeouts and the ability to sleep light. Comes into camp here,” Coop continued with his attention back on the map. “Heads back to camera site here, and doubles back to camp. Then it’s to the main gate of the refuge to dump the wolf. Another pass at the refuge to let your tiger out.”

“And to some point on the Crow Peak trail where he intercepted Tyler, to here, at this point by the river where he left him. Hits the Good-win farm, which is about here. That’s a lot of ground. The majority of it’s in Spearfish, so he’s at home here. Well, me too.”

She glanced at her empty mug of coffee, wished more would magically appear. “Lots of caves,” she added. “He has to have shelter, and I don’t see him pitching a tent. He needs a den. Plenty of fish and game. His best cover, best ground would be in here.” Lil drew a circle on the map with her finger. “It would take weeks to search that many acres, that many caves and hidey-holes.”

“If you’re entertaining the idea of going up as bait to draw him out, you can forget it.”

“I entertained the idea for about two minutes. I think I could track him, or certainly have as good a chance as anyone they’ve got searching.” She rubbed the back of her neck, where the lion’s share of her stress had chosen to make camp. “And I’ve got a better chance of getting whoever’s with me killed. So no, I’m not going to be bait.”

“There should be a way to look at this and figure where he’ll go next, or where he goes when he’s done. There should be a pattern, but I don’t see it.”

She closed her eyes. “There has to be a way to goad him into coming out, to pull him into a trap instead of the other way around. But I can’t see that either.”

“Maybe you can’t see it because you’ve had enough for one day.”

“And you’d be willing to take my mind off this.”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“In the interest of truth, I’ll admit the thought crossed mine.” She turned to him. “My mind’s pretty busy, Coop. It’s going to take some doing to distract me.”

“I think I can handle it.” Even as she reached out he rose, evading her.

“Straight upstairs, huh? I thought you might warm me up a little right here.”

“We’re not going upstairs.” He turned off the lights so only the fire glowed, then moved to her little stereo and punched the button for the CD player. Music poured out, low and soulful.

“I didn’t know I had any Percy Sledge.”

“You didn’t.” He crossed back, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “I figured it might come in handy.” He drew her in, and swayed. “We never did this much.”

“No.” She closed her eyes as Percy’s magic voice told her what a man would do when he loved a woman. “We didn’t do this much.”

“We’ll have to start.” He turned his head to brush his lips over her temple. “Like the flowers. I owe you several years worth of dances.”

She pressed her cheek to his. “We can’t get them back, Coop.”

“No, but we can fill them in.” He ran his hands, up and down, up and down the tensed, tight muscles of her back. “Some nights I’d wake up and imagine you were there, in bed beside me. Some nights it was so real I could hear you breathing, I could smell your hair. Now some nights I wake up and you’re in bed beside me, and there’s this moment of panic when I hear you breathing, when I smell your hair, that I’m imagining it.”

She squeezed her eyes tight. Was it her pain she felt, or his?

“I want you to believe in us again. In me. In this.” He drew her back until his mouth found hers. And took her under, deep and breathless while they swayed in the gold shimmer of firelight.

“Tell me you love me. Just that.”

Her heart trembled. “I do, but—”

“Just that,” he repeated, and took her under again. “Just that. Tell me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Lil. You can’t believe the words yet, so I’ll just keep showing you until you can.”

His hands skimmed up and down her sides. His mouth sampled and savored hers. And the heart that trembled for him began to beat for him, slow and thick.

Seduction. A soft kiss and sure hands. Easy, easy movements in golden light and velvet shadows. Quiet words whispered against her skin.

Surrender. Her body pliant against his. Her lips yielding to a gentle, patient assault. A long, long sigh of pleasure.

They lowered to the floor, kneeling, wrapped close.

Swayed there.

He drew her shirt away, then brought her hands to his lips, pressed them to her palms. Everything, he thought, she held everything he was in her hands. How could she not know?

Then he laid her palm on his heart, looked into her eyes. “It’s yours. When you’re ready to take it, to take me for what I am, it’s yours.”

He pulled her close so her hands were caught between them, and this time his mouth wasn’t gentle, wasn’t patient.

Need leaped inside her, alive and fierce, while his heart kicked its wild beat against her palms. He tugged her jeans open, and drove her roughly up and up, drove her higher even when she cried out.

When she went limp, when it seemed she melted to the floor, he covered her with his body. Took more.

His hands and mouth stripped her, left her raw and open, weak and dazzled. Her breath sobbed out, caught on a fresh cry when he thrust into her. He gripped her hands, held tight as her fingers curled with his.

“Look at me. Look at me. Lil.”

She opened her eyes, saw his face washed in the reds and golds of firelight. Fierce and feral as that heartbeat. He plunged inside her until her vision blurred, until the slap of flesh to flesh was like music.

Until she’d given him everything.

She didn’t object when he carried her upstairs. She didn’t protest when he lay down with her and drew her close, his arms wrapped tight around her.

When he kissed her again it was like the first in the dance. Soft, sweet, seductive.

She closed her eyes and let herself dream.

IN THE MORNING, she rolled out of bed as he came out of the bath, hair still dripping.

“I thought you might sleep longer,” he said.

“Can’t. Full day.”

“Yeah, me too. Some of your people should be here in about thirty minutes, right?”

“About. That’s assuming they all remember how to work the new gate.”

He crossed to her, skimmed a thumb down her cheek. “I can wait until some of them get here.”

“I think I can handle myself alone for a half hour.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Because you’re worried about me or because you’re hoping I’ll use the time to fix you breakfast.”

“Both.” Now that thumb traced the line of her jaw. “I picked up bacon and eggs since you were out.”

“Do you ever give a passing thought to cholesterol?”

“Not when I’ve got you talked into fixing me bacon and eggs.”

“All right. I’ll slap a couple biscuits together.”

“I’ll toss a couple steaks on the grill tonight. A trade-off.”

“Sure, eggs, bacon, red meat. Screw the arteries.”

He caught her hips, levered her up for a hard good-morning kiss. “So speaks the beef farmer’s daughter.”

She headed downstairs thinking it seemed almost normal, this talk of breakfast, of dinner plans, of full days. But it wasn’t normal. Nothing was quite within that safe, normal zone.

She didn’t need the scattered clothes on her living room floor to remind her.

She swept in there first, gathered them up to shove the whole armload into her laundry room.

Once the coffee got going she heated up a pan. Leaving the bacon sizzling, she opened the back door, stepped onto the porch to breathe in the morning air.

Dawn broke in the east, bringing the hills into soft silhouettes against the first light. Higher, higher still, the last stars were going out like candles.

She scented rain. Yes, she was a farmer’s daughter, she thought. The rain would bring more wildflowers out, unfurl more leaves, and let her think about buying some plants for the compound.

Normal things.

She watched the sunrise and wondered how long he would wait. How long would he watch and wait and dream of death?

She stepped back in, closed the door. At the stove she drained bacon and broke eggs in the pan.

Normal things.

25

Tansy wasn’t wearing the ring. Lil actually felt her spirits plummet; she’d been counting on some happy news. But when Tansy rushed over to where Lil and Baby were having their morning conversation, the ring finger of her left hand was bare.

Her eyes shining with distress, Tansy threw her arms around Lil and hugged hard.

Lil said, “Um.”

“I started to call you last night. I was so upset. But then I thought you had enough to do and didn’t need me adding to it.”

“Upset? Oh, Tans.” As the plummet became a dive, all Lil could do was return Tansy’s crushing hug. “I know you can only feel what you feel, and you have to follow those feelings, but I hate that it upset you.”

“Of course it upset me.” Tansy pulled back, gave Lil a little shake. “Upset isn’t even close to the mark when my best friend’s being threatened. We’re going to start screening your e-mail as of now. In fact, we screen all e-mails.”

“E-mails?”

“Honey, did you take drugs this morning?”

“What? No! E-mails. The e-mail. Sorry, I saw you just drive up, so I didn’t think you knew about it yet.”

“Then what the hell did you think I was talking about?”

“Ah . . .” Flustered, Lil managed a weak laugh. “Got me there. I’m a little turned-around yet this morning. How did you find out so fast?”

“Farley and I ran into the sheriff last night after you called him about it. He—Willy—knew you were concerned about your parents, and wanted Farley to know what was going on. He went right home.”

“Farley went right home?”

“Of course, Farley. Lil, maybe you should lie down awhile.”

He didn’t ask her, Lil realized as Tansy checked her brow for fever. Never had the chance to ask her. “No, I’m okay. Just a lot on my mind, and I’m trying to stick to routine. I think it’ll help.”

“What did it say? No.” Tansy shook her head. “I’ll read it for myself. I should’ve told you right away everyone’s fine at your parents’. Farley called before I left this morning just to let me know.”

“I’ve talked to them, but thanks. It’s nice, you and Farley.”

“It’s weird, me and Farley. Nice and weird, I guess.” She watched as Lil picked up the bright blue ball and winged it high over the fence, into the enclosure. Baby and his companions screamed in happy competition as they gave chase. “They’re going to find him, Lil. They’ll find him soon, and this will be over.”

“I’m counting on it. Tansy, he mentioned Carolyn in the e-mail.”

“Oh.” Tansy’s dark eyes sheened. “Oh, God.”

“It sticks, right here, when I think about it.” Lil fisted a hand at her sternum. “So, routine.” She looked over to where Baby and his friends rolled and wrestled for the ball. “And comfort.”

“There’s always plenty of routine.”

“You know what I’d like, Tansy? You know what would bring that comfort?”

“A hot fudge sundae?”

“That’s a never-fail, but no. I’d like to be up there, hunting him down. I’d be comforted if I could be in the hills, tracking him.”

“No.”

“Can’t do it.” Lil shrugged, but her gaze stayed on the hills. “It would put others at risk. But it’s something else that sticks right here. That I have to wait, just wait while others go after the person responsible for all this.” She heaved out a breath. “I’m going around to check on Delilah and Boris.”

“Lil,” Tansy called after her. “You won’t do anything stupid?”

“Me? And risk losing my smart-girl status? No. Routine,” she repeated. “Just routine.”

HE HAD A PLAN, and it was sweet. He believed it had come to him in a trance vision, and convinced himself his great ancestor in the form of a cougar guided him. He’d claimed Crazy Horse as his own for so long that the connection had become truth to him. The longer he remained in the hills, the truer it became.

This plan would take care and precision, but he was not a careless hunter.

He knew his ground, had his stand. He would lay the trail. He would gather the bait.

And when the time was right, spring the trap.

He scouted first, considering and rejecting several sites before settling on the shallow cave. It would do for his purposes, for the short term. Its location worked well, a kind of crossroads for his two main points.

It would serve as a holding cage.

Satisfied, he took a snaking route back toward park territory until he could ease onto a popular trail. He wore one of the jackets he’d stolen along the way, along with a pair of aviator sunglasses and a Chance Wildlife Refuge cap. A nice touch, he thought. Those and the beard he’d grown wouldn’t fool any sharp-eyed cops for long, but it gave him a thrill to stay out in the open, to use good old Jim’s little Canon to take photos.

He moved among them, he thought, but they didn’t know him. He even made a point to talk to other hikers. Just another asshole, he thought, tromping around on sacred ground like he had a right.

Before he was done, everyone would know who he was, what he stood for. What he could do. He would be a legend.

He’d come to understand this was what he’d been born for. He’d never seen it prior to now, not clearly. No one had known his face, no one had known his name, not in all the years before. That, he realized, had to change for him to turn truly toward his destiny.

He could not, would not move on as he had in the past when he’d felt the hot breath of pursuit on the back of his neck, or feared—he could admit the fear now—capture. It was meant to be here, in these hills, on this land.

Live or die.

He was strong and wise and he was right. He believed he would live. He would win, and that victory would add his name to those who’d come before him.

Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud.

Years before, before he had understood, he’d made sacrifice to this land. When the woman’s blood had spilled, by his hand, it had begun. It had not been an accident, as he’d believed. He understood now his hand had been guided. And the cougar, his spirit guide, had blessed that offering. Had accepted it.

She had defiled that sacrifice. Lillian Chance. She’d come to the place of his sacrifice, his holy ground, where he’d become a man, a warrior, by spilling the blood of the woman. She’d brought the government there, in the form of the police.

She’d betrayed him.

It all made sense now, it all came clear.

It must be her blood now.

He traveled with a small group, merged with them as a helicopter buzzed overhead. Looking for him, he thought, and felt the pride fill his chest. When the group chose one of the many crossings over a narrow creek, he waved them off.

It was time to slip away again.

If he fulfilled his destiny, the government would surely have to disclose to the public what they’d stolen. And perhaps one day, the true people would erect a statue of him on that very land, as they had to Crazy Horse.

For now, the hunt and the blood would be their own reward.

He moved quickly, covering the ground—the rises, the flats, the high grass, the shallow creeks. Even with his speed and skill, it took most of the day to lay the false trail west toward the Wyoming border, leaving behind signs he thought, derisively, the blind could follow. He sweetened it with Jim Tyler’s wallet before backtracking.

Once again he headed east through the pine-scented air.

Soon the moon would be full, and under that full moon, he would hunt.

LIL PERSONALLY PLANTED pansies in the bed across from Cleo’s enclosure. They’d handle the frosts that weren’t just likely but inevitable, and the spring snows that were more than probable for the next few weeks.

It felt good to get her hands in the dirt, and satisfying to see that splash of color. Since the jaguar watched her avidly, Lil crossed over to the path. “What do you think?”

Cleo appeared to have no particular bias against or liking for pansies. “If you’re still waiting for some Godiva, you’re doomed to disappointment.”

The cat pressed her flank against the fence, rubbed back and forth. Interpreting, Lil went under the barricade. She watched Cleo’s eyes as she approached, and watched them slit with pleasure when she stroked and scratched through the fencing.

“Miss that, don’t you? No chocolate or poodles, but we can give you a little personal attention now and then.”

“Doesn’t matter how often I see you do that, I’m never tempted to try it for myself.”

Lil glanced back to smile at Farley. “You pet horses.”

“A horse may kick the hell out of me, but it’s not going to rip my throat out.”

“She’s used to being touched, to being spoken to, to the scents and voices of people. It’s not just humans who need physical contact.”

“Tell that to Roy. Or Siegfried. Whichever one of them had that real contact with the tiger.”

“Mistakes cost.” She backed away, ducked under to join Farley. “Even a kitten will scratch and bite when it’s annoyed or bored. Nobody who deals with cats gets out without a few scars. Were you looking for Tansy?”

“I wanted to see you, too. I just wanted you to know I’ll be sticking close to home, so you don’t need to worry.”

“This screwed up your plans for last night.”

“I was hoping I could work things out for a picnic maybe. That’s romantic, right?”

“Meets the top ten requirements.”

“But spring’s a busy time around the farm and around here.”

“Go raid the pantry in my cabin. Use the picnic area over there.”

“Here?” He gawked at her. “Now?”

“I’d bet my budget for the next five years you’ve got the ring in your pocket here and now.”

“I can’t take that bet. I need to save my money.” He looked back around, his face full of excitement and concern. “You think I could ask her here?”

“It’s a pretty afternoon, Farley. She loves this place as much as I do, so yeah, I think you could ask her here. I’ll make sure everyone gives you some room.”

“You can’t tell them why.”

“Have some faith.”

He had plenty of faith in Lil, and the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the right thing. After all, he and Tansy had gotten to know each other right here at the refuge. He’d fallen in love with her here. And she with him, something he thought she was just about ready to admit.

Lil didn’t have much in the way of picnic food, but he found enough to put a couple of sandwiches together. He took apples, a bag of chips, and two Diet Cokes—since that was all she had.

Then he nagged Tansy over to a picnic table.

“I can’t take much of a break.”

“Neither can I, but I want to spend what I’ve got with you.”

She went soft, he could see it. “Farley, you just kill me.”

“I missed you last night.” He tipped her face up for a kiss before he gestured her to the bench he’d already brushed off.

She sighed. “I missed you, too. I really did. But I’m glad you went back. It was the right thing. Everyone’s trying not to be jumpy, and that makes me more jumpy. I spend a lot of my time in what most people consider a danger zone. And there is risk, of course. But it’s calculated and it’s respected and understood. I just can’t understand any of this. Humans are, to my thinking, the most unpredictable of animals.”

“You got that scar right here.” He reached out to trace the mark on her forearm with his finger.

“From a cheetah who saw me as a threat. And my fault more than hers. None of this is Lil’s fault. None of it.”

“We’re not going to let anything happen to her. Or you.”

“He’s not interested in me.” Tansy laid a hand over his. “And I’m spoiling this quick picnic. What’ve we got?” She picked up a sandwich, laughed. “Peanut butter and jelly?”

“Lil didn’t have a lot of choices on the menu.”

“She always has pb&j.” Tansy bit in. “How are things at the farm?”

“Busy. Time for spring plowing soon. And we’ll be turning some calves into steers shortly.”

“Into . . . oh.” She lifted a hand, made a scissor motion with her finger. “Snip, snip?”

“Yeah. It always pains me a little.”

“Not as much as the calf.”

He smiled. “One of those got-to-be-done things. Living on a farm, well, it’s a lot like here. You get to see things as they are. You get to work outside, feel a part of things. You’d like living on a farm.”

“Maybe. When I came out here to help Lil, I really thought it would be temporary. I’d help get her up and running, train some staff, and then go to work for one of the big outfits. Make a big name for myself. But this place got its hooks into me.”

“You’re home now.”

“Looks like.”

He drew the ring out of his pocket. “Make home with me, Tansy.”

“Farley. Oh.” She held up a hand, thumped the other on her heart. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

He dealt with the problem by spinning her around then shoving her head between her knees. “Take it easy.”

“This is crazy.” Her breath hitched and pitched.

“Just in and out a few times.”

“Farley, what have you done? What have you done?”

“Bought a ring for the woman I’m going to marry. Couple more times in and out.”

“Marriage is huge! Huge. We’ve barely dated.”

“We’ve known each other a long time now, and we’ve been sleeping together regular the last little while. I’m in love with you.” In firm strokes he rubbed her back to help her settle. “And if you weren’t in love with me, you wouldn’t have your head between your knees.”

“That’s your gauge of love? That I’m dizzy and short of breath?”

“It’s a good sign. Now, are you ready to sit back up so you can get a look at this ring? Lil helped me pick it out.”

“Lil?” She popped straight up. “She knows about this? Who else?”

“Well, I had to tell Joe and Jenna. They’re my parents in every way that matters. And Ella at the jeweler’s. It’s hard to buy a ring without her knowing about it. That’s all. I wanted to surprise you with it.”

“You did. A lot. But—”

“You like it?”

Maybe some women could have resisted taking a good look, but Tansy wasn’t one of them. “It’s beautiful. It’s, oh, it’s gorgeous. Really. But—”

“Like you. I couldn’t ask you to wear a ring that wasn’t. It’s rose gold. So that makes it a little different. You’re not like anybody else, so I wanted to give you something special.”

“Farley, I can honestly say you’re not like anyone else either.”

“That’s why we suit. You just listen a minute before you say anything. I know how to work, make a decent living. So do you. We’re both doing what we’re good at, and what we like. I think that’s important. This is our place, yours and mine. That’s important, too. But most important is I love you.”

He took her hand and kept his eyes, so clear and serious now, on hers. “No one’s ever going to love you the way I do. Joe and Jenna, they made me a man. Every time I look at you, I know why. What I want most in this world, Tansy, is to build a good life with you, to make you happy every day of it. Or most every day, because you’ll get mad at me sometimes. I want to make a home and a family with you. I think I’d be good at that. I can wait if you’re not ready to wear this. As long as you know.”

“I have all these arguments in my head. Rational, sensible arguments. And when I look at you, when you look at me, they all seem weak. Like excuses. You’re not supposed to be the one, Farley. I don’t know why you are. But you are.”

“Do you love me, Tansy?”

“Farley. I really do.”

“Are you going to marry me?”

“I really am.” She let out a quick, surprised laugh. “Yes, I am.”

She held out her hand. He slipped it on. “It fits.” Her quiet murmur was thick and shaky.

Dazzled, he stared at the ring, then at her. “We’re engaged.”

“Yes.” Now she laughed, full out, and threw her arms around him. “Yes, we are.”

Lil kept the staff working on the other side of the compound as much as possible. She had to shift her own position to keep the picnic table in view when interns led a group around the habitats.

She told herself it wasn’t like spying. She was just . . . keeping an eye on things. And when she saw Tansy go into Farley’s arms she didn’t quite muffle the cheer.

“Sorry, what?” Eric asked.

“Nothing, nothing. Ah, can you make sure everything’s set up for the school group tomorrow morning? In the education center. Take a couple of the other interns along.”

“Sure. Matt’s going to do his exam of the new female tiger this afternoon. I was hoping I could observe. Maybe even assist.”

“If Matt clears it.”

“The word is you’re going to take the barricade down between the enclosures.”

“Yes. When Matt finishes the exam. She’s still caged, Eric. It’s a bigger cage, and it’s clean, it’s safe. Once we take the barrier down, she’ll be free to interact with her own kind, and she’ll be able, when she’s ready, to roam her habitat, walk in the grass, run. Play, I hope.”

“I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just rumor. I hate what they did to her. Cleo was different. She was so sleek and arrogant. But this one, she just seemed sad and tired. I guess I feel for her.”

“That’s why you’ve been getting better at your work. Because you feel for them.”

His eyes brightened. “Thanks.”

Was she ever that young? Lil wondered. So that a compliment from an instructor or trainer put that look in her eyes, that spring in her step? She supposed she had been.

But she’d been so focused, so absolutely determined to carve out her route. Not only to reach the goal but to make up for what she’d lost. To make up for Coop.

She drew a breath as she studied the compound. All in all, it had worked out for her. Now it would be her decision, her choice if she wanted to open back up, take back what she’d lost.

She heard the steps on the gravel, slow steps, and whirled to defend. Matt wheeled back so quickly he slid and nearly went down.

“Jesus, Lil!”

“Sorry, sorry.” Had she been braced like that all day? she wondered. “You startled me.”

“Well, you scared five years off my life, so we’re more than even. I want to set up to examine the female tiger.”

“Right. Eric wants to assist.”

“That’s fine.” Matt gave her just the lightest pat on the shoulder. For Matt, Lil knew, it equaled a hug from anyone else.

“There’s a lot of inside work. You could be doing that.”

“He should see me. If he’s watching, if he’s out there, he should see me. See that I’m doing what I always do. It’s about power.” She remembered what Coop had said. “The more I hide, the more power I give him. And hell, Matt,” she added when she saw Farley and Tansy exchange a kiss by his truck. “It’s a really good day.”

“Is it?”

“Wait and see.”

She stuck her hands in her back pockets and strolled toward Tansy as Farley drove away.

Tansy turned, and her shoulders went up and down with a bracing breath as she walked toward Lil.

“You knew.”

“Let me see how it looks on you.” She grabbed Tansy’s hand. “Fabulous. Perfect. I am good. Though he actually picked it himself, unless my mental shove actually worked.”

“It’s why you were babbling this morning. You thought I was talking about Farley asking me to marry him. Not the e-mail.”

“There was momentary confusion,” Lil allowed, “but no babbling.”

“He told me, just now, how he’d planned to ask me last night. He had a bottle of champagne and candles. He was going to set the stage in my apartment.”

“And instead he went to take care of family.”

“Yes, he did.” Tansy’s eyes went damp. “That’s who he is, and that’s one of the reasons this ring’s on my finger. I figured it out. So he’s younger and paler than I am. He’s a good, good man. He’s my man. Lil? I’m going to marry Farley.”

With a laughing hoot Lil grabbed Tansy to dance in a circle.

“What the hell is this?” Matt demanded.

“I told you it was a really good day.”

“So the two of you are yelling and jumping?”

“Yes.” Tansy ran to him, leaped, and nearly knocked him over with a hug. “I’m engaged. Look, look, look at my ring!”

“Very nice.” He eased her back, out of his personal space, and smiled. “Congratulations.”

“Oh! I’ve got to go show Mary. And Lucius. Well, mostly Mary.”

When she ran off, Lil just grinned. “See? A really good day.”

FAMILY CAME FIRST, Lil reminded herself and tried not to worry as she sat at her parents’ dining room table. Her mother wanted—insisted on—a celebrational family dinner, so she was where she should be. With them, and Farley and Tansy, with Lucy and Sam, who’d stood as Farley’s unofficial grandparents. And, of course, with Coop.

But her mind kept turning back to the refuge. Security system up and running, she reminded herself. Matt and Lucius and two of the interns on-site.

Everything was fine. They were fine, her animals were fine. But if something happened when she wasn’t there . . .

As conversation buzzed around them, Coop leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Stop worrying.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

She lifted her wineglass and made sure she had a smile on her face.

Late summer wedding. She tuned in. And here it was already April, so much to be done. Debates ran on the venue. The farm, the refuge. On the time. Afternoon or evening.

Did he know she wasn’t there? Lil wondered. Would he try to hurt someone just to prove he could?

Under the table, Coop took her hand and squeezed. Not supportive and lover-like, but cut it out.

She kicked him, but pulled herself back. “If I get a vote, it’s for here at the farm, afternoon. That way we can party right through the evening. We’ll close the refuge for the day. There’s more room here, and if we have any sort of bad luck with the weather—”

“Bite your tongue,” Jenna ordered.

“Well, the house is more accommodating than the cabins.”

“Close for the day?” Tansy pushed that single point. “Really?”

“Come on, Tans. It’s not every day my best friend gets married.”

“Oh, boy, we have to shop!” Jenna winked at Lucy. “Dresses, flowers, food, cake.”

“We were thinking to keep it kind of simple,” Farley put in.

To which Joe muttered, “Good luck, son.”

“Simple’s no problem. But simple still has to be pretty and perfect.” Jenna emphasized the point by jabbing a finger in Joe’s arm. “I hope your mother can come out soon, Tansy, so we can put our heads together.”

“There’s no stopping her. She’s called three times since I told her, and already has a stack of bride magazines.”

“We’ll have a girl trip when she comes. Oh, this will be fun! Lucy, we have to have a shopping safari.”

“I’m already there. Jenna, remember the flowers at Wendy Rearder’s daughter’s wedding? We can outdo that.”

“Simple.” Sam rolled his eyes at Farley.

“Before you women get too far along and start talking about releasing a hundred doves and six white horses—”

“Horses.” Jenna interrupted her husband by clapping her hands together in delight. “Oh, we could do a horse and carriage. We could—”

“Just hold on, Jenna. Farley’s looking pale.”

“All he has to do is show up. You leave the rest to us,” Jenna told Farley.

“Meanwhile,” Joe said, pointing a hushing finger at his wife. “Jenna and I talked about some practicalities. Now, the two of you might have something else in mind, or maybe you haven’t thought about it as yet. But Jenna and I want to give you three acres. Room enough for you to build a house, have a place of your own. Close enough to make it easy for both of you to get to work. That is, if you’re planning on staying on here at the farm, Farley, and Tansy’s staying on with Lil.”

Farley stared. “But . . . the land should go to Lil, by rights.”

“Don’t be an ass, Farley,” Lil said.

“I . . . I don’t know what to say or how to say it.”

“It’s something you’ll want to talk to your bride about,” Joe told him. “The land’s yours if you decide you want it. And no hard feelings if you decide you don’t.”

“The bride has something to say.” Tansy rose, went first to Joe, then Jenna, to kiss them both. “Thank you. You’ve treated me like family since Lil and I were roommates in college. Now I am family. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to have a home here near you, near Lil.” She beamed over at Farley. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

“I’d say that’s settled.” Joe reached up to close his hand over the one Tansy had on his shoulder. “First chance we get, we’ll go scout out that acreage.”

Too overcome to speak, Farley only nodded. He cleared his throat. “I’m just gonna . . .” He rose, slipped into the kitchen.

“Now we’ve got something interesting to talk about.” Sam rubbed his hands together. “We’ve got a house to build.”

Jenna exchanged a look with Tansy as she got up and followed Farley.

He’d gone straight through and stood on the porch, his hands braced on the rail. The rain Lil had scented that morning pattered the ground, soaked the fields waiting for plowing. He straightened when Jenna laid a hand on his back, then turned and hugged her hard. Hard.

“Ma.”

She made a little sound, weepy pleasure, as she pressed him close. He rarely called her that, and usually with a kind of joking tone when he did. But now that single word said everything. “My sweet boy.”

“I don’t know what to do with all this happy. You used to say ‘Find your happy, Farley, and hold on to it.’ Now I’ve got so much I can’t hold it all. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You just did. Best thanks going.”

“When I was a boy they said I’d never have anything, never amount to anything, never be anything. It was easy to believe them. It was harder to believe what you and Joe told me. Kept telling me. I could be whatever I wanted. I could have whatever I could earn. But you made me believe it.”

“Tansy said she’s the luckiest woman in the world, and she’s pretty damn lucky. But I’m running neck-and-neck. I have both my kids close by. I can watch them make their lives. And I get to plan a wedding.” She drew back, patted his cheeks. “I’m going to be such a pain in the ass.”

His grin came back. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“You say that now. Wait until I’m nagging you brainless. Are you ready to go back? If you’re out here too long Sam and Joe will have designed your house before you get a chance to say whoa.”

“Right now?” He swung an arm around her shoulders. “I’m ready for anything.”

26

Wicked, windy thunderstorms pounded through the night, hammered into the morning. Then it got nasty.

The first rattle of hail spat out like pea gravel, bouncing on the paths, chattering on the rooftops. Well-versed in spring weather, Lil ordered all vehicles that could fit under cover. She maneuvered her own truck through the mud as the golf balls began to ping.

The animals had enough sense to take shelter, but she watched some of the interns racing around, laughing, scooping up handfuls of hail to toss. As if it were a party, she thought, and the slashes of lightning cracking the black sky were just an elaborate light show.

She shook her head as she caught sight of Eric juggling three balls of hail, like a street performer while the cannon fire of thunder boomed.

Someone, she thought, was going to get beaned.

She cursed as a clump the size of a healthy peach slammed into the hood of her truck. Even as she squeezed the truck under the overhang on the storage shed she snarled at the new dent.

Not laughing now, she noted, as interns scrambled for the nearest shelter. There would be more dents and dings, she knew. Shredded plantings and an unholy mess of ice to scrape and shovel. But for now, she was warm and dry and opted to wait it out in the truck.

Until she saw a softball of ice wing into the back of one of the running interns, and pitch her forward into the mud.

“Crap.”

Lil was out and sprinting even as a couple of her other kids rushed to pick up the fallen.

“Get her inside. Inside!” It was like being pelted by an angry baseball team.

She grabbed the girl, half dragged, half carried her to the porch of her own cabin. They arrived wet and filthy, with the girl pale as the ice that battered the compound.

“Are you hurt?”

The girl shook her head, and wheezing, braced her hands on her knees. “Knocked the wind out of me.”

“I bet.” Lil flipped through the jumbled data in her brain to find names for the two of the new crop of interns while thunder roared over the hills like stalking lions. “Just relax. Reed, go in and get Lena some water. Wipe your feet,” she added. For all the good it would do.

“It happened so fast.” Lena shivered, and her eyes stared out of a face smeared with mud. “It was just like little ice chips, then ping-pong balls. And then . . .”

“Welcome to South Dakota. We’ll have Matt take a look at you. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Um. No. Just sort of . . . wowed. Thanks, Reed.” She took the water bottle, drank deep. “Scared me. And still.” She looked past Lil to where the ice balls hammered the ground, and a vicious pitchfork of lightning hurled out of the clouds. “Weirdly cool.”

“Remember that when we’re cleaning up. The hail won’t last long.” Already slowing, Lil judged. “Storm’s tracking west now.”

“Really?” Lena blinked at her. “You can tell?”

“The wind’s carrying it. You can use my shower. I’ll lend you some clothes. When it’s over, the rest of you report to the cabin. There’ll be plenty to do. Come on, Lena.”

She took the girl upstairs, gestured toward the bathroom. “You can toss out your clothes. I’ll throw them in the wash.”

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble. Taking a header in a hailstorm wasn’t the way I wanted you to notice me.”

“Sorry?” Lil turned from where she dug fresh jeans and a sweatshirt out of her dresser.

“I just mean we’ve been working mostly with Tansy and Matt since I got here. There hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to work with you directly with everything that’s going on.”

“There will be.”

“It’s just that you’re the reason I’m here. The reason I’m studying wildlife biology and conservation.”

“Really?”

“God, that sounds geeky.” Lena sat on the john to drag off her boots. “I saw that documentary on your work here. It was that three-part deal. I was home sick from school and really bored. Channel surfing, you know? And I hit the part about you and the refuge. I missed the other two parts, because—you know—back to school. But I got the DVD, the same one we sell at the gift shop. I got really into what you were doing, and what you said and what you were building here. I thought, That’s what I want to be when I grow up. My mother thought it was great, and that I’d change my mind a dozen times before college. But I didn’t.”

Intrigued, Lil set the jeans, the sweatshirt, and a pair of warm socks on the bathroom counter. “That’s a lot from one documentary.”

“You were so passionate,” Lena continued, rising to unzip her mud-died hoodie. “And so articulate and involved. I’d never been interested in science before. But you made it sound, I don’t know, sexy and smart and important. And now it sounds like I’m sucking up.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen. Up till then I thought I’d be a rock star.” She smiled and wiggled out of her wet jeans. “Not being able to sing or play a musical instrument didn’t seem to be a problem. Then I saw you on TV, and I thought, now that’s a rock star. And here I am, stripping in your bathroom.”

“Your instructors gave you a very high rating when you applied for internship here.”

Obviously unconcerned with modesty, Lena stood in her underwear and watched Lil with wide, hopeful eyes. “You read my file?”

“It’s my place. I’ve noticed you work hard, and you listen well. You’re here on time every morning and you stay late when you’re needed. You don’t complain about the dirty work, and your written reports are thorough—if still a little fanciful. I’ve noticed you take time to talk to the animals. You ask questions. There may be a lot going on, and that’s cut into the one-on-one time I like to put into the intern program. But I noticed you before you took the header in the mud.”

“Do you think I have what it takes?”

“I’ll let you know at the end of the program.”

“Scary, but fair.”

“Go on and clean up.” She started to leave, hesitated. “Lena, what’s everyone saying about what’s going on? How are you guys dealing with it? You talk,” she said. “I was an intern once. I remember.”

“Everyone’s a little freaked. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel really real.”

“It’d be good if you all stuck together. As much as you can. Head over next door when you’re done.”

Lil went down to toss the clothes in the wash, ordered herself to remember to put them in the dryer when they were clean. While thunder, distant now, echoed, she thought about the girl up in her shower, and realized Lena reminded her of Carolyn.

The idea gave her a quick shiver before she went out to start cleaning up from the storm.

AT THE FARM, Coop and Sam let the horses out to pasture. Sam limped a bit, and maybe always would, but he seemed sturdy and steady enough. Enough that Coop didn’t feel the need to watch his grandfather’s every step.

Together they watched the young foals play while the adults grazed.

“At least we hadn’t gotten any of the spring crop in. Could’ve been worse.” Bending, Sam picked up a baseball-sized hunk. “How’s that arm of yours?”

“I’ve still got it.”

“Let’s see.”

Amused, Coop took the ice, set, then winged it high and long. “How’s yours?”

“Might be better suited for the infield these days, but I put it where I throw it.” Sam plucked up another ball, pointed to a pine, then smashed the ice dead center of the trunk. “I still got my eyes.”

“Runner on second’s taking a long lead. Batter fakes a bunt, takes the strike. Runner goes.” Coop scooped up the next ball of ice, bulleted it to his imaginary third baseman. “And he’s out.”

Even as Sam chuckled and reached for more ice, Lucy’s voice carried to them. “Are you two fools going to stand around throwing ice, or get some work done around here?” She leaned on the hoe she’d been using to clean the ice from her kitchen garden.

“Busted,” Coop said.

“She’s mad ’cause the hail tore into her kale. Fine by me. I can’t stand the stuff. Be right there, Lucy!” Sam brushed his hands on his pants as they started back. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about getting more help around here. I’m going to look into it.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s not that I can’t handle the work.”

“No, sir.”

“I just figure you should put more of your time into the business. If we get somebody to pitch in with what needs doing around here, that gives you that time for the rentals and guiding. That’s what makes practical sense.”

“I agree.”

“And I figure you won’t be using the bunkhouse all that much longer. Not if you’ve got any sense or spine. If you’ve got that sense and spine, you’ll be adding on to that cabin of Lil’s. You’ll want more room when you settle down and start a family.”

“You kicking me out?”

“Bird’s got to leave the nest.” Sam grinned over at him. “We’ll give you a little time first. See you don’t waste it.”

“Things are complicated right now, Grandpa.”

“Boy, things are always complicated. The two of you might as well untangle some of the knots together.”

“I think we’re doing that, or starting to. Right now, I’m focused on keeping her safe.”

“You think that’s going to change?” Sam stopped a moment, shook his head at Coop. “It won’t be what it is now, God willing, but you’ll be working to keep her safe the rest of your life. And if you’re blessed, you’ll be keeping the children you make between you safe. Got no problem sleeping with her, have you?”

Coop barely resisted the urge to hang his head. “None.”

“Well, then.” As if that was that, Sam continued on.

“To get back to the business,” Coop said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you and Grandma about it. I’m looking to invest.”

“Invest what?”

“Money, Granddad, which I’ve got.”

Sam stopped again. “The business is doing well enough. It doesn’t need a . . . what’s it? Infusion.”

“It would if we expanded. Built on to the stables, added pony rides, a small retail space.”

“Retail? Souvenirs?”

“Not exactly. I’m thinking trail gear and supplies. We get a lot of customers who buy them somewhere else. Why shouldn’t they buy their trail mix, water bottles, trail guides, and disposable camera when they realize their battery’s dead from us? If we upgraded the computer, the printer, we could do photographs, make them into postcards. A mother’s going to want a postcard of her little cowgirl sitting on a pony. She’s going to want a dozen of them.”

“That’s a lot of add-on.”

“Think of it as an organic expansion.”

“Organic expansion.” Sam snorted. “You beat all, Coop. I expect we could think on it. Postcards,” he muttered and shook his head.

Frowning, he shaded his eyes against the beam of the sun that broke through after the storm. “That’s Willy coming.”

Lucy had seen him, too, and stopped to pull off her gardening gloves, push at the hair the wind blew around her face.

“Miss Lucy.” Willy tapped the brim of his hat. “The hail sure did a job on your garden.”

“Could’ve been worse. Doesn’t seem to’ve hurt the roof, so that’s a blessing.”

“Yeah. Sam. Coop.”

“Willy. Did you get caught out in that hail?” Sam asked him.

“I missed the worst of it. Weatherman never said a thing about hail today. I don’t know why I listen half the time.”

“That’s about the amount he gets it right. Half.”

“If that. Seems to’ve blown in some warm though. Maybe that’ll stay awhile. Coop, I wonder if I could have a word with you.”

“William Johannsen, if you’ve got something to say about that murdering so-and-so, you say it right out.” Lucy fisted her hands on her hips. “We’ve a right to know.”

“I guess that’s the truth. I’m going by to talk to Lil, so it’s not something you won’t hear.” With a nudge of his knuckle, he tipped up the rim of his hat. “We found Tyler’s wallet. Or what we believe is Tyler’s wallet. Had his driver’s license and some other ID in it. No cash, no photographs like his wife said he had. But all the credit cards she listed.”

“Where?” Coop demanded.

“See, now, that’s the interesting thing. Well west of here, only about five miles from the Wyoming border. It looked like he was heading toward Carson Draw. The rain washed some of his trail, but once the men picked it up, they followed it well enough.”

“That’s a ways from here,” Lucy said. “A good long ways.”

Out of his current territory, Coop thought. Out of the hunting ground. “He took the pictures but left the ID.”

“That’s a fact. One theory is he figured he was far enough away from the search area to toss the wallet. Another is he just dropped it by mistake.”

“If he wanted to toss it, he could’ve used the river, or buried it.”

Willy nodded at Coop. “That’s a fact, too.”

“But this is good news, isn’t it? If he’s that far west and still moving, he’s leaving.” Lucy reached out for Coop’s arm. “I know he needs to be caught, to be stopped, but I won’t be sorry if that happens miles from here. So this is good news.”

“Might be.”

“It’s sure not bad news,” she shot back at Willy.

“Now, Miss Lucy, in circumstances like this, I’ve got to be cautious.”

“You be cautious. I’ll be sleeping easier tonight. Come on in and sit down a minute or two. I’ve got some sun tea cold and coffee hot.”

“I’d like that, I would, but I’ve got to get on. I want you to sleep easier tonight, but I want you to keep your doors locked just the same. Don’t you work too hard now. Miss Lucy, Sam.”

“I’ll be right back.” Coop walked off with Willy. “How long to verify it’s Tyler’s wallet, and match his prints?”

“I’m hoping tomorrow. But I’m willing to put money down it’s Tyler’s, and that Howe’s prints will be on it.”

“Are you putting the same money down that he tossed it, or dropped it?”

“That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take.”

“I’d put mine on him planting it.”

Willy pressed his lips together as he nodded. “I’d say we’re on the same page of this book. It just strikes too easy. We barely find a sign of this bastard for days. Then he leaves a trail, even after it rains, that my nearsighted grandmother could follow. I may be small-time law, but I’m not as stupid as he thinks.”

“He wants a little time, a little space, to prepare for whatever he has in mind. You make sure Lil understands that. I’ll be doing the same when I see her, but I want her to hear it from you first.”

“I’ll do that.” He opened the door of his cruiser. “Coop, the feds are putting their focus on Wyoming. Could be they’re right.”

“They’re not.”

“The evidence points there, so they’re following the evidence. All I’ve got is a gut telling me he’s hornswoggling us. That’s what I’ll be telling Lil.”

He got in the car, tipped Coop a salute, and drove back down the farm road.

BY THE TIME Coop got to the compound, the dusk-to-dawn lights had glowed on. He knew by the sounds the animals made they were feeding. A group of interns, finished for the day, piled into a van. Immediately, Weezer rocked out.

A glance at the office cabin told him that was locked up for the night. Still, he made the rounds, over gravel, concrete, mud to offices, sheds, stables, ed center, commissary to assure himself all was empty and secure.

Lights shone in the windows of Lil’s cabin. As he circled, he saw her—her hair pulled back from her face in a tail, the strong blue of her cotton sweater, even the glint of the silver dangles that swung at her ears. He watched her through the glass, the way she moved as she poured wine, sipped it while she checked something on the stove.

He saw the steam rise, and through it the strong lines of her profile.

Love rolled through him, over him, in one strong, almost violent, wave.

Should be used to it, he thought. Used to her after so much time, even counting the time without. But he never got used to it. Never got through it or over it.

Maybe his grandfather was right. Time was wasting.

He stepped up on the porch, pushed open the door.

She spun from the stove, drawing a long, serrated knife from the block as she whirled. He saw, in that moment, both the fear and the courage.

He held up both hands. “We come in peace.”

Her hand shook, very slightly, when she shoved the knife back in the block. “I didn’t hear you drive up, and didn’t expect you to come in the back.”

“Then you should make sure the door’s locked.”

“You’re right.”

Time might be wasting, Coop thought, but he had no right pushing now.

“Willy’s been by?” Coop asked and got down a second glass.

“Yes.”

He glanced at the stove, the bottle of good white wine. “Lil, if you’re thinking of a kind of celebration dinner—”

“When did I suddenly go stupid?” She bit off the words. Snapping more out as she took the lid off the skillet and made him lift his brows when she poured the good wine over the chicken she had sautéing. “He’s no more in Wyoming than I am. He made sure he left enough signs for them to follow, and might as well have put up a ‘Here’s a Clue’ sign pointing to that wallet.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not okay. He’s trying to make fools out of us.”

“Which is worse than trying to kill us?”

“It adds insult. I’m insulted.” She grabbed up her wine and drank.

“So you’re cooking chicken using twenty-five-dollar-a-bottle wine?”

“If you knew anything about cooking you’d know if it’s not good enough to drink, it’s not good enough for cooking either. And I felt like cooking. I told you I could cook. Nobody said you had to eat it.”

After she’d slapped the lid back on the skillet he crossed to her. He said nothing, just grabbed her, tightening his hold when she tried to pull away. Drawing her in, holding her to him, saying nothing at all.

“He’s up there somewhere, laughing. It makes it worse. I don’t care how petty it is, it makes it worse. So I’m going to be pissed off.”

“That’s fine, be pissed off. Or look at it this way: He thinks we’re stupid, that you’re stupid. He thinks we bought his little game, and we didn’t. He underestimated you, and that’s a mistake. It took a lot of time and effort for him to make that trail, plant that wallet. He wasted it on you.”

She relaxed a little. “When you put it that way.”

He lifted her face to his, kissed her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He ran his hand down the length of her braid, wishing he could ask, demand, even beg. And let her go. “Any hail damage?”

“Nothing major. How about at your grandparents’?”

“To my grandfather’s secret pleasure, they lost most of the kale.”

“I like kale.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “No good reason. There’s a ball game on tonight. Toronto at Houston. Wanna watch?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. You can set the table.”

He got out plates, laid them with the scent of cooking, of her, filling the air. He decided it wasn’t pushing just to ask. “Is that sexy underwear still in your dresser?”

“It is.”

“Okay.” He glanced at her while he opened a drawer for flatware. “You need to pick a date this summer. I’ll give you the Yankee schedule, and you can pick whichever game works for you. I can get Brad to send the plane. We could take a couple of days, stay at the Palace or the Waldorf.”

She checked the potatoes she had roasting with rosemary in the oven. “Private planes, fancy hotels.”

“I’ve still got my box-seat season tickets.”

“Box seats, too. Just how rich are you, Cooper?”

“Really.”

“Maybe I should hit you up for another donation.”

“I’ll give you five thousand to throw away the red number in the drawer upstairs.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

“New York and the Yankees were the first bribe. You missed it.”

She’d missed this, too, she realized. Just poking at each other. “How much to toss them all?”

“Name your price.”

“Hmm. Could be steep. I want to build a dorm for the interns.”

He turned back, head angled. “That’s a good idea. Keep them on the property. They have more time here, probably more interaction with one another and the staff. And you’d have a number of people on-site at all times.”

“The last part wasn’t a consideration until recently. Which I just don’t want to talk about right now. Housing and transportation aren’t huge problems, but they always take some work. I want to build a six-room dorm, with kitchen facilities and a community room. We’d have room for a dozen interns. Fork over enough and I’ll name it after you.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

She grinned at him. “How does it feel? To be loaded?”

“Better than it did to be broke. I grew up with money, so I never thought about it. Part of my mistake when I hit college. I never had to worry where a meal was coming from or how I’d pay for shoes, that kind of thing. I blew through my savings and then some.”

“You were just a boy.”

“You were just a girl and you made a budget, and lived by it. I remember.”

“I didn’t grow up rich. You spent plenty on me, too, back then. I let you.”

“In any case it was a come-to-Jesus when I got in a hole, which I compounded by going against my father and dropping out of college, wanting to be a cop. Still, I figured I could do it.”

He shrugged and sipped as if it didn’t matter. But she knew it did.

“I’d have the first chunk from the trust coming along so I could live thin for a while. I didn’t know what thin was. But I found out.”

“You must’ve been scared.”

“Sometimes. I felt defeated and pissed off. But I was doing what I needed to do, and I was pretty good at it. Getting good at it. When he blocked the trust payment and froze my accounts, what there was of them, it turned desperate. I had the job, so it wasn’t like I’d be on the street, but thin got thinner. I needed a lawyer, a good one, and a good one wants a good retainer. I had to borrow the money for that. Brad lent it to me.”

“I knew I liked him.”

“It took months, close to a year, before I could pay him back. It wasn’t just the money, Lil, breaking my father’s hold on the trust payment. It was, finally, breaking his hold on me.”

“His loss. And I don’t mean the control. He lost you.”

“And I lost you.”

She shook her head, turned back to the stove.

“I had to prove myself before I could be with you, and proving myself meant I couldn’t be.”

“Yet here we are.”

“And now I have to prove myself to you.”

“That’s not it.” Fresh annoyance shimmered in her voice. “That’s not right.”

“Sure it is. It’s fair. A pisser, but fair. There’s a lot of thinking time when you’re working with horses. I’ve spent a good chunk of that thinking about this. You’ve got me on probation, and that’s a pisser. You want to make sure I’m not going to leave again, and you want to make sure you want me to stay. But in the meantime, I get to have you in bed, and now and then I get a hot meal I didn’t have to make myself. And I can watch you through the kitchen window. That’s fair.”

“Sex and food and occasional voyeurism?”

“And I can look in your eyes and see that you love me. I know you can’t hold out forever.”

“I’m not holding out. I’m—”

“Making sure,” he finished. “Same thing.” He moved, fast and smooth, and had her wrapped in a kiss, layered in the warmth, in the need. He let her go slowly, and with a soft, lingering bite.

“The chicken smells good.”

She eased him back a little farther. “Sit down. It should be done.”

They ate, and by tacit agreement turned the conversation to simple things. The weather, the horses, the health of her new tiger. They did the dishes together. After he’d checked the locks—the only outward sign of trouble—they settled in to watch the ball game. They made love while the waxing moon poured its light through the windows.

And still, in the night, she dreamed of running. A panic race through the moonstruck forest with terror galloping in her chest and her breath a harsh echo. She felt the sweat of effort and fear slick her skin. Brush tore at that skin as she fought through it, and she scented her own blood.

So would he.

She was hunted.

The high grass slashed at her legs when she reached the flats. She heard the pursuit, steady, always closer no matter how fast she ran, which direction she took. The moon was a spotlight, mercilessly bright, leaving her no place to hide. Flight, only flight could save her.

But his shadow fell over her, nearly bore her to the ground with its weight. Even as she turned, to face, to fight, the cougar sprang out of the high grass, its fangs bared for her throat.

27

A day passed, then another. There were reports of sightings of Ethan in Wyoming as far south as Medicine Bow, as far north as Shoshoni. But none panned out.

The search team in Spearfish thinned, and talk in town and the outlying farms turned to other matters. Spring plowing and planting, lambings, the cougar who’d perched in an apple tree in a yard not a quarter-mile from downtown Deadwood.

People agreed over pie at the diner, across the counter of the post office, between sips of beer at the bar that the man who’d killed that poor guy from St. Paul had run off.

The trail had gone cold.

But Lil remembered the dream, and knew they were wrong.

While those around her lowered their guard, she only strengthened hers. She began to slip a knife in her boot every morning. Its weight gave her peace of mind even as she resented the need for it.

Good weather brought the tourists, and the tourists meant increased donations. Mary reported their seven percent increase for the first quarter held steady for the first weeks of the second. Good news, Lil knew, but she couldn’t work up enthusiasm.

The more settled and ordinary the days became, the more her nerves frayed. What was he waiting for?

She asked herself that question as she carried hampers of food, or hosed down enclosures, as she uncarted supplies. Every time she made her rounds of the habitats her muscles braced for attack.

She all but willed it to come. She’d rather see Ethan leap out of the woods armed to the teeth than wait and wait for some unseen trap to spring.

She could watch Boris and Delilah curled together, or see him lead, and her tentatively follow into the grass, and feel pleasure, a sense of accomplishment. But under it brewed worry and stress.

She should be helping Mary and Lucius plan the summer open house, or put real effort into helping Tansy plan her wedding. But all she could think was: When? When would he come? When would it be finished?

“The waiting’s driving me crazy.” Following another new habit, Lil circled the habitats with Coop after the staff had gone for the day.

“Waiting’s what you have to do.”

“I don’t have to like it.”

She wore one of their new Chance Wildlife Refuge hoodies under her oldest jacket, and couldn’t seem to stop playing with the strings.

“It’s not like sitting in a jeep half the night waiting for a pride of lions to come to the watering hole, or even sitting at a computer tracking a collared cougar for a report. That’s doing something.”

“Maybe we were wrong. Maybe he did head west.”

“You know he didn’t.”

Coop shrugged. “Willy’s doing the best he can, but he’s got limited resources. There’s a lot of ground up there, and a lot of hikers, trail riders, and campers making tracks.”

“Willy’s not going to find him. I think we both know that.”

“Luck plays, Lil, and you have a better chance at getting lucky with persistence. Willy’s damn persistent.”

“And you have a better chance of getting lucky if you take a chance. I feel like I’m locked in here, Coop, and worse, just running in place. I need to move, need to act. I need to go up there.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking for your permission. If I decide to do this, you can’t stop me.”

“Yes, I can.” He glanced at her. “And I will.”

“I’m not looking to argue, not looking to fight. You’ve gone up. I know you’ve guided tours on the trail the last couple days. And we both know he’d be happy to hurt you if only to get to me.”

“Calculated risk. Hold it,” he ordered before she could debate. “If he tried to take me out, he’d bring back the full force of the search. He took the time and effort to point the arrow west and the FBI’s followed it. Why bring them back? Second, if he was stupid or impulsive enough to try, I carry a radio, which I show every member of the tour how to use, in case of accident. So he’d have to take me out, and the entire group I’m guiding. Calculated risk,” he repeated.

“And you get to sit your ass on a horse, ride. Breathe.”

He skimmed a hand over her hair, a subtle show of sympathy. “That’s true enough.”

“I know you’re going up hoping to find some signs, pick up a trail. You won’t. You’ve got some skills, but they’re rusty. And you were never as good as I was.”

“Circles back to luck and persistence.”

“I could go up with you, take a group up with you.”

“Then, if he happened to catch sight of us, or you, he might take me out. Then he could force you off at gunpoint, so by the time anyone still alive radioed for help, you’d be gone. Well gone if he used the horses. Waiting means he moves first. He exposes himself first.”

She stalked down the path and back. In his enclosure, Baby mirrored her move. The reflected motion had Coop’s lips curving. “That cougar’s a slave to his love for you.”

She glanced over, nearly smiled herself. “No ball tonight, Baby. We’ll play in the morning.”

He let out a call that Coop would have called a whine if cougars were capable of it.

Lil ducked under the barricade, relenting enough to rub him through the cage, let him butt her head, lick her hand.

“Is he going to be pissed if I come over there?”

“No. He’s seen you with me enough. He’s smelled you on me, and me on you. A cougar’s sense of smell isn’t his strongest asset, but Baby knows my scent. Come over.”

When he’d joined her, Lil put her hand over his, and laid it on Baby’s fur. “He’ll associate you with me. He knows I’m not afraid of you, or threatened. And he really likes to be rubbed. Bump foreheads with me. Just lean down, touch your forehead to mine.”

“He smells your hair,” Coop murmured as he rested his brow against hers. “The way I do. It smells like the hills. Clean, and just a little wild.”

“Now rest your forehead on the bars. It’s an offer of affection. Trust.”

“Trust.” Coop tried not to imagine what those sharp teeth could do. “Are you sure he’s not the jealous type?”

“He won’t hurt what I care about.”

Coop laid his forehead on the fencing. Baby studied him for a moment. Then he rose to his hind legs, bumped his head against Coop’s.

“Did we just shake hands or exchange a sloppy kiss?” Coop wondered.

“Somewhere in between. Three times I tried to release him to the wild. The first, when I took him and his littermates up into the hills, he tracked me back—to my parents. I’d ridden there to visit. You can imagine the surprise we got when we heard him, then opened the back door and saw him sitting on the porch.”

“He followed your scent.”

“For miles, and he shouldn’t have been able to, he shouldn’t have wanted to.”

“Love adds to ability, I’d say, and desire.”

“Unscientific, but . . . The second time, he tracked me back to the refuge, and the last, I had Tansy and an intern take him. That was guilt on my part. I didn’t want to let him go, but felt I had to try. He beat them back. He came home. His choice. Good night, Baby.”

She moved back to the path. “The other night I dreamed I was being hunted. Running and running, but he kept getting closer. And when I knew I was done, when I had to turn and fight, a cougar leaped out of the grass and went for my throat.”

She leaned into him when he put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ve never dreamed of being attacked by a cat. Never. Not even after I’d been bit, or come out of some dicey situation. But this has done that. I can’t keep being afraid. I can’t keep being locked in here.”

“There are other ways to get out.”

“What? Going into the city to shop?”

“It’s out.”

“Now you sound like my mother. It’ll do me good, take my mind off things. That’s when I’m not hearing how Tansy wants her best friend and maid of honor with her when she picks out her wedding dress.”

“So you’re going.”

“Of course I’m going.” But she sighed. “Tansy’s mother flew in today, and tomorrow we’re off on our safari. And I feel guilty about being irritated about it.”

“You could buy new sexy underwear.”

She slanted him a look. “You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“Stay on track, you eventually reach the finish line.”

“I need the hills, Coop.” Her fingers went back, tugging and twisting the strings of the hoodie. “How long can I let him take them from me?”

This time he leaned down, pressed his lips to her hair. “We’ll take the horses down to Custer. We’ll ride the hills all day.”

She wanted to say those weren’t her hills, but it would have been petty and pouty.

She looked toward their silhouette, blank and black under the night sky. Soon, she thought. It had to be soon.

LIL REMINDED HERSELF, again, she liked to shop. Geography and circumstances meant she did a lot of that online, so when she had the chance to really dig into the colors, shapes, textures, smells of shopping in three dimensions, she did so with enthusiasm.

And she enjoyed the company of women, particularly these women. Sueanne Spurge had charm and a sense of fun, and got along like a house afire with Jenna and Lucy.

She liked the city, too. Usually. She enjoyed the change of pace, the sights, the stores, the crowds. Since childhood a trip into Rapid City had been a special treat, a day of fun and busy doings.

But now the noise annoyed, the people just got in the way, and she wanted nothing more than to be back at the refuge—which only the night before had begun to feel like a prison.

She sat in the pretty dressing room of the bridal boutique, sipping sparkling water garnished with a thin slice of lemon, and thought about what trails she would take if she had the opportunity to hunt Ethan.

She’d start on the flat, where he’d disabled the camera. The search had covered that area, but that didn’t matter. They might have missed something. He’d killed there, at least twice. A human and her cougar. It was part of his hunting ground.

From there, she’d cover the ground to the Crow Peak trail, where he most likely had intercepted James Tyler. From there to the river, where the body had been found. From that point—

“Lil!”

Lil jolted back so fast she nearly tipped the water into her lap. “What?”

“The dress.” Tansy spread her arms to model the off-the-shoulder ivory confection of silk and lace.

“You look gorgeous.”

“All brides look gorgeous.” A hint of impatience edged into Tansy’s tone. “We’re taking opinions on the dress.”

“Um . . .”

“I just love it!” Sueanne clasped her hands together at her heart as her eyes filled. “Baby, you look like a princess.”

“The color’s lovely on you, Tansy,” Jenna put in. “That warm white.”

“And the lines.” Lucy rubbed her hand up and down Sueanne’s back. “It’s very romantic.”

“It’s a spectacular dress,” Lil managed finally.

“And it’s an outdoor country wedding. Doesn’t anyone else think this is, yes, spectacular, but too much for a simple, country wedding?”

“You’re still the showpiece,” Sueanne insisted.

“Mama, I know you’ve got Princess Tansy in mind, and I love you for it. I love the dress, too. But it’s not what I have in my mind for my wedding.”

“Oh. Well.” Obviously deflated, Sueanne managed a wobbly smile. “It has to be your dress.”

“Why don’t we go hunt some more?” Lucy suggested. “Lil can help her out of that one, and into one of the others we’ve got in here. But maybe we missed the perfect one.”

“That’s a great idea. Come on, Sueanne.” Jenna took the mother of the bride by the arm to steer her out.

“I love it, I really do.” Tansy did a turn in front of the three-way mirror. “What’s not to love? If we were doing something more formal, I’d snatch this in a heartbeat, but . . . Lil!”

“Hmm. Damn it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Setting the water glass aside, she rose to unhook the back of the dress. “I’m a terrible friend. I’m the worst maid of honor in the history of maids of honor. I deserve to wear puce organdy with two dozen flounces and puffy sleeves. Please don’t make me wear puce organdy.”

“I’m holding it in reserve,” Tansy said darkly, “so watch your step. I know you didn’t want to come today.”

“It’s not that. I just haven’t been able to get my head here. But now it is. I’m keeping it here. Solemn swear.”

“Then help me get into the one I hid behind the one with the enormous skirt. I know Mama wants me in a big white dress, and would like it better yet if it had a twenty-foot train and six million sequins. But I saw that one out there and it hit. I think it’s the one.”

It was the color of warm, rich honey, its sweetheart neckline outlined with tiny, delicate pearls. It dipped in at the waist then flowed out in a subtle flair. Ribbons crisscrossed the back down to the elaborate bow that flirted from the waist.

“Oh, Tansy, you look . . . edible. If it weren’t for Farley I’d marry you myself.”

“I glow.” Tansy turned in front of the mirror, her face radiant. “That’s what I want. I want to glow on the outside the same way I am on the inside.”

“You really do. It’s not spectacular. It’s stunning and it’s so absolutely you.”

“It’s my wedding dress. You have to help me convince my mother. I don’t want to disappoint her, but this is my dress.”

“I think—”

Lil stopped short as Sueanne bustled back in, leading the parade. Sueanne stared at Tansy, then pressed her hands to her mouth. Tears spilled out of her eyes. “Oh, baby. Oh, my baby girl.”

“I don’t think she needs convincing,” Lil concluded.

Shopping did take her mind off things when she let it. And there was nothing quite like the fun of an all-girl day in the shops. Pretty dresses and pretty shoes and pretty bags, all guiltlessly purchased thanks to Tansy’s wedding.

Intermission was a fancy lunch, which included, at Sueanne’s insistence, a bottle of champagne. With the mood as bubbly as the wine, they went back to the task at hand, scouring florists and bakeries for ideas and inspiration.

Triumphant, they squeezed back into Jenna’s SUV with their mountain range of shopping bags. By the time they dropped off Tansy and her mother in Deadwood, the streetlights burned.

“I bet we walked twenty miles.” With a little groan, Lucy stretched out her legs. “I’m going to top off the day with a nice long soak in the tub.”

“I’m starving. Shopping makes me hungry. And my feet hurt,” Jenna admitted. “I wonder what I can eat in the tub.”

“That’s because you walked out of the store wearing new shoes.”

“I couldn’t resist.” Jenna curled and uncurled her aching toes. “I can’t believe I bought three pairs of shoes at one time. You’re a bad influence.”

“They were on sale.”

“One pair was on sale.”

“You saved money on the one, so it’s not like buying them.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” Lucy said in reasonable tones. “It’s like saving on them. So look at it that way: you only bought two pairs. And one of them’s for the wedding. Those you were obligated to buy. Really, you only bought one pair.”

“Your logic is wise. And confusing.”

In the backseat Lil listened to the old friends enjoy each other’s company, and smiled.

She hadn’t taken enough time for this, she admitted. Time to just sit and listen to her mother talk, to be with her, with Lucy. She had let that bastard steal that from her too, those little moments of pleasure.

That would stop.

“Let’s have a spa day.”

Jenna flicked a glance in the rearview. “A what?”

“A spa day. I haven’t had a facial or a manicure since before I left for South America. Let’s figure out when we can all take a day off and book a bunch of decadent treatments at the day spa.”

“Lucy, there’s someone in the backseat pretending to be Lil.”

Lil leaned up, poked her mother’s shoulder. “I’m going to have Mary call and book us as soon as I check my schedule and Tansy’s, so you’d better let her know if you’ve got any day next week that doesn’t work. Otherwise, too bad for you.”

“Somehow I believe I can clear my schedule. How about you, Lucy.”

“I may have to shuffle a few things, but I think I can clear the decks. Won’t that be fun.” She shifted to smile back at Lil.

“Yes. It’ll be fun.” And long overdue.

Lil got out when they reached Lucy’s to stretch her legs and switch to the front seat. “Let me help you in with those.”

“I bought them, I can carry them,” Lucy replied.

At the back of the SUV, the three of them pawed through bags.

“That’s mine,” Lucy said. “That one’s your mother’s. This one, yes, that’s mine. That one there. And, oh, my, I did go a little overboard.”

With a laugh, Lucy kissed Jenna on the cheek. “I don’t know the last time I had so much fun. ’Night, sweetheart,” she said with a kiss for Lil. “I’m going to listen to Sam ask me why I needed another pair of shoes when I’ve only got two feet, then I’m putting these old bones in the tub.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Jenna called out, and waited until Lucy was in the house before heading down the farm road.

“What about you? Are you looking to soak or eat?”

“I’m thinking shoes off, feet up, and a big fat sandwich.”

“You had a good day, and you’re going to be a beautiful maid of honor.”

“It’s a great dress.” Sighing, Lil let her head tip back. “I haven’t done a shopping marathon like that in years. Literally years.”

“I know it wasn’t easy for you to take a full day away like this. And now you’re planning a spa day. You’re a good friend.”

“She’d do the same for me. Plus, great dress, fabulous shoes, and assorted other items I really had no need for.”

“It’s more fun when you don’t need them.”

“Too true.” Lil toyed with the new earrings she’d bought, and—like her mother and the shoes—had worn out of the store. “Why is that?”

“Buying what you need’s the result of hard work. Buying what you don’t need’s the reward for hard work. You work hard, honey. I’m glad you took the time away. It was nice, wasn’t it, seeing how happy and excited Sueanne is? She can’t say enough about Farley.”

“It makes you proud.”

“It really does. It’s so satisfying when other people tell you what a good person your child is. I feel so good about it, about knowing how welcome he’s going to be in that family. You’ll be happy, too, having her living so close.”

“You want to bet Dad and Farley ditched the chess game and spent all evening playing with plans for the house?”

“No question. They’ll probably be sorry to see me home.”

When they got to the gate, Jenna stopped so Lil could swipe her card, and key in her code.

“I can’t tell you how much better I feel knowing you’ve got this security in. Almost as good as I feel knowing you’re not going home to an empty house.”

“It’s an odd situation, having Coop here. I want him here, but at the same time I’m trying not to get used to having him here.”

“You’re gun-shy.”

“I really am. Part of me feels that I might be punishing him for something he did, or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, when I was twenty. I don’t want to do that. Another part of me wonders if we’re together here because of the situation, because I’m in trouble and he needs to help.”

“Do you doubt he loves you?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“But?”

“But if I don’t hold something back, and he leaves again, I don’t know if I’d get through it.”

“I can’t tell you what to do. Well, I could, but I won’t. I’ll just say nothing in this world comes with a guarantee. With people, with love, a promise has to be enough. When it’s enough for you, you’ll let go.”

“It’s hard to think straight or feel straight with this cloud over my head. I don’t want to make a decision or take a step like that when everything around me is in such upheaval.”

“That’s very sensible.”

She narrowed her eyes at her mother as Jenna set the brake in front of the cabin. “And wrong?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes you did. Just not out loud.”

“Lil, you’re my daughter. My shining star.” Reaching out, she lifted a lock of Lil’s hair, let it slide through her fingers. “I want you safe and happy. I’m not content until I know you’re both, as much of both as is possible. I love Cooper, so I’d be thrilled if you decide he’s a part of making you safe and happy. But the safe and happy’s what I want most for you, however you decide. For now? I like seeing his truck there, and the lights on in your cabin. And . . . I like seeing him stepping out on the porch to welcome you home.”

Jenna slid out of the car. “Hi, Coop.”

“Ladies.” He walked down. “How’d it go?”

“You can judge that by the amount of bags still in the back. We considered renting a U-Haul for the loot, but we managed to stuff it and everyone in for the ride back. Barely.”

She opened the back, began to pass him bags.

“Did you leave anything for the rest of the state?”

“Not if we could help it. There. The rest is mine, all mine.” She turned, gave Lil a hug. “We don’t do this often enough.”

“I’d have to give myself a raise to do it more often.”

“You call me tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“Take care of my girl, Cooper.”

“Top of the list.”

Lil waved her off, watched the tailgate fade. “Is everything all right here?”

“Fine.”

“I should check, see if anyone left me any messages.”

“Matt and Lucius were still here when I got home. They said to tell you things ran okay without you. Even though you wouldn’t like to hear it.”

“Of course I like to hear it.”

“Then why are you frowning? I’m taking all this stuff inside.”

“I’m just not used to being away all day.” And now that she was back she wondered what had possessed her to suggest another day away.

“You were in Peru for six months.”

“That’s different. I don’t care if it’s illogical, it is different. I should do a circuit around the habitats.”

“I already did.” He dumped the bags at the base of the stairs. “Baby made do with me.”

“Oh. That’s good, too. I guess there’s no word on Ethan, or anything in that area.”

“I’d tell you if there were.” He leaned down, kissed her. “Why don’t you relax? Isn’t stripping stores of all their stock supposed to relax the female?”

“That’s very sexist, and mostly true. I’m starving.”

“I ate the leftovers.”

“I want a sandwich. A really big sandwich.”

“Then it’s a good thing I went shopping, too,” he said as he walked with her to the kitchen. “Because you were out of bread and anything—other than peanut butter—to put between it.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.” She opened the fridge, and stood staring with her eyes wide. “Wow. This is a lot of food.”

“Not if two people actually eat a couple of meals a day.”

With a shrug, she pulled out packs of deli meat. “We did fancy for lunch, which means you end up ordering salad. Fancy salads. I nearly ordered a Reuben, but somehow it felt wrong. Especially since we had champagne. I just don’t think you can have a Reuben and champagne at the same time.”

He sat on the bench, watched her. “You had a good time. It shows.”

“I did. It took me a while to change gears, get in the groove, whatever. But thankfully I did and will not be forced to wear puce and flounces at Tansy’s wedding.”

He cocked his head. “What is puce, anyway?”

“Every bridal attendant’s worst nightmare. Tansy got the most fabulous dress. A killer of a dress, which mine will complement perfectly. Then there were the shoes. Watching Lucy and my mother in the shoe department is an education and a thrill. I’m a rank amateur in comparison. Then there were handbags.”

She chattered about purses, then the flower shops, reliving little pieces of the day in the telling while she poured a glass of milk.

“We grazed through shops like a herd of starving deer. I think my credit card gasped weakly at the end of the day.” She brought the sandwich to the table, plopped down. “God, my feet!”

Even as she bit in, she toed off her shoes.

“It’s work, you know. The shopping safari. As physical as mucking out stalls.”

“Uh-huh.” He lifted her feet onto his lap, and began to rub, running his knuckles up her instep.

Lil felt her eyes roll back in her head. “Oh. This is probably what heaven’s like. A huge sandwich, a glass of cold milk, and a foot rub.”

“You’re a cheap date, Lil.”

She smiled and took another bite. “How much of my shopping adventures did you actually listen to?”

“I tuned out in the shoe department.”

“Just as I suspected. Lucky for you, you give a good foot rub.”

Later, when she hung her new dress in the closet, she thought it had been an exceptional day. Stress-free, once she’d put stress aside, and touched with moments of real joy and wonderful foolishness.

And her mother had been right, she realized as she heard Coop tune in for the baseball scores. It was nice to have someone who’d walk out on the porch to welcome her home.

28

Lil felt him touch her, just the lightest touch, a brush on her shoulder, down her arm. As if he reassured himself she was there before he got out of bed in the predawn dark.

She lay, wakeful now, in the warmth of the bed, the warmth he’d left for her, and listened to the sound of the shower. The hiss of water against tile and tub.

She considered getting up herself, putting on the coffee, getting a jump on the day. But there was something so comforting, so sweetly simple about staying just where she was and listening to the water run.

The pipes clanged once, and she smiled when she caught his muffled oath through the bathroom door. He tended to take long showers, long enough for the small hot water heater to protest.

He’d shave now—or not, depending on his mood. Brush his teeth with the towel slung around his hips and his hair still dripping. He’d rub the towel over it briefly, impatiently, maybe scoop his fingers through it a few times.

Oh, to have hair that didn’t require fuss or time. But in any case, vanity wasn’t part of his makeup. He’d already be thinking about what needed to be done that day, which chore to deal with first on the daily list of chores.

He’d taken on a lot, she mused. The farm, the business, and because of who and what he was, the responsibility of finding ways to keep his grandparents involved in the day-to-day while making sure they didn’t overdo.

Then he’d added her, she thought. Not trying just to win her back but also to help her deal with the very real threat to her and hers. That piled extra hours, extra worry, extra work into his day.

And he brought her flowers.

He came back into the bedroom, moving quietly. That, she knew was both an innate skill of his and basic consideration. He took some care not to wake her, dressing in the half-dark, leaving his boots off.

She could smell the soap and water on him, and found it another kind of comfort. Heard him ease a drawer open, ease it shut again.

Later, she thought, she’d go downstairs to the scent of coffee, the scent of companionship. Someone cared enough to think of her. He’d probably light a fire, to take the chill off the house, even though he’d be leaving it.

If she needed him at any time of the day, she could call. He’d find a way to help.

He came to the bed, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. She started to speak, but felt words would spoil the moment, would distract from what was happening inside her. She stayed silent as he slipped out of the room.

The night before he’d come out on the porch to greet her. He’d eaten the leftovers, and gone to the market. He’d walked with her on her evening check of the habitat.

He waited for her, she admitted. But what was she waiting for?

Promises, guarantees, certainties? He’d broken her heart and left her unspeakably lonely. It didn’t matter that he’d been motivated by good intentions, the hurt still happened. Still existed. She feared it nearly as much as she feared Ethan.

In fact, Coop was the only man who’d ever had the power to break her heart or make her afraid. Did she want to live without that risk? Because she would never get there, not with Coop. Just as she would never, never feel so utterly safe, happy, and excited about anyone else.

As dawn streamed in the windows she heard him leave. The door closing behind him, and moments later, the sound of his truck.

She rose, crossed to her dresser to open the bottom drawer. She dug under layers of sweats to draw out the cougar he’d carved for her when they’d been children.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she ran her fingers over the lines as she had countless times over the years. She’d put it away, true. But she took it with her when she traveled, kept it in that drawer at home. Her good-luck piece. And a tangible piece of him she’d never been able to toss away.

Through that roughly carved symbol, Coop had gone with her to Peru, to Alaska, to Africa and Florida and India. He’d been her companion on every field study.

Twenty years, she thought, nearly twenty years since he’d taken a block of wood and carved the image of what he knew—even then—she valued.

How could she live without that? Why would she choose to?

Standing, she set the cougar on her dresser, then opened another drawer.

She felt a tug for Jean-Paul. She hoped he was well, and he was happy. She wished him the love he deserved. Then she emptied the drawer.

She carried the lingerie downstairs. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the scent of coffee tantalized the air. In the kitchen she put the nightwear in a bag, and with a smile ghosting around her mouth put it in the laundry room.

It would wait until he got home, she thought, because this was home now. For both of them. Home was where you loved, if you were lucky. Where someone would light the fire and be there when you came back.

It was where you kept the precious. A baseball bat, a carved cougar.

She poured a mug of coffee and, carrying it with her, went upstairs to dress for the day. It was a good day, she thought, when you opened yourself to both the joys and the risks of love.

COOP WORKED UP the first sweat of the morning mucking out the stalls. They had three group rentals booked for the day, two of them guided, so he’d need to load up a couple more horses and get in to set up. He needed to schedule a visit from the vet and the farrier, both at the stables and at the farm. He had to get in, check the website for future bookings.

And he wanted an hour, a good hour without interruptions to study the files, his notes, the map and try to find a new angle for tracking down Ethan Howe.

It was there, he knew it was there. But somehow he was missing it. A handful of men couldn’t cover the hundreds of acres of hills, forests, caves, and flats. The dogs couldn’t hold the scent when there was essentially nothing to hold.

A lure was needed. Something to lure Ethan out, just far enough to trap him. But since the only bait that seemed potent enough to accomplish that was Lil, he had to find another way.

Another angle.

He tossed another load of soiled hay into the wheelbarrow, then leaned on the pitchfork as his grandfather came in. Barely a limp now, Coop noted, though it generally increased if Sam stayed on his feet for several hours.

The angle there, Coop knew, was to get the man to take periodic breaks without making them seem like breaks.

“Just the man I wanted to see.” Coop shifted to stand between Sam and the barrow before his grandfather got it in his head to haul the manure out to the pile. “Do me a favor, will you? We need vet and farrier appointments here and at the stables. If you could set those up it would save me some time today.”

“Sure. I told you I’d see to the mucking out.”

“Right. I guess I forgot. Well, it’s nearly done.”

“Boy, you don’t forget a damn thing. Now hand over that pitchfork.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In case you’re working your brains trying to find other ways to keep me out of trouble and in the rocking chair, I’ll ease your mind.” With the grace of long experience, Sam went to work on the last stall. “Joe and Farley are going to give me some time today helping check fences. I’m going to hire the young Hossenger boy to do some chores around here, before and after school. If he works out, I’ll keep him on through the summer. He’s got it in his head he wants to work with horses. We’ll give him a try.”

“Okay.”

“He’s got a strong back and he’s not an idiot. I was talking to Bob Brown yesterday. He tells me his granddaughter’s looking for a job. Girl can ride, and she’s thinking about asking you if you need another guide.”

“I could use one, especially with the season coming up. Does she know the trails?”

“Bob says she does, and she’s got a head on her shoulders. You can talk to her yourself, and decide.”

“I’ll do that.”

Sam puffed out his cheeks. “Jessie Climp teaches over at the elementary, and she’s looking for summer work. You might want to talk to her. She’s been around horses all her life, and she’s good with kids. Might be she’d do fine for those pony rides we’re adding in.”

Coop smiled. So they’d discussed the changes and additions he wanted to make. “I’ll talk to her.”

“New computers and what-all, I’m leaving to you and Lucy. I don’t want any more to do with them than I have to.”

“We’ll look into that, first chance.”

“As for adding on, could be I’ll talk to Quint about drawing something up for that. I had a conversation with Mary Blunt about this retail business, and she tells me Lil’s place does a good turn on things like postcards and such.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“I saw the doctor yesterday. He says I’m fit and I’m sound. The leg’s healed up.” To prove it, Sam gave his thigh a smack. “At my age I’m going to have to pamper it some, but I can walk and stand and I can sit a horse and ride a plow. So I’ll be taking on some of the guideds again. You’re not here to work yourself to the bone—that’s not what your grandmother and me want.”

“I’m a long way from the bone.”

As Coop had, Sam leaned on the pitchfork. “I’ve been dug in about hiring on. Don’t like change. But things change whether you like it or not, and the fact is we’ve got a good business going with the rentals. Better than we ever expected. We need to hire on more help there. We need more help around the farm so you can do what you came out here to do, and if that’s adding some things, changing them some, that’s the way it is.”

“More help’s not going to hurt my feelings, but I’m doing what I came out here to do, whether we add on or change a thing.”

“You came out to help your crippled grandfather.” Sam did a bounce and kick that had Coop laughing. “Do I look crippled?”

“No, but you don’t look like Fred Astaire either.”

Sam wagged the pitchfork. “You came back to start digging in the roots you planted when you were just a boy. To run the horse business and help with the farm.”

“Like I said, I’m doing what I came out to do.”

“Not all.” This time Sam pointed a finger. “Are you married to that girl? Did you just forget to invite me to the wedding?”

“I didn’t come out here to marry Lil. I thought she was going to marry someone else.”

“Had that been the case, you’d’ve been working out ways to win her away from that French guy ten minutes after setting eyes on her again.”

“Maybe.”

Pleased, Sam nodded. “You would’ve done it, too. Anyway, we’re hiring on, and we’re adding on. Your grandma and me decided on it.”

“Okay. I’ll make it work for you, Grandpa.”

“You make it work for you, I expect it’ll work for me. And you’ll have time to do everything you came out here to do. I’ll finish up here. You go in and sweet-talk your grandmother out of some breakfast before you go on. She’s got the start of her spring cleaning in mind today, so God help me. I got the names and phone numbers of those I told you about in the kitchen.”

“I’ll haul this load out first.”

“Do you think I haven’t got the muscle for that?”

“Grandpa, I figure you can haul your share of shit and everyone else’s, but it’s on my way.”

Coop wheeled out the barrow while Sam guffawed. He headed to the manure pile with a grin.

IN THE CHANCE kitchen, breakfast was on. Farley plowed into flapjacks, dazzled by his luck. Along with them were sausage and hash browns. A kingly breakfast, in his mind, for the middle of the week.

“Our stomachs are getting full because Jenna emptied my wallet yesterday.”

Jenna bumped Joe’s shoulder with her elbow, then topped off his coffee. It did ease the guilt of the sting she put on their credit card. “That’s our wallet, mister.”

“It’s still empty.”

She laughed and sat to look over her grocery list, the list for the feed store, and other errands. “It’s market day, so I’m going to be putting another dent in that tin can with the spare cash you’ve got buried outside.”

“I used to think you really had one of those,” Farley said between bites.

“What makes you think I don’t? Take my advice, Farley, get yourself a tin can and bury it deep. A married man needs some backup.”

Jenna’s eyes twinkled with humor even as she narrowed them. “I know where everything’s buried around here. And just where to bury you where no one will ever find the body if you’re not careful.”

“A woman who can threaten your life before you’ve finished breakfast is the only kind of woman worth having,” Joe told Farley.

“I’ve got one of those. I’m a lucky man.”

“The two of you lucky men better finish up and get out of here if you expect to get your work done, then help Sam.”

“We’ll be the best part of the day. We’ll have the radio if you need anything.”

“I’ve got my own full day. Lucy’s packing you two lunch so you won’t starve, or have need to come back in before you’re done. I’ll be heading into town later on, then swinging by Lucy’s. She’s started her spring cleaning, so I’m picking up what she needs at the market.”

“Can you go by the hardware? I need a couple things.”

“Put it on the list.”

Joe wrote down what he needed while he finished his coffee. “We can call the dogs in if you want them around today.”

“I’ll be leaving in a couple hours anyway. Let them have a good run with you. Are you home for supper, Farley?”

“Well, Tansy’s mom’s going back today, so I was thinking . . .”

“I know what you’re thinking. I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She added to her list while Farley cleared the table.

“I’ll load up the tools,” he said. “Thanks for breakfast, Jenna.”

When they were alone, Joe winked at his wife. “We’ll have the house to ourselves tonight, so I was thinking . . .”

She laughed. “I know what you’re thinking, too.” She leaned over for the kiss. “Get going so you can get back. And don’t work so hard you’ve got nothing left for what you’re thinking.”

“I’ve always got something left for that.”

She smiled as she finished her lists in the quiet kitchen, because that was the pure truth.

LIL HELPED CLEAN and hose down the enclosures before going into the offices. It was dental hygiene day at the refuge, so Matt and several of the interns would be busy drugging animals and cleaning teeth. And a shipment of chicken was due to arrive that morning. More interns busy unloading and storing. The winch on the door of the lion’s habitat had made unfortunate noises that morning as she’d lowered it to keep Sheba out of the enclosure while they’d cleaned and disinfected it. Maintenance on the list, she thought, and some prayers that it didn’t need replacement.

Maybe one day she’d be able to afford hydraulics, but that was not today.

“Don’t you look bright and happy this morning,” Mary commented.

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.” Mary tipped down her cheaters. “Good news?”

“No news, so I suppose that’s good. It’s going to hit seventy today, a veritable heat wave. Forecasters claim it’ll hang around through tomorrow before we drop about twenty degrees. We do need more feed for the petting zoo.”

“I ordered it yesterday.”

“I’ve got news.” Lucius waved the whip of red licorice in his hand. “I just checked the website. We’re up to five thousand dollars in donations attached to Delilah. People are all excited about her, and her and Boris. It’s the love story that’s done it, I think.”

“If it is, we’re going to generate a romance for every animal in here.”

“They’ve gotten more hits than any of the others on the webcam this week, and more comments. I was thinking we could update the bios on all the animals, juice them up a little. And replace some of the photos, maybe do a couple of short videos.”

“That’s good. And you know what, Lucius, maybe you could get some videos of Matt and his interns working on the dental. It’s not sexy, but it shows what kind of care we give them, how much work’s involved. It’s educational, plus it may stir up donations from people who don’t realize what goes into tending them.”

“Sure, but it would work better if you wrote up a little piece on it. Something fun that talks about how people hate to go to the dentist and stuff like that.”

“I’ll play with something.”

She went into her office to work on a piece she hoped to pitch for pay on Delilah’s rescue. She’d beef it up with the romance angle with Boris, she decided. Good nutrition, proper care, and housing all mattered, she mused, but the connection to another living thing made life rich.

Nodding, she sat down to work on it, and thought romance was certainly in the air.

HEWAS READY, fully prepared. It had taken hours of work, but he felt everything he needed and wanted was now in place. Timing would be an unknown, a risk factor, but it would be worth it. In fact, it would be more exciting, more important with that unknown.

He was ready to kill, here and now, and take that risk as well. But as he watched, hidden, he lowered the crossbow. He might not have to kill to retrieve the bait. It would be better if he could make this clean. Take less of his time, his energy.

And make the real hunt-and-kill that much more satisfying.

Look at them, he thought, look at them going about their business, their useless business, without a clue he was close. No idea they were being watched.

He could kill them so easily. As easy—easier—than shooting a buck at his watering hole.

But wouldn’t she try harder, run faster, fight more viciously if he let them keep their worthless lives? Too much blood and she might lose heart.

He couldn’t have that. He’d waited too long, worked too hard.

So he watched them load the fencing. Fucking farmers, making their rooms out of the land. His land. Trapping their mindless cattle, animals not even worth the hunt.

Go on, go, he urged them, setting his teeth as their voices and laughter carried to him. Go. Everything will have changed when you get back. Yes, it was better to let them live, let them suffer when they realized what he’d done right under their noses.

Their tears would be sweeter than their blood.

He smiled as the dogs raced and ran and leaped in anticipation. He’d been resigned to killing the dogs, but he’d have been sorry for it. Now, it seemed, even that blood could be spared.

They rode off, the dogs in joyful pursuit. And the little farm in the valley of the hills went quiet. Still he waited. He wanted them well away, out of sight, out of hearing before he broke cover.

He’d watched the women many times in the past, studied the routine of the farm as he would any herd he stalked. She was strong, and he knew they had weapons inside the house. When he took her, he’d take her quickly.

He circled behind the barn, moving fast and silent. In his mind he wore buckskin and moccasins. His face bore the symbols of the warrior.

Birds sang, and some of the cattle lowed. He heard the chickens humming, and as he neared the house, the sound of the woman’s voice singing.

His mother hadn’t sung. She’d kept her head down, kept her mouth shut. She’d done what she was told to do or she got the boot. In the end his father had had no choice but to kill her. As he’d explained, she’d stolen from him. Held back her tips. Hoarded money. Lied.

A worthless white bitch, his father had explained when they’d buried her deep. A mistake. Women were no damn good, and white women the worst of the bad.

It had been an important lesson to learn.

He eased up to the side window, letting the lay of the kitchen come into his head from the times he’d scouted it. He could hear clanking and clattering. Doing the dishes, he thought, and when he risked a look, he saw—pleased—that she had her back to him as she loaded the dishwasher. Pans stood stacked on the counter, and her hips moved as she sang.

He wondered what it would be like to rape her, then dismissed the idea. Rape was beneath him. Just as she was beneath him. He wouldn’t soil himself with her.

She was bait. Nothing more.

Water ran in the sink, pots clattered. Under the cover of the kitchen noise, he stepped lightly to the back door, tried the knob.

He shook his head, vaguely disappointed it wasn’t locked. He’d visualized kicking it in, and the shock on her face when he did. Instead, he merely pushed it open, stepped inside.

She spun around, a skillet in her hand. As she raised it to strike or throw he simply lifted the crossbow. “I wouldn’t, but you go ahead if you want this bolt in your belly.”

She’d gone white, so her eyes shone black against her skin. He remembered then she had some of his blood. But she’d let it go pale. She’d ignored her heritage. Slowly, she set the pan down.

“Hello, Jenna,” he said.

He watched her throat work before she spoke, enjoyed the fear. “Hello, Ethan.”

“Outside.” He plucked her cell phone out of its charger on the counter, stuck it in his back pocket. “I can put one of these in your foot and drag you,” he said when she didn’t move, “or you can walk. That’s up to you.”

Giving him as wide a berth as possible, she went to the door, and out to the porch. He closed the door behind them.

“Keep moving. You’re going to do exactly as I say and exactly when I say it. If you try to run, you’ll find out how much faster a bolt is than you are.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.” He shoved her forward when he decided she wasn’t moving fast enough.

“Ethan, they’re looking for you. Sooner or later they’ll find you.”

“They’re idiots. Nobody finds me unless I want to be found.” He forced her across the farmyard toward the trees.

“Why are you doing this?”

He watched her head move, left to right, and knew she was looking for a place to run, gauging her chances. He almost wished she’d risk it. As Carolyn had. That had been interesting.

“It’s what I am. What I do.”

“Kill?”

“Hunt. Killing’s the end of the game. Against the tree, face-first.” He pushed her. She threw her hands out to catch herself, scraping her palms on the bark. “Move, and I’ll hurt you.”

“What have we done?” She tried to think, to find a way out, but couldn’t push past the fear. It crawled inside her, crawled over her skin until there was nothing else. “What have we done to you?”

“This is sacred ground.” He looped a rope around her waist, pulled it tight enough to stop her breath. “It’s mine. And you, you’re worse than the rest. You have Sioux blood.”

“I love the land.” Think, think, think! “I—my family has always honored and respected it.”

“Liar.” He pushed her face against the bark, drawing blood. When she cried out, he yanked her back by the hair. “Put this on, zip it up.” He thrust a dark blue windbreaker into her hands. “And pull up the hood. We’re going for a hike, Jenna. Listen close. If we run into anyone, you keep your mouth shut, your head down, and just do what I say. If you make a move, try to get help, I’ll kill whoever you speak to. Then they’re on your head. Understand?”

“Yes. Why don’t you just kill me now?”

He smiled widely. “We have places to go and people to see.”

“You’re going to try to use me to get to Lil, and I won’t let you.”

He grabbed her hair again, yanked until she saw stars dancing. “I can use you dead as easy as alive. Alive’s more fun, but dead works.” He patted the knife sheathed on his belt. “Do you think she’d recognize your hand if I cut it off and sent it to her? We can try that. What do you think?”

“No.” Tears born of helplessness and pain tracked down her cheeks. “Please.”

“Then do what I tell you. Put this on.” He handed her a battered backpack. “We’re just a couple of hikers.” He gave the rope a yank. “And one of us is on a short leash. Now, walk. Keep up or you’ll pay for it.”

He avoided the trail as much as possible, kept a hard pace over rough ground. If she stumbled, he yanked or dragged. And since he seemed to enjoy it, Jenna stopped any attempt to slow him down.

She knew they skirted the edges of her daughter’s land, and her heart thundered. “Why do you want to hurt Lil? Look at what she’s done. She’s preserving the land, giving shelter and care to animals. You’re Sioux. You respect animals.”

“She puts them in cages so people can stare at them. For money.”

“No, she’s dedicated her life to saving them, to educating people.”

“Feeding them like pets.” He gave Jenna another shove when she paused. “Taking what should be free and caging it. That’s what they want to do with me. Cage me for doing what I was born to do.”

“Everything she’s done has been to preserve the wildlife and the land.”

“It’s not her land! They’re not her animals! When I’m done with her, I’ll free them all, and they’ll hunt as I hunt. I’ll burn her place to the ground. Then yours, then all the rest.”

His face shone with madness and purpose. “Purify.”

“Then why did you kill the others? James Tyler? Why?”

“The hunt. When I hunt to eat, it’s with respect. The rest? It’s sport. But with Lil, it’s both. She has my respect. We’re connected. By blood, by fate. She found my first kill. I knew someday we’d compete.”

“Ethan, you were only a boy. We can—”

“I was a man. I thought, at first, it was an accident. I liked her. I wanted to talk to her, to touch her. But she pushed me away. She cursed at me. Struck me. She had no right.”

He yanked the rope so she stumbled against him. “No right.”

“No.” Her heart skidding, Jenna nodded. “No right.”

“Then her blood was on my hands, and I was afraid. I admit it. I had fear. But I was a man and knew what should be done. I left her as a token to the wild, and it was the cougar who came for her. My spirit guide. And it was beautiful. I gave back to the land what had been taken. That’s when I became free.”

“Ethan, I need to rest. You have to let me rest.”

“You’ll rest when I say.”

“I’m not as strong as you are. God, I’m old enough to be your mother; I can’t keep up.”

He paused, and she saw a flicker of hesitation on his face. She swallowed on her dry throat. “What happened to your mother, Ethan?”

“She got what she deserved.”

“Do you miss her? Do you—”

“Shut up! Just shut up about her. I didn’t need her. I’m a man.”

“Even a man starts as a boy and he—”

She broke off when he closed his hand over her mouth. His eyes scanned the trees. “Someone’s coming. Keep your head down. Your mouth shut.”

29

She felt Ethan’s arm go around her waist, to keep her still, she imagined, and to cover the rope snaking from under the jacket. She prayed for the life of whoever crossed their path, and at the same time prayed they would sense trouble. She didn’t dare give them a sign, but surely they would sense her fear, sense the madness in the man holding her hard against his side.

It was in his eyes. How could anyone not see the murder and madness in his eyes?

They could get help. There was a chance for help. And then Ethan would never get to Lil.

“Morning!”

She heard the cheerful greeting and risked lifting her eyes a few inches. Her pulse picked up speed when she saw the boots, the uniform pants. Not another hiker, she thought, but a ranger.

And he’d be armed.

“Morning,” Ethan called back. “It sure is a pretty one!”

“Nice day for hiking. You’re a little off the trail.”

“Oh. We’re exploring some. We saw some deer, and figured we’d follow them for a while.”

“You don’t want to wander off too far. It’s easy to get lost if you go off the posted trails. Just out for the day, are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Can’t you hear the madness? Can’t you hear it in his overbright cheer? It’s licking at every word.

“Well, you’ve made some real progress from the trailhead. If you’re going to stick to this loop it gets pretty steep, but the views are worth it.”

“That’s what we’re here for.”

“If you backtrack to the posted trail, you’ll have a better time of it.”

“We’ll do that, then. Thanks.”

“Enjoy the day, and this fine weather. Just head over . . .” The ranger hesitated. “Jenna? Jenna Chance?”

She held her breath, shook her head.

“What in the world are you doing out . . .”

She felt it, that moment of awareness. On instinct she raised her head and pushed her body hard against Ethan’s. But even as she moved, he swung the bow from behind his back.

She screamed, tried to lurch forward. But he was right. The bolt moved faster, much faster, than she could. She watched it strike home, and the force of it knocked the ranger back and off his feet.

“No. No. No.”

“Your fault.” The backhand sent Jenna sprawling to the ground. “Look what you did, stupid bitch! Look at the mess I’ve got to clean up. Didn’t I tell you to keep your mouth shut?”

He kicked her, his boot slamming into the small of her back so she rolled and curled up in defense. “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. God, God, he has a wife, he has children.”

“Then he should’ve minded his own business. Assholes. They’re all assholes.” When he stomped over to wrench the barbed bolt from the ranger’s chest, Jenna began to retch.

“Look here. Got something out of it.” He pulled the sidearm out of the holster, brandished it. “Spoils of war.” Shoving the body over, he dug out the wallet. He slapped the gun back in the holster, unclipped it, and fixed it to his own belt before pushing the wallet in his backpack.

“Get up, help me drag him.”

“No.”

He walked over, pulled the gun again, and pressed the barrel to her temple. “Get up or join him. You can both be wolf bait. Live or die, Jenna. Decide.”

Live, she thought. She wanted to live. Fighting sickness, breathless from the pain radiating from her back, her face, she got to her feet. Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe someone would find him, help him. His name was Derrick Morganston. His wife was Cathy. He had two kids. Brent and Lorna.

She said his name, his family’s names as she followed orders, took the feet and dragged the body farther off the trail.

She said nothing when he used the rope to tie her to a tree so he could retrieve Derrick’s radio, go through his pockets for anything else he found useful.

She kept silent when they began to walk again. Nothing more to say, she thought. She’d tried and failed to find some place in him to appeal to. There was no place inside him. Nowhere to reach.

He wasn’t covering the tracks, and she wondered what that meant. She wondered if she would live through the day, such a pretty spring day. See her husband again, her home. Hold her children. Would she speak with her friends, wear her new shoes?

She’d been washing the skillet, she thought, when her life had changed. Would she fry bacon again?

Her throat burned, her legs ached. Her palms throbbed where she’d scraped them against the bark. But those discomforts meant she was alive. Still alive.

If she had the chance to kill him and escape, would she? Yes. Yes, she would kill him to live. She would bathe in his blood if it meant protecting Lil.

If she could get his knife or the gun, a rock. If she could find a way to use her bare hands.

She concentrated on that, on the direction, the angle of the sun, the landmarks. There, she thought, look at the brave pasqueflowers, blooming. Delicate and hopeful. And alive.

She’d be the pasqueflower. Look delicate, be brave.

She walked, one foot in front of the other, with her head down. But she kept her eyes, her body alert for any chance of escape.

“We’re home,” he announced.

Confused, she blinked sweat out of her eyes. She barely saw the mouth of the cave. It was so low, so narrow—like a slitted eye. It looked like death.

She spun around, launched herself at him to fight. She felt the pain, and the satisfaction when her fist connected with his face. Screaming, she used her nails, her teeth to claw and bite like an animal. And when she tasted his blood, it thrilled.

But when his fist plowed into her belly, he took her breath. When it rammed into her face, the sun went dim in a wash of dark red.

“Bitch! Bitch whore!”

Dimly, she heard the harsh wheeze of his breath. She’d hurt him. That was something. She’d given him pain.

He used the rope to drag her over the rough ground and into the dark.

She fought as he bound her hands and feet, screamed, spat, and cursed until he gagged her. He lit a small lantern, and with his free hand dragged her farther into the cave.

“I could kill you now. Carve you up and send the pieces to her. What do you think about that?”

She’d marked him, was all she could think. Blood welled and dripped from the grooves she’d scored in his cheeks, on his hands.

Then he smiled at her, wide and wild, and she remembered to be afraid.

“The hills are honeycombed with caves. I’ve got a few nice ones I use regular. This one’s yours.”

He set the lantern down, then drew out his knife before he crouched. He turned the blade so the soft light stuck the edge. “Need a couple of things from you.”

Joe, she thought. Joe. Lil. My baby.

And closed her eyes.

IT TOOK LONGER than he’d hoped, but he was still well within the time frame. The rush, the incidental kill, the unexpected fight left in the mother bitch all added a fresh anticipation. The best part was walking right into the refuge like any other paying customer. It was the biggest risk and the biggest thrill.

But he had no doubt Lil would give him more of both.

He smiled at the pretty intern through the beard he’d grown over the winter. It hid most of the scratches the mother bitch had given him. He wore old riding gloves to cover the ones on his hands.

“Is something wrong with the lion?”

“No, not a thing. She’s getting her teeth cleaned. Cats especially need regular dental checks, as they tend to lose teeth.”

“Because they’re caged up.”

“Actually, they’ll keep their teeth longer in the refuge than in the wild. We provide them with bones once a week, an important element of dental hygiene. Cats’ mouths tend to be full of bacteria, but with regular cleanings, good nutrition, and the weekly bones, we can help them maintain that smile.” She added one of her own. “Our vet and his assistant are making sure Sheba’s teeth are healthy.”

It made him sick, made him furious. Brushing the teeth of the wild animal, as if it were a kid who ate too much candy. He wanted to drag the smiling girl off, plunge the knife into her belly.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine and dandy. I thought this was a nature preserve. How come you don’t let it be natural?”

“Part of our responsibility to the animals here is to give them good, regular medical care, and that includes their teeth. Nearly all of the animals here at Chance were rescued from abusive situations, or taken in when they were sick or injured.”

“They’re caged. Like criminals.”

“It’s true they’re enclosed. But every effort has been made to provide them with a habitat natural to their needs and culture. It’s unlikely any of the animals here would survive in the wild.”

He saw the concern, even suspicion in her eyes, and knew he’d gone too far. This wasn’t why he was here. “Sure. You know more about it.”

“I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about the sanctuary, or any of our animals. You can also visit our education center. There’s a video on the history of the refuge, and on the work Dr. Chance has done.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” He moved along before he said something to make her worried enough to call for assistance. Or before he gave in to the urge to batter her bloody.

He understood the need. He’d washed carefully, but he could still smell the ranger’s blood. And the mother bitch’s. That was sweeter, and the sweet wanted to stir him up.

He needed to do what he’d come to do, and get out before he made a mistake.

He wandered, pausing at each enclosure even while the resentment burned in his gut. When he reached the cougars he expected to find his center again, to look into the eyes of his spirit guide and see approval. A blessing.

Instead the cat snarled, showing fangs as it paced.

“You’ve been caged too long, brother. I’ll come back for you one day. You have my promise.”

At his words, the cougar called a warning and hurled itself against the fence. In the compound, guests and staff came to attention. Ethan moved on quickly, and the cat screamed behind him.

She’d corrupted it, he thought as rage shook through him. Turned it into a pet. No better than a guard dog. The cougar was his, but it had come at him like an enemy.

Just one more sin she would pay for, and soon.

ERIC HURRIED ACROSS the compound to check on Baby. The usually playful cougar continued to pace. He leaped into his tree, over to the roof of his den, leaped down again to rise on his hind legs at the gate at the rear of the enclosure.

“Hey, Baby, hey, take it easy. What’s got you all stirred up? I can’t let you out for a run. You need your teeth checked first.”

“It’s that guy.” Lena jogged back to Eric. “I swear it’s that guy.”

“What guy?”

“That one. He’s heading toward the ed center. See him? Ball cap, long hair, beard. His face is all scratched up, too. You can’t see it from here, but he’s got some nasty scratches under that ugly beard. I was talking to him a few minutes ago and, I don’t know, something creepy. Something in his eyes.”

“I’ll go check him out.”

“Maybe we should tell Lil.”

“Tell her what? Some creepy-eyed guy’s taking the tour? I’ll just keep an eye on him.”

“Be careful.”

“My middle name.” He walked backward. “There are a couple of groups in the center, and a few of us in there, too. I don’t think creepy-eye’s going to cause any trouble.”

Ethan didn’t go to the center, but cut over and circled back to leave the present he’d brought with him on the table on Lil’s back porch.

By the time Eric crossed the compound he’d melted into the trees. He moved fast from there. The next phase of the game was about to start. Once he’d reached the watching post, he settled down, took out his field glasses. He washed trail mix down with water and played with Jenna’s cell phone.

He’d never owned one, never wanted one. But he’d practiced on others he’d stolen or taken from the kill. He punched and scrolled until he found the contact list, and smiled when he reached the entry listed as Lil’s Cell.

Before much longer, he thought, she’d get a phone call she’d never forget.

IN HER OFFICE Lil answered the last e-mail on her list. She wanted to get over to the commissary and make sure the meat had been properly stored before she checked on Matt’s progress. She looked at the time, surprised to find it was nearly three.

She’d asked Matt to hold off on Baby and the other cougars until she could help out. Baby hated dental hygiene day. So she’d check Matt first, she decided.

As she rose, Lena tapped on her doorjamb.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Lil. It’s just . . . Baby’s acting up.”

“He probably knows he’s about to get put under and have his teeth cleaned.”

“Maybe, but . . . There was this guy, and he was weird, and that’s when Baby started up. Eric went over to check him out at the center. But I just got this bad feeling and wanted to tell you.”

“What kind of weird?” Lil asked and was already on her way out of the office.

“Creepy weird—to me. He was saying stuff like we caged the animals like prisoners.”

“We get that sometimes. What did he look like?”

“Long hair, beard. Baseball cap, denim jacket. He had fresh scratches on his face. He kept smiling, but, well, it just made my skin crawl.”

“It’s okay. I’ll head over to the center, just in case. Do me a favor? Tell Matt I’m handling this, and I’ll be over to help with Baby and the others as soon as I’m done.”

“Sure. It was probably nothing. It’s just he hit the red zone on my Creep-O-Meter.”

They parted ways, with Lil veering toward the center. Her phone rang, and absently, she pulled it out of her pocket. Seeing her mother’s number, she clicked on. “Hey, Mom, can I call you back? I need to—”

“She can’t talk right now either.”

A chill arrowed down her spine. When her fingers trembled, she gripped the phone tighter. “Hello, Ethan.”

“Funny, that’s what she said. Like mother, like daughter.”

A terrible fear had her shivering, as if she’d plunged into an icy river. But she fought to keep her tone calm and even. Steady, she thought, stay steady with him as you would with anything feral. “I want to talk to her.”

“You want to stop where you are. You take another step back toward the office, I’ll cut off one of her fingers.”

She stopped dead.

“Good girl. Remember, I can see you. You’re wearing a red shirt, and you’re looking east. A wrong move, she loses a finger. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Start walking toward your own cabin, around the back. If anyone comes up to you, calls to you, wave them off. You’re busy.”

“All right. But how do I know you didn’t just steal my mother’s phone? You have to give me more than that, Ethan. Let me talk to her.”

“I said she can’t talk right now. But you keep walking. I left you something on your back porch. Right up on the table. Yeah, that’s right. Run.”

She bolted, rounded the cabin, sprinted up the short steps. Everything inside her stopped, heart, lungs, brain, for one terrible instant. Then she made herself pick up the small plastic bag.

Inside was a hank of her mother’s hair, and her wedding ring. Blood smeared the gold band.

“I figure you recognize those, so you know I’m not bullshitting you.”

She gave in to her shaking legs and lowered to the porch. “Let me talk to her. You let me talk to her, goddamn you.”

“No.”

“How do I know she’s still alive?”

“You don’t, but I can guarantee she won’t be in two hours if you don’t find her. Head due west. I left you a trail. If you follow it, you’ll find her. If not . . . If you tell anyone, try to get help, she dies. Toss the phone into the yard. Start now.”

He could see her, she thought, but she had the porch rails and pickets for partial cover. She curled into a ball, angling her body toward the house. “Please don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt my mother. Please, please, I’ll do whatever you say, whatever you ask. Just don’t—”

She pushed end, cut off the call. “Please God,” she whispered, and punched Coop’s number. She rocked, made her shoulders shake, let the tears come. “Answer, answer, answer.” She squeezed her eyes shut when it switched to voice mail. “He has my mother. I’m heading west from the back of my cabin. He can see me, and I only have seconds. He gave me two hours to find her. I’ll leave you a trail. Come after me. God. Come after me.”

She clicked off, pushed to her feet. She turned to face west, hoped Ethan could see the tears, the fear. And she threw the phone away. Then ran.

She picked up the trail right away. Trampled brush, broken twigs, prints in soft ground. He didn’t want her to go astray, she thought. He might be leading her miles from wherever he had her mother, but there was no choice.

Her wedding ring smeared with blood. The hacked-off hank of her beautiful hair.

She forced herself to slow, to breathe. If she rushed she might miss a sign or follow a false one. He might be watching her still, so she’d have to take care in the markings she left for Coop.

He’d given her two hours. Had he taken her mother from home? It seemed the most logical. Wait until she was alone, then take her. On foot or by horseback?

On foot most likely. A hostage would be easier to control on foot. Unless he’d forced her into the car and . . . No, no, don’t think that way, she ordered herself as panic bubbled into her throat. Think simple. Under it, he’s simple.

Two hours from her cabin—and he’d want to push her, want it to be close. She put a map in her mind. Somewhere accessible and solitary from the cabin and from the farm. If she was alive—She was alive, she had to be alive. He’d have to hide her. A cave would be best. If he . . .

She stopped, studied the tracks, the carelessly trampled wildflowers. He’d backtracked. She drew a breath, then another, steadying her nerve, and did the same until she found where he’d laid the false trail.

She scuffed out his prints, used her penknife to mark the bark of a tree so Coop wouldn’t make the same mistake. She picked up the trail again, then picked up her pace. She had an idea where he was leading her and knew she’d need nearly all the time he’d allotted.

JENNA WORMED AND rolled. She’d lost all sense of direction, could only pray she was inching her way to the mouth of the cave. He’d blindfolded her before he’d left so her dark was complete. Whenever she had to rest she lay still and tried to judge if the air was any fresher. But all she smelled was dirt, her own sweat, her own blood.

She heard him coming, screamed against the gag, struggled against the rope.

“Just look at you, Jenna. You’re a real mess. And with company coming.”

When he yanked off her blindfold the lantern light burned her eyes. “She’ll be along soon, don’t you worry. I’m going to clean up a bit.” He sat cross-legged on the cave floor, and with a travel razor, a broken piece of mirror, began to shave.

AT THE REFUGE Lena waved to Eric. “Hey! What did you think of Creepy Guy?”

“I never saw him. He must’ve gone right through the center, or changed his mind.”

“Oh. Well, what did Lil say?”

“About what?”

“About the guy. When she came over.”

“I didn’t see her either.”

“But . . . She was going over. I don’t see how you could’ve missed her.”

“Maybe she got hung up.” Eric shrugged it off. “She wanted to help Matt when he got to the cougars. Listen I’ve got to get back to—”

Lena simply grabbed him by the sleeve of his T-shirt. “I’ve just come from Matt. She’s not there, and he’s waiting for her.”

“She’s around somewhere. So okay, we’ll look around. I’ll check the commissary, you check her place.”

“She knows Matt’s waiting,” Lena insisted, but she hurried over to the cabin. She knocked, then pushed open the door to call out. “Lil? Lil?” Baffled, she walked straight through, and out the back. Maybe the office, she thought.

When she jogged down the steps, she heard the jingle of the phone. Relieved, she glanced back, expecting to see Lil striding along with the phone to her ear. But there was no one. She turned back, following the ring.

She snatched the phone off the ground, flipped it open.

“Hey, Lil, I just saw my mother off, so—”

“Tansy, Tansy, this is Lena. I think something’s really wrong.” She began to run toward the office cabin. “I think we need the police.”

ON A STRETCH of road between the farm and the stables, Coop tightened the lug nuts on the spare tire of a minivan. The two kids inside watched him like owls while they sucked on sippy cups.

“I really appreciate this. I could’ve changed it, but—”

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full.” He nodded toward the windows. “It’s no trouble.”

“You saved me a lot of cursing.” The young mother beamed a smile. “And took care of it in probably half the time it would’ve taken me, not including breaking up the fights inside. We’ve been running errands all day, so they missed their nap.” Her eyes sparkled with a laugh. “Boy, so did I.”

After sending the kids a wink, he rolled the flat around the back of the van to stow it. He shook his head when she offered him a ten-dollar bill. “No, but thanks.”

She leaned in, rooted around in the grocery bags. “How about a banana?”

He laughed. “I’ll take it.” He replaced the tools, gave the kids a quick salute with the banana and made them both giggle, then closed the door. “You’re good to go.”

“Thanks again.”

He walked back to his truck, waited for her to pull out. He did a U-turn to head back the way he’d been coming when he’d seen the van on the side of the road. In about half a mile, his phone signaled a voice mail.

“I got your Hefty bags, Grandma,” he muttered. “And the big-ass bottle of Lysol.” Still, he punched the key to play the message.

He has my mother.

Coop slammed on the brakes, swerved to the shoulder.

After the first flash of heat, everything in him went to ice. He punched the gas, pushed speed dial for the sheriff.

“Put me through to him. Now.”

“Sheriff Johannsen’s not in the office.”

“You patch me through to wherever the hell he is. This is Cooper Sullivan.”

“Hey, Coop, it’s Cy. I can’t really do that. I’m not authorized to—”

“Listen to me. Ethan Howe has Jenna Chance.”

“What? What?”

“He may have Lil by now, too. You get Willy, and you get him over to the refuge. Now. Fucking now.”

“I’ll get him, Coop, Jesus God, I’ll get him. What should I—”

“I’m heading to the refuge now. I want Willy there, and as many men as he can get. No air search,” he said quickly, fighting to stay focused. “He’ll just kill them if he sees copters. Tell him she said she’d leave me a trail. I’ll be following it. Do it.”

He shut it off and burned up the miles to Lil’s.

LIL SAW HIM sitting cross-legged at the mouth of the cave, the crossbow in his lap. His face was raw, cross-marked with vicious scratches under the streaks of war paint he’d applied. She thought of the bearded man who’d set off Lena’s radar.

He wore a braided leather strap around his head, with a feather from a hawk woven through it. On his feet were soft leather knee boots, around his neck a necklace of bear teeth.

It would’ve been funny, she thought, this half-assed play at being Indian. If she didn’t know how murderously serious he was.

He lifted his hand in greeting, then slid back into the cave. Lil climbed the rest of the way, held her breath, then followed him in.

It opened after the first few feet, but was still low enough she had to crouch. Deep though, she noted, as she watched the pale light of the lantern.

He sat in that light with a knife to her mother’s throat.

“I’m here, Ethan, you don’t have to hurt her. If you do hurt her, you’ll get nothing from me.”

“Have a seat, Lil. I’ll explain how things are going to be.”

She sat and wanted to tremble. Cuts and bruises marred her mother’s face, her hands. Blood stained the rope around her wrists, her ankles.

“I need you to take that knife away from my mother’s throat. I did what you asked me to do, and I’ll keep doing that. But not if you hurt her more than you already have.”

“She did most of this to herself. Didn’t you, Jenna?”

Jenna’s eyes said everything. Run. Run. I love you.

“I’m asking you to take the knife off my mother. You don’t need it. I’m here. I’m alone. That’s what you wanted.”

“It’s just the start.” But he lowered the knife an inch. “Everything else was just the start. This is the finish. You and me.”

“You and me,” she agreed. “So let her go.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not wasting time on stupid. I’m going to give you ten minutes. That’s a good head start for somebody who knows the hills. Then I hunt you.”

“Ten minutes. Do I get a weapon?”

“You’re prey.”

“A cougar, a wolf, have fangs and claws.”

He smiled. “You’ve got teeth, if you get close enough to use them.”

She gestured toward the bow. “You weigh the game heavily in your favor.”

“My game, my rules.”

She tried another angle. “Is this how a Sioux warrior shows his honor, his courage? Hunting women?”

“You’re more than a woman. This one?” He yanked Jenna’s head back by the hair and had Lil braced to leap. “Half-breed squaw? She’s mine by rights now. I took her as captive, just like our ancestors took captives from the white. Made them slaves. I might keep her for a while. Or . . .”

He knew so little, she realized, about those he claimed as his own. “The Sioux were hunters of buffalo and deer, of bear. They hunted for food, for clothing. How does it honor your blood to kill a woman who’s bound and helpless?”

“You want her to live? We hunt.”

“If I win?”

“You won’t.” He leaned forward. “You’ve disgraced your blood, your spirit. You deserve to die. But I’m giving you the honor of the hunt. You’ll die on sacred ground. If you play the game well, maybe I’ll let your mother live.”

Lil shook her head. “I won’t play at all unless you let her go. You’ve killed before, you’ll kill again. It’s what you are. I don’t believe you’ll let her live, however I play your game. So you’ll have to let her go first.”

He lifted the knife to Jenna’s throat. “I’ll just kill her now.”

“Then you’ll have to kill me, too, where we sit. I won’t play your game, use your rules unless she’s out of it. And you’ll have wasted all this time, all this effort.”

She ached to look at her mother, reach out to her, but kept her gaze on Ethan’s face. “And you’ll be nothing but a butcher then. Not a warrior. The spirit of Crazy Horse will turn from you.”

“Women are nothing. Less than dogs.”

“A true warrior honors the mother, for all life comes from her. Let mine go. You won’t finish this, Ethan. It’ll never be finished unless we compete. Isn’t that right? You don’t need her. But I need her to be worthy of the game. I’ll give you the hunt of your life. I swear it.”

His eyes glowed at her promise. “She’s useless anyway.”

“Then let her go, and it’s just you and me. Just the way you want it. It’s a bargain worthy of a warrior, worthy of the blood of a great chief.”

He cut the ropes on Jenna’s wrists. She moaned as she tried to lift her aching arms to pull off the gag. “Lil. No, Lil. I won’t leave you.”

“Touching,” he said, and spat as he cut the ropes at her ankles. “Bitch probably can’t even walk.”

“She’ll walk.”

“I won’t. I won’t leave you to him. Baby—”

“It’s all right.” Lil drew Jenna close, gently. “It’s all right now. Step back from her,” she told Ethan. “She’s afraid of you. Step back so I can give her comfort, and say goodbye. We’re only women. Unarmed. You can’t fear us.”

“Thirty seconds.” Ethan stepped back three paces.

“Lil, no. I can’t leave you.”

“Help’s coming,” she whispered in Jenna’s ear. “I need you to go, I need to know you’re safe or I won’t be able to think to win this. I know what to do. You have to go or he’ll kill us both. Give her some water,” Lil demanded in disgust. “What kind of honor is it to beat a woman, to deny her water?”

“She can drink her own spit.”

“Water for my mother and you can take five minutes off my lead time.”

He kicked a bottle over. “I don’t need your five minutes to beat you.”

Lil uncapped it, held it to her mother’s lips. “Slow now, a little at a time. Can you find home?”

“I—Lil.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. Yes, I think.”

“Won’t help you. By the time she gets there—if she does—and they start looking for you, you’ll be dead. And I’ll be smoke.”

“Take the water and go now.”

“Lil.”

“If you don’t he’ll kill us both. The only chance I have to live is for you to go. You have to believe in me. You have to give me that chance. I’m going to help her out of the cave, Ethan. You can hold the bow on me. I won’t run.”

She helped her mother to her feet, cursing when Jenna wept from pain, from grief. Crouched over in the shallow space, she helped Jenna hobble to the mouth. “Help’s coming,” she whispered again. “I can keep him off me until they come. Get home as fast as you can. Promise me.”

“Lil. Oh, God, Lil.” As the sun lowered toward the hills, Jenna held her tight.

“I’m going to lead him to the grassland above the river.” Lil pressed her face to her mother’s hair as if in grief, and murmured against her ear. “Where I saw the cougar. Remember that. Send help there.”

“Shut up! You shut up and she goes now, or she dies now, and you after her.”

“Go on, Mom.” Lil pried Jenna’s scraped and bruised arms away. “Go on or he’ll kill me.”

“Baby. I love you, Lil.”

“I love you.” She watched her mother limp and stumble, saw the agony of emotion in her battered face when she looked back. For that alone, Lil thought, he’d pay. Whatever it took.

“Start running,” Ethan ordered.

“No. The hunt doesn’t start until I know she’s away. Until I know you won’t go after her first. What’s your hurry, Ethan?” Deliberately she sat on a rock. “You’ve waited a long time for this. You can wait a little longer.”

30

The compound was chaos. A dozen people raced from various directions when Coop jumped out of his truck, and all of them talked at once.

“Stop! You.” He jabbed a finger at Matt. “Sum it up, and fast.”

“We can’t find Lil. Lena found her phone in the yard behind the cabin. And when I went back, I found this.” He held out the plastic bag with Jenna’s hair and wedding ring. There was somebody here, paying customer. Lena got a bad feeling about him. Baby didn’t like him either. Nobody can find him. We’re afraid he took Lil. Mary’s inside, calling the police.”

“I already called them.”

“I think it’s Jenna’s ring.” Tears spilled down Tansy’s cheeks.

“Yeah, it’s Jenna’s. He’s got her, and Lil’s gone in to find her. Shut up and listen,” he ordered when everyone began to talk at once. “I need anyone who can handle a gun without shooting themselves. Lil’s got a good hour’s head start, but she’s leaving a trail. We’re going to follow it.”

“I can.” Lena stepped forward. “I can handle a shotgun. Trap shooting champion, three years running.”

“In Lil’s cabin. Shotgun in the front closet, ammo on the top shelf. Go.”

“I’ve never shot a gun in my life, but—”

“Stay here.” Coop cut Matt off. “Wait for the police, then lock the place down. Tansy, go to the Chance farm. If Joe hasn’t heard, he needs to. Listen to me. Tell him it’s most likely Jenna was taken from there. He and Farley, and whoever else he can round up, should start from there. He taught Lil to track. He’ll pick up the trail. We need radios.”

Mary came out of the cabin as two interns sprinted for radios. “The police are on their way. Fifteen minutes.”

“Send them in after us. We’re not waiting for them. You upstairs, bedroom, top left dresser drawer. Three ammo clips. Get them. Wait.” Struck, he held up a hand, looked over to the enclosures. “I need something of Lil’s, something she was wearing.”

“Sweater in the office,” Mary said. “Hold on.”

“That cat loves her. Will he track her?”

“Yes! God, yes.” Tansy pressed a hand to her mouth. “He followed her back every time she tried to release him.”

“We’re going to let him out.”

“He hasn’t been out of the habitat since he was six months old.” Matt shook his head. “Even if he leaves the compound, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“He loves her.” Coop took the sweater Mary brought him.

“We’ll have to separate the others.” Tansy hurried to the enclosure with him.

“Do what you have to do. Make it fast.”

He held the sweater to the bars. Baby prowled over, then grumbled in his throat. Rubbed his face against the sweater. Purred.

“Yeah, that’s right. You know her. You’re going to find her.”

Interns chicken-baited the range area while Eric pulled up the door. Baby lifted his head, looked around while his companions rushed through the feed. Then turned back, pushed his face against the sweater.

“This is crazy,” Matt said, but he stood by with the drug gun. “Get back, well back. Tansy.”

She unlocked the cage. “Find Lil, Baby. You find Lil.” Using it as a barrier, she opened it.

He slunk out slowly toward the unknown, drawn by Lil’s scent. Coop held up a hand toward Matt as the cougar approached him. “He knows me. He knows I’m Lil’s.”

Once more, the cougar rubbed against the sweater. Then he began to track. “She’s everywhere, that’s the problem. She’s everywhere.”

Baby leaped onto Lil’s cabin’s porch, called, called. Then leaped off again to circle around.

“I packed you a kit.” Mary pushed it into his hands. “Bare essentials. Put that sweater in this plastic bag. It’ll confuse him otherwise. Get her back, Cooper.”

“I will.” He watched the cat stalk over the yard, then gather himself to run for the trees. “Let’s move.”

LIL GAUGED HER time, mentally planned out routes while she sat on the rock in the dying day with the man who wanted to kill her.

Her nerves smoothed out with every minute that passed. Every minute took her mother farther away and brought Coop closer. The longer she could keep him here, the better her chances.

“Did your father teach you to kill?” She spoke conversationally, her gaze aimed west, toward the setting sun.

“To hunt.”

“Call it what you like, Ethan. You gutted Melinda Barrett and left her for the animals.”

“A cougar came. A sign. Mine.”

“Cougars don’t hunt for sport.”

He shrugged. “I’m a man.”

“Where did you leave Carolyn?”

He smiled. “A feast for the grizzlies. She gave me a good game first. I think you’ll do better. You may last most of the night.”

“Then where will you go?”

“I’ll follow the wind. Then I’ll come back. I’ll kill your parents and burn their farm to the ground. I’ll do the same with that zoo of yours. I’ll hunt these hills and live free, the way my people should have lived free.”

“I wonder how much of your view on the Sioux comes from actual truth or your father’s bastardization of the truth.”

Color flooded his face, warning her not to test him too far. “My father wasn’t a bastard.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do you think the Lakota would approve of what you do? The way you hunt down and slaughter innocent people?”

“They aren’t innocent.”

“What did James Tyler do to deserve to die?”

“He came here. His people killed my people. Stole from them.”

“He was a real estate agent from St. Paul. It’s just you and me here, Ethan, so there’s no reason to pretend this is anything but what it is. You like to kill. You like to terrorize, to stalk. You like the feel of warm blood on your hands. It’s why you use a knife. Otherwise, saying you murdered Tyler because of broken treaties, lies, dishonor, greed perpetrated by people who’ve been dead more than a hundred years would just be crazy. You’re not crazy, are you, Ethan?”

Something—a slyness—came and went in his eyes. Then he bared his teeth. “They came. They killed. They slaughtered. Now their blood feeds the ground like ours did. On your feet.”

Fear blew through her again, one icy blast. Ten minutes, she reminded herself, if he kept to his own rules. She could cover a lot of ground in ten minutes. She got to her feet.

“Run.”

Her legs quivered to. “So you can watch where I go? Is that how you track? I thought you were good at this.”

He smiled. “Ten minutes,” he said and backed into the cave.

She didn’t waste time. Her first priorities were speed and distance. Cunning had to wait. The farm was closer, but she needed to draw him away from her mother. Cooper would come from the east. She scrambled down the slope, warning herself not to sacrifice safety for speed and risk a broken ankle. Fear urged her to take the shortest, straightest route toward the compound, but she thought of the bow. He’d track her too easily that way, and he could disable her from a distance with the bow.

And any trail she left for Coop, Ethan could follow.

She veered north, and raced ahead of the dark.

AT THE CHANCE FARM, Joe stuffed extra ammo in his pockets. “We’re losing the light. We’ll use flashlights until moonrise.”

“I want to go with you, Joe.” Sam gripped Joe’s shoulder. “But I’d just slow you down.”

“We’ll stay by the radio.” Lucy handed him a light pack. “We’ll wait for word. Bring them home.”

He nodded, moved out of the door ahead of Farley.

“Be careful.” Tansy wrapped her arms around Farley, held hard and brief. “Be safe.”

“Don’t you worry.”

Outside, Farley took point with Joe ahead of the three armed men who would join them on the search. Dogs, already on the scent, bayed.

“If he’s hurt her,” Joe said quietly to Farley. “If he’s hurt either of them, I’ll kill him.”

“We will.”

MILES AWAY, Coop studied the signs Lil had left for him. He hadn’t seen the cougar since it had run into the forest. He had two college kids with him, and twilight falling fast.

He should’ve come alone, he thought now. Shouldn’t have wasted even the few minutes it had taken to outfit the backup, release the cat.

The others were ten minutes or more behind him, with some steering south, others north. He knew Joe, by the information relayed by radio, led another group headed in from the west.

And still, there were untold acres to cover.

“You two wait here for the rest to catch up.”

“You’re worried we’ll screw up, or get hurt. We won’t.” Lena looked at her companion. “Right, Chuck?”

Chuck’s eyes were huge, but he nodded. “Right.”

“If you fall behind, go back. Radio back our new direction,” he ordered Chuck, then headed southwest.

She’d left clear markings, he thought as he forced himself not to run, not to run and miss one of those markings. She was counting on him. If he hadn’t stopped to play Good Samaritan, he’d have gotten her call, he’d have convinced her to wait until he could go with her. He’d have . . .

No point, no point. He’d find her.

He thought of Dory. Good cop, good friend. And the long, syrupy seconds it had taken to draw his weapon.

He wouldn’t be too late, not this time. Not with Lil.

SHE LAID A trail to a stream, backtracked. With sundown the air chilled. Despite the sweat of exertion and fear, she was cold. She imagined the warm sweater she’d shed in her office that afternoon as she took the time to remove her boots, her socks.

Brushing out tracks as she went, she returned to the stream, gritted her teeth as she waded through the icy water. The false trail might fool him, might not. But it was worth a try. She waded downstream ten yards, then ten more before she began to search the banks. Her feet were numb by the time she spotted the tumble of rocks. They’d do.

She climbed out, put her socks and shoes on again, then picked her way over the rocks until they gave way to soft ground. She ran, cutting away from the water, circling the brush until she was forced to shove through it. Her boots thudded as she propelled herself up a slope.

She sought the shelter of trees again to rest, to listen.

The moon rose like a spotlight over the hills. It would help her avoid tripping over roots or rocks in the dark.

Her mother should be halfway back to the farm by now, she calculated. Help would be coming from that direction, too. She had to believe her mother would make it, and would direct the help toward the high ground she’d chosen for her stand.

She had to cut east again. She rubbed her chilled arms, ignoring the sting from nicks and scrapes she’d incurred on the run. If her maneuver at the stream bought her any time, she had the distance to make it. She just needed the stamina.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed to her feet, then cocked her head as she heard a quiet splash.

Some time, she thought as she turned east. But not as much as she’d hoped.

He was coming. And he was closing in.

COOP STOPPED AGAIN. He saw the slash, fresh, on the pine bark. Lil’s sign. But he studied the prints—cougar tracks. The first pointed west, and the second north.

Nothing to prove it was her cougar, he thought. And clearly, she’d gone west. Following Ethan’s trail, to find her mother. But after, he’d want the hunt. Want the thrill.

Coop’s head said go west, but his heart . . .

“Head west. Be slow, go quiet. Follow the slash marks. Radio back, tell them I’m heading north from here.”

“But why?” Lena demanded. “Where are you going?”

“I’m following the cat.”

Wouldn’t she have led Ethan away from her mother? Coop asked himself. His heart thudded every time he thought he’d lost the trail. What made him think he could track a cougar? Mr. Fucking New York. She wouldn’t leave signs now. No handy slash marks or rock piles. She couldn’t leave signs because by now he was hunting her.

Come after me, she asked him. He could only pray he was.

Twice he lost the trail, so desperation and terror made his skin clammy. And his belly would clutch each time he found it again.

Then he saw the bootprints. Lil’s. Even as he crouched, touched a finger to the impression she’d left on the ground, his body shuddered. Alive. Still alive and moving. He saw where others—Ethan’s—crossed hers. He was following, but she was still ahead. And the cat followed both.

He moved ahead. When he heard the murmur of water on rock, he picked up his pace again. She’d headed toward water, to lose him in the water.

When he reached the stream, he stood, baffled. Her tracks led into the water, while Ethan’s moved forward, back, circled around again. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind and think.

What would she do?

False trails, backtracking. He had no skill for that. If she’d gone into the water, she might’ve come out again anywhere. The cat had gone in, that was clear enough. Maybe just to cross, or maybe to follow her. Which way?

His hands fisted at his sides as he struggled to see, to look at the land as she would. Upstream and across, she could cut around to his grandparents’ farm, or other houses. A long clip, but she could do it. Down and across, her parents’ farm. Closer.

She had to know help would come from that direction.

He started to wade in, to follow that instinct. Then stopped.

Downstream, and east. The grassland. Her camera. Her place.

He cut back, circled, and ran. He didn’t follow tracks now, but the thoughts and patterns of a woman he’d known and loved since childhood.

JOE STARED DOWN at the blood staining the ground. It was black in the moonlight. His head went light, his knees weak, so he knelt down, laying his hand over the blood. He thought, could only think: Jenna.

“Over here!” one of the deputies called out. “It’s Derrick Morganston. Goddamn it, it’s Derrick. He’s dead.”

Not Jenna. Not his Jenna. Later, sometime later, he might feel sorrow that he didn’t think of the man, his family, and only of his own. But now fresh fury and fear pushed him to his feet.

He started forward again, searching for tracks.

Like a miracle, she came through the shadows and the moonlight. She staggered, fell, even as he raced toward her.

He dropped to his knees again, pulled her up, rocked, wept. He stroked her bruised face with his fingers. “Jenna.”

“The grasslands.” She croaked it out.

“Here’s water. Ma, here’s water.” Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes as Farley held water to her lips.

She drank to ease her raging thirst as Farley petted her hair, as Joe rocked. “The grasslands,” she repeated.

“What?” Joe took the bottle from Farley. “Drink a little more. You’re hurt. He hurt you.”

“No. Lil. The grasslands. She’s leading him there. Her place. Find her. Joe. Find our baby.”

HE HAD TO know where she was going now, but it couldn’t be helped. She only had to get within range of the camera, trust someone would see. Then hide. All that tall grass, she could hide.

She had the knife in her boot. He didn’t know about that. She wasn’t defenseless. She hefted a rock, clutched it tight in her fist. Damn right she wasn’t defenseless.

God, she needed to rest. To catch her breath. She’d have sold her soul for a single sip of water. She wished the moon behind clouds, just for a few minutes. She could find her way now in the dark, and the dark would hide her.

The muscles in her legs wept as she fought her way up the next slope. The fingers that clutched the rock were numb with cold. Her breath whisked out, little ghosts, as she panted, as she pushed herself to the edge of endurance.

She nearly stumbled, hated herself for the weakness, and braced her hand on a tree until she found her balance.

The bolt slammed into the trunk inches from her fingers. She dropped, rolled behind the tree.

“I could’ve pinned you like a moth!”

His voice carried through the clear air. How close? How close? Impossible to tell. She lunged up, keeping low in the sprint from tree to tree. As the ground leveled out, she pushed harder. She imagined the shock and pain of one of those vicious bolts in the back. Cursed the thought. She’d come so far, nearly there. Her lungs burned, pushing air out as whistles as she tore her way through the brush, waking her freezing skin with fresh cuts.

He’d scent her blood now.

She burst out, praying someone would see as she flew across camera range. Then she dived, into the grass. Clamping her teeth, she slid the knife from her boot. Her heart pounded against the ground as she held her breath. Waited.

Such quiet, such stillness. The air barely stirred the grass. As the blood beating in her head slowed, she heard the night sounds, little rustles, the lazy call of an owl. Then him, coming through the brush.

Closer, she thought. Come closer.

The bolt cut through the grass a foot to the left. She bit back the scream tearing at her throat, stayed still.

“You’re good. I knew you would be. Best I’ve had. I’m sorry for it to end. I’m thinking I might give you another chance. Want another chance, Lil? Got any left? Go on and run.”

The next bolt dug into the ground to her right.

“You’ve got until I reload. Say thirty seconds.”

Not close enough, not for the knife.

“What do you say? Starting now. Thirty, twenty-nine—”

She sprang up, wheeled back, and pitched the rock with the heart of a girl who’d believed she could play in the majors. It struck his temple with a crack of stone on bone.

When he staggered, when the bow fell from his hands, she charged forward, screaming.

He pulled the gun he’d taken off the ranger, plowed a bullet into the ground at her feet.

“On your knees, you bitch.” Though he swayed, and blood dribbled down from the wound, the gun held steady.

“If you’re going to shoot me, just shoot me. Goddamn you.”

“I might. In the arm, in the leg. Not a kill shot.” He slid the knife out of his sheath. “You know how it’s going to be. But you did well. Even drew first blood.”

He swiped at it with the back of his knife hand, glanced down at the smear. “I’ll sing a song in your honor. You brought us here, where it’s right to end. Destiny. Yours and mine. Full circle, Lil. You understood all along. You deserve to die clean.”

He started toward her.

“Stop where you are. Put the gun down. Step away from him, Lil,” Coop ordered as he stood on the edge of the grass.

Shock had Ethan’s gun hand jerking. But the barrel stayed beaded on Lil. “She moves, I shoot her. You shoot me, I still shoot her. You’re the one, the other one.” He paused, nodded. “It’s only right you’re here, too.”

“Put the fucking gun down or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“It’s aimed at her belly. I can get one off, maybe two. You want to watch her bleed? You back off. You fucking back off. We’ll call this a standoff. There’ll be another time. If you don’t lower that gun, I’ll put a hole in her. Lower it and I’ll ease back. She’ll live.”

“He’s lying.” She’d seen it. That slyness again, sliding into his eyes and out. “Just shoot the bastard. I’d rather die than see him walk away.”

“Can you live with that?” Ethan demanded. “Live with watching her die?”

“Lil,” Coop said, trusting her to read his eyes, to understand. His finger twitched as he lowered his gun an inch.

The cat leaped out of the brush, a streak of gold, of flashing fang and claw in the streaming moonlight. Its scream sliced through the night like silver swords. Ethan stared, eyes dazed, mouth slack.

Then it was his scream as the cougar sank its teeth into his throat and took him down.

Lil stumbled back. “Don’t run, don’t run!” she shouted at Coop. “It might go for you. Stop!”

But he kept coming. Coming after her, she thought dully as her vision hazed. Kept coming to catch her when her knees finally gave way.

“We found you.” He pressed his lips to hers, to her cheeks, her throat. “We found you.”

“Have to move. Too near the kill.”

“It’s Baby.”

“What. No.” She saw the eyes gleam at her as the cat sat in the grass. Saw the blood staining his muzzle. Then it walked to her, bumped its head against her arm. And purred.

“He killed.” For me, she thought. For me. “But he didn’t feed. It’s not—he shouldn’t—”

“You can write a paper on it later.” Coop pulled out his radio. “I’ve got her.” Then he brought her hand to his lips. “I’ve got you.”

“My mother. She’s—”

“Safe. You’re both safe. We’re going to get you home. I need you to sit here while I check on Ethan.”

“He went for his throat.” She buried her face against her knees. “Instinct. He followed instinct.”

“Lil. He followed you.”

LATER, WHEN THE worst was over, she sat on the sofa with the fire roaring. She’d taken a hot bath, sipped brandy. And still, she couldn’t quite get warm.

“I should go see my mother. I should.”

“Lil, she’s sleeping. She knows you’re safe. She heard your voice on the radio. She’s dehydrated, exhausted, and bruised up. Let her sleep. You’ll see her tomorrow.”

“I had to go, Coop. I couldn’t wait. I had to go after her.”

“I know you did. You don’t have to keep saying it.”

“I knew you’d come after me.” She pressed his hand to her cheek, closing her eyes, absorbing the warmth. “But Matt and Tansy had to be crazy to release Baby that way.”

“We were all crazy. It worked, didn’t it? Now he’s eating his feast of chicken and has hero status.”

“He shouldn’t have been able to track me, not like that. He shouldn’t have been able to find me.”

“He found you because he loves you. The same goes for me.”

“I know.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I know.” She smiled when he leaned in to brush his lips to hers.

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s time you believed that, too.”

She let her head rest on his shoulder, studied the fire. “If he’d won, he’d have come back for my parents eventually. Killed them, or tried. He’d have come here, and killed. He liked to kill. Hunting people excited him. It made him feel important, made him feel superior. The rest, the sacred land, the revenge, the bloodline, that was smoke. I think he’d come to believe it, or parts of it, but it was smoke.”

“He didn’t win.” He thought of how many dead might never be found. How many he’d hunted and killed they’d never know. But those, Coop decided, were thoughts for another day.

He had Lil, had her safe in his arms.

“You were going to shoot him.”

“Yes.”

“Lower your gun enough to make him believe you meant it—so he’d swing his toward you. Then you’d have killed him. You figured I had brains enough to get out of the way.”

“Yes.”

“You were right. I was about to dive when Baby came out of nowhere. We trusted each other—life-and-death trust. That’s pretty damn important. Anyway.” She let out a long breath. “I’m tired. God.”

“Can’t think why.”

“One of those days. Do me a favor, will you? I left the trash in the laundry room this morning. Would you take it out for me?”

“Now?”

“I’d appreciate it. Small change compared with saving my life, but I’d appreciate it.”

“Fine.”

She folded her lips on the smile when he strode out, so obviously annoyed. She took another sip of brandy, and waited.

When he came back, he stood in front of her, looking down. “You put that trash in there this morning?”

“That’s right.”

“Before I saved your life—or had some part in it?”

“Right again.”

“Why?”

After shaking back her hair, she stared straight into his eyes. “Because I decided you’re not going anywhere, and since I’ve loved you most of my life, I want you not to go anywhere with me. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and the only man I’ve ever loved. Why should I live without you just because you were a moron at twenty?”

“That’s debatable. The moron part.” He skimmed a hand over her hair. “You’re mine, Lil.”

“Yes, I am.” She got to her feet, wincing only a little. “And you’re mine right back.” She went into his arms. “This is what I want,” she told him. “So much of this. Will you walk with me? I know it’s silly, but I want to walk in the moonlight, safe and loved and happy. With you.”

“Get your jacket,” he said. “It’s cool out.”

The moon beamed down, pure and white, as they walked. Safe and loved and happy.

In the stillness, in that chill of early spring, the cougar’s call echoed over the valley. And it carried into the hills looming black in the night.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

PART TWO

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

PART THREE

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

ALSO BY NORA ROBERTS

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

Sanctuary

Homeport

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

The Reef

River’s End

Jewels of the Sun

Carolina Moon

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

The Villa

From the Heart

Midnight Bayou

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

Chesapeake Blue

Birthright

Remember When

(WITH J. D. ROBB)

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

Northern Lights

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Blue Smoke

Red Lily

Angels Fall

Morrigan’s Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

High Noon

Tribute

Black Hills

Vision in White

Bed of Roses

WRITING AS J. D. ROBB

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

Kindred in Death

Fantasy in Death

G. P.PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Copyright © 2010 by Nora Roberts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Nora.

The search / Nora Roberts.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18870-5

1. Young women—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Serial murderers—Fiction. 3. Attempted murder—Fiction. 4. Dog owners—Fiction. 5. Search and rescue operations—Fiction. 6. Search dogs—Training—Fiction. 7. Orcas Island (Wash.)—Fiction. 1. Title.

PS3568.0243S

813’.54—dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To

HOMER AND PANCHO,

and all who sweetened my life before them

PART ONE

Properly trained, a man can be a dog’s best friend.

COREY FORD

ONE

On a chilly morning in February with a misty rain shuttering the windows, Devin and Rosie Cauldwell made slow, sleepy love. It was day three of their week’s vacation—and month two of their attempt to conceive a second child. Their three-year-old son, Hugh, was the result of a long week-end on Orcas Island in the San Juans and—Rosie was convinced—a rainy afternoon and a bottle of Pinot Noir.

They hoped to repeat their success with a return visit to Orcas, and happily applied themselves to the mission at hand while their toddler slept with his beloved Wubby in the next room.

It was too early in the day for wine, but Rosie took the quiet rain as an omen.

When they were snuggled up together, loose and warm from sex, she smiled.

“Who had the best idea ever?”

Devin gave her ass an easy squeeze. “You did.”

“Hang on, because I just had another one.”

“I think I need a few minutes, first.”

She laughed, rolled and propped herself on his chest to grin at him. “Get your mind off sex, Sleazy.”

“I think I need a few minutes for that, too.”

“Pancakes. We need pancakes. Rainy morning, our cozy little house. Definitely calls for pancakes.”

He squinted at her. “Who’s making them?”

“Let the fates decide.”

She scooted up, and in a long-standing Cauldwell family tradition they let the balance hang on Rock, Paper, Scissors—best two out of three.

“Damn it,” she muttered when he crushed her scissors with his rock.

“Superior skill wins out.”

“My ass. But fair’s fair—and I have to pee anyway.” She bent down to give him a smacking kiss, then jumped out of bed. “I love vacation,” she said as she dashed into the bathroom.

She especially loved this vacation, she thought, with her two handsome men. If the rain kept up, or got heavier, they’d play games inside. But if it let up, maybe they’d strap Hugh in the carrier and take a bike ride, or just go for a long hike.

Hugh just loved it here, loved the birds, the lake, the deer they’d spotted and of course the rabbits—all brothers to his faithful Wubby.

And maybe he’d have a brother of his own in the fall. She was ovulating—not that she was obsessing about getting pregnant. But counting days wasn’t obsessing, she thought as she caught her sleep- and sex-mussed hair back in a band. It was just being self-aware.

She grabbed a sweatshirt and some flannel pants, glanced back at Devin, who’d gone back to snoozing.

She really thought they’d hit the money shot.

Delighted with the idea, she pulled on heavy socks, then glanced at the watch she’d left on the dresser.

“Gosh, it’s after eight. We must’ve worn Hugh out last night for him to sleep this late.”

“Probably the rain,” Devin mumbled.

“Yeah, probably.”

Still, she turned out of their room for his, as she did every morning, at home or away. She moved quietly, content to let him sleep—a bonus if she could grab her first cup of coffee before she heard the first Mommy of the day.

She peeked in, expecting to find him curled up with his stuffed bunny. The empty bed didn’t bring panic. He might’ve gotten up to pee, just as she had. He’d gotten so good with his potty training.

Even when she didn’t find him in the little bathroom off the hall, she didn’t panic. Since he was habitually an early riser, they’d encouraged him to play for a bit before waking them. She usually heard him, talking to his toys or running his cars, but she’d been a little distracted having vacation sex.

God, she thought as she started downstairs, what if he’d looked in when they were doing it? No, he’d have walked right in and asked what game they were playing.

With a half laugh, she turned into the pretty living room, expecting to see her little boy on the floor surrounded by the toys of his choice.

When she didn’t, the first fingers of unease tickled up her throat.

She called his name, moving quickly now, sliding a little on the hardwood floors in her socks.

Panic struck, a knife in the belly.

The kitchen door stood wide open.

SHORTLY AFTER NINE, Fiona Bristow pulled up at the pretty vacation house in the heart of Moran State Park. Rain fizzed along the ground more than pattered, but its steadiness promised sloppy tracking. She signaled her partner to stay in the truck, then got out to approach one of the local deputies.

“Davey.”

“Hey, Fee. You got here fast.”

“I didn’t have far to go. The others are on their way. Are we using the house for base camp or do you want us to set up?”

“We’re using it. You’ll want to talk to the parents, but I’ll give you the basics. Hugh Cauldwell, age three, blond and blue. Last seen wearing SpiderMan pajamas.”

Fiona saw his mouth tighten a little. Davey had a boy about the same age as Hugh, and she imagined he had a pair of Spider-Man pj’s, too.

“The mother first noticed he was missing at about eight-fifteen,” Davey continued. “Found the back door open. No visible signs of forced entry or an intruder. The mother alerted the father. They called it in right away, and they ran around, calling for him, looking in the immediate area.”

And tracked up the place, Fiona mused. But who could blame them?

“We did a house-and-grounds search, to make sure he wasn’t just hiding.” Davey turned back to Fiona with rain dripping off the bill of his cap. “He’s not in the house, and his mother says he has his stuffed bunny with him. He sleeps with it, carts it around habitually. We’ve got rangers on the search, McMahon and Matt are out there,” he added, referring to the sheriff and a young deputy.

“McMahon cleared me to call in your unit, and assigned me to base.”

“We’ll set up and get started. I’d like to interview the parents now, if that’s good for you.”

He gestured toward the house. “They’re scared, as you’d expect—and they want to go out and look for him. You might help me talk them down from that.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Thinking of that, she went back to the truck, opened the door for her partner. Peck hopped out and walked with her and Davey to the house.

At Davey’s nod, Fiona crossed to the couple, who rose from their huddle on the couch. The woman clutched a little red fire engine.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cauldwell, I’m Fiona Bristow with Canine Search and Rescue. This is Peck.” She laid a hand on the head of the chocolate Lab. “The rest of my unit’s on the way. We’re going to help look for Hugh.”

“You need to go. You need to go right now. He’s only three.”

“Yes, ma’am. The rest of my unit will be here any minute. It would help us if I get some information first.”

“We told the police and the rangers everything.” Devin looked toward the window. “I need to go out there, look for him. We’re wasting time here.”

“Believe me, Mr. Cauldwell, the police and the rangers are doing everything they can to find Hugh. They called us because finding him is everyone’s priority. We’re trained, and your little boy is our only focus now. We’re going to coordinate with the police and the park rangers. I need to make sure I have all the information so we optimize our resources. You realized Hugh was missing about eight-fifteen, is that right?”

Tears swam fresh into Rosie’s eyes. “I should’ve checked on him earlier. He hardly ever sleeps past seven. I should’ve—”

“Mrs. Cauldwell . . . Rosie,” Fiona corrected, using the first name to comfort. “You don’t want to blame yourself. Little boys are curious, aren’t they? Has Hugh ever left the house by himself before?”

“Never, never. I thought he’d come down to play, then I couldn’t find him, and I went back to the kitchen. And the door . . . the door was open. Wide open. And I couldn’t find him.”

“Maybe you could show me.” Fiona signaled to Peck to follow. “He’s wearing his pajamas?”

“Spider-Man. He’ll be cold, and wet, and scared.” Her shoulders shook as they moved back to the kitchen. “I don’t understand what you can do that the police can’t.”

“We’re another resource, and Peck? He’s trained for this. He’s been on dozens of searches.”

Rosie swiped tears off her cheeks. “Hugh likes dogs. He likes animals. If the dog barks, maybe Hugh will hear and come back.”

Fiona said nothing, but opened the back door, then squatted down to take in the view from the level of a three-year-old boy. Likes animals. “I bet you can see a lot of wildlife around here. Deer, fox, rabbits.”

“Yes. Yes. It’s so different from Seattle. He loves watching out the windows, or from the deck. And we’ve taken hikes and bike rides.”

“Is Hugh shy?”

“No. Oh no, he’s adventurous and sociable. Fearless. Oh God.”

Instinctively Fiona put an arm around Rosie’s shaking shoulders. “Rosie, I’m going to set up here in the kitchen, if that’s okay. What I need you to do is to get me five things Hugh wore recently. Yesterday’s socks, underwear, shirt, like that. Five small items of clothing. Try not to handle them. Put them in these.”

Fiona took plastic bags from her kit.

“We’re a unit of five. Five handlers, five dogs. We’ll each use something of Hugh’s to give the dogs his scent.”

“They . . . they track him?”

Easier to agree than to try to explain air-scenting, scent cones, skin rafts. The boy had already been gone more than an hour. “That’s right. Does he have a favorite treat? Something he likes especially, something you might give him when he’s been good?”

“You mean like . . .” Pushing at her hair, Rosie looked around blankly. “He loves gummy worms.”

“Great. Do you have any?”

“I . . . yes.”

“If you could get the clothes and the worms,” Fiona said with a smile. “I’m going to set up. I hear my unit, so I’m going to set up.”

“Okay. Okay. Please . . . He’s just three.”

Rosie dashed out. Fiona shared a brief look with Peck, then began to set up operations.

As her team came in, human and canine, she briefed them and began to assign search sectors while poring over her maps. She knew the area, and knew it well.

A paradise, she thought, for those looking for serenity, scenery, an escape from streets and traffic, buildings, crowds. And for a lost little boy, a world filled with hazards. Creeks, lakes, rocks.

More than thirty miles of foot trails, she thought, over five thousand acres of forest to swallow up a three-year-old and his stuffed rabbit.

“We’ve got a heavy drizzle, so we’ll keep the search grids close and cover this area.” As field OL—operational leader—Fiona outlined their sections on the map while Davey listed data on a large whiteboard. “We’ll overlap some with the other teams, but let’s keep good communications so we don’t step on our own feet.”

“He’s going to be wet and chilled by now.” Meg Greene, mother of two and recent grandmother, looked at her husband, Chuck. “Poor little guy.”

“And a kid that age? He’s got no sense of direction. He’ll wander anywhere.” James Hutton frowned as he checked his radio.

“He might tire out, just curl up and sleep.” Lori Dyson nodded toward her German shepherd, Pip. “He might not hear the searchers calling for him, but our guys will sniff him out.”

“That’s the plan. Everyone has their coordinates? Radios checked, packs checked? Make sure you set your compass bearings. With Mai in emergency surgery, Davey’s solo base OL, so we’ll check in with him as we cover our sectors.”

She stopped as the Cauldwells came back in.

“I have . . .” Rosie’s chin wobbled. “I have what you asked for.”

“That’s great.” Fiona crossed to her, then laid her hands on the terrified mother’s shoulders. “You hold good thoughts. Everyone out there has only one thing to do, one thing on their mind: find Hugh and bring him home.”

She took the bags, passed them out to her unit. “Okay, let’s go get him.”

With the others, she walked outside, hitched on her pack. Peck stood by her side, the slight quiver in his body the only sign he was anxious to get started. She and the others spread out to take their assigned sectors, and like the rest of her unit, she set her compass bearing.

She opened the bag holding a little sock, offered it to Peck’s nose.

“This is Hugh. It’s Hugh. Hugh’s just a little boy, Peck. This is Hugh.”

He sniffed enthusiastically—a dog who knew his job. He glanced up at her, sniffed again, then looked deep into her eyes, body quivering as if to say, Okay, I’ve got it! Let’s move!

“Find Hugh.” She added her hand signal, and Peck lifted his nose in the air. “Let’s find Hugh!”

She waited, watching him scent and circle, let him take the lead as he prowled and paced. The thin, steady rain posed an obstacle, but Peck worked well in the rain.

She remained where she was, giving him verbal encouragement as he tracked the air and the wet pattered on the bright yellow of her wind-breaker.

When he moved east, she followed him into the thickening trees.

At five, Peck was a vet, a seventy-pound chocolate Lab—strong, smart and tireless. He would, Fiona knew, search for hours in any conditions, over any terrain, for the living or for the dead. She had only to ask it of him.

Together, they moved through deep forest, over ground soft and soggy with needles shed from the towering Douglas firs and old-growth cedars, over and around clumps of mushrooms and nurse logs coated with rich green moss, through brambles edgy with thorn. While they searched, Fiona kept an eye on her partner’s body language, made note of landmarks, checked her compass. Every few minutes, Peck glanced back to let her know he was on the case.

“Find Hugh. Let’s find Hugh, Peck.”

He alerted, showing interest in a patch of ground around a nurse log.

“Got something, do you? That’s good. Good boy.” She flagged the alert first with bright blue tape, then stood with him, scanning the area, calling Hugh’s name. Then closing her eyes to listen.

All she heard was the soft sizzle of rain and the whisper of wind through the trees.

When he nudged her, Fiona took the sock out of her pocket, opened the bag so Peck could refresh the scent.

“Find Hugh,” she repeated. “Let’s find Hugh.”

He moved off again, and in her sturdy boots, Fiona stepped over the log and followed. When Peck angled south, she called her new position in to base, checked in with her team members.

The kid had been out for a minimum of two hours, she thought. A lifetime for worried parents.

But toddlers didn’t have any real sense of time. Children of his age were very mobile, she mused, and didn’t always understand the concept of being lost. They wandered, distracted by sights and sounds, and had considerable endurance, so it might be hours of that wandering before Hugh tired out and realized he wanted his mother.

She watched a rabbit skitter away into the brush. Peck had too much dignity to do more than spare it a passing glance.

But a little boy? Fiona thought. One who loved his “Wubby,” who enjoyed animals? One his mother said was fascinated by the forest? Wouldn’t he want to try to catch it, probably hoping to play with it? He’d try, wouldn’t he, to follow it? City boy, she thought, enchanted with the woods, the wildlife, the other of it all.

How could he resist?

She understood it, the magic of it. She’d been a city girl once herself, charmed and hypnotized by the green shadows, the dance of light, the sheer vastness of trees and hills and sea.

A child could so easily lose himself in the acres and acres of parkland.

He’s cold, she thought. Hungry now and scared. He wants his mother.

When the rain increased, they continued on, the tireless dog, the tall woman in rough pants and rougher boots. Her tail of pale red hair hung in a wet rope down her back, while lake-blue eyes searched the gloom.

When Peck angled again, heading down a winding slope, she drew a picture in her mind. Less than a quarter of a mile farther, if they continued in this direction, they’d come to the creek that marked the southeast border of her sector. Chuck and his Quirk searched the other side. Fast water in the creek this time of year, she thought, cold and fast, the verges slippery with moss and rain.

She hoped the little guy hadn’t gone too close or, worse, tried to cross it.

And the wind was changing, she realized. Goddamn it. They’d adjust. She’d refresh the scent again, give Peck a quick water break. They’d nearly clocked two hours in the field, and though Peck had alerted strongly three times, she’d yet to see a sign of the boy—a bit of cloth on a bramble, a print in the softened ground. She’d flagged the alerts in blue, used orange tape to mark their progress and knew they’d cross-tracked once or twice.

Check in with Chuck, she decided. If Peck’s on the scent and the kid crossed the creek . . .

She didn’t allow herself to think fell in. Not yet.

Even as she reached for her radio, Peck alerted again. This time he broke into a run, shooting her the briefest of glances over his shoulder.

And she saw the light in his eyes.

“Hugh!” She lifted her voice over the now pounding rain and whistling wind.

She didn’t hear the boy, but she heard Peck’s three quick barks.

Like the dog, Fiona broke into a run.

She skidded a little as she rounded the turn on the downward slope.

And she saw near the banks of the busy creek—a bit too near for her peace of mind—a very wet little boy sprawled on the ground with his arms full of dog.

“Hey, Hugh, hi.” She crossed the distance quickly, squatted down, pulling off her pack as she went. “I’m Fiona, and this is Peck.”

“Doggie.” He wept it into Peck’s fur. “Doggie.”

“He’s a good doggie. He’s the best doggie ever.”

As Peck thumped his tail in agreement, Fiona pulled a space blanket out of her pack. “I’m going to wrap you up—and Wubby, too. Is that Wubby?”

“Wubby fell down.”

“So I see. It’s okay. We’ll get you both warm, okay? Did you hurt yourself ? Uh-oh.”

She said it cheerfully as she draped the blanket over his shoulders and saw the mud and blood on his feet. “Ouch, huh? We’re going to fix you all up.”

His arms still around Peck, Hugh turned his cheek and sent Fiona a pitiful, bottom-lip-wobbling look. “I want Mommy.”

“I bet you do. We’re going to take you to Mommy, me and Peck. Here, look what Mommy sent you.” She pulled out the little bag of gummy worms.

“Bad boy,” Hugh said, but he eyed the candy with interest while he clung to Peck.

“Mommy’s not mad. Daddy’s not either. Here you go.” She gave him the bag, pulled out her radio. When Hugh offered a worm to Peck, Peck gave Fiona a sidelong glance.

Can I? Huh? Can I?

“Go ahead—and say thank you.”

Peck took the candy delicately from the boy, gulped it down, then thanked him with a sloppy kiss that made Hugh giggle.

With that sound warming her heart, Fiona contacted base.

“We’ve got him. Safe and sound. Tell Mom he’s eating his gummy worms and we’ll be on our way home.” She winked at Hugh, who fed the filthy and wet stuffed rabbit, then popped the same candy into his own mouth. “He’s got some minor cuts and scrapes, he’s wet, but he’s alert. Over.”

“Copy that. Good work, Fee. Do you need help? Over.”

“We’ve got it. Heading in. I’ll keep you updated. Over and out.”

“Better wash those down,” she suggested, and offered Hugh her canteen.

“Whazit?”

“It’s just water.”

“I like juice.”

“We’ll make sure you get some when we get back. Drink a little, okay?”

He did what he was told, sniffling. “I peed outside, like Daddy showed me. Not in my pants.”

She grinned at him and thought of Peck’s strong alerts. “You did good. How about a piggyback ride?”

As they had at the sight of the candy, his eyes brightened. “Okay.”

She wrapped the blanket securely around him, then turned so he could climb onto her back. “You call me Fee. If you need something, you just say, Fee, I need or I want.”

“Doggie.”

“He’s coming, too. He’ll lead the way.” From her crouch she rubbed Peck, hugged him hard. “Good dog, Peck. Good dog. Return!”

With the pack slung over her shoulder and the boy on her back, the three of them began the hike out of the woods.

“Did you open the door by yourself, Hugh?”

“Bad boy,” he murmured.

Well, yeah, she thought, but who wasn’t bad now and then? “What did you see out the window?”

“Wubbies. Wubby said let’s go see the wubbies.”

“Uh-huh.” Smart kid, she thought. Blame it on the rabbit.

Hugh began to chatter then, so fast and in the toddlerese that defeated her on every third word. But she got the gist.

Mommy and Daddy sleeping, bunnies out the window, what could you do? Then, if she interpreted correctly, the house disappeared and he couldn’t find it. Mommy didn’t come when he called, and he was going to get a time-out. He hated time-outs.

She got the picture because even saying “time-out” made him cry with his face pressed against her back.

“Well, if you get one, I think Wubby needs one, too. Look, hey, Hugh, look. It’s Bambi and his mom.”

He lifted his head, still sniffling. Then tears were forgotten as he squealed at the sight of the fawn and doe. Then he sighed, laid his head on her shoulder when she boosted him up a bit. “I getting hungry.”

“I guess you are. You’ve had a really big adventure.” She managed to dig a power bar out of her pack.

It took less time to hike out than it had to search through, but by the time the trees began to thin the boy weighed like a stone on her back.

Revived, rested, fascinated with everything, Hugh talked nonstop. Amused, Fiona let him ramble and dreamed of a vat of coffee, an enormous burger and a gallon bucket of fries.

When she spotted the house through the trees, she dug out another gear and quickened her pace. They’d barely cleared the line when Rosie and Devin ran out of the house.

Fiona crouched. “Off you go, Hugh. Run to Mommy.”

She stayed down, slung her arm around Peck, whose entire body wagged with joy.

“Yeah,” she murmured to him as Devin beat his wife by a couple lopes and snatched Hugh up. Then the three of them were twined together in a tangle of limbs and tears. “Yeah, it’s a good day. You’re the man, Peck.”

With her son safe in her arms, Rosie hurried toward the house. Devin broke away to walk unsteadily to Fiona.

“Thank you. I don’t know how to . . .”

“You’re welcome. He’s a great kid.”

“He’s . . . everything. Thank you so much.” As his eyes filled, Devin wrapped his arms around Fiona and, much as Hugh had, dropped his head on her shoulder. “I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t have to.” Her own eyes stung as she patted his back. “Peck found him. He’s the one. He’d be pleased if you shook his hand.”

“Oh.” Devin scrubbed at his face, drew in a couple steadying breaths. “Thank you, Peck. Thank you.” He crouched, offered his hand.

Peck smiled as dogs do and placed his paw in Devin’s hand.

“Can I . . . can I hug him?”

“He’d love it.”

On a deep, shuddering sigh, Devin hugged Peck’s neck, pressed his face to the fur. Over the man’s shoulder, Peck sent Fiona a twinkling look.

Wasn’t that fun? he seemed to say. Can we do it again?

TWO

After debriefing, Fiona drove home while Peck sprawled in the back for a quick power nap. He’d earned it, she thought, just as she’d earned the burger she was going to make herself and devour while she transcribed the log onto her computer.

She needed to give Sylvia a call, tell her stepmother they’d found the kid and she wouldn’t need her to fill in for the afternoon classes after all.

Of course, now that the hard work was done, Fiona thought, the rain decided to back off. Already she could see a few breaks of blue in the gray.

Hot coffee, she decided, hot shower, lunch and paperwork, and with some luck she’d have dry weather for the afternoon’s schedule.

As she drove out of the park, she caught the faint glimmer of a rainbow over the rain-churned sound. A good sign, she decided—maybe even a portent of things to come. A few years before, her life had been like the rain—dull and gray and dreary. The island had been her break in the clouds, and her decision to settle there her chance for rainbows.

“Got what I need now,” she murmured. “And if there’s more, well, we’ll just see.”

She turned off the snaking road onto her bumpy drive. Recognizing the change in motion, Peck gave a snort and scrambled up to sit. His tail thumped the seat as they rattled over the narrow bridge spanning her skinny, bubbling stream. When the house came into view, the tail picked up in rhythm and he gave a happy two-note bark.

Her doll-sized cabin, shingled in cedar, generous with windows, grew out of her pretty chunk of forest and field. The yard sprawled and sloped, and held what she thought of as training zones. The sliding boards, teeter-totters, ladders and platforms, tunnels and pass-throughs ranged with benches, tire swings and ramps gave most the impression of a woodsy play area for kids.

Not that far off, Fiona thought. The kids just had four legs.

The other two of her three kids stood on the covered front porch, tails wagging, feet dancing. One of the best things about dogs, to Fiona’s mind, was their absolute joy in welcoming you home, whether you’d been gone for five minutes or five days. There lay unconditional and boundless love.

She parked, and her car was immediately surrounded by canine delight while, inside, Peck wiggled in anticipation of reunion with his best pals.

She stepped out to nuzzling snouts and wagging tails. “Hi, boys.” Ruffling fur, she angled to open the back door. Peck leaped out so the lovefest could begin.

There was sniffing, happy grumbling, body bumping, then the race and chase. While she retrieved her pack, the three dogs charged away, zipping in circles and zigzags before charging back to her.

Always ready to play, she mused as three pairs of eyes stared up at her with hopeful gleams.

“Soon,” she promised. “I need a shower, dry clothes, food. Let’s go in. What do you say, wanna go in?”

In answer, all three bulleted for the door.

Newman, a yellow Lab and the oldest, at six, and the most dignified, led the pack. But then Bogart, the black Lab and the baby, at three, had to stop long enough to grab up his rope.

Surely someone wanted to play tug.

They bounded in behind her, feet tapping on the wide-planked floor. Time, she thought with a glance at her watch. But not a lot of it.

She left her pack out as she had to replace the space blanket before she tucked it away. While the dogs rolled on the floor, she stirred up the fire she’d banked before leaving, added another log. She peeled off her wet jacket as she watched the flames catch.

Dogs on the floor, a fire in the hearth, she thought, made the room cozy. It tempted her to just curl up on the love seat and catch her own power nap.

No time, she reminded herself, and debated which she wanted more: dry clothes or food. After a struggle, she decided to be an adult and get dry first. Even as she turned for the stairs, all three dogs went on alert. Seconds later, she heard the rattle of her bridge.

“Who could that be?”

She walked to the window trailed by her pack.

The blue truck wasn’t familiar, and on an island the size of Orcas there weren’t many strangers. Tourist was her first thought, a wrong turn, a need for directions.

Resigned, she walked outside, gave her dogs the signal to hold on the porch.

She watched the man get out. Tall, a lot of dark hair, scarred boots, worn jeans on long legs. Good face, she decided, sharp planes, sharp angles blurred by the shadow of stubble that said he’d been too busy or too lazy to shave that morning. The good face held an expression of frustration or annoyance—maybe a combo of both—as he shoved a hand through the mass of hair.

Big hands, she noted, on the ends of long arms.

Like the boots, the leather jacket he wore had some years on it. But the truck looked new.

“Need some help?” she called out, and he stopped frowning at the training area to turn toward her.

“Fiona Bristow?” His voice had an edge to it, not anger so much as that annoyance she read on his face. Behind her Bogart gave a little whine.

“That’s right.”

“Dog trainer?”

“I am.” She stepped off the porch as he started toward her, watched his gaze skim over her three guardians. “What can I do for you?”

“Did you train those three?”

“I did.”

His eyes, tawny, like warm, deeply steeped tea, shifted back to her. “Then you’re hired.”

“Yay. For what?”

He pointed at her dogs. “Dog trainer. Name your price.”

“Okay. Let’s open the floor at a million dollars.”

“Will you take it in installments?”

That made her smile. “We can negotiate. Let’s start this way. Fiona Bristow,” she said, and offered her hand.

“Sorry. Simon Doyle.”

Working hands, she thought, as his—hard, calloused—took hers. Then the name clicked. “Sure, wood artist.”

“Mostly I build furniture.”

“Great stuff. I bought one of your bowls a few weeks ago. I can’t seem to resist a nice bowl. My stepmother carries your work in her shop. Island Arts.”

“Sylvia, yeah. She’s great.” He brushed off the compliment, the sale, the small talk. A man on a mission. “She’s the one who told me to come talk to you. So how much of the million do you need up front?”

“Where’s the dog?”

“In the truck.”

She looked past him, cocked her head. She saw the pup through the window now. A Lab-retriever mix, she judged—and currently very busy.

“Your dog’s eating your truck.”

“What?” He spun around. “Fuck!”

As he made the dash, Fiona signaled her newly alerted dogs to stay and sauntered after him. The best way to get a gauge on the man, the dog and their current dynamic was to watch how he handled the situation.

“For God’s sake.” He wrenched open the door. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you?”

The puppy, obviously unafraid, unrepentant, leaped into the man’s arms and slathered his face with eager kisses.

“Cut it out. Just stop!” He held the puppy out at arm’s length, where it wagged and wriggled and yipped in delight.

“I just bought this truck. He ate the headrest. How could he eat the headrest in under five minutes?”

“It takes about ten seconds for a puppy to get bored. Bored puppies chew. Happy puppies chew. Sad puppies chew.”

“Tell me about it,” Simon said bitterly. “I bought him a mountain of chew deals, but he goes for shoes, furniture, freaking rocks and everything else—including my new truck. Here.” He shoved the puppy at Fiona. “Do something.”

She cradled the pup, who immediately bathed her face as if they were reunited lovers. She caught the faintest whiff of leather on his warm puppy breath.

“Aren’t you cute? Are you a pretty boy?”

“He’s a monster.” Simon snarled it. “An escape artist who doesn’t sleep. If I take my eye off him for two minutes, he eats something or breaks something or finds the most inappropriate place to relieve himself. I haven’t had a minute’s peace in three weeks.”

“Um-hmm.” She snuggled the pup. “What’s his name?”

Simon shot a look at the dog that didn’t speak of returning sloppy kisses. “Jaws.”

“Very appropriate. Well, let’s see what he’s made of.” She crouched down with him, then signaled her dogs to release. As they trotted over, she set the puppy on the ground.

Some puppies would cower, some would hide or run away. But others, like Jaws, were made of sterner stuff. He leaped at the dogs, yipping and wagging. He sniffed as they sniffed, quivered with glee, nipped at legs and tails.

“Brave little soldier,” Fiona murmured.

“He has no fear. Make him afraid.”

She sighed, shook her head. “Why did you get a dog?”

“Because my mother gave him to me. Now I’m stuck with him. I like dogs, okay? I’ll trade him for one of yours right now. You pick.”

She studied Simon’s sharp-boned, stubbled face. “Not getting much sleep, are you?”

“The only way I get so much as an hour at a time is if I put him in the bed. He’s already ripped every pillow I own to shreds. And he’s started on the mattress.”

“You should try crate-training him.”

“I got a crate. He ate the crate. Or enough of it to get out. I think he must be able to flatten himself like a snake. I can’t get any work done. I think maybe he’s brain-damaged, or just psychotic.”

“What he is, is a baby who needs a lot of playtime, love, patience and discipline,” she corrected as Jaws merrily humped Newman’s leg.

“Why does he do that? He’ll hump anything. If he’s a baby, why does he think about humping everything?”

“It’s instinct—and an attempt to show dominance. He wants to be the big dog. Bogart! Get the rope!”

“Jesus, I don’t want to hang him. Exactly,” Simon said, as the black Lab dashed for the porch and through the open door.

The dog came out with the rope between his teeth, bounded to Fiona and dropped it at her feet. When she reached for it, he lowered on his front paws, shot his butt in the air and wagged.

Fiona shook the rope. Bogart bounded up, chomped down and, snarling and pulling, engaged in a spirited tug-of-war.

Jaws abandoned Newman, made a running leap for the rope, missed, fell on his back. He rolled, leaped again, little jaws snapping, tail a mad metronome.

“Want the rope, Jaws? Want the rope? Play!” She lowered it so he could reach, and when his puppy teeth latched on, she released.

Bogart’s tug lifted the puppy off the ground and he wiggled and clung like a furry fish on the line.

Determined, she mused, and was pleased when Bogart dipped down so the pup hit the ground, then adjusted his pull for the smaller dog.

“Peck, Newman, get the balls. Get the balls!”

Like their packmate, Peck and Newman dashed off. They came back with yellow tennis balls, spat them at Fiona’s feet. “Newman, Peck! Race!” She heaved the balls in quick succession so both dogs gave chase.

“Nice arm.” Simon watched as the dogs retrieved, repeated the return.

This time she made a kissing sound that had Jaws angling his head even while he pulled on the rope. She tossed the balls in the air a couple times, studying his eye line. “Race!” she repeated.

As the big dogs sprinted off, the puppy scrambled after them.

“He has a strong play instinct—and that’s a good thing. You just need to channel it. He’s had his vet visits, his shots?”

“Up-to-date. Tell me you’ll take him. I’ll pay room and board.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” As she spoke, she took the returned balls, threw them again. “I take him, I take you. You’re a unit now. If you’re not going to commit to the dog, to his training, his health and well-being, I’ll help you find a home for him.”

“I’m not a quitter.” Simon jammed his hands in his pockets as once again Fiona threw the balls. “Besides, my mother would . . . I don’t want to go there. She’s got this idea that since I moved out here, I need companionship. It’s a wife or a dog. She can’t give me a wife, so . . .”

He frowned as the big yellow Lab let the pup get the ball. Prancing triumphantly, Jaws brought it back.

“He fetched.”

“Yes, he did. Ask him for it.”

“What?”

“Tell him to give you the ball. Crouch down, hold out your hand and tell him to give you the ball.”

Simon crouched, held out his hand. “Give me—” Jaws leaped into his lap, nearly bowling Simon over, and rapped his ball-carrying mouth into his face.

“Tell him ‘off,’ ” Fiona instructed, and had to bite the inside of her cheek as obviously, from his expression, Simon Doyle didn’t see the humor. “Set him down on his rump. Hold him down, gently, and take the ball away. When you’ve got the ball, say, ‘Good dog,’ repeat it, be enthusiastic. Smile.”

Simon did as he was told, though it was easier said than done with a dog that could wiggle like a wet worm.

“There, he’s successfully fetched and returned. You’ll use small bits of food and lavish praise, the same commands, over and over again. He’ll catch on.”

“Tricks are great, but I’m really more interested in teaching him not to destroy my house.” He shot a bitter look at the mangled headrest. “Or my truck.”

“Following any command is a discipline. He’ll learn to do what you ask, if you train him with play. He wants to play—he wants to play with you. Reward him, with play, and with food, with praise and affection, and he’ll learn to respect the rules of the house. He wants to please you,” she added when the pup rolled over to expose his belly. “He loves you.”

“Then he’s an easy target since we’ve had a rocky and short relationship.”

“Who’s your vet?”

“Funaki.”

“Mai’s the best. I’ll want copies of his medical records for my files.”

“I’ll get them to you.”

“You’ll want to buy some small dog treats—the sort he can just chomp down rather than the bigger ones he’d need to stop and chew. Instant gratification. You’ll want a head collar and a leash in addition to his regular collar.”

“I had a leash. He—”

“Ate it,” Fiona finished. “It’s common enough.”

“Great. Head collar? Like a muzzle?”

She read Simon’s face clearly enough and was unsurprised when she saw him considering the idea of a muzzle. And was pleased when she noted his rejecting frown.

“No. It’s like a halter, and it’s gentle and effective. You’ll use it during training sessions here and at home. Instead of putting pressure on the throat, it puts pressure—gentle pressure—on calming points. It helps persuade a dog to walk rather than lunge and pull, to heel. And it’ll give him more control as well as put you more in tune with your pup.”

“Fine. Whatever works.”

“I’d advise you to replace or repair the crate and lay in a very big supply of chew toys and rawhide. The rope’s pretty much no-fail, but you’ll want tennis balls, rawhide bones, that sort of thing. I’ll give you a basic list of recommendations and requirements for training. I’ve got a class in . . .” She checked her watch. “Crap. Thirty minutes. And I didn’t call Syl.”

As Jaws began to leap and try to climb up her leg, she simply bent over, pushed his rump to the ground. “Sit.” Because she didn’t have a reward, she crouched, held him in place to pet and praise. “You might as well stay if you’ve got the time. I’ll sign you up.”

“I don’t have a million dollars on me.”

She released the pup, picked him up to cuddle. “Got thirty?”

“Probably.”

“Thirty for a thirty-minute group session. He’s, what, about three months old?”

“About.”

“We’ll make it work. It’s an eight-week course. You’re two behind. I’ll juggle in two individual sessions to bring him up to speed. Does that work for you?”

Simon shrugged. “It’s cheaper than a new truck.”

“Considerably. I’ll lend you a leash and a head collar for now.” Still carrying the puppy, she walked to the house.

“What if I paid you fifty, and you worked with him solo?”

She spared him a glance. “That’s not what I do. He’s not the only one who needs training.” She led him into the house before passing the puppy back to him. “You can come on back. I’ve got some extra leashes and collars, and you need some treats. I have to make a phone call.”

She veered off the kitchen to the utility room, where collars and leashes and brushes hung neatly according to type and size, and various toys and treats sat organized on shelves.

It made him think of a small pet boutique.

She gave Jaws another glance as he squirmed in Simon’s arms and tried to gnaw on his master’s hand.

“Do this.”

She turned to the pup and, using her forefinger and thumb, gently closed his mouth. “No.” And keeping her eyes on the dog’s, she reached behind her, took a rawhide chew toy shaped like a bone. “This is yours.” When he clamped it, she nodded. “Good dog! Go ahead and set him down. When he chews on you, or something else he shouldn’t, do what I did. Correct, give him a vocal command and replace with what’s his. Give positive reinforcement. Consistently. Find a leash and a collar for him.”

She stepped out into the kitchen, grabbed the phone and hit her stepmother’s number on speed dial. “Crap,” she muttered when it shifted to voice mail. “Syl, I hope you’re not already on your way. I got distracted and forgot to call. I’m home. We found the little boy. He’s fine. Decided to chase a rabbit and got lost, but no worse for wear. Anyway, if you’re on your way, I’ll see you here. If not, thanks for the standby, and I’ll call you later. Bye.”

She replaced the phone and turned to see Simon in the doorway, a leash in one hand and a small head collar in the other. “These?”

“Those should work.”

“What little boy?”

“Hmm. Oh, Hugh Cauldwell—he and his parents are here for a few days’ vacation in the state park. He wandered out of the house and into the forest this morning while they were sleeping. You didn’t hear?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Because it’s Orcas. Anyway, he’s fine. Home safe.”

“You work for the park?”

“No. I’m part of Canine Search and Rescue Association volunteers.”

Simon gestured toward the three dogs, currently sprawled on the kitchen floor like corpses. “Those?”

“That’s right. Trained and certified. You know, Jaws might be a good candidate for S-and-R training.”

He snorted out what might’ve been a laugh. “Right.”

“Strong play drive, curious, courageous, friendly, physically sound.” She lifted her eyebrows as the pup left his new toy to attack the laces on Simon’s boots. “Energetic. Forget your training already, human?”

“Huh?”

“Correct and replace and praise.”

“Oh.” He crouched, repeated the series Fiona had demonstrated. Jaws clamped on the toy, then spat it out and went for the laces again.

“Just keep doing it. I need to put some things together.” She started out, stopped. “Can you work that coffeemaker?”

He glanced to the unit on the counter. “I can figure it out.”

“Do that, will you? Black, one sugar. I’m running low.”

He frowned after her.

While he’d only been on the island a few months, he doubted he’d ever get used to the casual, open-door policy. Just come on in, complete stranger, he thought, and while you’re at it, make me some coffee while I leave you virtually alone.

She only had his word on who he was, and besides that, nobody knew he was there. What if he was a psycho? A rapist? Okay, three dogs, he mused, eyeing them again. But so far they’d been friendly, and about as casual as their mistress.

And currently, they were snoring away.

He wondered how she managed to live with three dogs when he could barely find a way to tolerate one. Looking down, he saw the pup had stopped chewing on his bootlaces because he’d fallen asleep sprawled over the boot, with the laces still caught in his teeth.

With the same care and caution a man might use when easing away from a wild boar, Simon slowly slid his foot back, holding his breath until the pup oozed like furred water onto the kitchen floor.

Passed out cold.

One day, he thought as he crossed to the coffeemaker, he’d find a way to pay his mother back. One fine day.

He studied the machine, checked the bean and water supply. When he switched it on the burr of the grinder had the pup waking with a barrage of ferocious barks. Across the room, the dogs cocked their ears. One of them yawned.

The movement had Jaws leaping with joy, then charging the pack like a cannonball.

While they rolled, batted and sniffed, Simon wondered if he could borrow one of them. Rent one, he considered. Like a babysitter.

Since the cupboards had glass fronts, he didn’t have any trouble finding a pair of bright cobalt blue mugs. He had to open a couple of drawers before he found the flatware, but that gave him the opportunity to marvel. Every drawer was tidy and organized.

How did she do that? He’d been in his house for only a matter of months and his kitchen drawers looked like a flea market. Nobody should be that organized. It wasn’t natural.

Interesting-looking woman, though, he decided as he poked around a little. The hair that wasn’t really red, wasn’t really blond, the eyes of absolutely clear and perfect blue. Her nose tilted up a little on the end and sported a dusting of freckles, and a slight overbite made her bottom lip seem particularly full.

Long neck, he thought as he poured the coffee, lanky build with no rack to speak of.

Not beautiful. Not pretty or cute. But . . . interesting, and the few times she’d smiled? Almost arresting. Almost.

He dumped a spoon of sugar from a squat white bowl in one mug, picked up the other.

He took his first sip looking out her over-the-sink window, then turned when he heard her boot steps. She moved briskly, with an efficiency that hinted at athleticism. Wiry, he thought, as much as lanky.

He saw her shift her gaze down, followed it and saw Jaws circle and squat.

Simon opened his mouth, but before he could yell Hey!, his usual response, Fiona tossed the folder she carried on the counter and clapped her hands twice, sharply.

The sound startled Jaws out of his squat.

She moved fast, scooping up the pup with one hand, grabbing the leash with the other. “Good dog, Jaws, good dog. Let’s go out. Time to go out. Pantry, second shelf, canister with mini-treats, grab a handful,” she ordered Simon, and clipped the leash on the collar as she headed out the back door.

The three dogs whooshed after her in a flurry of fur and paws.

He found her gnome-sized pantry as scarily organized as the drawers, dug out a handful of little dog cookies the size of his knuckle from a big glass jar. Hooking the mug handles in one hand, he walked outside.

She still carried the dog, with her long legs eating up the short distance to the edge of trees that guarded the back of her property. By the time she put Jaws down Simon caught up.

“Stop.” She stopped the pup from attacking the leash, rubbed his head. “Look at the big guys, Jaws! What are the big guys doing?” She turned him, walked a few steps.

Obviously, the pup was more interested in the dogs, currently sniffing, lifting legs, sniffing, than the leash. He bounded after them.

“I’m giving him some slack. Thanks.” Fiona took the coffee, drank deep, sighed. “Praise Jesus. Okay, you’re going to want to pick a regular spot for your Pooptown. You don’t want land mines all over your property. So you consistently take him where you want him to go. Then he’ll just start going there. You’re the one who has to be vigilant and consistent. He’s just a baby, so that means you’re going to have to take him out several times a day. As soon as he wakes up in the morning and before you go to bed at night, every time he eats.”

In his mind’s eye, Simon saw his life becoming a revolving door swinging at the whims of the dog’s elimination needs.

“And when he does what he’s supposed to do,” Fiona continued, “be thrilled. Positive reinforcement—lavish. He wants to please you. Wants to be praised and rewarded. See there, the big guys are going, so he’s not going to be outdone.”

Simon shook his head. “When I take him out, he spends an hour sniffing, rolling and screwing around, then cuts loose five seconds after I take him back in.”

“Show him. You’re a guy. Whip it out and pee.”

“Now?”

She laughed—and yeah, he thought, almost arresting. “No, but in the privacy of your own. Here.” She handed him the leash. “Get down to his level, call him. Happy, happy! Use his name, then when he comes, make over him, give him one of the treats.”

He felt stupid, making happy noises because his dog shit in the woods, but thinking of the countless piles he’d cleaned off his floors, he followed instructions.

“Well done. Let’s try a basic command before the others get here. Jaws.” She took hold of him to turn his attention, stroked him until he’d calmed down. She took one of the treats Simon held, palmed it in her left hand, then lifted her right over the pup’s head, extended her index finger. “Jaws, sit. Sit!” As she spoke, she moved her finger over his head so he looked up, trying to follow it. And his butt hit the ground.

“Good dog! Good!” She fed him, petted him, praised him. “Repeat, repeat. He’ll automatically look up, and when he does the back of him goes down. As soon as he sits, praise, reward. Once he gets that, you try it with just the voice command. If he doesn’t get it, go back and repeat. When he does, praise, reward.”

She stepped back.

Since the pup wanted to follow her, Simon had a little struggle.

“Make him focus on you. You’re the boss. He thinks you’re a patsy.”

Annoyed, Simon shot her one cold stare. But he had to admit, when the pup’s rump hit the ground, he felt a little spurt of pride and pleasure.

He could see Fiona, standing hip-shot, arms folded. Judging him, Simon thought, as he went through the routine again, and again. When her dogs wandered over to join her, sitting like three sphinxes, he felt ridiculous.

“Try it without the motion. Point, use the voice command. Keep eye contact. Point, use the command.”

Like that was going to work, Simon thought, but he pointed. “Sit.” And gaped when Jaws plopped his ass on the ground. “He sat. You sat. Nice job. Nice work.” As Jaws inhaled the little cookie, Simon grinned over at Fiona. “Did you see that?”

“I did. He’s a good, smart dog.” Hers went on alert. “Time to get started. Your classmates are coming.”

“How do you know?”

“They know.” She laid one hand on the closest dog’s head. “Here, let Newman smell you.”

“What?”

She simply gestured, then took Simon’s hand, held it down to Newman. “Newman, this is Simon. This is Simon. Walk with Simon. Walk. I need to set a couple things up. Newman’s going to walk with you while you practice leading Jaws on the leash. Stop off and get the head collar, then come on around. Newman’ll give you a hand with him.”

When she and the other dogs dashed away, Jaws leaped to chase. Newman simply gave him a gentle body block.

“Want to come home with me, big guy? I could use you. Walk, right? Walk!”

In fits and starts, with the big Lab running interference, Simon managed to lead, pull and drag the puppy across the lawn.

If the wiry, almost arresting dog trainer earned her fee, he thought, he might end up with a dog as appealing as Newman.

Miracles happened—occasionally.

AN HOUR LATER, exhausted, Simon sprawled on his own living room couch. Jaws scrabbled at his leg, whined.

“Jesus, don’t you ever wind down? I feel like I’ve been to boot camp.” He hefted the dog up and Jaws wiggled and licked and snuggled. “Yeah, yeah. You did okay. We did okay.”

He scratched the pup’s ears.

In minutes, man and dog were sound asleep.

THREE

With a day loaded with classes, Fiona needed a jump start to the morning. Over sweetened black coffee, she debated the relative fuel ratios of Froot Loops versus Toaster Strudels.

Maybe a combination of both, she considered, as she’d missed out on that fat burger and mountain of fries the day before due to man and dog.

Sexy man, sweet dog, she mused, but she’d ended up settling for frozen pizza at the end of a long day because she’d been too tired to think about actually cooking.

Since she had another long day ahead of her, what was the harm in an extra boost of sugar?

As she debated, she drank the coffee and watched her dogs play outside. She never got tired of watching them. And wasn’t she lucky she could make a reasonable living in the company of dogs, and do something important?

She thought of a little boy, warm and safe, and a father weeping with relief with his arms around a very good dog. Now that very good dog pranced around the yard with a stick in his mouth, as proud of that find—or nearly—as he’d been with the kid.

As she watched, all three dogs alerted, then raced around to the front of the house.

Somebody had driven over her little bridge.

Damn it. Her day wasn’t supposed to start for nearly an hour. She wanted her solo time, and her Froot Loops/Toaster Strudel combo before she interacted with other humans.

But when she walked to the front door, opened it, her mood took a bounce. She was always ready to interact with Sylvia.

Sylvia hopped out of her snappy hybrid—a compact, energetic woman with rich brown waves bouncing. She wore knee-high boots with skinny little heels under a floaty skirt matched with a gorgeous plummy sweater that had, no doubt, come from her own stock. Huge silver triangles swayed at her ears as she stepped back so her cheerful Boston terrier, Oreo, could jump out after her.

The dogs immediately fell into an orgy of delighted welcome—sniff, lick, roll, run. Sylvia gracefully waded through them and shot Fiona one of her stunning smiles.

“Morning, cutie! We’re an hour early, I know, but I wanted some gossip time. Can you spare it?”

“For you I can.” Fiona crouched as Oreo raced to give her a quick hello before dashing back to his playmates. “Come on back to the kitchen. You can have some tea while I grab breakfast.”

Sylvia’s hello included a long, hard hug—it always did—before, with her arm still looped around Fiona’s waist, she walked into the house.

“The news about you and Peck finding the little boy is all over the island. You did good.”

“Peck was perfect. And the fact Hugh had to pee, twice, didn’t hurt. Still, it’s pretty amazing how much ground a three-year-old in footie Spider-Man pj’s can cover.”

“He must’ve been so scared.”

“More wet, cold and tired, really.” Fiona put the kettle on, gestured to the cupboard where she kept several options of herbal tea, with Sylvia in mind. “I’m really sorry I didn’t call you right away to let you know.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sylvia waved it off as she settled for cinnamon peach. “I was out and about anyway, checking out some pottery—and naturally left my phone in the car. I have to stop doing that.”

She turned, narrowed her eyes as Fiona took a box of Froot Loops out of another cupboard. “You’re not having that processed sugar for breakfast.”

“Fruit, as in Froot Loops.” Smiling hopefully, Fiona shook the box. “There has to be fruit in here.”

“Sit down. I’m fixing you a decent breakfast.”

“Syl, this is fine.”

“It might be, on occasion, if you were ten. Sit,” she repeated, and, at home, opened Fiona’s refrigerator. “Um-hmm, um-hmm. I can work with this. You’ll have a nice egg-white omelet on whole wheat toast.”

“I will?”

“And fill me in on the distraction. An interesting eyeful, isn’t he?”

“Adorable, and with some training he’ll be a wonderful companion.”

Sylvia shot Fiona an arched look as she pulled out a small bowl and a tiny container. “I meant Simon.”

“Maybe I did, too.”

“Ha. He’s tremendously talented, and well mannered, if a little mysterious.”

“Which one are you talking about?”

“Smarty.” Expertly, Sylvia separated the eggs, sealing the yolks in the container before whipping the whites together with a little cheese and herbs. “He has a lovely house on East Sound, is meticulous in his craft, has gorgeous eyes, a strong back, a cute puppy, and he’s single.”

“He sounds perfect for you. Go get him, Syl.”

“I might, if he wasn’t two decades behind me.” Sylvia poured the egg whites into the skillet she had heating and popped bread into the toaster as Fiona fixed the tea. “You go get him.”

“What would I do with him once I got him? Besides that,” she added when Sylvia snorted, “men, like dogs, aren’t just for the fun times. They’re a full-out, long-term commitment.”

“You need the fun times so you can decide if you want the rest. You could try, oh, I don’t know, the wild and crazy concept of a date.”

“I’ve been known to date. I prefer group socialized events, but I occasionally date. And I occasionally indulge in those euphemistic fun times. And before you give another nudge, just let me say: Pot, kettle.”

“I married the love of my life, and had ten wonderful years with him. Sometimes I still feel cheated we didn’t have more time.”

“I know.” Fiona slipped over to rub a hand down Sylvia’s back as they both thought of Fiona’s father. “You made him so happy.”

“We made each other. I can’t help wanting that for you.” She slid the omelet onto the lightly browned toast on a plate. “Eat your breakfast.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They sat across from each other at the tiny table, and Fiona took the first bite. “God, this is good.”

“And hardly took more time or effort than pouring colored sugar into a bowl.”

“You’re entirely too hard on the loops of fruit, but this is too good for me to argue.”

“Well, while you’re eating a decent breakfast, I’ll tell you what I know about Simon Doyle.” Sipping, Sylvia leaned back, crossed her legs. “And don’t bother trying to tell me you’re not curious.”

“Okay, I won’t because I am. A little curious.”

“He’s thirty-three, originally from Spokane, though he lived the last several years in Seattle.”

“Spokane and Seattle. Night and day.”

“Pretty much. His father owns and still operates as a contractor in Spokane—with Simon’s older brother. He double-majored in art and architecture at USC, then worked as a cabinetmaker before he began to design and build furniture. He did pretty well for himself in Seattle, won some awards. Had a very hot affair with Nina Abbott—”

“The singer?”

“That’s right. Pop star, rock star—I’m not sure where she fits.”

“Bad girl of pop,” Fiona said over a mouthful of omelet. “She’s a little crazy.”

“Maybe so, but they steamed it up for a few months after she commissioned him to design several pieces for her house on Bainbridge Island. She’s originally from Washington state and has a house there.”

“Yeah, I know. I read People, watch E! TV now and then. I just . . . Oh, wait. He’s the one? I remember reading some dish about her and a carpenter. The press mostly referred to him as a carpenter. She’s sexy and talented, but there’s that little-bit-crazy factor.”

“Some people like to shock, I think. Anyway, it fizzled. Still, I expect it didn’t hurt him, business-wise. Then about three months ago, he moved here, and Island Arts is very proud, and damn lucky, to be his exclusive outlet in the San Juans.”

Sylvia lifted her teacup in toast, then sipped.

“Did you get all that from his bio for Island Arts’ Web page and brochures?”

“Actually the bio he gave me was a little thin, so I Googled him.”

“Sylvia.”

Unashamed, Sylvia tossed her lush curls. “Listen, when I take on an artist I have to know who they are. For one thing, I often have to travel to them to check out their work. I wouldn’t want to wander into the den of an ax murderer, would I?”

“I bet you can’t Google most ax murderers. Except those already in prison or in the ground.”

“You never know. Anyway, over and above his work, I like him. What did you think?”

“Since he was a little pissed that Jaws ate the headrest in his truck—”

“Oops.”

“Yeah, and was obviously frustrated with his new puppy-owner status, it might be difficult to judge. On surface observation, and setting aside his physical attributes—”

“And he has them,” Sylvia said with a wicked wiggle of eyebrows.

“No question. I’d say he’s not used to having responsibility for anyone other than himself, and more used to solo ventures. A lone wolf sort—which you’ve added to with this morning’s data: a private place on the sound of a very small island, his move away from family, his choice of career.”

“Sometimes a lone wolf just hasn’t found a mate—or his pack.”

“You’re forever a romantic.”

“Guilty,” Sylvia agreed. “And proud of it.”

“Well, on his side, the puppy’s crazy about him. Shows no fear. Right now, the dog is the alpha, which tells me the man has a soft center. It may be small—can’t know yet—but it’s there. That’s also illustrated by the fact that while he’s very frustrated and annoyed, he doesn’t seem inclined to get rid of the dog. And when given logical options, he accepts. He signed Jaws up for kindergarten, and while I wouldn’t say Simon appears to be happy or enthusiastic about it, he did seem determined. So while not especially used to taking responsibility for another, he will take it when he sees no way out.”

“I swear, you should have gone into psychology. Or profiling.”

“Everything I know, I learned from dogs.” Fiona rose to take her plate to the dishwasher, then turned to step behind Sylvia’s chair and wrap her arms around her stepmother’s neck. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“Anytime.”

“Have another cup of tea. I’m going to set up for class.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Not in those boots. We’re a little soggy from yesterday’s rain. Change your very sexy ones for my Uggs before you come out. They’re in the mudroom.”

“Fee,” Sylvia said before Fiona left the room.

“Yeah.”

“It’s been nearly eight years now, for both of us.”

“I know.”

“It hit me this morning. Sometimes it does when it comes up on the anniversary of Will’s death. So I just wanted to get out of the house—and more, to see you. I want to tell you how glad I am you’re here, that I can come by and fix you breakfast, or borrow your Uggs. I’m so glad, Fee.”

“Me too.”

“He’d be so proud of you. He was proud of you, but—”

“I know he was, and I like knowing he’d be proud and happy with what I’ve done. With what I’m doing.” She let out a breath. “Greg would, too. I think. So much of him’s faded, his voice, his scent, even his face. I never thought I’d have to pull out a photo to bring his face clearly into my head.”

“Seven years is a long time. You were so young, sweetie. I know you loved him, but you were so young. You didn’t have much time together really.”

“Almost two years, and he taught me so much. I have what I have now because of what Greg taught me, what he showed me, what he gave me. I did love him, Syl, but I can’t remember what it felt like anymore. I can’t bring back how he made me feel.”

“We loved him, too, your dad and I. He was a good, good man.”

“The best.”

“Fee, maybe you can’t bring back what you felt for him because it’s time you let yourself feel for someone else.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes . . . well, sometimes I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for that.”

“Feelings don’t always happen when we’re ready for them.”

“Maybe not. Maybe I’ll get a surprise. But for now, I’ve got enough to keep me occupied. Don’t forget the Uggs.”

AFTER HER ADVANCED CLASS, a group of six including Oreo, Fiona prepared for her special-skills group, novice level. Most of the students were off-islanders with hopes to earn certifications as Search and Rescue dogs. Some in this larger class would make it, some would not. But she knew every dog and owner would benefit from the additional and more specialized training.

As students arrived, it was socialization time—for canines and humans. Not a waste of time, in her opinion, but a vital step. A dog who couldn’t be or wouldn’t be socialized would never make the cut. And the ten-minute “mixer” gave her the opportunity to judge how well the dogs and handlers were doing with their at-home training.

She watched, her hands in the sagging pockets of an ancient hooded jacket. “Okay, let’s get started. We’ll run the basics first.”

She ran them through heeling, on then off leash—with mixed results.

“Snitch, Waldo,” she said, addressing the dogs rather than the owners. “We’re going to need to practice those off-leash skills a little more at home. We’re close, but you can do better. Let’s try recall. Handlers, step away. I want you to wait until your dog is distracted, then give the command. Let’s be firm. Don’t forget reward and positive reinforcement.”

She deliberately distracted some of the young dogs herself. Petting, playing. Still, the percentage of success pleased her. That percentage faltered on drop on recall as most of the dogs wanted to play when called.

She culled out the worst offenders, assigning the others to work on sit-stay while she did a few one-on-ones.

“There are good reasons you need your dog to stop instantly. There could be danger he doesn’t understand. In addition, that instant and complete response shows absolute trust. When you say Stop! or whatever word you choose for that command, your dog needs to obey without hesitation. Let’s work on this with close proximity. Walk with your dog heeling, off leash, then try your drop command. Callie, can I use Snitch to demonstrate?”

It wasn’t the dog portion of the partnership that needed work, but the human, in Fiona’s opinion. Callie tended to be hesitant.

In minutes, with a sure, firm tone, Fiona had the puppy heeling like a champ and dropping on command like a soldier.

“I don’t know why he won’t do it for me.”

“He knows he can mess with you, Callie. He doesn’t believe you mean it, that you’re in charge. You don’t have to yell or be angry, but you have to be firm. Your voice, your face, your body language. Convince him you mean business.”

“I’ll try.”

Slightly better, Fiona judged—but she figured it was residual behavior from her own round with Snitch. Unless Callie toughened up, the little golden would walk all over her, and back again.

“Okay, short break for playtime.”

It was the signal her own dogs waited for. They joined in the five minutes of chaos, the running, fetching, bounding after balls, rolling in wrestling groups.

“I don’t mean to complain.”

Fiona added on another layer of patience as Earl Gainer, retired cop and owner of a very clever young German shepherd, began all his complaints the same way.

“What’s the problem, Earl?”

“I understand one of your tenets is exploiting the play drive, but it just seems to me we spend an awful lot of time letting all these dogs fool around.”

And time, she knew, meant money as well.

“I know it might seem frivolous, but at this age, their attention span is very short. There’s a real danger of overtraining. If a dog gets frustrated, simply can’t keep up with all the new demands and expectations, he can give up, or revert or rebel. They need time to work off some of that puppy energy—and to continue their socialization with other dogs, other humans. We’re going to try a couple new things in the second thirty minutes today.”

Earl brightened immediately. “Like what?”

“Let’s give them another couple minutes. Kojak has a lot of potential. You know that. He’s smart, eager to please. If you stick with this another couple weeks, we’ll be into some scent training. Before we go there, we’re going to cement the bond, the socialization and the tractability.”

Earl puffed out his cheeks. “I heard about what you and your dog did yesterday, finding that boy. That’s what I want to do.”

“I know, and with your training, your experience, you’ll be a great asset. Let’s help Kojak want to do the same. He’s on his way, I promise you.”

“Everybody who knows says you’re one of the best in the state, maybe in the Northwest. That’s why we’re taking that ferry ride twice a week. Well, hell, he’s having fun anyway.”

“And learning.” She gave Earl’s arm a pat.

She called her own dogs, sent them to the porch where they sprawled to watch the show.

“Heel your dogs,” Fiona called out, and waited for the line to form. “A Search and Rescue dog can and is called on to search in various terrains, rough ground, frozen ground, rock, woods, urban settings. And water. Today, we’re going to introduce water.”

She gestured to a child’s wading pool she’d already filled, then picked up a rubber ball. “Each of you, in turn, will take your dog off leash, then toss this ball into the pool. I want you to command your dog to fetch. Don’t worry. I have towels. Earl, why don’t you and Kojak go first? Position about ten feet away.”

Earl took the ball, got into position. He unleashed his dog, gave him a quick rub, showed him the ball. “Get it, Kojak!” he yelled as he tossed it.

The dog took off like a bullet, made a leap—and a splash. He came up with the ball in his mouth and a shocked look on his face that clearly translated into, to Fiona’s mind, What the fuck!

But he leaped out again, returned to Earl when his master snapped a finger.

Show-off, Fiona thought, but with a grin, and one that widened as Kojak shook ferociously and soaked his proud and praising owner.

“You see that?” With water dripping from his face, Earl looked over at Fiona. “He did it, first time out.”

“He did great.”

And so did you, she thought.

Fiona routinely tried to schedule an hour between classes, knowing that a good chunk of that would be taken up by handlers who wanted to talk, ask for advice, get her input on the day’s session.

With what she had left, she might be able to squeeze in a quick lunch, play with her own dogs, return any calls that came in during a session.

Since she had forty minutes to herself when the last car bumped over her bridge, she tossed balls, played tug, before dashing inside to grab a couple handfuls of Cheez-Its, then snagged an apple so she didn’t feel guilty.

She ate while she checked and answered voice and e-mail, made a few notes for the blog she updated two or three times a week.

The blog, she knew, led people to her website—or vice versa. And that led some of them to her school.

She left herself enough time to empty the pool and go over her lesson plan for the next group. Even as she started to set up, someone drove over her bridge.

So much for quiet time, she thought, then frowned as, for the second time in two days, an unfamiliar vehicle rolled down her drive.

She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and recognized Rosie and Devin Cauldwell. When the car made the slight turn, she caught a glimpse of Hugh in his car seat in the back.

“Okay, boys, best behavior. Greet.”

As the car parked, all three dogs lined up beside it and sat.

Devin got out, dog-side. “Hey, Peck. Hey.” When Peck lifted his paw, Devin grinned, then bent over to shake. “Good to see you again.”

“Newman,” Fiona said as Devin walked down the line, accepting paws. “And Bogart.”

“Guess you’re a fan of classic movies.” He held out a hand to Fiona. “I hope it’s okay that we came by.”

“Sure it is.” She turned toward Hugh, who had his hand in his mother’s and looked none the worse for wear in a red hoodie and jeans. “Hi, Hugh. Do you want to say hi to Peck and his pals?”

“Doggies!” Hugh scrambled over to throw his arms around Peck. “Doggie found me. I got lost.”

She introduced the boy to the other dogs, who were all treated to a hug.

“I never even thanked you yesterday,” Rosie began.

“You were a little preoccupied.”

“I—Is that all right?” she asked when the dogs flopped down and Hugh began crawling over them, giggling, tugging on ears.

“They’re in heaven. They love kids.”

“We’ve talked about maybe getting a dog. We thought we’d wait another year or two, but now . . .” Rosie watched Hugh, and smiled. “Any recommendations on breeds for an active three-year-old?”

“Obviously I’ve got a soft spot for Labs. They’re great with kids, with families, but they want a lot of interaction. And they need room.”

“We have a yard, and a park not far from the house. The way I feel right now? If there’s another Peck out there, I want him. Sorry,” Rosie added when her eyes watered up. “I haven’t quite settled down yet. Ms. Bristow—”

“Fiona.”

“Fiona.” Rosie reached over to clasp both Fiona’s hands. “There aren’t words. There just aren’t. There’s no payment, no gesture. There’s nothing we can do that comes close to what you did for us.”

“Hugh’s playing with my dogs and laughing. That’s the payment. That’s why we do this.”

Devin laid an arm over his wife’s shoulders. “We wrote a letter to the organization—the Search and Rescue organization—about your unit, and we’re mailing it today with a donation. It’s something.”

“It’s a lot. It’s appreciated.”

“When we get that puppy, we’ll sign up for your classes,” Rosie added.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else to help us train him. Deputy Englewood told us you run an obedience school and train search dogs.”

“And we’re probably holding you up. But before we go . . . Hugh, don’t you have something for Ms. Bristow and Peck? Actually, they said you had the three dogs,” Devin continued as Rosie walked Hugh back to the car. “So we got one for each of them.”

Hugh came back with his arms loaded with three huge rawhide bones. He dumped them in front of the dogs.

“Don’t want?” he said when the dogs simply sat.

“They won’t take them until you tell them they can.” Fiona moved a bone in front of each dog.

“Get the bone! Get the bone!” Hugh shouted.

Fiona added hand signals so the dogs executed a happy leap, then a stylish bow that had Hugh giggling. “They said thank you very much.”

“Hugh picked these out for you.” Rosie offered a bouquet of red tulips. “He thought they looked like lollipops.”

“They really do, and they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

“I drew a picture.” Hugh took the drawing from his mother. “I drew me and Peck and you.”

“Wow.” Fiona admired the colorful squiggles, circles and lines. “It’s great.”

“This is Peck. He’s a big dog. And this is Fee, and this is me. I got to ride on Fee’s back, and that’s Wubby. He got to ride, too. Mommy and me writed the names.”

“It’s a terrific picture.”

“You can put it on your frigedator.”

“I will. Thanks, Hugh.” She hugged him, breathed in the scent of little boy—wild, innocent and free.

After she waved them off, Fiona went inside to fix the drawing to the front of her fridge, to arrange the lollipop tulips in a bold blue vase.

And was grateful to have a few minutes to compose herself before her first students arrived for the next class.

FOUR

Man’s best friend, my ass.

After a furious chase followed by a pitched battle, Simon managed to pry the mallet out of the death grip of Jaws’s teeth.

Holding the now slimed and mangled tool while the puppy bounced like a furry spring, Simon imagined giving the dog just one good whack on his bone head. Not that he would, however tempting, but imagining it wasn’t a crime.

He pictured chirping cartoon birds circling the pup’s head, and little X’s in his eyes.

“If only,” he muttered.

He set the tool out of reach on the workbench, then looked around—again—at the scatter of toys and bones on the floor of his shop.

“Why are these no good? Why is that?” He picked up a Jaws-sized rope, offered it. “There, go destroy that.”

Seconds later, as Simon wiped off the abused mallet, the dog dropped the rope on his boot, then sat, tail thumping, head cocked, eyes bright with fun.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” he demanded. “I don’t have time to play every five damn minutes. One of us has to make a living.”

Simon turned back to the standing wine cabinet—a thing of beauty, if he did say so himself—of wild cherry and ebony. He used wood glue to affix the last of the trim while the dog attacked his bootlaces. Struggling to focus on the work, Simon shook the dog off, picked up a clamp. Shook, glued, shook, clamped.

Jaws’s growls and happy yips mixed with the U2 he’d chosen as shop music for the morning.

He ran his fingers over the smooth, silky wood, nodded.

When he walked over to check the seams on a pair of rockers, he dragged the dog with him through the sawdust.

He supposed Jaws had conned him into playing after all.

He worked for nearly two hours, alternately dragging the dog, chasing him down, ordering himself to stop and walk the dog out to what he’d dubbed Shitville.

The break wasn’t so bad, he decided. It gave him a chance to clear his mind, to take in the mild air and the bright sun. He never tired of watching the way the light—sun or moon—played over the sound that formed his narrow link between the island’s saddlebags of land.

He liked standing on his rise and listening to the subtle and steady music of the water below, or sitting for a while on the porch of his shop and contemplating the thick forest that closed him in as the sound opened him out.

He’d moved to the island for a reason, after all.

For the solitude, the quiet, the air, the abundance of scenery.

Maybe, in some convoluted way, his mother had been right to foist a dog on him. It forced him to get outside—which was a big part of the purpose of relocating. Gave him a chance to look around, relax, get in tune with what moved around him. Air, water, trees, hills, rocks—all potential inspirations for a design.

Colors, shapes, textures, curves and angles.

This little chunk of land, the woods and the water, the rocky slope, the chip and chatter of birds instead of cars and people offered exactly what he’d been after.

He decided he’d build himself a sturdy bench for this spot, something rustic and organic. Teak, he thought, reclaimed if he could find it, with arms wide enough to hold a beer.

He turned back to his shop for paper to sketch ideas on and remembered the dog.

He called, annoyed the pup wasn’t sniffing around his feet as he seemed prone to do half the time so he ended up tripping over the damn dog or stepping on him.

He called again, then again. Cursing while a messy brew of annoyance, guilt and panic stirred up in his belly, Simon began the hunt.

He looked back in the shop to see if the dog had backtracked to wreak destruction, around the building, in the brush and shrubs while he called and whistled. He scanned the slope leading down to the water, and the skinny lane leading from the house to the road.

He looked under the shop porch, then hiked to the house to circle it, check under the porches there.

Not a sign.

He was a dog, for God’s sake, Simon told himself. He’d come back. He was a little dog, so how far could he go? Reassuring himself, he walked back to the shop where he’d last seen the damn troublemaker and started into the woods.

Now, with his interlude of peace shattered, the play of light and shadow, the sigh of wind, the tangled briars all seemed ominous.

Could a hawk or an owl snag a dog that size? he wondered. Once, he’d thought he spotted a bald eagle. But . . .

Sure, the pup was little, but he was solid.

Stopping, he took a breath to reassure himself he wasn’t panicked. Not in the least. Pissed off, that’s what he was. Seriously pissed off at having to waste the time and energy hunting for a stupid puppy he’d imagined braining with a mallet.

Christ.

He bellowed the dog’s name—and finally heard the answering yips. Yips, Simon determined, as the nerves banging in his gut settled down, that didn’t sound remotely scared or remorseful but full of wild joy.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered but, determined to be cagey, tried for the same happy tone in his call. “Come on, Jaws, you little bastard. Here, boy, you demon from hell.”

He quickened his steps toward the sound of puppy pleasure until he heard the rustling in the brush.

The pup emerged, filthy, and manfully dragging what appeared to be the decaying corpse of a very large bird.

And he’d actually worried a very large bird would get the dog? What a joke.

“Jesus Christ, put that thing down. I mean it.”

Jaws growled playfully, eyes alight, and dragged his find backward.

“Here! Now! Come!”

Jaws responded by hauling the corpse over, sitting and offering it.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Judging the timing, Simon grabbed the dog and booted what was left of the bird back into the brush. Jaws wiggled, struggling for freedom.

“This isn’t a game of fet—Don’t say the f word. On the other hand, fuck, fuck, fuck!” He held the dog aloft. The stench was unspeakable.

“What did you do, roll in it? For God’s sake, why?”

With no other choice, Simon tucked the odorous dog firmly under his arm and, breathing through his teeth, hiked back to the house.

On the way back he considered and dismissed hosing the dog off. No way a hosing would combat the smell—even if he could keep the dog still long enough. He considered a bath, wished he had a galvanized tub—and shackles. An indoor bath gave him visions of a flooded bathroom.

On his porch he managed to take off his boots while Jaws bathed his face in loving, death-smell kisses. He tossed his wallet on a table when he went inside and straight up to the shower.

When he’d closed them both in, Simon stripped down to boxers, ignoring the dog while Jaws attacked jeans and shirt. Then he turned on the spray.

“Deal with it,” Simon suggested when Jaws bashed into the tile, then the glass door in a bid to escape.

Teeth set, Simon picked up the soap.

THEY WERE LATE. Fiona checked the time again, shrugged and continued to fill a pot with pansies and trails of vinca. She’d simply have to train Simon to respect her schedule, but for the moment having the luxury of a bit of gardening satisfied her. Her dogs snoozed nearby, and she had a rocking mix on her iPod.

If her new students didn’t show, she’d get the second planter done, then maybe take her boys for a little hide-and-seek in the woods.

The day, sunny and mild, all blue skies and pretty breezes, was meant to be enjoyed.

She studied her work, fluffed petals, then started the second pot.

She spotted the truck.

“That’s Simon,” she said when her dogs rose. “Simon and Jaws.” And went back to her pansies.

She continued to plant as man and dog got out of the truck, as her dogs greeted them—as man waded through the dogs. And took her time placing the next cell pack of pansies, precisely.

When Simon tapped her shoulder, she pulled out her earbuds. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“We’re probably late.”

“Uh-huh.” She patted dirt.

“There were circumstances.”

“The world’s full of them.”

“We had a large share of the world’s circumstances, but the biggest involved the dead bird.”

“Oh?” Fiona glanced over at the puppy, now engaged in fierce tug-of-war with Bogart. “Did he get a bird?”

“Something else got the bird, days ago from the look—and smell—of it.”

“Ah.” She nodded and, deciding to take pity, pulled off her gloves. “Did he bring it to you?”

“Eventually. After he rolled in it for a while.”

“How’d he handle the bath?”

“We had a shower.”

“Really?” She swallowed back the laugh since he didn’t look inclined to appreciate it. “How’d that work out?”

“After he stopped trying to butt his way through the shower door and eat the soap, okay. Actually, he liked it. We may have found a shaky foot-hold of mutual ground.”

“It’s a start. What did you do with the corpse?”

“The bird?” He stared at her, wondering why the hell she’d care. “I kicked it back in the brush. I had my hands full with the dog.”

“You’d better bag it and dispose of it. Otherwise, he’s going to find it again first chance he gets.”

“Great. Perfect.”

“Smells are a dog’s crack. He did what instinct told him to do.” And the human, she decided, had done just as he should—except call and tell her he’d be late. “Given the circumstances, I’ll give you the full session. Did you do your homework?”

“Yeah, yeah. Yes,” he corrected when Fiona raised an eyebrow. “He’ll sit on command—almost every time. He’ll come on command when he damn well feels like it. Since we were here last, he’s tried or succeeded in eating a TV remote, a pillow, an entire roll of toilet paper, part of a stair tread, most of a bag of barbecue potato chips, two chairs and a mallet. And before you ask, yes, I corrected and replaced. He doesn’t give a damn.”

“Learn to puppy-proof,” she advised with no particular sympathy. “Jaws!” Fiona clapped her hands to get his attention, held them out in invitation and smiled. “Come. Jaws, come!”

He bounded over to scrabble at her knees. “Good dog!” She pulled a treat out of her pocket. “What a good dog.”

“Bullshit.”

“There’s that positive attitude and reinforcement!”

“You don’t live with him,” Simon muttered.

“True enough.” Deliberately, she set her trowel on the steps. “Sit.” Jaws obeyed and accepted another treat, more praise, more rubs.

And she watched his eyes shift over to the trowel.

When she set her hands on her knees, he struck, fast as a whiplash, and with the trowel in his teeth raced away.

“Don’t chase him.” Fiona grabbed Simon’s hand as he turned. “He’ll only run and make it a game. Bogart, bring me the rope.”

She sat where she was, the rope in her hand, and called Jaws. He raced forward, then away again.

“See, he’s trying to bait us into it. We respond, go after him, he’s won the round.”

“It seems to me if he eats your tool, he’s won.”

“It’s old, but in any case, he doesn’t know he’s won unless we play. We don’t play. Jaws! Come!” She pulled another treat out of her pocket. After a brief debate, the pup loped back to her.

“This is not yours.” She pried his mouth open, took the trowel, shook her head. “Not yours. This is yours.” And passed him the rope.

She set the trowel down again, and again he lunged for it. This time, Fiona slapped her hand on it, shook her head. “Not yours. This is yours.”

She repeated the process, endlessly patient, schooling Simon along the way. “Try not to say no too often. You should reserve it for when you need or want him to stop instantly. When it’s important. There, see, he’s lost interest in the trowel. We won’t play. But we’ll play with the rope. Grab the other end, give him a little game of tug.”

Simon sat beside her, used the rope to pull the dog in, gave it slack, tugged side to side. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for a dog.”

Willing to give some sympathy now, she patted Simon’s knee. “This from a man who takes showers with his puppy?”

“It was necessary.”

“It was clever, efficient and inventive.” And they both smelled of soap and . . . sawdust, she realized. Very nice. “He’ll learn. You’ll both learn. How about the housebreaking?”

“Actually, that’s working.”

“Well, there you go. You’ve both learned how to handle that, and he sits on command.”

“And wanders into the forest to roll in dead bird, eats my universal remote.”

“Simon, you’re such a Pollyanna.”

He sent her a narrow stare and only made her laugh. “You’re making progress. Work on training him to come, every time you call. Every time. It’s essential. We’ll work on some leash training, then give him a refresher on coming.”

As she rose, she saw the cruiser heading down her lane. “It’s a good time to teach him not to run toward a car—and not to jump on a visitor. Keep him controlled, talk to him.”

She waved and waited for Davey to pull up and get out of the car. “Hi, Davey.”

“Fee. Hi, guys, how’s it going?” He bent to rub black, yellow and brown fur. “Sorry, Fee, I didn’t know you had a lesson going.”

“No problem. This is Simon Doyle and Jaws. Deputy Englewood.”

“Right, you bought the Daubs’ place a few months back. Nice to meet you.” Davey nodded at Simon, then crouched to greet the puppy. “Hey, little fella. I don’t want to interrupt,” he said as he scratched and rubbed the exuberant Jaws. “I can wait until you’re done.”

“It’s okay. Simon, why don’t you get the leash, do a little solo work on heeling? I’ll be right there. Is there a problem, Davey?” she murmured when Simon walked to his truck.

“Why don’t we take a little walk ourselves?”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me. Did something happen? Syl?”

“Syl’s fine, far as I know.” But Davey put a hand on her shoulder, steered her into a walk toward the side of the house. “We got some news today, and the sheriff thought, since we go back, I should come talk to you about it.”

“About what?”

“A woman went missing mid-January back in California. Sacramento area. Went out for a jog one morning and didn’t come back. They found her about a week later in Eldorado National Forest, shallow grave. An anonymous tip gave them the basic direction.”

She swallowed the flutter in her throat and said nothing.

“Ten days ago, another woman went out for a morning run in Eureka, California.”

“Where did they find her?”

“Trinity National Forest. The first woman, she was nineteen. The second was twenty. College students. Outgoing, athletic, single. Both had part-time jobs. The first worked as a bartender, the second in a bookstore. They both were taken down with a stun gun, then bound with nylon rope, gagged with duct tape. Both were strangled with a red scarf left on the body.”

She couldn’t feel the flutters now, not when her body had gone numb. “And tied in a bow.”

“Yeah, and tied in a bow.”

Fiona pressed a hand to her heart, felt it pounding. “Perry’s in prison. He’s still in prison.”

“He’s never getting out, Fee. He’s locked up, locked down.”

“It’s a copycat.”

“It’s more than that.” He reached out, gave her shoulders a rub. “It’s more than that, Fee. There are details the Perry investigation didn’t release, like how Perry took a lock of hair from his victims and wrote a number on the back of their right hand.”

Already the numbness was wearing off. She wanted it back, wanted it to block this sickness roiling in her belly. “He told someone, or one of the investigators did—someone in the crime lab or the medical examiner’s office.”

Davey kept his eyes on hers, his hands on her shoulders. “Has to be. They’re going to track that down.”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Davey. Any of dozens of people could’ve passed that information on. It’s been nearly eight years since . . .”

“I know. I’m sorry, Fee. I want you to know the cops are all over this. We wanted you to be informed, and it’s likely the media’s going to make the connection pretty quick. They might poke at you about it.”

“I can handle the press. Greg’s family?”

“They’re being notified, too. I know this is hard for you, Fee, but I don’t want you to worry. They’ll get him. And as bad as it is, this asshole’s sticking to Perry’s pattern. Young college girls. You’re not twenty anymore.”

“No.” She bore down to keep her voice steady. “But I’m the only one who got away.”

SIMON DIDN’T HAVE TO HEAR the conversation to know something was wrong. Bad news or trouble, maybe both. He couldn’t see why Fiona would want anyone around—especially when the anyone was the next thing to a stranger.

He considered loading the dog back in the truck and taking off. It would be rude, but he didn’t particularly mind rude.

But it also seemed downright cold, and that he did mind.

He’d just wait until the deputy left, let the woman make whatever excuses suited her, then escape. Nobody lost face.

Plus, miracle of miracles, he was actually getting Jaws to heel about thirty percent of the time. Even the pup’s cooperation stemming from having the other dogs stroll along, stop on command, didn’t negate success.

So he could go home flush from that, get a little more work done, then have a beer.

Take the dead bird out of the equation and it added up to a pretty good day.

When the cruiser headed out, he expected Fiona to wander over, make those excuses, then go handle whatever needed handling.

Instead, she stood where she was for several minutes, just staring out at the road. Then she walked back to the porch steps, sat. And sat.

So he’d make the excuses, Simon decided. Easy enough. Just remembered something I have to do. Dog’s coming along, blah, blah, see you.

He crossed toward her, pleased it only took a couple of tugs to have the pup fall in line. And as he approached, he saw she was dead white, and the hands clutched on her knees trembled lightly.

Crap.

With walking casually away no longer an option, he scooped up the puppy before Jaws could try to leap into her lap.

“Bad news,” he said.

“What?”

“The deputy brought bad news. Is Sylvia all right?”

“Yes. It’s not about Sylvia.”

Her dogs, sensing her mood, clustered around her. The big yellow Lab rested his head on her knee.

“Ah . . . we should . . .”

He watched her struggle to pull herself out of whatever hole she’d fallen into.

“We should work on sit and stay.”

“Not today.”

She looked up at him then, but he couldn’t translate what clouded her eyes. Grief ? Fear? Shock?

“No,” she agreed, “not today. Sorry.”

“No problem. I’ll see you next time.”

“Simon.” She drew a breath as he hesitated. “Would you mind . . . Could you stay for a while?”

He wanted to say no—wished he had it in him to say no. Maybe he’d have found it in him if it hadn’t been so obvious it was as hard for her to ask as for him to agree.

“All right.”

“Why don’t you let him run awhile. The big guys’ll watch him. Play,” she said as Simon unclipped the leash. “Stay close. Close,” she repeated, stroking fur. “Watch Jaws, go play.”

They whined a little, and each glanced back at her as they started into the yard.

“They know I’m upset. They’d rather stay until I’m not. You’d rather go.”

He sat beside her. “Yeah. I’m not much good at this kind of thing.”

“Not much good’s better than no good.”

“Okay. I guess you want to tell me the bad news.”

“I guess I do. It’ll get around the island anyway.”

Still, for a few moments she said nothing at all, then seemed to gather herself.

“Several years ago there was a series of abduction murders. Young women, ranging from eighteen to twenty-three. They were all college students, twelve of them over a three-year period. California, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington state were either abduction sites or burial sites—or both.”

It rang a bell somewhere, dimly, but he said nothing.

“They were all the same type—not physically, as he crossed races and coloring, but basic body types and all college students, athletic, outdoorsy, outgoing. He’d stalk them for weeks once he’d chosen a target. Sometimes longer. Meticulous, patient, he’d record their routines, habits, wardrobe, friends, family, schedules. He used a tape recorder and kept a notebook. All of them either jogged or hiked or biked routinely. Habitually.”

She drew another breath and made him think of someone preparing to execute a surface dive in murky water.

“He preferred women who went out alone, early morning or dusk. He approached from the opposite direction—just another jogger, another hiker. And when he closed in, he used a stun gun to take them down. While they were incapacitated, he carried them to his car. He had the trunk lined with plastic so there’d be no trace on the bodies, and no trace of them in the trunk.”

“Thorough,” Simon said, thinking out loud.

“Yes. Very.” She continued briskly, without inflection, like a woman giving a report she knew by rote. “He bound them with nylon cord, gagged them with duct tape, then gave them a mild sedative to keep them under, keep them quiet. He’d drive to a national park. He’d already have the spot picked out. While the search went on for her, in the area she’d been abducted, he was hours away, forcing this groggy, terrified woman to walk, through the dark, off the trail.”

Now her voice hitched, a quick tremble as she linked her fingers together in her lap and stared straight ahead. “He dug the grave first—not too deep. He wanted them to be found. He liked them to watch him dig so he tied them to a tree. They couldn’t beg, couldn’t even ask him why because he kept them gagged the entire time. He didn’t rape them or torture them, physically. Or beat them or mutilate them. He just took out the red scarf and, while they were bound and gagged, unable to defend themselves, strangled them. He tied it in a bow when he was finished, and buried them.”

“The Red Scarf Killer. That’s what the press called him,” Simon commented. “I remember this. They caught him after he shot some cop.”

“Greg Norwood. The cop was Greg Norwood, and his dog, his K-9 partner, Kong.”

The words throbbed in the air between them like an open wound.

“You knew him.”

“Perry laid in wait for them. Greg had a place, a nice little weekend place near Lake Sammamish. He liked to take Kong there, work on his training. Once a month, just the two of them. Boy-bonding, he called it.”

She laid her hands on her knees, a casual gesture, but he saw the way her fingers dug in.

“He shot Greg first, and maybe that was his mistake. He put two bullets in Kong, but Kong kept coming. That’s what they reconstructed, and that’s what Perry said happened, trading confessions, information, details against the threat of the death penalty when he knew he’d lose the trial. Kong tore Perry up pretty good before he died. Perry was strong, and he managed to get back to his car, even drove a few miles before he passed out, wrecked. Anyway, they got him. Greg, he was strong, too. He lived two days. That was in September. September twelfth. We were going to be married the following June.”

Useless words, Simon thought, but they had to be said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. He staked Greg out for months, maybe longer. Meticulous, patient. He killed him to pay me back. See, I was supposed to be his number thirteen, but I got away.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “I want a drink. Do you want a drink?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

When she rose and went in, he debated going with her, and decided maybe she needed a little time to pull it together.

He remembered bits and pieces of the story. Remembered now there’d been a girl who escaped, and who gave the FBI a description of the man who abducted her.

Years ago, he thought now, and tried to think what he’d been doing when the story had been hot.

He just hadn’t paid that much attention, he thought now. He’d been, what, about twenty-five? He’d just moved to Seattle and had been trying to build a reputation, make a living. And his father had that cancer scare about that time. That had eclipsed everything else.

She came out with a couple glasses of white wine.

“It’s an Aussie chardonnay. All I’ve got, apparently.”

“It’s fine.” He took the glass, and they sat in silence, watching the heap of dogs who’d decided to take a nap. “Do you want to tell me how you got away?”

“Luck, on the heels of stupidity. I shouldn’t have been out alone that morning on that jogging path. I should’ve known better. My uncle’s a cop, and I was already seeing Greg, and they’d both made a point of telling me not to run without a partner. But I couldn’t get one who’d keep up with me. Track star,” she added with a ghost of a smile.

“You’ve got the legs for it.”

“Yeah. Lucky me. I didn’t listen to them. Perry hadn’t crossed over to Washington at that point, and there hadn’t been an abduction for months. You never think it’s going to be you. You especially never think that when you’re twenty. I went out for my run. I liked to go early, then hit the coffee shop. It was a crappy day, gloomy, rainy, but I loved running in the rain. This was early November, the year before Greg died. I had a second, just a second when I saw him. So ordinary-looking, so pleasant, but I had that click. I had a panic button on my key chain. I even reached for it, but it was too late. I felt that shock of pain, then nothing works.”

She had to stop a moment, had to breathe. “Nothing works,” she repeated. “Pain, shock, then numb, useless. I felt sick when I came to in the trunk. It was dark, and I felt the movement, the sound of the tires on the road. Can’t scream, can’t kick, can hardly move.”

She stopped, breathed it out, took a slow sip of wine. “I cried awhile because he was going to kill me and I couldn’t stop him. He was going to kill me because I wanted to take a morning run by myself. I thought about my family, and Greg, my friends, my life. I stopped crying and got mad. I hadn’t done anything to deserve this.”

She stopped again, drank again while the breeze whispered through the pines. “And I had to pee. That was humiliating, and as stupid as it is, the thought that I’d pee my pants before he killed me just revved me up. So I’m fighting that, sort of squirming around, and I felt the lump in my pocket. I had a hidden pocket in my jogging pants—one of those inside-the-back deals. Greg had given me this little Swiss Army knife.” She reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulled it out.

“Tiny little knife, cute little scissors, mini nail file. A girl knife.” She closed her hand around it. “It saved my life. He’d taken my keys, the coffee money I had zipped in my jacket pocket, but he hadn’t thought of the inner pocket in the pants. Couldn’t know it was there, I guess. My hands were tied behind my back. I could just reach it. I think I was most scared then, when I managed to get the knife, when I started to think maybe, maybe there was a way out.”

“Can I see it?” When she offered it, Simon opened it, studied the knife in the bright afternoon sun. Half as long as his thumb, he thought. “You cut through the nylon cord with this?”

“Cut, sawed, hacked. It took me forever just to get it open, or it seemed like it, and a lifetime to saw through the rope. I had to cut through the one around my ankles because I couldn’t loosen the knot. First I was terrified he’d stop the car before I’d finished, then I was terrified he’d never stop that fucking car. But he did. He did, and he got out whistling a tune. I’ll never forget that sound.”

He thought of it—a girl, trapped, terrified, very likely bloody where the cords had cut into her. And armed with a knife barely more lethal than a thumbtack.

“I put the duct tape back over my mouth.”

She said it so calmly now, so matter-of-factly that he turned his head to stare at her.

“And I wound the rope around my ankles, put my hands behind my back. I closed my eyes. When he opened the trunk, he kept right on whistling.

“He leaned in, tapped my cheek to bring me around. And I stuck that little knife in him. I’d hoped for the eye, but I missed and got him in the face. Still it surprised him, hurt him enough to give me a second. I rammed my fist into his face and swung my legs around and kicked. Not as hard as I wanted because the rope got tangled some, but hard enough to knock him back so I could get out. The shovel was right there, where he’d dropped it when I stabbed him. I grabbed it and I slammed it against his head—a couple of times. I got his keys. I’m still a little blurry on all of it—shock, adrenaline, they said—but I got in the car and floored it.”

“You knocked him out and drove away,” Simon murmured, stunned and fascinated.

“I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, and I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself, but I drove like a bat out of hell. There was a lodge, a hotel—I saw the lights. He’d taken me into the Olympic National Forest. They called the rangers, and the rangers called in the FBI and so on and so on. He got away, but I gave them a description. They had the car, his name, his address. Or the one he had on record. And still, he eluded them for nearly a year. Until he shot Greg and Kong, and Kong stopped him. Kong gave his life to stop him.”

She took the knife back, slipped it into her pocket.

“You seem like a fairly smart woman,” Simon commented after a few moments. “So you know that what you did saved other women. The bastard’s put away, right?”

“Multiple and consecutive life terms. They made the deal after I testified, after he realized he’d be convicted for Greg, for me, and he’d face the death penalty.”

“Why’d they deal?”

“For confessions on Greg, on me, on the other twelve victims, for the whereabouts of his notebooks, his tapes, for closure for the families of the murdered women. For answers. And the certainty he’d never get out.”

She nodded as if to a question in her head. “I always thought it was the right thing to do. It gave me, strangely enough, relief to hear him go through all of it, step by step, and to know he’d pay for it, for all of it, for a very, very long time. I wanted to put it behind me, close the door. My father died just nine weeks later. So suddenly, so unexpectedly, and the bottom dropped out again.”

She rubbed her hands over her face. “Horrible times. I came out to stay with Syl for a few weeks, a couple months, I thought, but I realized I didn’t want to go back. I needed to start over, and I wanted to start over here. So I did, and most of the time that door stays closed.”

“What opened it today?”

“Davey came to tell me someone is using Perry’s pattern, including details that weren’t released to the public. There’ve been two so far. In California. It’s started again.”

Questions circled in his head, but he didn’t ask them. She was done, he thought. Purged what she’d needed to purge for now.

“Rough on you. Brings it all back, makes it now instead of then.”

Again she closed her eyes, and her whole body seemed to relax. “Yes. Yes, exactly. God, maybe it’s stupid, but it really helps to have someone say that. To have someone get that. So thanks.”

She laid a hand on his knee, a brief connection. “I have to go in, make some calls.”

“Okay.” He handed her the glass. “Thanks for the drink.”

“You earned it.”

Simon walked over to pick up the puppy, who immediately started bathing his face as if they’d been parted for a decade.

As he drove away, he glanced back to see Fiona going inside, closely followed by her dogs.

FIVE

Fiona thought about dinner, and had another glass of wine instead. Talking to Greg’s parents tore off the scar tissue and opened the wound again. She knew the healthy option was to fix a meal, maybe take a long walk with the dogs. Get out of the house, get out of herself.

Instead she shooed the dogs outside and indulged in a long session of brooding so wide and deep her hackles rose at the interruption of another visitor.

Couldn’t people just let her wallow?

The chorus of happy barks translated to a friend. She wasn’t surprised to see James and his Koby exchanging greetings with her dogs.

She leaned against the porch post, idly sipping her wine and watching him. In the floodlights she’d flipped on, his hair had a sheen. But then, something about James always did. His skin, an indescribable shade she thought of as caramel dipped in gold dust, was a testament to his widely mixed heritage. His eyes, a bright, shining green, often laughed out of a forest of lashes.

He turned them on Fiona now, with a quick and easy smile as he shook a jumbo take-out bag.

“I brought provisions.”

She took another slow sip of wine. “Davey talked to you.”

“Seeing as he’s married to my sister, he often does.”

He walked to her, bringing the scent of food, then just wrapped his free arm around her to bring her close. Swayed.

“I’m okay. I’ve just been holding the first meeting of my Pity Me Club.”

“I want to join. I’ll be president.”

“I’ve already elected myself president. But since you brought provisions, you can be the second official member.”

“Do we get badges? A secret handshake?” He leaned back to press his lips to her forehead. “Let’s go inside and vote on it over burgers.”

“I talked to Greg’s mother,” Fiona told him as she led the way.

“Hard.”

“Brutal. So I’ve been sitting here drinking wine in the dark.”

“Fair enough, but I’m calling time’s-up on that. Got any Coke?”

“Pepsi. Diet.”

“Blech. I’ll take it.”

As much at home in her place as in his own, he got out plates, set a burger, loaded, on each, then divvied up the mountain of fries from an insulated box. She poured out the drinks after dumping the rest of the wine in her glass down the sink.

“We should’ve had sex before we got to be friends.”

He smiled, sat. “I think we were eleven and twelve when you started coming on island to see your dad, so we were a little young for sex when we got to be friends.”

“Still.” She plopped down in her chair. “If we’d had sex back then, we could have a revival now. It’d be a good distraction. But now it’s too late because I’d feel stupid getting naked with you.”

“It’s a problem.” He took a bite of burger. “We could do it in the dark, and use assumed names. I’d be Rock Hard and you’d be Lavender Silk.”

“Nobody can call out ‘Lavender’ while in the throes. I’ll be Misty Mars. I like the alliteration.”

“Fine. So, Misty, you want to eat first or just go jump in the sack?”

“It’s hard to resist that kind of romance, but we’ll eat.” She nibbled on a fry. “I don’t want to beat on the drum all night, James, but it’s so strange. Just the other day I was telling Syl how I could hardly get Greg’s face in my head. How he’s faded on me. Do you know?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“And the minute Davey told me about what’s happened, it was there again. I can see him, every detail of his face. He’s back. And . . . is it awful?” she managed as tears rose in her throat. “Is it? That I wish he wasn’t. A part of me wants him to fade, and I didn’t realize that until he came back.”

“So what? You should wear black and read depressing poetry for the rest of your life? You grieved, Fee. You broke, and you mourned, and you healed. You started the unit out of love and respect for him.” Reaching over, he gave her wrist a squeeze. “And it’s a hell of a tribute.”

“If you’re going to be all rational and sensible, I don’t see how you can be a member of the Pity Me Club.”

“We can’t have a club meeting while there are burgers. That requires really bad wine and stale crackers.”

“Damn you, James, you’ve screwed up a really good wallow.” She sighed, ate her burger.

EVEN THE COMFORT of a friend, the familiarity of her dogs and the nighttime routine didn’t spare her from the bad dreams. She woke every hour, struggling out of the goop of a nightmare only to sink in again the next time she drifted off.

The dogs, as restless as she, got up to pace or rearrange themselves. At three a.m., Bogart came to the side of the bed to offer her the rope as if a game of tug would set things right.

At four, Fiona gave it up. She let the dogs out, made coffee. She did a hard, sweaty workout then settled down with paperwork.

She balanced her checkbook, drafted upcoming newsletters for her classes and for the Search and Rescue subscribers. While the sky lightened she updated her Web page and spent some time surfing various blogs because she couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm to write her own.

By the time her first class began, she’d been up for over four hours and wanted a nap.

She loved her classes, Fiona reminded herself. She loved them for the work itself, the dogs, the social opportunity, the interaction. She loved being outside most of the day.

But right then she wished she’d canceled the other two classes on the schedule. Not to wallow, she told herself, but just for some alone time, just to catch up on sleep, maybe read a book.

Instead, she prepared for round two, took a call from Sylvia—word traveled—and got through it.

By the end of her workday, after she and the dogs had gathered and stowed all the toys and training tools, she realized she didn’t want to be alone after all. The house was too quiet, the woods too full of shadows.

She’d go into town, she decided. Do some shopping, maybe drop by and see Sylvia. She could walk on the beach after. Fresh air, exercise, change of scene. She’d keep at it until she was too damn tired for dreams, bad or otherwise.

She decided on Newman for company. As he leaped in the car, she turned to the other dogs.

“You know how it is. Everybody gets a chance for some one-on-one. We’ll bring you something. Be good.”

When she got in, she gave Newman a sidelong glance. “No smirking,” she ordered.

Stress eased as she drove, snaking along while the early evening sun dipped beams into the water. Fatigue lessened as she opened the windows wide and cranked up the radio while the wind tossed her hair.

“Let’s sing!”

Always ready to oblige, Newman howled in harmony with Beyoncé.

She intended to drive to Eastsound, stock up on essentials and treat herself to something she absolutely didn’t need. But as she wound along between hill and water, by field and forest, she followed impulse and made the turn at the mailbox marked simply DOYLE.

Maybe he needed something from the village. She could be neighborly, save him a trip. It didn’t have anything to do with wanting to see where and how he lived. Or hardly anything.

She liked the way the trees screened, and let the sunlight shimmer and shine on rock and tall grass. And she liked the house, she thought, as it came into view. The central double peaks, the tumbling lines that followed the slope of the land.

It could use some paint, she decided. Something fresh and happy for the trim. And some chairs, some colorful pots of flowers on the porch and the sweet little second-story deck. Maybe a bench under the weeping cherry that would burst into bloom in the spring.

She parked beside Simon’s truck, noted he’d replaced the headrest he’d patched with duct tape. Then she spotted the outbuilding a few yards from the house, nearly enveloped by the trees.

Long and low, it likely held as many square feet as her house, and offered a generous covered porch on the front. A scatter of tables, chairs and what she took as parts of other pieces of furniture stood or leaned under the shade.

She heard the sound of sawing—at least she thought it was sawing—buzzing under heroically loud rock and roll.

She got out, signaled Newman to join her. He scented the air—new place, new smells—as he fell into step with her.

“Great view, huh?” she murmured, looking out over the sound to the opposing shorelines and the little nubs of green on the water. “And look, he’s got a little beach down there, and a pier. He needs a boat, but it’s nice. Water, woods, some nice stretches of ground, and not too close to the road. It’s a good home for a dog.”

She scratched Newman’s ears and wandered closer to the outbuilding.

She spotted him through the window—jeans, T-shirt, goggles, tool belt. And noted she’d been right about the saw. It was, she thought, one big, scary mother. He slid wood under its fast, toothy blade. Her stomach tightened a little at the thought of what it could do to fingers, and with that in mind, she moved carefully around to the door, standing out of range until the buzzing paused.

Then she knocked, waved through the glass. When he only stood there, frowning at her, she opened the door. The pup lay on the floor, feet in the air as if he’d been electrocuted.

“Hi!” She had to pitch to just under scream level to beat out the music. “I was on my way to the village and thought . . .”

She trailed off as he pulled out earplugs.

“Oh, well, no wonder it’s so loud. Listen—”

She broke off again when he pulled a remote from a pocket of the tool belt, shut down the music. The silence roared like a tsunami—and woke the puppy.

He yawned, stretched, then spotted her. Insane joy leaped into his eyes as he sprang up, did a kind of bouncing dance, then charged her. Fiona crouched, held out a hand, palm facing dog so he bumped into it first.

“Hi, yes, hi, good to see you, too.” She rubbed his head, his belly. She pointed a finger at the ground. “Sit!” His butt vibrated a moment, then plopped down. “Aren’t you smart, aren’t you good?” She grabbed him when he spotted Newman, sitting patiently outside. “Can he go out? I’ve got Newman, and he’ll watch out for him.”

Simon simply shrugged.

“Okay. Go play.” She laughed when Jaws took a flying leap out the door and belly-flopped into the grass. When she glanced back, Simon remained by the table saw, watching her.

“I’ve interrupted you.”

“Yeah.”

Blunt, she thought. Well, she didn’t mind blunt. “I’m heading into the village and thought I’d see if you needed anything. Sort of a payback for playing sounding board.”

“I’m good.”

“Okay, then. We both know the do-you-need-anything’s just an excuse, but we can leave it at that. I’ll—Oh my God, that’s beautiful!”

She headed straight for the cabinet across the shop, skirting benches and tools.

“Don’t touch it!” Simon snapped, and stopped her in her tracks. “It’s tacky,” he added, in an easier tone. “Varnish.”

Obediently, she linked her hands behind her back. It was the varnish she smelled, she realized, and sawdust, and freshly sawed wood. The combination merged into a fascinating aroma. “Those are the doors? The carving’s just exquisite, and the tones of the wood. Delicious, really.” As delicious as the scent that soaked the air. “I want it. I probably can’t afford it, but I want it anyway. How much?”

“It doesn’t suit you or your place. It is elegant, and a little ornate. You’re not.”

“I can be elegant and ornate.”

He shook his head, then walked over to an old, squat refrigerator, took out two Cokes. He tossed her one, which she caught one-handed.

“No, you can’t. You want something either simpler, cleaner or going the other direction into fanciful. A little tension with the primarily Mission and Craftsman style you lean toward.”

“Is that where I lean?”

“I’ve been in your house,” he reminded her.

She yearned to run a finger over the deep carving—elongated hearts—on the raised panel of the door. “This could be tension.”

“No.”

Sincerely baffled, she turned to him. “You actually won’t sell it to me because I’m not elegant?”

“That’s right.”

“How do you sell anything?”

“On commission or direct sale. By designing what works with the client.” He eyed her while he took a deep drink. “Rough night.”

Now she jammed her hands in her pockets. “Thanks for noticing. Well, since I’m interrupting and I’m not suitable to buy your stupid cabinet, I’ll leave you alone with your monster saw.”

“I’m taking a break.”

She drank, studying him as he studied her. “You know, given my line of work, really crappy manners such as yours don’t bother me.”

“If you’re thinking of training me like my dog, you should know I’m intractable.”

She only smiled.

“So, if the need-anything-in-town was an excuse, are you hitting on me?”

She smiled again, wandered. She saw a lot of clamps and chisels, a skinnier saw and a stationary drill thingee that looked as scary as the monster saw.

She saw tools she had no names for and empty coffee cans full of nails and screws and other strange things.

What she didn’t see was any semblance of organization.

“Hitting on you? Not yet. And given your behavioral flaws, I’m reconsidering.”

“Fair enough, and to be fair back, you’re not really my type.”

She stopped examining a wonderful wide-armed rocker she coveted to send him a cool stare. “Is that so?”

“Yeah, it’s so. Mostly I lean toward the arty, feminine type. Curvy’s a bonus.”

“Like Sylvia.”

“Yeah.”

“Or Nina Abbott.” She couldn’t help the smug smile when annoyance flicked briefly in his eyes.

“Or” was all he said.

“Thank God we got that cleared up before I gave my squishy, susceptible heart into your hands.”

“Lucky break. But . . . it’s good to mix things up now and then. Try new things.”

“Great. I’ll let you know when I want to be mixed and tried. Meanwhile, I’ll take my inelegant, art-starved, unfeminine, flat-chested self out of your way.”

“You’re not flat-chested.”

The laugh escaped before she knew it was there. “God, you’re a weird sucker. I’m going while I still have enough crumbs of ego left to sweep into a pile.”

She went to the door, called his dog. When the puppy raced to her, she petted and praised. Then she nudged his butt farther into the room, closed the door with him inside. She flicked one glance at Simon through the glass before striding to her truck, Newman faithfully at her side.

He watched her through the window, the long, athletic stride, the easy grace. She’d looked lost when she came into the shop. Hesitant, uncertain. Tired.

Not anymore, he thought as she hopped into her truck. Now she was brisk, distracted and maybe a little pissed.

Better. Maybe he was one weird sucker, but he’d worry less about her now.

Satisfied, he replaced his earplugs, his goggles, turned on the music. And got back to work.

EYES BRIGHT, SYLVIA leaned on the counter of her pretty little shop while Fiona debated earrings. “He did not say that.”

“He absolutely said that.” Fiona held long pearl drops to one ear, funky, colored glass balls to the other. “I’m not elegant enough for his overrated cabinet. I can be elegant.” She turned. “See? Pearls.”

“Very pretty. But the fused glass ones are really you.”

“Yeah, but I could wear the pearls, if I wanted.” After setting them back in the display, Fiona wandered over to a tall raku vase.

There was always something new to see in Sylvia’s place. A painting, a scarf, a table, a treasure trove of jewelry. She stopped by a bench with high, curved sides and skimmed her fingers over the wood.

“This is beautiful.”

“It’s one of Simon’s.”

She resisted giving it a flick with her formerly admiring fingers. “Figures. Then he said I wasn’t his type. As if I’d asked. You are.”

“I am?”

“He even used you as an example. Arty and female and built.”

“Really?”

“Sure, go ahead and look smug.”

Deliberately, obviously, Sylvia fluffed at her hair. “It’s hard not to.”

“Well, feel free to follow up,” Fiona added with a dismissive wave.

“It might be interesting, but I think I’ll just stay smug. I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Oh yes he did.”

“Tell you what. I’m closing in ten minutes. We’ll go have dinner and trash him. Better, men in general.”

“That sounds like fun, but I need to get back. I really just came in to bitch. Jesus, Syl, it’s been a crappy couple of days.”

Sylvia skirted the counter to give Fiona a bolstering hug. “Why don’t I come over and fix you some pasta while you take a nice long bath?”

“Honestly, I think I’m going to open a can of soup, then go to bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“I worry about you, Fee.” She gave Fiona’s tail of hair a little tug. “Why don’t you come stay with me until they catch this maniac?”

“You know I’m fine. Me and the boys. Besides, the maniac’s not interested in me.”

“But—” She broke off when the door opened.

“Hi, Sylvia. Hi, Fiona.”

“Jackie, how are you?” Sylvia smiled at the pretty blonde who ran a local B&B.

“I’m just fine. I meant to get in earlier. I know you close in a few minutes.”

“Don’t worry about that. How’s Harry?”

“Tucked up in bed with a cold—which is one of the reasons I ran out. I swear you’d think he had the plague instead of the sniffles. He’s driving me crazy. I’ve been doing a little early spring cleaning between waiting on him hand and foot and listening to him moan. I decided I need to spruce the place up a little, do some redecorating. Mind if I look around, get some ideas?”

“You go right ahead.”

“I’d better get going. Nice to see you, Jackie.”

“You, too. Oh, Fiona, my boy and his wife just got a puppy. Practice, they say, before they start working on making me a grandmother.” She rolled her eyes.

“That’s nice. What kind did they get?”

“I don’t know. They went to a shelter.” She smiled then. “Brad said they’d save a life, then start thinking about starting one.”

“That’s really nice.”

“They named her Sheba—as in Queen of. He said if I ran into you I should tell you they’re going to sign up for your puppy classes.”

“I’ll look forward to it. I’d better go.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow, give you a hand with your classes,” Sylvia told her. “Oreo could use a little refresher course.”

“I’ll see you then. Bye, Jackie.”

As she walked out she heard Jackie exclaim over the bench, “Oh, Sylvia, this is a wonderful piece.”

“Isn’t it? It’s by the new artist I told you about. Simon Doyle.”

Fiona grumbled all the way to the truck.

IN HIS CELL in Washington State Penitentiary, George Allen Perry read his Bible. While his crimes had earned him a maximum-security cage for the rest of his life, he was considered a model prisoner.

He joined no gangs, made no complaints. He did the work assigned to him, ate the food served him. He kept himself clean, spoke respectfully to guards. He exercised regularly. He did not smoke or swear or use drugs, and spent most of the endless days reading. Every Sunday he attended services.

Visitors came rarely. He had no wife, no child, no staunch friends outside, or inside, the walls.

His father had long ago deserted him, and his mother, who the psychiatrists agreed was the root of his pathology, feared him.

His sister wrote him once a month, and made the long trek from Emmett, Idaho, once a year, considering it her Christian duty.

She’d given him the Bible.

The first year had been a misery that he’d borne with downcast eyes and a quiet manner that had disguised a raging fear. In the second year he’d lost fear in depression, and by the third he’d accepted that he would never be free.

He would never again be free to choose what to eat, and when to eat it, to rise or repose at his own whim. He would never again walk through a forest or glade or drive a car along a dark road with a secret in the trunk.

He would never again feel the power and the peace of a kill.

But there were other freedoms, and he earned them carefully. Meticulously. He expressed regret for his crimes to his lawyer, to the psychiatrist.

He’d wept, and considered the tears humiliation well spent.

He told his sister he’d been born again. He was allowed private consultation with a minister.

By his fourth year, he was assigned to the prison library, where he worked with quiet efficiency and expressed gratitude for the access to books.

And began his search for a student.

He applied for and was granted permission to take courses, both by visiting instructors and by video feed. It gave him an opportunity to interact with and study his fellow inmates in a new setting.

He found most too crude, too brutal, too lacking in intellect. Or simply too old, too young, too deeply entrenched in the system. He continued to further his education—he found it interesting—and he held to the thinning hope that fate would offer him the spiritual freedom he sought.

In his fifth year in Walla Walla, fate smiled on him. Not in the guise of a fellow inmate, but an instructor.

He knew instantly, just as he’d known the woman he would kill the moment he saw her.

This was his gift.

He began slowly, assessing, evaluating, testing. Patient, always, as he outlined and refined the methods by which he would create his proxy, the one who would walk outside the walls for him, hunt for him and kill for him.

Who would, in time, in good time, correct his single mistake. One that haunted him every night in the dark cage where silence and comfort were strangers.

Who would, in time, kill Fiona Bristow.

That time, Perry thought as he read Revelation, was nearly here.

He glanced up as the guard came to the cell. “Got a visitor.”

Perry blinked, carefully marking his place before setting aside the worn Bible. “My sister? I didn’t expect her for another six weeks.”

“Not your sister. FBI.”

“Oh, my goodness.” A big man with thinning hair and prison pallor, Perry stood meekly as the door clanged and slid open.

Two guards flanked him, and he knew others would search his cell while he was gone. No matter, none at all. They’d find nothing but his books, some religious tracts, the dry, God-fearing letters from his sister.

He kept his head down, repressed the smile that strained to spread over his face. The FBI would tell him what he already knew. His student had passed the next test.

Yes, Perry thought, there were many kinds of freedom. And at the thought of gaming with the FBI again, he took wing and soared.

SIX

Grateful for the bright, brisk morning and work that demanded her full attention, Fiona studied her advanced special-skills students. Today was a very big day for dogs and handlers. They’d attempt their first blind search.

“Okay, the victim’s in place.” She thought of Sylvia, three-quarters of a mile away, sitting cozily under a forked-trunk cedar with a book, a thermos of herbal tea and her radio. “I want you to work as a unit. We’re going to use the sector system. You can see I’ve set up the base.” She gestured to a table she’d placed under a pole tarp and the equipment on it. “For today, I’ll handle base and stand as operational leader, but by next week I want you to elect your officers.”

She gestured to the whiteboard under the tarp. “Okay. The local authorities have notified the operations officer—me, in this case—and asked for assistance in the search and rescue of an adult female hiker who’s been lost approximately twenty-four hours. You see on the board temperatures last night dropped to forty-three degrees. She has only a day pack, and little experience. The victim is Sylvia Bristow.”

That brought out some grins as the class knew Sylvia as Fiona’s sometime assistant. “She’s age-deleted for my own well-being, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, five feet, five inches, and about a hundred and thirty pounds. When last seen she was wearing a red jacket, jeans, a blue baseball-style cap. Now, what do you need to know before being given your sectors?”

She answered with details from the scenario she’d devised. The subject was in good health, had a cell phone but often neglected to charge it, had been expected to hike two to four hours, was not local and had only recently taken up hiking.

She called the unit to the map and the log she’d already begun. Once she’d assigned sectors, she ordered everyone to load on their packs.

“I have items worn recently by the subject. Take a bag, give your dogs the scent. Remember to use the subject’s name. Refresh the scent whenever you think your dog may be confused, or if he or she becomes distracted or disinterested. Remember the boundaries of your sector. Use your compass, check in by radio. Trust your dogs. Good luck.”

She felt their excitement, and the nerves, as well as a sense of competition. Eventually, if they made it as a unit, the competition would shift into cooperation and trust.

“When you get back, all dogs who didn’t find our victim need a short find, to keep up morale. Remember, it’s not just your dogs being tested. You’re honing your skills, too.”

She watched them spread out, separate, and nodded in approval at the way each gave his or her dog the scent, the command.

Her own dogs whined as the others scented the air, began to roam.

“We’ll play later,” she promised them. “These guys need to do it on their own.”

She sat, noted the time, wrote it in the assignment log.

They were a good group, she thought, and should make a solid unit. She’d started with eight, but over the past ten weeks three had dropped out. Not a bad percentage, she mused, and what was left was tight, was dedicated. If they pushed through the next five weeks, they’d be a good asset to the program.

She picked up her radio, checked the frequency, then contacted Sylvia. “They’re off and running. Over.”

“Well, I hope they don’t find me too soon. I’m enjoying my book. Over.”

“Don’t forget. Sprained ankle, dehydration, mild shock. Over.”

“Got it. But until then, I’m going to eat my apple and read. See you when they haul me back. Over and out.”

To keep her own dogs occupied, and give them some consolation for not being able to play the find game with the others, Fiona ran them through their paces on the agility training equipment.

It may have looked comical to an outsider—cheerful Labs climbing up and down the ladder of a child’s sliding board, or taking that slide on command. But the skill taught and reinforced a search dog’s ability to cope with difficult footing. The fact that they enjoyed it, as well as balancing on the teeter-totter, negotiating along narrow planks, maneuvering through the open drums she’d formed into tunnels, added a bonus.

The demands of the search exercise required her to order sit-and-stays while she took radio calls from the unit, answered questions, logged in positions.

At the end of an hour, the dogs settled down with chew treats, and Fiona at her laptop. When her radio crackled, she continued to keyboard one-handed.

“Base, this is Tracie. I have Sylvia. She’s conscious and lucid. Her right ankle may be sprained and is causing her some discomfort. She appears to be somewhat dehydrated and shaky, but otherwise uninjured. Over.”

“That’s good, Tracie. What’s your location, and do you require assistance transporting Sylvia to base? Over.”

Exercise or not, Fiona logged in the location, the time, the status. She may have smiled when she heard Sylvia playing up her victim role in the background, but she created a professional and complete log.

While they’d debrief as if the search had been real, Fiona felt such moments deserved commemoration. She set trays of brownies on her picnic table, added fruit platters for the more healthy-minded, pitchers of iced tea.

She had dog biscuits and a toy for the dogs—and for Lolo, Tracie’s clever German shepherd, a gold star for her tag collar.

As she carried glasses outside, Simon’s truck drove over her bridge.

It annoyed her to feel annoyed. She was basically a happy person, Fiona thought. A friendly one. She liked Simon well enough, and his dog quite a bit. But irritation pricked nonetheless.

Maybe part of it was because he just looked good—sort of rough and arty at the same time in battered jeans and expensive sunglasses—and somehow approachable (a misconception, in her opinion) with his adorable puppy.

He let the puppy race unleashed to greet her, then bounce like an over-wound spring to the other dogs, back to her before he tore off in circles around the yard in a bid to get her dogs to play.

“Having a picnic?” Simon asked.

“Of sorts.” She mimicked his oh-so-casual tone. “I have an advanced class on their way in from a practice search. Their first with a person. So we’ll have a little celebration.”

“With brownies.”

“I like brownies.”

“Who doesn’t?”

Jaws demonstrated his opinion by trying to climb onto the picnic bench to steal a sample. Fiona simply put his front paws back on the ground. “Off!”

“Yeah, good luck with that. He’s a freaking acrobat. Yesterday he managed to climb up on a stool and eat my sandwich—he likes pickles, apparently—in the five-point-two seconds my back was turned.”

“Consistency.” Fiona repeated the “Off!” command the second and third times Jaws attempted the snatch. “And distraction.”

She walked back a few steps, called him. He ran to her as if they’d just been reunited after a war. He sat when she ordered him to, then preened under her praise and pets. “Positive reinforcement.”

She dug a treat out of her pocket. “Good dog. He’s coming along.”

“Two days ago, he ate my flash drive. Just swallowed it whole like a vitamin pill.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, so I rush him to the vet—and she takes a look and decides it’s small enough he doesn’t need it surgically removed. I’m supposed to . . .” Jaw set, he scowled off into the distance. “I don’t want to talk about that part, so we’ll just say I eventually got it back.”

“This, too, shall pass.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He picked up a brownie. “It still works. I haven’t decided if that’s amazing or disgusting.” He took a bite. “Good brownie.”

“Thanks. They’re the only things I can bake with regular success.” And since these had been a product of her two a.m. jitters, she’d had two for breakfast.

“What are you doing here, Simon?”

Some of her irritation must have come through as he gave her a long, silent look before answering. “I’m socializing my idiot dog. And you still owe me part of a lesson. Two for one. Three for one adding in the brownies.”

“Your dog’s handler could use some socialization.”

He polished off the brownie, poured himself a glass of iced tea. “I’m probably past the training age.”

“Despite the maxim, you actually can teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Maybe.” After downing the tea, he glanced around. “Shit. Where the hell is he?”

“He went in the tunnel.”

“The what?”

She gestured to the line of drums. “Let’s see what he does,” she suggested, and began to stroll to the far end.

They were here, she thought, with the human helping himself to her celebratory snacks. She might as well work in the lesson.

“If he just comes back out where he went in, let it go for now. But if he goes on through, give him praise, and a treat.” She handed Simon one.

“For going through a bunch of fifty-five-gallon drums?”

“Yes.” Her tone took on a scolding edge. “It takes curiosity, courage and some agility to not only go in, but go through and come out again.”

“And if he doesn’t come out at all?”

“I guess you leave him there and go home and watch ESPN.”

He studied the drums. “Some people would complain it’s sexist to assume I watch ESPN. Maybe I’m a fan of Lifetime.”

She gave up. “If he doesn’t come out on his own, you call, coax, try to lure. Failing that, you go in after him.”

“Great. Well, at least he can’t get into trouble in there. So you set up the radio, the computer, all those maps and charts for a make-believe rescue?”

“Eventually it won’t be make-believe. How’s sit and stay going?”

“Fine, unless he wants to do something else. Consistency,” he said before Fiona could. “I got the mantra, boss.”

Jaws gave a yip, then zipped out of the drum.

“Hey, he did it. That’s pretty good.” Simon crouched, and, in Fiona’s observation, didn’t pet and praise by rote. He enjoyed his dog’s success and excitement. When he laughed, gave the pup a good scratch with those long, artistic hands, she began to see why the dog found the man so appealing.

“He’s intrepid.” She hunkered down to add her approval to Simon’s, and realized they both smelled of his wood shop. “If a client’s interested in agility training, I’d start a puppy this age off with one drum, so he can see all the way through. Jaws just skipped a few grades on this one.”

“Hear that? Intrepid eater of flash drives, wood chips and kosher pickles.”

He grinned at Fiona, eye to eye. She saw fascinating flecks of bronze scattered on the tawny gold.

As the look held, one beat, then two, Simon gave a considering Hmmm.

“Forget it.” She got to her feet. “Let’s see his sit and stay. My class should be back any minute.”

“You’re still bent about the cabinet.”

“What cabinet?” she asked with the sweetest of smiles.

“Uh-huh. Okay, sit and stay. Jaws, you’re about to lose your head-of-the-class status.”

“You know, a little optimism and confidence translate, to dogs and to people. Or maybe you just like anticipating failure.”

“I consider it realism.” When he ordered the pup to sit, Jaws plopped his butt down cooperatively. “He’s got that one, mostly, but now it gets tricky. Stay.” He held up a hand. “Stay,” he repeated and began to back up.

The dog thumped his tail but stayed seated.

“He’s doing well.”

“Showing off for teacher. At home, odds are he’d be chasing his tail by now, or trying to chew on my boots while I’m wearing them.” He called the dog, rewarded.

“Do it again. Increase the distance.”

Simon took Jaws on the second round, stretching the space between them on the “Stay.” Then, at Fiona’s instructions, a third time until dog and man were a good twenty-five feet apart.

“Don’t frown at the dog when he’s doing what he’s told.”

“I’m not frowning.”

“Let’s call it your default expression. You’re confusing him. Call him in.”

Jaws responded and took the last couple of feet on his belly before rolling over to expose it.

“You did good, you did fine. Show-off,” Simon muttered as he bent down to rub.

“He switched to submissive mode because he wasn’t sure what you were after. You asked him for something, he gave it, and you stand there scowling at him. He gets an A.” Fiona knelt down to stroke Jaws into delirium. “You get a C minus.”

“Hey.”

“My class is coming back. Hold him. Give him the stay command and keep him still for a few seconds. Then you can give him the release, let him go greet.”

“How?”

“Sit and stay—holding him as he’s going to want to run and see who’s coming.” As she spoke she checked her watch for the log. “Then give him the go—use simple phrasing, something natural to you. Say hi, go ahead, greet. Whatever. Then let him loose.”

She rose, walked away to meet the first of her returning students.

“You wanted me to look bad, didn’t you? You think I’m not on to you?” Simon held the puppy in place while rubbing his ears. “Not as dumb as you look, are you? Just wanted to impress the pretty girl. Okay . . . check it out,” he said, and let Jaws race over to sniff and dance around the returning students.

By the time he walked over, Fiona was listening to the handlers describe how their dogs had performed, noting down the area covered, the number of alerts.

Simon pulled the leash out of his pocket.

“Why don’t you let him hang out, play with the others awhile,” Fiona suggested. She glanced up from her log. “You want him to get used to being around people, other dogs, ones he hasn’t met before. A little socialization wouldn’t hurt you either. Have another brownie. Maybe you can end the day on a higher grade.”

“I’ll take the brownie, but—” He broke off as Sylvia limped out of the woods, leaning on a makeshift crutch, with a woman supporting her on one side and a man on the other while a pair of dogs pranced ahead.

“She’s all right.” Fiona laid a hand on his arm to stop him from crossing over to help. “Make-believe, remember? The exercise involved a lost woman with a minor injury. She plays it up.”

The class broke into applause. Sylvia took an exaggerated bow, then gestured grandly to the woman and dog beside her.

“That’s Tracie and her Lolo. They found Syl in just under seventy-five minutes. Not bad. Not bad at all. Mica’s the one helping her out, with his Ringo. His positioning at the successful find was close enough for him to intersect with Tracie and assist in bringing Syl, with her fake sprained ankle, back to base. Besides, he’s got a crush on her.”

“On Syl? Like brownies, who doesn’t?”

“Not on Syl.” Though she shook her head, Fiona found herself amused and a little proud at Simon’s comment. “On Tracie. They’re both from the Bellingham area, like the rest of the unit. Excuse me.”

She closed the distance to give Tracie a handshake, then a hug, to fuss over the dogs. To laugh with Sylvia, he noted.

She did have an appealing way, he supposed. If you liked the überoutgoing, the type who tended to touch or embrace in a kind of second nature, and looked good in jeans or work pants, sweatshirts or sweaters.

He couldn’t think of a woman who fell into that subset ever attracting him before, not sexually in any case. The fact that she did presented an interesting puzzle.

Maybe it was her eyes. They were so clear, so calm. He suspected they were just one of the reasons animals responded to her. You felt you could trust those eyes.

He watched as she slung her arm around Tracie’s shoulders—there was that just-have-to-touch, just-have-to-connect aspect of her—and led the woman over to . . . What would she call it? he wondered. Base? HQ? Anyway, it was a table under a pole tarp.

Debriefing, he assumed, noting down whatever data needed to be noted down. It struck him as a little over the top for an exercise. Then he remembered she’d found a little boy in the very big woods, in a cold rain.

Details mattered. Discipline and efficiency mattered.

In any case, the brownies were excellent, and the interlude gave him a chance to flirt with Sylvia.

“How are you coping after your ordeal?” he asked her.

Sylvia laughed, poked him in the chest. “I love when I get to play the lost woman. I get some exercise—wandering around, then either plopping in my spot or wandering some more. It depends on which victim behavior Fee wants to replicate. It’s handy you came by. I was going to call you when I got home today.”

“Yeah? To ask me on a date?”

“You’re so cute. I sold two of your pieces yesterday. The high-sided bench and the five-drawer chest. I’ll take more whenever you can get it to me.”

“I finished a couple of things this morning actually. A wine cabinet and a rocker.”

“Ah, the famous wine cabinet.”

He shrugged, glanced back at Fiona. “It’s not her style, that’s all.”

Sylvia smiled and nibbled on a strawberry. “She has a lot of styles. You should ask her out to dinner.”

“Why?”

“Simon, if I thought that was a serious question, I’d be worried about you.”

She hooked her arm through his as Fiona addressed her class.

“Everyone did a solid job today, as individuals, as teams and as a unit. Next class we’ll be working a different terrain with an unconscious victim. I want you to work your dogs thirty to sixty minutes, mixing in short ten-minute problems. Let’s keep using someone your dog is familiar with. After the next class, you can try someone he or she doesn’t know. Please don’t skimp on your first-aid training, and let’s try some of those exercises compass only. Keep your logs up-to-date. Any problems, any questions before next time, shoot me an e-mail or give me a call.

“And please, God, finish off those brownies so I don’t.”

Sylvia gave Simon a kiss on the cheek. “I’ve got to run. Check on my shop and my Oreo. You can bring the new pieces in whenever you want. And take my girl out to dinner.”

He lingered out of curiosity, and because his dog had finally played himself out and was passed out under the table.

“He’s had enough for today,” Fiona commented when they were alone. She began to gather dishes.

“Question.” He picked up empty glasses and followed her toward the house. “Those people take your class.”

“Obviously.”

“This was what, like two hours?”

“A little more. This is an advanced stage, and a mock Search and Rescue, so it was set up, search, debrief—add the pat on the back.”

“And between that they’ve got to work with the dogs an hour here, an hour there, study first aid—”

“Yes. One of them’s an EMT, and they’ll all need to be certified in CPR, and basic field treatments. They’ll also have to know how to read a topographical map, have a good working knowledge of climate, wind, foliage, wildlife. Both they and their dogs have to be in good physical shape.”

She set the dishes on the counter in the kitchen.

“So when do any of them have time for an actual life?”

She leaned back. “They have lives, jobs, families. They also have dedication. Becoming a Search and Rescue team takes months of hard, focused training. It means sacrifice and it brings enormous satisfaction. I’ve been working with this unit for weeks,” she added. “They have an almost ninety percent success rate on individual problems. Now we’re working simultaneously. We’ll be repeating this sort of training exercise over and over, in all weather situations.”

“Have you ever kicked anybody out?”

“Yes. As a last resort, but yes. Most of the time someone who isn’t suited drops out before I have to. Are you interested?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, it might cut into your Lifetime addiction. Still, I wouldn’t mind giving Jaws some of the early training. It’ll help him be well rounded, if nothing else. Once he heels, sits and stays, masters recall and drop on recall, we can give him a little more.”

“More than the obedience deal?” Simon studied her, dubious. “What’s it cost?”

She angled her head. “I might be open to the barter system on this one. Say, working on additional training and specialized skills for . . . a wine cabinet.”

“It doesn’t suit you.”

Narrow-eyed, she pushed off the counter. “You know, every time you say that it just makes me want it more. I ought to know what suits me.”

“You’re just being stubborn.”

“I am?” She pointed the index fingers of both hands at him. “You’re the hardhead here. What do you care who buys the cabinet? Aren’t you building to sell?”

“What do you care if a dog’s crap at training? Don’t you teach to get paid?”

“It’s not the same thing. Plus it’s usually the handler that’s crap. Case in point, Mr. C Minus.”

“I wasn’t frowning.”

“Hold that. Don’t move, don’t change expression. I’m going to get a mirror.”

He grabbed her arm but didn’t quite swallow the laugh. “Cut it out.”

“Next class I’ll make sure I have a camera. A picture’s worth a thousand, after all.” She gave him a little shove.

He gave her a little nudge.

And behind him the dog growled low in his throat.

“Stop!” Fiona ordered sharply, and the dog froze. “Newman, friend. Friend. He thought you were hurting me. No, don’t back off. Simon,” she said to the dogs. “We’re playing. Simon’s a friend. Put your arms around me.”

“What?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so dainty.” She put her arms around Simon, hugged, laid her head on his shoulder. “Playing with Simon,” Fiona said to the dog, and smiled. She gestured so the dog walked to them, rubbed against Simon’s leg. “He wouldn’t have bitten you.”

“Good to know.”

“Unless I told him to.” She tipped her head back, smiled again. Then gave Simon another gentle shove. “Push back. It’s okay.”

“It better be.” He nudged her again, and this time the dog used his head to nudge Simon.

“Fun.” She wrapped her arms around Simon again, nuzzled. “He reads me,” she said. “If I was afraid now, he’d know it. But he sees, hears, senses I’m fine, I’m good with you. That’s what I’m trying to get through your head about Jaws and your reactions, what you transmit. Your mood influences his behavior, so—”

She broke off when she looked up again into eyes that were very close, and very focused.

“What mood do you think I’m transmitting now?”

“Funny. It’s just an exercise,” she began.

“Okay. Let’s try advanced class.”

He closed his mouth over hers, very firm and just a little rough.

She’d known he’d be just a little rough. Impatient, direct, with no testing moves, no easy flirtation.

She didn’t resist. It would be a waste of time, effort and a very hot and healthy kiss. Instead she slid her hands up his back, let herself drop into it, let herself enjoy the warring sensations of the moment.

Soft lips, hard hands, firm body—and just a hint of chocolate on the tongue that tangled with hers.

And when she felt herself dropping close to the point of no return, when climbing back would be painful, she worked her hand between them and pushed against his chest.

He didn’t stop. Her heart went from flutter to pound. Intractable, she thought, and wished she didn’t find that quality in him quite so exciting.

She pushed again, harder.

He eased back, just a little, so their eyes met again. “Grade that.”

“Oh, you definitely aced it. Congratulations. But playtime’s over. I have some lesson planning and . . . things to get done. So . . .”

“So, I’ll see you.”

“Yes. Ah, keep working on the basics. Throw sticks. Lots of sticks.”

“Right.”

When he walked out, she blew out a breath, looked at Newman. “Wow.”

His own fault, Simon thought as he loaded Jaws into the car. Or hers, he decided. It was really more her fault. Wrapping around him, rubbing in, smiling up.

What the hell was a man supposed to do?

He hadn’t expected her to be so receptive. To just give, to just open until that subtle, almost quiet sexy peeled back a corner and showed him all the heat beneath.

Now he wanted it. And her.

He glanced at the dog, currently in bliss with his nose stuck out the two-inch opening of the window.

“I should’ve just sold her the damn cabinet.”

He flipped the radio up to blast, but it didn’t swing his mind away from Fiona.

He decided to try his own “exercise,” and began to design a wine cabinet suited to her, in his head.

Maybe he’d build it; maybe he wouldn’t. But it was a damn sure bet he’d end up going back to peel up another corner.

SEVEN

A trip to the vet invariably included comedy and drama, and required persistence, stamina and a flexible sense of humor. To simplify, Fiona always scheduled her three dogs together at the end of office hours.

The system also gave her and the vet, her friend Mai Funaki, a chance to recover and unwind after the triple deed was done.

At a scant five-two, Mai appeared to be a delicate lotus blossom, a romantic anime character brought to life with ebony hair curved at her gilded cheeks and fringing flirtatiously above exotic onyx eyes. Her voice, a melodious song, calmed both animals and humans in the course of her work.

Her pretty, long-fingered hands soothed and healed. And were as strong as a bricklayer’s.

She’d been known to drink a two-hundred-pound man under the table, and could swear the air blue in five languages.

Fiona adored her.

In the exam room of her offices in her home just outside Eastsound, Mai helped Fiona heft seventy-five pounds of trembling Peck onto the table. The dog, who had once courageously negotiated smoldering rubble to locate victims after an earthquake in Oregon, who tirelessly searched for the lost, the fallen and the dead through bitter winds, flooding rain and scorching heat, feared the needle.

“You’d think I hammered spikes into his brain. Come on now, Peck.” Mai stroked, even as she checked joints and fur and skin. “Man up.”

Peck kept his head turned away, refusing to look at her. Instead he stared accusingly into Fiona’s eyes. She swore she could see tears forming.

“I think he was tortured by the Spanish Inquisition in another life.”

While Mai examined his ears, Peck visibly shuddered.

“At least he suffers in silence.” Mai turned Peck’s head toward her. He turned it away again. “I’ve got this Chihuahua I have to muzzle for any exam. He’d eat my face off if he could.”

She took the dog’s head firmly to examine his eyes, his teeth.

“Big healthy boy,” she crooned. “Big handsome boy.”

Peck stared at a spot over her shoulder and shivered.

“Okay,” Mai said to Fiona. “You know the drill.”

Fiona took Peck’s head in her hands. “It’s only going to take a second,” she told him as Mai moved behind and out of eye line. “We can’t have you getting sick, right?”

She talked, rubbed, smiled, as Mai pinched some skin and slid the needle in.

Peck moaned like a dying man.

“There. All done.” Mai walked back to Peck’s head, held up her hands to show them empty of all tools of torture. Then she laid a treat on the table.

He refused it.

“Could be poisoned,” Fiona pointed out. “Anything in this room is suspect.” She signaled the dog down, and he couldn’t jump off the table fast enough. Then he stood, facing the wall, ignoring both women.

“It’s because I cut off his balls. He’s never forgiven me.”

“No, I really think it all comes down from Newman. He fears, so they all fear. Anyway, two down, one to go.”

The women stared at each other. “We should’ve taken him first. The worst first. But I just couldn’t face it.”

“I bought a really nice bottle of Pinot.”

“Okay. Let’s do this thing.”

They released Peck into the yard where he could exchange horrors with Bogart and seek sympathy with Mai’s one-eyed bulldog, Patch, and her three-legged beagle-hound mix, Chauncy.

Together they approached Fiona’s car where Newman lay on the backseat, nose pressed tight in the corner, body limp as overcooked pasta.

“Heads or tails?” Fiona asked.

“You take the head. God help us.”

He squirmed, tried to roll into a ball, leaped over the seats, then back again. He slithered like a snake in an attempt to wedge himself under the seat.

Then, unable to escape, went limp again, forcing the two women to carry his dead dog weight into the examining room.

“Fuck me, Fee. Couldn’t you raise Poms?”

“He could be a face-eating Chihuahua.”

“Please tell me you got his weight at home because there’s no way we’re getting him on the scale.”

“Eighty-two.”

It took a solid and sweaty thirty minutes as Newman resisted every second.

“You know,” Fiona panted, using her own body to hold Newman’s down, “this dog would walk through fire for me. Through fire over broken glass while meteors rained out of the sky. But I can’t get him to just hold the hell still for a routine exam. And he knew. The minute I called them to get in the car, he knew. How many times do I put them in the car for work, for play, for whatever? How does he know? I had to get the others in first—they’re more easily fooled. Then drag him. It’s humiliating,” she said to Newman. “For both of us.”

“Thank all the gods, we’re done.”

Mai didn’t bother to offer the treat as Newman would very likely spit it in her face. “Cut him loose, and let’s open that wine.”

Mai’s pretty bungalow sat with its back to the sea. Once it had been part of a farm, then the house had morphed into a B&B. When Mai and her husband moved to Orcas, he’d wanted to farm.

Mai moved her Tacoma practice to the island, pleased to work at home, content with the slower lifestyle while her husband raised chickens, goats, berries and field greens.

It took less than four years for the bloom to wear off on the gentleman farmer, whose next brainstorm had been buying a bar and grill in Jamaica.

“Tim’s moving to Maine,” Mai said as they carried the wine out to the yard. “He’s going to be a lobsterman.”

“Not kidding?”

“Not. I have to say, he lasted longer than I expected with the bar.” Even as they sat, dogs hurried over to vie for attention. Tails wagged, tongues licked. “Sure, now we’re pals.”

Mai passed out the biscuits she’d brought with her.

“They love you—and the treats aren’t poison except in the exam room.”

“Yeah, all’s forgiven. I’m sorry I couldn’t run the base for the search on the little boy. I had that emergency surgery, and I just couldn’t postpone it.”

“It’s no problem. That’s why we have alternates. They’re a nice family. The kid’s a champ.”

“Yeah?” Mai sighed. “You know, it’s probably—certainly—best that Tim and I put off having kids. Can you imagine? But my clock’s ticking double time. I know I’m going to end up adopting another dog or cat or other mammal to compensate.”

“You could adopt an actual human child. You’d be a great mom.”

“I would. But . . . I still have a tiny crack of a sliver of hope that I could start a family with a man, give the kid the full complement of parents. Which means I have to actually date, and have sex. And when I think of men, dating and sex, I remember how horny I am. I’m considering naming my vibrator Stanley.”

“Stanley?”

“Stanley is kind, and thinks only of my pleasure. I’m still winning our dry spell contest, I assume. Fourteen months.”

“Nine, but I don’t think that one time really counts. It was lousy sex.”

“Lousy sex is still sex. It may be a crap contest to win, but there are rules. And while there will always be Stanley, I’m seriously considering other options.”

“Girls? Club trolling? Personal ads?”

“All weighed and rejected. Don’t laugh.”

“Okay. What?”

“I’ve been checking out the Internet dating sites. I even have a profile and application ready to go. I just haven’t hit send. Yet.”

“I’m not laughing, but I’m not convinced. You’re gorgeous, smart, funny, interesting, a woman with a wide range of interests. If you’re serious about getting back into the dating arena, you need to put yourself out there more.”

Nodding, Mai took a long sip of wine, then leaned forward. “Fee, you may not have noticed, but we live on a small island off the coast of Washington state.”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“The population of this small island is also relatively small. The single-male element of that population, considerably smaller. Why else are two gorgeous, smart and sexy women sitting here on a pretty evening drinking wine with dogs?”

“Because we like to?”

“We do. Yes, we do. But we also like the company of men. At least I think we do as it’s been some time. And I believe I’m correct in saying we both enjoy good, healthy, safe sex.”

“This is correct, which is why I really think that one time shouldn’t count in the contest.”

“Old business.” Mai flicked it away. “I’ve made a considerable if unscientific study of that single-male element of our island population. For my own purposes, I have to eliminate males under the age of twenty-one and over the age of sixty-five. Both boundaries are a stretch as I’m thirty-four, but beggars, choosers. The pool’s shallow, Fee. It’s pretty freaking shallow.”

“I can’t argue with that. But if you add in tourists and seasonals, it’s a little deeper.”

“I do have some small hope for summer, but meanwhile? I took a hard look at James.”

“James? Our James.”

“Yes, our James. Mutual interests, age appropriate. Low spark, admittedly, but you work with what you’ve got. The trouble is he’s got his eye on Lori, and there’s no poaching within the unit. There is one intriguing possibility on island. Single, age appropriate, dog owner, very attractive. Creative type. A little taciturn for my taste, but there’s that beggars, choosers again.”

“Oh,” Fiona said, and took a drink.

“Simon Doyle. Sylvia carries his work. Wood artist, furniture.”

“Mmm,” Fiona said this time, and took another drink.

Mai’s eyes narrowed. “You’re looking at him? Damn it, he might be all that’s standing between me and HeartLine-dot-com.”

“I’m not looking. Not exactly. He’s a client. I’m working with his dog.”

“Cute dog.”

“Very. Hot guy.”

“Very. Look, if you’re going to call dibs, call it, because I have plans to make. I have a serious need to get laid.”

“I’m not calling dibs on a man. Jesus, Mai. He’s really not the kind of guy you tend toward.”

“Shit,” Mai said, and took a slug of wine. “He’s alive, single, within the age boundaries and, as far as I know, not a serial killer.”

“He kissed me.”

“Two scoops of shit. Okay, give me a minute to hate you.” Mai drummed her fingers on the table. “All right, hate time’s done. Sexy kiss or friendly kiss?”

“It wasn’t friendly. He’s not especially friendly. I don’t think he likes people that much. He stopped by so I could work with Jaws. I was running the mock search with the Bellingham unit. So I invited him to stay, mix, have some brownies. I doubt he said five words to anybody. Except for Syl. He likes Syl.”

“Maybe he’s shy. Shy can be sweet.”

“I don’t think so, and sweet’s not a word I’d use in the same sentence with Simon. He’s an exceptional kisser, and that’s a plus.”

“Bitch, don’t make me hurt you.”

Fiona grinned. “And I don’t need a relationship, but I do require some basic conversation when I sleep with a guy.”

“You had conversation with the one-time guy nine months ago. Look where that got you.”

“That’s true.” Fiona was forced to sigh in remembrance. “But I’m not calling dibs. If the opportunity presents, help yourself.”

“No, it’s too late. He’s out of the running. HeartLine-dot-com, here I come.”

“We need to go on vacation.”

Mai choked out a laugh. “Yeah, sure.”

“No, I mean it. You, me, Syl. A girl trip, a girl thing. A spa,” she decided, inspired. “A long girl spa weekend.”

“Don’t toy with me, Fiona. I’m a woman on the edge.”

“Which is why we need a break.”

“Question?” Mai held up a finger. “When’s the last time you took a vacation—even a long weekend type vacation?”

“A couple years maybe. Okay, probably three. Which just cements the point.”

“And with your work, mine, Syl’s, the responsibility for the animals, just how do we manage it?”

“We’ll figure it out. We know how to plan things, how to organize.” Now that the idea popped out, Fiona wanted it like Christmas. “Massages and facials and mud baths, room service and sparkly adult beverages. No work, responsibility or schedules.”

“It may be better than sex.”

“It’s possible. What we’ll do is check our schedules and find the best time to clear three days. We can clear three days, Mai. We all have friends who’ll take care of our animals for that length of time. How often have we done it for them?”

“Countless times. Where?”

“I don’t know. Close so we don’t spend too much time on travel. I’ll start researching, and I’ll get Syl on board. What do you say?”

Mai raised her glass. “I am so in.”

Determined to seal the deal, Fiona swung by Sylvia’s before heading home.

Pansies spilled out of tubs in front of the tranquil bayside house. Fiona knew the greenhouse would be crowded with flowers and vegetables and herbs her stepmother babied like children, and would soon tranfer to her extensive gardens.

As much at home there as in her own cabin, Fiona opened the bright red door and called out, “Syl?”

“Back here!” Sylvia called out as Oreo raced to say hello. “In the great room.”

“I was just at Mai’s.” Fiona wound her way through the house where Sylvia had lived with Fiona’s father throughout their marriage. Like her shop, it was a bright, fascinating, eclectic mix of styles and art and color.

She found Sylvia on her yoga mat mimicking the twisting pose of the instructor on the TV. “Just winding down from the day,” Sylvia told her. “Nearly done. Did you bring the boys?”

“They’re in the car. I can’t stay.”

“Oh, why don’t you? I’m thinking of making couscous.”

“Tempting.” Not in the least, Fiona thought. “But I’ve got a project. Mai’s horny and her biological clock’s ticking. She’s thinking of trying one of those online dating services.”

“Really?” Sylvia untwisted, then twisted in the other direction. “Which one?”

“I think she said HeartLine-dot-com.”

“They’re supposed to be pretty good.”

“I don’t . . . Have you used that kind of thing?”

“Not yet. Maybe never. But I’ve looked around.” Sylvia lowered to the floor, folded.

“Oh. Huh. Well, anyway, what do you say the three of us take a long weekend and go to a spa?”

“Gosh, let me think.” Sylvia unfolded. “It’ll take me five minutes to pack.”

“Really?”

“I can do it in four if pressed. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s part of the project. I need to check the schedule, refine it with yours and Mai’s and find us a destination.”

“I’ve got that. One of my artists has a connection at a spa. Supposed to be fabulous. It’s near Snoqualmie Falls.”

“Seriously?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Sylvia lay back in corpse. “Tranquillity Spa and Resort. I’ll take care of it—but you might want to check out the website to make sure it’s what you have in mind.”

“Do they have massages, room service and a pool?”

“I can pretty much guarantee that.”

“It’s perfect.” She did a quick dance in place. “God, this is going to be great.”

“Can’t miss. But what brought this on?”

“I told you. Mai’s hormones.”

“And?”

Fiona walked to the window to look at the water. “I really haven’t been sleeping all that well since Davey told me about the murders. It’s just . . . there. On my mind. Keeping busy tamps it down, then when I’m not, it’s just there. A break would be good, I think. And a break with two of my favorite women, the best. Plus I’m feeling conflicted about Simon since he kissed me.”

“What?” Sylvia’s eyes popped open as she sat up. “You tried to sneak that by me. When did he kiss you?”

“The other day, after you and the others left. It was just an impulse of the moment, and the circumstances. And yes, before you ask, it was very, very good.”

“I suspected it would be. What happened next?”

“He went home.”

“Why?”

“Probably because I told him to.”

“Oh, Fee, I worry about you. I do.” Shaking her head, Sylvia rose, reached for her bottle of water.

“I wasn’t ready for the kiss, much less any follow-through.”

Sylvia sighed. “See? No wonder I worry about you. Not being ready is part of the thrill. Or should be. The unexpected and the passionate.”

“I don’t think unexpected works for me. At least not right now. Who knows, maybe it will after a spa break.”

“Clear your schedule and we’re gone. I can work mine around yours and Mai’s.”

“You’re the best.” Fiona gave her a quick hug. “I’m going to see what classes I can juggle. I’ll e-mail you and Mai.”

“Wait. I’m going to get you some of this tea. It’s all natural, and it should help relax you, help you sleep. I want you to take a long bath, drink some tea, put on some quiet music. And give those meditation exercises I showed you a chance,” she added as she got the tin out of a cupboard in the adjoining kitchen.

“Okay. Promise. I’m already relaxed just thinking about the spa.” She moved in for another hug. “I love you.”

“I love you back.”

She should have thought of it before, Fiona realized. An indulgent break with good friends was the perfect prescription for restlessness and stress. Then again she rarely felt the need for a break as she considered her life on the island the best of all possible worlds.

She had independence, reasonable financial security, a home and work she loved, the companionship of her dogs. What else was there?

She remembered the hot, unexpected kiss in her kitchen and Simon’s rough, proprietary hands on her.

There was that, she admitted. At least now and again there was that. She was, after all, a healthy woman with normal needs and appetites.

And she could admit she’d considered the possibility of a round or two with Simon—before he’d shut that down in no uncertain terms. Before he’d opened it up again. Blew the lid off it again, she corrected.

Which only served to prove any sort of relationship with him promised to be complicated and frustrating and uncertain.

“Probably best to leave it alone,” she said to the dogs. “Really, why ask for trouble? We’re good, right? We’re good just as we are. You and me, boys,” she added and had tails thumping.

Her headlights slashed through the dark as she turned onto her drive—and reminded her she’d forgotten to leave the porch light on again. In a few weeks, the sun would stay longer and the air would warm. Long evening walks and playtime in the yard, porch sitting.

The approach had the dogs shifting and tails swishing in excitement. The trauma of the exam room was forgotten in the simple pleasure of coming home.

She parked, got out to open the back. “Make your rounds, boys.” She hurried inside to hit the lights before making her own. She checked water bowls and the feeder, got a smile from her new planters.

While the dogs circled outside, stretched their legs, emptied their bladders, she opened the freezer and grabbed the first frozen dinner that came to hand.

While it buzzed up she started checking her phone messages. She’d set up her laptop, she decided, go over the schedule while she ate, find the best hole, check out the website Sylvia had recommended.

“Get the party started,” she murmured.

She took notes on her pad, saving or deleting messages as necessary.

“Ms. Bristow, this is Kati Starr. I’m a reporter with U.S. Report. I’m writing a story on the recent abduction murders of two women in California that seem to parallel those committed by George Allen Perry. As you were the only known victim to escape Perry, I’d like to speak with you. You can reach me at work, on my cell or via e-mail. My contacts are—”

Fiona hit delete. “No way in hell.”

No reporters, no interviews, no TV cameras or mikes pushed at her. Not again.

Even as she took a breath the next message came on.

“Ms. Bristow, this is Kati Starr with U.S. Report following up on my earlier call. I’m approaching deadline, and it’s very important that I speak with you as soon as—”

Fiona hit delete again.

“Screw you and your deadline,” she murmured.

She let the dogs in, comforted by their presence. Dinner, such as it was, didn’t hold much appeal, but she ordered herself to sit down, to eat, to do exactly what she’d planned to do with her evening before the reporter flooded her mind with memories and worries.

She booted up her laptop, poked at chicken potpie. To boost her mood, she checked the resort’s website first—and in moments was cruising on anticipatory bliss.

Hot stone massages, paraffin wraps, champagne and caviar facials. She wanted them all. She wanted them now.

She took the virtual tour, purring over the indoor pool, the posttreatment meditation rooms, the shops, the gardens, the lovely appointments in the guest rooms. That included, she thought, a two-story, three-bedroom “villa.”

She closed one eye, glanced at the cost. Winced.

But split three ways . . . it would still sting like hellfire.

But it had its own hot tub, and, oh God, fireplaces in the bathrooms.

In. The. Bathrooms.

And the views of the waterfall, the hills, the gardens . . .

Impossible, she reminded herself. Maybe when she won the lottery.

“It’s a nice dream,” she told the dogs. “So, now we know where. Let’s figure out when.”

She brought up her class schedule, calculated, tried some juggling, recalculated, shifted.

Once she’d settled on the two best possibilities, she e-mailed Sylvia and Mai.

“We’ll make it work,” she decided, and shifted over to check her incoming e-mail.

She found one from the reporter.

Ms. Bristow:

I haven’t been able to reach you by phone. I found this contact on the website for your canine training service. As I explained, I’m writing a story on the California abduction-murders which echo the Perry homicides. As you were a key witness for the prosecution in the Perry trial that resulted in his conviction, your comments would be very valuable.

I can’t write a salient or accurate story on the Perry angle without including your experiences, and the details of the murder of Gregory Norwood, which resulted in Perry’s capture. I would prefer to speak with you directly before the story goes to press.

Fiona deleted the e-mail, including the list of contacts.

Then simply laid her head down on the table.

She was entitled to say no. Entitled to turn her back on that horrible time. She was entitled to refuse to be fodder for yet another story on death and loss.

Reliving all that wouldn’t, couldn’t bring Greg back. It wouldn’t help those two women or their grieving families.

She’d started her life over, and she was damn well entitled to her privacy.

She pushed herself up, shut down the laptop.

“I’m going to take that long bath, drink that stupid tea. And you know what? We’re going to book that damn villa. Life’s too damn short.”

EIGHT

Though her puppy classes invariably kept Fiona’s mood up, tension lingered, an endless echo of memories and loss.

Kati Starr, persistent if nothing else, called shortly after eight a.m.

One glance at the caller ID had Fiona letting the machine take it. She deleted it without listening, but the call itself lodged in the back of her neck like a brick.

She reminded herself her clients deserved her full attention.

Simon was late. Of course. He pulled in while the rest of the class ran through the basics.

“Just pick it up where we are,” she said coolly. “If we’re not interfering too much with your busy schedule.”

She moved away to work with each of her students individually, demonstrating how to discourage the exuberant Great Dane pup, who promised to be massive, from jumping up—and the perky schnauzer to stop crotch sniffing.

When they began to work off leash, she sighed as Jaws raced away to chase a squirrel—and led a stampede.

“Don’t chase them!” Fiona pushed a hand through her hair as Jaws did his level best to climb the tree the squirrel skittered up. “Call them back. Use your return command, then order your dog to sit. I want all the dogs back to their handlers and sitting.”

What she wanted took time and persistence—and some hands-on.

She reviewed sit and stay, individually and as a group, careful to keep her tone detached whenever she had to address Simon.

With leashes on, she worked on the stop and drop.

The class that usually amused and warmed her had a headache carving dully just above the brick at the base of her neck.

“Keep up the good work.” She ordered up a smile. “And remember: positive reinforcement, practice and play.”

As always, there were comments, questions, a story or two that had to be shared with her by one of the clients. Fiona listened, answered, stroked and petted. But felt none of her usual pleasure.

When Simon lingered, letting Jaws off leash to run with her dogs, Fiona decided it was fine. She’d deal with him, and eliminate a minor problem on her list.

“You’ve got a bug up your ass today,” he said before she could speak.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. And you look like hell.”

“You have to stop throwing all these pearls at my feet.”

“Did that guy in California kill someone else?”

“I don’t know. Why would I know? It has nothing to do with me.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her hooded jacket. “I’m sorry for the women, for their families, but it has nothing to do with me.”

“Who’s arguing? You weren’t listening, not really, when Larry started on about how his supermutt figured out how to open doors or when Diane showed you the picture of her toddler drawing with crayons on the bulldog. I’d say that’s your version of having a bitch on. So, what’s the deal?”

“Listen, Simon, just because I kissed you, sort of—”

“Sort of?”

She set her teeth. “That doesn’t mean I’m obliged to share the details of my life with you, or explain the reasons for my moods.”

“I’m still stuck on ‘sort of,’ and wondering what would be actually.”

“You’ll have to keep wondering. We’re neighbors and you’re currently a client. That’s it.”

“A definite bitch on. Well, enjoy.” He whistled for his dog, which naturally brought the whole pack.

When Simon bent down, ruffled and praised, Fiona sighed again. “He’s doing well on the return. He doesn’t get stay yet, but he’s doing well in most areas.”

“He hasn’t eaten anything I needed to worry about in the last couple days.” He clipped on the leash. “See you.”

He got halfway to the car when she called his name.

She hadn’t planned to, couldn’t think why she had. And yet . . .

“Do you want to take a walk? I need to walk.”

“A walk? Where?”

She gestured. “One of the perks of living in the woods is being able to walk in them.”

He shrugged, crossed back to her.

“You’d better leash him,” she said. “Until you’re confident he’ll obey the stop command. He might take off after a rabbit or deer and get lost. Come on, boys, take a walk.”

Her dogs fell in happily, then ranged ahead. Jaws pulled on the leash.

“Wait,” Fiona ordered, sympathizing. The dogs paused, continuing at a slower pace at her signal when Jaws caught up.

“He thinks he’s one of the big guys. It’s good for him to get out like this, explore new territories, respect the leash, respond to you.”

“Is this another lesson?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Do you ever talk about anything other than dogs?”

“Yes.” Irritated, she hunched her shoulders, lapsed into momentary silence. “I can’t think of anything right now. God, I wish spring would hurry up. There, that’s other than. I can bitch about the weather. But it’s a nice day, so it’s hard to. Still I wish it would get warmer faster, and I want the sun to stay out till ten. I want to plant a garden and chase the deer and rabbits out of it.”

“Why don’t you just put up a fence?”

“Then I don’t have the entertainment value of chasing the deer and rabbits, do I? They’re not afraid of the dogs, which is my own fault because I trained the boys not to chase—oops. Dog talk. I love the way it smells in here.”

She took a deep breath of pine, grateful the headache had backed off a bit. “I love the way it looks—the lights, the shadows. I thought I’d be a photographer, because I like light and shadows, and people’s faces and the way they move. But I don’t take very good, or interesting, pictures. Then I thought I’d be a writer, but I bored myself so I suspect I’d have flopped at that one. Except I like to write—for the blog or the newsletter, or little articles about, you know, the thing I’m not talking about in this conversation. Then I thought I could coach track or be a trainer but . . . I didn’t really have a center, I guess. I’m not sure you’re required to have a center when you’re twenty. Why don’t you say something?”

“Mostly because you haven’t shut up.”

She blew out a breath. “That’s true. I’m babbling useless conversation because I don’t want to think. And I realize I asked you to come so I wouldn’t think or start brooding. I don’t have a bitch on. I have a brood on, and it’s entirely different.”

“Comes off the same to me.”

“You’re a hardass, Simon. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”

They moved through a clearing where the trees soared overhead, beefy giants that sighed like the surf where their tops met sky.

“Why Orcas?” she asked him. “Of all the places to live.”

“It’s quiet. I like being near the water. Hold this.” He shoved the leash into her hand and walked over to a large, twisted stump, heaved half out of the needle-strewn ground.

While she watched, he circled it, crouched, knocked on it.

“Is this your property?”

“Yeah. We haven’t walked that far.”

“I want this.” His eyes, the color of old gold in the luminous streams and dapples of light, shifted briefly to hers. “Can I have this?”

“You want . . . the stump?”

“Yes. I’ll pay for it if you want to be greedy.”

“How much? I’m going on a spa vacation.” She walked closer trying to see what he saw.

“Pee somewhere else.” He gave Jaws a nudge as the pup prepared to squat. “Ten bucks.”

She pff’d.

“It’s just sitting here. You’re not using it, and I’m going to have to yank it out and haul it off. Twenty, but that’s it.”

“Replace it. Plant a tree in the hole and we’re good.”

“Done.”

“What’ll you do with it?”

“Something.”

She studied it, circled it as he had, but still only saw the twisted remains of a tree broken off in some long-ago storm. “I wish I could see like that. I wish I could look at a tree stump and see something creative.”

He glanced up again. “You looked at that dog and saw something.”

She smiled. “I think that was an actual nice thing to say. Now I guess I have to be sorry for being mean to you.”

“You have a strange scale, Fiona. ‘Sort of’ kissed me when you were locked on like a clamp. Being mean when you told me to mind my own business.”

“I yelled at you in my head.”

“Oh, well, now I’m crushed.”

“I can be mean. Harsh and mean, and I can be okay with it. But it has to be justified. You just asked what was wrong. You can come back and get the stump anytime.”

“Next couple of days.” He straightened, glanced around to orient himself. Then he looked at her. “You might as well spill it.”

“Let’s keep walking.” She held the leash, bringing Jaws to heel, letting him range, bringing him back while they wound through the trees, skirted the curve of a quiet creek.

“This reporter’s hounding me,” she began. “Calling, e-mailing. I haven’t talked to her—just deleted all the messages.”

“What does she want?”

“To talk to me about Perry—in connection with the two women in California. She’s writing a story on it. That’s her job; I get that. But it’s not mine to talk to her, to feed that fire. The only victim who escaped—that’s how she put it. I’m not a victim, and it just pisses me off to be called one. I had enough of that when it all happened.”

“Then keep deleting.”

“Sounds simple—and I will—but it’s not simple.”

The headache was gone, she realized, but the anger and frustration that had caused it remained lodged like splinters.

Small, sharp and nasty.

“When it happened, the prosecution and the cops kept me away from the press as much as possible. They didn’t want me giving interviews—and God knows, I didn’t want to give them. But a story like that? It’s got juice, right? They kept calling, or talking to people who knew me—people who knew people who knew me. Squeezing the juice.” She paused, glanced at him again. “I guess you’d understand that, from your relationship with Nina Abbott.”

“Relationship’s a pretty word for it.”

“And now you like quiet islands.”

“One doesn’t have much of a connection with the other. And this isn’t my brood.”

None of her business, she thought. Well, he had a point. “All right. After Greg, it started up again. Then the trial. I don’t want any part of what’s happening now. So I’m angry all over again, and that makes me feel sick inside. Because twelve before me, and Greg after me, died. And I didn’t. I barely had a scratch, but they say I’m a victim or they say I’m a heroine. Neither’s true.”

“No, neither’s true. You’re a survivor, and that’s harder.”

She stopped, stared at him. “Why do you get it? That’s the mystery.”

“It’s all over you. It’s in your eyes. So calm, so clear. Maybe because they’ve already seen so much. You’ve got wounds. You live with them. That shouldn’t be appealing to me.”

She might have smiled at the way he tossed her own words back at her, but they made her stomach flutter. “What have we got here, Simon?”

“Probably just some heat.”

“Probably. I haven’t had sex in almost ten months.”

“Okay, it’s getting hotter.”

Now she laughed. “God, you’ve actually made me feel better. But what I meant was I haven’t had sex in ten months, so waiting longer isn’t such a big deal. We both live on island—have a connection with Sylvia. I like your dog, and right now I’m part of his team. I think I need to figure out if sleeping with you would just be a nice release, or cause too many complications.”

“It wouldn’t be nice. Nice is cookies and milk.”

“Confident. I do like confidence. Since I’m not going to have sex with you in the woods, especially since we’ve only got about twenty minutes before the sun sets, I think we’re safe. So why don’t you give me a little preview of possible coming attractions?”

He reached behind her, wrapped her hair around his fist. “You like living on the edge?”

“No, I really don’t. I like stability and order, so this is unusual for me.”

He gave her hair a tug, enough to lift her face, to bring his mouth within a breath of hers. “You’re looking for nice.”

“I’m not really looking at all.”

“Me either,” he said, and closed the distance.

She’d asked for it, and thought herself prepared. She’d expected the fast strike, that immediate explosion of heat and lust and want that flashed through the brain and body.

Instead, he came in easy, disarming her with a slow kiss, the sort that shimmered through the system just before it fogged the brain. She sighed into it, lifting her arms to link them around his neck as he tempted her to offer more.

As she did, he pulled her deeper, gradually building that heat they both acknowledged, degree by degree, so when the strike came, she was defenseless.

The world snapped off—the woods, the sky, the deepening shadows. All that was left was the wonder of mouth against mouth, body against body, and the floodwall of need rising in her.

Even as he started to pull back, she dragged him back and dived again, dived deep.

She frayed his control. That combination of yielding and demand tore at his resolve to set both tone and pace. She reached inside him somehow, opening doors he’d determined to keep locked until he was no longer sure who led the way.

And when he intended to step back, regain some distance, she lured him back.

Soft lips, lithe body and a scent that was somehow both earthy and sweet. Like her taste—neither one thing nor the other, and utterly irresistible.

He lost more ground than he gained before the pup began to bark—wild joy—and scrabble at his legs in an attempt to nudge through and join the fun.

This time they stepped back together.

Fiona laid a hand on Jaws’s head. “Sit,” she ordered. “Good dog.”

Not so calm now, Simon thought as he looked at her eyes. Not so clear.

“I can’t think of a single sensible thing to say,” she told him. She signaled for her dogs, then handed Simon the pup’s leash. “We should start back. Um, he’s doing better on the leash. This is new territory for him, and there are a lot of fun distractions, but he’s responding pretty well.”

Back in her safe zone, he thought, with dog talk. Curious how she’d handle it, he simply walked along in silence.

“I’d like to work with him a little on some other skills and behaviors. Maybe an extra half hour in ten- or fifteen-minute sessions a week. A couple of weeks, no charge. Then if you like the way it’s going, we can discuss a fee.”

“Like a preview of possible coming attractions?”

She slid a glance in Simon’s direction, then away again. “You could say that. He learns quickly, and has a good personality for . . . And this is silly. It’s cowardly. I wanted to kiss you again to see if the other day was just a fluke, which, obviously, it was not. There’s a strong physical attraction, which I haven’t felt for anyone in a long time.”

“Just under ten months?”

He watched her color come up, but then she smiled. Not sheepish but amused. “Longer actually. To spare us both the embarrassment of details, that particular incident was a failure on several levels. But it does serve as a baseline, and causes me to wonder if the just-under-ten-months factor is part of the reason for the attraction. It also makes me cautious. I’m not shy about sex, but I am wary of repeating what turned out to be a mistake.”

“You’d rather be stable and ordered.”

She pushed her hands back in her pockets. “I talk too much and you listen too well. That’s a dangerous mix.”

“For who?”

“For the talker. See, you give the impression you don’t pay all that much attention, just aren’t interested enough. But you do pay attention. Not big on the interacting, but you take in the details. It’s kind of sneaky, really. I like you. Or at least I think I do. I don’t know much about you because you don’t talk about yourself. I know you have a dog because your mother gave him to you, which tells me you love your mother or fear her wrath. It’s probably a combination of both.”

They walked in silence for a full thirty seconds.

“Confirm or deny,” she insisted. “It can’t be a deep, dark secret.”

“I love my mother and prefer, when possible, to avoid her wrath.”

“There, that wasn’t so hard. How about your father?”

“He loves my mother and prefers, when possible, to avoid her wrath.”

“You realize, of course, that the less you say the more curious people get about you.”

“Fine. That can be good for business.”

“So, it’s a business. Your work.”

“People pay you, the government takes a cut. That’s business.”

She thought she had a handle on him now, even if it was a slippery one. “But it’s not business first or you’d have sold me that cabinet.”

He paused while Jaws found a stick and pranced along like a drum major at halftime. “You’re not letting that one go.”

“It was either a display of artistic temperament or bullheadedness. I suspect, in this case, the former, though I also suspect you’re no stranger to the latter. I’d still like to buy it, by the way.”

“No. You could use a new rocker for your porch. The one you have is ugly.”

“It’s not ugly. It’s serviceable. And it needs repainting.”

“The left arm is warped.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, then realized she wasn’t sure either way. “Maybe. But to turn this back on you, Mr. Mysteriosa, it only proves you notice detail.”

“I notice crappy workmanship and warped wood. I’ll trade you a rocker for the lessons, with the caveat you bust that ugly warped chair up for kindling.”

“Maybe it has sentimental value.”

“Does it?”

“No, I bought it at a yard sale a few years ago, for ten bucks.”

“Kindling. And you teach the dog something interesting.”

“That’s a deal.” As they came out of the woods, she looked up at the sky. “It’s cooling off. I could probably use the kindling. A nice fire, a glass of wine—of course I won’t be able to get the bottle out of a beautiful cabinet, but I’ll live. I won’t be inviting you in, either.”

“Do you think if I wanted to finish up what we started back there I’d wait for an invitation?”

“No,” she said after a moment. “I should find that arrogant and off-putting. I have no idea why I don’t. Why don’t you want to finish up what we started back there?”

He smiled at her. “You’ll be thinking about that, won’t you? I like your house.”

Baffled, she turned to study it as he was. “My house?”

“It’s small, a little fanciful and right for the spot. You should think about adding a solarium on the south face. It’d add some interest to the architecture, opening up your kitchen and bringing more light in. Anyway, do yourself a favor and don’t check your e-mail or messages. I’ll bring the dog and the chair back in a couple days.”

She frowned after him as he and the dog walked to the truck. Simon unclipped the leash, boosted Jaws inside, where he sat, proudly holding his stick.

HE HAD PLENTY to keep him busy—his work, his dog, a half-baked idea of planting a garden just to see if he could. Every couple of days, depending on the weather, he’d take a drive with Jaws around the twisting, up-and-down roads of the island.

The routine, or the lack of routine, was exactly what he’d been after without fully realizing he’d been looking.

He enjoyed having his shop only steps away from the house where he could work as early or as late or as long as he pleased. And though it surprised him, he enjoyed having the dog for company, at work, on walks, on drives.

It pleased him to paint a flat-armed rocker a bold blue. Fiona’s coloring might be soft, subtle, but her personality was bright and bold. She’d look good in the chair.

She looked good.

He thought he’d haul the chair, and the dog, over to her place that afternoon. Unless he got caught up in work.

Luckily, he thought as he drank his morning coffee on the porch, there was plenty of work to get caught up in. He had the custom breakfront for a Tacoma client, another set of rockers. There was the bed he intended to make for himself, and the cabinet he’d started for Fiona.

Maybe.

He had to get the stump—and should go ahead and deal with that today. He’d check and see if Gary—fellow obedience school client and local farmer—was still willing to help him out with the chain and the Bobcat.

Whistling for the dog—and ridiculously pleased when Jaws responded by racing happily to him—Simon went back inside. He’d have his second cup of coffee while he checked the stories online in U.S. Report, as he’d done the last two days.

He’d begun to think the reporter had given up on the article, stymied by Fiona’s lack of cooperation.

But he found it this time, with the bold headline:

ECHOES OF FEAR

Photos of the two women—hardly more than girls, really, he thought—featured prominently in the lead of the story. As far as he could tell the reporter had done her homework there, with details of their lives, the last hours before they vanished and the ensuing search and discovery of their bodies.

He found the photo of Perry chilling. So ordinary—the middle-aged man next door. The history teacher or insurance salesman, the guy who grew tomatoes in the backyard. Anyone.

But it was the photo of Fiona that stopped him cold.

Her face smiled out, as did those of a dozen others, the ones who hadn’t escaped. Young, fresh, pretty.

It contrasted sharply with the file shot of her being hustled into the courthouse through the gauntlet of reporters. Her head down, her eyes dull, her face shattered.

The article added the details of her escape, her fiancé’s murder, and added briefly that Bristow could not be reached for comment.

“Didn’t stop you,” he murmured.

Still, people did what they did, he thought. Reporters reported. The smartest thing Fiona could do would be to ignore it.

The urge to call her irked him, actually brought an itch between his shoulder blades. He ordered himself to leave it—and her—alone.

Instead he called Gary and arranged for the stump removal. He gave Jaws ten minutes of fetch—they were both starting to get the hang of it—then went to work.

He focused on the breakfront. He thought it best not to do any further work on the cabinet, not until he could block the image of Fiona, that sick mix of fear and grief on her face, out of his head.

He took a short break in the early afternoon for a walk on the beach, where Jaws managed to find a dead fish.

After the necessary shower—he really had to remember to buy the damn dog a bathtub—Simon decided to load up some of his smaller items for Sylvia. He boxed cutting boards, weed pots, vases, bowls, then loaded them, along with the dog, into the truck.

He’d meet Gary, deal with the stump, and with the stock already loaded, have an excuse not to linger too long with Fiona.

It surprised him, and caused Jaws untold sorrow, when she wasn’t there. Nor were the dogs. Maybe she’d taken off for some solitude and distraction.

Jaws perked up when Gary arrived shortly with his chirpy border collie, Butch.

Gary, a cap over his grizzled hair, thick lenses over faded green eyes, watched the pups greet each other. “Coupla pips,” he said.

“At least. Fiona’s not home, but I told her I’d be by for the stump.”

“Got unit practice up in the park. They do a day of it once a month. Keep in tune, you know? Would’ve headed out at first light, most likely. Well, let’s get the Cat off the truck and go get you a stump. What the hell do you want it for?”

“You never know.”

“You sure don’t,” Gary agreed.

They lowered the ramp, and Gary backed the machine down. With the two dogs on board, they putted their way into the woods.

“I appreciate this, Gary.”

“Hell, it’s no big thing. Nice day to be out and about.”

It was, Simon thought. Warm enough, sunny, with little signs of encroaching spring showing themselves. The dogs panted in desperate joy, and Gary smelled—lightly—of fertilizer.

When they reached the stump, Gary hopped out, circled it, shoved his cap back to scratch his head. “This what you want?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we’ll get her. I knew a guy once made statues out of burl wood and a chain saw. This isn’t any stranger.”

They hauled out the chain, discussed strategies, baseball, dogs.

Simon tied the dogs to a tree to keep them out of harm’s way while Gary began maneuvering the machine.

It took an hour, and considerable sweat, re-angling, reversing, resetting the chain.

“Easy!” Simon called out, grinning widely. “You’ve got it now. She’s coming.”

“Cocksucker put up a fight.” Gary set the machine to idle when the stump rolled free. “You got yourself a stump.”

Simon ran his gloved hand over the body, along one of the thick roots. “Oh yeah.”

“Happiest I’ve seen you look since I met you. Let’s get her in the bucket.”

Once they were rolling out of the woods, the bucket full of stump, Gary glanced over. “I want you to let me know what you do with that thing.”

“I’m thinking a sink.”

Gary snorted. “You’re going to make a sink out of a stump?”

“The base of it, yeah. Maybe. If it cleans up like I think it will. I’ve got this round of burl wood could work as the basin. Add high-end contemporary fixtures, half a million coats of poly. Yeah, maybe.”

“That beats a chain saw and burl wood for strange. How much would something like that go for?”

“Depends, but if this works like I see it? I can sell it for about eight.”

“Eight hundred dollars for a stump sink?”

“Thousand.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Upscale Seattle gallery? Might get ten.”

“Ten thousand dollars for a sink. Fuck me sideways.”

Simon had to grin. “One of a kind. Some people think of it as art.”

“Some people have shit for brains. No offense.”

“Some people do—no offense taken. I’ll let you know when it’s finished, whatever it turns out to be. You can take a look for yourself.”

“I’m doing that. Wait until I tell Sue,” he said, speaking of his wife. “She won’t believe it.”

NINE

By the time he and Gary hauled the stump home and unloaded it, Simon considered skipping the trip to town and just staying put to play with his new toy. He’d already drafted half a dozen design possibilities in his head.

But the stock sat in his truck, packed and ready. If he didn’t go now, he’d have to go later, so he gave Jaws the thrill of another ride with the window half down, the dog’s snout pressed through the opening, and his ears flapping in the breeze.

“Why do you do that?” Simon wondered. When Jaws banged his tail against the seat in answer, Simon stuck his head out his own window. “Huh. Feels pretty good, actually. Next time you drive and I’ll catch the breeze.”

He tapped his fingers on the wheel in time with the radio while he refined and discarded more designs on the sketch pad in his head. The physical labor combined with the creative possibilities, the dog’s sheer and simple pleasure combined in a near perfect mix that had him grinning his way into the village. He’d finish his errand, go home, study his material, measure, then take a walk on the beach to let the ideas stew. Top it off with some design work over a beer, maybe a pizza, and it was a damn good day.

And that, he thought, was the answer to Fiona’s question.

Why Orcas?

Water drew him—kicky surf on beaches, wide river, busy creeks, quiet inlets. That yen had pulled him from Spokane to Seattle. That, he mused, and the city itself—its style, its openness to art. The nightlife, the movement, he supposed, had appealed at that stage of his life.

As Nina had, for a while.

He’d had good years there. Interesting, creative, successful years. But . . .

Too many people, too much movement and not enough space.

He liked the idea of an island. Self-contained, just a little apart and surrounded by water. Those wicked, twisting roads offered countless views of blue and green and the pretty boats that plied it, the green-knuckled clumps of rough land that seemed to float on it.

If he wanted more he could drive into a village, have a meal, watch the tourists. If he wanted solitude, he could stay home—his island on the island. Which, he admitted, was his usual choice.

And which, he thought with a glance toward Jaws, was why his mother had pushed a dog on him.

Watching those ears flap and the tail thump, he acknowledged his mother was right. Again.

He pulled in the back of Sylvia’s shop and raised the windows, leaving a three-inch crack. “You stay here. Don’t eat anything.” At the last minute he remembered distraction, reached over and took a chew toy from the glove box.

“Play with this,” he ordered.

When he carted in the first load, he caught the scent of home cooking—a little spicy—and spotted a Crock-Pot on the shipping counter.

He poked his head into the shop. Sylvia, pretty and bright in one of her colorful skirts, chatted up a customer while her clerk rang up sales for another.

Business was good, he thought. Another plus for the day.

He gave her a quick wave, started to back out.

“Simon! This is perfect timing. This is Simon Doyle,” she told the customer. “Simon, Susan’s over from Bainbridge Island. She’s interested in your wine cabinet.”

Sylvia gave him a blinding smile and a subtle “Come over here” signal.

This was the part he hated. But trapped, he stepped over.

“I was just telling Susan how lucky we are you moved to Orcas and let us display your work. Susan came over for the day with her sister. Also lucky for us.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Susan offered a hand sporting a perfect French manicure and a canary diamond. “It’s beautiful work.”

“Thanks.” He rubbed his hand on his jeans. “Sorry. I’ve been working. I’m just dropping off some new pieces.”

“Anything as impressive as this?”

“Smaller pieces, actually.”

The sister wandered over, holding an earring up to each ear. “Susan, which pair?”

Susan angled her head, tipped it side to side. “Both. Dee, this is the man who made the bowl I’m buying for Cherry’s birthday, and this cabinet I can’t seem to walk away from. Simon Doyle.”

“I love the bowl.” Dee gave Simon’s hand a hard, fast shake. “But she saw it first. Sylvia said you might be persuaded to make another.”

“Simon’s just brought some new pieces in.”

“Really?” Dee glanced from Sylvia back to Simon. “Any bowls?”

“A couple,” he began.

“Why don’t I go unpack so you can take a look,” Sylvia suggested.

“That’d be great. First pick,” Dee said, giving her sister a little poke.

“There’s more in the truck. I’ll go—”

“No, no, I’ll take care of it.” Sylvia patted Simon’s arm, then gave it a warning squeeze. “Why don’t you tell Susan more about the cabinet? It’s our current showpiece,” she added, then glided off before Simon could find an escape hatch.

He hated the selling part, the feeling of being on display as much as the work.

“I love the tones of the wood.” Susan traced a hand down the grain. “And then the detail. It’s elegant without being ornate and showy.”

“It suits you.”

Her face lit up. “That’s a clever thing to say.”

“I’d tell you if it didn’t. You like the understated and the unique. You don’t mind if it’s impractical, but you’re happier if it serves a purpose.”

“God, you nailed her. Psychic woodworker,” Dee said with a laugh. “You’d better buy it, Susan. It’s karma.”

“Maybe it is.” Susan opened the doors again, slid open one of the drawers. “Smooth as silk. I appreciate good work.”

“Me too.” He noted that Sylvia had stocked it with some excellent wineglasses and a couple bottles of good wine.

“How long have you been working with wood?”

“According to my mother, since I was two.”

“Time well spent. Sylvia said you moved to the island. From where?” He felt his skin begin to itch. “Spokane via Seattle.”

“Doyle,” Dee murmured. “I think I read something about you and your work some time ago, in the art section.”

“Maybe.”

Susan tilted her head again, as she had when judging her sister’s earring choices. “Not much on self-promotion, are you?”

“The work should speak for itself.”

“I absolutely agree with that, and in this case, it does. I’m buying it.”

“Ladies,” Sylvia called from the doorway. “Why don’t you come into the stockroom. Dee, I think we have your bowl. Simon, I brought the puppy in. I hope you don’t mind. I know this is taking a little longer than you planned, and he was so happy to see me.”

“A puppy.”

“Careful,” Dee said as her sister bolted for the stockroom. “She’ll want to buy him, too. She’s wild about dogs.”

It took another thirty minutes, with Sylvia cagily blocking his escape and Jaws being stroked and cuddled into delirium. He loaded boxes and bags into their car and decided the entire event had been more exhausting than pulling a stump.

Sylvia dragged him back into the stockroom and into a circling dance while Jaws barked and leaped. “Simon! Those two women didn’t just make our day, they made our week! And they’ll be back, oh yes, they’ll be back. Every time Susan looks at her wine cabinet, or the vase, or Dee uses the bowl, they’ll think of the shop, and of you. And they’ll be back.”

“Go, team.”

“Simon, we sold pieces as we unpacked them. And the cabinet? I honestly thought we’d have it on display until well into the tourist season. You have to make me another!” She plopped down on the little sofa where she’d served her two customers lemon water.

“Then I’d better get to work.”

“Be excited. You just made an excellent amount of money. Ch-ching. And we sold pieces that those two ladies will enjoy. Really enjoy. My day needed a lift, and this really did it.”

She bent down to pet Jaws. “I’m worried about Fee. There was an article on Perry and the recent murders in U.S. Report this morning. I went by to see her, but she was already gone. Her unit works today.”

“I heard.”

“I talked to Laine, her mother. We both decided not to call her while she’s out practicing.”

“You talk to her mother?”

“Laine and I have a good relationship. We both love Fee. I know she’ll have heard about the article by now, and I know it’ll upset her. You could do me a big favor.”

He felt his skin start to itch again. “What kind of favor?”

“I made her minestrone.” She gestured to the Crock-Pot. “And a round of rosemary bread. She should be getting home soon, if she’s not home already. Would you take it by?”

“Why? You should take it by.”

“I would. I planned to, but it occurs to me it’d be good to have someone else around, someone closer to her own age. And this one.” She stroked Jaws again. “It’s hard to be blue around this guy.”

She tipped up her face, and even knowing she was using her eyes deliberately, he couldn’t fight it.

“Would you mind, Simon? I get so emotional when I think of what she went through. I might make it worse. I’d really feel better if I knew she had a good meal, maybe a little company.”

HOW WAS IT, Simon wondered, that some women could talk you into doing the opposite of what you wanted to do?

His mother had the same talent. He’d watched her, listened, attempted to evade, maneuver, outfox—and she could, without fail, nudge him in the opposing direction.

Sylvia was cut from the same cloth, and now he had a Crock-Pot and a loaf of bread, an assignment—and that contemplative walk on the beach was over before it had begun.

Was he supposed to let Fiona cry on his shoulder now? He hated being the shoulder. He never knew what to say or do.

Pat, pat, there, there. What the fuck?

Plus, if she had any sense—and he thought she did—she’d want solitude, not company.

“If people let other people alone,” he told Jaws, “people would be better off. It’s always people that screw things up for people anyway.”

He’d just give her the food and take off. Better all around. Here you go, bon appétit. Then, at least, he’d have his studying, measuring time, his design time over pizza and a beer.

Maybe she wasn’t back yet. Better. He could just leave the pot and loaf on the porch and be done with it.

The minute he turned into her drive, Jaws perked up. The pup danced on the seat, planted his paws on the dash. The fact that he could without doing a header to the floor caused Simon to realize the dog had grown considerably in the last couple weeks.

He probably needed a new collar.

Reaching over, he slid his finger between the collar and the fur. “Shit. Why don’t you tell me these things?”

As he drove over the bridge, the pup’s tail slashed—door, seat, door, seat, in a jubilant rhythm.

“Glad somebody’s happy,” Simon muttered.

The truck sat in the drive; the dogs raced in the yard.

“We’re not staying,” he warned Jaws. “In and out.”

He let the dog out first and considered that what with stump hauling with Gary and Butch, a visit to town, the adoration of women and now the unscheduled playdate with pals, this had turned into the canine version of a day at Disney World for Jaws.

He retrieved the pot and the foil-wrapped bread.

Fiona stood in the doorway now, leaning casually on the jamb. And to Simon’s puzzled surprise, she was smiling.

“Hi, neighbor.”

“I had to go in to Sylvia’s. She asked me to drop this off.”

She straightened to take the lid off the pot and sniff. “Mmm, minestrone. I’m very fond. Bring it on back.”

She moved aside to let him pass and left the door open as she often did.

The fire crackled, the whiff of soup spiced the air, and she smelled like the woods.

“I heard you got your stump.”

“Is it out on the newswire?”

“Grapevine’s faster. I ran into Gary and Sue on my way home. They were heading to their son’s for dinner. Just set it on the counter, thanks. I was going to have a beer, but Syl’s minestrone requires a good red. Unless you’d rather beer.”

The plan to get in and out shifted, weighed by curiosity. The grapevine was fast, he thought. She had to know about the article. “The red’s good.”

She crossed to a long, narrow cupboard—she really could use a wine cabinet—to select a bottle. “So, a sink?”

“What?”

“The stump.” She opened a drawer, pulled out a corkscrew without any rooting around. “Gary said you’re going to make a sink. A stump sink. It’s going to be the talk of the island.”

“Because not that much goes on here. I’ll get your tree planted in a couple days.”

“Works for me.”

He studied her face while she pulled the cork, saw no signs of distress, shed tears, anger. Maybe the grapevine had broken down after all.

She poured the wine, plugged in the cord on the pot. “Let’s give it a few minutes,” she said, and tapped her glass to his. “So, a solarium.”

“A what?”

“You said I should think about a solarium, south side. Open the kitchen. How would it work?”

“Ah . . . that wall.” He gestured with his glass. “Load-bearing so you’d need support. Maybe a couple of beams, columns—keep it open but give it a sense of entry. Wall out, beams up. Take it out ten, twelve feet. Maybe pitch the roof. Skylights. A good, generous window would give you a view into the woods. Maybe wide-planked floors. You’d have room for a table if you wanted an alternate to eating in the kitchen.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It’d be some work.”

“Maybe I’ll start saving my pennies.” She took a sip of wine, then set the glass down to get a jar of olives out of the refrigerator. “You know about the article.”

“Apparently you do.”

She transferred olives from bottle to a shallow dish. “James read it before we met up this morning—and passed the word to the rest of the unit. They were all so worried about bringing it up, not bringing it up, nobody could concentrate. So they finally told me and we got started on our work.”

“Did you read it?”

“No. This is my version of an appetizer, by the way.” She shoved the olives toward him. “No, I didn’t read it, and I won’t. No point. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened before, and nothing I can do to change what’s happening now. I knew it was coming, now it has. Tomorrow it’ll be yesterday.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Syl sent my favorite soup. She thought I’d be upset.”

“I guess.”

Fiona picked up her wine again, pointed at him with her free hand. “You know very well, as she’d have told you—and maneuvered you into coming by so I wouldn’t be alone.”

The dogs rushed in then, a happy pack of fur. “You’re not alone anyway.”

“True enough.” She gave everyone a rub. “You figured I’d be upset—and probably couldn’t outmaneuver Syl.”

“Does anybody?”

“Not really. I am upset—but in a controllable way. I’ve already had two brooding days this month, so I’m not allowed another one.”

He found himself unwillingly fascinated. “There’s a limit?”

“For me there is. And now I have soup and . . .” She peeled back the foil. “Mmmm, rosemary bread. This is exceptional. I have a stepmother who’d take the time to make it for me, a neighbor who’d bring it by even though he’d rather not, and my dogs. I’m not allowed to brood. So we’ll have dinner and conversation. But I’m not going to sleep with you after.”

“Cocktease.”

She nearly choked on the wine. “You did not just say that.”

“Say what?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “See? This is better than brooding. Let’s eat.”

She ladled out bowls of soup, put the bread on a board and poured some sort of dipping sauce into a dish.

“The candles,” she said as she lit them, “aren’t for seduction. They just make the food taste better.”

“I thought they were to make me look prettier.”

“But you’re so beautiful already.” She smiled, spooned up soup. “To Syl.”

“Okay.” He sampled. “Wait.” Sampled again. “This is really good. Like dinner-in-Tuscany good.”

“She’d love to hear that. Mostly, I think Sylvia’s developed too close an attachment to tofu and strange grains of rice. But when she does minestrone, she’s a genius. Try the bread.”

He broke off a hunk, dipped. “She called your mother.”

“Oh.” Distress came into those clear blue eyes. “I should’ve thought of that. I’ll call them both later and let them know I’m all right.”

“You’re right about the bread, too. My mother bakes bread. Baking’s kind of a hobby for her.”

“I can bake. You know you buy that cookie dough in rolls, slice it, stick it in the oven?”

“My specialty’s frozen pizza.”

“Another fine skill.”

He went back to his soup. “Everyone I know who’s divorced hates all parties involved. Or at least coldly disdains.”

“My father was a very good man. My mother’s a lovely woman. At some point they just stopped being happy together. I know there were fights, and anger, probably some blame tossed around, but for the most part they handled it as well as it can be handled. It still hurt unbelievably, for a while. But then, it didn’t, because he was a very good man, and she’s a lovely woman, and they were happy again. And, oddly, came to like each other again. Then Dad met Syl, and they were . . . well, they were just beautiful together. She and my mother took the time, made the effort to get to know each other, because of me. And they just hit it off. They really like each other. My mother sends Syl flowers every year on the anniversary of my father’s death. Sunflowers, because they were my father’s favorite. Okay.” She pressed her hands to her eyes briefly. “Enough of that. It gets me weepy.

“Tell me what you did today besides hauling a stump out of the woods.”

Before he could speak, the dogs wandered back in. Jaws scented the air and bulleted for the table. He plopped his paws on Fiona’s leg and whined.

“Off.” She snapped her fingers, pointed to the ground. He sat, but the tail swished and the eyes shone with anticipation. She shifted her gaze to Simon.

“You feed him from the table.”

“Maybe. He keeps at me until—”

He broke off when she huffed out a breath. She rose, walked to the pantry. She got out small chew bones. One for Jaws, and one each for the three dogs who looked at the pup with pity.

“These are yours.” She laid the bones across the room. “Go ahead. Distract,” she said to Simon. “Replace, discipline. As long as you give in and feed him from the table—and people food isn’t good for his diet—he’ll keep begging. And you’re teaching him to be a nuisance by rewarding bad behavior.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Keep it up, you’ll raise a counter-grazer. I’ve had more than one student who’s chowed down on the Thanksgiving turkey, the dinner party rack of lamb or the Christmas ham because they weren’t taught proper manners. One stole a neighbor’s steaks right off the grill.”

“Was that a fetch/retrieve? Because that could be a good skill.”

She shook her spoon at him. “Mark my words. Anyway, other than the stump?”

“Nothing much. I had some work, and I took some pieces into Syl’s, which is why I’m eating soup.” It wasn’t a chore after all, he realized, this dinner conversation with candlelight and dogs gnawing on rawhide. “She’s buzzed because a couple of women were in there when I came in, and they walked out loaded down. She’s shipping the wine cabinet because it was too big for their car.”

“The wine cabinet.” Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “You sold my wine cabinet.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

She sulked a moment, then shrugged. “Well, hell. Congratulations.”

“It suited her.” He shrugged back when Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “Susan from Bainbridge Island. Canary diamond, good leather jacket, stylish boots. Subtle but expensive Susan from Bainbridge Island.”

“What am I? Obvious and cheap?”

“If you were cheap we’d be having sex now, soup later.”

“That’s supposed to be funny. It is, but only a little.”

“What do you do when you’re out with your unit like today? Don’t you just know all the stuff anyway?”

“It’s essential to practice, individually and as a team. We work a different problem, over different terrain, at least once a month. Then we can go over any mistakes, any flaws or any room to improve. We worked a cadaver find today.”

Simon frowned at his soup. “Nice.”

“Happy to change the subject if you’re sensitive.”

“Where’d you get the cadaver? Corpses Are Us?”

“They were out. We use cadaver material—bone, hair, body fluid—in a container. Mai, as base operations, plants it earlier. Then we set up, just as we would for a real search, assign sectors and so on.”

He tried to think if he’d ever had a more unusual conversation over minestrone. Absolutely not.

“How does the dog know it’s supposed to find a dead person instead of a live one?”

“That’s a good question. Different command. For mine, I use ‘find’ for a live search and ‘search’ for cadaver work.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s more, but most of it deals with the cross-training, the early work, the advanced work.”

“Jaws might be good at it. He found a dead fish today. No problem.”

“Actually, he could be. He can be taught to differentiate between the scent of a dead fish, or animal, and human remains.”

“And not to roll in it when he finds it?”

“Definitely.”

“Might be worth it just for that.” He glanced over to see Jaws bellying toward the table. Fiona simply turned, pointed. Jaws slunk back to the other dogs.

“He responds well, see? Not only to you but to another handler. That’s another essential skill.”

“I think he responds better to you, and I’m not sure that’s all that helpful.”

She nudged her bowl aside. “Maybe not, but this has been. I wouldn’t have brooded because it’s against the rules, but I’d have come close on my own.”

He studied her while the candlelight flickered. “You don’t look like hell tonight.”

“Oh my goodness.” She fluttered a hand at her heart. “Am I blushing?”

“I figured you would,” he added, unperturbed. “A full day out on maneuvers, or whatever they are.”

“Unit training.”

“Sure, and the fallout from the article. But you look good.”

“Wow, from not looking like hell to looking good in one leap. What could be next?”

“Your smile. I also figure you have to know it’s your best feature—the most appealing, the sexiest thing about you. That’s why you use it so often.”

“Really?”

“See, like right now.”

Still smiling, she rested her chin on her fist. “I’m still not sleeping with you tonight. This wasn’t a date. I may want you to take me on a date before we sleep together. I haven’t decided.”

“You haven’t decided.”

“That’s right. It’s one of the privileges of the female to decide these things. I don’t make the rules. So I’m not going to sleep with you yet.”

“Maybe I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“Because I’m not your type,” she said with a nod. “But I’ve already seduced you with my smile, and softened you up with Sylvia’s soup. I could lay you like linoleum.”

“That’s insulting. And provocative.”

“But I won’t because I like you.”

“You don’t really like me that much.”

She laughed. “I actually do, and I’m not altogether settled tonight, so it wouldn’t be what it should be. But I’ll take this.”

She rose to walk around the table. And slid into his lap. She grazed her teeth over his bottom lip, then soothed it with her tongue before sinking them both into the kiss.

Comfort and fire, she thought, promise and threat. The hard body and thick, soft hair, the rough stubble and smooth lips.

She sighed into it, retreated, then locked her eyes on his.

“A little more,” she murmured, and took his mouth again.

This time his hands slid up her sides, skimmed her breasts. Possessed. Small and firm, with her heart thudding under his palms.

“Fiona.”

She broke the kiss to lay her cheek to his. “You could convince me; we both know it. Please don’t. It’s so unfair, but please don’t.”

Some women, he thought, had the power to turn a man in the opposite direction from what he wanted. It seemed his fate to run up against them. And, damn it, to care.

“I need to go.”

“Yeah.” She drew back again, this time cupping his face in her hands. “You do. But thanks, because when I’m restless tonight it won’t be over some damned article in the paper.”

“Just call me Samaritan.”

For a moment, she rested her brow to his. “I’ll give you a container of soup. And a bigger collar for Jaws. He’s outgrown that one.”

He didn’t argue as she gave him time to settle.

And still, all the way home while the pup snored in the seat beside him, he could taste her, smell her.

He glanced at the dog. “This is your fault,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t be in this situation except for you.”

As he turned into his own drive, he reminded himself to go buy a damn tree and plant it.

A deal was a deal.

TEN

She got through it, got past it. Work and routine pushed her hour to hour. She channeled excess nerves into workouts, shedding tension with sweat until an article rehashing her ordeal, her loss no longer mattered.

Her classes, her blog, the daily care and interactions with her dogs filled her days. And since a casual dinner over soup and bread, she had the idea of a relationship—however far it went—with Simon to entertain her mind.

She enjoyed him, quite a bit. Maybe, she considered, because he wasn’t as protective and easy as her circle of friends or the two women who made up her family. He was a little hard, a lot blunt and, she thought, a great deal more complicated than most people she knew.

In many ways, since Greg’s murder, the island had become her sanctuary, her safe place where no one looked at her with pity, or particular interest, and where she’d been able to restart her life.

Not on bare ground, she thought. She was who she was, at the core. But like an island, she’d broken off from the mainland and allowed herself to change direction, to grow, even to re-form.

Not so many years before, she’d imagined herself raising a family— three-kid plan—in a pretty suburb. She’d have learned to cook good, interesting meals and would love her part-time job (to be determined). There would have been dogs in the house and a swing set in the yard, dance lessons and soccer games.

She’d have been a steady and supportive cop’s wife, a devoted mother and a contented woman.

She’d have been good at it, Fiona thought as she sat on the porch taking in the quiet morning. Maybe she’d been young to have been planning marriage and family, but it had all unfolded so seamlessly.

Until.

Until there was nothing left of that pretty picture but shattered glass and a broken frame.

But.

But now she was good at this. Content and fulfilled. And she understood she’d come to this place, to this life, to these skills because all those lovely, sweet plans had shattered.

The core might be the same, but everything around it had changed. And she was, because of or despite that, a happy, successful woman.

Bogart came over to bump his head under her arm. Automatically, she shifted, draped her arm over him to rub his side.

“I don’t think everything happens for a reason. That’s just the way we cope with the worst that happens to us. But I can be glad I’m here.”

And not feel disloyal, she thought, to Greg, to all those pretty plans and the girl who made them.

“New day, Bogart. I wonder what it’ll bring.”

As if in answer, he came to alert. And she saw Simon’s truck rolling down her drive.

“Could be interesting,” she murmured as the other dogs raced over to join her and sit, tails drumming.

She smiled at Jaws’s happy face peering out from the windshield on the passenger’s side, and Simon’s unreadable one behind the wheel.

She rose and, when the truck stopped, gave her dogs the release signal. “A little early for class,” she called when Simon stepped out, and Jaws leaped into the reunion with his buddies.

“I’ve got your damn tree.”

“And so cheerful, too.” She wandered over as he waded through the dogs.

“Give me the coffee.” He didn’t wait for the offer but took her mug, downed the rest of the contents.

“Well, help yourself.”

“I ran out.”

Because he looked surly, unshaven and sexy, she fluttered her lashes at him. “And still, here you are bright and early with a tree, just for me.”

“I’m here bright and fucking early because that dog chewed open five pounds of dog food somewhere before dawn, then opted to puke it up, bag and all, on my bed. While I was in it.”

“Awww.”

Simon scowled as the concern and attention went straight to the dog. “I’m the injured party.”

Ignoring him, Fiona rubbed the puppy, checked his eyes, his nose, his belly. “Poor baby. You’re okay now. That’s all right.”

“I had to throw out the sheets.”

From her crouch, Fiona rolled her eyes. “No, you clean off the puke, then you wash the sheets.”

“Not those sheets. He heaved like a drunk frat boy.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“I didn’t eat the damn kibble.”

“No, but you didn’t have it stowed where he couldn’t get to it, or better yet in a lidded container. Plus, he’s probably not ready to have free rein in the house. You should put up a baby gate.”

His scowl only deepened. “I’m not putting up a baby gate.”

“Then don’t complain when he gets into something he shouldn’t while you’re sleeping or otherwise occupied.”

“If I’m getting a lecture, I want more coffee.”

“In the kitchen.” Once he’d stomped out of earshot, she let the wheezing laugh escape. “He’s mad at you, isn’t he? Yes, he’s very mad. He’ll get over it. Anyway”—she gave Jaws a kiss on his cool, wet nose—“it was his own fault.”

Rising, she walked to the back of the truck to get a look at her tree.

She stood there, grinning still, when Simon strode out with his own mug of coffee.

“You got me a dogwood.”

“It seemed appropriate when I bought it yesterday. But that was before this morning when I was reminded dogs are a pain in the ass.”

“First, it’s a beautiful tree. Thank you. Second, any and everything that depends on us can be pains in the ass. He booted on your bed because when he felt sick and scared he wanted you. And third”—she laid her hands on his shoulders, touched her mouth to his—“good morning.”

“Not yet.”

She smiled, kissed him again.

“Marginally better.”

“Well, let’s plant a tree and see what that does for you. Let’s put it over there. No . . .” She changed direction. “There.”

“I thought you wanted it back in the woods, where the stump was.”

“Yes, but it’s so pretty, and back there hardly anyone will see it but me. Oh, there, back there, just on this side of the bridge. Maybe I should get another one for the other side. You know, so they’d flank the bridge.”

“You’re on your own there.” But he shrugged, opened the truck door.

“I’ll go with you, give you a hand.” So saying, she hopped nimbly in the back of the truck and sat on the bag of peat moss.

He shook his head but maneuvered the truck around, eased to the bridge and parked again. When he got out to lower the tailgate, she slung the bag of peat moss over her shoulder.

“I’ll get that.”

“Got it,” she said, and jumped down.

He watched as she carted it over to the spot she wanted, set it down. When she came back, he took her arm. “Flex,” he ordered.

Amused, she obeyed, saw his eyes register surprise when he tested her biceps. “What do you do, bench-press your dogs?”

“Among other things. Plus, I just have excellent protoplasm.”

“I’ll say.” He climbed up to pull the tree to the tailgate. “Get the tools, Muscle Girl. There should be an extra pair of work gloves in the glove box.”

The dogs sniffed around but soon lost interest. He said nothing when she hauled over the bag of soil he’d bought to mix with the peat, still nothing when she walked back to the house trailing the dogs.

But he stopped digging to watch her walk back carrying two pails like some lean-muscled milkmaid.

“My hose won’t reach this far,” she told him—and he was gratified she was at least a little winded. “If it needs more water, I can get it from the stream.”

She set the buckets down. The dogs immediately began to lap at the water.

“I don’t know why I never thought to plant something pretty here before. I’ll see it whenever I come home, go out, from the porch, when I’m training. Them,” she corrected, “if I put one on the other side of the drive. Want me to dig awhile?”

It was probably stupid to take that as a challenge to his manhood, but he couldn’t help it. “I’ve got it.”

“Well, let me know.” She walked off to play with the dogs.

He’d never considered tough especially sexy, but despite the willowy frame, the soft coloring, the apparently bottomless patience, the woman had an underlayment of steel. Most of the women he’d been involved with hadn’t lifted anything more challenging than an apple martini—and maybe a five-pound free weight at a fancy health club. But this one? She shouldered a sack of dirt like a seasoned laborer.

And damn if it wasn’t sexy. And it made him wonder just what that body would look like, feel like, when he got her naked. Maybe he needed to push a little harder on that goal, he thought, and put his back into the digging.

She came back when he cut open the bags of soil and peat to mix into the hole.

“Hold off on that a second, and I’ll do it. But I want to show you something first.” She stepped beside Simon, then signaled Jaws—hand command only. He trotted right over and, when she pointed, sat. “Good dog, good.” She slipped him one of the treats she never seemed to be without. “Stay. Go on and get down to his level,” she told Simon.

“Do you want this tree planted or not?”

“It’ll only take a second. Stay,” she repeated firmly when Jaws bunched for a leap as Simon hunkered down. “Stay. He’s getting it, and we’ll work on the sit and stay with distance. But I thought you’d like this. Hold out your hand, say, ‘Shake.’”

Simon slid a cynical glance up at her. “No way.”

“Just give it a try.”

“Right.” He held out a hand. “Shake.”

Jaws lifted a paw, plopped it into Simon’s palm. “Son of a bitch.” He laughed, and the dog forgot himself in pride and pleasure to rear up and lap at Simon’s face. “That’s pretty good. That’s pretty damn good, you dumbass.”

Fiona smiled down as man and dog congratulated each other.

“Do it again,” Simon demanded. “Sit. Okay, shake. Nice.” He stroked the pup’s ears, looked up at Fiona. “How’d you teach him that so fast?”

God, they looked adorable together, she realized. The tawny-eyed man with his morning stubble, the young dog who was growing into his feet.

“He wants to learn, to please. He has a strong drive.” She passed treats into Simon’s free hand. “Reward him. He’ll be happy with your approval and affection, but the food reward’s extra incentive.”

She picked up the shovel, began to toss dirt, then peat, then dirt into the hole.

“That’s enough. We need to set the root-ball.”

“I don’t know much about planting trees.” She swiped the back of the work glove over her brow. “In fact, this is my first. Do you?”

“I’ve plugged in a few.”

“I thought you lived in the city before Orcas.”

“I didn’t grow up in the city. My family’s in construction.”

“Okay, but doesn’t that mean planting buildings?”

His lips quirked. “You could say. But my dad’s policy was to buy a tree or a shrub for any new house he built. So I plugged in a few.”

“That’s nice. Your dad’s policy, that’s nice.”

“Yeah. Nice gesture, and good business.”

He hefted the dogwood, lowered the root-ball into the hole. “That’s about right.” Crouching, he opened the burlap around the root-ball to expose it.

Together they dumped in topsoil and peat, mixed it.

“Shouldn’t we cover it more?” she asked when Simon stopped.

“No, just to the height of the root-ball.” He lifted a bucket. “You want to deep-water, and do that about once a week unless we get a good rain.”

It had been fun, she thought, planting a tree with him in the cool morning air. “Once a week, check.”

“I didn’t get mulch. Figured it was going in the woods and I could just use pine needles. You’ll want to mulch it.”

“Okay.” She stepped back. “I’ve got a dogwood tree. Thank you, Simon.”

“We had a deal.”

“And you could’ve picked up a pine and stuck it in the hole from the stump. This is lovely.”

She turned to kiss him, a friendly gesture, but he moved in and made it more.

“We’ve got some time before school starts,” he told her.

“Hmm, that’s true.” She tipped up her wrist to check the time. “Not a lot. We’d have to be pretty quick and pretty motivated.”

“You’re the former track star. You be quick. I’ll be motivated.”

He smelled of the soap from his shower twined with a touch of healthy sweat from the effort of digging. He looked rough, and ready. And the long, hard kiss beside the sweet young tree had stirred her to aching.

Why wait? she asked herself. Why pretend?

“It might be a good way to celebrate a tree planting. Why don’t we—”

She broke off as she heard tires on gravel. “Apparently someone else is early,” she began, then saw the patrol car. “Oh God.” Reaching down, she groped for Simon’s hand.

Davey pulled up behind the truck, got out. “Nice-looking tree,” he said, and took off his sunglasses and hooked them in his shirt pocket. He gave Simon a nod as he walked toward them. “Simon.”

“Deputy.”

Davey reached out to run a hand down Fiona’s arm. “Fee, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but they found another one.”

The breath she’d held came out with a jump. “When?”

“Yesterday. In Klamath National Forest, near the Oregon border,” he said before she asked. “She’d been missing a couple days. A college student, Redding, California. So he moved west and a little south for the abduction, then drove over a hundred miles to . . . bury her. The details are the same as the others.”

“Two days,” she murmured.

“They’ve got a couple of feds going in to push on Perry, to see if they can pull anything out of him, if there’s anything to pull.”

“He’s not waiting as long between,” she said. “He’s not as patient.” She shuddered once. “And he’s heading north.”

“He’s targeting the same victim type,” he reminded her, then set his teeth. “But goddamn it, Fee, after that newspaper thing, I’ve got some concerns.”

“He knows where to find me if he wants me.” Panic wanted to beat its wings in her throat. And panic, she reminded herself, solved nothing. Nothing.

And still those wings fluttered.

“If he wants to finish Perry’s work, a kind of homage, he can find me. I’m not stupid, Davey. It’s something I considered when I knew there was going to be an article.”

“You could move in with Sylvia or Mai for a while. Hell, Fee, you can stay with Rachel and me.”

“I know, but the fact is I’m as safe here as anywhere. Safer, maybe, with the dogs.” Her sanctuary. She had to believe it or the panic would win. “Nobody can get near the house without me knowing.”

Davey glanced toward Simon. “I’d feel better if you had more than the dogs.”

“I’ve got a gun, and you know I can use it. I can’t uproot my life on the possibility he may decide to come here in a week, a month, six months.” She dragged a hand through her hair, ordering herself to stay sensible. “He’s not as patient as Perry,” she repeated, “and he’s following someone else’s pattern. They’ll catch him. I have to believe they’ll catch him. Until they do, I’m not helpless.”

“One of us is going to check in with you every day. We take care of our own, even when they aren’t helpless.”

“That works for me.”

Simon held his silence until he and Fiona were alone. “Why don’t you go visit your mother for a while?”

“Because I have to work. And I do have to work,” she added. “I have a mortgage, a car payment, bills. I’ve had to juggle like a circus clown to manage the time and money for a long weekend off.” She picked up the shovel to put it in the back of the truck. “And what happens if he doesn’t go after some other poor girl for weeks? Do I just put everything on hold because of a maybe? I won’t be stupid and I won’t be careless.” Because it made her feel strong and capable, she hauled up the sagging bag of peat. “But I will not let this ruin my life. Not again. And I won’t be taken. Not again. Not ever again.”

“You leave your door unlocked. Half the time you leave it open.”

“Yes, that’s true. And if someone they didn’t know tried to get within twenty feet of the house, or me, the dogs would stop them. But you can believe I’ll be locking up at night now, and my nine millimeter’s going in the drawer next to my bed.”

It took him a minute. “You have a nine millimeter?”

“That’s right.” She tossed the bag of topsoil after the bag of peat. “Greg taught me how to shoot, how to respect a weapon. And after . . . after I started going to the range regularly until I was proficient. I’m probably a little rusty, but I’ll fix that. I’ll fix it.” The words came out too fast, too fast, and she fought to slow them. “I’ll take care of myself. I need my life. I need my home and my work, my routine.”

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I need it.”

“Okay. Okay.” He glanced toward the dogs. They looked like happy, friendly, lick-your-face-off types. But he remembered the low growl from Newman when he’d tussled a little with Fiona in the kitchen. “Why don’t you cancel your classes for the day?”

“No, no. Some of them are already on the ferry, or heading in. Besides, routine. It keeps me centered.”

“Is that what does it?”

“Apparently. The tree’s still pretty,” she said, calmer again. “It’s still a nice morning, and I still have work to do. It helps.”

“Then I’d better move my truck.” He opened the door. “Teach him something else.” He lifted his chin at Jaws. “Like how to get me a beer out of the fridge.”

“Not altogether impossible. But we’d better nail down the basics first.”

ROUTINE DID HELP, and part of that routine was people, and their dogs. She listened, as always, to clients relating progress, or the lack of it. She listened to problems, and arranged her lesson for the day around them.

She used the first few minutes for walk, heel, sit to get both handlers and pups settled in.

“Some of us are having problems with jumping, so we’re going to take that discipline first today. Puppies jump on us because it’s fun and because they want our attention, and they’re so cute we give in to them, even encourage it, rewarding bad manners—and behavior that won’t be so cute in bigger dogs as they grow. Annie, why don’t you tell us what happened the other day.”

Annie from San Juan Island gave her collie mix an apologetic glance. “My niece came to visit with her little boy. He’s three. Casey was so happy to see them, she ran over and jumped on Rory. She knocked him down and he hit his head. He wasn’t really hurt, but he could’ve been, and it scared him. She didn’t mean it.”

“Of course not. Casey’s a friendly, happy dog. Energetic. I imagine most of us have had something like this happen. Or at least scratched legs, dirtied pants, shredded hose.”

“Bruno’s always tearing up my panty hose.” Jake, all 220 pounds of him, got a laugh at the remark.

“We’ll fix that for you, Jake. Like everything else, it takes consistency, firmness and understanding. Do not reward your dog when it jumps. No attention, no smiles, no petting. I find the best command is generally ‘Off.’ Using the ‘Down’ command can confuse them, as we want to use this to get them to lie down. I’m going to use Casey to demonstrate. Go ahead and take her off the leash, Annie.”

She called the dog, who raced over and, as Fiona expected, rose up on her hind legs to jump. Fiona stepped forward, countering the balance. “Off!” Casey’s feet hit the ground. “Good dog. Good girl.” Fiona offered a treat and a rub.

“Obviously it’s going to take more than once, but the dog will learn. The instinct is to step back when a dog jumps, to take their weight. But by stepping forward, the dog can’t get its balance. You use the step and the command—both firm—and when your dog has all four feet on the ground again—not before—you offer praise and reward.”

She demonstrated again. “You and everyone in your family have to get on board with this. The discipline can’t come from just you. Don’t let your kids encourage jumping because it’s fun for them, too. Call her back, Annie, and repeat what I just did if she jumps. Step forward, say ‘Off!’ Then reward.”

Fiona nodded in satisfaction as the routine played out. “Okay, let’s spread out so everyone can work on this. We move on to how to teach your dog not to jump on others next.”

She walked around, offered advice, encouragement. People needed praise and reward, too, she knew, so she doled them out.

She ended the class with a second round of sit and stay.

“Good job, everybody. I’ve got a tip for you this week since spring’s coming: some of you might be planning a garden or have one already started. I just blogged about this, so you can refer to that if and when you need a reminder. You’ll be unhappy if your dog digs up your petunias or tomatoes. Dogs dig for several reasons. Sometimes it’s just because they like it. Sometimes because they’re bored. Regular play, exercise and attention can discourage digging, but not always. You’re not always going to be right on hand when that digging urge strikes. So, fill the holes.”

She got a moan out of several students.

“Yeah, it’s an irritating cycle initially. But a lot of young dogs will get discouraged when the hole they’ve dug keeps getting filled. What’s the point? Also offer alternatives to digging. Playtime, a walk, a chew toy. Distract. But because some will just, well, dig in, I advise you to put a few additives in the dirt you replace. Chili pepper’s a good deterrent, and so is dog poop. Seriously. Sometimes a dog digs to find a cool spot. If you have enough room you might designate some shady spot in the yard for him to dig and clear and hang out in when it’s hot.

“Last, those of you who have no plans to breed your dog and haven’t already made arrangements for spaying or neutering, it’s time.”

She didn’t lecture on the subject. Yet.

As her students began heading out, she strolled over to Simon. “I saw your face.”

“That’s because it’s right here, on the front of my head.”

“The look on your face when I mentioned neutering.” She gave him a poke. “He’ll still be a guy. Balls don’t make the man.”

“Easy for you to say, sister.”

“And what are you going to say the first time he catches a whiff of some sexy bitch in heat and runs off to bang her?”

“Score?”

She poked him again. “And following those instincts, he could get hit by a car on the road, get lost. Now, do you really want to add to the stray and/or unwanted dog population? The number of dogs put to sleep every year just so yours keeps his balls and scores?”

“He’s more into dead fish than sex.”

“For now. Responsibly neutering him will help his behavior. Odds are he’ll be somewhat calmer.”

“Most eunuchs are.”

“You force me to give you literature.” She picked up the ball Peck dropped at her feet, winged it. Then watched the car cruise down her drive. “They timed it.”

“Who?”

“I expect Davey let some people know about what happened. That’s Meg and Chuck Greene, from my unit. First class is over, and I don’t have another today until this afternoon. So here they are to see if I need company.”

She seemed touched rather than annoyed, and Simon took it as his cue to go. “I’ve got to take off.”

“Oh, don’t be rude. Wait two minutes so I can introduce you. You didn’t bring Quirk and Xena,” Fiona called out.

“We’re having a people day,” Meg called back.

They got out of opposite sides of the car, met in front of the hood and joined hands before they crossed over. Stopping, Simon noted, to greet the dogs.

“Who’s this handsome boy!”

Simon watched as Meg, a breezy-looking woman he pegged as late forties, stepped into Jaws’s excited leap.

It worked, he had to admit. They’d have to practice.

“That’s Jaws. Meg and Chuck Greene, this is Simon Doyle, Jaws’s human.”

“Simon!” Meg stuck out a hand, then grasped Simon’s in both of hers. “I bought a set of your stacked tables from Sylvia. I love them. I’ve been hoping to run into you.”

“Meg and Chuck live over in Deer Harbor. Chuck’s a retired cop, and Meg’s one of our lawyers. Simon was here when Davey came by,” Fiona added. “And I’m fine.”

“We needed to check the cabin,” Meg told her. “We’ve got somebody coming in over the weekend.”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t buy that for a minute. “Meg and Chuck have a pretty cabin in Moran State Park they rent out.”

“Since we were so close, we just came by to see if we could talk you into meeting us for lunch. We thought we’d grab an early one at the Rosario.”

“Meg.”

“And we’re entitled to look after you.”

“Thanks, but I’m going to stick close to home today. You can pass that on to the next shift.”

“Where’s your cell phone?” Chuck asked her.

“Inside.”

“I want you to start carrying it with you.” The tap he gave her nose spoke of affection, and authority. “I don’t think you’ve got a thing to worry about, but use that common sense you’ve got so much of. Carry your phone.”

“All right.”

“Are you spending any nights here?” Chuck asked Simon.

“Chuck!”

“I’m not talking to you,” he said to Fiona.

“Not yet.”

“Wouldn’t hurt. You do custom work, don’t you?”

“Are you talking about sex or wood?”

There was a beat of silence before Chuck roared out his big laugh, then slapped Simon on the back. “Maybe we’ll talk sex over a beer sometime. On the wood, Meg’s been after a new china cabinet. Can’t find anything that suits her. This one’s too big, that one’s too small, the other one’s not the right wood. If she could tell you what the hell it is she wants and you make it, I’d stop hearing about it.”

“We can talk about that. You’d want to show me the space.”

“If you’ve got time this afternoon, after three.” Chuck reached in his wallet and pulled out a business card. “Home address is on there.”

“Okay. More like four.”

“That’ll work. Well, come on, Meg, let’s get this party started. You?” He pointed at Fiona, then kissed her cheek. “Put your phone in your pocket.”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant Greene.”

“You take care, Fee. We’ll see you this afternoon, Simon.”

They walked back to their car as they’d walked from it. Hand in hand.

“They’ve been married over thirty years, and they still hold hands,” Fiona murmured. “He was a cop for twenty-five, down in San Francisco.” She waved as they drove out. “They moved here about ten years ago, and he runs a tackle shop. He loves to fish. She does real estate and some family law.”

“Did they get married when she was twelve?”

“Oh, boy, she’d love that. She’s in her late fifties, he had his sixty-third birthday in January. And yeah, they both look easily ten years younger. I think it’s love and happiness. Or just lucky genes.”

She picked up the ball one of the dogs had dropped hopefully at her feet, threw it again. “I’m telling you because I always want to know about people, so I tend to give backgrounds, but also because it might help you with the design.” She tilted her head. “Since you’re so strict about it. Anyway, Chuck figures everybody can find every place on the island. I can give you directions.”

“I’ll find it.”

“All right. I’ve got to go clean my house, do some laundry and other exciting domestic chores before my afternoon session.”

“I’ll see you later, then.”

He called the dog, headed for his truck.

He didn’t kiss her good-bye, Fiona thought, and sighed a little, thinking of the Greenes holding hands.

He boosted the dog in, hesitated, then shut the truck door and strode back to her. He gripped her shoulders, drew her up and into a kiss that was hard and brief and satisfyingly hot.

“Put your phone in your pocket.”

When he went back to the truck, drove off without another word, she smiled after him.

PART TWO

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

SAMUEL BUTLER

ELEVEN

Two days later, Fiona started her day with a call on a missing elderly man who’d wandered out of his daughter’s home on San Juan Island.

She alerted her unit, checked her pack, added the necessary maps and, choosing Newman, was on her way to Deer Harbor and Chuck’s boat. With Chuck at the helm she briefed the unit while they carved through the passage.

“The subject is Walter Deets, eighty-four. He has early-onset Alzheimer’s and lives with his daughter and her family on Trout Lake. They don’t know what time he left the house. The last time anyone saw him was before he went to bed at about ten last night.”

“There’s a lot of wooded area around the lake,” James put in.

“Do we have any information on what he’s wearing?” Lori rubbed Pip’s head. “It’s pretty chilly out.”

“Not yet. I’ll talk to the family when we get there. Mai, you’ll be working with Sheriff Tyson.”

“Yeah. We’ve worked with him before. Is this the first time he’s wandered off?”

“Don’t know yet. We’ll get all that. The search began just after six, and the family notified the authorities by six-thirty. So they’ve been searching for about ninety minutes.”

Mai nodded. “Tyson doesn’t waste time. I remember from before.”

“They’ve got a couple of volunteers picking us up, driving us to the location.”

By the time they got to the lake, the sun had burned away the mist. Tyson, brisk and efficient, greeted them.

“Thanks for the quick response. Dr. Funaki, right? You’re base?”

“Yes.”

“Sal, show Dr. Funaki where she can set up. The son-in-law and his boy are out on the search. I’ve got the daughter inside. He got dressed—brown pants, blue shirt, red cotton jacket, navy Adidas sneakers, size ten. She says he’s wandered once or twice, but hasn’t gone far. He gets confused.”

“Is he on any meds?” Fiona asked him.

“I had her make a list for you. Physically, he’s in good shape. He’s a nice guy, used to be sharp as a tack. Taught my father in high school. History. He’s five-ten, about a hundred and sixty-five pounds, full head of white hair, blue eyes.”

He led her inside a spacious, open-floor-plan house with killer views of the lake.

“Mary Ann, this is Fiona Bristow. She’s with Canine Search and Rescue.”

“Ben—Sheriff Tyson—said you’d need some things of Dad’s—for the dogs to smell. I got his socks, and his pajamas from last night.”

“That’s good. How was he feeling when he went to bed last night?”

“Fine. Really fine.” Her hand fluttered to her throat and away again. Fiona could hear barely controlled tears in her voice. “He’d had a good day. I just don’t know when he left. He forgets, and gets confused sometimes. I don’t know how long he’s been gone. He likes to take walks. Keep fit, he says. He and my mother walked miles every day before she died last year.”

“Where did they like to walk?”

“Around the lake, some light hiking in the woods. Sometimes they’d walk over to see us. This was their house, and after Mom died and when Dad started having trouble, we moved here. It’s bigger than our house, and he loves it so much. We didn’t want him to have to leave his home.”

“Where was your house?”

“Oh, it’s about three miles from here.”

“Could he have gotten confused? Tried to walk there to find you?”

“I don’t know.” She pressed her knuckles to her lips. “We’ve lived here for nearly a year now.”

“We checked Mary Ann’s old place,” Tyson added.

“Maybe he and your mother had a favorite spot, or route.”

“They had so many. Even five years ago he’d have been able to find his way through the woods around here in the dark, blindfolded.” Her eyes teared up. “He taught Jarret—our son—how to hike and camp and fish. He’d declare Hook and Line Day—hook school and drop a line so he and Jarret could—Oh God, wait.”

She dashed away.

“How’s his hearing?” Fiona asked Tyson.

“He wears a hearing aid—and no, he didn’t take it. He’s got his glasses, but—”

He broke off when Mary Ann rushed back. “His fishing gear. He took his fishing gear, even his old fishing hat. I didn’t think—I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

ARMED WITH DATA, Fiona worked with her unit on strategy.

“He had three favorite fishing spots.” She marked the map Mai had posted. “But he also tended to try others, depending on his mood. He’s both physically fit and physically active. So while his mental condition may bring on confusion, turning him around, disorienting him, he could overdo it. He takes meds for high blood pressure and, according to the daughter, tends to get emotional and upset when he can’t remember things, and he’s starting to have some trouble with his balance. He needs a hearing aid and isn’t wearing it.”

The problem, as Fiona saw it, as she assigned sectors, was that Walter might not, as small kids and the elderly tended to, take the paths of least resistance. He’d tax himself, she thought, facing steep climbs rather than easy slopes.

He’d probably had a purpose and a destination when he started, she thought as she gave Newman the scent. But along the way, it was very likely he’d become confused.

How much worse to be lost, to look around and see nothing familiar, when you once knew every tree, every path, every turn?

Newman was eager and scented along a drainage. The air would rise upslope, and the chimney effect, the rise of the tree lines, would disperse the scent in several directions. When they moved into an area of heavy brush she looked for signs—a bit of torn clothing in the briars, bent or broken branches.

Newman alerted, then chose a path that challenged the quadriceps. When it leveled, she stopped to give her partner water and drink some herself.

She checked her map, her compass.

Could he have detoured, backtracked or looped away from the fishing spot, angled toward his daughter’s old house? Going for his grandson after all? The Hook and Line Day?

Pausing, she tried to see the trees, the rocks, the sky, the paths as Walter would see them.

For him, she imagined, getting lost here would be like getting lost in his own home. Frightening, frustrating.

He might become angry and push himself, or scared, only more confused and wander in aimless circles.

She gave Newman the scent again. “This is Walt. Find Walt.”

She followed the dog as he clambered over a pile of rocks. Veering toward Chuck’s sector, she noted, and called her position in.

When they headed downhill, Newman alerted, strongly, then pushed his body through brush.

She pulled out her tape to mark the alert. “What’ve you got?” She used her flashlight, switching it on to chase away those green shadows.

She saw the disturbed ground first, the depressions, and got a picture in her mind of the old man taking a spill, catching himself by the heels of his hands, his knees.

Briars pulling and tearing, she thought. And, playing the light, she saw a few strands of red cotton snagged on thorns.

“Good boy. Good boy, Newman. Base, this is Fee. I’m about fifty yards from my west boundary. We’ve got some red threads on briars and what looks like signs of a fall. Over.”

“Base, this is Chuck. We just found his hat. Fee, Quirk’s alerting in your direction. We’re moving east. My boy’s got something. I’m going to—Hold on! I see him! He’s down. Ground falls off here. We’re going down to him. He’s not moving. Over.”

“I’m heading your way, Chuck. We’ll assist. Over. Newman! Find Walt. Find!”

She ignored the radio chatter as they continued west, until Chuck reported again.

“We’ve got him. He’s unconscious. Pulse is thready. He’s got a head wound, a lot of scratches—face, hands. He’s got a gash on his leg, too. We’re going to need some assistance getting him out. Over.”

“Copy that,” Mai said. “Help’s on the way.”

TIRED, BUT FORTIFIED with the hot dog she’d grabbed in Deer Harbor, Fiona turned toward home. They’d done their job, she thought, and well. Now she had to hope Walter’s physical stamina would hold the line against his injuries.

“We did what we could, right?” She reached over and gave Newman a pat. “It’s all you can do. You need a bath after all that . . .”

She trailed off, stopped the car. A second dogwood stood pretty as a picture across from the first. And both, she noted, were tidily mulched.

“Uh-oh,” she said as her heart sighed. “Direct hit.”

Peck and Bogart, thrilled to see her, raced to her car, back to the house as if to say, Come on! Come on home!

Instead, she followed impulse, got out and opened the back. “Let’s go for a ride.”

They didn’t have to be asked twice. While her dogs greeted one another, and the stay-at-homes explored all the fascinating scents Newman brought back from the search, she turned her car around.

ON THE PORCH of his shop, Simon sanded a table. The warm day, the sweet air had tempted him outside. With the care and precision of a surgeon, he smoothed the sleek walnut legs. He’d leave this one natural, he decided, and play up that beautiful grain with clear varnish. If somebody wanted uniform, they’d have to buy something else.

“Don’t even think about it,” he ordered as Jaws tried to belly up for the sandblock Simon used for larger areas. “Not now,” he said when the dog bumped his arm with his nose. “Later.”

Jaws scrambled off the porch to choose a stick from the piles of other sticks, balls, chew toys and assorted rocks he’d dumped together in the past ninety minutes.

Simon stopped long enough to shake his head. “When I’m finished.”

The dog wagged his tail, danced in place with the stick clamped in his jaw.

“That’s not going to work.”

Jaws sat, lifted a paw, tilted his head.

“Still not going to work,” Simon muttered, but he felt himself weakening.

Maybe he could take a break, throw the damn stick. The problem was, if he threw it once, the dog would want him to throw it half a million times. But it was kind of cool he’d actually figured out that if he brought it back and dropped it, he got to chase it again.

“Okay, okay, but I’m only giving you ten minutes, then—Hey!”

Annoyed, after he’d decided to play, he watched Jaws race away. Seconds later, Fiona’s car made the curve toward the house.

When she got out, Simon cursed under his breath as Jaws bunched to jump. Hadn’t they been working on that for two damn days? She countered, had him sit, then accepted the stick he offered, hurled it like a javelin.

When she opened the back of her car, it became dog mania.

Simon went back to sanding. If nothing else, maybe she’d keep his dog out of his hair until he finished the job. By the time she’d made it to the porch, Jaws had mined his pile for three more sticks.

“Treasure trove,” she said.

“He’s been trying to con me by dumping stuff there.”

She bent down, chose a bright yellow tennis ball, then threw it high and long.

More mania.

“You brought me another tree.”

“Since you decided to plant the first one where you did, it skewed the balance. It bothered me.”

“And you mulched them.”

“No point in going to the trouble to plant something if you don’t do it right.”

“Thank you, Simon,” she said primly.

He spared her a glance, noted her eyes laughed. “You’re welcome, Fiona.”

“I’d have given you a hand if I’d been home.”

“You were out early.”

She waited, but he didn’t ask. “We had a Search and Rescue on San Juan.”

He paused, gave her his attention. “How’d it go?”

“We found him. An elderly man, with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He’d wandered out, took his fishing gear. It looks like he got confused, maybe had a little visit to the past in his head and just headed out to one of his fishing holes. More confusion and, from the tracking, he got turned around and tried to hike to his daughter’s old house to get his grandson. They live with him now. He did a lot of circling, backtracking, walked miles, we think. Wore himself out, then he took a bad fall.”

“How bad?”

“Gashed his head and leg, concussion, hairline fracture on his left ankle and a bunch of bruises, lacerations, dehydration, shock.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“He’s got a strong constitution, so they’re hopeful, but boy, he took a beating. So, you’re glad you found him, satisfied the unit did the job and concerned you might’ve been too late anyway.” She picked up another stick. “That looks like it’s going to be a nice table. Why don’t I thank you for the tree by playing with your dog while you finish?”

He passed the sandblock from hand to hand as he studied her. “Did you come over to play with my dog?”

“I came over to thank you, and since Syl took my morning classes and I don’t have my last class of the day until five-thirty, I decided to thank you now, in person.”

“What time is it?”

She arched her eyebrows, glanced at her watch. “Three-fifteen.”

“That’ll work.” He tossed the sandpaper down, then stepped off the porch to take her arm and pull her toward the house.

“Are we going somewhere?”

“You know damn well.”

“Some might attempt at least a little warming up before—”

He swung her around, crushed his mouth to hers while his hands streaked down to mold her ass.

“You’re right, that’ll work. I want to say I’m not normally this easy, but—”

“Don’t care.” This time his hands streaked under her jacket, her shirt, up her bare back.

“Me either. Outside.”

“I’m not doing this outside with all these dogs around.”

“No.” She choked out a laugh, struggled to stay on her feet as they groped each other. “I’m telling the dogs to stay outside.”

“Good thinking.” He dragged her onto the back deck, through the door.

He yanked off her jacket, shoved her against the wall. As desperation spiked, she dragged at his shirt.

“Wait.”

“No.”

“No, I mean—I know you’re happy to see me, but I really think that’s an actual hammer pressing into my . . . Oh God.”

He pulled back, glanced down. “Shit. Sorry.” And unstrapped his tool belt, dumped it on the floor.

“Just let me—” She shoved his unbuttoned work shirt aside, then pulled up the T-shirt he wore beneath. “Oh, mmm,” she said as she pushed her hands up his chest. “Too long,” she managed when his mouth clamped on the side of her neck. “Need to hurry.”

“Okay.” With that he tore her shirt open, popping buttons into the air.

She should’ve been shocked, possibly annoyed—it had been a decent shirt—but the sound of ripping cloth followed by the rough hands on her breasts shot her within a hairbreadth of the edge.

She shuddered, grinding against him, urgent sounds humming in her throat as she fumbled with his zipper. He tugged hers down, one quick, impatient motion, then slid his hand in, down, over. He watched her face, watched those calm eyes glaze like blue glass as she erupted against him. Then he took her mouth again and drove her until she went limp.

“No, you don’t,” he murmured when she started to slide down the wall.

The simplest solution was to toss her over his shoulder and find the handiest flat surface. He dumped her on the dining room table, shoved debris aside. Whatever crashed and shattered could be replaced.

Because he wanted her naked, he pulled off her boots. “Your belt, undo it.”

“What? Oh.” Like a shock victim, she stared at the ceiling while she unhooked her belt. “Am I on the table?”

He pulled her pants down her legs by the hems.

“Am I naked on the table?”

“Not quite yet.”

But close enough. He wanted his hands on every inch that was, every inch that wasn’t. He dealt with his own boots, pants, then climbed on to straddle her.

“Handy,” he decided when he noted the front hook of her bra. He flipped it, then simply lowered to devour.

“Oh. God.” She arched, her hands fisting on the table before she dug her fingers into his back. “Thank God. Don’t stop. Just don’t stop.”

He used his teeth, and she thought she’d go mad. Too much, too much, this tidal wave of needs and pleasures and demands. And yet her body consumed them, starved for more.

She heard cloth ripping again and realized he’d torn her panties away.

She was being ravished, she thought as she gasped for air—and the little kernel of shock only added to the wild thrill.

She tried to say his name, to slow things down—just enough to breathe—or to give back. But he shoved her knees back and drove into her. Hard as steel, fast as lightning. And she could only cry out and ride the storm.

She closed around him when she came, squeezing like a fist. The sensation only whipped him on. He’d wanted her, and that want had sharpened over the last days. But now, with that long, tight body quaking under his, those surprising and sexy muscles taut under his hands, that want turned its keen edge inside him.

He took until she went lax, then took more until that edge sliced through him and emptied him out.

She heard music. Angels singing? she thought, dizzy. It seemed odd for angels to sing after table sex. She managed to swallow on a throat wildly dry.

“Music,” she murmured.

“My phone. In my pants. Don’t care.”

“Oh. Not angels.”

“No. Def Leppard.”

“Okay.” She managed to find the energy to lift her hand, stroke it down his back. “Once again, I have to say thank you, Simon.”

“No problem.”

She let out a rusty laugh. “That’s good because I don’t think I did much of the work.”

“Am I complaining?”

She smiled, closed her eyes and kept stroking his back. “Where are we, exactly?”

“It’s the dining-room-slash-downstairs-office area. For now.”

“So we had sex on your dining-room-slash . . . workstation.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you make the table?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s very smooth.” A giggle tickled her throat, then escaped. “And remarkably sturdy.”

“I do good work.” He lifted his head then, looked down at her. And smiled. “It’s cherry with a birch inlay. Pedestal style. I was going to sell it, but now—maybe not.”

“If you change your mind, I’d like first bid.”

“Maybe. Obviously it suits you.”

She touched a hand to his cheek. “Can I get some water? I feel like I climbed Mount Constitution without a bottle.”

“Sure.”

She lifted her eyebrows when he rolled off the table and strode, naked, out of the room. She was pretty comfortable with her own body, but she couldn’t see herself walking around her house naked.

Still, he looked damn good doing it.

She sat up, took a breath, started to stretch with a huge smile on her face. Then stopped in shock. They’d just had crazed sex on the dining room table, in front of open, uncurtained windows. She could see the dogs romping, his drive, her own car.

Anyone could’ve driven up, hiked up from the beach, out of the woods.

When he walked back in with a bottle of water, already uncapped and half empty, she pointed. “Windows.”

“Yeah. Table, windows, ceiling, floor. Here.” He passed her the bottle. “I started it, you can finish it off.”

“But windows. Daylight, open.”

“It’s a little late to get shy now.”

“I didn’t realize.” She took a long drink, then another. “It’s probably for the best. But next time—if you’re interested in next times.”

“I’m not done with you yet.”

“That’s a very Simon way to put it.” She took another, slower drink. “Next time I think we should try for a little more privacy.”

“You were in a hurry.”

“I have no argument.”

He smiled at her again. “You make a hell of a centerpiece. All I need is a picture of you, sitting there in the middle of the table, your hair catching just the right amount of sun, all messy around your face, and those long legs drawn up right below those very pretty breasts. I could get a freaking fortune for that table.”

“No dice.”

“I’ll give you thirty percent.”

She laughed, but wasn’t entirely sure he was joking. “And still no. I wish I didn’t have to, but I need to get dressed and go.”

He took her hand, turned her wrist to check the time. “We’ve still got an hour.”

“During which I have to get home, clean up. Dogs are . . . very sensitive to scent.”

“Got it. They’ll smell the sex.”

“In indelicate terms, yes. So I need a shower. I also need a shirt. You ripped mine.”

“You were—”

“In a hurry.” She laughed and, despite the uncurtained windows, was tempted to leap up and do a happy dance on the table. “But I still need to borrow a shirt.”

“Okay.”

When he walked out naked again, she shook her head. After sliding off the table, she pulled on her pants, her bra.

Just as casually, he walked in and tossed her the shirt she’d recently yanked off him.

“Thanks.”

He tugged his work pants on while she pulled on her boots. Though she felt a little dreamy, she matched his easy tone when she stepped over, touched his face again.

“Next time, maybe we’ll have dinner first.” She kissed him lightly. “Thanks for the tree, and the use of the table.”

She walked out, called up her dogs and gave Jaws a body-scrub good-bye. It pleased her to see Simon standing out on the deck, shirtless, his hands in the pockets of his yet to be buttoned jeans, watching her as she drove away.

TWELVE

Francis X. Eckle completed the last of his daily One Hundred. A hundred push-ups, a hundred crunches, a hundred squats. He performed these, as always, in the privacy of his motel room.

He showered, using his own unscented shower gel rather than the stingy sliver of motel soap. He shaved, using a compact electric razor that he cleaned meticulously every morning. He brushed his teeth with one of the travel brushes in his kit, which he then marked with an X for future disposal.

He never left anything personal in the motel waste can.

He dressed in baggy sweatshorts and an oversized white T-shirt, nondescript running shoes. Under the T-shirt he wore a security belt holding cash and his current ID. Just in case.

He studied himself in the mirror.

The clothes and the bulk of the belt disguised the body he’d sculpted to mean and muscular perfection, and gave the illusion of an ordinary man, a bit thick in the middle, about his ordinary morning. He studied his face—brown eyes, long, bladed nose, thin, firm mouth, smooth cheeks—until he was satisfied with its pleasant, even forgettable expression.

He kept his brown hair close-cropped. He wanted to shave it for ease and cleanliness, but though a shaved head had become fairly common, his mentor insisted it drew more attention than ordinary brown hair.

This morning, as every morning over the past weeks, he considered ignoring that directive and doing what suited him.

This morning, as every morning, he resisted. But it was becoming harder as he felt his own power grow, as he embraced his new self, to follow the lesson plan.

“For now,” he murmured. “But not for much longer.”

Over his head, he fit a dark blue cap with no logo.

There was nothing about him to draw the eye, to earn a glance by a casual observer.

He never stayed in the same hotel or motel more than three nights—two was better. He sought out one with a gym at least every other stop, but otherwise looked for the lower-end type of establishment where service—and the attendant attention—was all but nonexistent.

He’d lived frugally all of his life, dutifully pinching pennies. Before he’d begun this journey he’d gradually sold everything he owned of value.

He could afford a great many cheap motel rooms before the journey’s end.

He slipped his key card into his pocket and took one of the bottles of water from the case he’d brought in himself. Before leaving the room, he switched on the camera hidden in his travel alarm by his bedside, then plugged in the earbuds for his iPod.

The first would assure him housekeeping didn’t poke through his things; the second would discourage conversation.

He needed the gym, needed the weights and machines, and the mental and physical release they provided. Since he’d converted, the days without them left him tense and angry and nervous, clouded his mind. He’d have preferred to work out in solitude, but traveling required adjustments.

So with his pleasant expression in place he walked outside and across to the tiny lobby and the tiny health club.

A man walked with obvious reluctance on one of the two treadmills, and a middle-aged woman rode a recumbent bike while reading a novel with a bright cover. He timed his gym visit carefully—don’t be the first or the only.

He chose the other treadmill, selected a program, then switched off the iPod to watch the news on the TV bracketed in the corner.

There would be a story, he thought.

But as the newscasters reported on world events, he started his run and let his mind focus on the latest correspondence from his mentor. He’d memorized every line before destroying it, as he had all the others.

Dear friend, I hope you’re well. I’m pleased with your progress to date, but want to advise you not to push yourself too fast, too soon. Remember to enjoy your travels and your accomplishments, and know you continue to have my support and my gratitude as you prepare to correct my foolish and disappointing mistake.

School your body, your mind, your spirit. Maintain your discipline. You are the power, you are the control. Use both wisely and you will amass more fame, more fear, more success than any who have come before you.

I look forward to hearing from you, and know that I am with you, in every step of your journey.

Your Guide

Fate had taken him to that prison, Eckle thought, where George Allen Perry had unlocked the cell he’d been trapped in all of his life. He’d toddled like a child with those first steps of freedom, then had walked, then had run. Now, now he craved the heady taste of that freedom like breath. Craved it until he’d begun to twitch at the rules, the regulations, the absolutes Perry asked of him.

He was no longer the soft, awkward boy desperate for approval and hounded by bullies. No longer the child passed from hand to hand because of a selfish whore of a mother.

No longer the pimply, overweight teen ignored or laughed at by girls.

All of his life he’d lived inside that cage of pretense. Stay quiet, tolerate, obey the rules, study and take whatever was left when the stronger, the more attractive, the more aggressive took theirs.

How many times had he seethed in silence when passed over for a promotion, a prize, a girl? How many times had he, alone, in the dark, plotted and imagined revenge against coworkers, students, neighbors, even strangers on the street?

He’d begun these travels, as Perry had explained to him, before they’d met—but he’d carried the cage with him. He’d worked to discipline his body, pushing through pain and frustration and deprivation. He’d sought and found a rigid internal control, and still had failed in so many ways. Because he’d still been locked in that cage. Unable to perform with women when, at last, one deigned to sleep with him. Forced to humiliate himself with whores—like his mother.

No longer. Perry’s creed preached that the act of sexual intercourse diminished a man’s power, gave that power to the woman—who would always, always use it against him. Release could be gained in other, more potent ways. Ways only a relative few dared practice. With that release power and pleasure rose.

Now that the cage was open, he’d discovered in himself both an aptitude and an appetite for that release, and the power that charged through it.

But with the power came responsibility—and that, he could admit, he found difficult to navigate. The more he gained, the more he wanted. Perry was right, of course. He needed to maintain his discipline, to enjoy the journey and not rush it.

And yet . . .

As he pushed up the speed and resistance on the treadmill, Francis promised himself and his absent mentor he would refrain from seeking his next partner for at least two weeks.

Instead he would travel a bit more—meandering. He would allow his power to recharge, feed his mind with books.

He wouldn’t head north, not yet.

And while he recharged and fed, he’d monitor Perry’s disappointing mistake through her blog, her website. When it was time, he would correct that mistake—the only payment Perry asked of him, the price for tearing down the cage.

He looked forward, like a child to a parent’s applause, to Perry’s approval when he took, strangled and buried Fiona Bristow.

Bringing her image into his mind pushed him through the next mile while sweat ran down his face, his body. His reward came when the news-caster reported on the discovery of a young woman’s body in the Klamath National Forest.

For the first time that morning, Eckle smiled.

ON SUNDAY, Mai and her dogs came for a visit. Saturday night’s rain left the air cool and fresh as sorbet and teased out a haze of green on the young dogwoods flanking the bridge. In the field the grasses sparkled with wet while the creek bubbled busily and the dogs romped like kids in a playground.

On the scale of lazy Sunday mornings, Fiona rated this one a solid ten. With Mai, she relaxed on the porch with the mochaccinos and cranberry muffins the vet had bought in the village.

“It’s like a reward.”

“Hmm?” Slumped down, eyes half open behind the amber shades of her sunglasses, Mai broke off another piece of her muffin.

“Mornings like this, they’re like a reward for the rest of the week. All the get-up, get-going, get-it-done mornings. This is the carrot on the stick, the brass ring, the prize at the bottom of the cereal box.”

“In my next life I’d like to come back as a dog because, really, in the great scheme? Every morning is the prize at the bottom of the cereal box for a dog.”

“They don’t get mochaccinos on the porch.”

“True, but toilet water would taste just as wonderful.”

Fiona studied her coffee, considered. “What kind of dog?”

“I think a Great Pyrenees, for the size, the majesty. I think I deserve it after being short in this life.”

“It’s a nice choice.”

“Well, I’ve given it some thought.” Mai yawned, stretched. “Sheriff Tyson called me this morning to let me know they upgraded Walter’s condition to stable. He’s going to be in the hospital for another few days, but if he stays level, they’ll let him go home. The daughter and her family are making arrangements for a visiting nurse.”

“That’s good news. Do you want me to pass it along?”

“I let Chuck know, so I figure he’ll take care of that. Since I was heading over, I thought I’d just tell you in person. By the way, I really like your trees.”

“Aren’t they great?” Just looking at them made Fiona smile. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Now I’m thinking maybe I should plant something splashy at the far end of the drive. Like an entryway. It’d be a kind of landmark for new clients, too. Turn at the drive with the . . . whatever I decide on.”

Mai tipped down her glasses to peer at Fiona over the tops. “Moving out of the low-key stage? And I worried you’d put a gate up.”

Sipping her coffee, Fiona watched the dogs troop around the yard in what she thought of as The Peeing Contest. “Because of Vickie Scala?” she said, referring to the latest victim. “A gate wouldn’t do me much good if . . . and it’s a big if.”

But like Mai and her next life as a dog, she’d given it some thought.

“It makes me sick to think about those girls, and their families. And there’s nothing I can do, Mai. Nothing at all.”

Mai reached over, squeezed Fiona’s hand. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s on my mind. How could it not be? And I’m scared. You’re probably the only one I can say that to, just flat-out.” Fiona held on to Mai’s hand a moment, steadied by the contact. “I’m scared because if. I’m scared because there’s nothing I can do. I’m scared because it took them years to catch Perry, and I don’t know how I’ll cope if the pattern repeats. If I said that to Syl or my mother, they’d turn themselves inside out with worry.”

“Okay.” Tone brisk, Mai shifted to face Fiona. “I think you’d be stupid not to be scared, and why the hell would you be stupid? I think if it wasn’t on your mind, you’d be hiding in denial, and what good would that do? And I think if you didn’t feel sick and sorry about those girls, you’d be heartless, and how could you be?”

“And there,” Fiona said on a wave of relief, “is why I could say it to you.”

“Now, on the other end of the scale, on the solid reasons not to freak—scared, yes, freaked, no—you have the dogs, and you have people who’re going to be checking on you with such annoying regularity you’ll be tempted to tell them to butt the fuck out. Oh, and don’t bother to tell me to butt the fuck out,” she added. “I’ll just kick your ass. Short, yes, but mighty.”

“Yes, you are. I also know we’re sitting here drinking mochaccinos and watching our dogs play because you’re checking on me. And I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. I want you to plant your splashy whatever at the end of your drive, Fee, if it makes you happy. But I want you to be careful, too.”

“Part of me wonders if I’ve ever really stopped being careful since the day Perry grabbed me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I stopped running, and God, Mai, I used to love it. Now I use a treadmill, and it’s not the same rush. But I settle because I feel safer. I haven’t gone anywhere alone in years.”

“That’s not . . .” Mai paused. “Really?”

“Really. You know, it didn’t occur to me until this started that I never go anywhere without at least one of the dogs—and part of the reason is what happened to me. I wait for movies to come out on DVD or cable instead of going to the movies because I don’t want to leave one of the dogs in the car that long—and more, I only take all three of them, leaving the house unguarded, when it’s for training or when I’m taking them into your office.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, and I’m okay with it—I just didn’t realize the underlying reason for it. Or didn’t admit it. I leave my door open a lot. I rarely lock it—until recently—because the dogs give me the sense of security I need. I haven’t actively thought about all that happened, not really, in the last year or two, but I’ve protected myself, or at least my sense of security, all this time.”

“Proving you have a smart unconscious.”

“I like to think so. My conscious is also doing some target practice. I haven’t done any shooting in a couple years either. So . . .” She shook it all off. “I’m doing whatever I can, which includes not obsessing about it. Let’s talk about the spa.”

Enough, Mai decided. She hadn’t come to drag Fiona into the stress but to help ease it. “We could, and we should, but first I could tell you about my date for drinks this evening.”

“You have a date?” This time Fiona lowered her sunglasses. “With who?”

“With Robert. He’s a psychologist, with his own practice in Seattle. Forty-one, divorced, with a nine-year-old daughter. He shares custody. He has a three-year-old Portuguese water dog named Cisco. He likes jazz, skiing and travel.”

“You used HeartLine-dot-com.”

“I did, and I’m taking the ferry over and meeting him for drinks.”

“You don’t like jazz, or skiing.”

“No, but I like dogs, I like to travel when I can, and I like kids, so it balances out.” Stretching out her legs, Mai studied the toes of her shoes. “I like ski lodges, with roaring fires and Irish coffee, so that’s half a point. Besides, I have a date, which means I’m going to put on a nice outfit, fuss with my makeup and go have a conversation with someone I haven’t met. And if there’s no zing, I get on the ferry, come home and try again.”

“I’d be nervous. Are you nervous?”

“A little, but it’s a good nervous. I want a relationship, Fee, I really do. It’s not just the dry spell, because, hello, Stanley. I want someone I care enough about to want to spend time with, be with, fall in love with. I want a family.”

“I hope he’s wonderful. I hope Robert the psychologist is freaking amazing. I hope there’s zing and common ground and palpitations and laughs. I really do.”

“Thanks. The best part is, I’m doing something for myself. Taking a chance, which I haven’t done, not really, since the divorce. Even if there’s zing, I’m going to take it slow. I want to get a feel for how this whole thing works before I jump into the pool.”

Feeling the vibes of Mai’s good nerves and anticipation, Fiona sat silently a minute. “Well, speaking of zing, I guess I have to tell you I’ve lost the contest.”

“The—You had sex?” Mai scooted around in her chair, whipped off her sunglasses. “You had sex and didn’t tell me?”

“It was only a couple of days ago.”

“You had sex a couple of days ago and didn’t immediately call me? Who—Well, shit, why would I even ask? It has to be Simon Doyle.”

“It could’ve been a new client I was suddenly hot for.”

“No, it was Simon—who actually is a new client you’re hot for. Details. The nitty and the gritty.”

“He gave me the trees.”

“Oh.” Mai sighed, turned to look at them. “Oh,” she sighed again.

“I know. The first one was part of a deal, a trade for this stump he wanted.”

“The stump sink. I heard about it.”

“I said maybe I should get another, and he got it, planted it—when we were out on the search. I came home, and there it was—planted, mulched, watered. I got the other dogs and went over to thank him. And I guess I thanked him by having sex with him on his dining room table.”

“Sweet magnetic Jesus on the dashboard. On the table?”

“It just sort of happened.”

“How does it happen that trees lead to table sex?”

“One minute we’re outside talking, then he’s pulling me to the house. Then we’re all over each other and pulling and dragging each other toward the front door.”

“This is the flaw in the Stanley system—the lack of pulling and dragging. Then what?”

“And when we got there, I’m up against the wall, actually telling him to hurry. So he dumped me on the table, shoved things off and wow. Wow.”

“A moment to recover, please.” Sitting back, Mai waved a hand in front of her face. “Obviously this wasn’t crappy sex.”

“I almost hate to say it because it might make it more than it might be, but it was, it really was the best sex of my life. And I loved Greg, Mai, but this? It was outrageously stupendous sex.”

“Are you going to see him again that way?”

“Definitely.” Fiona laid a hand on her heart, did a pat-pat. “Plus or moreover or first and foremost, I like him. I like the way he is, the way he looks, the way he is with his dog. And you know, I like that I’m not his type—at least according to him—but he wants me. It makes me feel . . . powerful, I guess.”

“That much like could get serious.”

“It could. I guess, like you, I’m doing something for myself, and taking a chance.”

“Okay. Here’s to us.” Mai lifted what was left of her coffee. “Adventurous women.”

“It feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Seeing as you had sex on the dining room table, it probably feels better to you. But yeah, it feels good.”

They both glanced over as the dogs sounded the alert.

“Well, well, lookie here,” Mai murmured as Simon drove over the bridge. “Is your table cleared off?”

“Ssh!” Fiona strangled a laugh. “Either way,” she muttered, “I’ve got the first of my Sunday sessions in about twenty minutes.”

“Just enough time to—”

“Cut it out.” She watched Simon get out and Jaws leap after him. Jaws raced for her dogs, then stopped to sniff and wag at and around Mai’s. “No aggression,” she commented, “no shyness. He’s a damn happy dog.”

Simon walked over, held out a collar. “The one I borrowed before. Dr. Funaki.”

“Mai. Nice to see you, Simon, and with such good timing as I have to go. But first. Jaws, come here. Here, Jaws.”

The pup reacted with joy, bulleting over and onto the porch. Mai held her hand out, palm first, as he bunched to leap. He shivered, so obviously dying for just one jump, but stayed down.

“What a good dog.” She stroked, rubbed, smiled up at Simon. “He reacts well to a group, is cheerfully friendly, and he’s learning his manners. You’ve got a winner here.”

“He’s stealing my shoes.”

“The chewing stage can be a problem.”

“No, he’s not chewing them—anymore. He just steals them and hides them. I found my boot in the bathtub this morning.”

“He’s found a new game.” Mai ruffled his ears while the other dogs came up to bump and squeeze in for attention. “Your shoes carry your scent, obviously. He’s attracted to and comforted by your scent. And he’s playing with you. Aren’t you clever?” She gave Jaws a kiss on the nose, then rose. “It’s time to think about neutering.”

“What are you two, a tag team?”

“Read the literature I gave you. We’ll talk soon,” she said to Fiona. “Oh, cleavage or legs?”

“Legs, save the girls for round two.”

“That’s what I thought. Bye, Simon. Come on, babies! Let’s go for a ride.”

“You won’t ask,” Fiona said as she waved Mai and her dogs off, “so I’ll just tell you. She has a date—a first date—and was asking which asset to highlight.”

“Okay.”

“Men don’t have to worry about that particular area of dating ritual.”

“Sure we do. If it’s cleavage we still have to look you in the face and pretend not to notice.”

“You’ve got a point.” Since he stood on the steps, she laid her hands on his shoulders, leaned in for an easy kiss. “So, I’ve got a class in a few minutes. Did you time this visit to check up on me?”

“I returned the collar.”

“So you did. If you want you can stay for the class. It might be good for Jaws to interact with another set of dogs. It’s a small group, and we’re going to work on some basic search skills. I’d like to see how he does.”

“We’ve got nothing else going on. Teach him something else.”

“Now?”

“I need a distraction. I’ve been thinking about getting you naked since I got you naked. So teach him something else.”

She slid her hands up, brushed them over his cheeks. “You know, that’s oddly romantic.”

“Romance? I’ll pick a couple wildflowers next time I think about getting you naked. And this isn’t distracting me, so . . . where the hell is he?”

Simon scanned the porch, turned. “Oh, shit.”

Fiona grabbed his arm as he braced to run.

“No, wait. He’s fine.” She studied Jaws as he climbed up the ladder of the sliding board after Bogart. “He wants to play with the big guys. If you run or call out, you’ll break his focus and balance.”

Jaws climbed to the top, tail waving like a flag, but unlike Bogart, who pranced his way down the short slide, he slipped at the top, belly-flopped, then did a slow header into the soft ground below.

“Not bad,” Fiona declared as Simon snorted out a laugh. “Get your treats.” She walked over, calling out praise and approval in a cheerful voice. “Let’s try it again, want to try it again? Climb,” she said, adding a hand signal. “He does well on the ladder,” she said as Simon joined her, “and that’s generally the most difficult. It’s open and it’s vertical. He’s agile, and he’s watched the other dogs do it. He’s figured out how to go up. So . . . there we are, good boy.”

She took a treat from Simon, rewarded the dog when he reached the top. “You just need to give him a little help figuring out how to walk down, keep his footing. Walk. That’s it. Good balance. Good, good job.” She rewarded him again at the bottom. “You do it with him so . . . What?” she demanded when she looked up to find him staring at her.

“You’re not beautiful.”

“There you go again, Mr. Romance.”

“You’re not, but you grab hold. I haven’t figured out why.”

“Let me know when you do. Take him up and down.”

“And I’m doing this because?”

“He’s learning how to navigate unstable footing. It gives him confidence, enhances his agility. And he likes it.”

She stepped back, watched the two of them play the game a few times. Not beautiful, she thought. The observation, and the fact that he just said it, should’ve been a flick to the ego—even though it was perfectly true. So why had it amused her, at least for the few seconds between that and his next comment?

You grab hold. That made her heart flutter.

The man incited the oddest reactions in her.

“I want him,” Fiona said when Jaws all but swaggered down the slide.

“You’ve got your pronouns confused. Me. You want me.”

“I admire your ego, but I meant him.”

“Well, you can’t have him. I’m getting used to him, and besides, my mother would be seriously pissed if I gave him away.”

“I want him for the program. I want to train him for S-and-R.”

Simon shook his head. “I’ve read your website, your blog. When you say train him, you mean us. Those crazy pronouns again.”

“You read my blog?”

He shrugged. “I’ve skimmed it.”

She smiled. “But you have no interest in S-and-R?”

“You have to drop everything when a call comes in, right?”

“That’s pretty much right.”

“I don’t want to drop everything, or whatever.”

“That’s fair enough.” She took a little band out of her pocket, bound her hair back with a couple of quick twists. “I could train him as an alternate. Just him. He responds to me, obviously. And any S-and-R dog needs to respond to other handlers. There are times one of our dogs is unable—sick, maybe, injured.”

“You have three.”

“Yes, because, well, I want three, and yes, because if someone else’s dog is unable, one of mine can go as backup. I’ve been doing this for years now, Simon, and your dog would be good. He’d be very good. I’m not giving you the pitch to join the unit, just to train your dog. On my own time. If nothing else, you’ll end up with a dog with superior skills and training.”

“How much time?”

“Ideally, I’d like to work with him a little every day, but at least five days a week. I can do it at your place and stay out of your way while you’re working. Some of what I teach him you’ll want to follow up on.”

“Maybe. We can see how it goes.” Simon glanced over to where Jaws was engaged in one of his favorite activities: chasing his own tail. “It’s your time.”

“Yeah, it is. Clients coming,” she announced. “You can sit this one out if you want. I can work with him solo.”

“I’m here anyway.”

IT WAS INTERESTING, Simon decided, and semi-distracting. Fiona called it The Runaway Game, and it involved a lot of running—dogs and people—in the field across her bridge. The class worked in pairs, or with Fiona as a partner—one dog at a time.

“I don’t get the point,” he said when Jaws was up. “He’s going to see where I’m going. He’d have to be an idiot not to find me.”

“It teaches him to find you on command, and to use his scenting skill—that’s why we’re running against the wind, so our scent goes toward the dog. Anyway, he’s going to find me. You need to get him excited.”

He looked down at the dog, whose tail chopped the air like a Ginsu knife. “He gets excited if somebody glances in his direction.”

“Which is to his advantage. Talk to him, be excited. Tell him to watch me when I run away. Watch Fee! Then the minute I drop down behind the bush, tell him to find and release him. Keep telling him to find me. If he gets confused, give him a chance to catch my scent. If it doesn’t work the first time, I’ll call him, give him an audio clue. You need to hold him, keep him with you while I get his attention, and run. Ready?”

He finger-combed his breeze-ruffled hair out of his face. “It’s not brain surgery.”

She gave Jaws a rub, let him lick and sniff at her before she straightened. “Hey, Jaws! Hey.” She clapped her hands. “I’m going to run. Watch me, Jaws, watch me run. Tell him to watch me. Use my name.”

She took off at a dash.

She hadn’t exaggerated, Simon noted. She was fast.

And he’d been wrong. When she moved, she was beautiful.

“Watch Fee. Where the hell’s she going, huh? Watch her. Jesus, she’s like an antelope. Watch Fee.”

She dropped down, out of sight, behind a bush.

“Find her! Go find Fee.”

The pup tore across the field, expressing his excitement with a couple happy barks. Not as fast as the woman, Simon thought, but . . . Then he felt a quick surge of surprise and pride as Jaws homed straight in.

A couple of the other dogs had needed the hider to call out, and one had required the visual clue of the hider waving a hand beside the bush.

But not Jaws.

Across the field he could hear Fiona laughing and praising even as his temporary classmates applauded.

Not half bad, Simon thought. Not bad at all.

She ran back with the dog happily chasing her.

“We do it again, right away. Praise first, reward, then we go again.”

“HE ACED IT,” Simon murmured when the class was over. “Three times in a row, different hiding spots.”

“He’s got the knack. You can work with him at home, with objects. Use something he likes, that he knows the name of—or work to teach him the name. Show it to him, then make him sit/stay and go hide it. Easy places at first. Go back, tell him to find. If he can’t find it, guide him to it. You want success.”

“Maybe I should tell him to find my tennis shoe. I don’t know where the hell he put it.” He looked at her, a long, thorough look that had her raising her eyebrows. “You run like the fucking wind, Fiona.”

“You should’ve seen me run the four-hundred-meter hurdles in college. I was amazing.”

“Probably because you have legs up to your ears. Did you wear one of those skinny little uniforms—aerodynamic?”

“I did. Very flattering.”

“I bet. How long before the next class?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Long enough.” He began to back her toward the house.

She kept her eyes on his, and he saw the laugh in them, a sparkle on the serene blue. “No ‘Would you like to?’ or ‘I can’t resist you’?”

“No.” He clamped her waist, lifted her up the porch steps.

“If I said I’m not in the mood?”

“I’d be disappointed, and you’d be lying.”

“You’re right about the lying. So . . .” She pulled the door open, tugged him inside.

But when she backed toward the steps, he shifted directions.

“Couch is closer.”

It was also softer than the dining room table, at least until they rolled off and hit the floor. And it was, Fiona thought when she lay beside him trying to regain her breath and the path to coherent thought, every bit as exciting.

“Eventually we might make it to a bed.”

He trailed, very lightly, a fingertip over her breast. “Cancel the class and we’ll go up now.”

“It’s a shame I’m a responsible woman—and one who barely has time to take a shower.”

“Oh yeah, the obligatory shower. I could use one.”

“Doubling up would only lead to shower sex.”

“Damn straight.”

“Which, while fun, I have no time for. Besides, you and Jaws can’t do the next class. It risks overtraining. But you could—” She broke off when the dogs announced visitors. “Oh hell, oh shit!” Scrambling, she grabbed her shirt, her pants, bundled them in front of her as she hunched toward the window.

“It’s James, and oh God, Lori. It’s James and Lori and I’m naked in the living room on a Sunday afternoon.” She glanced back. “And you’re naked on the floor.”

She looked so sexily flustered, a little wild in the eye and pink from her toes to her hairline.

Delicious, he thought. He could’ve lapped her up like ice cream. “I like it here.”

“No! No! Get up!” She waved her hands, dropped her shirt, grabbed it again. “Up, get something on. Go . . . go tell them I’ll be out in five minutes.”

“Because you’re taking an after-sex shower?”

“Just . . . get your pants on!” Still hunched, she sprinted for the stairs.

Grinning—she looked even more interesting running naked—he tugged on his pants, tossed on his shirt and, grabbing his socks and boots, strolled out onto the porch.

James and Lori stopped greeting the dogs. James’s eyes narrowed. Lori flushed.

“She’ll be out in a couple minutes.” Simon sat to put on his socks and boots. Jaws instantly made a lunge for a boot. Simon swung it out of reach, said, “Cut it out.”

“Nice-looking dog. How’s his training coming?”

“It’s coming. We just took in a class.”

James’s eyes stayed narrowed. “Is that what you just did?”

Simon laced up his boot, smiled coolly. “Among other things. Is that a problem for you?”

Lori patted frantically at James’s arm. “We just dropped by to see if Fiona wanted to grab some dinner after her classes. You could join us.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got to get on. See you around.” He walked to his truck. Jaws danced in place, obviously torn, then ran after Simon, leaped into the cab of the truck.

“I don’t know about this,” James muttered.

“It’s not our business—exactly.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon, practically. It’s daylight.”

“Prude.” Lori elbowed him and laughed.

“I’m not a prude, but—”

“People make love in the daylight, James. Plus I like knowing he’s around, spending time with her. Didn’t you say we should come by just to check on her?”

“Yeah, but we’re her friends.”

“I think Fee and Simon are pretty friendly. Just a wild guess. I’m sorry if you’re jealous, but—”

“I’m not.” Genuinely surprised, he stopped scowling after Simon and turned to her.

“I know you and Fee are close,” Lori began, lowering her lashes.

“Wow. No. Not that way.”

The lashes lifted again. “At all?”

“At all, as in never. Jeez, do people actually think . . . ?”

“Oh, I don’t know about people. I guess I just thought you were, or had been or maybe hoped to.” She managed an embarrassed laugh. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Listen, Fee and I are . . . we’re like family. I don’t think about her that way. I don’t think that way.” He paused until she looked at him, looked in his eyes. “About Fee.”

“Maybe you think that way about somebody else?”

“All the time.”

“Oh.” She laughed again. “Thank God.”

He started to touch her; she started to let him. And Fiona rushed out of the house.

“Hey! Hi. It’s my day for pals. Did Simon leave?”

James let out a long breath. “Yeah, he said he had to go.”

“Sorry,” Lori put in. “Lousy timing.”

“Actually, it could’ve been worse. Or much more embarrassing for all. Let’s just close the door on all that. So.” She offered a big, bright smile. “What are you two up to?”

THIRTEEN

Organic milk.” Fiona unloaded the items she’d picked up for Sylvia. “Free-range eggs, goat cheese, lentils, brown rice and one shiny eggplant. Mmm, yummy.”

“I shudder to think what you’ve got in the car.”

“Besides Bogart? You’re better off not knowing.”

“Fat, salt, starch and sugar.”

“Maybe, but also a couple of very pretty apples. And look what I got for you,” she said to Oreo, “because you’re so cute.”

She pulled out a squeaky toy, gave it a squeeze and sent the little dog into a quiver of delight. “Sylvia,” she said when she offered the toy, and Oreo pranced off with it. “I’m having an affair.” With a laugh she turned two quick circles. “I’m closing in on thirty, and I’ve never been able to say that before. I’m having a hot, steamy, crazy affair.”

With the one shiny eggplant in her hand, Sylvia smiled. “It’s certainly giving you a relaxed, happy glow.”

“Is it?” Fiona laid her hands on her own cheeks. “Well, I am relaxed and happy. You know it was never an affair with Greg. It was friendship and a crush and a relationship one after another, or altogether. But a slow build. And this? This has been pow! Explosive.”

She leaned on the kitchen counter, grinned. “I’m having scorching, no-strings sex, and it’s fabulous.”

“Do you want to keep it that way?” Sylvia gave Fiona’s hair, loose today, swinging, a quick stroke. “The no strings?”

“I’m not thinking about that yet.” Fiona lifted her shoulders, let them fall in a kind of internal hug. “I like this phase of not thinking about it.”

“Exciting. A little dangerous. Unpredictable.”

“Yes! And that’s all so unlike me. No plans, no checklist.”

“And all glow.”

“If it keeps up, I may turn radioactive.” Charged, she broke a sprig of glossy green grapes from the bunch in the bowl on the counter and began popping them into her mouth. “I’ve been training Jaws one-on-one. Over a week now, which means either I go over there or Simon brings the dog to me. And we don’t always . . . There isn’t always time, but there’s always heat.”

“Don’t you ever go out? I mean, wouldn’t you like to go have dinner or catch a movie?”

“I don’t know. That all seems . . .” She whisked a hand through the air. “Outside right now. Maybe we will, or maybe it’ll burn off. But right now, I feel so involved, so excited, so—cliché time—alive. I’m a walking buzz. Did you ever have one? A hot, steamy affair?”

“Yes, I did.” After tucking the eggs away, Sylvia closed the refrigerator. “With your father.”

Fiona patted a hand to her throat as a grape threatened to lodge. “ Seriously?”

“I think we both decided it was just sex, just a fast, exciting ride—during that no-thinking phase.”

“Hold on a minute, because I want to hear this but I don’t want to get a picture in my head. That’s too weird. Okay, okay.” She squeezed her eyes shut, nodded. “No video. You and Dad.”

Sylvia licked her fingertip, made a hissing sound. “Scorching. I was managing Island Arts in those days. I have many, many fond memories of the stockroom.”

“I must say . . . wow. Dad in the stockroom.”

“Exciting, a little dangerous, unpredictable.”

“Like you,” Fiona murmured. “Not so much like him—or my perception of him.”

“We were like teenagers.” She sighed, smiled. “God, he made me feel that way. Of course, I was much too unconventional to consider marriage, so I imagined we’d just continue as we were, until we stopped. And then, I don’t know, Fee, how or when or why, not specifically, but then I couldn’t imagine my life without him. Thank God he felt the same.”

“He was so nervous the first time he took me to meet you. I know I was young, but I knew he loved you because he was so nervous.”

“He loved us both. We were lucky. Still, when he asked me to marry him, I thought, Oh no, absolutely not. Marriage? Just a piece of paper, just an empty ritual. I thought absolutely not, but I said yes—and stunned myself. My heart,” she murmured, laying her hand over it. “My heart wouldn’t say no.”

Fiona ran those words through her mind on the drive home. My heart wouldn’t say no.

She thought it lovely, and at the same time felt relief that, at the moment, her heart kept silent. A speaking heart could break—she knew that very well. As long as hers remained content, she’d stay relaxed and happy.

Spring was beginning to show her face as field and hill and forest steeped in green, sprinkled by the bold yellow of wild buttercups, like grains of shaken sunlight. Maybe there was a dusting of snow high up on Mount Constitution, but the contrast of white peaks against soft blue only made the shy blooms of the early white fawn lilies more charming, the three-note call of the sparrow more poignant.

Right at the moment, she felt like the island—coming alive, blooming, busy with the business of being.

Classes and clients and work on her blog packed her days, while her unit and training added the spice of satisfaction. Her own three dogs gave her love, entertainment, security. Her very hot neighbor kept her excited and aware—and had a dog she believed she could mold into a solid, even superior, Search and Rescue dog.

The police didn’t have any news—not that they were sharing, in any case—on the three murdered women, but . . . There’d been no more abductions reported in two weeks.

As she rounded a curve she caught sight of the iridescent blur of a hummingbird zipping along a clump of red-flowering currant.

If that couldn’t be taken as a good omen, she mused, what could?

“No bad news, Bogart, just the—what is that song?—the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. Hell, that’s going to stick in my head.”

He thumped his glossy black tail, so she sang it again. “I don’t know the rest—before my time, you know. Anyway, errands are done, we’re nearly home. And you know what? Maybe I’ll give Jaws’s daddy a call, see if he wants to come over for dinner. I could cook. Something. It might be time we had ourselves a date—and a sleepover. What do you say? Do you want Jaws to come over and play? Let’s get the mail first.”

She turned into the drive, parked and walked over to the box on the side of the road. She tossed the mail into one of the grocery bags. “We’d better get this stuff put away so I can see if I actually have anything to make for dinner—the sort you make when somebody comes over.”

As she carried bags inside she wished she’d had the idea earlier. Then she could’ve picked up something, put together an actual adult menu.

“I could go back,” she mused, stowing frozen dinners, cans. “Pick up a couple of steaks. You know what?” She tossed the mail on the table, put away the cloth bags Sylvia had given her for grocery runs. “I could just call the pizza place and sweet-talk them into a delivery.”

Considering the options, she picked up the mail. “Bill, bill, oh, and, surprise, bill.” She lifted the padded mailing bag. “Not a bill. Hey, guys, maybe this is some pictures from one of our graduates.”

Her former clients often sent her photos and updates. Pleased to have something that wasn’t a bill, she zipped open the bag.

The gauzy red scarf fell onto the table.

She stumbled back, revulsion and panic rising in her throat like burning reflux. For a moment the room spun around her, gray at the edges so the snake coil of the scarf boiled red. Pain crashed into her chest, blocking her breath until the gray swam with white dots. She groped behind her, clamped one white-knuckled hand on the counter as her legs liquefied.

Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint.

Bearing down, she sucked in air, hissed it out, and forced her quivering legs to move. Even as she reached for the phone, the dogs milling around her in concern went on alert.

“Stay with me. Stay with me.” She gasped it out as hammers of panic slammed against her ribs. She swore she heard the strike of them cracking her bones like glass.

Fiona grabbed the phone with one hand, a carving knife with the other.

“Damn it, Fiona, you left the door open again.”

Simon strode in, annoyance in every line. Faced with a woman, pale as wax, holding a very large knife and guarded by three dogs who all growled a low warning, he stopped short.

“You want to tell them to stand down?” he asked. Coolly, calmly.

“Relax. Relax, boys. Friend. Simon’s a friend. Say hi to Simon.”

Jaws galloped in with a rope, ready to play. Simon walked to the back door, opened it. “Everybody out.”

“Go on out. Go outside. Go play.”

Still watching her, Simon closed the door behind the rush of bodies. “Put down the knife.”

She managed another breath. “I can’t. I can’t seem to let go of it.”

“Look at me,” he ordered. “Look at me.” His eyes on hers, Simon put a hand on her wrist and used the other to release the vise of her fingers on the handle of the knife. He shot it back into the slot on the cutting board.

“What happened?”

She lifted a hand, pointed at the table. Saying nothing, he walked to the table, stared down at the scarf, the open bag.

“Finish calling the cops,” he told her, then turned when she didn’t speak, didn’t move. He took the phone.

“Speed dial one. Sheriff’s office. Sorry. I need to just . . .” She slid down, sat on the floor and dropped her head between her knees.

His voice was a vague buzz under the thunder of her heart in her ears. She hadn’t fainted, she reminded herself. She’d armed herself. She’d been ready.

But now, now all she wanted to do was come apart.

“Here. Drink.” Simon took her hand, wrapped it around a glass of water. “Drink it, Fiona.” Crouching, he guided the glass to her lips, watching her steadily.

“Your hands are hot.”

“No, yours are cold. Drink the water.”

“Can’t swallow.”

“Yes you can. Drink the water.” He nudged it on her, sip by slow sip. “Davey’s on his way.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw a hummingbird. I saw a hummingbird, and I stopped to get the mail. It was in the mail. I picked up the mail, brought it in with the groceries. I thought it might be pictures of one of my dogs—students. I get them sometimes. But . . .”

He rose, took the bag by the corner with two fingers, flipped it over. “It’s postmarked Lakeview, Oregon. There’s no return address.”

“I didn’t look. I just opened it—right before you came in. Right before.”

“I couldn’t have walked in and scared you if you hadn’t left your door open.”

“You’re right.” The knot at the base of her throat wouldn’t loosen. The water wouldn’t wash it away, so she focused on Simon’s face, the rich tea color of his eyes. “That was careless. Comes from being relaxed and happy. Stupid.” She pushed to her feet, set the glass on the counter. “But I had the dogs. I had a weapon. If it hadn’t been you, if it had been . . .”

“He’d have a hard time getting by the dogs. Odds are he wouldn’t. But if he did, goddamn, if, Fiona, he’d have taken that knife away from you in two seconds.”

Her chin came up; so did her color. “You think so?”

“Look, you’re strong, and you’re fast. But grabbing a weapon you have to use close in, and can be used against you, isn’t a smart alternative to running.”

Her movements jerky, she yanked open a drawer, pulled out a spatula. The knot dissolved, with anger and insult in its place. “Take it away from me.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Pretend it’s a knife. Prove your point, goddamn it.”

“Fine.” He shifted, feinted with his right hand, then reached for her arm with his left.

Fiona changed her leg base, grabbed his reaching arm and used his momentum to drag him by. He had to slap a hand against the wall or run face-first into it.

“Now I’ve just stabbed you in the back with the knife—or if I’d been feeling less murderous, I’d have kicked you in the back of the knees and taken you down. I’m not helpless. I’m not a victim.”

He turned toward her. Fury shone on her face now, infinitely preferable to fear.

“Nice move.”

“That’s right.” She nodded sharply. “That’s goddamn right. Do you want to see another? Maybe the one where I kick your balls up against the back of your teeth, then beat you into a coma when you’re on the ground writhing in pain.”

“We can skip that one.”

“Being scared doesn’t make me weak. Being scared means I’ll do anything and everything I have to do to defend myself.” She heaved the spatula into the sink. “Couldn’t you show some compassion, some understanding instead of jumping down my throat?”

“You’re not sitting on the floor shaking anymore. And I’m feeling less inclined to punch my fist through the wall.”

“And that’s your method?”

“I haven’t been in a situation like this before but apparently, yes, that’s my method.” He took the spatula out of the sink, shoved it back in the drawer. “But if you want the strong male to blubbering female, we can go with that.”

“Blub—God! You piss me off. Which is,” she said after a righteous breath, “exactly the goal. Well, bull’s-eye for you.”

“It makes me crazy.”

She pushed her hands over her face, back into her hair. “What?”

“Seeing you like that. Have you ever seen yourself when you’re seriously scared, seriously sad? You lose every drop of color in your face. I’ve never seen anybody still breathing get that white. And it makes me crazy.”

She dropped her hands again. “You’re damn good at leashing the crazy.”

“Yeah, I am. We can talk about that some other time. Don’t think—” He broke off, shoved his own hands in his pockets. “Don’t think you don’t matter. You do. I just haven’t—Now, see?” he said with raw frustration. “The minute I stop pissing you off you start crying.”

“I’m not crying.” She blinked desperately at the tears welling in her eyes. “And what’s wrong with crying? I’m entitled. I’m entitled to a jag of major proportions, so be a man, damn it, grow a pair and suck it up.”

“Crap.” He yanked her against him, chained his arms around her.

She felt the sob flood her throat. Then he eased her back, skimmed his fingers down her cheek, laid his lips on her brow.

The tenderness shocked her eyes dry, killed the sob before it released. Instead she let out a long, shuddering sigh and leaned on him.

“I don’t know how to take care of people,” he muttered. “I’m barely able to take care of a damn dog.”

You’re wrong about that, she thought. So wrong about that.

“You’re doing okay,” she managed. “I’m okay.” Still she jolted when the dogs barked the alert. “That’ll be Davey.”

“I’ll go let him in.” He stroked his hand down her hair once, twice. “Sit down or something.”

Sit down or something, Fiona thought as Simon walked out. Then she took his advice and made herself sit at the kitchen table.

Simon walked out onto the porch. “She’s inside, back in the kitchen.”

“What—”

“She’ll fill you in. I need about twenty minutes, and I need to know you’ll be here that long.”

“All right.”

Simon headed to his truck, ordered Jaws to stay, then drove away. Calmer, Fiona thought, she was much calmer when Davey came in. “I haven’t touched it since I opened it,” she began. “I don’t guess that’s going to matter.” She looked over his shoulder, frowned. “Where’s Simon?”

“He had something to do.”

“He—Oh.” The pressure on her chest returned, just for a moment. “Fine. It was in the mail. It’s got an Oregon postmark.”

He sat first, took her hands. Just took her hands.

“Oh God, Davey. I’m scared senseless.”

“We’re going to look out for you, Fee. If you want it, we’ll have somebody parked outside the house twenty-four hours a day until they catch this bastard.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that. Yet. It could come to it.”

“Have you gotten any unusual calls, any hang-ups? Anything troubling on your website or blog?”

“No. This is the first thing. And I know it might not be from him. It’s probably not. It’s from some vicious person who read that damn article, got my address. That’s just as likely.”

“Maybe it is.” He released her hands, took out two evidence bags. “I’m going to take these in. We’ll do what we can. There’s a federal task force on this now, and we’ll probably need to turn these over to them. Fee, it’s likely they’re going to send someone out to talk to you.”

“I’m okay with that.” Wouldn’t be the first time, she thought bitterly. “I’m good with that.”

“We’ll be reaching out to the police in Lakeview. I know this is hard for you, but maybe it’s a break. We might get prints or DNA off the stamp. Something from the handwriting, or we’ll trace the scarf.”

Investigations, routines, procedures. How was it all happening again?

“What about Perry? He might have paid somebody to send it to me.”

“I’m going to see what I can find out, but I have to think they’ve talked to Perry. They’d monitor his contacts, his visitors, his mail. We’re not really in the loop, Fee, but after this the sheriff’s going to push that. Maybe this was just some asshole’s idea of a nasty joke, but everybody’s going to take it seriously. I can bunk on the couch.”

He would, she thought, for as long as she needed. “You’ve got a family. I have the dogs.”

He leaned back. “Do you have anything cold to drink?”

She cocked her head. “Because you’re thirsty, or because you don’t want to leave me alone?”

He gave her a hard stare. “You can’t spare a cold drink for a hardworking civil servant?”

She got up, opened the fridge. “You’re lucky I just hit the market. I have Coke, OJ, bottled water and V8 Splash. Beer, too, but as you’re a hard-working civil servant on duty—”

“I’ll take the Coke.”

“Ice and lemon?”

“Just hand over the can, Fee. Why don’t we take it out on the porch, take advantage of the weather?”

She got out a second can. “I’m all right on my own, Davey. I’m scared,” she added as they walked toward the front door, “but I feel safer and more secure in my own place than I would anywhere else. I’m carrying my cell phone in my pocket. I’ve done some practicing with my gun—and believe I’ll do more before dark. And you’ll be happy to know that when Simon walked in while I was having my freak-out, the dogs warned him back until I released them.”

“All good, Fee. I’d just be happier if you had somebody staying with you. Why don’t you call James?”

The fact that she considered doing just that told her she was shakier than she’d realized. “I don’t know. Maybe—”

The dogs alerted when they reached the door. Davey nudged her to the side, opened it himself. And nodded when Simon drove back up. “I guess I’ll get going.”

She’d been tag-teamed, she realized.

“What about the cold drink and taking advantage of the weather?”

“I’m taking the drink with me.” He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze before walking out to meet Simon.

Fiona waited where she stood while the two of them had a brief conversation. Davey got in his car, and Simon slung a small knapsack over his shoulder.

“I thought you went home.”

“I did. I had to take care of a couple things and get some stuff. I need some of my stuff since I’m staying over tonight.”

“You’re staying over tonight?”

“Yeah.” He took the can of Coke from her, downed some. “If you’ve got a problem with that, too damn bad.”

Her insides softened as another woman’s might if a man read her a love sonnet. “I guess you’ll expect sex and a hot meal?”

“Yeah, but you can pick the order.” He handed her back the Coke.

“I’m a lousy cook.”

“Luckily you’re good in bed—or wherever.” He shrugged. “Don’t you have any frozen pizza?”

Still scared, she realized, but she didn’t feel like crying anymore, didn’t have to fight off trembling anymore.

“I do, but I also have a menu from Mama Mia’s. They’ll deliver for me.”

“That works.” He started to move by her, into the house, but she turned, stepped into his arms, held hard.

“Simon.” She murmured it as she relaxed against him. “I have no idea why, but you’re exactly what I need right now.”

“I don’t know why either.” He tossed the duffel through the open door, then stroked a hand down her back. “You’re really not my type.”

“That’s because I defy typing.”

He studied her face when she laughed and leaned back. “Yes, you do.”

“Let’s take a walk before we order dinner. I need to shake off the last of the jitters.”

“Then I want a beer.”

“You know what, so do I. Two walking beers coming up.”

LATER, THEY SAT on the sofa with a second beer, the fire chasing the evening chill, with a pepperoni pizza in the delivery box between them. Fiona crossed her ankles on the coffee table.

“You know, I keep telling myself I’m going to start eating like an adult.”

“We are eating like adults.” Simon blocked Jaws’s attempt to scoot under his legs for a stab at the pie. “Get lost,” he told the dog. “Kids have to eat when and what they’re told,” he continued. “We get to eat when and what we want. Because we’re adults.”

“That’s true. Plus, I love pizza.” She bit into her slice. “There’s no food to match it. Still, I was actually thinking before . . . before you came by that I’d ask you over to dinner.”

“Then how come I paid for the pizza?”

“You got out your wallet; I let you. I was going to ask you over to dinner that I cooked.”

“You’re a lousy cook.”

She jabbed him with her elbow. “I was going to make an attempt. Besides, I can grill. In fact, I’m superior on the grill. A couple of good steaks, Idahos wrapped in foil—some vegetable kabobs as a nod to a balanced meal. That’s where I rule.”

“You cook like a guy.” He picked up a second slice. “I admire that.”

“I guess I owe you a steak dinner, since you paid for the pizza, and you’re keeping me company tonight. Tell me about leashing the crazy.”

“It’s not that interesting. Why don’t you have a TV down here?”

“Because I never watch TV down here. I like to watch it in bed, all sprawled out or nested in. The living room’s for company and conversation.”

“The bedroom’s for sleeping and sex.”

“Until recently sex wasn’t that much of a factor, and watching TV in bed helps me fall asleep.” She licked sauce off her thumb. “I know when you’re changing the subject, and it won’t work. I’m interested.”

“I’ve got an ugly temper. I learned how to keep it under control. That’s it.”

“Define ugly temper.”

He took a pull on his beer. “Fine. When I was a kid and something, someone pissed me off, tried to push me around, I’d go off. Fighting was my answer, the bloodier the better.”

“You liked to brawl.”

“I liked to kick ass,” he corrected. “There’s a difference. Brawl? There’s something good-natured about that word. I wasn’t good-natured about it. I didn’t pick fights, I didn’t bully other kids, I didn’t look for trouble. But I could find a reason to swing, I could find trouble, no problem. Then the switch would go off.”

He turned the beer around, idly read the label. “Seeing red? That can be literal. And I’d wade in, and when I waded in, it was to do damage.”

She could imagine him wading in—his build, those big, hard hands, the hard line of heat she caught in his eye now and then. “Did you ever hurt anyone seriously?”

“I could have. Probably would have eventually. I got hauled down to the office in school more times than I can count.”

“I never did. Not bragging,” she added when he turned his head to eye her. “I sort of wish I hadn’t been such a good girl all the damn time.”

“You were one of those.”

“Sadly, yes. Keep going. Bad boys are so much more interesting than good girls.”

“Depends on the girl, and what it takes to bring out the bad.” He reached over, released the top two buttons of her shirt until her bra peeked out. “There you go. Pizza slut. Anyway,” he continued when she laughed, “I got in some trouble, but I never started the fight—and there were always people around to back me up on that. My parents tried different things to channel it. Sports, lectures, even counseling. The thing was, I got decent grades, didn’t smart-mouth teachers.”

“What changed?”

“Junior year in high school. I had a rep—and there are always going to be the type who need to challenge the rep. New guy comes along—tough guy. He goes after me; I take him down.”

“Just like that?”

“No. It was vicious, on both sides. We hurt each other. I hurt him more. A couple weeks later, he and two of his buddies jumped me. I was with a girl, making out in the park. Two of them held me while he took his shots. She’s screaming for them to stop, screaming for help, and he’s laughing and beating me until I don’t even feel it anymore. At some point I blacked out.”

“Oh my God, Simon.”

“When I came to, they had her on the ground, holding her down. She’s crying, begging. I don’t know if they’d have raped her. I don’t know if they’d have gone that far. But they didn’t get the chance. I went crazy, and I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember getting up off the ground and going after them. I beat two of them unconscious. The third ran off. I don’t remember any of it,” he repeated, as if it still troubled him. “But I remember coming out of it, out of that red zone, and hearing the girl—a girl I was half in love with—crying and screaming and begging me to stop. I remember the look on her face when I pulled in enough to see her. I’d scared her as much as the ones who jumped me and nearly raped her.”

Then she was a wimp, in Fiona’s opinion. Instead of screaming and crying, she should’ve run for help. “How badly were you hurt?”

“Enough for a couple days in the hospital. Two of the three who came at me spent longer. I woke up in the hospital—a world of hurt. I saw my parents sitting together across the room. My mother was crying. You had to practically cut her arm off with a hatchet to make my mother cry, but tears were just running down her face.”

That, Fiona saw clearly, troubled him more than the memory lapse. That had been the mark that had turned his path. His mother’s tears.

“And I thought, That’s enough. It’s enough. I leashed the crazy.”

“Just like that?”

“No. But eventually. Once you learn how to walk away the first time, or realize the one baiting you is an idiot, it gets easier.”

So, she thought, that’s where the control had its roots. “What about the girl?”

“I never made it past second base with her after all. She broke it off,” he added when Fiona said nothing. “I couldn’t blame her.”

“I can. She should’ve found a big stick and helped you instead of crying. She should’ve grabbed some rocks and started throwing them. She should’ve kissed your goddamn feet for saving her from being mauled and raped.”

He smiled. “She wasn’t the type.”

“You have faulty taste in types.”

“Maybe. Up till now, anyway.”

She smiled, leaned over the take-out box to kiss him—and flipped open another button on her shirt. “Since I’m tonight’s pizza slut, I say we take the rest of this upstairs, where it’ll be handy if we want some after.”

“I’m a fan of cold pizza.”

“I’ve never understood people who aren’t.” She rose, held out a hand for his.

FOURTEEN

Simon woke with the sun in his eyes. At home he slept in a cave, shuttering the bedroom windows so he could wake up, get up, whenever the hell he wanted. He considered it, like eating whatever and whenever, a perk of adulthood aided by being self-employed.

Of course, the dog had changed that, demanding to be let out at questionable hours by jumping on the bed, or licking any body part that might hang over the bed. Or his newest, and fairly creepy, method: standing beside the bed and staring at the human.

Still, they’d worked out a routine where he let the dog out, stumbled back into bed and caught some more sleep until Jaws wanted in again.

So where the hell was the dog? And more important, where the hell was Fiona?

Deciding they were undoubtedly together, Simon grabbed a pillow and put it over his face to block the light so he could sleep.

No good, he realized in seconds.

The pillow smelled of her, and her scent drove him crazy. He indulged himself for a moment, just breathing her in while a picture of her formed in his mind. The soft coloring, the sharp features, the long, strong body. The dash of freckles and clear, calm eyes.

He’d thought if he figured out what there was about her he found so damn compelling, he’d get past it, or around it.

But now that he had, at least partially, he found himself only more tangled up. Her strength—mind and body—her resilience, her humor and what seemed an almost bottomless well of patience combined with an innate kindness and an easy, almost careless self-confidence.

He found the mix fascinating.

He shoved the pillow aside and lay there squinting at the light.

Her bedroom, he thought, showed a strong, imaginative use of color. The walls glowed a coppery hue in the sunlight and formed a good backdrop for some decent local art—probably picked up at Syl’s. She’d indulged herself with a big iron bed with hints of dark bronze along with that copper, and high, knobbed posts.

No fuss, he thought. Even the obligatory female bottles and bowls on the dresser had a sense of organization, while the trio of dog beds across the room spoke of her passion and profession.

Attractive lamps, simple in style, an oversized chair draped with a beautifully made throw—likely Syl’s again. A low cabinet holding books—and he’d bet they were shelved alphabetically—photos, trinkets.

No clothes tossed around, no shoes left on the floor, no pocket stuff scattered on the dresser.

How did anyone live like that?

In fact, he noted, the clothes he’d peeled, tugged and yanked off her the night before were nowhere to be seen, and the clothes she’d peeled, tugged and yanked off him sat neatly folded on the chest under the window.

And since he was lying there thinking about how she decorated and organized her bedroom, he obviously wasn’t getting any more sleep.

He used her shower, found it stingy on the pressure and the hot water. Her bathroom, he thought, needed some serious updating. The old fixtures should be replaced, the tile work redone, and the basic layout wasted space.

Despite what he considered a poor design, it was tidy, organized, scrupulously clean.

He dropped his towel on the floor, went out into the bedroom to dress. Walked back into the bath, picked up the towel and slung it over the shower rail.

He dressed, thinking about coffee, then started out of the room. Walked back, snarling a little, and picked up the pillow he’d shoved off his face and onto the floor. Tossed it back onto the bed. Muttered, but pushed his neatly folded clothes into his duffel. Satisfied, he started out again.

“Goddamn it.” Since he couldn’t shrug off the guilt line between his shoulder blades, he backtracked again, yanked the sheets into some semblance of order, then flipped the bold blue comforter up and over—and considered the bed made.

Feeling put-upon, he trudged downstairs and decided there better damn sight be coffee.

It waited for him, hot, fragrant and seductive. Next to a woman, he thought as he sloshed some into a mug, coffee was the best thing a man could consume in the morning.

He drank, topped off the mug, then went to find the woman and his dog.

They were in the sunny side yard fooling around on what he thought of as the playground equipment while the other three dogs sprawled on the grass. He leaned against the porch post, drinking his coffee, watching the woman—her stone gray hoodie zipped against the early morning chill while she walked his dog up a teeter-totter.

It tilted down at his weight when he passed the center, but rather than jump off, as Simon expected, he walked straight down.

“Good!”

Jaws got a treat, a pat before she directed him to the tunnel.

“Go through.” She moved down the outside as he—probably, Simon thought—wound through the inside. He wiggled out the far side.

After his reward, she turned to a platform. Simon watched his dog leap on command, preen at the praise, then trot down the ramp on the other side and straight to the ladder of the slide.

“Hup!”

Without hesitation he climbed up, navigated the slide down.

Amazed, Simon started over as Fiona turned Jaws to a lower platform. At her command, he jumped over it and, at the next, scrambled up a pile of logs.

“Call the circus,” Simon said. At his voice, Jaws broke ranks and charged over.

“Morning.” Fiona gave her dogs the release signal.

“Yeah.” She’d done something to her hair, he noticed. Some kind of braiding deal at the sides that merged into one at the back.

Where the hell did she find time to do that stuff ?

“What are you doing up and out this early and playing recess?”

“I have morning classes, including a one-on-one with a behavioral problem.”

She stepped in to him the way she did, kissed him the way she did—light and easy. He liked light and easy well enough, but . . . He pulled her back in for stronger.

“Off.” She held a hand down to Jaws as he jumped, skimmed the other through Simon’s hair. “Your hair’s still wet. So you found the shower and the coffee.”

“Yeah.” She smelled like spring, he thought, with just a hint of heat. “I’d rather have found you in bed, but I settled.”

“The dogs needed to go out, and since we were up and out, I thought I’d work with Jaws. That was his third round with the obstacle course this morning. He thinks it’s great fun, and he’s picked up several skills. If you want to leave him here today, he can hang with the boys, and I’ll work with him some between classes.”

“Ah . . .”

“Or if you want him with you, you can just drop by later and we’ll work in a session.”

Stupid, Simon thought, that he’d gotten so used to the dog he’d hesitate over the offer of a day without the responsibility of him.

“Keep him if you want. Any special time I should come back for him?”

“Anytime. Play your cards right and you could get that steak dinner out of it since I know you’ll be back. If I’d known you were coming by yesterday . . . Why did you come by yesterday?”

“Maybe I wanted sex.”

“Mission accomplished.”

He grinned at her, ran a finger over one of those fancy braids. “The sex and pizza were a bonus. I had a reason, but I lost it with everything.”

“There was a lot of everything. I’m glad you were here, whatever the reason.”

“It’s in the truck. I’ll get it. Here.” He pushed the empty mug into her hand.

“What’s in the truck?”

“The reason.” Jaws grabbed a stick and bounded along with him. “We’re not going for a ride yet.” To keep his legs from being bashed and poked, he took the stick. “Give.” Then tossed it.

The entire pack of dogs gave merry chase.

Simon lowered the tailgate, climbed in and tossed aside a tarp. He muscled the chair out of the truck.

“Oh my God, is that mine? Is that my chair?” Fiona scrambled over as he hauled it to the porch.

She lit up, he thought, as if he’d given her diamonds. “It’s mine. I’m not sitting on that piece of crap when I’m over here.”

“It’s beautiful. Look at the color! It’s, what, Caribbean Vacation, maybe? It’s fun!”

“It works with the house, the trim.” Though he shrugged, her reaction brought him ridiculous pleasure. “It won’t look half bad around you.”

“It’s so smooth.” She ran a hand along the side arm. The minute he set it on the porch she plopped into it. “Oh, and it’s comfortable.” Laughing, she rocked. “An easy ride. So, does it suit me?”

“Yeah, it suits you.” He picked up the old chair.

“What are you going to do with—Oh, Simon!” She winced when he snapped one of the rungs—which also gave him ridiculous pleasure. “Someone could use it.”

“It’s crap.”

“Yes, but, I should at least recycle so—”

He broke off another rung. “There. Recycled crap into kindling. Or”—he tossed it, and sent the dogs into another mad dash—“dog toy.”

He needed to go, he thought. If he was up this early, he ought to be working.

“When’s your first class?”

“The one-on-one’s first. They ought to be here in about a half hour.”

“I’m going to get more coffee. Is there anything around here that resembles breakfast food?”

“Simon, you don’t have to stay. I’m going to be alone here sometimes.”

“I make you a chair and you can’t spare a bowl of cereal?”

She rose, laid her hands on his cheeks. “I have Froot Loops.”

“That’s not a cereal. Frosted Flakes is a cereal.”

“Out of stock. I do have Eggos.”

“Now you’re talking.”

IT TOOK A few days, but in the middle of her last afternoon class, Fiona spotted the mid-level American-made car easing down her drive—and thought, The feds.

“Keep working on bringing your dogs to heel. Astrid, you’re hesitating and tensing up. You have to show Roofus you’re pack leader.”

She stepped away from the class, turned to walk to the car. Her own tension eased when she saw the driver get out.

He wore a dark suit over a stocky build, and the flecks of gray in his hair had multiplied since the last time she’d seen him.

“Special Agent Tawney.” Fiona held out both hands. “I’m so glad it’s you.”

“Sorry it has to be anybody, but it’s good to see you. My partner, Special Agent Erin Mantz.”

The woman wore a suit as well, trim over a compact build. Her hair fell in a sleek blond tail, leaving her strong, serious face unframed.

“Ms. Bristow.”

“If you could wait? I have about another fifteen minutes to go. And, no offense, but I’d rather not announce to my clients that the FBI’s on the premises.”

“No problem,” Tawney told her. “We’ll have a seat on the porch, watch the show.”

“I’ll wrap it up as soon as I can.”

Mantz stood where she was for a moment. “She looked pretty happy to see you. Not our usual reception.”

“I was with her after she escaped from Perry. She felt comfortable with me, so I was on her during the trial.”

Mantz studied the terrain, the house, the setup from behind dark glasses. “And here you are again.”

“Yeah, here I am again. Perry’s in this, Erin, there’s not a doubt in my mind. And if there’s one person in this world he hasn’t forgotten, it’s Fiona Bristow.”

Mantz watched, cool-eyed, as Fiona supervised owners and dogs. “Is that what you’re going to tell her?”

“Let’s hope I don’t have to.”

He walked to the porch and, a gentleman to the core, sat on the toy chest to leave the rocker for his partner.

“She’s pretty isolated out here,” Mantz began, then reared back, hands out, when Bogart bopped up to say hello. “Stay back. Go away.”

Tawney patted his knee, inviting Bogart over. “Good dog. What’s the problem, Erin?”

“I don’t like dogs.”

They’d only been partners a few months and were still learning each other’s quirks and rhythms. “What’s not to like?”

“Dog breath, shedding, big, sharp teeth.” Bogart’s tail whapped her legs as Tawney rubbed him. Mantz got to her feet, moved out of range.

Peck sauntered up, glanced at Mantz, got the message. He bumped his nose on Tawney’s knee.

“These must be her dogs. You read her file, didn’t you?” he asked Mantz. “They’re S-and-R dogs. She has three. Trains them, too. She started her own unit out here.”

“You sound like a proud daddy.”

He glanced up, cocking his eyebrows at the edge of sarcasm. “I find her a tough, admirable young woman, one who helped us put a monster in a cell by standing up in court, hanging in, even after her fiancé was murdered.”

“Sorry. Sorry. The dogs make me nervous, and being nervous makes me bitchy. I read Greg Norwood’s file, too. He was a good cop. Came off solid. A little old for her, don’t you think?”

“I’d say that was up to them.”

“Proud and protective daddy.”

“Is that you being nervous and bitchy?”

“Just me observing. Jesus, here comes another one.”

She moved over another foot as Newman trotted onto the porch.

By the time Fiona finished class, her three dogs were sprawled happily at Tawney’s feet, and his partner stood rigidly at the far end of the porch.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Did you make friends with the boys?”

“I did. Agent Mantz doesn’t like dogs.”

“Oh, sorry. I’d have kept them off the porch. Why don’t we go inside? They’ll stay out. Stay out,” she repeated, and opened the front door.

“You’re not fenced,” Mantz observed. “Aren’t you worried they’ll run off?”

“They’re trained not to go past certain boundaries without me. Please, sit down. Why don’t I make some coffee? I’m nervous,” she said before Tawney could respond. “Even though it’s you, even though I was expecting someone and I’m glad it’s you. I’ll make some coffee and settle down.”

“Coffee’d be good.”

“Is it still coffee regular?”

He smiled. “It still is.”

“Agent Mantz?”

“Same for me, thanks.”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“Nice place,” Mantz commented when she was alone with her partner. “Tidy. Quiet, if you like quiet. I’d go nuts.”

“Deb and I talk about getting a quiet place in the country when we retire.”

Mantz glanced back at him. They hadn’t been partners long, but she knew enough. “You’d go nuts.”

“Yeah. She thinks we could take up birding.”

“Does that mean watching them or shooting them?”

“Watching them. Jesus, Erin, why would I go out and shoot birds?”

“Why would you watch them?”

He sat a moment. “Damned if I know.”

When Fiona came back, she carried three mugs on a tray. “I’ve got these cookies Sylvia baked, which means they’re disguised health food, so I can’t promise anything.”

“How is Sylvia?” Tawney asked.

“She’s great. Her shop’s doing really well, and it keeps her busy. She helps me out here, taking classes if I get called out on a search. She’s huge into organic gardening, heads up a monthly book club, and she’s making noises about starting yoga classes—teaching them, I mean. I’m rambling. Still nervous.”

“You have a nice place here. You’re happy?”

“Yes. I needed to move, the change, and it turned out to be the best thing I could’ve done for myself. I love my work, and I’m good at it. At first, I think it was just escape, immerse myself in something so I’d have a reason to get up in the morning. Then I realized it wasn’t escape, it was finding my place, my purpose.”

“You’re not as easily accessible here, for your business, as you would’ve been in Seattle.”

“No. I started out slow, and small. The Internet and word of mouth helped me grow, and starting the unit, building a reputation. I’m still pretty small, but it’s the right fit for me. And that was all a way to ease me into saying I live in a fairly remote location and spend a lot of time either alone or with people I don’t really know—at least not initially.”

“Do you do any sort of screening before you take on a client?” Mantz asked.

“No. A good chunk of my business comes from referrals. Friends, family, coworkers recommending me. I do offer personal behavior training, but that’s a really small percentage of my business. Most are classes, ranging from about five dogs to a max of twelve per class.”

“How about anyone who’s signed up for your class who gave you trouble? Wasn’t satisfied with the results.”

“It happens sometimes. I usually offer them their money back, because it’s better business. A pissed-off client’s going to trash you to friends, family, coworkers, and that could cost me more than a refund.”

“What do you do when a client hits on you? You’re a young, attractive woman,” Mantz continued. “It’s a pretty sure bet it’s happened.”

She hated it, hated the intrusion into every corner of her private life. All the questions they asked of victims and suspects. She was neither, Fiona reminded herself.

She was something else entirely.

“If a client’s single and I’m interested, I’d consider seeing him outside class.” She spoke briskly, almost carelessly. “It doesn’t happen often. If he’s not single, or I’m just not interested, there are ways to discourage and deny without causing friction.”

Fiona picked up a cookie, then just turned it in her fingers. “Honestly, I can’t imagine anyone I’ve discouraged or who hasn’t been satisfied with my work mailing me a red scarf. It’s cruel.”

“Someone you broke off a relationship with?” Mantz continued. “Angry exes can be cruel.”

“I don’t have any angry exes. That’s not being naive. After I lost Greg, and then my father, I wasn’t interested in dating or relationships. It must’ve been close to two years before I so much as had dinner with somebody who wasn’t a close friend. I haven’t had a serious relationship in a very long time, until recently.”

“You’re involved with someone now?”

“I’m seeing someone, yes.”

“For how long?”

Resentment tightened her belly. “Altogether, a couple months. He lives here, on the island. I’m working with his dog. He’s not connected to this.”

“We’ll need his name, Fiona, just so we can eliminate him.”

Fiona looked at Tawney, sighed. “Simon Doyle. He’s a wood artist. He made the rocker on the porch.”

“Nice chair.”

“The scarf was mailed from Oregon. Simon hasn’t been off the island. Agent Tawney, we all know there are two possibilities. The first is somebody following the news reports of the murders, somebody who read the article that brought me into it, sent me that scarf as a sick joke or for some prurient thrill. If that’s the case, it’s unlikely you’ll ever find out who it was. The second is whoever’s following Perry’s pattern sent it to me as a warning, a tease. If that’s the case, I have to hope you find out who he is and stop him, really soon. Because if you don’t, at some point he’s going to come at me and try to correct Perry’s mistake.”

“You hung tough through everything that happened before. You’re going to need to hang tough again. The scarf mailed to you is the same as those used on the three victims. The same manufacturer, the same style, even the same dye lot.”

“So.” Her skin went cold, numbed under a sheath of ice. “That’s probably not a coincidence.”

“We’ve traced the outlets, and we know this specific scarf, this dye lot, was shipped to those outlets at the end of October of last year for distribution in the Walla Walla area.”

“Near the prison,” she murmured. “Near Perry. Why would he buy them there if he didn’t live or work or have business there? A prison guard.” She fought to keep her voice steady. “An inmate who was released or, or a family member. Or—”

“Fiona, believe me, trust me, we’re covering all possibilities. Agent Mantz and I have interviewed Perry. He claims he doesn’t know anything about these murders—how could he?”

“He’s lying.”

“Yes, he is, but we haven’t been able to shake him. Not yet. We’ve had his cell searched, multiple times, all of his correspondence is being analyzed. We’ve interviewed prison officials and inmates he interacts with. We’re watching his sister and are in the process of identifying, locating and contacting anyone—former inmates, prison personnel, outside contractors and instructors—he may have had contact with since he went in.”

“A long time.” She set the cookie aside. She’d never be able to swallow it now. “Do you think he’s directing this, or at least lit the fuse?”

“At this point, we have no proof—”

“I’m not asking for proof.” She paused to smooth the sharp edge out of her tone. “I’m asking what you think. I trust what you think.”

“If he isn’t directing it or hasn’t incited it, he’d be furious. He’d control the anger, but I’d have seen it.”

She nodded. Yes, he’d have seen it. They knew Perry, she and Tawney. They knew him all too well.

“This was his power, his accomplishment,” Tawney continued. “Having someone else pick up that power, claim new accomplishments while he’s locked up? Insulting, demeaning. But selecting or approving the person to continue for him, he’d find pride and pleasure in that. And that’s what I saw when we talked to him. Under the control, the feigned ignorance, he was proud.”

“Yes.” She nodded, then got to her feet to walk to the window, to comfort herself watching her dogs roam the front yard, the field. “That’s what I think, too. I’ve studied him, too. I needed to. I needed to know the man who wanted to kill me, who killed the man I loved because he failed with me. I read the books, watched the TV specials, dissected all the articles. Then I put them away, put them aside because I needed to stop.

“He never has,” she said, turning back. “Not really, has he? He’s just bided his time. But why didn’t he send this proxy for me first, before I could prepare?”

She shook her head, waved away the question as the answer was right there. “Because I’m the big prize—I’m the main event, the reason. And you need to build up to that. The others? They’re opening acts.”

“That’s a hard way to put it,” Mantz commented.

“It’s a hard way to think of it, but that’s how he sees it. It’s a kind of rematch, isn’t it? Last time, I won. Now he’s going to fix that. Maybe by remote, maybe by proxy, but it’ll clear his record. And the opening acts give him his sick satisfaction with the bonus of making the big prize sweat. He wants my fear. It’s part of his method and a large part of his reward.”

“We can take you in, put you in a safe house, offer you protection.”

“I did that before,” Fiona reminded Tawney, “and he just waited me out. Waited me out, then killed Greg. I can’t put my life on hold again, I can’t give him that. He’s already taken so much.”

“We have more leads this time,” Mantz told her. “He’s not as careful, not as smart as Perry. Sending you the scarf was stupid. It’s taunting. Buying them in multiples, from one area, another mistake. We’ll find him.”

“I believe you will, and I hope it’s soon, before someone else dies. But I can’t hide until you do. That’s not being brave so much as realistic. And I have the advantage here. He has to come to me. He has to come onto the island.”

“Your local police department can’t monitor everyone who gets off the ferry.”

“No, but if he does manage to get this far, he’s not going to come up against a twenty-year-old girl.”

“At the very least you should take more precautions,” Mantz advised. “You should have better locks installed. You should think about an alarm system.”

“I have three of them. I’m not being glib,” she added. “The dogs are always with me, and between the police and my friends, I’m being checked on several times a day. Simon’s staying here at night. I’m actually going away next week for a couple of days with a friend and my stepmother. I have a friend staying here with his dog to watch mine and the house.”

“You mentioned that on your blog.”

She smiled at Tawney. “You read my blog.”

“I keep up with you, Fiona. You said you were taking a quick mental health trip with girlfriends, and intended to relax and pamper yourself.”

“Spa,” Mantz said.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t say where you were going, specifically.”

“No, because everyone and anyone can read a blog. I’ll talk about it after, if it seems interesting. But most of what I write about is dog related. I’m not careless, Agent Tawney.”

“No, you’re not. Still, I’d like the information—where you’ll be, the exact dates, how you’ll get there.”

“Okay.”

When his phone signaled, he held up a finger. “Why don’t you give them to Agent Mantz,” he suggested, and walked out onto the porch to take the call.

“We’re driving up to Snoqualmie Falls next Tuesday,” Fiona told her. “Tranquillity Spa and Resort. We’re coming back Friday.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah, it will be. It’s our version of a long weekend, as actual weekends are busiest for all of us. I’m going with Sylvia and a friend. Mai Funaki, our vet.”

Mantz noted down the information, then glanced over as Tawney stepped back in.

“We need to go.”

Fiona got to her feet even as Mantz did. “They found another.”

“No. A twenty-one-year-old woman’s been reported missing. She left her off-campus housing at about six this morning, on foot, on her way to the university’s fitness center. She never got there.”

“Where?” Fiona demanded. “Where was she taken?”

“Medford, Oregon.”

“Just a little closer,” she murmured. “I hope she’s strong. I hope she finds a way.”

“I’m going to stay in touch, Fiona.” Tawney pulled out a card. “You can reach me anytime. My home number’s on the back for you.”

“Thanks.”

She walked out with them, stood with her arms folded over her chest against her thudding heart and the dogs sitting at her feet as they drove away. “Good luck,” she murmured.

Then she went inside to get her gun.

FIFTEEN

Simon carved the scrolled detail into the header for the custom china cabinet while The Fray blasted out of the radio. Meg Greene, a woman who knew exactly what she wanted—except when she changed her mind—had asked to adjust the design four times before he hit the mark for her.

To ensure she didn’t adjust it again, he’d put aside other work to focus on the cabinet. It was a big, beautiful bastard, Simon thought, and would be the showpiece of Meg’s dining room. Another few days, and he’d be done with it, and between the staining and varnishing, he could get serious about the sink base. Maybe work in a few pieces for Syl and have them done when she got back from the spa deal.

If he delivered the stock while she was gone, she couldn’t drag him into talking with her customers. That added motivation.

Starting the day earlier meant he got a jump on things, which almost offset quitting at specific times each day instead of going until he’d had enough.

Stopping, even though he might be on a solid roll, went against the grain, but knowing Fiona would be alone if he didn’t would only screw with his concentration anyway.

But the arrangement had benefits—and not just the sex.

He liked hearing her talk, and listening to the stories she told him about her day. He didn’t know why she relaxed him, but she did. Most of the time.

Then there was the dog. He still chased his tail like a maniac, and stole footwear—and the occasional tool if he could get to it. But he was so damn happy, and a hell of a lot smarter than Simon had given him credit for. He’d gotten used to having the dog curled up under the workbench snoozing or running around outside. And the sucker could field a ball like Derek Jeter.

Simon stood back, studied the work.

Somehow he’d gotten himself a dog and a woman, neither of which he’d particularly wanted. And now he couldn’t imagine his days, or his nights, without them.

He’d gotten more done than he’d expected, and glanced at the clock he’d hung on the wall. Funny, it felt like more than a couple hours since he’d started back up after the grab-a-sandwich, throw-the-ball break he’d taken.

Frowning, he pulled out his phone, read the time on the display and swore.

“Damn it. Why didn’t you remind me to change the batteries in that thing?” he demanded as Jaws trotted through the open shop door.

Jaws only wagged his tail and dropped the stick he’d brought in.

“I don’t have time for that. Let’s move.”

He tried to time his trip to Fiona’s so he arrived long enough after her final class to avoid the inevitable stragglers. Otherwise, she’d start introducing him to people, and there had to be conversations. But he aimed for timing it so she wasn’t alone more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

It was, for him, a delicate balance.

Now, he was nearly two hours behind.

Why hadn’t she called? Wouldn’t any normal woman call to say, Hey, you’re late, what’s going on? Not that they had a formal sort of arrangement. He said see you later every day, left, then he came back.

Nice and easy, no big deal.

“Women are supposed to call,” he told Jaws as they got in the truck. “And nag and bug you. It’s the way of the world. But not her. There’s never any Are you going to be here for dinner? or Can you pick up some milk? or Are you ever going to take out that trash?”

He shook his head. “Maybe she’s lulling me into complacency, stringing me along until I’m . . . more hooked than I already am. Except she’s not, which is one of the reasons I’m hooked, and I’m already taking out the trash because it’s just what you do.”

The dog wasn’t listening, Simon noted, because he had his head out the window. So he might as well save his breath.

No reason to feel guilty because he was a couple hours later than usual, he told himself. He had his work; she had hers. Besides, he thought as he turned into her drive, if she’d called, he wouldn’t be later than usual.

Maybe she hadn’t been able to call. His stomach knotted. If something had happened to her . . .

He heard the gunshots as he drove across the bridge where dogwoods bloomed snowy white.

He floored it, then fishtailed to a stop even as Fiona’s dogs charged around the side of the house. Gunshots ripped through the fear that buzzed in his head as he leaped out of the truck. He left the door swinging open as he ran toward them. When they stopped abruptly, he heard his own heart roaring in his ears.

He pulled in the breath to shout her name, and saw her.

Not lying on the ground bleeding, but standing, coolly, competently shoving another clip into the gun she held.

“Jesus Christ.” The anger flew through him, stampeding out the fear. Even as she started to turn, he grabbed her arm, spun her around. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Careful. It’s loaded.” She lowered the gun, pointing it toward the ground.

“I know it’s loaded. I heard you blasting away like Annie fucking Oakley. You scared the hell out of me.”

“Let go. Earplugs,” she said. “I can barely hear you.” When he released her arm, she pulled them out. “I told you I had a gun, and I told you I’d be practicing. There’s no point getting pissed off that I am.”

“I’m pissed off about the five years you shaved off my life. I had plans for them.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to send out a notification I’d be getting in some target practice.” Her movements as testy as her tone, she shoved the gun into the holster on her belt, then stalked over to set up a variety of cans and plastic water bottles she’d obviously killed before his arrival.

“We can argue about that, seeing as you knew I’d be coming by and might have a strong reaction to gunfire.”

“I don’t know anything. You just show up.”

“If you have a problem with that you should’ve said so.”

“I don’t.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “I don’t,” she repeated. “Go ahead and take the dogs inside if you want. I won’t be much longer.”

“What crawled up your ass? I know your face, so don’t tell me about not getting pissed when you’re already there.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you. You should take Jaws inside. My dogs are used to the sound of gunshots. He’s not.”

“Then we’ll see how he deals.”

“Fine.”

She took out the gun, shifted into the stance he’d seen cops use on TV and in movies. As she fired away, Jaws moved closer to his side, leaning against him, but cocked his head and watched—as Simon did—the cans and bottles fly.

“Nice shooting, Tex.”

She didn’t smile, but walked over to set up fresh targets. Behind her a few big-leaf maples, boughs heavy with clusters of blossoms, shimmered in the sunlight.

It made, to his mind, an odd contrast of violence and peace.

“Do you want to shoot?”

“What for?”

“Have you ever shot a gun?”

“Why would I?”

“There are a lot of reasons. Hunting, sport, curiosity, defense.”

“I don’t hunt. My idea of sport is more in line with baseball or boxing. I’ve never been especially curious, and I’d rather use my fists. Let me see it.”

She put the safety on, unloaded it, then offered it to him.

“Not as heavy as I figured.”

“It’s a Beretta. It’s a fairly light and very lethal semiautomatic. It’ll fire fifteen rounds.”

“Okay, show me.”

She loaded it, unloaded it again, showed him the safety. “It’s double-action, so it’ll fire whether the hammer’s cocked or not. The recoil’s pretty minor, but it’s got a little kick. You want to stand with your feet about shoulder-distance apart. Distribute your weight. Both arms out, elbows locked, with your left hand cupped under your gun hand for stability. You lean your upper body toward the target.”

It was an instructor’s voice, he realized, but not her instructor’s voice. That was bright and charming and enthusiastic. This instructor was flat and cool.

“And you remember all that when bullets fly?”

“Maybe not, and maybe one-handed or a different stance would suit the situation better, but this is the best, I think, for target shooting. And like with anything, practice enough and it becomes instinctual. Tuck your head down to line up the sight with the target. Try the two-liter bottle.”

He fired. Missed.

“A little more square, and with your feet pointed at the target. Aim a little lower on the bottle.”

This time he caught a piece of it.

“Okay, I wounded the empty Diet Pepsi. Do I get praise and reward?”

She did smile, a little this time, but there wasn’t any light in it. “You learn fast, and I have beer. Try it a couple more times.”

He thought he got the hang of it, and confirmed the hang of it didn’t particularly appeal to him.

“It’s loud.” He put the safety on, unloaded it as she’d shown him. “And now you have a bunch of dead recyclables in your yard. I don’t think shooting cans and bottles comes close to shooting flesh and blood. Could you actually aim this at a person and pull the trigger?”

“Yes. I was stun-gunned, drugged, tied up, gagged, locked in the trunk of a car by a man who wanted to kill me just for the pleasure it gave him.” Those calm blue eyes fired like her pistol. “If I’d had a gun, I’d have used it then. If anyone tries to do that to me again, I’d use it now, without a second’s hesitation.”

A part of him regretted she’d given him exactly the answer he’d needed to hear. He handed the Beretta back to her. “Let’s hope you never have to find out if you’re right.”

Fiona holstered the gun, then picked up a bag and began to gather up the spent cartridges. “I’d rather not have to prove it. But I feel better.”

“That’s something then.”

“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t think about you driving up and hearing gunshots.” She leaned down, gave Jaws a body scrub. “You handled that, didn’t you? Big noises don’t scare you. Search and Rescue dogs need to tolerate loud noises without spooking. I’ll get you that beer after I pick up the targets.”

Odd, he thought, he’d learned her moods. Odd, and a little uncomfortable. “Got any wine?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get the bodies. You can pour out some wine, and maybe use your sexy voice to score us a delivery. I feel like spaghetti.”

“I don’t have a sexy voice.”

“Sure you do.” He took the bag, walked across her makeshift range.

By the time he’d finished, she was sitting on the back deck, two glasses of red on the little table.

“It’ll be about forty-five minutes. They’re backed up some.”

“I can wait.” He sat, picked up his wine. “I guess you could use a couple decent chairs back here, too.”

“I’m sorry. I need a minute.” She wrapped her arms around the nearest dog, pressed her face into fur and wept.

Simon rose, went inside and brought out a short trail of paper towels.

“I was okay when I was doing something.” She kept her arms around Peck. “I shouldn’t have stopped.”

“Tell me where you put the gun and I’ll get it so you can shoot more soup cans.”

She shook her head and, on a long breath, lifted it. “No, I think I’m done. God, I hate that. Thanks,” she murmured when he pressed the paper towels into her hand.

“That makes two of us. So what set you off?”

“The FBI was here. Special Agent Don Tawney—he’s the one from the Perry investigation. He really helped me through all of that, so it was easier going through all this again with him. He has a new partner. She’s striking—sort of like the TV version of FBI. She doesn’t like dogs.” She bent down to kiss Peck between the ears. “Doesn’t know what she’s missing. Anyway.”

She picked up the wine, sipped slowly. “It stirs up the ghosts, but I was ready for that. They traced the scarf, the one he sent me. It’s a match for the ones used on the three victims. The same make, dye lot. He bought a dozen of them from the same store, near the prison. Near where Perry is. So that squashes even the faint hope that somebody sent it to me as a sick joke.”

Fury burned a low fire in his gut. “What are they doing about it?”

“Following up, looking into, pursuing avenues. What they always do. They’re monitoring Perry, his contacts, his correspondence, on the theory that he and this one know each other. They’ll probably contact you because I told them you were staying here at night.”

She folded her legs up, drawing in. “It occurs to me that I’m a lot of work to be involved with right now. It’s not usually true—I don’t think. I’m not high maintenance because I know how to maintain myself, and I prefer it. But right now . . . So if you want to call a time-out, I get it.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do.” She turned her head to meet his eyes straight on, and now, he thought, there was the faintest light in them. “I’d think you were a cold, selfish bastard coward, but I’d get it.”

“I’m a cold, selfish bastard, but I’m not a coward.”

“You’re none of those things. Well, maybe a little bit of a bastard, but it’s part of your charm. Simon, another woman’s missing. She fits the pattern, the type.”

“Where?”

“South-central Oregon, just north of the California border. I know what she’s going through now, how afraid she is, how confused, how there’s this part of her that won’t—can’t—believe it’s happening to her. And I know that if she doesn’t find a way, if there isn’t some intersection with fate, they’ll find her body in a matter of days, in a shallow grave with a red scarf around her neck and a number on her hand.”

She needed to see something else, he thought. Control meant channeling the emotion into logic. “Why did Perry pick athletic coeds?”

“What?”

“You’ve thought about it, the FBI, the shrinks, they’d have a lot to say on it.”

“Yes. His mother was the type. She was an athlete, a runner. Apparently, she just missed being chosen for the Olympics when she was in college. She got pregnant, and instead of pursuing her interests or career, she ended up a very bitter, dissatisfied mother of two, married to a forcefully religious man. She left them, the husband, the kids—just took off one day.”

“Went missing.”

“You could say—except she’s alive and well. The FBI tracked her down once they’d identified Perry. She lives—or lived—outside of Chicago. Teaches PE in a private girls’ school.”

“Why the red scarf?”

“Perry gave her one for Christmas when he was seven. She left them a couple months later.”

“So, he was killing his mother.”

“He was killing the girl his mother was before she got pregnant, before she married the man who—according to his mother and those who knew them—abused her. He was killing the girl she talked about all the time, the happy college student who’d had her whole life in front of her before she made that mistake, before she was saddled with a child. That’s what the shrinks said.”

“What do you say?”

“I say all that’s just a bullshit excuse to cause pain and fear. Just like whoever’s killing now uses Perry as a bullshit excuse.”

“You stand there because of what he did to you. Motivation matters.”

She set down her glass. “You really think—”

“If you shut it down a minute, I’ll tell you what I think. Motivation matters,” he said again, “because why you do something connects to how you do it, who you do it to, or for. And maybe what you see at the end of it—if you’re looking that far.”

“I don’t care why he killed all those women, and Greg, why he tried to kill me. I don’t care.”

“You should. You know what motivates them.” He gestured to the dog. “Play, praise, reward—and pleasing the ones who dole all that out. Knowing it, connecting to it, and them, makes you good at what you do.”

“I don’t see what—”

“Not done. He was good at what he did. It was doing something he wasn’t as good at—When he deviated from his skill area, he got caught.”

“He murdered Greg and Kong in cold blood.” She shoved out of the chair. “You call that a deviation?”

He shrugged and went back to his wine.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Because you’d rather be pissed.”

“Of course I’d rather be pissed. I’m human. I have feelings. I loved him. Haven’t you ever loved anyone?”

“Not that way.”

“Nina Abbott?”

“Jesus, no.”

There was just enough shocked derision in his tone to carry the truth. “It didn’t seem that far-out a question.”

“Look, she’s gorgeous, talented, sexy, smart.”

“Bitch.”

Pleased, he let out a short laugh. “You asked. I liked her, except when she was batshit crazy—which, looking back, was pretty damn regular. It was steam and smoke, then it was just drama. She liked the drama. No, she fucking loved the drama. I didn’t. That’s it.”

“I guess I assumed there was more than—”

“There wasn’t. And it’s not about me anyway.”

“So you just expect me to be logical and objective about Greg, about Perry, about this. I should be analytical when—”

“Be whatever the hell you want, but if you don’t think, if you don’t step outside and look at the whole, you can shoot that gun as much as you like and it’s not going to help. For fuck’s sake, Fiona, are you going to pack it twenty-four/seven? Are you going to strap it on while you’re running your classes, or driving to the village for a quart of milk? Is that how you’re going to live?”

“If I have to. You’re mad,” she realized. “It’s hard to tell with you because you don’t always show it. You’ve been mad since you got here, but you’ve only let it sneak out a couple times.”

“We’re both better off that way.”

“Yeah, because otherwise you’re Simon Kick-Ass. You come here every night. There’s probably some mad in that, too.”

Considering, she picked up her wine again, walked to the post to lean back, study him as she drank. “You’ve got to stop what you’re doing, toss some things in a bag, drive over here. You don’t leave anything, except what you forget. Because you’re messy. It’s another thing you have to do every day.”

She’d managed to turn it around so it was about him after all, he realized. The woman had skills. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“That’s true.” She nodded, drank again. “Yeah, that’s true. You get a meal and sex out of it, but that’s not why you do it. Not altogether anyway. It has to irritate you, to some extent. I haven’t given you enough credit for that.”

“I don’t do it for credit either.”

“No, you don’t work on the point system. You don’t care about things like that. You do what you want, and if an obligation sneaks in—a dog, a woman—you figure out how to handle it and continue to do what you want. Problems are meant to be solved. Measure, cut, fit the pieces together until it works the way you want it to work.”

She lifted her glass, sipped again. “How’s that for looking at motivation?”

“Not bad, if this was about me.”

“Part of it is, for me. See, it was okay when this was an affair. This you and me. I never had one before, not really, so it was all new and shiny, sexy and easy. Really attractive guy who gives me the tingles. Enough in common and enough not to make it interesting. I like the way he is, and maybe partly because he’s so different from my usual. I think it’s the same with him about me. But that changes without me realizing it—or at least without me admitting it. Affair becomes relationship.”

She sipped again, let out a little sigh. “That’s what we have here, Simon. We’re in a relationship whether either of us wanted it or were ready for it. And as stupid as it is, as useless and wrong as it is, part of me feels disloyal to Greg. So I’d rather be pissed. I’d rather not admit I’m not having an affair with you, a no-problem, casual little fling I can walk away from anytime.”

She watched the dogs scramble off the porch like runners at the starting gun, then bound around the side of the house.

“I guess you’re going to have to remeasure and refit. That’s dinner. We should eat inside. It’s cooling off.”

She walked into the house, leaving him wondering how the hell the conversation had flipped on him.

IN THE KITCHEN, Fiona gave the pasta a quick buzz in the microwave. By the time Simon came in, she’d dumped the spaghetti in a bowl, set the garlic bread on a small plate and brought the wine to the table.

When she turned with dinner plates in her hands, he took her by the shoulders. “I’ve got some say in what this is.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

She waited. Waited another moment. “Are you figuring it out now?”

“No.”

“Then we should eat before I have to heat it up again.”

“I’m not competing with a ghost.”

“No. No, believe me, Simon, I know it’s not fair. He was my first, in every way.” She set the plates down, crossed over to get the flatware, napkins. “And the way I lost him left scars. There hasn’t been anyone since who was important enough to make me take a good look at those scars. I didn’t know that’s what I’d have to do when I started falling for you. I think I’m in love with you. It’s not like it was with Greg, so it’s confusing, but I think that’s what it is, going on with me. And that’s a dilemma for both of us.”

She topped off both glasses of wine. “So I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know when you figure it out on your end.”

“That’s it?” he demanded. “Oops, we’re in a relationship, and by the way, I think I’m in love with you. Let me know what you think?”

She sat, tipped her face up to look at him. “That pretty much sums it up. Love’s always been a positive in my life.” She scooped some spaghetti onto his plate. “It adds and enhances and opens all sorts of possibilities. But I’m not stupid, and I know that if you can’t or don’t feel it for me, it’ll be painful. That’s a dilemma. I also know you can’t force love, or demand it. And I’ve already dealt with the worst. If you can’t or don’t love me, it’ll hurt. But I’ll get through it. Besides, maybe I’m wrong.”

She took a portion of pasta. “I was wrong about being in love with Josh Clatterson.”

“Who the hell is Josh Clatterson?”

“Sprinter.” She wound pasta around her fork. “I pined for him for nearly two years—tenth and eleventh grade, and the summer between. But it turned out it wasn’t love. I just liked the way he looked when he ran the twenty-yard dash. So maybe I just like the way you look, Simon, and how you smell of sawdust half the time.”

“You haven’t seen me run the twenty-yard dash.”

“True. I might be sunk if I ever do.” When he finally sat down, she smiled. “I’m going to try to be logical and objective.”

“It seems to me you’re doing a damn good job at it already.”

“About you and me? I guess it’s a defense mechanism.”

He frowned, ate. “It doesn’t work as a defense once you tell me it’s a defense.”

“That’s a good point. Well, too late. I meant logical and so forth about Perry and what’s going on now. You were right about that, about the importance of understanding motivation. He didn’t try to kill me just because. I represented something, just like the others had. And failing with me, he needed to inflict punishment? Do you think punishment?”

“It’s a good enough word for it.”

“It had to be more severe than the others. Death ends—though I imagine if he hadn’t been caught he’d have come for me again. Because he’d have needed to end it—to tie off that thread. How am I doing?”

“Keep going.”

“He understood it’s hard to live when you know, when you understand someone you love is dead because you lived. He knew that, understood that, and used that to make me suffer for . . . breaking his streak, spoiling his record. What then?” she asked when Simon shook his head.

“For leaving him.”

She sat back. “For leaving him,” she repeated. “I got away. I ran away. I didn’t stay where he put me, or . . . accept the gift. The scarf. All right, say that’s true, what does it tell me?”

“He’s never forgotten you. You left him, and even though he managed to scar you, he was the one who was punished. He can’t get to you, can’t close that circle, tie off the thread. Not with his own hands. He needs someone to do it for him. A stand-in. A proxy. How does he find one?”

“Someone he knows, another inmate.”

“Why would he use someone who’s already failed?”

Her heart knocked at the base of her throat. “He wouldn’t. He waits. He’s good at waiting. So he’d wait, wouldn’t he, until he found someone he believed smart enough, good enough. The women he’s killed—this proxy—it’s a kind of building-up. I understand that. They’re a horrible kind of practice.”

“And they’re bragging. ‘You locked me up, but you didn’t stop me.’ ”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Good.” For an instant those tawny eyes went fierce. “Be scared, and think. What motivates the proxy?”

“How can I know?”

“Jesus, Fee, you’re smarter than that. Why does anyone follow someone else’s path?”

“Admiration.”

“Yeah. And you train someone to do what you want, how you want, when you want?”

“Praise and reward. That means contact, but they’ve searched Perry’s cell, they’re monitoring his visitors—and his sister’s the only one who goes to see him.”

“And nobody ever smuggles anything into prison? Or out? Did Perry ever send a scarf before he abducted a woman?”

“No.”

“So this guy’s deviated. Sometimes you follow another person’s path because you want to impress them, or outdo them. It has to be someone he met, more than once. Someone he was able to evaluate, and trust, and speak to privately. A lawyer, a shrink, a counselor, a guard. Somebody in maintenance or prison administration. Somebody Perry looked at, listened to, watched, studied and saw something in. Someone that reminded him of himself.”

“Okay. Someone young enough to be maneuvered and trained, mature enough to be trusted. Smart enough not to simply follow instructions, but to adjust to each particular situation. He’d have to be able to travel with nobody questioning him about where he’d been, what he’d done. So, single, someone who lives alone. Like Perry did. The FBI must already have a profile.”

“He’d have to have some physical stamina, some strength,” Simon continued. “His own car—probably something nondescript. He’d need enough money to carry him along. Food, gas, hotels.”

“And some knowledge of the areas where he abducts them, and where he takes them. Maps, time to scope it all out. But under it, doesn’t there have to be more? The reason why. Admiring Perry? Nobody could unless they were like him. What made this person like that?”

“It’ll be a woman, or women. He’s not killing Perry’s mother. My guess would be she’s his proxy.”

IT MADE SENSE, though she didn’t know what good it did her. Maybe the fact that it made sense was enough. She had a theory about what she was facing—or who.

She supposed it helped that Simon pushed her to think. No promises that nothing would happen to her, to protect her from all harm. She wouldn’t have believed those claims, she thought as she tried to soak out the tension with a hot bath. Maybe she’d have been comforted by them, but she wouldn’t have believed them.

He didn’t make promises—not Simon. In fact, he was very careful not to, she decided. All those casual see you laters rather than just saying he’d be back. Then again, a man who didn’t make promises didn’t break them.

Greg had made promises, and kept them when he could. It occurred to her now that she’d never worried about Greg or wondered or doubted. He’d been her sweetheart before the abduction, and he’d been her rock after.

And he was gone. It was time, maybe long past time, to fully accept that.

Wrapped in a towel, she stepped into the bedroom as Simon came in from the hall.

“The dogs wanted out,” he told her. He crossed over, flicked his fingers over the hair she’d bundled on top of her head. “That’s a new look for you.”

“I didn’t want it to get wet.” She reached up to pull out pins, but he brushed her hand aside.

“I’ll do it. Did you finish your brood?”

She smiled a little. “It was only a partial brood.”

“You had a rough day.” He pulled a pin out.

“It’s done now.”

“Not quite.” He drew out another pin. “Scent’s the thing, right? How you find someone. I’ve got yours inside me. I could find you whether I wanted to or not. Whether you wanted me to or not.”

“I’m not lost.”

“I still found you.” He took out another pin, and her hair tumbled after it. “What is it about the way a woman’s hair falls?” He speared his hands through it, locked his eyes on hers. “What is it about you?”

Before she could answer, his mouth was on hers, but softly, testing and easy. She eased into him as she had the bath, with every muscle sighing its pleasure.

For a moment, just a moment, he simply held her, with his hand stroking down her hair, her back. It undid her, the offer of comfort she hadn’t asked for, the gift of affection she hadn’t expected.

He slipped the towel off, let it fall, and even then just held her.

“What is it about you?” he repeated. “How does touching you calm me down and excite me at the same time? What is it you want from me? You never ask. Sometimes I wonder, is this a trick?” His eyes on hers, he backed her slowly toward the bed. “Just a way to pull me in? But it’s not. You’re not built that way.”

“Why would I want anything I had to trick out of you?”

“You don’t.” He lifted her, held, then laid her on the bed. “So you pull me in. And I end up being the one who’s lost.”

She framed his face with her hands. “I’ll find you.”

He wasn’t used to tenderness, to feeling it spread inside him. Or this need to give her what she never asked of him. It was easier to let the storm come, let it ride over both of them. But for tonight, he’d embrace the calm and try to soothe the fears he understood hid behind those lake-blue eyes.

Relax. Let go. As if she’d heard his thoughts, she sank into the kiss that offered quiet and warmth. Slow and easy, his mouth tasted hers, changing angles, gently deepening in a seduction that shimmered sweet.

She’d been wrong, she realized. She was lost. Floating, untethered, in an unfamiliar space where sensation layered gauzily over sensation to blur the mind and enchant the body.

She surrendered to it, to him, yielding absolutely as his lips gently conquered hers, as his hands trailed over her—tender touches soothing a troubled soul.

The softly lit bedroom transformed. A magic glade steeped in green shadows silvered at the edges with moonlight, with the air thick and still and sweet. She didn’t know her way, and was content to wander, to linger, to be guided.

His mouth grazed down her throat, over her shoulders until her skin tingled from the quiet onslaught. He tasted her breasts, patiently sampling until on a groan she arched and offered.

He feasted, but delicately.

Hands and mouth skimmed down in whispering trails, inciting sighs and shivers that rolled into a slow rise, a gilded peak, a breathy fall.

He was with her in the magic, steeped in her, in the rich glow of the moment, in the slow glide of movements. Seduced as he seduced, enraptured by the sound of his name murmured from her lips, the slide of her hands, the taste of her skin.

She welcomed him, warm and wet, took him in—into her body, into her arms. The need stayed slow and sweet, tender as an open heart even as it climbed.

And when he fell, he fell into her eyes.

SIXTEEN

In the shabby excuse for a rented cabin squatting in the magnificence of the Cascade Mountains, Francis Eckle read Perry’s letter. They had, many months before, determined the route, the timing, the towns, colleges, burial sites.

Or Perry had, he thought.

The preplanning made it a simple matter to obtain a mail drop for the letters Perry smuggled out of prison. The answers returned by a similar method—mailed to Perry’s minister, who believed in his repentance.

In the beginning, he’d been thrilled by the correspondence, the exchange of details and ideas. Perry’s understanding, guidance and approval meant so much.

Someone, finally someone who saw him.

Someone who didn’t require the mask, the pretense, but instead recognized the chains required to keep them in place. Someone, at last someone who helped him gather the courage to break those chains and release what he was.

A man, a friend, a partner who offered to share the power that came from throwing off the shackles of rules and behavior and embracing the predator.

The teacher had become a willing student, eager to learn, to explore all the knowledge and experiences he’d so long denied himself. But now he believed the time had come for commencement.

Time to move beyond the boundaries and the tenets he’d been so meticulously taught.

They were rules, after all, and rules no longer applied.

He studied the two fingers of whiskey in his glass. Perry had decreed there could be no drugs, no alcohol, no tobacco during the journey. The body and mind remained pure.

But Perry was in prison, he thought, and sipped with the pleasure of rebellion. The journey no longer belonged to him.

It was time to make his own mark—or the next mark, as he’d detoured from the plan already by sending the Bristow bitch a little present.

He wished he could have seen her face when she opened the mailer. He wished he could have smelled her fear.

But that would come, soon enough.

He’d detoured as well by renting the cabin—an expense dearer than a dingy motel room, but he felt it earned the cost with its privacy.

He needed privacy for the next detour from his mentor’s carefully drawn route.

Perry had given him a new life, a new freedom, and he would honor that by finishing what his mentor hadn’t and killing Fiona. But there was much to be done in the meantime, and it was time to test himself.

To celebrate himself.

He took another sip of whiskey. He’d save the rest until after. He moved quietly through the room into the bathroom where he removed his clothes, admired his body. He’d removed all the hair from it the night before, and enjoyed the smooth, sleek skin, the muscles he’d rigorously toned. Perry was right about strength and discipline.

He stroked himself, pleased anticipation hardened him, before sliding on a condom. He didn’t plan to rape—but plans could change. But in any case, protection was key, he thought as he drew on leather gloves.

Time to let himself go. To explore new ground.

He stepped into the bedroom, switched on a low light and studied the pretty girl tied to the bed. He wished he could rip off the duct tape over her mouth, hear her screams, her pleas, her gasps of pain. But sounds carried so he’d have to content himself with imagining them.

In any case, her eyes begged him. Her eyes screamed. He’d let the drug wear off so she’d be aware, so she’d struggle—so her fear would perfume the air.

He smiled, pleased to see she’d abraded her wrists and ankles fighting the cords. The plastic under her crackled as she cringed and writhed.

“I haven’t introduced myself,” he said. “My name is Francis Xavier Eckle. For years I taught useless cunts like you who forgot me five minutes after walking out of my class. No one saw me because I hid myself. But as you see”—he spread his arms as tears spilled out of her eyes—“I stopped hiding. Do you see me? Nod your head like a good girl.”

When she nodded, he stepped to the side of the bed. “I’m going to hurt you.” He felt the heat spread in his belly as she struggled, as her wild pleas piped against the tape. “You want to know why? Why me? you’re thinking. Why not you? What makes you so special? Nothing.”

He got on the bed, straddled her—considered the rape dispassionately as she tried to kick, to turn. And rejected it, at least for the moment.

“But you’re going to be special. I’m going to make you famous. You’ll be on TV, in the newspapers, all over the Internet. You can thank me later.”

Balling his gloved hands, he used his fists.

FIONA HESITATED AND BACKTRACKED. Her bag was packed and in the car. She’d made arrangements for everything. She’d left lists—long lists, she admitted—carefully detailed. She’d devised Plan Bs for a number of items—Plan Cs for a few.

Still, she went over everything in her head, again, looking for anything she’d left out, miscalculated, needed to cover more fully.

“Go away,” Simon ordered.

“I’ve still got a few minutes. I think maybe I should—”

“Get the hell out of here.” To solve the matter, he took her arm and steered her through the house.

“If one of the dogs gets sick or injured—”

“I have the name and number of the vet who’s covering for Mai. I have your number—hotel, cell, Mai’s cell, Sylvia’s cell. So does James. We have everything. In triplicate. Between us I think we can handle anything short of nuclear holocaust or alien invasion.”

“I know, but—”

“Shut up. Go away. If I’m hauling four dogs home with me this morning, I need to get started.”

“I really appreciate it, Simon. I know it’s a lot. James will pick my guys up—”

“After work. It’s on the list, with the time, his cell phone, his house phone. I think all that’s missing is what he’ll be wearing. Beat it. I’m finally going to have three days without having to listen to you.”

“You’ll miss me.”

“No I won’t.”

She laughed, then she crouched down to pet the dogs, to hug them. “You’ll miss me, won’t you, boys? Poor things having to spend the day with King Cranky. It’s okay. James will save you later. Be good. Be good boys.”

She straightened. “Okay, I’m going.”

“Thank Christ.”

“And thank you for letting them hang out with Jaws during the day.” She gave him a quick buss on the cheek, opened the car door.

He spun her around, yanked her into a long, hard kiss. “Maybe I’ll miss you a little, if a stray thought of you happens to cross my mind.” He brushed her hair behind her ears. “Have a good time.” Then he grabbed her hand. “Really. Have a good time.”

“I will. We will.” She got in the car, then leaned her head out the window. “Don’t forget to—”

He used the palm of his hand to push her head back in.

“Okay. Okay. Bye.”

He watched her go with the dogs plopped down beside him. “All right, guys, it’s man-time. Scratch your balls if you’ve got them.”

He walked back to the house, did a quick walk-through check. “It never smells like dog in here,” he muttered. “How does she pull that off?”

He locked up, strode to the truck. “Everybody in. Going for a ride.”

They scrambled up, except for Newman, jockeying for the passenger side or the narrow bench seat behind it.

“Come on. Gotta go,” Simon ordered as the dog sat and studied him. “She’ll be back in a couple days.” He patted the seat. “Up, come on, Newman. Don’t you trust me?”

The dog seemed to consider the question, then apparently took Simon at his word and jumped in.

He had a stray thought of her—maybe a couple of them—as he worked through the morning. He ate lunch with his feet dangling off the porch of the shop, tossing bits of salami (Fiona wouldn’t approve) to the dogs and watching them field. He took another twenty minutes, tossing sticks and balls on the beach, laughing his ass off when every one of them bounded into the water.

He went back to work, radio blasting and four wet dogs snoring their way dry in the sunlight.

He didn’t hear them bark, not with AC/DC screaming, but looked over as a shadow crossed his doorway.

He set his tool aside and picked up the remote to cut the music when Davey stepped in.

“Got yourself a gang of dogs out there.”

“Fiona’s away for a couple days.”

“Yeah, I know. Girl trip with Syl and Mai. I thought I’d run by her place a couple times a day, just to check. Listen . . . What is that?”

Simon ran a hand down the side of the stump. He’d stripped off the bark, done the first of some rough sanding. It stood, roots up.

“It’s a sink base.”

“It looks like a naked, upside-down tree stump.”

“It does now.”

“I gotta tell you, Simon, that’s pretty fucking weird.”

“Maybe.”

Davey wandered the shop. “You’ve got a lot going on in here,” he commented, winding around chairs, tables, the frame of a breakfront, doors and drawers glued and sporting clamps. “I saw the built-ins you did for the Munsons. They’re nice. Real nice. Hey. This is a beauty here.”

Like Davey, Simon studied the wine cabinet he’d designed for Fiona. “It’s not finished. You didn’t come by to critique my work.”

“No.” Face grim now, Davey shoved his hands in his pockets. “Shit.”

“They found her. The girl who got taken last week.”

“Yeah. Early this morning. Crater Lake National Park. He kept her longer than the others, so the feds thought maybe she got away, or it wasn’t the same guy. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe. Jesus, Simon, he beat the hell out of her before he killed her. Perry never messed them up that way. The other three we know of weren’t beaten. But everything else matches. The scarf, the position of the body. She had the number four written on her hand.”

Because he wanted to pummel something, Simon walked over, opened his shop fridge. He took out two Cokes. Tossed one to Davey.

“He’s finding his own way. It’s what you do. You learn, you emulate, then you create your own style. He’s experimenting.”

“Jesus, Simon.” Davey rubbed the cold can over his face before popping the top. “I wish I didn’t think you were right on that. I wish I didn’t think the same thing.”

“Why are you telling me about this?”

“I want your take. Do we contact Fee, let her know?”

“No. She needs a couple days away from this.”

“I’m with you on that, too, but it’s going to be all over the news.”

“Call Syl. Tell her, and tell her to . . . shit, make a girl pact—no news, TV, papers, Internet. Nothing to . . . you know, disturb the nirvana or estrogen field or whatever the hell. Syl will know how to handle it.”

“Yeah, she will. That’s good. That girl, Simon, she was barely twenty. Her dad was killed in an accident about two years ago. She was an only child. Her mother lost her husband and now her only child. It makes me sick.”

He shook it off, gulped down Coke. “I guess you’ll be talking to Fee every night.”

He hadn’t planned to. It seemed so . . . high school. “Yeah. I’ll be talking to her. She’s fine there.”

But he knew as he went back to work, he’d worry until she was back home again.

FIONA ALL BUT floated back to her villa, gliding on bliss and massaged feet. She stepped inside where the scent of flowers and the subtle strains of New Age music embraced her. She drifted through the living area with its sink-into-me furniture and glossy wood, then straight out to the pretty flower-decked terrace where Sylvia basked in dappled sunlight.

“I’m in love.” Sighing dreamily, Fiona dropped down onto a chaise. “I’m in love with a woman named Carol who’s stolen my heart with her magic hands.”

“You look relaxed.”

“Relaxed? I’m a noodle. The happiest noodle in the Pacific Northwest. How about you?”

“I’ve been detoxed, scrubbed, rubbed, polished. My biggest decision is what to have for dinner tonight. I’m considering living here for the rest of my days.”

“Want a roommate? God, Syl, why haven’t we ever done this before?”

Sylvia, her masses of hair messily pinned on her head, her rose-shaded glasses covering her eyes, set aside the fashion magazine open on her lap. “We fell into the busy-women-with-no-time-to-indulge-themselves trap. We’ve broken out of the cage now. And I have a decree.”

“At your command.”

“During our much-deserved indulgence, we’ll read only entertaining fiction and/or glossy magazines.”

She tapped the cover of the one she’d set on the table.

“We will watch only light, frothy, fun movies—if we so desire movies—on TV. We will banish all thoughts of work, worry and responsibility from our minds. Our only concerns, our only decisions during this time out of time will be room service versus restaurant, and the color of polish we want during our pedicure.”

“I’m behind that. I’m so behind that I’m inside it. Mai’s not back yet?”

“We crossed paths of bliss in the relaxation room. She said she was going to take a swim.”

“If I’d tried that, I’d have sunk like a stone and drowned.” Fiona started to stretch, then decided it took too much energy. “Carol balanced my chi, or maybe she aligned my chakras. I don’t know how, but having my chi balanced or chakras aligned results in something beyond ecstasy.”

Mai glided out wearing one of the spa’s cushy robes, slid into a chair. “Ladies. Is this a dream?” she wondered. “Is this all just a dream?”

“It’s our reality, for three glorious days.” Sylvia rose, wandered inside.

“I had the Mind, Body, Spirit Renewal. I’ve been renewed.” Mai tipped her face up, closed her eyes. “I want to be renewed every day for the rest of my life.”

“Syl and I are going to live here, and I’m going to marry Carol.”

“Good. I’ll be your permanent houseguest. Who’s Carol?”

“Carol used her magic hands on my chi or chakras—possibly both—and I have to have her for my own, for always.”

“Richie renewed me. I could marry Richie, then I could turn my back on the downward spiral of online dating.”

“I thought you liked the dentist.”

“Periodontist. I did, enough for a second date where he spent over an hour talking about his ex-wife. She was a bitch, never got off his back, spent too much money, scalped him in the divorce, et cetera, et cetera. Sam the periodontist goes down the tubes with Robert the psychologist, Michael the insurance exec and Cedric the lawyer/unpublished novelist.”

“You’re better off with Richie.”

“Don’t I know it.”

They both glanced at the doorway, and Fiona’s eyes popped wide as Sylvia came out carrying a silver tray.

“Champagne? Is that champagne?”

“Champagne and chocolate strawberries. I decided when three busy women and great, good friends finally indulge themselves it needs to be celebrated.”

“We’re going to have champagne on the terrace of our suite at the spa!” Fiona clasped her hands together. “It is a dream.”

“Do we deserve it?”

“Damn right.” Mai applauded when Sylvia popped the cork.

Once Sylvia poured the glasses, Mai raised hers. “To us,” she said, “and nobody else.”

With a laugh, Fiona clinked. “That absolutely works for me.” She took the first sip. “Oh, oh, yeah. Syl, this was inspired. It’s like the glitter on top of the shine.”

“We need to make a pact. We do this every spring. Come here, get renewed, balanced, drink champagne and be girls.” Mai held up her glass again.

“I’m in.” Fiona tapped glasses, grinned while Sylvia did the same. “I don’t even know what time it is. I can’t think of the last time I didn’t know, or had to think about, my schedule. I actually had one outlined for here. What time to get up to hit the gym, what classes to take, how long I’d have to take a swim or use the steam room before a treatment.”

She mimed tearing a page from a book and tossing it away. “There’s no room for organized Fee here. Spa Fee does what she likes when she likes.”

“I bet Spa Fee’s up before seven and trotting down to the gym.”

“That may be.” Fiona nodded at Mai. “But Spa Fee won’t be on a schedule. And it’s all because of the amazing Carol. Five minutes on the table and I stopped wondering how the dogs were doing with Simon, how Simon was doing with the dogs, how the rest of the unit would handle it if they got a call while we are here. What the police are . . . No,” she decided. “I’m not even mentioning that one. Everything just blurred into a quiet ecstasy, which I’m going to perpetuate now by having more champagne.”

They all had more.

“How’s the dating going, Mai?” Sylvia asked.

“I was telling Fee about the thumbs-down on the periodontist. Ex-wife-obsessed,” she explained.

“Never good.”

“First guy,” Mai continued, ticking off on her fingers, “obviously going off prepared remarks, and when I finally got him off-script, he was not only dull but so narrow-minded I’d be surprised if any new thought could squeeze in for consideration. Guy two, slick, self-absorbed and hoping for a quick bang. Guy next? A strange and unappealing combination of guys one and two. I’m going to give it one more shot, but I think this experiment has failed.”

“It’s too bad. Not even a potential casual dinner companion?” Sylvia asked.

“Not for me. I tell you, the most interesting conversations I had with the male of the species in the past couple of weeks have been with Tyson.”

“Sheriff Tyson?” Fiona broke in. “From San Juan?”

“Yeah. He’s looking into getting a dog, a rescue. He called me for some advice and input.”

“Really?” Fiona picked up a strawberry, studied it. “And there aren’t any vets on San Juan Island?”

“Sure, but I’ve got rescue dogs.” She shrugged. “It helps to talk to somebody who’s had the experience.”

“You said conversations,” Sylvia pointed out. “Plural.”

“Yeah, we’ve talked a few times. He was thinking a Lab or Lab mix because he likes Fee’s dogs. But then he thought, maybe just hit the shelter and see how it went, or go online and check out what’s available and who needs a home. It’s sweet,” she added. “He’s putting a lot of time and thought into it.”

“And checking in with you.” Fiona exchanged a glance with Sylvia.

“That’s right. I’m going to go with him to check out the shelter once we get back from Spa Bliss.”

“He asked you to go with him to the animal shelter?”

“A little professional and moral support,” she began, then goggled at Fiona. “Come on! It’s not like he asked me out for a moonlight cruise. It’s not like that.”

“A man, a single man, calls you multiple times to talk to you about one of your pet interests—pun intended,” Fiona added, “progresses to having you go out with him. But it’s not like that?” Fiona gestured to Sylvia. “Opinion, please.”

“It’s absolutely and completely like that.”

“But—”

“Your radar’s skewed,” Sylvia continued. “You’ve been focused on meeting strangers, looking for a spark and common interests so you missed the approach of a man you already know.”

“No, I . . . God, wait a minute.” She closed her eyes, held up her finger as she reviewed conversations, tones. “Holy shit. You’re right. It never blipped on my screen. Hmmm.”

“Hmmm, good or hmmm uh-oh?” Fiona asked.

“I think . . . good. He’s interesting, funny when he’s not being official, steady and a little shy. And nice-looking. And a little bit sneaky, which I like. Luring me into a date. I’m . . . flattered,” she realized. “Jesus, I’m seriously flattered. God. I’ve been renewed and I have a guy who interests me and vice versa. This is an excellent day.”

“Then . . .” Sylvia topped off all three glasses. “It’s a good thing I got a second bottle in the fridge.”

“You are so wise,” Mai told her. “Who’s for ordering dinner in here later, sitting around in our pajamas, getting lit on champagne and finishing it off with some ridiculously high-caloric dessert?”

They all raised their hands.

“I’m in love with Simon,” Fiona blurted out, then shook her head. “Wow, I really stepped on your Sheriff Tyson news. We can get back to this.”

“Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding?” Mai demanded. “Tyson—why do I refer to him by his last name?—Ben and the possibilities of dating him can wait. In love, like the big one, or in love like oh, this is so much fun and makes me feel good, and he’s really sexy.”

“The big one, with a lot of the other, which is why I thought it was all the other, but it’s not. All, or only. Why can’t I have an affair like a normal person? Now I’ve complicated it.”

“Life’s complicated, or what’s the point?” Sylvia beamed even as her eyes filled. “I think this is wonderful.”

“I don’t know if it’s wonderful or not, but it is. He’s so not what I imagined for myself.”

“You stopped imagining for yourself,” Sylvia pointed out.

“Maybe I did. But if I had imagined, I don’t think it would’ve been Simon Doyle—not for the big one.”

Mai propped her elbow on the table, gestured with her glass. “Why are you in love with him? What are the qualifications?”

“I don’t know. He’s solitary and I’m not, he tends to be cranky and I don’t. He’s messy and blunt, doesn’t quibble about being rude, and only ekes out information about himself when you pump or when he’s in the mood.”

“This is music to my ears,” Sylvia murmured.

“Why, O Wise One?” Mai demanded.

“Because he’s not some perfect fantasy. He’s flawed and you understand that. It means you’ve fallen for who he is, not who you want him to be.”

“I like who he is. And on the other side of it, he makes me laugh, and he’s kind. The fact that he’s reluctant about it only gives the kindness more impact. He can’t be bothered to say what he doesn’t mean, and that makes him honest.”

“Does he love you?”

Fiona let her shoulders lift and fall at Mai’s question. “I don’t know, but I know if he ever says he does, he’ll mean it. For now, it’s fine the way it is. I need time to get used to the way I feel—and to be sure he’s not with me or getting involved with me because, well, I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

“I bet he wasn’t thinking, Hey, this woman’s in trouble, when you had sex on the dining room table.”

She nodded at Mai. “Excellent point. And one worthy of more champagne. I’m going to get the second bottle.”

Mai waited until Fiona went back inside. “We’re right, aren’t we, not telling her about the murder?”

“Yes. She needs this. Apparently we all do, but she needs it most of all. She’ll have to deal with it soon enough.”

“I think he loves her, by the way.”

Sylvia smiled. “Why?”

“Because he told Davey to call you, not Fee, to suggest not telling her. We love her, and that’s why we’re not telling her—and I think we’d have decided not to whatever Davey said. But Simon had the same instinct. That’s a loving instinct, that’s what I think.”

“I think so, too.”

“It might not be the big one, but—”

“It’s enough for now, and what she needs. Honestly, Mai, I think they need each other, and they’re both going to be better and stronger together. At least that’s what I want.”

Mai glanced at the doorway, lowered her voice. “I told the concierge not to leave a paper at our door in the mornings. Just in case.”

“Good thinking.”

They heard the pop of a cork and Fiona’s shouted “Woo-hoo.”

“Put it out of your mind,” Sylvia murmured, “so we can keep it out of hers.”

SEVENTEEN

Given what she did for a living, and the gardening she’d be working on throughout the season, Fiona knew manicures were a waste of time and money.

But this was Indulgence Central.

Their last day, too, she reminded herself. She might as well make the most of it—and go home with pretty fingers and toes even if she’d mangle them within twenty-four hours in reality.

Besides, it felt good.

She admired the breezy, beachy pink on her short but currently well-shaped nails as she slid her feet into the warm, churning water at the base of the pedicure chair. A chair, she thought, that offered a slice of heaven as it vibrated up and down her back.

Cindy, who’d given her the pretty nails, brought her a cup of water with thin lemon slices floating in it. “Comfortable?”

“I passed comfortable and am on my way to euphoria.”

“That’s what we like to hear. Do you want the same polish on your toes?”

“You know, let’s go crazy on the toes. The Purple Passion.”

“Fun!” She lifted Fiona’s feet out, patted them dry, then brushed on a warm green clay. “We’re going to let this mask set for just a few minutes, so you just relax. Can I get you anything?”

“I’ve got it all.”

Snuggling into her chair, Fiona opened her book and let herself fall into a romantic comedy that was as much fun as her choice of toenail polish.

“Good book?” Cindy asked when she came back to sit and rinse off the clay.

“It is. Exactly perfect for my mood. I feel happy, relaxed and pretty.”

“I love to read. I like crazy horror and gruesome murder mysteries. I don’t know why they relax me, but they do.”

“Maybe because when you’re reading the book, you know you’re safe, so it’s fun to be scared.”

“Yeah.” Cindy began to smooth Fiona’s heel with a pumice stone. “I hate listening to the news because, well, it’s real, and so much of it’s just awful. Accidents, natural disasters, crime.”

“Or politics.”

“Worse yet.” Cindy laughed. “But when you’re reading about bad things happening in a book you can hope the good guys are going to win. I like when they do. Save the girl—or the guy—or the human race. Catch the killer and make him pay. It doesn’t always happen for real. I’m scared they’re never going to catch that maniac who’s killing those women. Four now. Oh! Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Fiona willed herself to relax her foot again. “No, you didn’t hurt me. Four?”

“They found her a couple of days ago. Maybe you didn’t hear. In the Cascades, in Oregon. I know it’s miles and miles away, but it really scares me. If I have late appointments, my husband comes by to pick me up. I guess it’s silly because I’m not a college girl, but it just spooks me.”

“I don’t think it’s silly.” Fiona sipped the lemon water to ease her dry throat. “What does your husband do?” she asked to change the subject so Cindy could chatter, and she could think.

A couple of days. Sylvia’s decree—no papers, no TV.

She’d known, which meant Mai knew, too. And they’d kept it from her. To give her some peace of mind, she thought. A little slice of oblivion before reality grabbed her by the throat again.

So, she’d do the same for them, she decided. She’d maintain the pretense for this last day. If death haunted her, she could, for now, keep the ghosts to herself.

IT WASN’T LIKE HIM, Simon thought as he frowned at the flowers on Fiona’s kitchen table. He didn’t buy flowers.

Well, for his mother every now and again, sure. He wasn’t a philistine. But he didn’t buy flowers for women on impulse, or for no good reason.

Coming home after a couple days—okay, four days—away wasn’t a good reason.

He didn’t know why the hell he’d bought them, or why the hell he’d missed her so much. He’d gotten a lot of work accomplished without her taking up his space and time, hadn’t he? And he’d drafted out more designs because he’d had more time alone, working and living on his own schedule.

His and the dogs’, anyway.

He liked a quiet house. He preferred a quiet house—one without the annoying obligation of having to remember to pick up his socks or hang up wet towels, or stick dishes in the dishwasher unless he damn well felt like it.

Which, like most normal members of his species, meant when there were no more clean socks, towels or dishes.

Not that she asked him to pick up his socks or hang up his wet towels or stick his dishes in the dishwasher. That was her brilliance. She said nothing, so he felt obligated.

He was being trained, he realized. No doubt about it. She was training him as subtly and consistently and effortlessly as she did the dogs.

To please her. Not to disappoint her. To develop habits and routines.

It had to stop.

He should throw the stupid flowers out before she got home.

When the hell was she getting home?

He looked at the stove clock again, then walked outside so he’d stop looking at the clock.

He didn’t wear a watch for the very specific reason he didn’t want to be bound up in time.

He should’ve stayed home working until she called—or didn’t call. Instead he’d stopped, went into town to buy some supplies—and the christing flowers—and didn’t forget the couple bottles of the red wine she preferred, then came here to check the house.

To make sure, he was forced to admit, that James had picked up his socks and so on. Which, of course, proved unnecessary.

James was either as insanely tidy as Fiona, or well trained.

He hoped it was the latter, at least.

To get his mind off the time, he grabbed a load of tennis balls and thrilled the dogs by throwing them. And when his arm went to rubber decided she needed one of those ball shooters they used for tennis practice.

He changed it up, giving the dogs the stay command, then walking out of sight to hide the balls in various places. He went back around, sat on the porch steps.

“Find the balls!” he ordered.

He had to admit, the stampede and search had its entertainment value, and passed the time he wasn’t paying any attention to.

He ended up with a pile of dog-slobbered balls at his feet, then repeated the routine. But this time he ducked inside for a beer.

The pile of balls waited, but the dogs had gone into their sentries-on-alert stance, facing the bridge.

About damn time, he thought, then deliberately leaned against the post. Just out having a beer with the dogs, he decided. It wasn’t like he was waiting for her, watching for her.

But it wasn’t her car that bumped across the bridge.

He straightened from the post, but waited for the man and woman who got out of the car to come to him.

“Special Agents Tawney and Mantz. We’re here to speak with Ms. Bristow.”

Simon glanced at the IDs. “She’s not here.” The dogs, he noted, were looking to him for direction. “Relax,” he told them.

“We were told she was coming back today. Do you know when she’s expected?”

Simon looked back at Tawney. “No.”

“And you are?”

Simon shifted his gaze to the woman. “Simon Doyle.”

“The boyfriend.”

“Is that an official FBI term?” It stuck in his craw. “I’m helping look out for the dogs while she’s gone.”

“I thought she had three dogs.”

“The one sniffing your shoes is mine.”

“Then would you mind telling him to stop it?”

“Jaws. Back off. Fiona told me you were the agent in the Perry case,” he said to Tawney. “I’ll tell her you came by.”

“You don’t have any questions, Mr. Doyle?” Mantz wondered.

“You wouldn’t answer them, so I’m saving us all time. You want to talk to Fiona. I’ll tell her, and if she wants to talk to you, she’ll get in touch.”

“Is there any reason you’re so anxious for us to leave?”

“Anxious isn’t the word I’d use, but yeah. Unless you’re here to tell Fiona you caught the bastard who picked up where Perry left off, I don’t want you to be the first thing she sees when she gets home.”

“Why don’t we go inside?” Mantz suggested.

“Do you think I’ve got her tied up or held against her will in there? Jesus, do you see her car? Do you see her dogs?” He jerked a thumb to where Jaws was currently humping a disinterested and patient Newman while Bogart and Peck played tug with one of the ropes. “Don’t they teach basic observational skills in the FBI? And no, I’m not letting you in her house when she’s not here.”

“Are you looking out for her, Mr. Doyle?”

“What do you think?” he said to Tawney.

“I think you have no criminal record,” Tawney said easily, “you’ve never been married, have no children and make a good living, enough to own your own home—which you purchased about six months ago. The bureau also teaches basic data-gathering skills. I know Fiona trusts you, and so do her dogs. If I find out that trust is misplaced, you’ll find out what else the bureau teaches.”

“Fair enough.” He hesitated, then went with instinct. “She doesn’t know about the last murder. The friends with her kept her away from the paper and the TV the last few days. She needed a break. I don’t want her coming back and ramming face-first into it. So I want you to go.”

“That’s fair enough, too. Tell her to contact me.” With his partner, he walked back to the car. “We haven’t caught the bastard yet. But we will.”

“Hurry up,” Simon muttered as they drove away.

He waited nearly an hour more, relieved now as every passing minute decreased the chance of her passing the agents on the road home. He gave some thought to putting a meal together, then spooked himself at the image of welcoming her home with a dinner and flowers.

It was just too much.

The bark of the dogs sent him back outside moments before she drove over the bridge. Thank God, he mused, now he could stop thinking so much.

He strolled casually down the porch steps, then the damnedest thing happened. The goddamnedest thing.

When she stepped out of the car, when he saw her standing in the fading sunlight, the fragile blooms of the dogwoods behind her, his heart actually leaped.

He’d always considered that sheer bull—just an overworked phrase in poetry or romance novels. But he felt it—that surge of pleasure and emotion and recognition inside his chest.

He had to restrain himself from rushing her, as the dogs did, bumping one another in their joyful hurry for strokes and kisses.

“Hi, guys, hi! I missed you, too. Every one of you. Were you good? I bet you were.” She accepted desperately loving licks while she rubbed wiggling, furry bodies. “Look what I’ve got.”

She reached inside the car for four huge rawhide bones. “One for everybody. Sit. Now sit. There we go. Everybody gets one.”

“Where’s mine?” Simon demanded.

She smiled, and the quieting sun flared off her sunglasses. As she walked to him, she opened her arms and just took him in.

“I was hoping you’d be here.” He felt her breath—the deep in, the deep out. “You made me another chair,” she murmured.

“That’s for me. You’re not the only one who likes to sit. Not everything’s all about you.”

She laughed, hugged tighter. “Maybe not, but you’re just what I need.”

He eased back until he found her mouth with his—and found it was just what he needed.

“My turn.” He shifted to knee and nudge the dogs back, and caught it. Just an instant as the change of angle let him see through the tinted lenses and into her eyes.

He slipped them off her face. “I should’ve known women couldn’t keep it shut down.”

“You’re wrong—and sexist. They didn’t tell me, and I returned the favor by not letting them know I heard.” Her eyes changed again. “Did you tell them not to say anything to me? To make sure I didn’t read about it in the paper, catch it on the news?”

“So what?”

She nodded, laid her hands on his cheeks, kissed him lightly. “So thanks.”

“That’s just like you, slipping around the normal reaction of being pissed and telling me I didn’t have the right to butt in and decide for you.” He opened the back of her car for her suitcase. “It’s how you get around people.”

“Is it?”

“Oh yeah. What’s this other stuff?”

“I bought some things. Here, I’ll—”

“I’ve got it.” He hauled out two shopping bags. “Why do women always come back with more than they left with? And it’s not sexist if it’s true.”

“Because we embrace and enjoy life. Keep it up and you won’t get your present.”

She led the way in, and he dumped all the bags by the base of her steps. “I’ll take them up later. How did you find out?”

She took off her shoes, pointed at her toes.

“Your purple toenails told you?”

“The technician who gave me the pedicure. She was just making conversation.”

Damn it. He hadn’t considered basic gossip.

“So that’s what you people talk about during those rituals? Murder and dead bodies?”

“Let’s put it in the category of current events. And let’s go back, get some wine. I’d really like a glass of wine.”

She saw the flowers when she stepped into the kitchen. The way she stopped cold and stared told him she was just as surprised he’d bought her flowers as he’d been.

“You made me another chair and you brought me flowers.”

“I told you, the chair’s mine. The flowers just happened to be there so I picked them up.”

“Simon.” She turned, wrapped herself around him.

Feelings winged into him, slapped against one another. “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to tough it out. It’s been a really long time since a man brought me flowers. I forgot what it’s like. I’ll be right back.”

The dogs followed her out—afraid, he assumed, she’d leave again. He got out a bottle of wine, pulled the cork. She came back with a small box as he poured her a glass.

“From me and the dogs. Consider it a thank-you for helping out with them.”

“Thanks.” It had weight for a small box, and, curious, he opened it. He found a slender doorknocker. The copper would verdigris over time, he thought, and add to its appeal. Raised letters ran down its length, and the knocker itself formed a Celtic knot.

“It’s Irish. I figured Doyle, there has to be Irish in there. Fáilte means—”

“Welcome. Doyle, remember?”

“Right. I thought if you put it on the door, sometimes it might even be true. The welcome, that is.”

He glanced up to see her smiling. “It might. Either way it’s nice.”

“And you could get one made—I bet Syl could find a metal artist to do it—to put up when you’re not in the mood for company. It could say ‘Go away’ in Gaelic.”

“That’s a pretty good idea. Actually, I know how to say ‘Fuck off’ in Irish, and that might be more interesting.”

“Oh, Simon. I missed you.”

She was laughing when she said it, and as she reached for her wine, he laid a hand on her arm.

“I missed you, Fiona. Damn it.”

“Oh, thank God.” She put her arms around him again, laid her head on his shoulder. “That makes it more balanced, like the two chairs on the porch, right?”

“I guess it does.”

“I have to get this out, and I don’t mean to put pressure on you. But when I dropped Mai and Sylvia off, after I did, all I could think about was that poor girl and what she went through in the last hours of her life. And when I pulled up here, home, and saw you, I was so relieved, so relieved, Simon, that I didn’t have to have all that in my head and be alone with it. I was so glad to see you on the porch, waiting for me.”

He started to say he hadn’t been waiting. Knee-jerk, he realized. But he had been waiting, and it felt good knowing she’d wanted him to be.

“You got back later than I figured, so I—Crap.”

“Last-minute shopping blitz, then the traffic—”

“No, not that.” He’d remembered the FBI and decided he should get it all over with at once. “The feds were here—Tawney and his partner. I don’t think they had anything new, but—”

“A follow-up.” She backed up, picked up her wine. “I told him before I left that I’d be home sometime today. I’m not going to get back to him tonight. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“But I need you to tell me what you know about it. There wasn’t a way for me to find out any of the details, and I want to know.”

“Okay. Sit down. I was thinking about putting something to eat together. I’ll tell you while I do.”

“I have frozen dinners in the freezer.”

He sneered. “I’m not eating those girl diet deals. And before you say ‘sexist,’ look me in the eye and tell me those Lean Cuisine numbers aren’t marketed to women.”

“Maybe they are, mostly, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good, or that guys who eat them grow breasts.”

“I’m not taking any chances. You’ll eat what I give you.”

Amused, as he’d meant her to be, she sat. “What are you going to give me?”

“I’m working on it.” He opened her fridge, scanned, poked into compartments. “Deputy Davey came by to tell me the day you left,” he began.

As he spoke, he tossed some frozen shoestring fries onto a cookie sheet, stuck them in the oven. Bacon went into the microwave. He found a tomato James must have left behind and sliced it thin.

“She was beaten? But—”

“Yeah. It sounds like he’s trying to find his style.”

“That’s horrible,” Fiona murmured. “And it feels true. Was she . . . she was beaten and trapped and strangled. And still rape puts a clutch in the throat.”

“No, she wasn’t raped. At least that wasn’t part of what Davey told me, or in any of the news reports.” He glanced over, scanned her face. “Are you sure you want this now?”

“Yes. I need to know what might be coming.”

Simon kept his back to her, ordered himself calm as he layered cheese, bacon, tomatoes between slices of bread. “He deviated with the beating, and with keeping her longer. Otherwise, it sounds as if he followed pattern.”

“Who was she? You know,” Fiona said quietly. “You’d have made it a point to know.”

When Simon slid the sandwiches onto the frying pan, the butter he’d spread on the outside sizzled. “She was a student. She wanted to pursue a career in physical education and nutrition. She taught yoga classes and did some personal training work. She was twenty, outgoing and athletic, according to the reports. She was an only child. Her mother’s a widow.”

“God. God.” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then scrubbed hard and dropped them. “It can always get worse.”

“She fits the body type. Tall, slender, long legs, toned.” He flipped the sandwiches. “If there’s any more, the press doesn’t have it.”

“Did he mark her?”

“Roman numeral four. You’re wondering what number he plans to put on you. I want you to hear me, Fiona, and to understand I don’t say what I don’t mean.”

“I already understand that.”

She waited, watched as he slid the sandwiches onto plates. Shook the fries from the pan beside them. He pulled out a jar of pickles, tossed a couple onto each plate and considered it done.

He put a plate in front of her. “He won’t mark you. He won’t be able to give you a number any more than Perry could. If the cops don’t stop him first, then we’ll stop him. And that’s it.”

She said nothing for a moment, but rose to get a knife, to retrieve the wine. She topped off the glasses, then cut her sandwich into two neat triangles before offering the knife.

“No, thanks.”

She picked up her wine, sipped, set it down. “All right,” she said, meeting his eyes. “All right.”

She lifted half of her sandwich, took a bite. And smiled. “It’s good.”

“A Doyle staple.”

She took another bite and brushed his leg under the table with her sexy purple toes. “It’s good to be home. You know, one of the things I have in those shopping bags is this incredible honey almond scrub they use at the spa. After dinner, and after I give the dogs some more play and attention, we could take a shower. I’ll exfoliate you.”

“Is that code?”

She laughed. “You’ll have to find out.”

“Do you know why I don’t cut my sandwiches into triangles?”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I don’t want to smell like honey and almonds.”

She gave him a wicked look as she picked up a french fry. “Or eat Lean Cuisine. I bet I could change your mind on the scrub. Tell you what. I’ll just do your back. Your big, strong, manly back, and we’ll see how it goes from there. They also had this shop that sold very interesting lingerie. I bought a little something. A very, very little something, which I’d be inclined to model for you, if you try the scrub.”

“How little?”

“Minuscule.”

“Just the back.”

She smiled and nibbled on a fry. “To start.”

She played with the dogs for an hour, endlessly tossing balls, letting them chase her through the obstacle course, then taking turns playing tug with each of them until he wondered that her arms didn’t pop out of their sockets.

But he could see, even when he left the games and sat on the porch to watch, she used the activities, the dogs, the connections to focus. To block out what they’d spoken of before dinner.

She’d deal, he thought, because that’s what she did. For now, she channeled her energy, and whatever nerves brewed under it, into the dogs and somehow transformed it into joy.

“Now I need that shower.” She swiped at her damp face with the back of her hands.

“You wore them out.”

“Part of the plan.” She held out a hand. “I never asked what you were up to while I was gone.”

“Work. And after work, James and I took in some strip clubs.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We took the dogs,” he said as they walked upstairs.

“Naturally.”

“Newman’s a mean drunk.”

“It’s a problem.” In the bedroom she dug the box of scrub out of the shopping bag, opened it for the jar.

“Actually, if you want some speculation and gossip, I don’t think we’re the only ones who’ll have exfoliated in the shower recently.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I came by to pick up the dogs one morning because I needed some supplies and figured I’d save James the trip. Lori’s car was in the drive.”

“Really? Well, well. She might’ve stopped by early, like you did. I hope not, but—”

“He came out when I started rounding up the dogs. He blushed.”

“Aw.” She crooned it, then laughed. “That’s so sweet.” After she set the jar down on the bathroom counter, she pulled the band from her hair—shook out all that rose gold.

He went rock hard.

“Strip it off,” she ordered. “Let’s see if I can make you blush.”

“I don’t blush, and I’m not sweet.”

“We’ll see.” She tugged off her shirt, but flicked his hand away when he reached out. “Uh-uh. A deal’s a deal. Let’s get wet.”

Maybe it was another way of focusing, channeling, blocking out. But who was he to complain? Naked, he stepped under the spray. “Your bathroom needs to be updated and redesigned.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” She made a circle with her finger, so he turned around and gave her his back. “It feels a little rough,” she told him as she scooped the scrub out of the jar. “But in a good way.”

She began to rub it over his back in slow, steady circles. “The texture, the flesh-to-flesh contact, the aroma—all add to the experience. Your skin wakes up and feels more—Uh-uh,” she said again, when he reached back. “I do the touching till we’re done. Hands on the wall, Doyle.”

“Did you get naked in the shower at the spa for this?”

“No. I’m adjusting it for home use. You smell wonderful already, and mmmm, smooth.” She leaned in, let her breasts ride over his back before using more scrub farther down. “Is this all right?” she asked as she circled those firm hands over his ass.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you close your eyes, relax? I’ll just keep going until you tell me to stop.”

Those hands ran down his legs, the rough texture tingling over his skin to be sluiced away by the spray, then explored by her lips, her tongue.

Need banged in his blood until his hands on the wall were fists. Rich scent curled in the steam, became erotic until even drawing a breath aroused to aching.

“Fiona.”

“Just a little more,” she murmured. “I haven’t even started on the front yet. You’ll be . . . unbalanced. Turn around, Simon.”

She knelt in front of him, water gleaming off her skin, sleeking her hair back. “I’ll just start down here, and work my way up.”

“I want you. You couldn’t need for me to want you more than this.”

“You’ll have me, as much as you want. But let’s see if you can hold out till I finish. Let me finish, and you can do whatever you want with me.”

“Jesus Christ, Fiona. You drive me insane.”

“I want to. That’s what I want tonight. But not yet.”

He reached down for her hands, let out a strained laugh. “Don’t even think about putting that stuff on my—”

“That’s not what I’m going to put there.” She skimmed her tongue over him until he bit back a moan. “Can you hold out?” she murmured, torturing him with her mouth as her hands worked up his legs, over his belly. “Can you hold out until you’re inside me? Hot and hard inside me. That’s what I want when I’m done. I want you to take me and use me until I can’t stand it, then I want you to take me and use me more. I won’t tell you to stop. I won’t tell you to stop until you’re done.”

She took him to the edge, then those tormenting lips slicked over his belly, up his chest, while her hands circled, circled.

“The water’s going cold,” she murmured against his mouth. “We should—”

He put her back to the wet wall. “You’ll have to take it, and me.”

“Deal’s a deal.” Her breath caught and shuddered out when he slid his hand between her legs.

“Wider.”

She gripped his shoulders, shuddered once as his eyes burned into hers. As he drove into her, they burned still. He took her, ruthlessly, so that her cries echoed with the slap of wet flesh, the sizzle of cold water. When her head fell on his shoulder, he continued to thrust while his hands made rough use of her body.

His own release ripped through him and left him raw.

He managed to shut off the water and pull her out. When she staggered, he half carried her to the bed. They dropped onto it wet and breathless.

“What do you—” She broke off, let out a whistling breath, cleared her throat. “What do you say about honey almond now?”

“I’ll be buying a case of it.”

She laughed, then her eyes popped open as he straddled her. His eyes, still hot, met hers as his thumbs flicked over her nipples. “I’m not done yet.”

“But—”

“I’m not done.” Leaning over her, he took her hands, lifted them, clamped them around the iron rungs. “Leave them there. You’re going to need something to hold on to.”

“Simon.”

“What I want, as much as I want,” he reminded her, and slid down, lifted her hips. “Until I’m finished.”

The breath trembled between her lips now, but she nodded. “Yes.”

EIGHTEEN

As a sop to healthier eating, Fiona tossed some strawberries onto her Froot Loops. She ate them leaning against the kitchen counter, watching Simon drink coffee leaning against the one across from her.

“You’re stalling,” she decided. “Stretching out another cup of coffee so you’re here until people start coming in for the first class.”

He reached into the cereal box she’d yet to put away, took a handful. “So?”

“I appreciate it, Simon, nearly as much as I appreciate being sexed into a coma last night. But it’s not necessary.”

“I’m drinking this coffee until I finish.” He experimented by dunking a Froot Loop into the coffee. Sampled.

Not half bad.

“I’m staying until I leave,” he continued. “If you have something you have to do, go do it, but I’m not leaving you alone. Deal with it.”

She scooped up more cereal, munched it while she studied him. “You know, somebody else might’ve said, ‘Fee, I’m concerned about you, and I don’t want to take any chances with your safety so I’m going to be here for you.’”

He dunked a couple more. “Somebody else isn’t here.”

“That’s very true, and maybe there’s something perverse in me that prefers your method.” He might’ve been dunking colorful rounds of cereal into his coffee like tiny doughnuts, but he looked scruffy and irritable. God, why did she love that? “What are we going to do about this, Simon?”

“I’m going to drink my coffee.”

“And, using the coffee as a metaphor, are you going to keep drinking it until they catch the person who’s killing those women, and may want to add me to his scorecard?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, ate more cereal. “Then stop hauling that stupid duffel over here every night. I’ll give you room in the closet, clean out a drawer. If you’re sleeping here, it’s ridiculous not to leave some of your things here. You deal with it.”

“I’m not living here.”

“Understood.” He’d inconvenience himself for her, but he’d be careful not to step over the next line. “You’re just hanging out here, and drinking coffee with coffee-soaked Froot Loops—”

“It’s pretty good.”

“I’ll put it on the menu. And sleeping here after making crazed love with me in the shower.”

“That was your idea.”

She laughed. “And a damn good one. Restrictions that apply are acknowledged. Leave your damn toothbrush in the bathroom, Simon, you idiot. Put your underwear in a drawer and hang up a couple of shirts in the closet.”

“I’ve already got a shirt in the closet. You washed it because I left it on the floor.”

“That’s right. And if you leave clothes on the floor, they’re going to get washed and put away whether you like it or not. If I can agree to you drinking coffee, you can agree not to haul that duffel back and forth like a security blanket.”

When his eyes narrowed, she narrowed hers back at him. And smiled. “What? Did that hit the mark?”

“Are you looking for a fight?”

“Let’s say I’m looking for your famous balance. I give, you give.” She tapped her chest, pointed at him, then wiggled a hand between them. “And it levels out in the middle. Think about it. I’ve got to get ready for class,” she added, and strolled away.

Twenty minutes later as her first class of the day started their socialization exercises, she watched Simon walk to his truck. He called his dog—and shot Fiona a look from behind his sunglasses.

He drove away—without the duffel.

She considered it a small, personal victory.

MIDWAY THROUGH THE DAY, she’d logged “visits” from Meg and Chuck, Sylvia and Lori, topped off by her daily check from Davey.

Apparently no one was going to leave her alone. As much as she appreciated the concern, it occurred to her just why she’d chosen a place several miles outside the village. As much as she loved company, she needed those small pockets of solitude.

“Davey, I’ve got a call in to Agent Tawney—who’s probably going to make yet another trip out here. I’ve got my phone in my pocket, as promised, and barely thirty minutes between classes. Less when one of the clients is an islander because they stall until whoever’s next on the Watch Out for Fee list shows up. I’m not getting any of my office work done.”

“So go do it.”

“Do you really think this guy’s going to drive up here in the middle of the day to attempt an abduction between my Basic Obedience class and my Advanced Skill Set?”

“Probably not.” He took a swig from the Coke she’d provided. “But if he does, he’s not going to find you alone.”

She cast her eyes up to the puffy clouds dotting the sky. “Maybe I should start serving refreshments.”

“Cookies would be good. You can’t go wrong with cookies.”

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Look, here comes one of the next class. Go protect and serve someone else.”

He waited until the car came close enough for him to see the driver was female. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget the cookies.”

Davey gave a nod to the other driver as he got into his cruiser and she parked.

She climbed out, a tall, pretty brunette with a swingy wedge of chin-length hair and what Fiona thought of as city boots. Stylish and thin-heeled under trim gray pants.

“Fiona Bristow?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, what great dogs! Can I pet them?”

“Sure.” Fiona signaled, so her dogs stepped up to the woman and sat politely.

“They’re so sweet.” She shoved her enormous shoulder bag behind her back and crouched down. “The pictures on your website are good, but they’re even better in person.”

And where’s your dog? Fiona wondered. But it wouldn’t be the first time a potential client came out to scope her and her setup before signing up.

“Did you come to monitor a class? I have one starting in about ten minutes.”

“I’d love to.” She angled her face up, all fresh style and perky smile. “I was hoping I’d hit between classes so I’d have a few minutes to talk to you. I checked the schedule on your website and tried to time it. But you know how the ferries are.”

“Yes, I do. You’re interested in enrolling your dog?”

“I would be, but I don’t have one yet. I’d love a big dog, like one of yours, or maybe a golden retriever, but I’m in an apartment. It doesn’t seem fair to coop one up that way. But once I get a place with a yard . . .”

She rose, offered a smile and her hand. “I’m Kati Starr. I work for—”

“U.S. Report,” Fiona finished, in a tone that went cool. “You’re wasting your time here.”

“I just need a few minutes. I’m doing a follow-up, actually a series of stories on RSK Two, and—”

“Is that what you’re calling him?” It revolted her on every level. “Red Scarf Killer Two—like a movie sequel?”

Starr traded in her smile for a tough-eyed stare. “We’re taking it very seriously. This man has already killed four women in two states. Brutally, Ms. Bristow, and with his latest victim, Annette Kellworth, that brutality escalated. I hope you’re taking it seriously.”

“Your hopes aren’t my problem. My feelings aren’t your business.”

“You have to understand your feelings are relevant,” Starr insisted. “He’s reprising the Perry murders, and as the only woman known to have escaped Perry, you must have some thoughts and feelings on what’s happening now. Insight into the victims, into Perry and RSK Two. Will you confirm the FBI has interviewed you regarding these latest homicides?”

“I’m not going to comment. I already made that clear to you.”

“I understand you may have felt reluctant initially, Fiona, but surely now that the death total is up to four, and these abductions and murders are heading north, from California to Oregon, you must want to be heard. You must have something to say—to the families of the victims, to the public, even to the killer. I only want to give you a platform.”

“What you want are headlines.”

“Headlines draw attention. Attention needs to be paid. The facts need to get out. The victims need to be heard, and you’re the only one who can speak.”

She might have believed that, Fiona considered, or at least part of it. But reality dictated that the attention focused on the killer with the catchy nickname.

“I have nothing to say to you, except you’re trespassing on private property.”

“Fiona.” All calm and reason, Starr pushed on. “We’re women. This man is targeting women. Young, attractive women with their lives ahead of them. You know what it is to be that target, what it’s like to be a victim of that kind of random violence. All I’m trying to do is get the story out, get the information out so maybe his next target is more aware, and maybe she’ll keep having her life ahead of her instead of ending up in a shallow grave. Something you know, can say, may be what helps her live.”

“Maybe you mean that. You’re only trying to help. Or maybe what you want is another front-page story with your byline. Maybe it’s a little of both.”

She didn’t know; she couldn’t allow herself to care.

“But here’s what I do know. You’re giving him what he wants. Attention. You published my name, where I live, what I do. And that helps no one except the man who’s emulating Perry. I want you off my property, and I want you to stay off my property. I don’t want to call the deputy who was just here to escort you off, but I will.”

“Why was the deputy just here? Are you under police protection? Do the investigators have any reason to believe you may be a target?”

So much for facts and the public right to know, Fiona thought. What this one wanted, at the base of it, was dish.

“Ms. Starr, I’m telling you to get off my property, and that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

“I’m going to write the story with or without your cooperation. There’s interest in a book deal. I’m willing to compensate you for interviews. Exclusive interviews.”

“That makes it easier,” Fiona said, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “You’ve got ten seconds to get in your car and get off my property. I will press charges. Believe it.”

“Your choice.” Starr opened her car door. All pretense of the perky dog lover was stripped away. “The pattern says he’s chosen his next victim, or he’s preparing to. Scoping out the area for the right target. Ask yourself how you’re going to feel when he racks up number five. You can reach me through the paper when you change your mind.”

Hold your breath, Fiona thought. Please.

SHE PUT IT out of her mind. Her work, her life were more important than a persistent reporter hoping, Fiona imagined, to springboard a book deal off tragedy.

She had her dogs to care for, her little garden to tend to and a relationship to explore.

Simon’s toothbrush took up residence in her bathroom. His socks scattered messily in one of her drawers.

They weren’t living together, she reminded herself, but he was the first man since Greg who slept consistently in her bed, whose things mixed with hers under the same roof.

He was the first man she wanted with her in the night when ghosts haunted her sleep.

HE WAS THERE, and she was grateful for it, when Tawney and his partner returned.

“You should go on to work,” she told Simon when she recognized the car. “I think I’ll be safe in the hands of the feds.”

“I’ll stick around.”

“All right. Why don’t you let them in? I’ll make some more coffee.”

“You let them in. I’ll make the coffee.”

She opened the door, holding it open to the morning air. It looked like rain heading in, she noted. That would save her from watering her pots and garden beds—and add a realistic element to the training classes she had on tap for the afternoon.

Dogs and handlers couldn’t pick just sunny days for a search.

“Good morning,” she called out. “You’re getting an early start. Simon’s making some fresh coffee.”

“I could use some,” Tawney told her. “Why don’t we go back, sit in the kitchen?”

“Sure.” Remembering Mantz’s aversion, she gestured the dogs out. “Go play,” she told them. “I’m sorry I missed you the other day,” she added, leading the way back. “We’d planned to be back earlier, but we dragged our feet. If you want a place to go and unwind, it’s the spot for it. Simon, you’ve met Agents Tawney and Mantz.”

“Yeah.”

“Have a seat. I’ll get the coffee.”

Simon left her to the pouring and doctoring. “Anything new?”

“We’re pursuing the avenues,” Mantz told him. “All of them.”

“You didn’t have to make another trip out here to tell her that.”

“Simon.”

“How are you, Fee?” Tawney asked her.

“I’m all right. I’m reminded daily how many people I know on the island, as somebody drops by to see me—read: check in on me—several times a day. It reassures, even as it makes me itchy.”

“We can still offer you a safe house. Or we can work putting an agent here, with you.”

“Would it be you?”

He smiled a little. “Not this time.”

She took a moment just to look out the window. Her pretty yard, she thought, with its tender spring gardens just starting to pop with color and shape. And all that bumping up against the tower of trees that climbed up the slopes and walked down again, offering countless paths to stroll, lovely surprises of wild lupine and dreamy blue cannas.

Always so quiet and restful to her, so hers season by season.

The island, she thought, was her safe house. Emotionally, yes, but she absolutely believed in every practical sense as well.

“I think, realistically, I’m covered. The island itself makes me less accessible, and I’m—literally—never alone.”

Even as she spoke, she watched her dogs wander by. On patrol, she mused.

“He broke pattern with Annette Kellworth. It’s possible he’s not interested in me anymore, not interested in mirroring Perry.”

“His violence is increasing,” Mantz stated. “Perry duplicated himself, obsessively repeating the same details with each murder. The UNSUB isn’t as controlled or disciplined. He wants to flaunt his power. Sending you the scarf, increasing the time he holds his victims, and now the added physical violence. But he continues to use Perry’s methods, to select the same type of victim, to abduct and to kill and dispose in the same way.”

“He’s adapting his work, finding his own style. Sorry,” Simon added when he realized he’d spoken out loud.

“No, you’re not wrong. Kellworth may have been an aberration,” Tawney continued. “Something she said or did, something that happened that pushed him to the increased violence. Or he may be looking to come into his own.”

“I’m not his.”

“You’re still the one who got away,” Mantz pointed out. “And if you’re going to talk to the press, it keeps you front and center, and makes you more of a challenge.”

Annoyed, Fiona turned from the window. “I’m not talking to the press.”

Mantz reached into her briefcase. “This morning’s edition.” She laid the paper on the table. “And the article’s been picked up by a number of online venues and cable news crawls.”

TRAIL OF THE RED SCARF

“I can’t stop this. All I can do is not give interviews, refuse to cooperate.”

“You’re quoted. And your picture runs inside.”

“But—”

“ ‘Surrounded by her three dogs,’ ” Mantz read, “ ‘outside her tiny woodland home on scenic and remote Orcas Island where purple pansies tumble out of white pots and bright blue chairs sit on the front porch, Fiona Bristow presents a cool and competent demeanor. A tall, attractive redhead, slender in jeans and a stone-gray jacket, she seems to approach the subject of murder with the same practical, down-to-earth manner that has made her and her canine training school fixtures on the island.

“ ‘ She was twenty, the same age as Annette Kellworth, when she was abducted by Perry. Like Perry’s other twelve female victims, Bristow was incapacitated by a stun gun, drugged, bound, gagged and locked in the trunk of his car. There, she was held for more than eighteen hours. But unlike the others, Bristow managed to escape. In the dark, while Perry drove the night roads, Bristow sawed through the rope binding her with a penknife given to her by her fiancé, Officer Gregory Norwood. Bristow fought off Perry, disabling him, and used his own car to reach safety and alert authorities.

“ ‘ Nearly a year later, still at large, Perry shot and killed Norwood and his K-9 partner, Kong, who lived long enough to attack and wound Perry. Perry was subsequently arrested when he lost control of his car in his attempt to escape. Despite her ordeal, and her loss, Bristow testified against Perry, and that testimony played a major role in his conviction.

“ ‘ Now, at twenty-nine, Bristow shows no visible scars from that experience. She remains single, living alone in her secluded home where she owns and operates her training school for dogs, and devotes much of her time to the Canine Search and Rescue unit she formed on Orcas.

“ ‘ The day is sunny and warm. The dogwood trees flanking the narrow bridge over the creek that bubbles across the property are in bloom, and the native red currant flames in the quiet morning. In the deep green woods where shafts of light shimmer through the towering firs, birds twitter. But a uniformed deputy drives his cruiser down her narrow drive. There can be little doubt Fiona Bristow remembers the dark, and the fear.

“‘ She would have been XIII.

“‘She speaks of the “movie sequel” title this mimic of George Allen Perry has been given, and the headlines his brutality has generated. It’s attention this man known as RSKII seeks, she believes. While she, the lone survivor of the one who came before him, wants only the peace and the privacy of the life she has now. A life forever changed.’ ”

“I didn’t give her an interview.” Fiona shoved the paper aside. “I didn’t talk to her about all of this.”

“But you did talk to her,” Mantz persisted.

“She showed up.” Struggling with rage, Fiona barely resisted ripping the paper to shreds. “I assumed she was here to ask about a class—and she let me assume that. She talked about the dogs, then she introduced herself. The minute she did I told her to go. No comment, go away. She persisted. I did say he wanted attention. I was angry. Look what they’re calling him, RSK Two, so it gives him flash and mystery and importance. I said he wanted attention, and she was giving it to him. I shouldn’t have said it.” She looked at Tawney now. “I know better.”

“She pushed. You pushed back.”

“And got just enough to run with it. I ordered her off the property. I even threatened to call Davey—Deputy Englewood—back. He’d just left because we both thought she’d come for class. She was here five minutes. Five goddamn minutes.”

“When?” Simon demanded, and a quick chill skipped up her spine at the tone.

“A couple of days ago. I put it away. I made her go, and I thought, I honestly thought I hadn’t given her anything—so I put it aside.”

She let out a breath. “She’s made him see me here, with my dogs and my trees. The quiet life of a survivor. And she’s made him see me there, in the trunk of that car, tied up in the dark—another victim, who just got lucky. The one line, the one about attention. The way she’s written it, that’s me speaking to him, dismissing him. It’s the sort of thing he might fixate on. I understand that.”

She glanced at the paper again, at the photo of her standing in front of her house, her hand on Newman’s head, Peck and Bogart beside her. “She must have taken this from her car. You’d think I posed for it.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble getting a restraining order,” Tawney told her.

Discouraged, Fiona pressed her fingers to her eyes. “She’ll eat that up. I wouldn’t bet against her adding column inches on me to that article, my pansies, my chairs—painting a damn picture—because I wouldn’t play ball. She’ll only be more determined to write about me if I make her an issue. Maybe I played it wrong. Maybe I should’ve given her the interview the first time around. Something dull and restrained, then she’d have lost interest in me.”

“You don’t get it.” Simon shook his head. He had his hands in his pockets, but Fiona knew there was nothing casual about it. “Talk to her, don’t, it doesn’t matter. You’re alive. You’re always going to be part of it. You survived, but it’s more than that. You weren’t rescued, the cavalry didn’t come charging up. You fought and escaped from a man who’d killed twelve other women, and who had eluded authorities for more than two years. As long as this bastard’s strangling women with red scarves, you’re news.”

He looked back at Mantz. “So don’t look down your dismissive FBI nose at her over this. Until you catch the fucker, they’ll use her for print, for ratings, to keep it churned up between murders. And you fucking well know it.”

“Maybe you think we’re just sitting on our hands,” Mantz began.

“Erin.” Tawney waved his partner off. “You’re right,” he told Simon. “About the media. Still, Fee, it’s better for you to stick with the straight ‘No comment.’ And you’re right,” he said to Fiona, “that this kind of press will very likely pump up his interest in you. You need to continue all the precautions you’re taking. And I’m going to ask you not to take on any new clients.”

“God. Look, I’m not trying to be difficult or stupid, but I have to make a living. I have—”

“What else?” Simon interrupted.

Fiona rounded on him. “Listen—”

“Shut up. What else?” he repeated.

“Okay. I want you to contact me every day,” Tawney went on. “I want you to keep a record of anything unusual. A wrong number, a hang-up, any questionable e-mails or correspondence. I want the name and contact for anyone who inquires about your classes, your schedule.”

“Meanwhile, what are you doing?”

Tawney glanced at Fiona’s flushed and furious face before answering Simon. “All we can. We’re interviewing and reinterviewing friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, instructors, classmates of all the victims. He spent time observing them, he has to have transportation. He’s not invisible. Someone saw him, and we’ll find them. We’re doing background checks and interviewing anyone associated with the prison who had, or may have had, contact with Perry over the last eighteen months. We have a team working the tip line twenty-four hours a day. Forensic experts are sifting through the dirt from every gravesite, looking for any trace evidence—a hair, a fiber.”

He paused. “We’ve interviewed Perry, and will do so again. Because he knows. I know him, Fee, and I know he wasn’t pleased when I told him about the scarf that was sent to you. Not in his plans, not his style. Even less pleased when I let it slip, we’ll say, that Annette Kellworth had been beaten and her face, in particular, severely damaged. He’ll turn on this guy, he’ll turn because I’ll make him feel betrayed and disrespected. And that—you know—he won’t tolerate.”

“I appreciate you keeping me informed, coming here and making sure I understand the status and the situation.” She held temper under clipped words and a brisk tone. “I have a class starting very soon. I have to get ready.”

“All right.” Tawney laid a hand over hers in a gesture as fatherly as it was official. “I want that call, Fee, every day.”

“Yes. Could you leave that?” she asked Mantz when the agent started to refold the paper. “It’ll help remind me not to give even an inch.”

“No problem.” Mantz rose. “There’ll be others now that this story hit. I’d start screening all my calls, and you’d be smart to post some ‘No Trespassing’ signs around your property. You can tell your clients you’ve had some trouble with hikers cutting through, and you’re concerned for your dogs,” she added before Fiona could speak.

“Yes. Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll take care of it.”

She walked them out, then waited for Simon to join her on the porch. “You want to give me grief for not mentioning the reporter. That’s fine, but you have to get in line. I’m first.”

“You already gave yourself grief on that.”

“No. I mean I have a few things to say to you, and I’m in a bind. You’re pissed at me, and pretty seriously, but you still stood up for me with Agent Mantz. I’d say the standing up wasn’t necessary, but that’s ungracious. Besides, standing up for someone isn’t ever necessary—it’s just what you do for someone you care about, or when somebody needs it. So I’m grateful for that, and I appreciate that. And at the same time I’m so angry with you for just taking over the way you did. For pushing my opinion and wants aside, and making it clear you’d see to it I’d do what I was told.”

“I’m clear on it, so I figured you and the feds should be.”

She swung around. “Don’t think for one minute you can—”

“You’d better shut it down, Fiona.” His eyes flared hot, singed gold. “You’d better shut it down fast.” He took a step toward her. Nearby, Peck let out a quiet warning. Simon responded by jerking his head, aiming a hard look, pointing a finger for silence.

The dog sat instantly but kept watchful.

“You want to go off on me, then you get in line. You can go on your I-can-take-care-of-myself routine all you want. I don’t give a rat’s rabid ass because you’re not doing it yourself this time, so just swallow that one down. You can tell me I’m stupid for not leaving my damn toothbrush in the bathroom, and I’ve got to give that to you. I’m telling you, you’re brain-dead if you think you can decide all the rest on your own. That’s not how it works.”

“I never said—”

“Shut up. This bullshit about not telling me some reporter came by to hassle you because you put it aside? Don’t pull that on me again. You don’t put things aside, not like this.”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m not fucking done. You don’t run this show. I don’t know how you worked it before with your cop, but this is now. You’re dealing with me now. You’d better think about that, and if you can’t deal with it, you let me know. We’ll leave it that we just fuck when we’re both in the mood, and move on.”

She felt her face go cold and stiff as the blood drained. “That’s harsh, Simon.”

“Damn right it is. You’ve got clients coming, and I’ve got work to do.” He strode away as a couple of cars drove across her bridge.

Jaws, obviously tuned in to his master’s mood, leaped quickly into the truck.

“I didn’t get my turn,” Fiona muttered, then tried some deep breathing to center herself before greeting her clients.

NINETEEN

Fiona deliberately scheduled a solo behavioral correction as her last client of the day. She often thought of those sessions as attitude adjustments—and not just for the dog.

The fluffy orange Pom, Chloe—all four pounds of her—ruled over her owners, reportedly wreaked havoc in her neighborhood, yipping, snarling and lunging hysterically at other dogs, cats, birds, kids, and occasionally tried to take a Pom-sized chunk out of whatever crossed her path when she wasn’t in the mood for it.

Struggling to crochet—her newest hobby—Sylvia sat on the porch with a pitcher of fresh lemonade and butter cookies while Fiona listened to the client repeat the gist of their phone consult.

“My husband and I had to cancel our vacation this winter.” Lissy Childs stroked the ball of fur in her arms while that ball eyed Fiona suspiciously. “We couldn’t get anyone to take her for the week—or house-sit, if she was in it. She’s so sweet, really, and so adorable, but, well, she is incorrigible.”

Lissy made kissy noises, and Chloe responded by shivering all over and lapping at Lissy’s face.

Chloe, Fiona noted, wore a silver collar studded with multicolored rhinestones—at least she hoped they were just rhinestones—and pink booties, open at the toe to show off matching pink toenails.

Both she and her human smelled of Vera Wang’s Princess.

“She’s a year?”

“Yes, she just had her very first birthday, didn’t you, baby doll?”

“Do you remember when she started showing unsociable behavior?”

“Well.” Lissy cuddled Chloe. The eye-popping square-cut diamond on her hand flared like fired ice, and Chloe made a point of showing Fiona her sharp, scissorlike teeth. “She’s really never liked other dogs, or cats. She thinks she’s a person, ’cause she’s my baby.”

“She sleeps in your bed, doesn’t she?”

“Well . . . yes. She has a sweet bed of her own, but she likes to use it as a toy box. She just loves squeaky toys.”

“How many does she have?”

“Oh . . . well.” Lissy had the grace to look sheepish as she flipped back her long blond mane. “I buy them for her all the time. I just can’t resist. And little outfits. She loves to dress up. I know I spoil her. Harry does, too. We just can’t resist. And really, she is a sweetheart. She’s just a little jealous and excitable.”

“Why don’t you put her down?”

“She doesn’t like me to put her down outside. Especially when . . .” She glanced over her shoulder where Oreo and Fiona’s dogs sprawled. “When other d-o-g-s are around.”

“Lissy, you’re paying me to help Chloe become a happier, better-adjusted dog. What you’re telling me, and what I’m seeing, is that Chloe’s not only pack leader, she’s a four-pound dictator. Everything you’ve told me indicates she has a classic case of Small Dog Syndrome.”

“Oh, my goodness! Does she need medication?”

“She needs you to stop allowing her to lead, fostering the idea that because she’s little she’s permitted to engage in bad behavior you wouldn’t permit in a larger dog.”

“Well, but, she is little.”

“Size doesn’t change the behavior, or the reason a dog displays it.” Owners, Fiona thought, were all too often the biggest obstacle. “Listen, you can’t take her for a walk without stress, or have people over to your house. You told me you and Harry love to entertain, but haven’t been able to have a dinner party in months.”

“It’s just that the last time we tried, it was so stressful with Chloe so upset that we had to put her in the bedroom.”

“Where she destroyed your new duvet, among other things.”

“It was awful.”

“You can’t leave her to have an evening away without her having a tantrum, so you and your husband have stopped going out to dinner, to parties, to the theater. You said she bit your mother.”

“Yes, it was just a nip really. She—”

“Lissy, let me ask you something. I bet you’ve been on planes, or in the shops, a restaurant where a child’s been running wild, disturbing everyone, kicking the seat, arguing with his parents, creating a nuisance, whining, complaining and so on.”

“God, yes.” She rolled her eyes as she spoke. “It’s so annoying. I don’t understand why . . . Oh.” Cluing in, Lissy blew out a breath. “I’m not being a responsible mommy.”

“Exactly.” Or close enough. “Put her down.”

The minute Chloe’s pink booties hit the ground, she leaped onto her hind legs, yipping, scrabbling at Lissy’s lovely linen pants.

“Come on now, baby, don’t—”

“No,” Fiona said. “Don’t give her that kind of attention when she’s misbehaving. You need to dominate. Show her who’s in charge.”

“Stop that right now, Chloe, or no yummies on the way home.”

“Not like that. First, stop thinking, But she’s so little and cute. Stop thinking about her size and think of her as a misbehaving dog. Here.” Fiona took the leash.

“Step away,” she told Lissy, and positioned herself between them. Chloe yipped and snarled, attempted a quick lunge and nip.

“Stop!” Voice firm, Fiona kept eye contact and shot a finger toward the dog. Chloe made grumbling sounds, but subsided.

“She’s sulking,” Lissy said with indulgence.

“If she was a Lab or a German shepherd sitting there growling, would it be cute?”

Lissy cleared her throat. “No. You’re right.”

“Spoiling her isn’t making her happy. It’s making her a bully, and bullies aren’t happy.”

She began to walk the dog. Chloe struggled, trying to turn back to Lissy. Fiona simply shortened the leash, forcing Chloe to fall in line. “Once she understands there’s no reward, no affection shown for bad behavior, and that you’re in charge, she’ll stop. And be happier.”

“I don’t want her to be a bully or unhappy. Honestly, that’s why I’m here. I’m just terrible at discipline.”

“Then get better,” Fiona said flatly. “She depends on you. When she’s already excited and heading out of control, speak to her firmly, correct her quickly, don’t placate her in that high baby-talk voice. That only increases her level of stress. She wants you to take control, and you’ll all be happier once you do.”

For the next ten minutes, Fiona worked with the dog, correcting and rewarding.

“She listens to you.”

“Because she understands I’m in charge, and she respects that. Her behavior problems are a result of how she’s been treated by the people around her, how she’s come to believe she should be treated and now demands to be treated.”

“Spoiled.”

“It’s not the squeaky toys, the yummies, the outfits. Why not indulge yourselves there if it makes all of you happy? It goes back to allowing, even encouraging, unacceptable behavior and giving her the controls. She goes on the attack with big dogs, right?”

“All the time. And it was funny at first. You just had to laugh. Now it’s gotten a little scary every time we take her for a walk.”

“She does it because you’ve made her pack leader. She has to defend that position every time she comes in contact with another dog, human, animal. It stresses her out.”

“Is that why she goes on those barking jags? Because she’s stressed?”

“That, and because she’s telling you what to do. People think of Poms as yappy dogs because their owners often allow them to become yappy dogs.”

Not yapping now, Fiona thought as she stopped and Chloe sat and watched her with those almond-shaped eyes. “She’s relaxed now. I want you to do the same thing with her. Walk her back and forth. Stay in control.”

Fiona led Chloe to Lissy, and the dog rose up to paw the air, to scrabble at Lissy’s legs.

“Lissy,” Fiona said firmly.

“Okay. Chloe, stop.”

“Mean it!” Fiona ordered.

“Chloe, stop!”

Chloe sat, tipped her head from side to side as if evaluating.

“Now walk her. Insist that she heel. She’s not walking you.”

Fiona stepped back to watch. She was, she knew, training the human every bit as much as—possibly more than—the dog. Progress, and a satisfied client, would depend on the human’s willingness to adhere to the training at home.

“She’s listening!”

“You’re doing great.” And both of you are relaxed, Fiona thought. “I’m going to walk toward you. If she exhibits unacceptable behavior, I want you to correct. And don’t tense up. You’re walking your cute little dog. Your cute, polite, happy little dog.”

At Fiona’s approach, Chloe barked and pulled on the leash. Fiona wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Pom or master, when Lissy hissed out a no-nonsense Stop and brought Chloe to heel.

“Excellent. Again.”

She repeated, repeated until at her approach, Chloe simply continued to walk politely at Lissy’s heel.

“Well done. Syl, would you mind? Syl’s going to walk by now. Syl, stop and chat, okay?”

“Sure.” Sylvia strolled up, crossed paths. “Nice to see you.”

“Okay. Gosh.” Lissy stopped, blinking when the pretty little Pom did the same without snarling or yipping. “Look what she did.”

“Isn’t that great? What a pretty dog.” Sylvia bent over to stroke Chloe’s fluffy head. “What a well-behaved dog. Good girl, Chloe.”

“We’re going to add Newman in,” Fiona announced.

“Oh my God.”

“Lissy, don’t tense up. Stay relaxed. Newman won’t react to her until I allow it. You’re in charge. She depends on you. Correct firmly, quickly and as necessary.”

With Newman by her side, Fiona walked across Chloe’s eye line. The Pom went ballistic.

“Correct,” Fiona ordered. “Firmly, Lissy,” she added when her flustered client faltered. “No, don’t pick her up. Like this. Chloe, stop! Stop!” Fiona repeated, making eye contact, pointing sharply.

Chloe subsided with a few grumbles.

“Newman’s no threat. Obviously,” Fiona added as the Lab sat placidly. “You need to keep relaxed and remain in charge—and be firm when she’s exhibiting unsocial behavior.”

“He’s so much bigger. She’s scared.”

“Yes, she’s scared and she’s stressed—and so are you. You have to relax, let her relax. She’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of.” At Fiona’s hand signal, Newman lay down, sighed a little.

“You said there was a park near you, and several people take their dogs there.”

“Yes. I stopped taking Chloe because she’d just get upset.”

“It’d be nice to be able to take her, so she could have playmates, make friends.”

“Nobody likes her,” Lissy whispered. “It hurts her feelings.”

“Nobody likes a bully, Lissy. But people, especially dog people, generally enjoy a well-behaved dog. And one as pretty and smart as Chloe could make a lot of friends. You’d like that for her?”

“I really would.”

“When’s the last time you took her to the park?”

“Oh gosh, it’s been three or four months. There was this little incident. Really she barely broke the skin—barely—but Harry and I felt it best not to take her back.”

“I think you can give it another try.”

“Really? But—”

“Take a look.” Fiona held a finger up first. “Don’t overreact. Stay calm—keep your voice calm.”

Lissy glanced down, then pressed her free hand to her mouth as she watched Chloe sniff curiously at Newman.

“She’s checking him out,” Fiona said. “Her tail’s wagging, her ears are up. She’s not afraid. She’s interested. Stay calm,” she added, then signaled Newman.

When he stood, Chloe retreated, then froze as he lowered his head to sniff her in turn. Her tail wagged again.

“He gave her a kiss!”

“Newman likes pretty girls.”

“She’s making a friend.” Lissy’s eyes filled. “It’s silly. I know it’s silly to get so emotional.”

“No it’s not. Not a bit. You love her.”

“She’s never had a friend. It’s my fault.”

Mostly, Fiona thought, but things were never quite that simple. “Lissy, you brought her here because you love her and you want her to be happy. She has a friend now. How about we let her make a few more?”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me.”

Lissy reached out, a bit dramatically, to clutch Fiona’s hand. “I really, really do.”

“Correct if necessary. Otherwise, just relax and let her deal.”

Fiona called the dogs off the porch, one at a time, to give Chloe a chance to acclimate. There were a few corrections, some retreat and advance, but before long they had what Fiona thought of as a sniff-and-wag party going on.

“I’ve never seen her like this. She’s not scared or being mean or trying to claw up my leg so I’ll pick her up.”

“Let’s give her a reward. Let her off the leash so she can run around with the boys and Oreo.”

Lissy bit her lip but obeyed.

“Go play,” Fiona ordered.

As the others ran off, bumping bodies, Chloe stood, shivering.

“She’s—”

“Wait,” Fiona interrupted. “Give her some time.”

Bogart raced back, gave Chloe a few swipes with his tongue. This time when he ran toward the pack, Chloe raced after him on her little designer booties.

“She’s playing.” Lissy murmured it as Chloe leaped to latch onto the frayed end of the mangled rope Bogart snagged. “She’s really playing with friends.”

Fiona draped an arm around Lissy’s shoulders. “Let’s sit on the porch and have some lemonade. You can watch her from there.”

“I—I should’ve brought my camera. I never thought . . .”

“Tell you what. Sit with Sylvia. I’ll go get mine and take some shots. I’ll e-mail them to you.”

“I’m going to cry.”

“You go right ahead.” Patting Lissy’s shoulder, Fiona led her to the porch.

LATER, SYLVIA ROCKED and sipped and watched Lissy drive away with Chloe. “That must be very satisfying.”

“And a little exhausting.”

“Well, you did give her two solid hours.”

“She—they—needed it. I think they’ll be all right. Lissy has to keep it up—and bring Harry on board. But I think she will. Our guys helped, a lot.” She lifted her foot and gave Peck’s rump a rub.

“Now that we’ve solved Chloe’s problem, what about yours?”

“I think that’s going to take more than a firm hand and some dog treats.”

“How mad is he?”

“Pretty mad.”

“How mad are you?”

“Undecided.”

Now that the dog party had ended, a trio of jewel-winged humming-birds dashed and darted along the flowering red currant that Starr had written about in the cursed article.

The blur of color should have charmed her, but it only served to remind Fiona of the harshness of the morning.

“I’m trying to stay calm, to be sensible—because otherwise I think, I really think I’d run screaming and never stop. And Simon’s angry I don’t run screaming. At least I think that’s part of it, and I’m not all ‘Oh, you’re so big and strong, please take care of me.’ Or something.”

Sylvia continued to rock, to sip. “It’s a wonder to me, it really is, Fee, how someone as insightful and sensitive as you can’t seem to understand how painfully hard this is on the rest of us.”

“Oh, Syl. I do! Of course I do. I wish—”

“No, honey, you don’t. Your solution is to block us out of some of the details, and your own fears. To make the decisions, on your own, about what to do and how to do it. And since I can’t completely disagree with that, I’m in a quandary.”

Guilt mingled with frustration, and irritation wrapped them with a frayed bow. “I don’t block you out.”

“Not often. You are a sensible woman, and you’re justifiably proud of your ability to take care of yourself and deal with your own problems. I’m proud of you. But I worry that your need to do that will box you into believing you have to do that, always. You have an easier time giving help than asking for it.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe. But honestly, Syl, I didn’t think telling Simon or you, or anyone, about that damn reporter was an issue. Was a thing. It happened, I dealt with it. Telling you wouldn’t have stopped her from writing the article.”

“No, but telling us would have prepared us for it.”

“All right.” Tired, next to defeated, Fiona pressed her fingers to her eyes. “All right.”

“I don’t want to upset you. God knows I don’t want to add to your stress. I’d just like you to think about . . . to consider that it’s time to really let those who care about you step in.”

“Okay, tell me what you think I should do.”

“I’ll tell you what I wish you could do. I wish you could pack up and go to Fiji until they catch this maniac. And I know you can’t. Not just because it’s not in your makeup, but because you have your home, your business, your bills, your life to deal with.”

“Yes, I do. It’s maddening, Syl, because I feel like people don’t really understand that. If I crawled in some cave, I could lose my business, my home, not to mention my self-confidence. I worked hard to build all of those.”

“In my opinion, honey, people do understand that, but they wish you could dig into that cave. I think you’re doing what you can, what you have to do—except asking and allowing others to genuinely help. It’s more than having James watch your house and dogs while you take a little trip, or letting Simon share your bed at night. It’s opening up to someone, Fiona, fully. It’s trusting enough to do that.”

“God.” Fiona huffed out a breath. “I’ve practically thrown myself at Simon’s feet.”

Sylvia smiled a little. “Have you?”

“I told him I thought I was falling in love with him. I didn’t get quid pro quo out of that.”

“Is that what you were after?”

“No.” Irritated with herself and everything else, she shoved to her feet. “No. But he’s not exactly the sort who tells you what’s on his mind—unless he’s mad. And even then . . .”

“I’m not talking about him, or to him. If I were, I’d probably have quite a bit to say. But this is you, Fiona. It’s you I’m worried about, worried for. It’s you I want happy and safe.”

“I’m not going to take any chances. I promise you. And I won’t make a mistake like I did with the reporter again.” She turned back, lifted her hand, palm out. “Solemn oath.”

“I’m going to hold you to it. Now, tell me what you want from Simon. With Simon.”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Don’t know, or haven’t let yourself dig down and think about?”

“Both. If things were just normal—if all of this wasn’t hovering around the edges of my life—maybe I would dig down. Or maybe there wouldn’t be anything to dig for in the first place.”

“Because what’s hovering is why you and Simon are where you are now?”

“It’s certainly influenced it. The timing, the intensity.”

“I’m full of opinions today,” Sylvia decided. “So here’s one more. I think you’re giving a murderer too much credit, and yourself and Simon not enough. The fact is, Fee, things are what they are, and you and Simon are where you are. That’s something to be dealt with.”

She lifted her brows when the dogs went on alert. “And I bet that’s what you have to deal with coming over your bridge. I’m going to go so you can.” Sylvia rose, gathered Fiona in a fierce hug. “I love you, so much.”

“I love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Then don’t try. And think of this,” she murmured. “He left mad, but he came back.”

She kissed Fiona’s cheek, then picked up her enormous straw bag. She called Oreo as she strolled toward Simon’s truck. Fiona couldn’t hear what Sylvia said to him, but noticed he glanced toward the porch as her stepmother spoke.

Then shrugged.

Typical.

She stood her ground, though she wasn’t quite sure where the ground lay, as Sylvia drove away. “If you’re here due to obligation, I’ll relieve you of it. I can ask James to stay here tonight, or go bunk at Mai’s.”

“Obligation for what?”

“Because I’m in trouble, which I freely admit. I know you’re mad, and I’m telling you you’re not obliged. I won’t stay here alone.”

He said nothing for a moment. “I want a beer.” He walked up the steps and into the house.

“Well, for—” She strode in after him. “Is that how you solve problems? Is that your method?”

“It depends on the problem. I want a beer,” he repeated, and pulled one out of the fridge, opened it. “I have a beer. Problem solved.”

“I’m not talking about the damn beer.”

“Okay.” He moved past her and out to the back porch.

She caught the screen on the back swing, slammed it behind her. “Don’t just walk away from me.”

“If you’re going to bitch, I’m going to sit down and drink my beer.”

“If I’m going to—You left here this morning pissed off and bossy. Interrupting me every five seconds. Telling me to shut up.”

“I’m about to repeat that.”

“What gives you the right to tell me what to do, what to think, what to say?”

“Not a thing.” He tipped the beer in her direction. “And right back at you, Fiona.”

“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m giving you a choice, and I’m telling you I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior.”

His gaze fired to hers, molten gold sheathed in ice. “I’m not one of your dogs. You won’t train me.”

Her jaw dropped in sincere shock. “I’m not trying to train you. For God’s sake.”

“Yeah, you are. Second nature for you, I guess. Too bad, because I’d say it’s a pretty sure bet I have a lot of behaviors you’d like to change. That’s on you. If you’d rather James stay here tonight, give him a call. I’ll take off when he gets here.”

“I don’t know why we’re fighting.” She pushed her hands through her hair, leaned back on the rail. “I don’t even know. I don’t know why I’m suddenly considered someone who’s closed in or blocked off or too stubborn or stupid to ask for help. I’m not. I’m not any of that.”

He took a long pull as he studied her. “You got yourself out of the trunk.”

“What?”

“You got yourself out. Nobody helped you. There wasn’t anybody to help you. Live or die, it was up to you. It must’ve been a hell of a thing. I can’t imagine it. I’ve tried. I can’t. Do you want to stay in the trunk?”

Tears stung behind her eyes, infuriatingly. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can keep getting out on your own. My money’s on you there. Or you can let somebody give you a hand with it, and get it through your head that it doesn’t make you incapable, and it sure as hell doesn’t make you weak. You’re the strongest woman I know, and I’ve known some strong women. So figure it out, and let me know.”

She turned away, pressing a hand to her chest as it ached. “I got myself into the trunk, too.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“How do you know? You weren’t there. I was stupid and careless, and I let him take me.”

“Jesus Christ. He killed twelve women before you. Do you think they were all stupid, careless? That they let him take them?”

“I—no. Yes.” She turned back. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I know I made a mistake that day. Just a little one, just a few seconds, and it changed everything. Everything.”

“You lived. Greg Norwood died.”

“I know that it wasn’t my fault. I had therapy. I know Perry’s responsible. I know.”

“Knowing isn’t always believing.”

“I believe it. Most of the time. I don’t dwell on it. I don’t pull the chains of that with me.”

“Maybe you didn’t, but they’re rattling now.”

She hated, hated that he was right. “I built a life here, and I’m happy. There wouldn’t be this . . . I wouldn’t have this if it wasn’t happening again. How can it be happening again?” she demanded. “How in God’s name can this happen again?”

She drew a shuddering breath. “Do you need me to say I’m scared? I told you I was. I am. I’m terrified. Is that what you want me to say?”

“No. And if I get the chance, he’ll pay for making you say it, for making you feel it.”

He watched as she swiped a single tear from her cheek. He’d pay for that, too, Simon thought. For that one drop of grief.

And that one drop doused the last sparks of the anger he’d hauled around with him all day.

“I don’t know what I’m after with you, Fee, exactly. I can’t figure it out. But I know I want you to trust me. I need you to trust me to help you out of that fucking trunk. To trust me enough for that. Then we’ll see what happens next.”

“That scares me almost as much.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He lifted the beer again to drink, eyeing her over it. “I’d say you’re in a spot.”

She let out an unsteady laugh. “I guess I am. I haven’t had a serious relationship since Greg. A couple of short-lived pretenses. I can stand here now and look back and see very clearly they weren’t fair to anyone involved. I wasn’t dishonest, and the other party wasn’t after any more than it was. But still, not fair. I didn’t intend to have a serious relationship with you. I wanted the company, some conversation, the sex. I liked the idea of having an affair. Look at me, all grown up. Maybe that wasn’t fair.”

“I didn’t have a problem with it.”

She smiled. “Maybe not, but here we are, Simon, and it’s pretty clear we’re both after a little more than we bargained for. You want trust. I want what I guess is the next level of commitment. I think we’re scaring each other.”

He stood up. “I can take it. Can you?”

“I want to try.”

He reached out, tucked her hair behind her ear. “Let’s see how we do.”

She moved in, sighed as she locked her arms around him. “Okay. This is already better.”

“Let’s try something different.” He stroked a hand down her hair. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

“Out?”

“I’ll take you out to dinner. You could wear a dress.”

“I could.”

“You have them. I’ve seen them in your closet.”

She tilted her head back. “I’d like to put on a dress and go out to dinner.”

“Good. Don’t take all night. I’m hungry.”

“Fifteen minutes.” Rising on her toes, she brushed his lips with hers. “This is better.”

Even as she walked inside, the phone rang.

“Business line. One minute. Fiona Bristow.” Immediately she reached for the pad, the pen. “Yes, Sergeant Kasper. How long?” She wrote quickly, nodded as questions she didn’t have to ask were answered. “I’ll contact the rest of the unit immediately. Yes, five handlers, five dogs. Mai Funaki will run our base, as before. We’ll meet you there. You still have my cell number? Yes, that’s it. We’ll leave within the hour. No problem.”

She hung up. “I’m sorry. We’ve got two missing hikers in the Olympic National Forest. I’ve got to call the others. I’ve got to go.”

“Okay. I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have any experience,” she began even as she speed-dialed Mai. “Mai, we’re on.” She relayed the information quickly. “Phone tree,” she said to Simon as she clicked off and began to move. “Mai makes the next call.”

“I’m going with you. One, because you’re not going alone. Once you start the search it’s just you and the dog, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“And two, if you’re going to train my dog to do what you’re about to do, I want a better sense of it. I’m going.”

“We won’t get there before dark. If they haven’t found them by then, we’re going to start the search at night, and very likely spend the night in very rough conditions.”

“What, am I a pussy?”

“Hardly.” She opened her mouth to push back again, then realized what she was doing. “Okay. I’ve got a spare pack. I have a list of everything you need to take. Most should be in there already. You take the list, make sure it’s complete. And I’ll need you to call Syl and ask her to keep an eye on the dogs we don’t take.”

She pulled out her spare pack, tossed it to him. “When we get there, I’m alpha dog. You have to deal with that.”

“Your show, your rules. Where’s the list?”

TWENTY

A unit was precisely what they were, Simon observed. During the trip, the six members spoke in shorthand, acronyms and the code tight friends or longtime coworkers often fell into.

He did what came naturally to him. He sat back and observed.

The change in James and Lori’s relationship was new enough they exchanged quick, secret glances—while the others shot them amused looks. He heard Chuck and Meg Greene discussing weekend plans—yard work topped the list—with the ease of well-marrieds.

Fiona checked in with the cop named Kasper regularly for status, adjusted ETA and other relevant details.

The small surprise, at least it struck him that way, was the addition of another cop—Sheriff Tyson, from San Juan Island.

Something going on between him and the sexy vet, Simon concluded. Something newer than James and Lori and not quite defined.

The evening air whipped by in quick wet bites as Chuck piloted the boat across the chopping, white-tipped waters of the strait. The dogs seemed to enjoy it, sitting or sprawling, eyes glowing.

If not for the fact that two people were lost, possibly injured, out in the dark, it might’ve been a pleasant evening ride.

He ate one of the sandwiches Meg had provided and let his mind drift.

If they took murder out of the equation, would he be here now, eating ham and cheese with spicy mustard on a kaiser roll on a crowded boat that smelled of water and dog?

He wasn’t sure.

Then he glanced toward Fiona. She sat, body swaying with the bump of the waves, her cell phone at her ear, the notebook she scrawled on—make that wrote on; Fiona didn’t scrawl, he mused—on her lap, wind whipping the hasty braid she’d tied. That deceptively slender body tucked into rough pants, light jacket, scarred boots.

Yeah, he’d be here. Damn it.

Not his type. He could tell himself that a thousand times and it didn’t change a thing. She’d gotten under his skin, into his blood. Gotten somewhere.

He was half dazzled, half irritated by her—a strange and dangerous combination. He kept waiting for it to pass.

No luck there.

Maybe, once things were settled, he’d take a break. Go visit his family for a week. In his experience absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, it generally blurred the edges of the fondness. While it was true nothing had blurred during her short trip away, this could be different. He’d be the one to go.

Mai dropped down beside him. “Are you ready for this?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

“My first search? I was scared to death, and so excited. The training, the mock-up, the maneuvers? All essential, but the real thing is . . . well, the real thing. People are depending on you. Real people, with feelings and families and fears. When Fee first talked to me about the unit, I thought sure, that’s something I could do. I had no idea how much it takes. Not just time, but physically, emotionally.”

“You still do it.”

“Once you’re in, you’re in. I can’t imagine not doing it.”

“You run the base.”

“That’s right. Coordinate the dogs and handlers, keep the logs, maintain contact, liaise with the other search teams, the cops or rangers. I don’t have a search dog since I end up adopting special-needs types, but I can work with one if they need me. Fee thinks your Jaws is hardwired for this kind of work.”

“So she says.” He offered her a dip into his bag of chips. “He picks up on the training—at least it looks like it to me. Mostly I think he’d turn himself inside out if he thought it would make her happy.”

“Dogs have that reaction to Fee. She’s got a gift.”

She shifted a little so their knees bumped and her back was to Fiona. “How’s she doing, Simon? I try not to bring it up often. I know how she likes to keep things in their proper box.”

It was a perfect description, he thought. Dead-on perfect. “She’s scared. That only makes her more determined to handle it.”

“I sleep better knowing you’re with her.”

Sylvia had said the same, Simon recalled. But with a warning tone. Don’t let me down.

Once they arrived at the mainland, a group of volunteers helped them transfer into trucks for the drive to base. Things moved fast, he noted, with a kind of hard-edged efficiency. Proper boxes again, he supposed. Everyone had a purpose, and everyone knew what it was.

Fiona wedged between him and some guy named Bob and continued to work in her notebook as they sped or bumped along.

“What are you doing?”

“Checklist, working out preliminary sections going on the data I have now. It was a long trip, and it’s dark—but we’ve got good moonlight. Possibility of thunderstorms before morning, but it’s clear now so we’ll do what we can. How’s your boy, Bob?”

“Heading off to college come fall. Don’t know how that happened. He and my wife are helping out with chow.”

“It’ll be nice to see them. Bob and his family run a local lodge. They’re regulars when we have a search. Sergeant Kasper said the missing hikers are staying at your place.”

“That’s right.” Bob, with his windburned, square-jawed face, gripped the wheel with big-knuckled hands and navigated the switchbacks like a commuter on the freeway. “Them and another couple, traveling together. They headed out at first light, took a box lunch. The one couple, they came back just before dinnertime. They said how they separated on the trail, took different directions. They expected their friends to be back before them.”

“They don’t answer their cell phones.”

“Nope. Sometimes the service gets spotty, but they’ve been trying since around five, five-thirty.”

“I have the formal search starting about seven.”

“That’s right.”

“In good shape, are they?”

“Seem to be fit enough. Early thirties. Woman wore new boots, fancy pack. Came in from New York. Plan to stay two weeks, do some fishing, hiking, sightseeing, use the spa.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Simon spotted the lodge—a sprawling two stories lit now like the Fourth of July. Someone had put up a large tarp so it served as a makeshift chow hall, he supposed, with a long table loaded with food, coffee urns, cases of bottled water.

“Thanks for the lift, Bob. I’m looking forward to some of Jill’s coffee.” She got out behind Simon. “Could you help with the dogs? They’ll need to be watered. I need to coordinate with Sergeant Kasper while Mai sets up base.”

“No problem.”

She crossed to a uniformed cop with a generous belly and a weathered, bulldog face. They shook hands, and when Mai joined them, he shook hers before gesturing. Mai walked briskly into the lodge.

Fiona got herself a cup of coffee while she and Kasper talked.

“Mai says this is your first.” Tyson held out a hand to Simon. “Ben Tyson.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s not yours, Sheriff.”

“Keep it at Ben. Not the first, but I’m usually on that end.” He jutted his chin toward Fiona and Kasper as he and Simon herded the dogs toward a huge galvanized tub of water.

“Okay. What are they doing?”

“Well, the sergeant’s updating her, giving her whatever he’s got. How many they’ve got out, what areas they’ve covered, time lines, PLS—the point last seen. Fee, she’s good about making sure they have the right maps, but he’ll fill her in on the topography. Roads, hills, water, barriers, drainage, trail markers. All that’s going to help her strategize the unit’s search pattern. Mai says they were hiking with friends, so Fee’ll talk to them, too, before she briefs the unit.”

“That’s a lot of time talking.”

“It might seem that way. If you rush it, brush by getting all the data, you may miss something. Better to take the time now. And it gives her time to get her feet under her, gauge the air.”

“The air?”

Ben smiled. “That’s where it goes by me, to tell you the truth. Air pockets and scent cones and whatever the hell. I’ve worked a few searches with Fee and the unit. Seems to me she’s got a nose like one of the dogs.” Ben reached down, gave Bogart a scrub between the ears.

For the next twenty minutes, Simon wandered, drank truly exceptional coffee, watched volunteers and uniforms come back to refuel, debrief.

“We’re set up in the lobby,” James told him. “If you want in on the briefing.”

“All right.”

“Done much hiking?”

“Some,” Simon answered as they walked inside.

“At night?”

“Not really.”

James grinned. “You’re about to get a workout, and an education.”

Simon thought of the lobby as rustic gloss. It worked. Lots of leather chairs, heavy oak tables stained dark, iron lamps and rough pottery. Fiona stood at a table that held a boxy radio, a laptop, maps. Behind her hung a large topographical map of the area, while Mai worked on a whiteboard.

“We’re looking for Ella and Kevin White, Caucasian, twenty-eight and thirty, respectively. Ella is five-five, a hundred and twenty-five, brown hair, brown eyes. She was wearing Levi’s, a red shirt over a white tank, and a navy hoodie. Kevin’s five-ten, a hundred and seventy. Levi’s, brown shirt over white, brown jacket. They’re both wearing hiking boots, the friends think Rockports, sizes seven and ten and a half.”

She flipped over a page in a notebook, but Simon sensed she didn’t need it. She remembered. “They left this location at just after seven a.m. with another couple, Rachel and Tod Chapel. They headed south, along the river.”

She stepped back to the map, used a laser pointer. “They kept to posted trails, stopped several times and took an hour’s break about eleven-thirty—here, as the witnesses best remember—to eat the boxed lunch the lodge provided. That’s when they separated. Ella and Kevin opted to continue south. The other couple headed east. They planned to meet back here around four, maybe four-thirty, for drinks. When they didn’t return by five, and neither answered their cell phone, there was some concern. They continued to try their cells and combed the immediate area until shortly before six, when Bob alerted the authorities. Formal search commenced at six fifty-five.”

“If they kept south, they’d head into the Bighorn Wilderness Area,” James pointed out.

“That’s right.”

“There’s some rough going in there.”

“And Ella is an inexperienced hiker.”

She moved on, pointing out the areas the search had covered, laying out the sectors for each team, using, Simon noted, natural barriers and landmarks as borders.

“Additional data. The witnesses say Kevin’s an overachiever. He’s competitive. Both he and Tod wore pedometers and had a bet going. Whoever clocked the most miles won, and the loser bought drinks and dinner tonight. He likes to win. He’d have pushed it.

“I know it’s late, but we’ve got the weather and the moon in our favor. It’s a go for a sector search. As OL, I’ll go in, inspect the PLS. I think it’s good data, but a spot on a map can’t replace eyeballing it.”

She checked her watch. “They’ve been out about fourteen hours, had their last real meal nine hours ago. They’ve got water and some power bars, some trail mix, but the water situation was geared toward a late-afternoon return. Let’s have a radio check, then I’ll pass out the scent bags outside.”

Once they were outside, Fiona hitched on her pack. “Are you sure about this?” she asked Simon.

He scanned the dense, primal dark of the surrounding forest. “I’m sure you’re not going in there alone.”

“I don’t mind the company, but it’s a stretch to think a crazed killer heard about a couple of missing hikers, and our unit’s call-in, managed to get here and is now lying in wait.”

“Do you want to argue about it, or do you want to find these people?”

“Oh, I can do both.” She gave Bogart the scent. “That’s Ella. That’s Ella. And Kevin. Here’s Kevin. Let’s go find them! Let’s find Ella and Kevin.”

“Why are you doing that now? I thought you were going to the PLS?”

“Good—and yeah, we are. He needs to start the game now, get revved. Maybe they got lost or turned around on the way back. Maybe one or both of them got hurt and just can’t make it back in the dark.”

“And sniffing socks is going to do the trick.”

She smiled, using her flashlight to add more illumination to the trail. “You like cornflakes, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope this doesn’t put you off them. We shed cornflake-shaped skin cells. Dead cells, called rafts, constantly shed and carry a scent unique to the person who sheds them. They’re carried off by the air, by wind currents downwind in a scent cone. The scent cone’s narrow, and it’s concentrated at the source.”

“The person.”

“Exactly. It widens with distance, and Bogart can and will find that scent. The problems with following it to the source can be too much wind, too much humidity, looping, pooling, a chimney effect—various ways wind and air work depending on the climate conditions and the terrain. That’s my job—judging that, outlining the search plan, helping the dog stay on scent.”

“Complicated. Tricky.”

“It can be. You get a hot day, no air movement, heavy brush? The scent’s not going to disperse out, and that’s going to limit the range. I’d have to adjust the search sweeps. A stream, a drainage, those can funnel scents, so the OL, then the handlers, may have to adjust for that.”

So it was science, he concluded, as much as training, as much as instinct. “How do you know the dog’s working it and not just out for a stroll?”

The reflectors on her jacket, and the ones she’d slapped on his, glowed eerie green in the moonlight. The beam she carried swept over trail and brush and odd clumps of wildflowers.

“He knows his job. He knows the game. See, he’s moving pretty briskly, but he checks behind, to make sure we’re in sight. He scents the air, moves on. He’s a good dog.”

Reaching out, she took Simon’s hand, gave it a squeeze. “Not exactly dinner out.”

“We’re out. The sandwich was pretty good. What are you looking for?”

“Signs.” She continued to sweep her light. “Tracks, broken brush, candy wrappers, anything. I don’t have Bogart’s nose, so I have to rely on my eyes.”

“Like Gollum.”

“Yes, my precious—but I think that was a lot of nose work, too. God, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? One of my favorite places in the world. And now, with the moon filtering through the canopy, all the shadows and sparkles, it’s just amazing.” Her light skimmed over gilded mushrooms, exotic jack-in-the-pulpit. “One of these days I’m going to find time to take a course in botany so I know more of what I’m looking at.”

“Because you’ve got nothing but time on your hands.”

“You can always squeeze out a little more for something you really want. Sylvia’s taking up crocheting.”

He paused, couldn’t find the connection. “Okay.”

“I’m just saying you can always make time for something if you want it. I know the basics on flora and fauna—and I know what not to touch or eat when I’m out on a search like this. Or if I don’t know, I don’t touch it or eat it.”

“Explain why we’re hauling crappy hiking food in the packs.”

“You won’t care if it’s crappy when you’re hungry.”

Each time Bogart alerted, she stopped, marked the spot with tape. Everything they knew said the lost hikers had passed this way hours before, but the dog followed the trail.

Knew his job, Simon concluded, just as Fiona claimed.

“We found a hiker a couple years ago, not all that far from here,” she told him. “Dead summer, steaming. He’d been wandering around for two days. Dehydrated, infected blisters, and he had poison ivy in places you really, really don’t want poison ivy.”

They walked, endlessly it seemed to Simon, lit by moonlight, along the trail with her scanning light. She’d stop, call out, listen, use her radio to check with her unit. Then move on after the dog. Tireless, he noted. Both of them. And there was no doubt the pair of them took the work seriously, and enjoyed every minute.

She pointed out things she knew. The busy life of a nurse log, the strange and fascinating pattern of lichen.

When Bogart stopped to drink, she refreshed the scent for him while owls and night birds filled the air with calls.

Bogart alerted, and began busily sniffing air and ground.

“This is it, where they stopped for lunch. Where they separated. Lots of tracks.” She crouched down. “They were respectful, I’ll give them that. No litter.”

The dog wandered off to relieve himself, and, deciding it was a fine idea, Simon moved deeper into the trees to do the same while Fiona cupped her hands around her mouth and called.

“We made good time,” she said when Simon came back. “It’s not quite midnight. We can take a break here, start again at first light.”

“Is that what you’d do if I wasn’t here?”

“I’d probably give it a little longer.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Short break first.” She sat on the ground, dug a bag of trail mix and a pouch of kibble out of her bag. “It’s important to keep the energy up, and stay hydrated. Otherwise, they’ll be sending someone out for us.”

She handed Simon the trail mix, then fed the dog.

“Have you ever not found who you were looking for?”

“Yeah. It’s horrible to go back empty. The worst. Worse than finding them too late is not finding them at all.”

She dipped her hand into the bag. “These two, they’re young and strong. I’m guessing they—or he—misjudged their endurance, got disoriented. Probably a combination. The phones are a concern.”

“Dead battery. Or they can’t get a signal. Dropped them. Lost them.”

“Any or all,” she agreed. “There’s wildlife, but it’s unlikely they ran into something that wouldn’t walk away. The thing is, a twisted ankle out here knocks you back, especially if you’re inexperienced.”

In the dark, he thought, probably disoriented, certainly tired, possibly injured. “It took them, what, four hours to get here?”

“Yeah, but they were meandering, stopping, taking photos. Kevin wants to pick up the pace, win the bet when they head south. He probably only planned to go another hour, maybe two—which is too damn much in one day when your hiking’s mostly done on Fifth Avenue. But then they could shortcut it back—at least in his head—and get back to the lodge by cocktail time.”

“Is that how you see it?”

“From what I got from his friends. He’s a good guy, a bit of a know-it-all, but funny. He likes a challenge, and he can’t resist a dare. She likes trying new things, seeing new places. It’s chilly.” Fiona drank from her water bottle while she searched the shadows and moonlight. “But they have jackets. They’re probably exhausted, scared, pissed off.”

She smiled at him. “Do you think you can handle another hour?”

“Kevin’s not the only one who’s competitive.” He rose, held out a hand for hers.

“I’m glad you came.” She rose up, moved into him. “But I still want that dinner out when we get back.”

They stretched the hour to ninety minutes, zigzagging on the trails as the dog followed the scent. Fiona’s calls went unanswered, and clouds drifted over the moon.

“The wind’s changing. Damn it.” She tipped her face up, and he’d have sworn she scented the air like her dog. “We’re going to get that storm. We’d better pitch the tent.”

“Just like that?”

“We can’t do any more tonight. Bogart’s tired. We’re losing the light, and the scent.” She pulled out her radio. “So we’ll take a couple hours, get some rest, stay dry.” She looked at him then, holding the radio. “It’s not worth going back to base, getting drenched, exhausted, then heading out again at dawn. A bed and a hot shower’s a cheap trade for warm, dry and rested out here.”

“You’re the alpha.”

She cocked her head. “And you’re saying that because you agree with me?”

“It helps that I agree with you.”

She called their status and location in to base, coordinated or took updates on the other searchers. No chatter, Simon noted. Straight business.

After she shed her pack and began setting up the tent, he found himself again in the position of taking direction. He didn’t have a clue, he was forced to admit. The last time he camped out in a tent he was probably twelve—and the deal she called a hyper-light didn’t work anything like the ancient pup tent he’d used.

“It’ll be cramped, but we’ll be dry. You first,” she told him. “You’re going to have to sort of angle yourself, given your height. Bogart and I will maneuver ourselves in after you.”

Light it might’ve been, but cramped was a kind word for it. By the time he had the dog curled at the small of his back and Fiona shoehorned beside him, there wasn’t an inch to spare.

“I think your dog has his nose in my ass.”

“Good thing you’re wearing pants.” Fiona shifted a little. “You can scooch over toward me a little more.”

Scooch, he thought, but realized he was too tired to think of a sarcastic comment. So he scooched, muttered and found if he got his arm under her—which he’d probably have to amputate in the morning—he gained a fraction of space.

Thunder belched violently seconds before the skies opened. The rain sounded like a monsoon.

“This would be romantic,” Fiona decided, “if we had a bigger tent, were doing this for fun, and there was a nice bottle of wine involved.”

“The dog’s snoring.”

“Yes, he is, and he will. He worked hard tonight.” She only had to turn her head a fraction to kiss him. “So did you.”

“You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking,” he repeated.

“I just need to settle down. I have a problem with closed-in or tight spaces.”

“You . . .” It struck him immediately, and he cursed himself for an idiot. She’d been bound, gagged and locked in the trunk of a car, heading for death. “Jesus, Fiona.”

“No, don’t.” She grabbed on to him when he started to move. “Just stay right here. I’m closing my eyes, and it’ll pass.”

He felt it now, the way her heart beat against him, as violently as the rain. “We should’ve gone back for the night.”

“No, it wastes time and energy. Plus I’m too tired for a full-blown panic attack.”

What the hell did she call the shivering and heart-banging? He drew her closer, wrapping his other arm around her to stroke a hand up and down her back. “Is that better or worse?”

“It’s better. It’s nice. I just need a minute to adjust.”

Lightning slashed wildly, illuminating the tent. He saw her cheeks were pale, her eyes closed. “So, is Tyson banging the vet?”

“I don’t think it’s progressed to banging, Mr. Romance. I think they’re just starting to get to know each other on a personal level.”

“Banging’s personal, if you do it right.”

“I’m sure she’ll let me know if banging becomes part of the arrangement.”

“Because you’ve told her we’re banging.”

“I suspect she could’ve come to that conclusion all on her own, but yes, of course I told her. And in specific and minute detail. She wishes you’d banged her first.”

“Huh. An opportunity lost.” Her heartbeat was slowing, just a bit. “I could backtrack and make it up to her.”

“Too late. She’d never have sex with you now. We have codes and standards. You’re no longer on the menu when it comes to any of my friends or relations.”

“That doesn’t seem fair when you consider you’re friends with everybody on the island.”

“That may be, but rules are rules.” She tipped her face again, touched her lips to his. “Thanks for taking my mind off my neurosis.”

“You don’t have any neuroses, which is annoying. You have quirks, which make up for it a little. But you’re mostly irritatingly stable and normal. You’re still not my type.”

“But you’re still going to bang me.”

“At every opportunity.”

She laughed, and he felt her fully relax against him. “You’re rude, socially stunted and cynical. But I intend to be available for said banging whenever possible. I’m not sure what that makes us, but it seems to be working.”

“You’re who I want to be with.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d said it—maybe the forced intimacy of the tent, the rain beating its fists down on it, his concern for her even as her trembling ceased. Whatever the reason, he thought, it was truth.

“That’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me,” she murmured. “Even more, given the current circumstances.”

“We’re warm and we’re dry,” he pointed out. “And they’re not,” he added, echoing her thoughts.

“No, they’re not. It’s going to be a terrible night for them.”

This time he turned his head and brushed his lips over her hair. “Then we’d better find them in the morning.”

PART THREE

Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?

THE BIBLE

TWENTY-ONE

She woke in solid dark, unable to move or see or speak. Her head throbbed like an open wound, while nausea churned choppy waves in her belly. Disoriented, terrified, she struggled, but her arms remained pinned behind her back; her legs felt paralyzed.

She could do no more than worm, buck and struggle to breathe.

Her eyes, wide and wild, wheeled in her head. She heard the hum, steady, forceful, and thought—fresh panic—she was in the cave of some wild animal.

No, no. An engine. A car. She was in a car. In the trunk of a car. The man. The man on the jogging path.

She could see it all so clearly, the bold morning sun, the dreamy blue sky like a canvas against the rich hues of fall. That hint of autumn spice on the air like a flavor on her tongue.

Her muscles had warmed. She’d felt so loose, so limber. So powerful. She’d loved that feeling, the heady rush of being alone in a world of color and spice. Just her and the morning and the freedom to run.

Then the man, jogging toward her. No big deal. They’d pass, he’d be gone, and the world would be hers again.

But . . . did he stumble, did he fall, did she stop for a second to help? She couldn’t remember, not exactly. All blurred now.

But she could see his face. The smile, the eyes—something in those eyes—an instant before the pain.

Pain. Like being struck by lightning.

It spun in her head as the rhythm beneath her changed and the floor vibrated under her. Rough road, she thought in some dizzy corner of her brain.

She thought of her uncle’s warnings, and Greg’s. Don’t run alone. Keep the panic button handy. Stay alert.

So easily dismissed. What could happen to her? Why would anything happen?

But it had. It had. She’d been taken.

All those girls—the girls she’d seen in the paper. The dead girls she’d felt sorry for—until she’d forgotten them and gone on with her life.

Was she going to be one of them, one of the dead girls in the paper, on the news reports?

But why? Why?

She wept and struggled and screamed. But the sounds drowned against the tape over her mouth, and the movements only cut the bands into her skin until she smelled her own blood and sweat.

Until she smelled her own death.

SHE WOKE IN THE DARK. Trapped. The scream burned up her throat only to be bitten back when she felt the weight of Simon’s arm tossed over her, when she heard the steady breathing—his, the dog’s.

But the panic was spiders skittering inside her chest, under her skin.

So the scream stayed in her head, piercing.

Get out! Get out! Get out!

She shoved herself toward the flap, fought it open and crawled out where the cool, damp air slapped at her face.

“Hold on. Hey. Hold on.”

When Simon gripped her shoulders she pushed at him. “Don’t. Don’t. Just need to breathe.” Hyperventilating—she knew it but couldn’t stop it. A boulder pressed on her chest, and her head began to swim in long, sick waves. “Can’t breathe.”

“Yes you can.” He tightened his grip, yanked her up to her knees and gave her a quick, shocking shake. “Breathe. Look at me, Fiona. Right here. Breathe! Now!”

She sucked in air on a short, shaky gasp.

“Let it out. Do what I tell you. Let it out, take it in. Slow it down. Slow it the hell down.”

She stared at him, wondered at him. Who the hell did he think he was? She shoved at his chest, met an unmoving wall even as he shook her again.

And she breathed.

“Keep going. Bogart, sit. Just sit. In and out. Look at me. In and out. Better, that’s better. Keep it up.”

He let her go. Focused on inhaling, exhaling, she sank back to sit on her heels as Bogart nudged his nose against her arm. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Drink. Slow.” Simon cupped her hands around a water bottle. “Slow.”

“I know. I’ve got it. I’m okay.” She blew out a long breath first, then sipped carefully. “Thanks, sorry, whatever altogether. Wow.” She sipped again. “I guess I wasn’t too tired for that panic attack after all. I had a flashback. It’s been . . . God, a really long time since I had one, but I guess the circumstances were pretty fertile ground.”

Breathing steadier, she draped her arm around Bogart’s neck. “You were mean,” she said to Simon. “And exactly what I needed to snap me out before I passed out. You could give lessons.”

“You scared the fuck out of me. Goddamn it.”

Before she could speak he held up a hand to stop her, then spun away to pace over the soggy ground. “Goddamn it. I’m not any good at this kind of thing.”

“Beg to differ.”

He whirled back. “I like you better tough.”

“Me too. Panic attacks and hyperventilating to the edge of unconsciousness are embarrassing moments.”

“It’s not a damn joke.”

“No, it’s reality. My reality.” She swiped her arm over her clammy face. “Fortunately, it’s not something I have to deal with regularly anymore.”

“Don’t,” he said when she started to rise. “You’re white as a sheet. If you try standing by yourself, you’ll fall on your face.”

He moved to her, took her hands to help her up. “You’re not supposed to be pale and fragile,” he said quietly. “You’re bright and bold and strong.” He pulled her close. “And this makes me want to kill him.”

“It’s probably wrong, but God, I appreciate that. Still, Perry’s worse off than dead.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. But maybe beating him half to death would be more satisfying.”

His heart, she realized, beat harder and faster than her own. And that, she realized, was another kind of comfort.

“Well, if you want violence, I broke his nose kicking him in the face when he opened the trunk.”

“Let me focus on that a minute. It’s good. Not complete, but not bad.”

She eased back. “Are we okay?”

He stroked her cheek, his eyes intense on hers. “Are you?”

“Yes. But I’m glad it’s nearly dawn, because I’m not going back in that tent. If you could get my pack, I’ve got some bouillon cubes we can heat up.”

“Bouillon at dawn?”

“Breakfast of champions, especially when you add a power bar.” Better, she thought, so much better to focus on what came next than what had happened before. “Once we eat and break camp, I’ll call in to base for the status, and a weather report.”

“Fine. Fiona? On the off chance I ever do this with you again, we’re getting a bigger tent.”

“Bet your ass.”

The bouillon was bland, but it was warm. As far as her nutrition bars, or whatever the hell you called them, Simon vowed if he ever came out again, he’d bring Snickers.

She broke camp as she did everything else, he noted. In an organized and precise fashion. Everything had to be put away exactly where it had come from.

“Okay, the forecast is good,” she announced. “Sunny, low seventies for a high—and we won’t reach that until this afternoon—light winds from the south. We’re moving into the northern section of the wilderness area. It’s not too rough. We’ll have some hills, slopes, some rocky ground. The understory may get thick in places, especially off the marked trails. I’m guessing after the hike they’d already put in, they wouldn’t choose the more mountainous terrain, or have kept going southeast into the higher elevations and rougher ground.”

“I can’t figure out why the hell they’d have come as far as this.”

“Again, I’m guessing, but he’s competitive, he’s pushing. Even if he was a little turned around, he probably wouldn’t admit it at first. And that type wouldn’t take the easier ground—wouldn’t necessarily head downhill instead of uphill.”

“Because he’s got something to prove.”

“More or less. I asked the woman they’re traveling with if he was the type who’d stop and ask directions—and she laughed. Nervous laugh, but a laugh. He’d drive to hell before he’d ask for directions. So you figure by the time he, or they, realized they were seriously screwed, it was just too late.”

“A lot of space out here to get lost in.” Which would he have done, he wondered, uphill or down, call for help or push on?

He wasn’t altogether sure, and hoped he wouldn’t ever have to find out.

“And if you’re not familiar with it, one fir or hemlock looks like the other hundreds. Anyway, we’re expanding the search area.” She glanced up. “Do you want me to show you on the map?”

“Do you plan on ditching me in the wilderness?”

“Only if you piss me off.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Then we saddle up.” She shrugged on her pack, gave Bogart the scent and juiced him up for the game.

Watery sunlight sparkled on mists and filtered through to shine on leaves that shed their rainwater from the night’s storm. Simon couldn’t say what Bogart smelled, but for him, it was clean and damp and green.

The ground roughened and rose, and still wildflowers, tiny stars of color, carved their way through cracks to bask or ranged themselves along skinny streams like waders about to dip their toes.

A downed tree, hollowed out by weather, tooth and claw, had him crossing over.

“Do you see something?”

“A bench,” he muttered. “Curve the seat, just like that. Back and arms, all out of one log. Carve a mushroom motif maybe on the base.”

He surfaced to see both her and Bogart waiting for him. “Sorry.”

“Bogart needed water anyway.” She offered the bottle to Simon. “I could use a bench.”

“Not that one. Too solid, too hefty for you. It wouldn’t—”

“Suit me. Got it.” Shaking her head, she checked in with base.

Despite the strengthening sun, Fiona continued to use her flashlight, running the beam over brush and trail as the dog trotted along.

“He’s picked it up. The rest did him good.”

“Isn’t the world basically a banquet of smells for a dog? How come he doesn’t get distracted? Hey, a rabbit! Or whatever. Jaws’ll chase a blowing leaf.”

“It’s training, practice, repetition. But basically, that’s not the game. The game’s to find the source of the scent I gave him.”

“The game’s moving off the trail,” Simon pointed out.

“Yeah.” She followed the dog, climbing the rough slope, maneuvering through brush. “They made a mistake here. Bogart may not get distracted, but people do. They left the marked trail, maybe they saw some deer or a marmot, or wanted to take a photo. Maybe they decided they’d try for a shortcut. There’s a reason the trails are marked, but people veer off anyway.”

“If the dog’s right, so were you. Competitive Kevin would go up instead of down.”

Bogart slowed down for the humans as they negotiated the climb. “Maybe they figured they’d get a cool view if they went up this way. But . . . Wait. Bogart! Hold!”

She turned her light on a berry bush. “He caught his jacket,” she murmured, and gestured to a tiny triangle of brown cloth. “Good dog. Good job, Bogart. Flag the find, will you?” she asked Simon. “I’m going to call this in to base.”

She’d shown him how to mark the finds early on the search when they’d come across tracks or other signs. Once he’d tied the flag, he gave Bogart water, took some for himself while she shouted for Kevin and Ella.

“Nothing yet. But this understory sucks up the sound. It’s warming up, and the wind’s still light, still good for us. He wants to go. He’s got a good scent. Let’s find Kevin and Ella. Go find!”

“What’s the longest you’ve ever been on a search?”

“Four days. It was brutal. Nineteen-year-old boy, pissed off at his family, walked away from their campsite after they’d bedded down for the night. Got lost, wandered in circles and took a bad fall. High summer—heat, bugs, humidity. Meg and Xena found him. Unconscious, dehydrated, concussed. He’s lucky he made it.”

Bogart zigzagged now, moving east, then west, turning back to the north.

“He’s confused.”

“No,” Fiona corrected, watching Bogart’s body language. “They were.”

Ten minutes later Simon spotted the cell phone—or what was left of it—in a huddle of rock. “There.”

He quickened his pace to reach Bogart, who stood at alert.

“Good eye,” Fiona said. “It’s cracked.” She crouched to pull it out. “Broken. Look here. Bandage wrappers on the ground, and this looks like blood—the rain didn’t wash it all off in here.”

“So one of them fell? Hit the rock, phone dropped, hit the rock?”

“Maybe. Only a couple bandages, so that’s a plus.” She nodded as he took out a flag without her asking. Once again, she cupped her hands and shouted. “Damn it. Damn it. How much farther would they go after this? I’ll call it in.”

“And eat something.” He dug into her pack himself. “Hey, you’ve got Milky Ways.”

“That’s right. Quick energy.”

“And I ate that crap bar. Sit down for five minutes. Eat. Drink.”

“We’re close. I know it. He knows it.”

“Five minutes.”

She nodded and, sitting on the rocks, ate a candy bar while she talked to Mai.

“We’re realigning the search. We’ve hit two finds, and Lori hit one that indicates this direction. Air search will sweep this way. It’s a red phone, and I’m betting hers. Mai’s going to check on that, but I don’t see Kevin with a bright red phone.”

“So that’s probably her blood.”

“Probably. He’s nuts about her, according to the friends. Just nuts about her. She’s hurt, he’d panic a little. Or maybe a lot, considering. You panic, you make it worse most of the time.”

“He could’ve called for help from right here.”

Fiona pulled out her cell. “Nope. Dead zone. That’s why they call it the wilderness. He probably tried to find a signal, ended up more lost, more off any kind of trail.”

They headed out again. Bogart was deep into the “game,” Simon concluded, trotting ahead, sending what could only be impatient looks over his shoulder as if to say, Hurry the hell up!

“Lost,” Fiona said half to herself. “Scared now—not an adventure anymore. One of them injured, even if it’s minor. Tired. New boots.”

“New boots?”

“Ella. New boots. She’s bound to have blisters by now. The instinct would be to take easier ground whenever they can. Downhill, or level ground, and they’d probably stop often to rest if she’s hurting. The storm last night. They’re wet, cold, hungry. They—Hear that?”

“Hear what?”

She held up a finger, concentrated. “The river. You can just hear the river.”

“Now that you mention it.”

“When you’re lost, scared, people often try to find high ground—to see more, to be seen. That might not be an option with an injury. Another instinct is to head for water. It’s a landmark, a trail, a comfort.”

“What happened to the deal about staying in one place and somebody’ll find you?”

“Nobody listens to that.”

“Apparently not. He’s got something.” Simon gestured to Bogart. “Look up. There’s a sock on that branch.”

“Once again, good eye. It’s a little late, but far from never. He’s started marking a trail. Good dog, Bogart. Find! Come on, let’s find Ella and Kevin!”

When they found a second sock in roughly a quarter mile, Fiona nodded. “Definitely the river, and he’s thinking again. He could use his phone here, see?” She showed Simon the service on hers. “So something’s up with that. But he’s trying to take easy ground, and he’s moving toward the river.”

“More blood, more bandage wrappers,” Simon pointed out.

“Dry. After the storm. These are from this morning.”

She lifted her voice to encourage the dog and, once again, to shout. This time, Simon heard it, a faint call in return.

Bogart gave a happy bark, then broke into a lope.

He felt it, a rise of excitement, a fresh spurt of energy as he quickened his pace to match Fiona’s and the dog’s.

In moments he saw a man, muddied, bedraggled, hobbling up a small rise.

“Thank God. Thank God. My wife—she’s hurt. We’re lost. She’s hurt.”

“It’s okay.” Even as she hurried toward him, Fiona pulled out her water bottle. “We’re Canine Search and Rescue. You’re not lost anymore. Drink some water. It’s okay.”

“My wife. Ella—”

“It’s okay. Bogart. Good dog. Good dog! Find Ella. Find. He’ll go to her, stay with her. Are you hurt, Kevin?”

“No. I don’t know.” His hand trembled on the water bottle. “No. She fell. Her leg’s cut, and her knee’s bad. She’s got awful blisters, and I think a fever. Please.”

“We’re going to take care of it.”

“I’ve got him.” Simon put an arm around Kevin, took his weight. “Go.”

“It’s my fault,” Kevin began as Fiona rushed after the dog. “It’s—”

“Don’t worry about that now. How far is she?”

“Just down there, by the water. I tried to move more into the open after last night. There was a storm.”

“Yeah.”

“We tried to stay covered. Jesus God. Where are we? Where the hell are we?”

Simon wasn’t entirely sure himself, but he saw Fiona and Bogart sitting beside a woman. “You’re found, Kevin. That’s what counts.”

He passed out candy bars, heated bouillon while Fiona checked and rebandaged the wound, elevated Ella’s swollen knee, treated the very nasty blisters on both her feet and Kevin’s.

“I’m such an idiot,” Kevin murmured.

“Yes, you are.” Huddled in a blanket, Ella managed a small smile. “He forgets to charge his phone battery. I’m so caught up in taking snapshots I talk him off the trail. Then he’s all, hey let’s try this way. Then I don’t look where I’m going and fall. We’re both idiots, and I’m burning those hiking boots the first chance I get.”

“Here.” Simon pressed the cup of bouillon on her. “Not as much fun as the Milky Way, but it should help.”

“It’s delicious,” Ella said after a small sip. “I thought we were going to die last night in that storm. I really did. When we were still alive this morning, I knew we’d make it. I knew somebody would find us.” When she turned to lay a hand on Bogart, the shine in her eyes shimmered with tears and relief. “He’s the most beautiful dog in the world.”

Bogart wagged his tail in agreement, then laid his head on Ella’s thigh.

“They’re sending an off-road.” Fiona hooked her radio back on her belt. “We can get you out in that. Your friends say you won the bet hands down, and they’re adding a magnum of champagne to drinks and dinner.”

Kevin dropped his head on his wife’s shoulder. As his shoulders shook, Bogart licked his hand in comfort.

“SHE’S NOT EVEN PISSED at him,” Simon observed as they bumped and rocked in a second off-road.

“Survival tops pissed off. They shared an intense, scary experience—and probably went off on each other a number of times during it. That’s done. They’re alive, and riding on euphoria. How about you?”

“Me? I had a hell of a time. It’s not what I expected,” he added after a moment.

“Oh?”

“I guess I thought you went out and tromped around, followed the dog, drank cowboy coffee and ate trail mix.”

“That’s not far off.”

“Yeah, it is. You’ve got one purpose out there, just like the dog. Find what’s lost, and find them as quickly as possible. You follow the dog, sure, but you handle the dog, and yourself while playing detective and psychologist and tracker.”

“Hmm.”

“All while being a team player—not just with the dog, but with the rest of the unit, the other searchers, the cops or whoever’s in authority. And when you find them, you’re paramedic, priest, best friend, mom and commander.”

“We wear many hats. Want to try some on?”

He shook his head. “You’ve already got my dog. He could do this. I get that now. Thank Christ,” he added when he saw the lodge through the trees. “I want a hot shower, a hot meal, a couple vats of coffee. Does that come with the package?”

“It will here.”

Chaos came first. Relief, tears, hugs, even as actual paramedics took over. Somebody slapped his back and shoved hot coffee into his hands. Nothing had ever tasted better.

“Good work.” Chuck tossed him a doughnut every bit as good as the coffee. “Helluva job. There’s a room for you inside if you want a hot shower.”

“Only as much as I want my next breath.”

“With you there. Ugly night, huh? But a damn good morning.”

He glanced over, as Chuck did, toward Ella and Kevin as the medics loaded Ella’s stretcher into an ambulance. “How’s she doing?”

“Knee’s banged up good, and she’ll need a few stitches. But they’re both better than they ought to be. They’ll fix her up. I guarantee this is a vacation they won’t forget.”

“Me either.”

“Nothing like a find,” Chuck said, and did another quick fist pump. “Well, go get that shower. Jill made up her spaghetti and meatballs, and you haven’t lived till you’ve eaten her meatballs. We’ll debrief over lunch.”

When he went inside, some motherly woman hugged him before pressing a room key in his hand. He turned toward the stairs, ran into Lori, got caught in another hug. Before he could get to the second floor, he had his hand shaken twice, his back slapped again. A little dazed, he found the room, closed himself inside.

Quiet, he thought. Silence—or nearly since the noise from downstairs and the corridors was nicely muffled by the door.

Solitude.

He dumped his pack in a chair, dug out the spare socks, boxers, shirt Fiona had instructed him to bring, the travel toothbrush she’d supplied.

On the way to the bathroom he glanced out the window. People continued to mill around. The dogs, obviously too juiced up from the game, trotted after humans or one another.

He didn’t find Fiona. He’d lost sight of her minutes after they’d gotten back to base.

He stripped, turned the shower on full and hot. And the instant the spray hit him every cell in his body wept with gratitude.

He might not be an urbanite, Simon thought as he just braced his palms on the tile and let the hot water pound over him, but Mother of God, he worshipped indoor plumbing.

He heard the tap-tap on the bathroom door and would’ve snarled if Fiona’s voice hadn’t followed it. “It’s me. Want company or do you want to ride solo?”

“Will the company be naked?”

His lips curved as he heard her laugh.

There was solitude, he thought, and solitude. And when she opened the shower door, tall, slim, naked, he decided he much preferred her kind.

“Come on in. The water’s fine.”

“Oh God.” As he had, she closed her eyes and wallowed. “It’s not fine. It’s bliss.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Oh. I needed to feed and water Bogart, touch base with the sergeant, set up the debriefing. We’re doing it over food, glorious food.”

“I heard. I haven’t lived till I eat the meatballs.”

“Solid truth.” She dunked her head, tipped it back so the water rained on her hair. Then just stood with her eyes closed and a hmm of pleasure in her throat.

“I called Syl, told her we’d pick up the boys on our way back.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Things that must be done.”

“I’ve got another one.” He turned her to face him.

“Everyone celebrates in their own way.”

She sighed her way into the kiss. “I like yours.”

TWENTY-TWO

He couldn’t argue about the meatballs. As he ate, Simon realized the meal reminded him of one of his family’s dinners back home. A lot of noise, interruptions, that situational shorthand again and a stunning amount of food.

But then, he supposed families came in all shapes, sizes and dynamics.

He suspected his pecking order was “the boyfriend”—annoying but predictable—who was still being measured and weighed, but welcomed warmly enough.

He couldn’t argue about the charged, happy mood, not when it infected him, too. Watching Kevin hobble toward them after all those hours, all those miles, had struck hard and struck deep.

More than satisfaction, Simon decided, it had been like a revival, like a shot of a really good drug that settled into a sense of pride.

Both Mai and Fiona took notes, and there was talk of documentation, logs, mission reports.

He noticed, in the playback, Fiona deleted her panic attack.

“Anything you want to add, Simon?”

He glanced over at James. “I think Fiona covered it. I was just along for the ride.”

“Maybe, but you pulled your weight. He did okay, for a rookie,” Fiona added. “He’s got endurance, a good sense of direction. He can read a map and a compass, and has a good eye. Some training? He could be ready when Jaws is.”

“You’re in if you want a shot,” Chuck told him.

Simon stabbed a meatball. “Use the dog.”

“We’d bring you in at the top pay scale.”

Amused, Simon studied Meg as he wound pasta around his fork. “That’s goose egg, right?”

“Every time.”

“Tempting.”

“Think about it,” Mai suggested. “Maybe you could bring Jaws to one of our unit practices sometime. See how it goes.”

THE MOOD MELLOWED OUT on the trip back, with the dogs dozing in the boat. Lori and James did the same, their heads tipped together, while Mai and Tyson huddled in the stern, fingers linked.

They’d drifted from unit to couples, Simon thought, sending a sidelong glance at Fiona, who sat beside him, reading over her notes. And it looked like he was one of them.

Once they reached Orcas, there were more hugs. He’d never seen people so addicted to squeezing one another.

He took the wheel for the drive home.

“We got dinner out—sort of,” Fiona said. “I ate so much pasta I may not eat for days. Plus, as date nights go, it was unique.”

“You’re never boring, Fiona.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Too much going on, in your life, in your head, to be boring.”

She smiled, flipped open her phone when it signaled. “Fiona Bristow. Yeah, Tod. That’s good. I’m really glad to hear it. We all are. You don’t have to, we got ours when Kevin and Ella got home safe. Yes, absolutely. You take care.”

She closed the phone. “Five stitches and a knee brace for Ella. They hydrated both of them, treated the blisters, the scrapes. Short version, they’re both going to be fine, and shortly on their way back to the lodge. They wanted to thank you.”

“Me?”

“You were part of the team who found them. How does it feel?”

He said nothing for a moment. “Pretty damn good.”

“Yeah. It really does.”

“You have to buy all your own equipment. The radios, tents, blankets, first aid, the whole shot.” Not that he was thinking about joining up. “I saw you note down what we used. You have to replace it on your own nickel.”

“That’s part of it. The radio was a gift, and boy did we need it. The parents of a kid we found bought it for us. Some want to pay us, but that’s a dicey area. But if they want to pick up some blankets or supplies, we don’t say no.”

“Give me the list. I’ll replace the stuff. I was part of the team, wasn’t I?” he asked when she frowned at him.

“Yes, but you don’t have to feel obligated to—”

“I don’t volunteer to do things out of obligation.”

“That’s true. I’ll give you a list.”

They stopped off at Sylvia’s, loaded up the dogs, which took twice as long as it might have due to desperate joy. He had to admit he’d missed his own idiot dog, and it felt damn good to be driving home with Fiona beside him and the back full of happy dogs.

“You know what I want?” she asked him.

“What?”

“I want a long, tall glass of wine and a lazy hour in my custom-made porch rocker. Maybe you’d like to join me?”

“I just might.”

When she reached over for his hand, he linked it with hers.

“I feel good. Tired, happy and just good all over. How about you guys, huh?” She shifted to look back, rub faces and bodies. “We feel so good. You can play while Simon and I drink wine until the sun goes down. That’s what I think. We’ll all be tired and happy and just good all over until—”

“Fiona.”

“Hmm?” Distracted, she glanced over. The hard set of his face had that happy lift dropping into worry. “What? What is it?”

She swiveled back as he slowed at her drive.

The red scarf tied to the lifted flag on her mailbox fluttered in the fitful breeze.

Her mind emptied, and for a moment she was back in the tight, airless dark.

“Where’s your gun? Fiona!” He whipped her name out and slashed her back.

“In my pack.”

He reached in the back, shoved her pack into her lap. “Get it out, lock the doors. Stay in the car and call the cops.”

“No. What? Wait. Where are you going?”

“To check out the house. He’s not going to be there, but we don’t take chances.”

“And you just walk out there, unarmed, unprotected?” Like Greg, she thought. Just like Greg. “If you get out, I get out. Cops first. Please. I couldn’t take it a second time. I couldn’t.”

She pulled out her phone, hit speed dial for the sheriff’s office. “This is Fiona. Someone tied a red scarf to my mailbox. No, I’m with Simon, at the end of the drive. No. No. Yes, all right. Okay.”

She drew a breath. “They’re on their way. They want us to stay where we are. I know that’s not what you want to do. I know it goes against the grain, against your instincts.”

She unzipped her pack, took out her gun. With steady hands, she checked the load, the safety. “But if he is there, if he’s waiting, he’d know that, too. And maybe I’d be going to another funeral for a man I love. He’d have killed me too, Simon, because I can’t come back from that a second time.”

“You put it that way to close me in a box.”

“I put it that way because it’s God’s truth. I need you to stay with me. I’m asking you to stay with me. Please don’t leave me alone.”

Her need pushed against his. He thought he could have fought hers back if she’d used tears, but the flat, matter-of-fact tone did him in. “Give me your binoculars.”

She unzipped another section of her pack, handed them to him.

“I’m not going anywhere, but I’m going to look.”

“Okay.”

He stepped out of the car but stayed close. He could hear her calming the dogs as he scanned the drive, the trees. Spring had leafed out those trees, forcing him to try to angle through the green and search the shadows. While the pretty breeze fluttered, he took a few steps away to try for a better vantage point, and followed the curve of her drive.

Her pretty house stood quiet before the dark arches of the forest. Butterflies danced on the air above her garden, while in her field, grasses and buttercups barely stirred.

He walked back, opened his door. “Everything looks fine.”

“He read the article. He wants me scared.”

“No argument. Stupid to leave the marker if he’s still around.”

“Yes. I don’t think he is either. He accomplished what he wanted. I’m scared. The cops are coming. It’s all in my face again, and I’m thinking about him. We all are. I called Agent Tawney.”

“Good. Here come the cops.”

He closed the car door, watched the two cruisers approach. He heard her get out the other side, nearly snapped at her to get back in. She wouldn’t, he thought, and it was probably unnecessary.

He watched the sheriff get out of the first cruiser. He’d seen the man around the village a few times, but they’d never had a conversation—or a need for one. Patrick McMahon carried a hefty girth on a big frame. Simon imagined he’d played high school football—maybe a tackle—and likely continued with hard-fought Sunday games with friends.

Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes, but his wide face held grim lines, and his hand rested on the butt of his weapon as he walked.

“Fee. I’m gonna want you to stay in the car. Simon Doyle, right?” McMahon held out a hand. “I’m gonna want you to stay with Fee. Davey and I, we’ll go down, take a look at things. Matt’ll stay here. He’s gonna take some pictures and put that scarf in an evidence bag so we’ll have it secure. Did you lock the doors when you left?”

“Yes.”

“Windows?”

“I . . . Yes, I think so.”

“They’re locked,” Simon told him. “I checked them before we left.”

“Good enough. Fee, how about you give me the keys? Once we clear everything, we’ll call on down to Matt. How’s that?”

She came around as Simon took the keys out of the ignition, then she peeled off the link that held her house key. “Front and back door.”

“Good enough,” he said again. “Sit tight.”

McMahon got back in the cruiser, swung around Fiona’s car and started down the drive.

“Sorry about this, Fiona.” Matt, barely old enough to buy a legal beer, gave her arm a little pat. “You and Mr. Doyle get on back in the car now.” He glanced down at the gun she held down at her side. “And keep the safety on that.”

“He’s younger than I am. Matt,” Fiona said when she got back in the car. “Barely old enough to drink. I trained his parents’ Jack Russell. He’s not going to be there,” she murmured, running her fist up and down her chest. “Nothing’s going to happen to them.”

“Did you ask anybody to come by, check on the place while we were gone?”

“No. It was just overnight. If it had been longer, Syl would’ve come by to water the pots, pick up the mail. God, God, if it had been longer, and—”

“Didn’t happen.” Simon cut her off. “No point projecting it. Everyone on the island, or damn near, would’ve known you were on that search by this morning. It’s not enough time for him to have pulled this.”

Unless, Simon thought, he was already on the island.

“I think it comes from the article—the timing of it—the way he mailed me the scarf after the first one. I guess he wants me to know he can get closer. Did get closer.”

“It’s arrogant, and arrogance leads to screwups.”

“I hope you’re right.” She stared at the scarf, forced herself to think. Follow the trail, she ordered herself. “Did it rain here last night? Did that storm, or the edge of it, blow through here, too? It was supposed to. The scarf’s dry, or dry enough to wave in the breeze. But then, the sun’s warm and bright today. He’d want to do that at night, wouldn’t he? At night or early enough there wouldn’t be much chance of a car going by.”

“We’ve been sitting here twenty minutes and I haven’t seen a car go by.”

“True, but it’s a stupid risk. Not just arrogant, stupid. If he came here at night, he’d need somewhere to stay on the island, or have a boat of his own. But if he came by boat, he’d need a car to get out here.”

“One way or the other, he was here. The odds are someone saw him.”

A car approached now, slowed, crept by.

“Tourists,” Fiona said quietly. “The summer season’s already geared up. Coming and going by ferry’s the easiest way to disappear. But maybe he didn’t come and go in the same day. Maybe he booked a room or a campsite or—”

She jolted when Matt tapped on the window.

“Sorry,” he said when she lowered it. “Sheriff says it’s clear.”

“Thanks. Thanks, Matt.”

She studied everything as Simon drove, everything so familiar. Could he have walked here? she wondered. Would he have risked the dogs? Would the need have overridden sense and caution? He might’ve taken the chance, creeping down, wanting a better look at the house, maybe hoping to see her sitting on the porch or weeding the garden.

Ordinary things, everyday things people do.

Walking down to get the mail, she thought, running an errand, holding a class, playing with her dogs.

Routine.

The idea he might’ve come before, might’ve studied her, watched her, stalked her—just as Perry had done—filled her with a sick dread that tasted bitter in the back of her throat.

McMahon opened her door when Simon stopped. “No signs of break-in. I can’t see that anything inside’s been disturbed, but you can tell me if you see different. We took a walk around outside, and I’m going to have Davey and Matt take another look, go a little farther out while we talk inside. Okay?”

“Yeah. Sheriff, I called Agent Tawney. I felt I should. I don’t mean to step on your toes, but—”

“Fiona. How long have you known me?”

She let out a relieved breath at the easy tone. “Since I started coming out to see my dad in the summers.”

“Long enough for you to know I’m not worried about my toes. I want you to go in, take a good look around. If you see anything off, you tell me. Even if you just think maybe.”

The advantage of a small house, Fiona thought, was it didn’t take long to go through it, even when she took the time—obsessively, maybe—to open a few drawers.

“Everything’s the way we left it.”

“That’s good. Why don’t we have a seat and talk about this?”

“Do you want something to drink? I could—”

“I’m good. Don’t worry about that.” He took a seat, continued in the avuncular tone Simon realized was designed to calm nerves and tempers. “I’ve let Davey take point on this, not because I haven’t been involved, but because I figured you’d be most comfortable with him. I don’t want you to think I’ve been brushing this off.”

“How long have you known me?”

He smiled at her, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling deep. “There you go. What time did you leave yesterday?”

“I logged the call in at seven-fifteen. I didn’t note down the time when we left, but I’d say it was less than fifteen minutes. Just enough time to pass the call to Mai, check the packs, lock up and load up. We dropped the dogs, except for Bogart, off at Syl’s, headed over to Chuck’s. The full unit was on its way at seven fifty-five.”

“That’s good response time.”

“We work at it.”

“I know you do. I know you found those people. That’s good work. What time did you get back today?”

“We got back to Chuck’s about three-thirty and swung by to pick up the dogs. I called you right away, within a minute after we saw the scarf. Was it wet? Damp? I thought—”

“Are you trying to do my job?” He wagged a finger at her, kept the tone light. “It’s dry. We got rain last night. Didn’t get hammered as much as you, but it came down pretty hard. Could’ve dried out by this time, as we’ve had a nice sunny day. But it wasn’t there when Davey did a drive-by at nine this morning.”

“Oh.”

“You might not’ve been here, Fee, but we’re keeping our eye out. A lot of people get on and off the ferry on a nice day like this. If I had to guess, I’d say he came over today, maybe did some driving around. Sometime between nine this morning and four-fifteen this afternoon he tied that scarf out there. I say drive because you live a good piece out. I can’t see him walking out this far, or hitching.”

“No,” she murmured, “he needs a car.” A car with a trunk.

“I’ve got a couple people I can trust keeping an eye on the ferry, checking out the departures. If they see a man driving on by himself, they’re going to get the license plate. The other thing we’ll do is check with the hotels, the B-and-Bs, campgrounds, even the rental houses, but it’s going to take some time. We’ll check out any man traveling alone.”

“You’re making me feel better,” she murmured.

“That’s good. But I don’t want you to take chance one, Fiona. I’m not just saying this as the sheriff, but as a friend of your father’s, and Sylvia’s. I don’t want you here alone. If here’s where you want to be, somebody’s here with you. I want your doors locked—day and night,” he added, and the warning edge to his gaze told Simon her habit of open, unlocked doors was no secret.

“They will be. Word of honor.”

“Good enough. When you’re on the road, I want your car windows up and your doors locked. I want you to carry your phone, and I want the name of every new client you take on. Every one of them. If you get another call for a search, I want you to contact me or my office. I want to know where you’re going and how to verify it.”

“She won’t be staying here,” Simon told him. “She’s moving to my place. Today. She’ll pack up what she needs before you leave.”

“I can’t just—”

“That’s a good idea.” McMahon ignored Fiona, nodded at Simon. “It changes the pattern. I don’t want her there alone, either.”

“She won’t be.”

“Excuse me?” Fiona held up both hands. “I’m not going to be difficult, and I’m not arguing about the need for precautions, but I can’t just move out of my house, my place of business. I teach here, and—”

“We’ll work it out. Pack.”

“What about my—”

“Give us a minute, will you?” Simon asked McMahon.

“No problem.” He scraped back his chair. “I’ll be right outside.”

“Do you know how infuriating it is when you continually interrupt me?” Fiona demanded.

“Yeah, probably about the same level as when you continually argue with good sense.”

“I’m not doing that. But good sense has to coordinate with the practical side. I have three dogs. I have a business here. The equipment I need to run that business.”

Excuses, not reasons, he concluded. And he wasn’t taking any bullshit.

“You want practical? I’ll give you practical. I have a bigger house and more room for those dogs. You can’t be alone because I’m there. I work there. If he comes looking for you here, he won’t find you. If you need the damn equipment, we’ll move the damn equipment. Or I’ll build new equipment. Do you think I can’t build a fucking seesaw?”

“It’s not that. Or not just that.” She held her hands out, then rubbed them over her face. “You haven’t given me five seconds to think. You didn’t even bother to ask.”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling you to go pack what you need. Consider it a change of pack leadership.”

“That’s not amusing.”

“I’m not feeling funny. We’ll get whatever equipment, whatever supplies we can today. We’ll get the rest tomorrow. Goddamn it, Fiona, he was under a quarter mile from your house. You asked me to stay, to go against my instincts and what I wanted to do and stay with you back there. Now it’s your turn.”

“I’m taking that five seconds to think.” She spun away from him, fists jammed on her hips as she stalked to the window.

Her place—was that what was wrong with her? Her place here, the first solid building block of the new life she’d created. Now, instead of holding her ground, defending it, she’d be walking away.

Could she be that stubborn, that foolish?

“Time’s up.”

“Oh, be quiet,” she snapped at him. “I’m being driven out of my own home, so give me a damn minute to deal with it.”

“Fine. Take a minute, then get moving.”

She turned back. “You’re a little pissed that you have—or feel you have—to do this. It’s one thing for you to sleep here, another for me to essentially live in your home.”

“Okay. What’s your point?”

“No point, just an observation. I have to make some calls. I can’t just pack. I’ll need to contact my clients, at least the ones coming tomorrow, and let them know I’ve moved the school. Temporarily,” she added, as much for her benefit as his. “James’s number is four on my speed dial. If you call him, he’ll come and help us move the outside equipment.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll need to have calls forwarded to your number—from my house phone. For clients, and in case we get a search call.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, wearily now. “I appreciate what you’re doing, especially because you’re not altogether happy about doing it.”

“I’d rather feel a little hemmed in than have anything happen to you.”

She let out a half laugh. “You have no idea, you really don’t, how sweet that is. I’ll do my best not to hem you in too much. Go ahead and tell Sheriff McMahon you won. I’ll start putting things together.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d won as he’d now have four dogs and a woman under his feet, but he stepped outside. McMahon broke off a conversation with his deputies and crossed toward the porch as Simon walked down.

“She’s packing.”

“Good. We’ll still come by here a couple times a day, check things out. When she’s going back and forth to hold those classes of hers—”

“She won’t be. She’ll do it at my place. I’m calling James so he can help me break down and move all that.”

Eyebrows lifted, McMahon looked over at the equipment. “Better yet. Tell you what, Matt here’s about to go off duty. He’s young and got a strong back. He’ll give you a hand. Won’t take much time. Those are your chairs, right?”

“They’re hers now.”

“Uh-huh. What I’m wondering is if you do porch gliders. My wife and I got an anniversary coming up next month. I’ve got a little shop, do some Harry Homeowner stuff, a little this and that. Thought I might try my hand at a glider. I proposed to her on one. I found out pretty quick building one was above my pay grade.”

“I can do that.”

“Something with those nice wide arms would be good. And she’s partial to red.”

“Okay.”

“Good enough. We’ll talk about the details later. You go ahead, get the tools to break what needs to be broken down. I’ll get Matt started on what doesn’t.” He started back, stopped. “Are you really making a sink out of a stump?”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s something I want to see. Matt! Haul some of this dog playground business into Simon’s truck.”

HE ENDED UP calling James anyway, for the third pair of hands and the second truck. And with James came Lori, and with James and Lori came Koby.

Simon’s initial annoyance with having so many people and animals swarming around gave way to the realization that sometimes people didn’t get in the way, but helped make a necessary and tedious job go smoother.

It wasn’t a matter of a couple of suitcases’ worth of clothes, not when it was Fiona. It was suitcases, dog beds, dog food, toys, leashes, meds, dishes, grooming equipment—and that didn’t begin to factor in platforms, the seesaw, the slide, the tunnel. Or her files—and Jesus the woman had files—her laptop, her packs, her maps, the perishables in her refrigerator.

“The flower beds and vegetable garden are on a soaker hose,” she said when he objected to hauling over her flowerpots, “so they’ll be fine. But these need regular watering. Besides, we’ll enjoy them. And besides besides, Simon, you asked for it.”

And that he couldn’t argue with.

“Fine, fine. Just . . . go start putting some of this crap away, will you?”

“Any preference to where?”

He stared at the last load and wondered how the hell she’d fit all of that into her Seven Dwarfs-sized house. How had it all tucked in so tidily—and that didn’t count what she’d left behind.

“Wherever, I guess. Dump the office stuff in one of the spare bedrooms, and don’t mess with my stuff more than you have to.”

He walked back to help James put the training equipment back together.

Beside Fiona, Lori rolled her eyes and grabbed a box of files. “Lead the way.”

“I’m not entirely sure of it, but I guess we’ll take this first load upstairs, find the best spot.”

As they started in, Lori glanced around. “Nice. Really nice—a lot of space and light and interesting furniture. What there is of it. Messy,” she added as she started up the steps, “but really nice.”

“Probably three or four times as much space as I have.” Fiona glanced inside a room, frowned at the weight machine, gym equipment, tangle of clothes, unpacked boxes.

She tried another. A stack of paint cans, some brushes, rollers, pans, tools, sawhorses. “Okay, I guess this’ll work. I’m going to need my desk and chair. I didn’t think of that.”

She winced a little at the dust on the floor, the film on the window. “It is messy,” she murmured, “and I know what you’re thinking. Messy makes me twitchy.”

She set down her box of office supplies, turned a circle. “I’ll live with it.”

And him, she thought. For now.

TWENTY-THREE

She opted to set up her office space first. Which, in this case, meant cleaning the space first. She’d live with messy. It wasn’t her house. But temporary live-in lover or not, she wouldn’t work in dust and disorder.

While Lori and James set out to get her desk and chair—and lamp, and desk clock—she hunted down cleaning supplies. And, as Simon apparently believed in only the barest of basics, called Lori to add a list from her own supplies.

How, she wondered, did anyone—especially anyone with a dog—live without a Swiffer?

Working with what she had, she cleaned several months of dust from the windows, the floor, the woodwork, and discovered what she’d assumed was a second closet but was actually a bathroom.

One, she thought with a long huff of breath, that surely hadn’t been cleaned since he’d moved in. Fortunately, its primary purpose seemed to be gathering more dust.

She was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor when he came in.

“What are you doing?”

“Planning my next trip to Rome. What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cleaning this bathroom.”

“Why?”

“That you would have to ask explains so much.” She sat back on her heels. “I may, at some point, have to pee. I find this occurs with some regularity on any given day. I prefer—call me fussy—to engage in this activity in sanitary surroundings.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, leaned on the jamb. “I haven’t been using this room or this john. Yet.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed.”

He glanced around the now dust-free bedroom where paint cans stood in stacks tidily beside sawhorses, rollers, pans and brushes on neatly folded tarps.

“You’re setting up in here?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not for me. Did you wash the floor out here?”

“Damp-mopped. Let me point out, as someone who works with wood, you should take better care of your floors. You need some Murphy’s at least.”

“I’ve got some. Somewhere. Maybe.” She was making him twitchy. “I’ve been busy.”

“Understood.”

“You’re not going to go around cleaning everything, are you?”

She swiped a hand over her forehead. “Let me give you my solemn oath on that. But I’m going to work in here. I need a clean, ordered space to work. I’ll keep the door closed so it doesn’t shock your sensibilities.”

“Now you’re being bitchy.”

Because she heard the amusement in his tone, she smiled back. “Yes, I am. Move back so I can finish this. I appreciate what you’re doing, Simon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do, and I know it disrupts your space, your routine, your privacy.”

“Shut up.”

“I just want to thank—”

“Shut up,” he repeated. “You matter. That’s it. I’ve got something to do.”

She sat back on her heels when he strode out. Shut up. You matter. That’s it. Honestly, she mused, coming from him that was practically a poem by Shelley.

By the time she’d arranged her office, with her desk tidy under the window facing the back and the woods, she’d have killed for a glass of wine and a comfortable chair. But her sense of order wouldn’t allow her to leave her clothes in suitcases.

She’d scope out Simon’s bedroom, then find him and ask how he wanted her to deal with her clothes.

It surprised her to find the bed made—sort of made, she thought. The dog beds had been tossed in a corner, and the doors to the deck stood open to let in the air.

She poked in the closet, saw he’d shoved his clothes over to make room for hers. She’d need a drawer, she thought. Two would be better. She moved to the dresser, opened one gingerly. He’d emptied it out for her. He was one step ahead of her, she thought, then cocked her head, sniffed.

Lemon?

Curious, she crossed to the bathroom, then just leaned on the door frame. She recognized a freshly cleaned bathroom—the scent of citrus, the gleam of porcelain, the rich sheen of brushed nickel. The towels hung in an orderly fashion on rods melted her heart.

He’d probably cursed with every swipe, she mused, but, well, she mattered. And that was it.

She put away her clothes, stowed her toiletries, then went down to find him.

He stood in the kitchen, looking out the back door at the training equipment.

“Some of that should be replaced,” he said without looking around. “That platform’s crap.”

“You’re probably right. Did James and Lori go?”

“Yeah. She put stuff in the fridge and wherever, said to tell you she’d call you tomorrow. I offered them a beer,” he added, almost defensively. “But they rain-checked.”

“I imagine they’re tired after all this.”

“Yeah. I want a beer and the beach.”

“That sounds perfect. Go ahead. I’ve just a couple things, then I’ll come down.”

He walked over, opened the fridge for his beer. “Don’t clean anything.”

She lifted her hand. “Solemn oath.”

“Right. I’ll leave Newman, take the rest.”

She nodded. She couldn’t be alone, she thought. Not even here.

She waited until he’d gone out, until she’d heard him order Newman to stay, stay with Fee. Then she sat at his counter, laid her head on it and waited for the tears that had begun to burn in her throat to come.

But they wouldn’t. She’d held them back too long, she realized. Pushed them down all these hours, and now they were simply blocked, locked inside, hurting her throat, aching in her head.

“Okay.” She breathed the word out, rose. Rather than a beer she chose a bottle of water. Better, she thought. Cleaner.

She stepped outside where the faithful Newman waited. “Let’s take a walk.”

He bounded over immediately, doing a full-body wag as he rubbed against her.

“I know, new place. It’s nice, isn’t it? Lots of room. We’ll be okay here for a while. We’ll figure it all out.” Her eye instinctively picked up spots that needed flowers, a good location for a kitchen garden.

Not hers to play with, she reminded herself.

“Still it could use more color, more outdoor seating. I’m surprised he hasn’t thought of it. He’s the artist.” She paused as they came to the drop leading down to the beach. “But then there’s this. It’s pretty fabulous.”

The charm of crooked steps led down to the narrow beach and opened to the dreamy spread of water. Stars winked on, adding to the sense of peace, of privacy. Simon walked along with the three dogs sniffing sand and shale and surf.

He’d missed this, she thought, his solo walks in the twilight where the land met the water. Missed the quiet, the subtle whoosh of the surf at the end of the day, but he’d stepped away from that to be with her.

Whatever happened around them, between them, she wouldn’t forget that.

As she stood, looking down, he pulled bright yellow tennis balls from a bag he’d hooked on his belt. He heaved them, one, two, three, into the water—and the dogs charged and leaped.

They’d smell . . . amazing, she thought as she watched them swim toward the bobbing yellow balls.

Even as she thought it, she heard Simon’s laugh rise up, over the subtle whoosh of the surf, over the quiet—and the sound of it chased away the demons.

Look at them, she thought. Look how wonderful they are, how perfect they are. My guys.

Beside her, Newman quivered.

“What the hell. Four smelly dogs isn’t any worse than three. Go! Go play!”

He charged down the crooked steps, joy in the speed, in the challenging bark. Simon tossed a fourth ball in the air, caught it, then winged it into the water. Without breaking stride, Newman sprinted in.

And Fiona ran down to join the game.

IN HIS MOTEL ROOM near the Seattle airport, Francis X. Eckle read the most recent message from Perry and sipped his evening whiskey on the rocks.

He didn’t care for the tone, no, he didn’t care for the tone at all. Words like disappointed, control, focus, unnecessary popped out of the text and grated against his pride. His ego.

Boring, he thought, and crumpled the paper into a ball. Boring, scolding and annoying. Perry needed to remember just who was in prison, and who wasn’t.

That was the problem with teachers—and he should know because before he evolved he’d been a teacher himself. Boring, scolding and annoying.

But no more.

Now he had the power of life and death in his hands.

He lifted one, studied it. Smiled at it.

He breathed fear at his whim, dispensed pain, eked out hope, then crushed it. He saw all of that in their eyes, all the fear, the pain, the hope and, finally, the surrender.

Perry had never felt this rush of power and knowledge. If he had, truly had, he wouldn’t constantly preach caution and control—or, as he liked to call it, “the clean kill.”

Annette had been the most satisfying kill to date. And why? Because of the sound his fists made when they pounded into her flesh, cracked against bone. Because he’d felt every blow even as she did.

Because there had been blood—the sight of it, the smell of it. He’d been able to watch, to study the way the bruises gathered, the way they rose up to stain the skin, and to enjoy the different tones—slap or punch.

They’d gotten to know each other, hadn’t they? Taking the time for that, sharing pain, made the kill so much more intimate. So much more real.

Thinking about it now, he realized Perry’s work had been bloodless, clinical, even detached. There couldn’t have been genuine pleasure with so little passion. The single time Perry had deviated, had allowed himself true, bloody violence, he hadn’t been able to handle it.

Now he lived in a cell.

That was why this gradual and creative acceleration was superior. Why he was now superior.

It was time, maybe past time, he decided, to break off all contact with Perry. He had nothing more to learn from that source, and no desire to teach.

Remembering himself, he rose to pick up the balled note. He smoothed it out carefully before tucking it into the folder with all the others.

He’d already begun to write a book on his life, his epiphany, his evolution, his work. He’d accepted it would be published posthumously. He’d accepted his inevitable end, and the acceptance made each moment more vital.

Not prison. No, never prison. He’d already lived his life in a self-imposed prison. But glory. In the end, the inevitable end, he would have glory.

For now, he would simply be a shadow, slipping in and out of the light, unnamed and unknown. Or known only by those he chose, those who crossed from life to death with his face caught in their eyes.

He’d already selected the next.

Another change, he thought. Another stage of his evolution. And while he studied her, tracked her like a wolf tracks a rabbit, he could speculate on how it would be between them.

The irony was exquisite, and he knew, already knew it would add to the thrill.

Then before much longer, there would be Fiona.

He took out the newspaper, unfolded it, smoothed his hands over her face. He’d fulfill his obligation to Perry with her, and his debt would be paid in full.

She would be the last to wear the red scarf. That was fitting, he decided. She’d be the highlight of this stage of the work. His crescendo, he thought, with a final homage to Perry.

He was sure already he’d enjoy her most of all. She’d know more pain, more fear than all the others before he was done.

Oh, how people would talk when he took her, when he ended her life. They’d talk of little else. They’d talk and they’d tremble over the man who killed the Perry survivor.

RSKII.

Reading the term made him shake his head, made him chuckle.

Made him preen.

After Fiona lay in the shallow grave he’d force her to dig herself, RSKII would be no more. He would become someone else, something else, find another symbol as he embarked on the next stage of his work.

In a way, he thought, and took another sip of whiskey, Fiona would be the end of him, and the beginning.

MANTZ HUNG UP the phone and knocked a fist on her desk. “I think I’ve got something.”

Tawney glanced away from his monitor. “What?”

“Verifying residence and employment on prison personnel and outside agencies. There’s a Francis X. Eckle, teaches at College Place—English studies, creative writing. He did four stints of instruction at the prison in the past two and a half years. He didn’t go back to work after the winter break. Mailed in a resignation, citing a family emergency.”

“Did you check it out?”

“He doesn’t actually have a family—not a traditional deal. He bumped around in the foster system from the time he was four. He didn’t leave any forwarding information at the school. Both the numbers listed for home and cell have been disconnected.”

“Let’s get more information. Find his caseworkers, some data on his foster homes. No criminal?”

“Not a whiff. No sibs, no spouse, no kids.” Though her voice stayed cool, the light of the hunter sparked in her eyes. “Perry signed in for all four of his classes at the prison. I ran a check on Eckle’s credit cards. Nothing since January. Not a single charge, but he hasn’t canceled them either. That’s off.”

“Yeah, that’s off. He could be dead.”

“This one’s talking to my gut, Tawney. Look, I know you want to try to get out and connect with Bristow today or tomorrow, but I think we need to check this out, talk to people who know him, face-to-face.”

“All right. Let’s check his bank accounts, see if you can get more background. An English teacher?”

“Untenured. Single, lives alone, forty-two years old. The administrator I talked to said Eckle just sort of drifted along, did his job, didn’t make waves. He couldn’t name any particular friends either, and it’s a small school, Tawney.”

That light sparked in Tawney’s eyes, too. “Make the calls. I’ll put in for the travel.”

SIMON COVERED the nearly finished wine cabinet with a tarp. It made him feel a little foolish, but he didn’t want Fiona to see it, or ask him about it. Maybe he didn’t want to think too deeply about the fact that he was making it for her, just because she wanted one.

It had been weird enough waking up and knowing she was there. Not in bed, of course, he mused as he added a third coat of poly to his stump-and-burl-wood sink. If the sun was up, so was Fiona. But she’d been there, in his place, his space.

His bathroom smelled of her, just as his kitchen smelled of the coffee she’d brewed while he’d still been in bed.

And the weird thing? He was okay with it. He’d even been okay, after a moment of puzzlement, when he’d opened a drawer for a spoon and found his flatware organized into type.

He’d thought, glancing around, the kitchen was tidier—but since he wasn’t sure exactly how he’d left it, that was just a maybe.

By the time he’d been ready to start work, she’d fed the dogs, taken them through a quick training session, showered, dressed and watered her flowerpots.

He heard the cars for her first session and had deliberately angled himself on the shop porch so he could check out who got out.

He’d modulated the volume on his music so he could hear her if she called out—and that was a sacrifice. But he remained undisturbed and alone throughout her morning classes.

Even Jaws had deserted him.

Which was fine—better than fine. He didn’t have to worry about getting stray dog hair in the poly or ignoring sticks or balls dropped and that pleading look for playtime.

He’d gotten more templates cut out, several pieces glued up and clamped and now, at what the shop clock said was still just shy of noon, he was giving his sink another coat that brought out the rich grain of the wood, deepened the tones.

He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and paused to watch her and the dog approach.

“Keep them back, will you? This is wet. One shake and they’ll have hair all over it.”

“Sit. Stay. I just thought I’d see if you want a sandwich or . . .”

She stopped, stared. And he had the great satisfaction of seeing her mouth literally drop open. “Oh my God. Is that the stump? That’s my stump?”

“My stump.”

“It’s amazing!” Instinct had her fingers reaching out to touch. He slapped them back.

“Ouch. Okay, sorry, it’s wet. It’s upside down. That’s how it works. Of course.” Sliding her hands in her back pockets to keep them from the reach/slap, Fiona circled the sink.

“The roots form the base, holder, whatever it is for the bowl so it looks like something that grew in a magic forest. Who knew tree roots could look so amazing? Well, you did. But the bowl. What’s the bowl?”

“Burl wood. I found it months back. It needed the right base.”

“The color’s so beautiful. Like glass syrup. It’s just beautiful, Simon. I knew it would be interesting, but I didn’t know it would be beautiful.”

Gushy praise over his work invariably made him itchy. But oddly with her, with that dazzled delight on her face, he felt only satisfaction. “It’s not finished.”

“What will you do with it when it is?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged because he’d caught himself wanting to give it to her. It suited her down to the ground. “Maybe sell it, maybe keep it.”

“You’d feel magical every time you washed your hands. I’ll never look at a tree stump the same way again. God, wait until people get a load of this!” She laughed over at him. “Anyway, I’ve got a couple hours until my first afternoon class. If you’re hungry, I can make you a sandwich.”

He considered it, and her. “Listen, I don’t want you to wait on me because if you do I’ll want you to wait on me.”

She took a second. “You know, I understand that, oddly enough. Okay, how about a trade?”

“What kind of trade?”

“I’ll make you a sandwich, and you make me some wood slat things. I wrote down the lengths I want.”

She pulled out a list, handed it to him. He frowned down at it.

“What are they for?”

“For me.” She smiled.

“Fine. You don’t have a width.”

“Oh. Hmm. Like this?” She held her thumb and forefinger together.

“About a quarter inch. What kind of wood?”

“The wood kind—whatever you’ve got around.”

“Finish?”

“Jeez, it’s a lot of decisions. Just that stuff, the clear stuff. I don’t need fancy.”

“Okay. I’ll run them up when I’m done with this.”

“Perfect.”

It worked out okay, Simon thought later. He got a sandwich without having to make it, and they stayed out of each other’s way during the work. Solemn oath or not, she cleaned up after him—subtly. He saw her sweeping off the porch, and when he realized he’d forgotten to restock his shop fridge and went in for a drink, the gleam inside his refrigerator all but blinded him.

He heard the suspicious sound of the washing machine running.

So fine, they’d trade again. He’d build her some new training equipment when he had the chance.

When he stepped back outside, he saw her pacing the backyard with the phone to her ear. Something’s up, he thought, and crossed to her.

“Yes, sure, that’s fine. Thanks for calling. Really. Okay. Bye.” She clicked off. “Agent Tawney. He was going to try to come out today, but they’ve got something else to do. I think they have a lead. He was careful not to say, but I think they have a lead. He sounded too calm.”

“Too calm?”

“Deliberately calm.” She rubbed the heel of her hand between her breasts as he knew she did when struggling for calm herself.

“As if he didn’t want to show any sort of excitement or interest,” she explained. “Maybe I’m projecting, but that’s how it feels. And he didn’t tell me anything because he didn’t want me to react exactly the way I am.”

She closed her eyes, took a breath. “It’s a good thing I have a full afternoon. I can’t obsess.”

“Yes you can. It’s what you do.” Reaching behind her, he gave the tail of her braid a tug and tipped the topic to take her mind off her nerves. “Are you washing my clothes, Mom?”

“I’m washing mine.” She spoke very primly. “There may be an item or two of yours in there, too, just to fill out the load.”

He poked her in the shoulder. “Watch it.”

She fisted her hands on her hips as he strode away. “I’ve already gone radical. I changed the sheets on the bed.”

He shook his head, kept walking—and made her laugh.

TAWNEY AND HIS PARTNER took Eckle’s last known residence first, a small three-level apartment building within walking distance of campus. Their knock on 202 went unanswered—except for the crack in the door across the hall.

“She’s not home.”

“She?”

“Just moved in a couple weeks ago.” The crack widened. “Young thing, first apartment. What do you want?”

Both agents took out their ID. And the door opened all the way. “FBI!” Her tone might’ve been the same on Santa Claus!

Tawney gauged the woman as early seventies with bright bird eyes behind silver-framed glasses.

“I love those FBI shows on TV. I watch them all. Cop shows, too. Is that little girl up to something? You couldn’t prove it by me. She’s friendly and polite. Clean, even if she dresses like most of them do.”

“We were actually hoping to speak with Francis Eckle.”

“Oh, he left right after Christmas. His mother took sick. At least that’s what he said. I bet he’s in some sort of witness protection. Or he’s a serial killer. He’s just the type.”

Mantz raised her eyebrows. “Ms. . . . ?”

“Hawbaker. Stella Hawbaker.”

“Ms. Hawbaker, could we come in and speak with you?”

“I knew he was funny.” She pointed a finger. “Come on in. You can have a seat,” she told them and walked over to shut off the TV. “I don’t drink coffee, but I’ve got some for when one of my kids comes by. That and soft drinks.”

“We’re fine,” Tawney told her. “You said Mr. Eckle left after Christmas.”

“That’s right. I saw him hauling out suitcases, middle of the day when hardly anyone’s around but me. So I said, ‘Going on a trip?’ And he smiled the way he does that doesn’t look you in the eye and said he needed to go help tend his mother, because she’d had a fall and broke her hip. Now, he’d never once mentioned his mother in all the years he lived across the hall. Course he hardly mentioned anything. Kept to himself,” she added with a knowing nod. “That’s what they say about people who go out and chop people up with an ax. How he was quiet and kept to himself.”

“Did he mention where his mother lived?”

“He said, because I asked him straight out, she lived in Columbus, Ohio. Now you tell me,” she demanded, pointing her finger again, “if he had a mother out east, how come he never went to see her before this, or how come she didn’t come out to see him?”

She tapped the finger to the side of her nose. “Smells funny. And it smells funnier seeing as he never came back. Left his furniture—or most of it from what I could tell when the landlord finally got around to clearing the place out. Not much else, and I know he had cases of books in there—and they didn’t go with him. Must’ve sold them on eBay or something.”

“You pay attention, Ms. Hawbaker.”

She took Tawney’s comment with a sly smile. “That I do, and since most people don’t pay much to old ladies, I get away with it. In the past few months, I’ve seen him go out hauling shipping boxes or stacks of those mailing bags, and coming back empty. So I figure he sold those books, and whatever. Running money, I’ll bet. Never paid the rent from January on either. And, ’cause I talked to the landlord about it, I heard he quit his job and cleaned out his bank account. Every penny.”

Those bright eyes went shrewd. “I expect you know that.”

“Did he have friends, visitors?” Mantz asked. “Any girlfriends?”

Ms. Hawbaker made a dismissive sound. “Never once saw him with a woman—or a man either if he went that way. Not natural. Polite, I’ll give him that. Well spoken, but he wouldn’t say boo unless you said it first. What’d he do?”

“We’re just interested in talking to him.”

Now she nodded sagely. “He’s what you all call ‘a person of interest,’ and mostly that means he’s a suspect in something bad. He drove one of those little compact cars with the hatchback. That’s what he loaded up and drove off in that day. I’ll tell you something else, ’cause I’m nosy and I poked in—and the landlord and I talked about it. There wasn’t a single photograph in that place, or a letter or a postcard. He never planned to come back, that’s what I say. And he didn’t go to take care of his mother with any broken hip. If he had a mother, he probably killed her in her sleep.”

Outside, Mantz wrenched open the car door. “Now that’s an insightful woman.”

“I don’t think Eckle killed his mother in her sleep, since the records show his mother OD’d when he was eight.”

“She pegged him, Tawney. If that’s not our UNSUB, I’m a Vegas showgirl.”

“You’ve got good legs, Erin, but I’m looking the same way. Let’s track down the landlord, see what we can find out at the college, then I guess we’re going back to prison.”

TWENTY-FOUR

One day, Fiona thought, she hoped to feel something other than dread when she saw Davey’s cruiser come down her drive.

“Uh-oh, we’re in trouble now,” one of her students joked, and she managed a stiff smile.

“Don’t worry, I have connections. Jana, see the way Lotus is circling? What do you read?”

“Ah, she’s in the scent pool?”

“Maybe. Maybe she’s trying to get a new gauge, work it out. Maybe she’s got a cross-scent and she’s trying to home in. You need to work it out, too. Work with her. Help her focus. Watch her tail, her hackles, listen to her breathing. Every reaction means something, and hers might be different from, say, Mike’s dog. I’ll be right back.”

She moved off, her heart banging against her ribs with every step as Davey walked to meet her.

“Sorry to interrupt your class—and it’s not bad news. How much longer are you going to be?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes. What—”

“It’s not bad news,” he repeated. “But I don’t want to talk to you with the audience. I can wait. It’s my timing that’s off.”

“No, we would’ve been done, but this group asked for an add-on cadaver-search cross-training. There’re only four of them, and I had the time, so . . .” She shrugged.

“I’ll let you get back to it. Okay if I watch?”

“Sure.”

“Fee?” Jana signaled, then lifted her hands in frustration. “She’s just not getting it, and she seems confused and, well, bored. We nail this at home. She loves this behavior, and we’ve got it down cold.”

Focus, Fiona ordered herself. “You’re not at home. Remember, a new place, new environment, new problems.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve said that before, but if we make it, every time she goes out on a search it’s a new place.”

“Absolutely true. That’s why the more experiences she has, the better. She learns every single time. She’s bright and eager, but she’s not pulling it in today—and she feels your frustration, too. First thing, relax.”

Do the same yourself, Fiona thought and glanced back to where Davey stood watching.

“Go back to where she started to circle and lose interest. Refresh, reward, reestablish. If she just can’t get it today, take her to the source, let her find it, reward.”

They were a good team, Fiona thought as she hung back. But the human partner tended to want quick results. Still, she put in the time and energy, had a strong relationship with her dog.

She turned to watch Mike and his Australian shepherd mix celebrate the find. The dog happily accepted the food reward and praise before Mike pulled on his plastic gloves and retrieved the cylinder containing human bone fragments.

Well done, she thought. And her third student held both his nose and his tail in the air, which told her he should find his source soon.

One day, she thought, one or all of them might go out on a call, search woods, hills, fields, city streets, and find human remains. And finding them would help give closure to family, help police find answers.

Bodies, she thought, like that of Annette Kellworth. Cruelly posed under a couple feet of dirt, left like a broken toy while the one responsible hunted something new.

Would there be another? Closer yet? Would her own unit be called in to search? She wondered if she could do it, if she could take one of her precious dogs and search for a body that could have been her own.

That would be hers if a man she didn’t even know had his way.

“She got it!” Jana called out as she bent to hug her Lotus. “She did it!”

“Terrific.”

Not bad news, she reminded herself as she stored her training tools. She got a Coke out of the refrigerator for both of them.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s have it.”

“The feds have a lead. They think it’s a strong one.”

“A lead.” Now her knees could tremble. She braced a hand on a counter stool to stay on her feet. “What kind of lead?”

“They’re looking for a specific individual, one who had contact with Perry inside the prison. An outside instructor. An English teacher from College Place.”

“Looking for?”

“Yeah. He quit his job, packed up some of his things and took off between Christmas and New Year’s. Cleaned out his bank account, left his furniture, defaulted on his rent. He fits the profile—they say. The thing is, he hasn’t had contact—that they can verify—with Perry in nearly a year. That’s a long time.”

“He’s patient. Perry. He’s patient.”

“The feds are putting pressure on Perry right now. Trying to find out how much he knows. And they’re digging into this guy’s background. What we got from them is he’s a loner. No relationships, no family. His mother was a junkie, so he was in the system even before she OD’d, when he was eight.”

“Mother issues,” she murmured as hope and fear bubbled up in a messy stew. “Like Perry.”

“They’ve got that in common.” Davey took a fax out of his pocket, unfolded it. “Does he look familiar?”

She studied the facsimile photo, the ordinary face, the trim, professorial beard, the ever-so-slightly-shaggy hair. “No. No, I don’t know him. I don’t know him. Is this really him?”

“He’s who they’re looking for. They’re not calling him a suspect. They’re careful not to. But I’m going to tell you, Fee, they believe this is the guy, and they’re all over it.” He gave her shoulder a quick rub. “I want you to know they’re all over it.”

“Who is he?”

“Francis Eckle. Francis Xavier Eckle. His age, height, weight, coloring are all listed on the fax. I want you to keep this picture, Fee. He may have changed his appearance. Cut the beard, dyed his hair. So I want you to keep this, and if you see anybody who looks anything like this guy, you don’t hesitate. You call.”

“Don’t worry, I will.” Even now his face was burned into her mind. “You said he was a teacher.”

“Yeah. His record’s clear. He had a rough childhood, but he didn’t make any waves—not on record, anyway. They’ll be talking to his foster families, his caseworkers. They’ve already started that, and interviewing his coworkers, supervisors, neighbors. So far, there’s nothing in his background that you’d look twice at, but—”

“People can be trained. Just like dogs. They can learn, good behavior or bad. It just depends on the motivation and methods.”

“They’re going to get him, Fee.” Davey put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a squeeze when their eyes met. “You believe that.”

Because she needed to believe it, she rushed over to Simon’s shop.

He stood at the lathe, music blaring, tool humming as he hollowed and smoothed the pale wood in his hands.

A bowl, she realized, one of those lovely ones he made with a sheen and texture like silk and a thickness that seemed hardly more than tissue.

She watched how he turned and angled, tried to figure out the method to help keep herself still.

He switched off the machine. “I know you’re over there, breathing my air.”

“Sorry. Why don’t you have any of those? You need one about twice that size for your kitchen counter, for seasonal fruit.”

He’d pulled off his ear protectors and goggles and simply stood. “Is that what you came in here to tell me?” And looked down as Jaws dropped a scrap of wood at his feet. “See what you started?”

“I’ll take them out for a game before my next class. Simon.” She held up the fax.

His body language changed. Alerted, she thought. “Do they have him?”

She shook her head. “But they’re looking, and they—Davey said—they think . . . I have to sit down.”

“Go outside, in the air.”

“I can’t feel my legs.” With a half laugh, she stumbled out, dropped down onto the shop porch.

Seconds later he came out with a bottle of water. “Let me have that.” He shoved the water at her, snatched the fax. “Who is this mother-fucker?”

“Nobody. Mr. Average Joe, except not really. Where’s the rope! Go get the rope!” All four dogs stopped poking with noses and bodies and shot off. “That’ll take a few minutes. Davey came to tell me what the FBI told them. His name’s Francis Xavier Eckle,” she began.

He continued to study the photo as he listened. When the dogs came back—the crafty Newman the winner—Simon took the rope. “Go play,” he ordered and heaved it hard and long.

“Don’t they check people out before they let them work at a prison?”

“Yes, of course. I guess,” she added after a moment. “The point is, there wasn’t anything there. Not that they’ve found so far. But he had contact with Perry, and now he’s changed his behavior. Drastically. They probably know more now. More than they told the sheriff’s office, or more than Davey could tell me. I’m looking at this because Tawney cleared it. Because he wants me to look at it.”

“Teaching at a small college,” Simon speculated. “Looking at long-legged coeds all day who probably don’t look back. It’s still a big leap from ordinary to Perry copycat.”

“Not so big if the predilection was there all along, if the drive was in place but he never knew how to engage it. Or didn’t have the nerve.”

She’d trained dogs like that, hadn’t she? Recognizing or finding hidden potentials, exploiting suppressed drives, or channeling overt ones, systematically altering learned behavior.

“You talked about the importance of motivation before,” she pointed out. “And you were right. It’s possible Perry found the right motivation, the right . . . game, the right reward.”

“Trained his replacement.”

“He taught there four times,” she added, “and Perry signed up for all the classes. He’s a chameleon. Perry. He acclimates. He’s acclimating in prison, doing his time, keeping his head down. Cooperating. So he becomes, in a way, ordinary again.”

“And they don’t pay as much attention?” Simon shrugged. “Maybe.”

“He’s a student of observation. It’s how he picked his victims, and how he blended so well for so long. He probably stalked and discarded dozens of women before the ones he abducted. Watching them, judging their behavior, their personality type.”

“Moving on if they didn’t fit his needs well enough.”

“That, and calculating the risk factors. Maybe this one’s too passive, and not enough of a challenge, or this one’s too chaotic and difficult to pin down.”

She rubbed her hand between her breasts, on her thigh—couldn’t keep it still. “He knows what to look for in people. It’s how he killed so many, how he traveled and engaged others so easily. I understand that. I can usually tell if a dog will respond to advanced training, if the dog and the handler will forge a team. Or if they’re better off strictly as the family pet. You can see the potential if you know where and how to look—and you can begin molding that potential. Perry knows where and how to look.”

Maybe she just needed to believe it, Simon thought, but she was damn convincing. “So you think Perry saw, we’ll say, potential, in this guy?”

“It could be it. It could be this Eckle approached Perry. Nobody’s really above flattery when it comes to their work. And killing was Perry’s work. But if either of those happened, if these two made that connection, Perry would know how to begin the mold. And, Simon, I think—if this is how it went—that the payment for that training, that molding, is me.”

She looked back at the photo. “He’d kill me to repay Perry for recognizing and grooming his potential.”

Perry’s dog, Simon concluded, who’d want to please his handler. “Perry’s never going to collect on that IOU.”

“He should’ve come for me first. They both made a mistake there. I was relaxed. I felt safe, and would’ve been an easier target at that point. Instead, they wanted me to live with the fear. That was stupid.”

He saw it happen, saw the nerves funnel into a steady anger and steely confidence.

“I’ve lived with fear before, and I’m older and smarter and stronger than I was then. Knowing I’m not invincible and that terrible things happen, that’s an advantage. And I have you. I have them.”

She looked over as the dogs played a kind of tag-team tug-of-war with the battered rope.

“You’re older and smarter and stronger—good for you. But if he tries to put a hand on you, I’ll break him to pieces.” When she turned her head and stared, he met her eyes with a blink. “I don’t say what I don’t mean.”

“No, I know you don’t. It’s a reassuring, if occasionally frustrating, behavior. It helps hearing you say it, and knowing you mean it. And I’m really hoping you don’t have to follow through. They have his face now, and his name. I’m going to believe that before much longer, they’ll have him.”

She let out a breath, tipped her head to his shoulder for a moment. “I have to get ready for my next session. Actually, you might want to keep Jaws in the shop with you for the next hour or so.”

“Because?”

“He’s not as mature or calm as my boys, and I’m doing a one-on-one behavioral correction session with a rottweiler with aggression issues.”

“A rottweiler with aggression issues? Where’s your body armor?”

“He’s coming along. We’ve had a couple sessions already, and he’s making good progress. Normally I’d go to the source on this sort of thing, but under the circumstances, I asked the client to bring Hulk here.”

“Hulk. Perfect. Are you carrying your gun?”

“Stop it. This is what I do,” she reminded him. “Or one of the things I do.”

“If you get bit, it’s going to piss me off. Hang on a minute.”

He got up, walked inside. She considered if they kept going down the path they were on now, he’d probably get pissed eventually. She’d rarely been nipped, but it did happen once in a while.

He came out with a box. “Those slats you wanted.”

“Oh, great. Thanks.”

SHE CAME THROUGH the session unscathed and decided to busy herself in the kitchen for the next hour. And since she had a chunk of time on her hands and was—more or less—confined to quarters, she thought she might make use of what could very loosely be termed Simon’s home gym once she’d finished up her kitchen project.

Dogs weren’t the only ones who needed to keep up with their training. Pleased with her first project, she emptied one of the kitchen drawers, scrubbed it, measured and cut the liner she’d asked Sylvia to pick up for her. Using the pattern she’d outlined in her head, she slid in the wood dividers—and deemed them perfect.

She’d nearly completed the third drawer when the phone rang. Her mind on organization, she answered it without thinking.

“Hello.”

“Oh, I must have the wrong . . . I’m looking for Simon.”

Fiona laid spatulas, slotted spoons, serving forks in their allotted space. “He’s here, but he’s out in the shop. I can go get him for you.”

“No, no, that’s fine. He’s probably got the music blasting and machines running. That’s why he didn’t answer his cell. Who’s this?”

“Ah, Fiona. Who’s this?”

“Julie, Julie Doyle. I’m Simon’s mother.”

“Mrs. Doyle.” Wincing a little, Fiona closed the drawer. “I know Simon would want to talk to you. It’ll just take me a minute to—”

“I’d much rather talk to you—if you’re the Fiona Simon’s told me about.”

“He . . . really?”

“He may not say much, but I have years of experience prying things out of him. You’re a dog trainer.”

“Yes.”

“And how’s that puppy doing?”

“Jaws is great. I hope your years of experience helped you pry out of Simon that he’s madly in love with that dog. They’re a great team.”

“You do Search and Rescue. Simon mentioned to his brother you’re training the pup for that.”

“He mentioned to his brother?”

“Oh, we e-mail a lot, all of us. But I need a phone conversation at least once a week. The better to pry, plus I’m angling for him to come home for a visit.”

“He should.” Guilt stewed in her belly. “Of course he should.”

“And he will when everything’s back to normal. I know you’re in a hard situation. How are you doing?”

“Mrs. Doyle—”

“Julie, and why would you want to talk about all of that with a perfect stranger? Just tell me, are you staying with Simon now, at his place?”

“Yes. He’s . . . he’s been wonderful. Generous, supportive, understanding. Patient.”

“I think I must have the wrong number after all.”

Fiona laughed and leaned back on the counter. “He talks about you. Just little things he says once in a while. He’s madly in love with you, too.”

“The madly’s often the key word in the Doyle family.”

It was easy to chat. Relaxed, Fiona opened the drawer again and filled it systematically as she and Julie Doyle got acquainted.

When the door opened, she glanced over her shoulder. “Well, here’s Simon now, so I’ll turn you over. It was really nice talking to you.”

“We’ll do it again, soon.”

“Your mom,” Fiona mouthed and offered the phone.

“Hey.” He stared at the open drawer, shook his head.

“I’ve already spent most of the time I have talking to the delightful Fiona. I don’t have much left for you.”

“You should’ve called my cell. Some of us work for a living.”

“I did call your cell.”

“Well, I was working for a living.” He opened the fridge, pulled out a Coke. “Everything good?”

“Everything’s very good. Simon, you’re living with a woman.”

“You’re not going to send a priest, are you?”

Her laugh rolled through the earpiece. “On the contrary, I’m pleased with this new step.”

“It’s just a thing because of that other business.”

“She thinks you’re wonderful, generous, supportive and patient.” Julie waited a beat. “Yes, I was speechless, too. Do you know what I see, Simon, with my mother’s super-vision?”

“What?”

“I see some rough edges smoothing out.”

“You’re asking for it, Julie Lynne.”

“When I ask for it, I get it. We’re good at that, aren’t we?”

Amused, he took a swig of Coke. “I guess we are.”

“I like the tone of your voice when you talk about her. And that’s all I’m saying about it. For now.”

“Good.”

“I’ll give you good, good and proper next time I see you. Do something for me, Simon.”

“Maybe.”

“Be careful. You’re the only second son I have. Take care of your Fiona, but be careful.”

“I can do that. Don’t worry, Ma. Please.”

“Now that’s a useless request for a mother. I have to go. I have more important things to do than talk to you.”

“Same goes.”

“You were always a difficult child. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Same to Dad. Bye.” He hung up, took another swig of Coke. “You’re organizing my kitchen drawers.”

“Yes. You’re free to disorganize them at your whim and will. But doing this keeps me sane. And you made the clever dividers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I enjoyed talking to your mother. I like the way you sound when you talk to her.”

Brow creasing, he lowered the bottle. “What is this?”

“What’s what?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Turn around.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if the rottweiler bit you in the ass.”

“He did not bite me in the ass or anywhere else.”

“I’ll check it out later.” He pulled open a drawer at random. “Jesus, Fiona, you lined them.”

“I’m so ashamed.”

“Let me point out, neither of us actually cooks, so what’s the point of having lined, divided, organized kitchen drawers?”

“To be able to find things, whether or not you use them. And what’s the point of having all these things in the first place if you don’t cook?”

“I wouldn’t have all this junk if my mother didn’t . . . never mind that either.”

“I can jumble everything up again if it makes you feel better.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

And she grinned at him, quick and fun. “I’m going to do the cabinets, too. You can just consider it my little hobby.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to put things back where you think they belong.”

“See, look how well we understand each other.”

“You’re sneaky, and don’t think I don’t know it. I grew up with sneaky.”

“I got that impression.”

“That’s the problem. You’re not like her, but you are.”

“How about if I tell you I also understand you’re not really stewing about me organizing the kitchen drawers, but trying to gauge whether this is a prelude to me trying to organize your life.”

“Okay.”

“And in the spirit of why fuck around with it, I’ll tell you straight I can’t promise I won’t try, at least in some areas, to do just that. I like to think I know when to back off, give up or adjust, but that doesn’t mean I won’t irritate you with my deadly sense of order. At the same time”—she held up a finger before he could interrupt—“I think I get that at least part of your creativity feeds on disorder. I don’t understand it, but I get it. Which doesn’t mean that your apparently innate messiness won’t irritate me occasionally.”

He felt, tidily, put in his place. “I guess that’s supposed to be logical.”

“It is logical. And I’ll tell you something else. The occasional irritation works well for me as a distraction. But then it just fades. I don’t hold irritable well for long under most circumstances. But under the current? There’s just too much that’s bigger to worry about than whether or not you put the corkscrew back in the right drawer or kick your dirty socks under the bed.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“Good. I want to get in a workout. Is it okay if I use your stuff?”

“You don’t have to ask.” Frustrated, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Don’t ask me things like that.”

“I don’t know where your boundaries are yet, Simon, so I have to ask or . . .” She closed the drawer he’d neglected to. “I’ll cross over them.” Then she stepped toward him, cupped his face. “I don’t mind asking, and I can handle no.”

When she walked out, he stayed where he was, hands in pockets, frowning after her.

TWENTY-FIVE

He couldn’t figure out if they were fighting. Nothing ever seemed to fall into the nice clear areas of black or white with Fiona—and that drove him a little bit crazy. Because it fascinated him every bit as much as it frustrated him.

If he knew she was pissed and in fighting mode, he could gear up for it, wade into it or ignore it. But the uncertainty kept him off balance.

“That’s her point, isn’t it?” He wandered outside with the dogs. “I’m thinking about it, and her, because I don’t know. It’s fucking devious.”

He frowned at the back of his house. He could pick out the windows she’d washed. She hadn’t gotten to them all, he thought, but she would. Oh, yes, she would. Where the hell did she find the time? Did she get up in the middle of the damn night with a bottle of freaking Windex?

Now, with the way the sun glinted off clean glass, he couldn’t ignore the dull, weathered paint on the window trim. And just when was he supposed to find the time to paint the freaking window trim, which means painting the door trim?

And once he painted the trim, he knew damn well he’d have to paint the goddamn porches or they’d look like crap.

“It was fine before she cleaned the damn windows, and I’d have gotten to it sooner or later. Go up.”

At the command, Jaws cheerfully climbed the ladder of the slide and trotted down again with a hand signal. Simon gave the dog a treat, then repeated the skill a couple of times before moving to the teeter-totter.

The other dogs climbed, tunneled, jumped and navigated on their own, using the training equipment as enthusiastically as kids use a playground in the park.

Simon glanced over as Bogart barked, then watched as the Lab picked his way agilely over a length of board no wider than a gymnast’s balance beam.

“Show-off. You can do that.” Simon gave Jaws a pat on the head. “Go on up there and do that. What are you, a pussy?” He led the dog over, surveyed the beam. “It’s not that high. You can get up there.” Simon patted the beam. “Go up!”

Jaws gathered himself, then plopped his ass down. He gave the beam and Simon a look that clearly said, What the fuck?

“Don’t embarrass me in front of these guys. I’m spotting you, aren’t I? Up!”

Jaws angled his head, then his ears pricked when Simon took out a treat and set it on the beam.

“You want it? Come get it. Up!”

Jaws made the jump, scrabbled for purchase, then dropped off the other side.

“He meant to do that.” Simon gave the other dogs a cool stare, then leaned down close to Jaws. “You meant to do that. That’s your story. Let’s try it again.”

It took a few attempts, and a human demonstration Simon was grateful no one could see, but Jaws finally managed a landing.

“All right, fucking A. Now you’ve got to walk. Let’s walk.” He took out another treat, held it just out of reach until Jaws picked his way to the end of the beam. “Yeah, look at you. Circus Dog.”

Ridiculously pleased, he got down to give Jaws a full-body rub. “Let’s do it again. I’d give that one an eight-point-five. We’re going for the perfect ten.”

He spent the next ten minutes working on the skill, perfecting it before indulging in a wrestling contest in which he was outnumbered four to one. “She’s not the only one who can train. We got that one down, didn’t we? We—Well, shit.”

He shoved to his feet as it hit him. He was playing with dogs, working with dogs. He carried dog cookies in his pocket as habitually as loose change and his Leatherman. He was thinking about what color to paint his exterior trim and porches.

He’d made organizers for his kitchen drawers.

“This,” he said with feeling, “is nuts.”

He strode to the house. Boundaries? She didn’t know where his boundaries were? Well, she was about to find out.

He wasn’t going to be maneuvered and manipulated, and trained to be something he wasn’t.

There, he thought, was the black and the white.

He could hear her, breathing hard, as he stomped up the steps. Good, he thought, maybe the workout had worn her out and she wouldn’t have enough breath to argue her way out of it.

Then he stepped into the doorway, and just stood.

He didn’t notice the clean floor or windows, or that the sweaty shirt he’d peeled off when he’d done some lifting the day before wasn’t on the floor where he’d tossed it.

How could he? All he could see was her.

She executed some sort of martial arts routine and looked as if she could kick some serious ass. Lust added the final grip to interest and admiration to choke out temper.

Sweat dampened her face and the skinny tank she’d changed into. Those long legs, highlighted in a pair of snug black shorts, kicked, set, spun while the wiry muscles in her arms rippled.

He’d be drooling in a minute, he thought, as she balanced on one leg, kicked, then landed on the other in a graceful blur.

He must’ve made some sound because she pivoted, set into a fighting stance—eyes cold and fierce. Just as quickly, she relaxed and laughed.

“Didn’t see you there.” She sucked in air. “Scared me.”

She hadn’t looked scared, he thought. “What was that? Tae kwon do?”

She shook her head, gulped from the bottle of water she’d set on the weight bench. “Tai chi—mostly.”

“I’ve seen people doing tai chi. It’s like sissy New Age in slow motion.”

“First, it’s really old age, and the slow moves are about control, practice and form.” She crooked a finger. “It’s organic,” she said, “and about centering your power.”

“I’m still hearing sissy New Age, and that’s not what I was looking at a minute ago.”

“There’s a reason many of the moves have pretty names that come from nature. Like Push the Wave.”

She demonstrated, slowly, again gracefully pushing her hands out, palms toward him, then drawing them back, palms up. “But if I intensify that same move for defense, it’s—”

She shoved him back, knocking him off balance, then pulled him in and past her. “See?”

“I wasn’t ready.”

Grinning, she spread her legs, bent her knees and gave him a come-ahead gesture.

“Okay, you’ve seen The Matrix,” he said, and made her laugh.

“You’re stronger than I am, bigger, taller, longer reach. You may be faster, but we haven’t tested that yet. If I have to defend myself, I need to be able to center my power and use yours. I used to practice every day, in my obsessive way. Tai chi, power yoga, boxing—”

Interest piqued. “Boxing?”

“Yeah.” She put up her dukes. “Want to go a couple rounds?”

“Maybe later.”

“I did kickboxing, resistance training, hours of Pilates and whatever else you can think of every week. It made me feel capable and secure. Pro-active, I guess. Then I eased off, and I got rusty. I stopped pushing myself until . . . well, until.”

“You didn’t look rusty.”

“Muscle memory. It comes back. And the ever-popular motivation.”

“Show me. No, wait. This isn’t why I came in here. You did it again.”

“I did?”

“Distracted me. Sweaty, sexy body. You don’t need tai chi to throw a man off balance.”

“Wow.” She gave a little shoulder wiggle. “Now I do feel powerful.”

“It’s that.” He pointed.

“It’s . . . the window?”

“It’s the window. Why did you wash the window?”

“Because I like clean windows. I like to look outside, and it’s more pleasant to do that when I’m not looking through a film of dust.”

“That’s only part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“The other part is getting me to notice the ones you haven’t gotten around to washing yet so I feel guilty. And so I see that the trim needs painting.”

She picked up her water bottle, uncapped it. “That’s a lot of motivation behind some Windex and a rag.”

“And there’s this.” He dug in his pocket, pulled out a handful of dog treats.

“Oh, thanks, but I’m trying to cut down.”

“Funny. I put these damn things in my pocket every day. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. I just spent a good half hour, maybe more, out there working with the dogs.”

All patient attention, she sipped her water. “Because I washed the window?”

“No, but it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing as the house smelling like a lemon drop or me thinking I should probably pick you up some flowers the next time I’m in the village.”

“Oh, Simon.”

“Shut up. And it doesn’t matter a damn that we’ve got bigger things to worry about because basic is basic. So . . .”

He strode to the window, slapped the palm of his hand against the sparkling glass. “Leave it,” he ordered, pointing at the smudged print he left behind.

“Okay. Why?”

“I don’t know why. I don’t have to know why, but if I want it gone, I’ll wash it off. You leave it alone.”

There, he thought. Now they’d get down to it.

She started to laugh, a full-out, up-from-the-gut roll that left her breathless again. She had to bend over, brace her hands on her thighs.

“Listen, it may sound stupid, but—”

Still bent over, she waved him off. “Not entirely, but enough. God, God! I’ve been up here working my ass off to make myself feel strong, capable of dealing with whatever comes at me so I’m not hiding under the bed trembling, and you accomplish the same thing in under five minutes.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You make me feel strong, capable, even ingenious because you just see me that way. I haven’t got you wrapped around my finger, Simon—far from it. And the fact is, I wouldn’t want you there. But because there’s this little part of you that worries I do, or I could, I feel I can take on anything that comes. Anything at all. I feel strong and sexy and capable and ingenious.” She flexed her left biceps. “It’s heady. I’m drunk on it.”

“Well, that’s just great.”

“And you know what else? That you would do that—that silly thing to make a point.” She gestured toward the window. “That you could do that without feeling foolish, but feel just a little foolish because you’ve spent time out there playing with the dogs? Simon, it just disarms me.”

“For God’s sake.”

“It disarms me and delights me. So I’m disarmed, delighted, strong and sexy and capable all at the same time. And no one has ever made me feel the way you do. No one. That.” She pointed to the window again, and let out a laugh that sounded as baffled as he felt. “That right there is why, as ridiculous, as incomprehensible as it is, it’s why I’m in love with you.

“Simon.” She walked to him, linked her arms around his neck. “Isn’t that a kick in the ass?” She pressed her lips to his in a hard, noisy kiss. “So, handprint stays. In fact, I think I’ll draw a heart around it first chance. Meanwhile, I can show you some basic moves before I dive into the shower and a glass of wine. Unless you want to yell at me for a while.”

“That’s it,” he muttered, and, grabbing her arm, pulled her across the room.

“That’s what? Are you throwing me out of the house?”

“Don’t tempt me. I’m taking you to bed. I ought to get something out of this.”

“Gosh, what a charming offer, but I really need that shower, so—”

“I want you sweaty.” He used the momentum, gave her arm a quick whip and more or less slingshot her onto the bed. “I’ll show you some moves.”

“I think you just did.” She pushed herself up, cocked her head. “Maybe I’m not in the mood.” And her breath caught when he yanked the damp shirt over her head, tossed it. “Or—”

“You can pick that up later.” He cupped her breasts, rubbed her nipples with calloused thumbs. “You made the bed.”

“Yes, I did.”

“A lot of good it did you.” When she shivered, he pushed her onto her back.

“And you’re going to show me the error of my ways?”

“Damn right.” He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her gym shorts, pulled.

Smiling, she trailed a fingertip from her collarbone to her belly, and back again. “Then come and get me.”

He stripped, watching her watching him.

“I should just keep you naked,” he considered as he straddled her. “I know what to do with you when you’re naked.”

“I like what you do with me when I’m naked.”

“Then you’re going to love this.”

He took her avid, inviting lips with his, roughening the kiss even as he deepened it. He used his weight to pin her as her heart began to gallop, used his hands to exploit her so that hot, damp skin trembled.

Strong and capable she was, down to the marrow, he thought. It was part of what made her irresistible. But now, just now, he wanted her weak, he wanted her helpless. For him, only for him.

He used his tongue, his fingertips, in long, slow journeys that made her sigh as he felt her body relax into pleasure.

Then his teeth so her pulses leaped.

When his mouth came back to hers, she sighed again, lifting her hands to his face in the way that always disarmed him, then sweeping her fingers through his hair.

Against his mouth her breath quickened when he trailed a finger up her inner thigh, retreated, stroked slowly back to brush, only to brush, the heat.

When she moaned his name, arched her hips, he retreated again.

She ached. Her body quivered, rising toward that lovely release, only to have it denied. Even as she said his name again, he feathered his fingers over her, made her writhe. And his mouth began the same torturous assault on her breasts.

He gave, gave, took her to within a breath of peak. Then eased away to leave her churning.

“I want you. Simon. Please.”

Still he played her until her gasps mixed with moans, until her hands pulled at the spread she’d so neatly smoothed that morning.

He drove into her, hard, fast, a shock to her tormented system. The orgasm tore through her, center to throat. She heard her own scream, heard it, felt it deepen into a shuddering moan of release. Her body roared through it, bucking beneath his, nails digging in until her hands simply slid bonelessly to the bed.

He dragged her up so her head fell against his shoulder.

“Put your legs around me.”

“I—”

“I want you around me.” His teeth scraped over her throat, her shoulders. “It’s all I can think about. You around me.”

She gave him what he wanted, held on through the storm. Rode it up again, yet again, until there was nothing left.

She all but melted onto the bed, might have lain there weak as water till morning. But he pulled her over, anchored her so she sprawled over him with her head on his chest over his raging heart.

She dozed off and the next thing she knew she was blinking awake and staring at four furry faces pressed to the deck door. Simon’s chest rose and fell steadily under her head, but his fingers played with her hair, sliding through it, twining it, sliding. Everything about the moment made her smile.

“The dogs want in,” she murmured.

“Yeah, well, they can wait a minute.”

“I’ll get them.” But she didn’t move. “I’m starving. I guess working out followed by working out hones the appetite.”

She snuggled in. One more minute, she told herself. Then she’d let the sad-eyed dogs in, grab that shower, and they’d figure out what to toss together for dinner.

She started to stretch, then her gaze landed on the bedside clock. “What! Is that clock right?”

“I don’t know. Who cares?”

“But . . . Did I fall asleep? For an hour ? That’s like a nap.”

“Fee, that is a nap.”

“But I never take naps.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“Well, God.” She shoved up, pushed her hands through her hair. Since it was the closest to hand, she grabbed his T-shirt, dragged it on.

It just covered her ass, he noted. Too bad.

She opened the door, and the room was immediately filled with dogs.

“Sorry, boys. Go on and talk to Simon. I need a shower.”

She dashed into the bathroom. And all four dogs lined up on the side of the bed, tails whipping, eyes staring, noses twitching.

“Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I had sex with her. A lot of sex. What’s it to you? Only one of you has balls, and since everybody’s haranguing me, he’s not going to have them much longer.”

He recognized the gleam in Jaws’s eyes. “Don’t even think about jumping up here,” Simon warned, but cupped a hand around his own balls, just in case. “Why don’t you go get me a beer? Now that would be a useful behavior.”

Since none of them seemed inclined, he got up to get one for himself.

Once he got downstairs, he switched it to wine. She’d said she wanted wine, he remembered. He might as well go that route, too. He poured two glasses and sipped the first as he opened the refrigerator to study the contents.

They were going to starve to death, he decided, if one of them didn’t think about hitting the grocery store. He poked into the freezer and decided one of her frozen girl meals was better than starvation.

Marginally.

He picked up her wine and, with the dogs trailing him—again—started back for the stairs.

Beside him, Newman let out a quiet woof seconds before he saw the woman walk onto his front porch.

She beamed a smile through the screen door. “Well, hello.”

Simon took a moment to think she was lucky he’d bothered to pull on his boxers. “Something I can do for you?”

“I hope so. I’d love to talk to you for a few minutes. I’m Kati Starr, with U.S. Report. Isn’t that Fiona Bristow’s car—and her dogs, right?”

Slick looks, slick manner, he thought.

“Here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to tell you, once, to turn around, get back in your own car. Go away. Stay away.”

“Mr. Doyle, I’m just doing my job, and trying to do it as thoroughly and accurately as I can. My information is there might be a break in the investigation. As I’ve been told Ms. Bristow’s now living with you, I’d hoped to be able to get her thoughts on this potential break. I admire your work,” she added. “I’d love to do a feature on you sometime. How long have you and Ms. Bristow been involved?”

Simon closed the door in her face, flipped the lock.

He figured he’d give her three minutes to get the hell off his property before he called the sheriff and had the satisfaction of pressing charges for trespassing.

But when he got back upstairs, Fiona, wet hair slicked back, sat on the side of the bed.

“I saw her through the window, so you don’t have to wonder if you should tell me or not.”

“Okay.” He passed her the wine.

“I was going to say I’m sorry she came here, started on you, but it’s just not my fault.”

“No, it’s not your fault. She said she had information that there’d been a break in the case. I don’t know if she was just fishing or if she’s got a source leaking her information.”

Fiona let out a muttered oath. “I guess we’d better tell Agent Tawney, just in case. What did you say to her?”

“I told her to go away, and when she didn’t, I just closed the door.”

“Smarter than I was.”

“Well, I considered giving her a quote, but I thought ‘Fuck you, bitch’ didn’t have any real creative zing. And it was all I could think of. If you’re going into brood mode, it’s going to piss me off.”

“I’m not going into brood mode. I’m going into neener-neener mode by calling the FBI and the sheriff’s office and tattling on her. And I’m asking for a restraining order after all, just for the fun of it.”

He reached out, smoothed a hand over her hair. “I like that mode better.”

“Me too. Then what do you say we flip to see who cooks dinner?”

“Buzzing up sissy frozen dinners isn’t worthy of a flip.”

“I was thinking of the steaks we have in the meat drawer of the fridge.”

“We have steaks?” The day got brighter. “We have a meat drawer?” She smiled and got to her feet. “Yes, we do.”

“Okay, the meat drawer probably came with the fridge. How did we get steaks? Do you have a magic cow somewhere?”

“No, I have a fairy stepmother, who delivers. I asked Syl if she’d pick us up a couple steaks, Idahos, some staples I needed. She dropped them off today, including a bunch of fresh vegetables and fruit because she thinks we need those, too. That’s why there are fresh vegetables in the crisper. And yes, we have a crisper.”

He decided there was no point in telling her he’d looked in the fridge and seen none of those things. There’d just be some variation of his mother’s standard crack about Male Refrigerator Blindness Syndrome.

“You make the calls. I’ll start the grill.”

“Works for me. You do know you’re only wearing your underwear.”

“I’ll put on the pants you’ve already picked up and folded on the bed you’ve already made. But that means if we have to have any of those vegetables, you’re dealing with them. I’ll take the steaks.”

“That’s a fair trade. I’ll make the calls downstairs.”

When she went down, he put on the neatly folded work pants she’d laid on the bed.

Before he went downstairs, he stepped into his makeshift gym.

Okay, maybe, like the rest of the house, the room smelled like a lemon drop. But his handprint was still on the window.

It was, he supposed, a strange kind of compromise.

He started down, cursed, walked back up and yanked open a drawer. He pulled on a fresh shirt.

She’d gotten the steaks, he reminded himself.

Steaks, fresh shirt. It was just another kind of compromise.

TWENTY-SIX

Tawney studied Perry on the monitor. He sat at the steel table, shackled, his eyes closed, the smallest of smiles on his face—as a man might when listening to pleasant music.

His prison-pale face, doughier than it had been seven years before, expressed quiet contemplation. Lines carved brackets around his mouth, more spiderwebbed from the corners of his eyes, only enhancing the appearance of an ordinary, harmless man who’d use his senior discount for the Early Bird Special at his local Denny’s.

The indulgent uncle, the quiet next-door neighbor who tended his roses and clipped his lawn meticulously. The simple Everyman people passed on the street without a second glance or particular interest.

“He used that the way Bundy used his charming looks and fake arm cast,” Tawney murmured.

“Used what?”

“His I’m-somebody’s-grandfather mask. He’s still using it.”

“Maybe. But he’s talking to us without his lawyer, and that has to be another device.” Mantz shook her head. “What’s he up to? What’s he thinking? Nobody knows him better than you, Tawney.”

“Nobody knows him.”

He kept his eyes on Perry’s face and thought, He knows we’re watching him. He’s enjoying it.

“He’s good at making you think you do, saying what you want to hear, or expect to hear. It’s the layers that trip you up with him. The ones he has already, the ones he adds on to suit the circumstance. You’ve read the files, Erin. You know it was mostly just his bad luck and the heroism of a canine cop that we caught him.”

“You don’t give yourself or the investigative team enough credit. You’d have bagged him.”

“He stayed in the wind nearly a year, a year after we had his face, his name. Fiona gave him to us, and still, it took months and the murder of a police officer before we took him down.”

And for that he’d never completely forgive himself.

“Look at him,” Tawney added. “A paunchy man past middle age, chained, caged, and still he finds a way. He found Eckle and lit the fuse.”

“You’re not getting enough sleep.”

“I bet that bastard’s sleeping like a baby. Every night, with that goddamn smile on his face just like he has on now. He’s got an agenda. He’s always got an agenda, a purpose to everything he does. He doesn’t need the lawyer to talk to us because he’s only going to tell us what he’s already decided to tell us.”

“He doesn’t know we’ve got a line on Eckle.”

“I wonder.”

“How could he? And telling him what we want to tell him is our leverage. Eckle’s screwing up the plan, and that’s going to piss him off.”

“Well. Let’s find out.”

When they entered, Tawney nodded to the guard on the door. Perry remained still, eyes closed, the little smile in place as Tawney read the names, date and time into the record. “You’ve waived your right to counsel during this interview?”

Perry opened his eyes. “Hello, Agent Tawney. Yes, no need for lawyers between old acquaintances. Agent Mantz, you’re looking lovely today. It’s so nice to have visitors to break up the monotony of the day. We’re chatting so often these days. I look forward to it.”

“Is that what this is about?” Tawney demanded. “The attention, the break in the monotony?”

“It’s certainly a nice benefit. How goes the hunt? I’m hungry for news. The powers that be have narrowed my access to the outside. Understandable, of course, but unfortunate.”

“You get your ‘news,’ Perry. I don’t doubt your abilities.”

Perry folded his hands, leaned forward a little. “I’ll say that before my current situation, I enjoyed the article that bright young woman wrote. Kati Starr? I suspect that’s a nom de plume, or a clever gift from fate. Either way, I enjoyed her slant, we’ll say, and was delighted to catch up a little with Fiona. You’ll have to tell her I’m thinking about her.”

“I bet you are. It’s hard to forget a woman who kicked your ass.”

“My face, actually.”

“She’ll do the same to your apprentice,” Mantz put in. “If he’s stupid enough to try for her.”

“You give me too much credit.” Perry’s chains rattled as he waved the comment away. “I’m hardly in any position to train anyone, even if I were inclined. Which I’m not. We’ve talked about this before, and as I said then, you can clearly see from my record in this institution, I’ve accepted the punishment the courts, and society, meted out. I obey the rules here. Rather than look for trouble, I avoid it. My life on the outside being what it was, I don’t have many visitors. My sainted sister, of course. Or maybe you think she’s taken up where I left off.”

Saying nothing, Tawney opened a file, took out a photo. He tossed it on the table.

“May I?” Perry picked up Eckle’s photo, examined it. “Now, he looks very familiar. Give me a minute. I never forget a face. Yes, yes, of course. He came to teach here, several times. Literature and writing. You know how interested I am in books—and I do miss my work in our library. I took his courses. I hope to take more. Incarceration shouldn’t preclude education.

“I found him an average teacher. No spark, really. But beggars can’t be choosers, can we?”

“I bet he found you a better teacher,” Mantz said.

“That’s sweet of you. Is that your way of saying you believe I inspired him? That would be fascinating, but I can’t be held responsible for the actions of others.”

“You don’t owe him anything either,” Mantz pointed out. “We’ll stop him. We’ll put him in a cage just like yours, but you have an opportunity, and that should appeal to you. Give us information that leads to his arrest, and we can make things a little less monotonous for you.”

A thin shell of hard slid over his face. “What? You’ll see I’m served ice cream every Sunday, given an extra hour a week in the yard? There’s nothing you can do for me, or to me, Agent Mantz. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this place. I accept that. If beggars can’t be choosers, I choose not to be a beggar.”

“When we catch him, he’ll talk. Just like the minister you conned talked,” Mantz added. “It didn’t take us long to persuade him to admit he smuggled letters in and out for you, for more than a year.”

“Correspondence with my prayer group.” Perry folded his hands piously. “Reverend Garley sympathized with my need for spiritual comfort—and privacy for my soul, which the system fails to respect.”

“Everyone in this room knows you don’t have a soul.”

“Eckle will roll on you,” Mantz continued, “and you’ve already considered that. When he does, your life in here will get a little more—how did you put it?—narrow. You’ll be charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to murder. The years added to your time won’t mean a damn, but we’ll see to it your time in here is a fucking misery.”

Perry only continued to smile at her in his calm, pleasant way. “You think it’s not already?”

“It can be worse,” Tawney promised. “Believe me when I tell you I’ll make sure it’s worse. And for what, Perry? For this.” He flicked a hand at the photo. “He’s a screwup. Impatient, careless. You stayed ahead of us for years. We’re breathing down his neck within months. He’s not worthy of you.”

“Flattery.” Perry sighed. “I am susceptible to flattery. You know my weaknesses, Don.”

“He tied a red scarf to Fiona Bristow’s mailbox.” With her eyes trained on Perry’s, Mantz saw the quick flicker of irritation in his. There was something he hadn’t learned yet. “He’ll never get her for you now, never finish it for you.”

“That was . . . immature of him.”

“You know what he did to Annette Kellworth, beating her half to death before he ended it.” Tawney shook his head with a disgust he wanted Perry to see, a disgust he understood Perry would share.

“Not your style, George. Not your class. He’s losing control, and showing off. You never stooped like that. If we get him without your help, you’re going to pay a heavy price for his mistakes.”

“You know my weakness,” Perry repeated after a moment. “And you know my strengths. I’m an observer. I observed Mr. Eckle. Took an interest in him as there’s so little of interest here. It may be those observations would be helpful to you. I might have theories, speculations. I might even remember certain comments or conversations. I might remember something helpful, but I’d want something in return.”

“What flavor ice cream?”

Perry smiled at Tawney. “Something a little sweeter. I want to speak with Fiona. Face-to-face.”

“Forget it,” Mantz said immediately.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Perry kept his eyes on Tawney. “Do you want to save lives? Do you want to save the life of the woman he’s stalking even now? Or will she die? Will others die, all for the lack of a single conversation? What would Fiona say to that? It’s her choice, isn’t it?”

“WE SHOULD PUSH him harder,” Mantz insisted. “Dig under his skin. He responded when you said Eckle wasn’t worthy of him. It fed his ego.”

“It only affirmed what he’d already concluded himself.”

“Exactly, so we push that button. Let me do it. I’ll work him alone. Flattery and fear from a woman may turn it.”

“Erin, he barely acknowledges you.” Because it was his turn to drive, Tawney slid behind the wheel. “As far as he’s concerned, you’re not even part of this. You weren’t around during the investigation that brought him down, and this is all about that. All about him. Eckle’s just his vehicle, his conduit.”

Mantz slammed the buckle of her seat belt into the lock. “I don’t like being the ones making the down payment.”

“Neither do I.”

“Will she do it?”

“A part of me’s sorry to say, yes, I think she will.”

WHILE THE FBI flew east, Francis Eckle stepped in line a few places behind his prey. She’d worked late tonight, he thought. Just an hour or so, but it pleased him to know she was hard at work. Pleased him that, as usual, she made the stop at Starbucks for her evening pick-me-up.

Skinny latte, he knew, double shot of espresso.

Tonight was yoga class, and if she hurried, she could fit in twenty minutes on the treadmill in the upscale fitness club she treated herself to.

He’d noted, thanks to his thirty-day trial membership, she rarely did more than twenty, and often skipped even that.

Never touched the weights, never bothered with the other machines. Just liked to show herself off in one of the tight outfits she changed into.

No different from a street-corner whore.

Afterward, she’d walk the three blocks back to work, get her car from the parking lot, then drive the half mile home.

She wasn’t fucking anyone at the moment.

Career-focused. Self-focused. Nobody and nothing mattered as much to her as herself.

Selfish bitch. Street-corner whore.

He felt the rage rising up. It felt so good. So good. Hot and bitter.

He imagined pounding his fists into her face, her belly, her breasts. He could feel the way her cheekbone would shatter, smell the blood when her lip split, see the shock and pain in her eye as it swelled and closed.

“Teach her a lesson,” he murmured. “Teach her a lesson, all right.”

“Hey, buddy, move it up.”

His hands shook and fisted as he whirled on the man behind him in line. His rage quivered, and his pride spread as the man took an instinctive step back.

Paying attention now, he thought. Everyone’s paying attention now.

You have to blend, Frank. You know how. As long as they don’t see you, you can do anything you want. Anything.

Perry’s voice murmured in his ear. He made himself turn back, cast his gaze down. He was sick of blending. Sick of not being seen.

But . . . but . . .

He couldn’t think with all this noise. People talking about him, behind his back. Just like always. He’d show them. Show them all.

Not yet. Not yet. He needed to calm down, to remember the preparations. To focus on the goal.

When he glanced up again, he saw the prey already moving toward the door, her take-out cup in her hand. His face burned with embarrassment. He’d nearly let her walk away, nearly lost her.

He stepped out of line, kept his head down. It couldn’t be tonight after all. Discipline, control, focus. He needed to calm down, to calm himself, to box in the excitement until after.

She’d have one more night of freedom, one more day of life. And he’d have the pleasure of knowing she was unaware she had already stepped into the trap.

FIONA CONSIDERED a voodoo doll. She could probably get one of Sylvia’s artists to make a doll in Kati Starr’s likeness. Sticking pins in it, or simply bashing its head against a table, might be childish, but she had a feeling it would also be therapeutic.

Simon didn’t seem to be concerned about the latest story with Starr’s byline. He was probably right. Probably. But the idea that she claimed to have sources stating the FBI was looking for a “person of interest” in the RSKII investigation grated.

She didn’t just pull that out of the air.

Someone was leaking information, and she was confident enough of the source to print it, and to have traveled to Orcas, again.

To have pushed Fiona’s name forward, again. And this time linking her with Simon. The hunky artist who traded Seattle’s urban flair for a quiet inlet retreat on Orcas.

The paper had even printed a sidebar on him, relating his work in the medium of wood, his practical applications with a creative flair, its organic center.

Blah, blah, blah.

She had a few dozen things she’d like to say to Kati Starr, which of course was just what the reporter wanted.

The continued publicity put her in a tenuous position with clients. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer questions, and they couldn’t help but ask them.

And because the questions, and the crazies, were popping up on her blog, she had to close the comments section and rerun old entries.

Desperate for something to keep her mind occupied, she focused on a new project. And hunted Simon down in his shop. Whatever he was making involved the lathe and the use of a small carving tool—and looked as though it required precision and focus.

She stood back and kept her mouth shut until he turned off the machine.

“What?”

“Can you make this?”

He tossed the protective goggles aside and studied the photo.

“It’s a window box.”

“I know what it is.”

“It’s actually Meg’s window box. I asked her to take a picture and upload it for me. Simon, I need something to do.”

“This looks like something for me to do.”

“Yes, initially. But I’ll plant them. If you could make four of them.” She caught the wheedling edge in her voice and hated it enough to change tones. “I know maybe you don’t actually want window boxes, but you have to admit they’d look good, and they’d perk up the front of the house. You could even decorate them for Christmas with—or not,” she said as he only stared.

“Okay, I guess I won’t mention an idea for some raised beds on the south side of the house. Sorry. Sorry. One look around here and anyone could see you’re already busy enough without me dreaming up more to keep myself occupied. What’s that?”

She gestured toward the tarp that covered the wine cabinet.

“That would be none of your business.”

“Fine. I’ll go clean something and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Fiona.”

She stopped at the door.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“No, it’s fine. You’re in the middle of something, and my problem is I’m not. So I’ll get in the middle of something.”

“So, I’ll go for a walk by myself, and you can go in and sulk.”

She heaved out a breath before crossing over and putting her arms around him. “I was planning on sulking, but I can put it off.” She tipped her face up. “I’m restless, that’s all. I’m used to coming and going when I please. Heading off with the dogs, or jumping in the car and driving into the village. Stopping by Sylvia’s, or going by to see Mai. I promised I wouldn’t go anywhere alone, and I didn’t realize how stir-crazy I’d get when I couldn’t. So now I’m a pest, and it annoys me. Probably more than it annoys you.”

“Doubtful,” he said, and made her laugh.

“Go back to work. I’m going to go take some new pictures of the boys and update the website.”

“We’ll go out later. Go out for dinner or something.”

“I feel sanity returning. I’ll see you when you’re done.” She walked back to the door, opened it. Stopped. “Simon.”

“What now?”

“Agents Tawney and Mantz just pulled up.”

She tried to be optimistic as she walked across the yard. Tawney greeted the dogs, and was immediately offered a rope by Jaws as Mantz stayed several cautious steps back.

“Fiona. Simon.” Despite his dark suit, Tawney gave Jaws a quick game of tug. “I hope we’re not interrupting.”

“No. In fact I was just complaining I had too much time on my hands today.”

“Feeling hemmed in?”

“A little. Lie. A lot.”

“I remember how it was for you before. We’re making progress, Fee. We’re going to do everything we can to close this case and get things back to normal for you.”

“You look tired.”

“Well, it’s been a long day.” He glanced over at Simon. “Is it all right if we talk inside?”

“No problem.” Simon started toward the house. “You’ve seen the latest in U.S. Report,” he said. “It upsets her. She doesn’t need that added on. You’ve got a leak to plug.”

“Believe me, we’re working on it.”

“We’re no happier about it than you are,” Mantz added as they stepped inside. “If Eckle gets the idea we’re looking for him, he could go under.”

“That answers the top question. You haven’t found him yet. Do you want anything?” Fiona asked them. “Coffee? Something cold?”

“Let’s just sit down. We’re going to tell you as much as we can.” Tawney sat and, leaning forward, linked his hands on his knees. “We know he was in Portland on January fifth because he sold his car to a used-car lot on that date. There’s no other vehicle registered in his name, but we’re checking on purchases in the Portland area on or around that date.”

“He could have bought something from a private seller. Not bothered to register it.” Simon shrugged. “Or had fake ID. Hell, he could’ve taken a bus to anywhere and bought a car off Craigslist.”

“You’re right, but we check, and we keep checking. He needs transportation. He needs lodging. He needs to buy gas and food. We’re going to turn over every stone and use every means at our disposal. That includes Perry.”

“We spoke with him earlier today,” Mantz continued. “We know he and Eckle communicated, using a third party to smuggle letters in and out.”

“Who?” Simon demanded.

“The minister Perry bullshitted at the prison. The minister took Perry’s letters out and mailed them—they were to different names, different locations,” Tawney explained. “Perry claimed they were to members of a prayer group his sister belonged to, and the minister swallowed it. He brought Perry the responses, mailed to him, again from different names and locations.”

“So much for maximum security,” Simon muttered.

“Perry managed to get a letter out a few days after Kellworth’s body was found, but there’s been no correspondence to him for over three weeks.”

“Eckle’s distancing himself?” Fiona glanced from agent to agent. “Is that what you think?”

“It plays. Eckle’s gone off script now,” Tawney added. “And that’s something Perry’s not pleased about. Now that he knows we’ve identified Eckle and we’re focused on him, Perry’s not pleased about that either.”

“You told him?” Simon interrupted. “So he’ll have a chance to confirm the damn news story with his pen pal?”

“Short of ESP, Perry’s not getting any more messages out or in,” Mantz insisted. “We’ve blocked his conduit. He’s been locked down, and now he’ll remain locked down until we have Eckle in custody. Eckle’s not living up to his standards, and Perry’s feeling the squeeze of losing some of the privileges he gained through good behavior.”

“You think he’s going to tell you, if he knows, how to find this Eckle?” Fiona demanded. “Why would he?”

“He wants to cut the cord there, Fee. He’s not happy his protégé is making mistakes, going his own way. Perry knows, because we made sure he knows, those mistakes will make it impossible for Eckle to get to you.” Tawney waited a beat. “You’re still his one failure, and the reason he’s in prison. He still thinks about you.”

“That’s not particularly good news.”

“We don’t have much to bargain with. Perry knows he’s in prison for life. He’s never getting out. Eventually, his pride will push him into telling us what we need, or we’ll take Eckle without him.”

“Eventually.”

“He’s offered us information. He’s careful enough to couch it as observations, speculations, theories, but he’s ready to turn on Eckle with the right incentive.”

“What does he want?” She already knew. In her gut she already knew.

“He wants to speak with you. Face-to-face. You can’t say anything I haven’t already thought,” Tawney said as Simon surged to his feet. “Nothing I haven’t already said to myself.”

“You’d put her through that, ask her to sit down with the man who tried to kill her so maybe he might toss you a few crumbs?”

“It’s up to her. It’s up to you,” Tawney said to Fiona. “I don’t like it. I don’t like asking you to make this decision. I don’t like giving him squat.”

“Then don’t,” Simon snapped.

“There are plenty of reasons not to do it. He may lie. He may get what he wants and claim he knows nothing after all, or give us information that sends us in the wrong direction. But I don’t think he will.”

“It’s your job to stop this bastard. Not hers.”

Mantz shot him a single hard look. “We’re doing our job, Mr. Doyle.”

“From where I’m standing, you’re asking her to do it.”

“She’s the key. She’s what Perry wants, what he’s wanted for eight years. The reason he recruited Eckle, and she’s the reason he’ll betray him.”

“Stop talking around me,” Fiona murmured. “Just stop. If I say no, he’ll shut down.”

“Fiona.”

“Just wait.” She reached up for Simon’s hand, felt the anger through his skin as clearly as she heard it in his voice. “Wait. He’ll say nothing. He’ll hold out for weeks, maybe months. He’s capable of that. He’ll wait until there’s another. At least one more, so I’ll know she’s dead because I wouldn’t face him.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s how I’d feel.” She squeezed Simon’s hand, hard. “He took Greg to hurt me, and he could do this. He’d like to do it. He expects me to say no. He probably hopes I do until someone else is dead. It would appeal to him. That’s what you think, too.”

“I do,” Tawney confirmed. “He can wait, and the waiting gives him more time to think. He considers us inferior. We wouldn’t have caught him but for a fluke, so he’d calculate Eckle may have time for one or two more.”

“There wouldn’t have been a fluke if he hadn’t killed Greg. He wouldn’t have been driven to kill Greg if I hadn’t gotten away. So it comes back to me. You need to make the arrangements. I want to do this as soon as possible.”

“Goddamn it, Fiona.”

“We need a minute.”

“We’ll be outside,” Tawney told her.

“I need to do this,” she said to Simon when they were alone.

“The fuck you do.”

“You didn’t know me when Greg was killed. You wouldn’t have known me in those weeks, months even, afterward. I shattered. My broods? They’re a shadow of it. They’re nothing compared to the guilt, the grief, the depression, the despair.”

She took both his hands now, hoping to transmit her need through his rage.

“I had help through it. The counseling, sure, but it was friends and family that pulled me out. And Agent Tawney. I could call him, day or night, talk to him when I couldn’t talk to my mother, my father, Syl, anyone else. Because he knew. He wouldn’t ask me if he didn’t believe. That’s one.”

She took a breath, steadied herself. “If I don’t do this, don’t try, and someone else dies, I think it’ll break something inside me. He’ll have won after all. He didn’t win when he took me. He didn’t win when he killed Greg. But, Simon, God, you can only take so many beatings and get up again. That’s two.

“Last. I want to look him in the eye. I want to see him in prison and know he’s there because of me. He wants to use me, he wants to manipulate me.”

She shook her head, the gesture as fierce as the sudden fury that lit her face. “Fuck him. I’ll use him. Maybe, I hope to God, he’ll tell them something that leads them to Eckle. I hope to God. But whether he does or not, I’ll have used him, and done what I needed to do to live with whatever happens after. I’ll be the one who wins. I’ll be the one who beats his sorry, motherfucking ass again. And when it’s done, he’ll know that.”

He pulled away, walked to the window, stared out, then walked back to look down at her. “I love you.”

Knocked sideways, she lowered to the arm of the couch. “Oh my God.”

“I’m so pissed off at you right now. I don’t think I’ve ever been more pissed at anyone in my life. And I’ve been pissed at plenty.”

“Okay. I’m really trying to keep up, but with my head spinning it’s hard to focus. You’re pissed off because you love me?”

“That’s a factor, but not the main thrust. I’m pissed off because you’re going to do this, because you, being you, have to do it. I’m pissed off because short of tying you to the bed, I can’t stop you.”

“You’re wrong. You could. You’re the only one who could.”

“Don’t give me the opening,” Simon warned. “I’m pissed at you. And I think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known, and my mother sets a damn high standard for amazing. If you cry,” he said when she teared up, “I swear to God . . .”

“I’m having a hell of a day. Give me a break.” She got to her feet. “You don’t say what you don’t mean.”

“Goddamn right. What’s the point?”

“Tact, diplomacy, but we won’t get into that. Simon.” Needing to touch, she ran her hands over his chest. “Simon. Everything you just said to me—all of it—there’s nothing you could have said or done that could have made me feel better or stronger or more able to do what I need to do.”

“Great.” A few grains of bitterness came through. “Glad I could help.”

“Would you tell me again?”

“Which part?”

She rapped a fist on his chest. “Don’t be an ass.”

“I love you.”

“Good, because I love you. So we’re balanced. Simon.” She laid her hands on his cheeks, and when she kissed him it was strong and sweet. “Try not to worry. He’s going to try to mess with my head. It’s the only power he has now. And he can’t because I’m going in armed with something he’ll never have, and never understand. When I do what I need to do, and walk away from him, I know I’m coming back here. I know you’ll be here, and you love me.”

“You want me to buy that?”

“I’m not selling it. I’m giving it, and it’s truth. Let’s go out and make this deal. I want it done and over, so I can come back to the good part.”

They walked outside. “How soon can we go?” Fiona asked.

Tawney took a moment to study her face. “We’re cleared for tomorrow morning. Agent Mantz and I will see about getting a hotel here on Orcas, and we’ll fly out of Sea-Tac at nine-fifteen. We’ll escort you all the way, Fee. There and back, and be with you throughout the session with Perry. We’ll have her home by midafternoon,” he said to Simon.

Over and done and back, Fiona told herself. “I’ll have someone cover my classes tomorrow morning and afternoon. You don’t need a hotel. You can stay at my place. It’s there, it’s empty,” she added before Tawney could decline. “And it’ll save you some time.”

“We appreciate that.”

“I’ll get the keys.”

Simon waited until Fiona went back inside. “If he screws her up, you’ll pay for it.”

Tawney nodded. “Understood.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Normally, though opportunities to travel were few and far between, Fiona liked to fly. She enjoyed the ritual, the people-watching, the sensations, the anticipation of leaving one place and hurtling through the air to another.

But in this case, the flight was simply one more necessary part of a means to an end, just something to get through.

She’d thought carefully about what to wear, and hadn’t been able to figure out why her appearance, her presentation, took on such importance.

She considered and rejected a suit as too formal and studied. She contemplated jeans, her usual and most comfortable choice, but decided they were too casual. In the end, she decided on black pants, a crisp white shirt and added a jacket in strong blue.

Simple, serious and businesslike.

And that, she realized when she sat between Tawney and Mantz on the plane, had been the importance. What she wore, how she presented herself indicated tone.

Perry thought he was in charge, she reasoned. Though he currently resided in a maximum-security prison, he’d made a strong bid for alpha position.

He had something they wanted, something they needed, so that gave him power—power she intended to countermand.

The clothes would help remind her—and him—at the end of the day, she’d be the one walking out, going back to her life, to freedom.

He’d be the one going back to a cell.

Nothing he had to trade changed that. And that, she reminded herself, was her power. That was her control.

“I want to go over some of the procedure with you.” Tawney shifted toward her. “You’ll go through security, and there’ll be some paperwork.”

She knew by the way he studied her face he wondered if her nerve would falter. “There always is.”

“We’ll be escorted to an interview room rather than the visitation area. Perry will already be there. He’ll be secured with wrist and ankle shackles, Fee. You will never, not for one second, be alone with him. He won’t be able to touch you.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” That, at least, was true. “I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid all this might be for nothing. He’ll get what he wants, get his rocks off on that, and not tell you anything that can help. I hate giving him the satisfaction of being in the same room with me, looking at me. But at the same time I’m getting the satisfaction of doing the same. And knowing I’ll walk away, go home—and he won’t.”

“Good. You keep that in your head. Keep it front and center, and know that if you want to break it off, at any time, it’s over. It’s your call, Fee. All the way.”

He patted her hand as they shimmied through some choppy air.

“He’s refused to have his lawyer there, he made a point of it. He thinks he’s in charge, in control.”

“Yes, I was just thinking about exactly that. Let him believe whatever he wants. Let him get a good long look at me.” Her voice hardened, edged with challenge. The turbulence, she thought, was all outside.

“He’s not going to see someone who’s afraid or subservient. And later today, I’ll be playing with my dogs. I’ll eat pizza and have some wine, and tonight, I’ll be sleeping with the man I love. He’ll go back to his cell. I don’t give a damn what he thinks, as long as he tells you what you need to know.”

“Don’t give him anything he can use against you,” Mantz added. “No names, no locations, no routines. As much as you can, keep your reactions steady. He’ll play you if he can, either to scare you or make you angry—anything to get under your skin. We’ll be in the room the entire time, and so will a guard. The entire session will be monitored.”

She let their reassurances, their instructions slide over her. No one, not even Tawney, could know what she felt. No one, she thought, could know that in some dark, closed part of herself she reveled in the idea of seeing him again, of seeing him restrained, as she’d once been. When she faced him again, she’d do it for herself, for Greg, for every woman whose life he’d taken.

He couldn’t know he’d given that dark, closed part of herself a reason to celebrate.

How could he, when she hadn’t known it herself ?

She considered it all a journey. The early morning ferry, the plane, the drive. Every leg brought her the comfort that she’d traveled farther and farther from home. That Perry would never know or see what she knew and saw every single day.

Southeastern Washington wasn’t just a trip away, but almost another world. These weren’t the fields and hills of home, the villages busy with tourists and familiar faces, the sounds and the sea. These weren’t her streams and woods and deep green shadows.

The red brick and thick stone of the penitentiary struck her as formidable and intimidating. The square, squat, unadorned block of the Intensive Management Unit that housed him added stark and cold. And that dark place inside her hoped his life had been, would continue to be, equally stark, equally cold.

Every length of iron, every foot of steel added to her comfort, and her secret celebration.

He believed he’d caused her pain and distress by bargaining for this meeting, she thought, but he’d done her an enormous favor.

Every time she thought of Perry now, she’d think of the walls, the bars, the guards, the guns.

She submitted to the security, the search, the paperwork, and thought Perry would never know that by forcing her to open this door he would help her, finally, to close it—lock off even that tiny chink she’d never been able to shut out.

When she walked into the room where he waited, she was ready.

It pleased her she’d worn that deliberate touch of bold color, that she’d worked her hair into a complicated braid and had been meticulous with her makeup. Because she knew he studied her when she came in, knew he took in those details.

Eight years since he’d locked her in the trunk of his car. Seven since she’d sat in the witness chair facing him. They’d both know the woman who faced him now wasn’t the same person.

“Fiona, it’s been a very long time. You’ve bloomed. Your new life obviously agrees with you.”

“I can’t say the same for you and yours.”

He smiled at her. “I’ve managed to find a tolerable routine. I have to tell you, up until this moment, I doubted you’d come. How was your trip?”

Wants to run the show, take the lead, she concluded. Requires a small correction. “Did you ask me to come here for small talk?”

“I rarely have visitors. My sister—you remember her from the trial, I’m sure. And, of course, in recent days our favorite special agent and his attractive new partner. Conversation is a treat.”

“If you think I’m here to offer you a treat, you’re mistaken. But . . . the trip was uneventful. It’s a beautiful spring day. I’m looking forward to enjoying more of it when I leave. I’ll enjoy it particularly knowing when I leave you’ll be going back into—what do they call it?—segregation.”

“I see you’ve developed a mean streak. A shame.” He offered her a sorrowful look, adult to child. “You were such a sweet, unaffected young woman.”

“You didn’t know me then. You don’t know me now.”

“Don’t I? You retreated to your island—condolences, by the way, on the death of your father. I often think people who choose to live on islands consider the water surrounding them a kind of moat. A deterrent to the outside world. There you have your dogs and your training classes. Training is an interesting endeavor, isn’t it? A kind of molding of others into your likeness.”

“That would be your take.” Lead him, she told herself. Lull him. “I see it as a method of helping individuals reach their potential, in my particular area of interest and expertise.”

“Reaching potential, yes. On that we agree.”

“Is that what you saw in Francis Eckle? His potential?”

“Now, now.” He sat back, chuckled. “Don’t segue so ham-handedly when we’re having such a nice time.”

“I thought you’d want to talk to me about him, since you set him on me. Of course, he’s made a mess of it. He’s diminished your legacy . . . George.”

“Now you’re trying to both flatter and annoy me. Did the agents prep you? Tell you what to say, how to say it? Are you a good little puppet, Fiona?”

“I’m not here to flatter or annoy you.” Her voice stayed flat, her eyes steady. “I’ve got no interest in doing either. And no one tells me what to say—or what to do or when to do it. Unlike your situation. Are you a good little puppet in your cage, George?”

“Feisty!”

He laughed out loud, but it wasn’t only humor that sparkled in his eyes. She’d hit a switch, she knew, and turned on the heat.

“I’ve always admired that about you, Fiona. That classic, and clichéd, redhead’s spunk. But as I recall you weren’t so feisty after your lover and his faithful dog took bullets.”

It hurt, brutally, and she held on to the pain.

“You needed medication and ‘therapy,’ ” he added, putting quotes in the air. “You needed your own fatherly special agent to protect you from me, and the drooling press. Poor, poor Fiona. First a heroine through a stroke of luck, then a creature of tragedy and frailty.”

“Poor, poor George,” she said in the same tone, and saw the temper flash, for just an instant, in his eyes. “First a figure to be feared, and now one forced to recruit the inferior to finish the job he couldn’t. Let me be honest. I don’t care if you tell the FBI anything about Eckle—a part of me hopes you won’t. Because he’ll try to finish what you couldn’t. You took mine, now I’ll take yours. If they don’t find him first, he’ll come after me, and I’m ready for him.”

Now she leaned forward, letting him see it. Letting him catch a glimpse of her will, and the secret inside her. “I’m ready for him, George. I wasn’t ready for you, and look where you are. So when he comes for me, he’ll lose—and so will you. Again. I want that more than I can say. You’re not the only one who sees him as a proxy. So do I.”

“Have you considered he wants you to feel so confident? He’s manipulating you into this sense of power and security?”

She let out a half laugh as she leaned back again. “Who’s being ham-handed now? He’s not what you thought he was. Judging character and abilities is one of the traits of a good trainer. Not just teaching, instructing, but recognizing the limitations and the pathology of those you train. You missed that one. You know you did, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“You’re here because I demanded it.”

She hoped she pulled off an expression between bored and amused because her heart thumped riotously. She was beating him.

“You can’t demand anything of me. You can’t scare me, and neither can the vicious dog you’ve set on me. The only thing you can do is try to make a deal.”

“There’s no telling who a dog might attack. No telling how many he may bloody along the way.”

She cocked her head, smiled a little. “Do you really think that keeps me up at night? I’m on my island, remember? I have my moat. I’ll only be sorry if he screws up before he gets to me. Feel free to let him know that—that is, if he’s still listening to you. I don’t think he is. I think your dog’s off the leash, George, and going his own way. As for me?” Deliberately, she glanced at her watch. “That’s really all the time I have to spare. It was good to see you here, George,” she said as she rose. “It really made my day.”

“I’ll escort you out.” Mantz got to her feet.

“I’ll find another. Sooner or later, I’ll find another.”

Fiona glanced back to see his chained hands fist on the table.

“You’re always in my thoughts, Fiona.”

She smiled at him. “George, that’s just sad.”

At Mantz’s nod, the guard opened the door. The minute the door closed behind them, Mantz shook her head, held up a hand. “We’re going to be escorted to a monitoring area where you can wait.”

Fiona held on to her composure, following Mantz’s example, saying nothing, keeping her eyes straight ahead. The sound of the thick electronic doors opening, closing, made her want to shudder.

They entered a small room holding electronic equipment, monitors. Mantz ignored them and the officials running them and gestured to a couple of chairs set up across the room.

She poured a glass of water, handed it to Fiona.

“Thanks.”

“Do you want a job?”

Fiona looked up again. “Sorry?”

“You’d make a good agent. I’m going to tell you, I had my doubts about this, about bringing you here. I thought he’d play you. I thought he’d twist you up and wring you out to dry, and we’d walk out empty-handed. But you played him. You didn’t give him what he wanted, and you sure as hell didn’t give him what he expected.”

“I gave it a lot of thought. What to say, how to say it. How to . . . wow, look at that,” she said when she saw her hands shaking.

“I can take you out of here altogether. There’s a coffee shop not that far away. Tawney can meet us there.”

“No, I’ll stick. I want to stick, and I know you want to be in there.”

“Here’s fine. He’s not going to take another woman in his face after that. Tawney’s better finishing this up without me. How did you know what to say, how to say it?”

“Truth?”

“Yeah, truth.”

“I work with dogs, and do one-on-ones with dogs and owners with behavioral problems—some of them fairly severe and violent. You can’t show fear—you can’t even feel it, because if you do it will show. You can’t let them get the upper hand, even for a minute. You don’t want to lose your temper, but always maintain the position of power. Alpha position.”

Mantz considered a moment. “You’re saying you thought of Perry as a bad dog?”

Fiona let out a shuddering breath. “More or less. Do you think it worked?”

“I think you did your job. Now we’ll do ours.”

PERRY STRUNG IT OUT, dribbling out information, stopping to request a meal, dribbling more. Fiona fought off a rising sense of claustrophobia from being shut up in the small room for so long, and wished—more than once—she’d taken Mantz up on her offer to leave the prison and wait elsewhere.

In for the whole shot, she reminded herself, and sat, sat while Mantz listened on an earpiece, when Tawney came in to confer with her. To wait it out, she thought, refusing an offer of food she wasn’t entirely sure she could keep down.

They approached the time Tawney had predicted she’d be home before they left the prison behind. Fiona kept the window of the car open, breathed in the air.

“I can use my phone now? I need to let Simon and Sylvia know I’m delayed.”

“Go ahead. I contacted your stepmother,” Tawney told her. “I left Simon a voice mail. He didn’t answer his phone.”

“Between the machines and the music in his shop, he never hears the phone. But Syl would let him know. She’s taking my classes this afternoon. I’ll wait until we’re about to board the plane.”

“Erin said you didn’t eat.”

“Still a little unsteady in that area. You have to tell me something. You have to tell me if this helped.”

“You’re going to be disappointed.”

“Oh.”

“Disappointed that Erin’s back there on the phone right now, checking out some of the information Perry gave us, coordinating agents to various mail drops Perry said he lined up to contact Eckle over the next few weeks. He gave us locations, trolling sites they agreed on and the two alternate identities Eckle’s using.”

“Thank God.”

“He wants Eckle to go down. One, because he’s no longer subservient, no longer obedient. And two—and I believe this cemented it—he doesn’t want you to win again. He doesn’t want to risk you going up against Eckle and winning. You convinced him not only that you could, that you would, but that you were looking forward to it. Hell, you convinced me.”

“I’d just as soon not have to try to prove it.”

Mantz returned. “We’ve got agents on the way to the locations he gave us, and a team to the trolling site, which geographically should be next on Eckle’s list. We have another taking Kellworth’s college, as that should have been his target for this time frame. He could repeat there if he decides to go back to Perry’s game plan.”

“I don’t see that,” Tawney said, “but it’s better to cover it.”

“We’ve issued a BOLO for Eckle, including his aliases. And we got a jackpot, Tawney. We have a 2005 Ford Taurus, California plates, issued to one of those aliases. John William Mitchell.”

Tawney reached over to lay a hand briefly on Fiona’s. “You’re not going to have to prove anything.”

MIDAFTERNOON , MY ASS , Simon thought. At this rate, they’d be lucky if she made it home by six. Hearing her on his voice mail helped, but he wasn’t going to be able to relax until he saw her for himself.

He’d kept busy, and having Syl pinch-hitting on the classes saved him from a trip to town as she’d hauled off the new stock he’d finished. Plus, she’d made him lunch. Not a bad deal.

He set the last of the window boxes he’d spent most of his day making on its bracket, then walked back into the front yard, surrounded by the pack of dogs who’d rarely left his side all day, to view the results.

“Not bad,” he murmured.

He hadn’t used the design Fiona cadged from Meg—what would be the point in making something you could buy in a damn catalog? Anyway, his were better. He liked the marriage of mahogany and teak, the slightly rounded shapes, the interest of the Celtic design he’d carved into the wood.

Needed hot colors in the flowers, he decided. And if she tried to do some wussy pastels, she’d have to try again.

Strong, hot colors—nonnegotiable. What was the point in planting flowers if they didn’t make a statement?

When the dogs turned as one, he swung around himself. He thought, Thank God , when he saw the car on his drive.

He had to force himself not to race to the car, pluck her right out through the window and check every inch of her to make sure she was untouched, unhurt, unchanged.

He waited, with roiling impatience, while she sat, speaking to the agents. They’ve had you all day, he thought. Say good-fucking-bye and come home. Be home.

Then she got out, walked to him. He barely noticed the car drive away.

He heard her laugh as the dogs surged to greet her, watched color bloom in her cheeks as she stroked and ruffled. My turn, he thought, and moved toward them.

“Back off,” he ordered the dogs, then just stood looking at her. “Took you long enough.”

“It feels even longer from this side. I need a hug. A really long, hard hug. Crack my ribs, will you, Simon?”

He put his arms around her, gave her what she needed short of snapping bones. Then he kissed the top of her head, her temples, her mouth.

“Better, better.” She sighed it out. “So much better. You smell so good. Sawdust and dogs and the forest. You smell like home. I’m so glad to be home.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m okay. I’ll tell you all about it. I want to shower first. I know it’s completely in my head, but I feel . . . I just need a shower. Then maybe we can toss a frozen pizza in the oven, crack a bottle, and I’ll . . . You made window boxes.”

“I had some spare time today since you weren’t around interrupting me.”

“You made window boxes,” she murmured. “They’re so . . . just exactly right. Thank you.”

“They’re my window boxes on my house.”

“Absolutely. Thank you.”

He yanked her back into his arms. “Making them kept me from going crazy. Syl and I worked on keeping each other from going crazy. You should call her.”

“I did. I called her, my mother and Mai from the ferry.”

“Good, then it’s just you and me. And them,” he added as the dogs sat at their feet. “Have your shower. I’ll deal with the pizza.” But he caught her chin in his hand, held it while he searched her face. “He didn’t touch you.”

“Not the way he hoped, no.”

“Then I can wait for the rest. I’m hungry anyway.”

THEY ATE OUTSIDE on the back porch with the sun beaming through the trees and the birds trilling like mad things. Outside, Simon thought, where it made a point. They were free. Perry wasn’t.

Her voice stayed steady as she took him through it, step-by-step.

“I don’t know where some of it came from. I’d worked it out in my head, the approach, the tone, the basic thrust, but some of it was just there, coming out of my mouth before it really seemed to plant in my head. Telling him if Eckle kills other women it has nothing to do with me. I’m usually a lousy liar. It’s just not natural to me, so I tend to fumble it. But it just flowed right out, smooth and cold.”

“And he bought it.”

“Apparently so. He gave them what they were after: locations, mail drops, aliases. They tracked a car and plates with one of the aliases. They’ve got agents scrambling out to do what they do.”

“And you’re out of it.”

“Oh God, Simon, I really think I am.” She lifted her hands, pressed her fingers to her eyes for a moment. “I really think I am. And more, it was so different from what I expected, what I’d prepared for.”

“How?”

“He was so angry. Perry. I expected him to be smug, full of himself and his ability to pull all these strings even from prison. And he was, on one level. But under it there was all this anger and frustration. And seeing that, knowing that, seeing where he is, how he looks, it felt—feels . . .”

She fisted a hand on the table, studied it. “Solid. It feels hard and strong and solid.” She lifted her gaze again, the soft blue clear again, calm again. “It feels over. What was between him and me, still there in the shadows and the dark, it’s done now. We’re finished.”

“Good.” He heard the truth of it, felt it—and realized that until that moment, he’d carried those shadows inside him, too. “Then it was worth it. But until Eckle is in the same place, things stay the same here. No chances, Fiona.”

“I can live with that. I’ve got window boxes, and pizza.” She unfisted her hand, reached for his. “And you. So.” She took a long breath. “Tell me something else. What did you do besides window boxes?”

“I’ve got a few things going. Let’s take a walk.”

“Beach or woods?”

“Woods first, then beach. I need to find another stump.”

“Simon! You sold the sink.”

“I’m keeping that one, but Syl got a look at it and says she’s got a client who’ll want one.”

“You’re keeping it.”

“Half-bath downstairs needs a bump.”

“It’ll be fabulous.” She glanced over at the dogs, back at Simon. Her guys, she thought. “Come on, boys. Let’s go help Simon find a stump.”

ECKLE FELT SOMETHING, too. He felt freedom.

A new task, a new agenda. New prey.

He knew he’d severed the strings that held him to Perry, and rather than falling limp, an untethered marionette, he stood strong and vital. He experienced a new sense of self, one he’d never felt before, not even when Perry had helped him reach inside to the man he’d hidden for so many years.

He owed Perry a debt for that, and one he fully intended to pay. But the debt was one of student to teacher. A true teacher, a wise teacher knew the student must step away, must carve his own path once the roadbed was laid.

He’d read, with interest and pride, the article in U.S. Report. He critiqued the style, the voice, the content, and gave Kati Starr a solid B.

As he would have done in his other life, he edited, corrected, made suggestions in red pen.

He could help her improve, he had no doubt of it. And he’d considered communicating with her, collaborating, so to speak, to give her series of articles more depth.

He’d never realized how addictive notoriety could be, how piquant the flavor once tasted. But his new self wanted more sly licks and nibbled bites before the end. He wanted to feast. To gorge.

He wanted to sate himself on legacy.

As he’d studied his potential student’s habits, routines, read her other articles, researched her personal and professional data, he detected in her what he’d often seen in his own students.

Particularly the females.

Whores. All women were whores at their slippery, wet roots.

Bright, clever Kati was, in his opinion, too headstrong, too rash, too sure of herself. She was a manipulator, and wouldn’t take instruction or constructive criticism well.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be useful.

The more he observed, the more he learned, the more he wanted. She would be his next and, in a very real way, his first even as she might be his last. His own choice, rather than a mirror of Perry’s needs.

She was older, not particularly athletic. More inclined to hours at a desk, a keyboard, a phone than physical pursuits.

Playing in her fancy fitness club so she could show off her body.

Yes, she showed off her body, he thought, but didn’t tend it, didn’t discipline it. If she lived she’d grow soft and fat and slow.

Really, he’d be doing her a favor, ending it while she was still young and smooth and tight.

He’d been busy during his time in Seattle. He’d changed his license plates twice and had the car painted. Now when he returned to Orcas any cops watching the ferry traffic wouldn’t note the return of the car—not that he gave barely educated hayseeds that much credit.

Still, Perry had schooled him carefully on precaution.

He considered the best time and location to take her, then simply waited for Seattle’s weather to give him the final element.

KATI SHOT UP her umbrella and stepped out into the drenching rain and gloom. She’d worked late, polishing up some details on her next article. For now, she didn’t mind inhabiting a cubicle in a small building in the rainy Northwest.

It served as a stepping-stone.

Her series was gaining her the attention she wanted, not only from readers but from the powers that be. If she could keep the heat turned up, just a little longer, she had every reason to believe she’d be packing her laptop and looking for an apartment in New York.

Fiona Bristow, George Perry and RSKII created and stamped her ticket out of Seattle and into the Big Apple. And it was there she’d shop her book.

She needed to crack Fiona open a bit, she thought as she dug for her keys. And it wouldn’t hurt for RSKII to take another coed, keep that flame high—and her byline front and center.

Of course, if the feds broke the case, that wouldn’t hurt either. She had sources primed, including the one who’d fed her the information that the Tawney-Mantz team had interviewed Perry again that day—and the fresh, hot juice that Fiona had joined in.

Face-to-face with the man who abducted her, killed her lover. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room. But even without the access, she’d gotten enough from her sources for a solid piece—above the fold—for tomorrow’s edition.

She hit the unlock button on her key ring and in the flash of lights saw the flat rear tire.

“Crap. Crap!” She hurried closer to make certain. Even as she turned, digging into her bag for her phone, he boiled out of the gloom.

Out of nowhere, no more than a blur.

She heard him say, “Hi, Kati! How about an exclusive?”

The pain shot through her, an electric bullet that sizzled in every cell of her stunned, seizing body. The rainy gloom burst into blinding white as a scream gagged in her throat. In some shocked part of her brain she thought she’d been struck by lightning.

The white sliced to black.

IT TOOK LESS than a minute to bind her, to lock her in the trunk. He stowed her bag, her computer, her umbrella in the back, for now, carefully turned off her phone.

Filled with power and pride, he drove off into the rainy night. He had a lot of work to do before he slept.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Kati’s phone provided a wealth of information. Scrolling through, Eckle carefully copied down all the names and numbers, studied her incomings, outgoings, her calendar, reminders. It fascinated him that virtually every communication, every appointment in her logs—but for an upcoming dentist appointment—dealt with professional interests.

Really, he mused as he wiped the phone clean, he and Kati had a great deal in common: no real connection to family, no particular friends and an absorption with rising in their chosen field.

They both wanted to make a name for themselves, leave a deep mark.

Wouldn’t that make their brief time together all the more important?

He tossed the phone in the trash at the rest stop where he’d parked, then backtracked, exited the interstate and drove the wandering twenty miles to the motel he’d chosen for this leg of the work.

He paid cash for a single night’s stay, then parked away from the lights. Though he doubted he’d need it, he angled her umbrella to shield his face as he climbed out of the car. People who frequented motels of this type didn’t sit around their shitty little rooms looking out the window at a rain-swept parking lot, but it paid to be cautious.

He opened the trunk.

Her eyes were wide open, full of fear and pain with that glaze of shock he found so arousing. She’d struggled, but he’d learned a thing or two and had linked the bindings on her wrists and ankles together in the back, hog-tying her so she could do little more than hump like a worm. Still, it was best to keep her absolutely still, absolutely silent through the night.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” he told her as he pulled a syringe from his pocket, removed the tip. Her screams were no more than harsh whispers swallowed by the rain as he gripped her arm, shoved up her sleeve. “Sleep tight now,” he said, and slid the needle under the skin.

He replaced the tip. She, like the others, wouldn’t live long enough to be bothered about any infection from shared needles. He watched her eyes dull as the drug took her under.

After securing the trunk, he got his suitcase and her belongings out of the back and carried them across the broken pavement of the lot to his room.

It smelled of old sex, stale smoke and the cheap detergent that couldn’t mask the brew. He’d learned to ignore such annoyances, and he’d learned to ignore the inevitable groans and thumps from adjoining rooms.

He switched on the TV, scrolled until he found local news.

He entertained himself first with a pass through Kati’s wallet. She carried nearly two hundred in cash—for payoffs? bribes? he wondered. The money would come in handy, another advantage of changing his target type. The coeds rarely had more than five or ten, if that.

He found the current password for her computer hidden behind her driver’s license. He set it aside for later.

He made piles of what he could keep and what he would dispose of from her handbag, and munched on the M&M’s she had in an inside pocket, toyed with her bag of cosmetics.

She carried no photos, not his all-work-and-no-play Kati. But she had a street map of Seattle and one of Orcas, tidily folded.

On the Orcas map she’d marked several routes from the ferry. He recognized the route to Fiona’s, wondered about the others. If time permitted, he’d check them out.

He approved of the fact that she carried several pens and sharpened pencils, a small cube of Post-its, a bottle of water.

He saved her breath mints, towelettes, pack of tissues, removed her IDs and credit cards to be cut up and disposed of along the way.

He used the money in her change purse to buy a Sprite and a bag of Lay’s potato chips from the vending machine outside the room.

Organized and settled, he opened her computer. As with her phone calls and texts, all of her e-mails centered on work and many were cryptic. But he could follow the dots, as he’d been following her.

While he, Perry and Fiona weren’t her only stories, they were, unquestionably, her focus. She’d pushed, and was pushing, for nibbles and bites from numerous sources.

Tenacious, thy name is Kati Starr.

She did well, he thought, digging, digging, digging, amassing details and comments from Perry’s past, from Fiona’s, from past and present victims.

She had files full of information on Fiona’s search unit, on the other members, on her training business, on her mother, her stepmother, the dead father, the dead lover. The current lover.

Thorough. He respected that.

And he understood she’d gathered and was continuing to gather more information, more deep background and areas than a reporter could possibly use in a series of articles.

“Writing a book,” he murmured. “You’re writing a book, aren’t you, Kati?”

He plugged in one of the two thumb drives he’d found in her case. Rather than the novel or true-crime book he’d expected to find, he brought up the file containing her next article.

For tomorrow’s edition.

He read it through twice, so engrossed he barely noticed when the couple next door began to fuck.

The betrayal—for he had little doubt Perry had betrayed him—slashed. A whip across the throat that strangled him so he shoved up to pace the miserable little room, his fists clenching, unclenching.

His teacher, his mentor, the father of who he’d become turned on him, and that turning could—almost certainly would—hasten the end of him.

He considered running, simply abandoning the plans he’d so meticulously set in place and driving east. Kill the reporter along the way, he thought, far along the way, out of what he knew the police would call his hunting ground.

Change his looks, his identity again. Change everything—the car, the plates and then . . .

What? he wondered. Be ordinary again, be nothing again? Find another mask and hide behind it? No, no, he could never go back, never be the pathetic shell again.

Calmer, he stood, eyes closed, accepting. Perhaps it was true and right and inevitable that the father destroy the child. Perhaps that formed the circle, brought the journey to its better, bitter end.

And he’d always known it would end. This new life, this sharpness of being was transient. But he’d hoped, he’d believed he had more time. With more time he could, and would, surpass Perry, in song and story, thought the teacher, the lover of books.

No, he would not go back, could not go back. Would not hide like a rat in a hole. He’d go forward, as planned.

Live or die, he decided. But he would never, never simply exist again.

He sat and read the article again, and this time felt a sense of destiny. Of course this was why he took the reporter. Everything was happening as it was meant to happen.

He was at peace with that.

By the time his neighbors finished and had checked out to go home to, he assumed, the spouses they’d cheated on, he’d found the book. He read through the draft, noting she worked in what he thought of as patchwork style—scenes and chapters mixed out of order that she’d link and weave together in another draft.

He looked at her key ring with some regret. How he wished he could risk going through her apartment. She’d have more there—files, notes, books, numbers.

He began to read again, this time making some changes, some additions. He’d keep the computer, the drives, and merge her work with his if he survived the next stage.

For the first time in months he felt a bubble of excitement over something other than killing. He’d include the portions of his own book, the draft he’d begun in the first person, with her third-person reporter’s point of view. Juxtaposing his parts of the story with hers.

His evolution and her observations.

And with Kati’s help, he would create his own song and story. Death, even his own, would be his legacy.

IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM where she and Tawney worked together, Mantz held her phone in one hand and tapped her keyboard with the other. “Yeah, got it. Thanks, Tawney.” She set the phone down, gestured. “I just got word that U.S. Report is hyping Starr’s article for tomorrow. They’ve got a teaser online. You should see this.”

He stepped over to her desk, read over her shoulder.

Under “Sneak Peeks” the headline glared:

FACE-OFF

Fiona Bristow Goes to Prison to Confront Perry

A Kati Starr Exclusive

“Son of a bitch.” Tawney murmured it, the low tone more violent than a shout. “The UNSUB will read this and it puts Fee right back in the crosshairs. Front and center.”

“And Starr’s billing’s going up. She’s piling up career capital with this. Whatever she’s invested to get information, it’s paying off for her.”

“We need to find the leak. And we need to see this goddamn story. I’m going to push on her editor, her publisher. She’s hampering the investigation by printing sensitive information, information she may have obtained by illegal means.”

“Yeah, we try that, and ball it up with lawyers on both sides. I’ve got a more direct idea. I can move on that while you try the push. I’ll try a little face-off myself, with Starr.”

“No way she’ll reveal her sources.” Tawney stalked over to the coffeemaker. “She’ll lap it up.”

“Yeah. But I’ll go see her, now. Off-hours, late. Try to pump her while she’s trying to pump me. I might get something.” Mantz checked her watch as she outlined the scenario in her head. “Either way, I bring her in, tonight. Obstruction of justice, interference with a federal investigation, harassing a federal witness. I’ll pile it on while she makes her noises about the Fourth Estate and freedom of the press.”

Tawney sipped his coffee. “Okay, then what?”

“We sweat her awhile. She’ll want a lawyer, she’ll call her boss, but we might be able to get her to hold off, just a bit. She wants attention, and she wants information. If we make it seem like we have more, she might try to play us. Buy us time.”

“For?”

“For letting it leak she’s talking. That we’re breaking her down.”

Considering, Tawney edged a hip onto Mantz’s desk. “So her source or sources start to sweat.”

“Worth a shot. It’s probably a waste of time, but why shouldn’t she lose some sleep over this, feel some pressure? She’s shortcutting her way through this, Tawney, and using Bristow every chance she gets. We can work with the media. We do. We use them, they use us. That’s the way it’s done. But she’s not interested in cooperation. She’s just looking for the byline.”

“You’re not going to get an argument from me. I’ll work from here, play the game with her bosses. You go direct. Let me know if and when you’re bringing her in, and I’ll set it up.”

He rubbed the knots of tension at the back of his neck. “Maybe he won’t see the paper. Maybe he’ll make a move tomorrow, one of the mail drops, or we’ll spot his car at one of the trolling sites.”

Mantz nodded as she put on her jacket. “If he’s following current events, and we know damn well he is, Starr’s telegraphing our leads, or enough of them to put him on alert. The mail drops are a long shot. I think he’s done with Perry, and if not, he will be once he knows Bristow went to see him.”

She paused at the door. “Are you going to let her know what’s coming?”

“Like you said, it’s late. Let her get a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s soon enough for that. Work Starr, Erin, then bring her in and we’ll work her harder.”

“Looking forward to it.”

IT FELT GOOD to be outside, to do something that didn’t involve the keyboard or the phone. Mantz didn’t mind the rain. In fact, Seattle’s weather suited her perfectly. She enjoyed catching sight of Mount Rainier on sunny days, just as she enjoyed the cozy sense of intimacy the rain offered her.

Tonight, she considered it an added bonus. Pulling Starr out of her office or dry apartment into a downpour piped a little icing on the cake.

She really wanted a go at the reporter on a personal level as much as professional. While she wasn’t a one-for-all-because-we’re-women sort, she saw Starr’s barrel-ahead style on this story as a woman climbing over the bodies of other women—dead and alive.

She’d climbed her own rocky cliff to get where she was in the bureau, Mantz thought, but by God she hadn’t taken shortcuts, she hadn’t stepped on anyone’s back to do it.

Those who did deserved to be kicked down a few rungs.

With her windshield wipers swishing and the lights blurring wet on the glass, she drove toward the paper first. Most likely Starr had called it a night by this time, but the building was en route to the apartment. Might as well do a check there.

As she drove she considered her strategy. Go in soft first, she thought, let the fatigue and the stress show. Try the girl-to-girl appeal. Her instincts said that approach would bomb, and Starr would see it as a weakness.

That was just fine. It would add an element of what-the-fuck? when she kicked in, bore down and charged Starr with obstruction, maybe tossed in suspicion of bribing a federal employee.

She’d see how it went.

She turned into the parking lot and lifted her eyebrows when she spotted the apple-red Toyota. A scan of the plate verified it as Starr’s car.

Burning the midnight oil? That was just fine.

As she pulled up beside it, she noted the flat right rear tire.

“Bad luck,” Mantz murmured and smiled as she parked beside the Toyota.

Even as she reached for her umbrella something tickled in her gut. She sat for a moment, studying the lot, the rain, the building. Dark but for the security lights on the main level, she noted. You’d need a light in your office to burn the midnight oil.

She left the umbrella in the car, hitched her jacket back for easier access to her weapon.

She heard nothing but the rain and the wet whoosh of sporadic traffic when she got out. Traffic light enough, she observed, distant enough so the lot, the position of the car wouldn’t be in clear view. And the rain? There was that icing again.

She circled the car, studied the pancaked tire and, going with impulse, tried the door.

That tickle went to a buzz when she found it unlocked.

Following the buzz, she hiked to the building, banged on the locked glass doors. When the security guard crossed the tiled lobby floor, his walk, his body language said retired cop.

Sixty-couple, she judged, and sharp-eyed.

She held her ID up to the glass.

He studied it, and her, then used the intercom.

“Problem?”

“I’m Special Agent Erin Mantz. I’m looking for Kati Starr. Her car’s in the lot, rear right tire’s flat. It’s unlocked. I need to know if she’s in the building, or what time she logged out.”

He scanned the lot, then her face again. “Hold on.”

Mantz took out her phone. She gave her name, her ID number, and asked for the numbers for Starr’s home phone, cell and office.

The cell transferred her to voice mail as the guard came back.

“She signed out at nine-forty. There’s nobody here. Even the cleaning crew’s finished up.” He hesitated a moment, then unlocked the doors. “I tried her home phone and her cell,” he said as he opened the glass. “Straight to voice mail.”

“Did she leave alone?”

“According to lobby security she walked out on her own.”

“Is there security video on the lot?”

“No. Stops at the doors, and she walked out the door alone. That’s usual for her,” he added. “She doesn’t travel in groups or socialize much with coworkers. If she had car trouble, she’d have used her key pass and come back in to call for service. No reason she’d have done otherwise. Nobody else signed out within twenty minutes of her, either side.”

Mantz nodded, keyed in the number for her partner. “Tawney? We’ve got a problem.”

WITHIN AN HOUR, agents had convinced the building super to open Kati Starr’s apartment, roused her editor and took statements from the guard and the cleaning crew.

The editor blocked the request to open her desk computer.

“Not without a warrant. Look, odds are she’s following a lead or she’s banging her boyfriend.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?” Mantz demanded.

“How the hell should I know? Starr keeps her personal life private. So she got a flat tire? Probably called a cab.”

“None of the local cab companies made a pickup at this location.”

“And you want me to leap from there to foul play? So you can poke around in her files? Not without a warrant.”

Mantz pulled out her phone when it signaled and turned away in disgust to answer. “Where? Keep on it. We’re on our way there. We got a ping on her cell phone.”

“There, see?” The editor shrugged. “With a boyfriend, or out having a drink. She’s earned it.”

“OUT HAVING A DRINK,” Mantz said between her teeth as they stood in the rainy parking lot of the rest stop. She snapped on protective gloves. “He left the phone turned on so we’d get a signal. So we’d come out here.”

She waited impatiently while the forensics team documented the scene.

She took the iPhone. “We’ll need to dump the data, go through it.” She looked over at Tawney. “It’s got to be Eckle. It’s not a damn coincidence she gets taken from her office lot. He’s got her. He grabbed her right under our noses. She doesn’t fit his victim profile, but she fits him. Like a glove. We didn’t see it.”

“No, we didn’t see it.” He handed her an evidence bag for the phone. “He’s got a couple hours on us, but he expected more. A lot more. Nobody would notice she’s not around until morning, and even then . . . maybe her editor gets pissed when she doesn’t show, but he’s not going to call the cops. Maybe not for hours more, until somebody notices and mentions her car’s in the lot.

“He figures he’s got twelve, maybe fifteen hours on us. He’s only got two. We need boots on the ground. Now. I’ll drive, you work the phone.” He swung toward the car. “We want badges checking every hotel, motel, vacation rental. Focus on out-of-the-way spots first. Cheap. He’s used to living frugally. He doesn’t need shine. He wants a place where nobody looks too close, nobody cares.”

Tawney peeled out. “He needs supplies, food,” he continued even as Mantz relayed the orders. “Fast-food joints, places he can pick up road food. Gas. Gas marts would work best, get everything in one stop, move on.”

“He’s got her computer. She walked out with it, so he has it. Maybe he’ll use it. We can trace that. He thinks he’s clear, at least until morning. Maybe we send her an e-mail. We set up a name, a URL, send her a message. A tip. I’ve got information on RSK Two, what’s it worth to you?” Mantz flicked Tawney a glance. “He might bite on that. If he answers, we can track it.”

“Bargain with him, keep him involved. It could work. Get the geeks working on it.”

ECKLE SLEPT ON TOP of the thin bedspread, fully dressed. Still his mind raced. So much to do, so much to relive, so much to imagine. His life had never been so full that even his sleep swirled with color and movement and sound.

He dreamed of what he would do with Kati—bright, sharp Kati. He had the place for it, just waiting for him. The perfect spot—all the privacy he’d need. And the irony of it tasted sweet as candy.

Then when he was finished with her—or maybe not quite—he would take Fiona. While they looked for one, he’d take Perry’s lost prize.

Maybe he’d make her watch while he did things to Kati. Make her watch while he turned her from alive to dead. He’d have so little time with Fiona, wouldn’t that enhance the brevity?

So he dreamed of two women, bruised and bleeding. Dreamed of their pleading eyes. Dreamed of them begging him, bargaining with him. Doing whatever he told them to do, saying whatever he told them to say. Listening to him as no one ever had.

He’d be the single focus of their life. Until he killed them.

He dreamed of a room shuttered from the light, a room washed with red, as if he looked through the thin silk of a red scarf. Dreamed of muffled moans and high, thin screams.

And woke with a jerk, breath wheezing in, eyes wheeling.

Someone at the door? His hand shot under the pillow for the .22, the gun he’d use to put a bullet in his own brain should there be no escape.

He would never go to prison.

He held his breath, listening. Only the rain, he thought. But it hadn’t been only the rain. A click, a click, like the turn of a knob, but . . .

His breath eased out again.

E-mail. He’d left the computer on while he charged it.

He pulled the laptop back onto the bed, studied the unopened e-mail. The subject line read RSKII, and reading it sent a thrill over his skin.

Cautious, he checked the sender’s address against Kati’s contact list.

A new one.

He sat studying the subject line, the sender’s name, while the thrill ebbed and flowed like a tide. And he opened it.

Kati Starr:

I’ve read your stories on RSKII. I think you’re pretty smart. I’m smart, too. I have some information on our mutual interest. Information I think you’ll want for your next article. I could go to the police, but they don’t pay. I want $10,000, and to be reported as an anonymous source. The girl’s already dead, so I can’t help her. I’ll help you and help myself. If you want what I have, let me know by noon tomorrow. After that, I’ll send my offer to someone else.

EW (Eye Witness)

“No. No.” He shook his head, jabbed the screen with his finger twice. “You’re lying. Lying. You didn’t see anything. Nobody sees me. Nobody.”

Except them, he thought. Except the women he killed. They saw him.

A trick, just a trick. He pushed off the bed to pace the room as the tide over his skin rose high and fast. People were liars. Tricksters.

He told the truth, in the end he told them the truth, didn’t he? When he tightened the scarf around their neck, he looked them right in the eye and told them. He gave them his name, and told them who killed them and why.

Simple truth. “My name is Francis Eckle, and I’m going to kill you now. Because I can. Because I like it.”

So they died with his truth, like a gift.

But this EW? He—or she—was a liar. Extorting his work for money.

No one saw him.

But he thought of the man in line at Starbucks. Of the pimply-faced clerk at the gas mart whose eyes had passed over him with boredom. Of the greasy-haired night clerk at the motel who’d smelled of pot and smirked at him as he handed over the key.

Maybe.

He sat again, studied the e-mail again. He could answer it, demand more information before any discussion of payment. That’s what she’d do.

He poured himself a short glass of whiskey and thought it through.

He composed a response, editing, deleting, refining as carefully as he might a thesis. When his finger hovered over send, he hesitated.

It could be a trap. Maybe the FBI was poking a finger in, trying to trap Kati. Or him. He couldn’t see it clearly, so he rose and paced again, drank again, thought it through again.

Just in case, he decided. Safety first.

He took a shower, brushed his teeth, shaved the faint shadow over his skull, his face. He stowed all his things in his duffel.

Moments after he hit send, he left the room. He bought a Coke at vending for the caffeine jolt, but realized he didn’t need it.

The idea of being seen, the vague possibility of being tricked, energized him. Excited him.

In some secret part of his heart he hoped he had been seen. It made it all the more worthwhile.

He gave the trunk a little pat as he passed it. “Let’s take a drive, shall we, Kati?”

“JESUS, HE ANSWERED IT.” Mantz leaped toward the tech. “He bit. Can you track it to the source?”

“Give me a minute,” the tech told her, tapping keys.

EW,

she and Tawney read:

I’m very interested in good information. However, I can’t negotiate any sort of payment without more data. Ten thousand is a lot of money, and the paper will require a show of good faith on your part. You claim to be an eyewitness. To what? You’ll have to give me some details, of your choosing, before we can go to the next step.

I can meet you, in a public place—again of your choosing—if you don’t want to put those details in writing or on the record at this time.

I’m eager to discuss this.

Kati Starr

“Smart enough to know she wouldn’t jump without having more,” Tawney commented. “But curious enough not to ignore it.”

“And not mobile,” Mantz added. “He has to be holed up somewhere with Internet access. Awake but not moving. It took him less than an hour to answer, and he’d have thought about it first. He was on top of her computer when we sent it.”

“Got him.” The tech gestured to the screen.

They set it up on the move. Agents, snipers, hostage negotiators—all with orders to surround, to go in silent.

“The agent who roused the night clerk said four single men have checked in tonight,” Mantz relayed as they raced through the night. “Two paid in cash. He’s got no holdovers from yesterday, or any day. He can’t make Eckle from the photo, didn’t see any of the cars and can’t say if any of them went into the rooms alone. Basically, he’s stoned and could give a rat’s ass.”

“Let’s get a team in rooms next to the four check-ins. Hold positions. There’s always the chance he took her in with him.”

They parked in the lot of the all-night diner next to the motel, donned their vests. As Tawney assessed the lay of the land, he nodded to an agent.

“Cage, give me the word.”

“We’ve got it down to two rooms. The other two have dual occupancy of the consenting kind. One’s got a couple banging like it’s the Fourth of July, and the other’s got a woman ragging on a guy about leaving his bitch of a wife. Teams said the walls are like paper. It’s like being there.”

“The other two?”

“One’s got somebody snoring loud enough to peel the paint off the walls.” He paused, held up a finger to his earpiece. “Just heard a woman’s voice saying, ‘Shut the fuck up, Harry.’ I’d say that leaves the one. Number four-fourteen. Corner room, back, east side. Team on that says it’s dead quiet. Not a sound.”

“I want the other rooms covered, and the parking lot blocked off. He doesn’t slip through.”

“Affirmative.”

“Desk clerk have a problem with us taking down the door?”

“He’s stoned to the eyeballs. Said do what we got to do—and probably went back to his bong and porn.”

Tawney nodded as they walked. “I want to take it down fast. I want lights in there the second it goes down. Blind his ass. The team’s in there and on him like a wolf on a deer. How about the car?”

“None matching the description or plates on the lot, or in the diner lot.”

“Could’ve switched it,” Mantz put it. “She could be in one of these. Any of them.”

“She won’t be for long.”

He had to hang back, let the take-down team move into position. He wanted to take the door, wanted it like he wanted breath. But he wanted it done clean and fast and safe just a little more.

It went exactly as he’d ordered. With his weapon drawn, he moved forward as the sounds of Clear! Clear! rang out of the room. His stomach dropped. That wasn’t the response he’d wanted. He knew before he reached the door that Eckle had already slipped through their fingers.

TWENTY-NINE

Fiona slathered cream over her damp skin and hummed a tune that got stuck in her head in the shower. She couldn’t quite pin down the song, the lyrics, but the cheery melody suited her mood.

She felt she’d turned a corner and closed a door. She liked the philosophy that by closing one she could—and maybe already had—opened another.

Maybe it was naive, but she had every confidence the FBI would track down Francis Xavier Eckle, and quickly, with the new information. Information she’d helped generate.

She’d kicked her way out of the trunk again, she decided.

Still humming, she stepped into the bedroom. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise when she saw the bed empty. Usually she’d find Simon sprawled in it, pillow over his head as he clung to those last minutes of sleep—until she went down and made coffee.

She liked the routine, she thought as she dressed. The easy give and take of it. Liked knowing the dogs were outside for their morning romp, and that Simon would stumble downstairs, with uncanny timing, when the coffee was ready so, in this lovely weather, they’d have it and whatever food came readily to hand on the back deck.

She supposed the siren’s call of coffee had been too loud for him to resist that morning, or she’d taken too long to suit him in the shower.

She pulled on her army green Chucks, then spent a few minutes on her hair, her makeup in anticipation of her morning classes. There was a window in the afternoon, she calculated, just wide enough for a trip to the nursery.

If she couldn’t go alone—not yet—Simon would just have to go through the window with her. She wanted to plant her window boxes.

She jogged downstairs, the tune in her head juggling with geraniums and petunias and the planned session of obstacle training.

“I smell coffee!” Her voice danced into the kitchen a few steps ahead of her. “And I’ve got a yen for Toaster Strudels. Why don’t we—”

She knew the moment she saw his face, and the shadow blocked her sun. “Oh God. Goddamn. Say it fast.”

“He took the reporter. Kati Starr.”

“But—”

“I said it fast.” He pushed the coffee he’d poured into her hands. “Now take this. We’ll sit down and I’ll give you the rest.”

She made herself sit. “Is she dead?”

“I don’t know. They don’t know. Tawney called while you were in the shower. He’d hoped to get out here, tell you in person, but he can’t get away.”

“Okay, that’s okay. They’re sure?” She shook her head before he could speak. “Stupid question. He wouldn’t have called if they weren’t sure. I’m trying to shut up, let you tell me, but words keep shoving into my throat. She’s not the right type. She’s five years out of the age group, at least. She’s not in college, not the right body type. She’s—”

For the second time, she shook her head. “No, I’m wrong. She’s not Perry’s type. He’s already shown he wants to make his own mark, hasn’t he? He’s tired of doing it Perry’s way. Boy’s all grown up now and wants his own. And she—the reporter—she’s made him a star, she made him important. She gave him a name. She knows him, wouldn’t he think? That makes it more intimate and exciting. More his.”

She took a breath. “Sorry.”

“You’re the behavioral specialist, not me. But that’s how I see it.” He studied her face, judged her ready to hear the rest. “He grabbed her last night, from the parking lot where she works.”

She bit back the urge to interrupt as he took her through it.

“They nearly had him,” she murmured. “They were never that close with Perry, not so soon after an abduction. She’s still alive. She has to be. Do they think he knows?”

“They’re going on the theory that he was just being careful, or he was planning to leave the motel before morning anyway. They sent another e-mail claiming they’d seen him burying the last victim while they were camped illegally in the park. He hasn’t responded. Yet.”

“She’s still alive. The dogs are at the door, wondering what’s taking us so long. Let’s go out. I could use the air anyway.”

She rose, left her untouched coffee where it was.

Sensing her mood, the dogs whined, pushed against her legs, shoved noses in her hands.

“I have such a violent dislike of her,” Fiona told him. “It’s still there, just as intense even though I’m sick knowing what she’s going through right now. It’s a weird tug-of-war.”

“It’s natural. What she’s going through doesn’t change what she is.”

“Oh, it will.” Briefly, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, then let them fall. “If she lives, it will. She’ll never be quite the same. He’ll hurt her more than the others because he’s got a taste for that now. Like a dog who bites and gets away with it. If he answers the e-mail, they’ll be able to track him again, even if he keeps moving. They’ll do that stuff they do. Analysis, triangulating, calculating. So she has a better chance than the others. She’ll need it.”

“They have a little more. They interviewed everybody at the motel, and there was one guy who saw him. He was keeping an eye out for the woman he was meeting and looked out when he heard the car. Mostly he noticed because Eckle parked across the lot, and it was raining hard so it seemed weird.”

“He saw Eckle? He saw his face?”

“He didn’t really get a look at him. Eckle had an umbrella, had it angled so his face was behind it—and the guy only glanced out for a few seconds. But he’s sure the car was a dark color—black, dark blue, dark gray—too hard to tell in the rain.”

“He changed cars, or the color anyway. More they know that he’s unaware of.”

“The guy’s going to work with an FBI artist. He’s even agreed to try hypnosis. Apparently, he’s into it. They’re working the desk clerk, too. They’re pretty sure he’s ditched the beard.”

“Okay, that’s as good as it gets.” She tried not to think about the miles of back roads and interstates a beardless man in a dark-colored car could travel or the acres and acres of parkland he could wander.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to go pull the covers over my head, brood and curse God. What I’m going to do is take my morning classes, then drag you to the nursery this afternoon so I can pick out flowers for the window boxes.”

“Crap. If we’re doing that, I’m going to stop and pick up some lumber and drop some designs off at the Inlet Hotel.”

“Fine. I have to be back by four.”

“Then we’ll be back by four.”

She worked up a smile for him. “Let’s go by and rent a movie while we’re at it. Something fun.”

“Can it be porn?”

“No. You have to buy porn movies off the Internet so they come in plain mailers and nobody on the island knows for sure you’re watching porn. Those are the rules.”

“I’ll settle for nudity and adult language.”

“Deal.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “I have to prep.”

He covered her hand with his before she could step back. “We’re stuck now because you wheedled me into falling in love with you. So we get through whatever there is to get through.” He kissed her. “With or without porn.”

“If I could needlepoint, I swear I’d make that into a sampler.” She kissed him back. “Come on, boys, it’s time for work.”

ECKLE BOUGHT A COPY of the paper to read at his leisure on the ferry. He’d given Kati another dose that morning before she’d fully come out from the first.

He needed her nice and quiet and peaceful. That was one of the mistakes Perry made that he hadn’t—and wouldn’t. Perry had wanted them at least semi-aware while they were trapped—and that’s how Fiona had beaten him.

Eckle liked the idea of Kati unconscious and helpless in the trunk, appreciated the fresh terror she’d experience when she woke in a different place entirely. As if by magic.

But for now, he’d just enjoy the ride on the ferry busy with tourists and summer people. He might have preferred to sit in his car the entire way, but he understood that might rouse some suspicion if anyone paid attention. Besides, wandering, mingling, even speaking to people here and there was good practice, and better cover.

He made a point of talking to a pair of hikers who’d boarded the ferry on foot. In preparation for his time on Orcas he’d studied the trails and parks and campgrounds, and had already visited several on previous trips. So he was able to speak knowledgeably—and gained their gratitude by buying them coffee.

He waved it off. “I know what it’s like to be your age and hitting the trail. I’ve got a boy about your age. He’s coming out with his mother next week.”

“You baching it till then?”

Eckle smiled. The hiker’s name had nearly escaped him. He saw them both as tools to be used. “That’s right. Just me, some peace and quiet and a six-pack.”

“I hear that. If you decide to hit the trail today, we’re going to start at Cascade Lake.”

“I might. But I think I’m more inclined to . . .” He knew the expression. What was it? What was it? He felt the back of his neck start to burn as the boys looked at him oddly. “Drown some worms,” he said, imagining pushing both their heads underwater. “Listen, if you’re heading for the lake, I can give you a lift as far as Rosario. Save you the boot leather.”

“Seriously? That’d be cool.” The boys looked at each other, nodded.

“Thanks, Frank.”

“No problem at all. We’re nearly there. Why don’t we go ahead, get your gear in the car?”

He was Frank Blinckenstaff from Olympia. A high school teacher with a wife, Sharon, and a son, Marcus. Of course they hadn’t asked him about Sharon and Marcus—they were too self-involved, too egocentric to care about him. He was a means to an end—but so were they.

“Trunk’s loaded,” he said with a bright, bright smile that sent a skitter of ice down one of the boys’ spine. “But there’s room enough in the back.”

The boys hesitated, then shrugged.

In the end he drove off the ferry and passed the vigilant gaze of the deputy checking cars, looking, he imagined, like a father heading out on a little vacation with his two sons.

Nobody saw him, he thought again. And that was perfect.

HE DROPPED HIS PASSENGERS off and forgot them. They were ghosts, like the students who’d passed in and out of his classroom. Transient, insubstantial, meaningless.

His more important passenger would be stirring soon, he thought, so he’d have to keep on schedule if he wanted to have her, and himself, all settled in before she regained full consciousness.

It was time for the next act.

Excitement frothed in his belly. No one would see him. They would see only Frank Blinckenstaff from Olympia. He drove through the busy village, along the twisting roads and into the park. He had to wipe damp palms on his jeans as he thought of Fiona. So close now, nearly close enough to touch.

He could’ve told the watchful deputy at the ferry she had a few days left. Days to eat and sleep and teach. Days left to wonder. Days left before he repaid his mentor, and made both her and Perry other ghosts who’d passed in and out of his life.

And once that was done, he’d fully become. His own man, at last.

Live or die, his own man.

He navigated the winding roads, easing carefully on the switchbacks, and smiled as the trees thickened. Like curtains, he thought, green curtains he’d keep snugly closed as he worked.

He turned into the narrow drive—wound his way back as his excitement grew till his hands wanted to shake.

He spotted the car in front of the picturesque cabin shrouded by those green, green curtains. His landlady waited, as promised.

He noted the windows were open—airing it out for him. There were planters of flowers on the porch. He’d have to remember to water them, in case she slipped by to check.

As he parked beside her car, she stepped out. He had to repeat her name over and over in his head to make her real.

“Mrs. Greene!”

“Meg,” she reminded him and walked down to offer her hand. “Welcome. Smooth trip in?”

“Couldn’t’ve been smoother. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here.” He kept his smile pasted on his face as the dog trotted up to greet him. “Hey, boy, how’s it going!”

“Xena and I spruced the place up for you a little.”

“Oh now, you shouldn’t have bothered. It’s just going to be me for a few days. Wait till Sharon and Marcus get here. It’s going to be love at first sight.”

“I hope so. Now we’ve laid in some basics for you. Don’t say we shouldn’t’ve bothered. It’s part of the package. Why don’t I help you in with your things, show you through again. Xena! Come on away from there.”

“She must smell my fishing tackle,” Eckle said as the dog sniffed around the trunk of the car. His voice went flat. He imagined kicking the dog bloody, strangling its master. “I’ll get my gear later. No need to show me through again, Mrs.—Meg. I think the first thing I’m going to do is take a long walk, stretch out my legs.”

“If you’re sure. I left the keys on the kitchen counter, and there’s a list with all the numbers you should need right on the refrigerator. Booklet in the living room has all the information on the cabin, restaurant menus, shops, park information. Now you’re sure you don’t want the cleaning service?”

“We’ll be fine.” He would kill her if she didn’t leave him alone. Yes, he would kill her and her sniffing dog if she didn’t leave within one minute. Really, he’d have no choice.

“Well, if you change your mind, or you need anything, you just call. Otherwise, enjoy the cabin, and the quiet. Good luck with your writing.”

“What?”

“Your writing? The travel piece you’re going to do.”

“Yes, yes. My mind was wandering.” He let out a heh-heh-heh, the closest he could get to a laugh. “Not enough coffee this morning.”

“There’s a fresh pound of beans in the freezer.”

Thirty seconds, he thought. Live or die.

“Appreciate it.”

“I’ll let you get to your walk. Come on, Xena.”

He waited and, because his fingers had begun to tremble, slipped his hands in his pockets while the dog followed her to the car. He watched the dog look back at the trunk, nose quivering.

Kick you bloody, then carve you up and bury you with the bitch who owns you.

He spread his lips in a smile, pulled his trembling fingers out of his pocket to answer Meg’s wave.

And he breathed and breathed, the air charging out of him like an engine as she drove down the lane and disappeared into the trees.

Nosy bitches better stay away.

It took him time to get settled. All the windows had to be closed, locked, the curtains drawn. In the cozy bedroom his chatty landlady had shown him on his previous visit and deemed perfect for his imaginary son, he covered the bed with plastic.

He unpacked, tidily arranging his things in the closet, the dresser, on the bathroom counter while he enjoyed the quiet and the generous space. He’d gotten too used to tiny motel rooms, shabby beds, ugly sounds and smells.

This was a treat.

Satisfied with his preparations and his privacy, he walked back outside. For a few moments he simply stood basking in the quiet, in the peace.

Then he opened the trunk.

“We’re home, Kati! Let me show you to your room.”

She trembled toward consciousness, ill, aching, confused. She felt as though she was floating in some freezing river with slabs of jagged ice scraping and stabbing along her skin. Red and black dots spun in front of her eyes, tilting sickeningly. Through the rush of blood in her head, she heard someone humming. A sudden burning pain in her arm brought on a shocked gasp, but the air wouldn’t come.

As she began to struggle, as her eyes wheeled, the humming stopped.

“So, awake at last. You slept right through your bath. Believe me, you needed it. You’d made a mess of yourself and stank to high heaven. No wonder that idiot dog was sniffing around.”

She tried to focus on the face over hers, but everything about it was too hard, too bright. The eyes, the smile. She cringed away.

“I didn’t have time to introduce myself before. I’m Francis Eckle. But you can call me RSK Two.”

Fear drenched her like sweat, and as she shook her head in denial that bright, hard smile only widened.

“I’m a big fan! And I’m going to give you an exclusive interview. It’s the story of your life, Kati. Just think of it. You’ll know everything, experience everything.” He patted her cheek. “I smell Pulitzer! Of course, it’s going to cost you, but we’ll talk about that. I’ll leave you to settle in.”

He leaned down close to her ear and whispered, “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to enjoy it. Think about that.”

He leaned back, beamed that smile again. “Well, all this excitement has worked up my appetite. I’m going to go down and have some lunch. Want anything? No?” He laughed at his own joke while tears leaked down her cheeks. “See you soon.”

IT FELT GOOD to do something normal, something fun. Better yet, Fiona thought, to wander around the nursery and stop and catch up with neighbors. It struck her just how isolated she’d become over the past week, tethered to the house.

She missed outings, she realized, and errands and the bits of easy gossip gathered up at routine stops.

She’d even enjoyed the interlude with lumber and hardware.

Simon spent his time vetoing choices or shrugging his assent. Until she dawdled over dahlia.

“Pick one. They all have stems, leaves, petals.”

“This from a man who just spent half a lifetime over drawer pulls.”

“The drawer pulls won’t die in the first hard frost.”

“Which makes the choice of dahlia more important, as its time’s brief.”

“This one.” He snatched one at random. “I can’t live without this one.”

She laughed even as she grabbed two more. “Perfect. Now I want some of that blue stuff.” She gestured toward a flat of lobelia. “Then we’ll be—Hey, hi, Meg, Chuck.”

Her friends turned, with Meg’s hands full of dianthus.

“Hi! Oh, aren’t those pretty.” Meg beamed at Simon. “You must’ve built those window boxes.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed as he and Chuck exchanged brief yet long-suffering glances over the women’s heads.

“Are you putting in another bed?” Fiona asked.

“No. I had to run over and open the cabin for a new tenant, and Chuck stayed back, started cleaning out the shed.”

“If I try it when she’s around, nothing gets thrown away.”

“You never know, do you? He was going to toss this old washtub.”

“Piece of junk,” Chuck said under his breath.

“It won’t be, once I fill it with these and put it in the yard. I’m thinking of sort of digging in one end, so it looks like it just got tossed there. It’ll be a bit of lawn art instead of a piece of junk.”

“Meg’s always figuring out how to repurpose things.” Fiona set the flowers in the cart.

“I hate waste.”

“I guess it saves us in the long run,” Chuck put in. “She mostly furnished the cabin out of thrift store and yard sale junk she fixed up.”

“So you’ve got a tenant,” Fiona said as she picked through the lobelia.

“A two-weeker. Husband’s down by himself this week. His wife and son are coming down next.” Meg picked up some lobelia, held it next to the dianthus and deemed it good. “The boy’s got some swim meet or some such thing he didn’t want to miss. The dad’s a teacher and writes travel articles. We’re hoping he does one on the cabin and Orcas. It couldn’t hurt. Kind of an odd one,” Meg added as they wandered through. “He came in a couple months back, asked to see it. Wanted a quiet place, private, so he could write.”

“That’s natural enough, I guess.”

“I guess he likes his solitude because he sure gave me the bum’s rush this morning. Wouldn’t have the housekeeping service, so I’m already feeling for his wife. But he paid cash, up front and in full, and that buys a lot of washtub flowers.”

“What kind of screening do you do on tenants?”

Meg blinked at Simon’s question. “Oh, well, there’s really not much you can do there. Most people take a week or two, or even a weekend off-season. You take a security deposit and hope for the best. We haven’t had any serious problems there. Are you thinking of buying a place for rentals?”

“No. Do you get many who pay cash?”

“Not a lot, but it happens. Some people just feel uncomfortable giving us their credit card number.”

“What did he look like?”

Meg glanced at Fiona, who’d gone uncharacteristically silent. “Ah, he’s . . . Oh my Jesus, you’re thinking he might be . . . God, Simon, you’re freaking me out. He’s, well, he’s in his mid-forties somewhere. I’ve got his driver’s license on file because we ask to see ID, but I can’t remember the birthday. He’s clean-shaven, bald as a hard-boiled egg. He’s well spoken, friendly enough. He talked about his wife, and how his boy was going to love the place. He even asked if his boy could bring a friend with him for a few days if he wanted.”

“We’re all just a little jumpy.” Fiona rubbed a hand up and down Meg’s arm.

“Do you want to go by the place, check him out?” Chuck asked.

“We can’t check out everybody who’s rented a place, or who’s camping or spending a few days at one of the hotels or B-and-Bs,” Fiona pointed out. “They’re watching the ferry.”

It had to be enough.

She waited until they were in the truck, heading back. “I forget, or don’t always realize, how worried you are. Don’t shrug it off,” she said when he did just that. “This thing has been there almost from the start with us. Like a shadow in the room, all the time. And I’m so busy thinking about it, or telling myself not to think about it, I can forget it’s weighing on you, too.”

He said nothing for nearly a mile. “I didn’t want you. Got that?”

“Simon, I hold that sentiment close to my heart.”

“I didn’t want you because I knew damn well you’d get in my way, and you’d find a way to make me like it. Need it. And you. So, now I do. I keep what’s mine, and I take care of it.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Like a puppy?”

“Like however you want to see it.”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“Cops, feds, that’s all fine. They do what they do. But nobody’s getting through me to you. Nobody.”

This time Fiona fell silent, stayed silent until they made the turn to his house. “You know I can and will take care of myself. No, wait—you know that. And because you know that, hearing you say that to me, knowing you mean it, it makes me feel more cared for than I have in a very, very long time.”

She drew a breath. “So I’m going to plant window boxes, then I’m going to teach my evening class. And I’m going to hope with everything I’ve got they find Kati Starr, alive, and that soon—really soon—we’ll be rid of the shadows so it’s just you and me.”

“And a pack of dogs.”

She smiled. “Yeah.”

ECKLE STEPPED OUT of the bathroom, freshly showered, in clean boxers and a T-shirt. On the bed, Kati whimpered behind the tape as her eyes, the left nearly swollen shut, ticked in his direction.

“That’s better. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about rape as I’ve never found sex to be particularly important. But I liked it. It was an entirely new experience for me, and every new experience is important to the whole—thanks for that. With rape, all the pressure’s off as there’s just no need to worry about pleasing the whore spreading them for you.”

He pulled the little desk chair over and sat beside the bed. “I like giving pain. I always knew it, but since it’s not acceptable under the rules”—he gave the word quick air quotes—“I buried the urge. I was not a happy man, Kati. I was just going through the motions, living a life in the gray. Until Perry. I owe him for that. I owe him Fiona for that. But this, all the rest? You? That’s mine, entirely. Now.”

He tapped the mini tape recorder he’d taken from her bag and set on the nightstand. “I’m going to turn this on, and we’re going to have a conversation. You’re going to tell me everything you know, everything your source or sources have leaked to you. If you scream, even once, I’ll put the tape back on and I’ll start breaking your fingers. There’s no one to hear you, but you’re not going to scream. Are you, Kati?” As he asked her he reached up and bent the pinkie of one of her bound hands backward until her face went bone white. “Are you, Kati?”

She shook her head, arching up as if to escape the pain.

“Good. This is going to hurt.” He ripped the tape away, viciously, nodded with satisfaction as she bit back the scream. “Very good. Say thank you.”

Her breath shuddered out, in, her chest trembled with it, but she managed a barely audible whisper. And licked her dry lips. “Please. Water. Please.”

“This?” He held up the bottle. “I bet you’re parched.” He pulled her head up by the hair, poured water into her mouth so she choked, gagged, wheezed. “Better? What do you say?”

She said thank you.

THIRTY

They had more than he’d expected, but not more than he’d prepared for.

Tawney and his partner had been to College Place, though Kati couldn’t confirm they’d gone to his school or apartment. Even when he broke two of her fingers she couldn’t give him the exact locations. Her source hadn’t given her the data, or hadn’t had the data to give.

But they’d been there, he was sure of it. They’d pawed through his things, through the daily life of the person he’d once been. Not that it mattered, he thought. They weren’t his things any longer. They belonged to another life—the gray life.

They were, as he’d expected, watching the ferries. And Fiona had moved into her lover’s house. She was never alone.

He’d taken care of the first, and had plans for the second complication. The centerpiece of that plan lay unconscious on the plastic sheet.

He thought of the e-mail. A trap, just as he’d suspected. He was sure of it now. They thought they could trick him, outwit him, but he was much too smart for that.

He considered, briefly, tossing the reporter back in the trunk and taking the morning ferry back to the mainland or one of the other islands. But that would leave Fiona undone, and a debt was a debt.

More, the student would surpass the teacher when he killed Fiona. Correcting Perry’s mistake would be part of his legacy.

His song and story.

The pity was he could no longer take his time with Kati, no longer risk two or three days with her as he’d hoped. It left him little time for their collaboration on the book.

He’d need to do the lion’s share of that himself as he had to start the next phase sooner than originally planned.

He studied her, shrugged. Really, there wasn’t much more he wanted to do with her.

He decided he’d study his maps again, then get a few hours’ sleep, fry up a good breakfast. He’d want to get started well before dawn.

As he went out, he decided it was a good thing he’d broken her fingers instead of her toes. He didn’t want to carry her the whole way.

SIMON KEPT HIS MUSIC turned off and found work he could do on the shop porch. That way he could see, and hear, who came and went.

Just something else he owed Eckle, he thought. The fact that he couldn’t focus on his work, couldn’t blast his music.

He’d already decided to give it one more week, then whatever Fiona’s schedule, he was taking her away for a while. Nonnegotiable. They’d go visit his parents in Spokane, which would kill two birds as his mother would stop nagging him about meeting Fiona every time they talked on the phone or e-mailed.

He’d already selected the hammer to drive home that nail. He’d sacrifice his dog’s balls. Fiona wanted Jaws neutered—and kept leaving information about it all over the house. He’d give her that; she’d give him this.

Sorry, pal, he thought.

Then they’d drive—the whole pack of them if she wanted—to Spokane. He’d rent a damn van if he had to. Driving took time, the more the better as far as he was concerned.

If Tawney and Mantz couldn’t run Eckle to ground by the time they got back, they didn’t deserve their badges.

He glanced up at the sound of a car, then set aside the brush he’d been using to stain a pair of bar stools when he saw the police cruiser.

He hoped to hell it was good news.

“Davey.” Fiona stepped out of the house. “You’ve got the timing down. My last clients left ten minutes ago. The next aren’t due for twenty.” She pressed her knuckles between her breasts where the breath wanted to stick. “Is she alive?”

“They haven’t found her yet, Fee.”

She just sat down where she stood, on the porch steps. Her arms went around dogs as they crowded around her.

“They sent us a picture. The best they could get from the two witnesses at the motel. I brought you a copy.”

He took it from the file he carried, offered it.

“It hardly looks like him—or like he did. The eyes, I guess. The eyes do.”

“The witnesses were shaky there. They’ve done a composite.”

“His face looks . . . beefier, and he looks younger without the beard. But . . . the cap covers a lot, doesn’t it?”

“The night clerk was next to useless—that’s the word we got. The other guy, he did his best. But he barely saw Eckle. He left prints in the motel room—Eckle did. They matched them with prints from his apartment. He’s not biting on the e-mail again, at least not so far.”

He nodded to Simon as Simon walked up. “They don’t think he will now so they’re releasing his name and this sketch to the media this afternoon. It’s going to be all over the TV and the Internet in a couple of hours. Somebody’s going to make him, Fee.”

Simon said nothing but took the sketch out of Fiona’s hand to study it.

“We’re going to plaster those on the ferries, at the docks,” Davey continued. “Starr’s paper’s offering a quarter-million reward for information that leads to her or Eckle. It’s blowing open in his face, Fee.”

“Yes, I think it is. I only hope it blows hot and fast enough to save Starr.”

HE’D MADE HER WALK. Even with the speed and the protein drink he forced down her throat it took a full three hours. She fell often, but that was fine. He wanted to leave a good trail. He dragged her when he had to, and enjoyed. He knew where he was going and how to get there.

The perfect spot. Brilliant, if he said so himself.

By the time they stopped, her face was filthy, purpled with bruises, hatchmarked with scrapes and nicks. The clothes he’d washed and put back on her were little more than rags.

She didn’t cry, didn’t fight when he lashed her to the tree. Her head just fell forward, and her bound hands lay limp in her lap.

He had to slap her several times to bring her around.

“I have to leave you here awhile. I’ll be back, don’t worry. You may die of dehydration or exposure, infection.” He lifted his shoulders in a what-can-you-do? gesture. “I hope not because I really want to kill you with my own hands. After I kill Fiona. One for Perry, one for me. Jesus, you smell, Kati. All the better, but phew. Anyway, when this is done, I’m going to write the story for you, send it in, in your name. You’ll get that Pulitzer. Posthumously, but I think you’re a shoo-in. See you soon.”

He popped one of the black pills himself—he needed the kick—and started off in a brisk jog. Without the dead weight, he calculated he could make it back in under half the time it had taken to drag her pitiful ass alone. He’d be back at the cabin before dawn, or just after.

He had a lot of work to do before he made the return trip.

SIMON WATCHED HER push herself through her next class, and decided enough was enough. When he’d done what he needed to do, he waited until the last car pulled away and she walked back into the house.

He found her in the kitchen running a cold can of Diet Coke over her forehead. “Hot today.” She lowered the can, popped it. “It feels like the sky’s dropped down a few thousand feet so the sun’s pressing against the tops of the trees.”

“Go take a shower, cool off. You’ve got time,” he said before she could answer. “Sylvia’s coming over to take your last two classes.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you look like hell and probably feel worse. You got fuck-all for sleep last night, and I know because I was the one trying to sleep beside you. You’re wound up and worn out. So take a shower, take a nap. Brood, if you need to, as long as I’m not around. I’ll order some dinner in a couple hours.”

“Just hold it.” She set the can aside, very deliberately. “My classes, my business, my decision. You don’t get to decide when I’m capable of running my business or when I need a goddamn nap. You’re not in charge.”

“You think I want to be? You think I want to take care of you? I damn well don’t. It’s a pain in the ass.”

“Nobody asked you to take care of me.”

He grabbed her arm, dragged her out of the kitchen.

“If you don’t let go of me I’m going to deck you.”

“Yeah, you do that.” He shoved her in the powder room, pushed her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself. You couldn’t deck an unconscious toddler. So be as pissed off as you want because I’m right there with you. And I’m bigger, I’m stronger and I’m meaner.”

“Well, excuse the hell right out of me for not looking my best. And thanks so much for not sparing my feelings and letting me know I look like warmed-over crap.”

“Your feelings aren’t my priority.”

“Oh, there’s news. You do your work, and I’ll do mine, and I’ll do you a favor. When I’m done I’ll take myself off to your slobfest of an excuse for a spare room and sleep there so I don’t disturb your beauty sleep.”

He recognized by the pitch of her voice she jiggled midway between fury and a crying jag. It damn well couldn’t be helped.

“If you try to run this next class I’ll make a scene and you’ll lose every client in it. Believe me, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” She shoved him with considerably more strength than her pale face advertised. “Giving me ultimatums, threats, blackmail. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the one who loves you. Goddamn it.”

“Don’t use that on me.”

“It’s what I’ve got.” Stupid, he realized. He’d let temper bump aside sense—and strategy. This wasn’t the way to handle her, and he knew it. “I can’t stand it.” He gave her the truth, harder for him than the threats. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.” He pulled her in. “You need a break. I’m asking you to take a break.”

“You weren’t asking.”

“Okay. I’m asking now.”

She sighed, hugely. “I look like shit.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle my work, or that you get to call in the reserves without asking me.”

“We’ll make a trade.”

“What?” She pulled back. “A trade?”

“You take the break, Mai gets to cut off Jaws’s balls.” An ace in the hole, Simon figured, needed to be used sooner rather than later.

“Oh! That’s ridiculous. That’s wrong. That’s . . .” She fisted her hands at her temples. “Low. You’re using my belief in responsible pet ownership.”

“A couple hours down for you, a lifetime of never knowing the thrill of a woman for him. You get the shiny end on this.”

She shoved him back, strode out of the bathroom. Then she turned and scowled at him as he leaned against the doorjamb. “You’re going to do it anyway.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Part of me figures he ought to at least have a shot at a couple of willing bitches first. A guy should have some memories.”

“You’re stringing me.” But he only shrugged, let the silence hang. “Damn it. You’ll call Mai now, today, make an appointment?”

He opened his mouth and swore he felt his own balls shrink up. “No. You do it.”

“Okay, but no backing out.”

“What do you want, a pinkie swear? A deal’s a deal. Go take a shower.”

“I will, after I call Mai—and give Sylvia the roundup for the classes she’s taking.”

“Fair enough. You know how they have those weird-ass dog spas and dog salons and boutiques?”

She huffed, struggling to settle . . . somewhere. “Not everyone thinks they’re weird-ass, but yes.”

“They ought to have dog bordellos for times like this. A guy could at least have a bang before he becomes a eunuch.”

“You ought to look into that. There are enough people who think like you do that you’d probably make a fortune.” She glanced toward the front door as the dogs gave the alert. “That’s Syl now.”

He moved to the door ahead of her, checked for himself.

“Are you that worried?” she asked him.

“I don’t see any reason to take chances. Meg’s with her.”

“Oh.” She stepped out. “Hi. First, sorry, second, thanks.”

“First, don’t be sorry. Second, you’re welcome. It was my afternoon off, and Meg and I were doing a garden exchange. I’m overrun with daylilies and she’s got extra purple coneflowers.”

“So, I tagged along.” Meg spoke with calculated cheer. “You’ve got co-instructors.”

“And Simon’s right. Honey, you do look tired.”

“So I’ve been told,” Fiona said, shooting him one burning stare, “in less tactful terms. Come on in. I’ll give you the overview for the classes—and we’ve got some sun tea.”

“Sounds good.” Sylvia walked onto the porch, rose to her toes and kissed Simon on the cheek. “Good job.”

He smirked at Fiona over Sylvia’s head.

“Don’t encourage him.” Fiona went inside. “The first is a beginners’ class, and we’re working on the basics. You’re going to want to keep the sheltie mix away from the Goldendoodle. He’s determined she’s the love of his life, and he’ll hump her every chance he gets. There’s a border collie,” she continued as they reached the kitchen. “She’s honor-bound to try to spend the entire class herding everyone.”

“Any snappers?” Sylvia asked while Fiona got out glasses.

“No. They run in age from around three to six months, so there’s short attention span and some screwing around, but pretty good temperaments. In fact there’s . . . Meg?”

Fiona paused when she caught the stunned look on Meg’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“This is him.” She pressed a finger to the sketch on the counter. “The guy in our cabin. This is Frank.”

The glass started to dissolve in Fiona’s hand. She set it down before she dropped it. “Are you sure? Meg, are you sure?”

“It’s him. It’s not perfect, but it’s him. The eyes, the shape of the face. I know this is him. It’s a police sketch, isn’t it? Oh my God.”

“This is a police composite of what Eckle looks like now?” Sylvia’s voice was utterly calm and seemed to come from inside a wind tunnel. “Fee!”

“Yes. Yes. Davey brought it over earlier. Tawney sent it in to the sheriff.”

“Meg, go out and get Simon. Right now. Right now. Fee, call Agent Tawney. I’m calling the sheriff.”

But before she called the FBI, Fiona went upstairs and got her gun.

WHEN SHE CAME DOWN she’d found her calm, and ignored the quick look of distress on Sylvia’s face when her stepmother saw the gun strapped to her belt.

“The sheriff’s on his way.”

“So’s the FBI. They’ll coordinate with the sheriff en route. Everything’s under control.” Fiona laid a hand on Meg’s shoulder as her friend sat at the counter.

“I was alone with him in that cabin. I showed him through it last spring, chatted with him. And yesterday . . . Oh sweet Jesus, that poor woman was in the trunk while I was making small talk. That’s why Xena kept sniffing all around it. I should’ve known—”

“Why? How?” Fiona demanded. “Let’s just be grateful you’re okay, and you’re here, and you recognized the sketch.”

“I shook his hand,” Meg murmured, staring at her own. “And that makes me feel . . . God, I have to call Chuck.”

“I already did.” Sylvia moved behind Meg and began to rub her shoulders. “He’s coming.”

“You may have saved that reporter’s life,” Fiona pointed out. “You may have saved mine. Think of that. Simon.” She walked out of the kitchen to the living room, kept her voice low. “I know what you want to do. I can see it. You want to go over there, drag him out of that cabin and beat him to a pulp.”

“The thought crossed. I’m not stupid,” he said before she could speak. “And not willing to risk even the slim chance that he’d get away from me. I know how to wait.”

She took his hand, squeezed it. “He doesn’t. Not like Perry. It was wildly stupid to come here like this, and to bring her—he must’ve brought her.”

“Stupid, yeah, but if he got away with it? A big splash if they found the reporter dead all but in your goddamn backyard. Perry just wanted to kill. This guy wants to be somebody.”

“He’ll never get away.” Still, she rubbed her arms to warm them as she checked through the front window again. “He won’t get off the island. But he’s had her for two days now. She may already be dead.”

“If she’s got a chance, it’s because of you.”

“Me?”

“You’re not stupid. He brought her here to unravel you, to hurt you. He’s boxed himself in, and he may have hurt you, but he hasn’t unraveled you.”

“I like having you around.”

“It’s my house. I have you around.”

She didn’t think she could laugh, but he brought it out of her. And with it she put her arms around him and held on until the sheriff pulled into the drive.

When they stepped out to meet him, Sheriff McMahon didn’t waste time.

“We’ve got the road to the cabin blocked off. Davey was able to get close enough to get a look through binocs. The car’s there, all the windows in the cabin are closed, the curtains drawn.”

“He’s inside. With her.”

“It looks that way,” he said with a nod to Fiona. “Feds are coming in by chopper, and I called in for some backup. Ben Tyson over on San Juan’s heading in now with two of his deputies. Feds don’t want us moving in, but I’m going to argue some on that. It would help us out, Simon, if we could use your place here as a base for now.”

“It’s yours.”

“Appreciate it. I need to talk to Meg, and keep the line open with Davey and Matt. They’re watching the cabin.”

Fiona felt the minutes dripping like syrup, so slow, so thick.

No movement, the deputies reported, again and again. Each time she imagined what moved inside, behind those shuttered windows.

“The problem is, there just aren’t enough of us, and goddamn it, Matt’s still green.” McMahon scrubbed his fingers over his head. “We can keep watch, but I can’t argue with the feds that if we go in, he might get through us. It doesn’t sit well, I can tell you, but sit’s what I have to do. At least till Tyson gets here.”

“I’ve got a shotgun.” Chuck stood, his arm around Meg’s shoulders. “We could have half a dozen men here in ten minutes willing to help out with this.”

“I don’t need a bunch of civilians, Chuck, or to be worried about maybe having to tell somebody’s wife she’s a widow. He killed the others where he buried them—I can’t argue that fact, either. Odds are she’s alive, and we’re going to get her out the same way.”

He pulled out his phone when it signaled and walked outside to take the call.

“He’d have her up here, wouldn’t he?” Fiona gestured to the printout of the floor plan they’d gotten off the cabin’s website. “In one of the bedrooms. Not downstairs, just in case somebody got in. But where he could lock her in. So they not only have to get into the cabin but up the stairs—if he’s with her.”

She tried to think of it as a search and applied the same principles of most likely behavior. “The master has the little deck off it. I don’t think he’d keep her there. He’d use the smaller room, the one with less access. But they could get men on that deck from the outside, and they could go through the slider, into the cabin on the second floor. Then—”

She broke off when McMahon strode back in. “Chopper just landed, they’re on the road. And Tyson’s on island, on his way. I’m going out to meet them. I need all of you to stay here. Right here. I’ll keep in touch best I can.”

FROM HIS PERCH in the trees on the rise well beyond Simon’s house, Eckle watched the sheriff through his field glasses. The third time the man paced the back porch, with the phone at his ear, Eckle knew they’d made him.

He pondered how. The e-mail he’d composed wasn’t set to send for another two hours. Maybe there’d been a glitch.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. Things would just get started sooner. He heard it, faintly—the whir of a helicopter.

The gang’s all here, he decided. The chances of his escape, of going under long enough to write the article, finish the book, dropped dramatically.

He’d most likely die on Fiona’s island.

That didn’t matter either. If formerly pretty Kati wasn’t dead by now, she’d likely be before they found her, so he’d have had his own.

And while they were looking, he’d find Fiona and accomplish what his teacher never did, never could.

THEY WENT IN much as she’d imagined—fast, silent, covering every door and window. As one unit rushed through the first floor of the cabin, another rushed the second.

Tawney swept into the second bedroom steps behind the team.

He didn’t need the calls of Clear! to know Eckle had moved out, and taken Starr with him.

“He’s on his own script now. He’s tossed Perry’s and he’s on his own.”

“The trunk’s empty.” A little breathless, Mantz joined him. “He had her in there. It’s lined with plastic, and it’s bloodstained. Jesus,” she added with a murmur when she saw the plastic, and what stained it, covering the bed.

“He left us plenty of her scent.”

He wondered why.

Fiona wondered the same as her search unit reported to the cabin. She listened to the theory speculating he intended to come back, clean up, clear out—he’d left clothes behind as well—after he’d killed and buried Starr.

She didn’t argue. Her unit had a job to do, and the focus was to find the reporter.

“We’ll use the buddy system,” she said. “None of us goes in alone. Meg and Chuck, Team One; James and Lori, Team Two; Simon and me, Team Three. Two people, two dogs per team.”

She took a breath. “There are going to be armed police and federal agents swarming everywhere. You’ll keep in regular contact with Mai, and with Agent Tawney. They’re running the base. We’ve got about three hours before we lose the light. There’s a strong chance of a storm hitting before dusk. If we don’t find her before dark, we call it until morning. Everybody’s back to base at dusk. We don’t risk ourselves or our dogs.”

She glanced toward Tawney. “We all heard what Agent Tawney told us. Francis Eckle is a killer. He may be armed, he’s certainly dangerous. If any of you want to opt out of this search, it’s not a reflection on you or the unit. Just tell Mai, and she’ll recoordinate.”

She stepped aside as Mai signaled. “I don’t like you going in, Fee. You’re a target. He’s fixed on you already, and if he got any sort of a chance—”

“He won’t.”

“Can’t you convince her to take the com on this?” she said to Simon. “I’ll take Newman in, go with you and Peck.”

“I’d be wasting my breath, just like you, and Tawney, for that matter. But she’s right. He won’t get the chance.”

Mai swore, then caught Fiona in a hard hug. “If anything happens to you—anything—I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Fear of that alone will keep me safe. Let’s get started,” she called out. Signaling the dogs, she moved off toward her sector.

“Aren’t you supposed to give them the scent?” Simon asked her.

“Not yet,” she murmured. “I need you to cover me here. I’ll explain.”

When she judged the distance enough, she drew the scent bag out of her pack. “We’ve got four experienced search people and dogs looking for Starr—and cops and feds. They’ll find her, or they won’t.”

She looked up into Simon’s eyes. “We’re not going to look for her. We’re going to look for him.”

“That suits me fine.”

This time she blew out a breath. “Good. Okay, good.” She opened the bag. “This is his. He wore this sock and it hasn’t been washed. Even I can smell him on it.”

She gave both dogs the scent. “This is Eckle. It’s Eckle. Let’s find Eckle. Find him!”

As the dogs scented the air, noses twitching, heads lifted, she and Simon followed.

THIRTY-ONE

As they covered the first quarter mile, Simon swore the dogs consulted each other. Ear flicks, tail wags, a duet of sniffing. The temperature eased down under the cover of trees, along ground soft with its bed of needles, and rose again in the open, through wild grass and juts of rock.

“If he brought her this way,” Simon wondered, “why didn’t he use the road, keep her in the trunk until he found his spot? And if he did that, why is the car back at the cabin, and the cabin empty?”

“He didn’t bring her this way. At least I don’t see any sign of it.” Fiona trailed her flashlight over the ground, over brush and branch. “He left tracks, he wasn’t being careful. But I don’t see any that could be hers. It doesn’t make any sense, but I know damn well we’re following his route. His solo route.”

“Maybe he spotted the cops, or got wind of them somehow and got out. It could explain why he left everything.”

“Panicked, ran.” She nodded. “We’ve only been on a couple of searches where the person didn’t want to be found. A pair of teenage lovers, and a guy who stabbed his wife during an argument when they were here on a camping trip. The teenagers had a plan, such as it was, and covered their trail, hid out. The man just ran, and that made him easier to find. I wish I knew which category Eckle falls into. If either.

“I have to check in with Mai.”

Simon watched her take out the radio. “Decide yet what you’re going to tell her?”

“We’re still in our sector, so I’ll tell her the truth. Just not all of it yet.” She stared at the radio in her hand. “I should tell her all of it. I know that in one logical part of my head. Tell Agent Tawney or at least the sheriff. I could tell Meg to tell Sheriff Tyson. We could pull a couple of the deputies in on this trail.”

“You could,” he agreed. “And spend time arguing with them when you’re told to go back to base.”

Which wasn’t an entirely bad idea, Simon considered. “Can any of them—Davey, McMahon, Tyson—handle the dogs on a search?”

“Davey might. That’s a maybe. The reality is he hasn’t had much more training or experience than you have. Which isn’t enough, not without an experienced handler on the team. I know how to read my dogs. I can’t guarantee any of them can.”

“I guess that’s the answer.”

She called in, gave their location. “I’ve made some tracks,” she told Mai, “and the dogs have a good scent.”

“Tawney wants to know if you’ve spotted any blood trail, or any signs of struggle.”

“No, none of that.”

“James and Lori found blood, and strong signs of someone falling, possibly being dragged. Their dogs have multiple alerts. I’m working on narrowing the sectors.”

Fiona looked at Simon. “I’d like to follow this for now. I don’t want to confuse the dogs when they’re alerting.”

“Understood, but . . . hold on. Stand by.”

“I gave the dogs Eckle, and they took his route. It must be fresher than the trail James and Lori picked up. I can’t lie to Mai, to any of them,” Fiona told Simon. “The unit’s built on trust.”

“So give it to her straight. Argue it out. You’re still going to do what you have to do.”

Even as she nodded, the radio crackled. “All teams, Agent Tawney’s just relayed that Eckle sent a timed e-mail from Starr’s computer. They’re speculating that he wanted it traced, wanted the authorities to find the cabin. Fee, he wants you to head back, now. They think this might be a lure to get you out there.”

“I am out here,” Fiona responded. “And we’re tracking him. Eckle, not Starr.”

“Fee—”

“The dogs are alerting, Mai, and I’m not coming back in while the rest of my unit is out here. I’ll stay in contact, but I need a minute to think this out.”

She shoved the radio back onto her belt, turned down the volume. “I have to see this through.”

“I’m standing right here,” Simon pointed out. “That makes it we. Where are we in connection to James and Lori’s area?”

“Give me a minute.” She pulled out her copy of the map. Okay, okay,” she murmured as she studied. “They’re east of us, here. Plenty of places off the trails or on private property. But if they’ve got the scent, and found blood, he had to cross this road.”

“So he had to do it at night. He’d need the dark, and the relative assurance he wouldn’t be seen.”

“Yeah, but we’re here. Well west. In fact, he veered west all along, which is more like panic, more like trying to distance himself from wherever he took her. But . . .”

“New element,” Simon put in. “If he sent the e-mail to bring the cops in, and to bring you out, where’s he going? He thinks you’ll be following Starr’s scent, not his. If he’s set a trap for you, it’s not here.”

“You think she’s bait,” Fiona murmured. “He brought her here, to my place, even used the cabin of a friend, a partner. God, of course she’s bait.” How, she wondered, did that make it worse? “He walked her, dragged her, left a blood trail because he wanted to lead us—or me—to wherever she is. But he can’t be sure I’d be the one to find her.”

“He’d need a place where he could watch. If you’re the one who finds her, he takes or kills you there. If you’re not, he moves over to your location, does the same.”

“But . . . No, I see. He doesn’t need to abduct me, to string it out. He just needs to kill me. I’m Perry’s. I’m payment.” She stared straight ahead, spoke calmly. “We need to water the dogs.”

He crouched down with her to fill the bowl. “Fiona, you don’t have to be a cop or a shrink to figure out this guy’s gone over an edge. Once he slipped over, changed Perry’s agenda, method, criteria—whatever the hell—for his own, he went over.”

“Yes.”

“Starr had information, some she’d printed, some she probably was still trying to confirm. He probably knows they’ve got his name, his face, everything there is about him. He probably knows Perry turned on him.”

“Yes,” she said again. “And she’d have told him anything, I imagine, anything he wanted to know if he told her he’d let her live. Maybe he didn’t need to ask. He had her laptop, her phone. He knew the FBI was closing in.”

“Where does he go, Fiona? When he’s paid his debt to Perry, where does he go? How does he get off the island? Steal a boat? A car? How does he get through all the search teams to manage that? Long odds. Even if he did it, how does he get through more cops to get on the ferry or get a boat off the island?”

“He doesn’t.” She picked up the empty bowl, stowed it. “It’s not panic, it was never panic. Maybe, back in April when he rented the cabin he thought he could get to me, take care of it and move on, but all that changed when he took Starr. When he brought her here knowing I’d gone to see Perry, when he read her article. It ends with me, one way or the other. Maybe he tries to kill the dogs, and you. Maybe as many as he can manage. But he knows it ends with me.”

“Blaze of glory.”

“He’s never had it.” She took out the scent bag. “But he’s tasted it now. Starr gave it to him, so he made her part of it. This is Eckle,” she said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice as she freshened the scent. “Let’s find Eckle! Find him!”

As they started again, she turned up her radio, winced at the chatter and the demands that she respond.

“Let me do it.” Simon held out his hand. “You need to focus on the dogs.”

He was right. There wasn’t just one life on the line but many. Starr was either alive or she was dead—that depended on Eckle’s whim.

Her unit, her friends, they were subject to that whim, too. As Greg had been to Perry’s.

But for Eckle it had never been about her, she realized. Despite the taunts, the terrorizing. She was no more than an IOU, and his twisted sense of honor demanded he pay that debt before the ugly new life Perry had given him was finished.

“He’s cutting back east now.” She flagged the next alert. “If he keeps the direction, he’s going to cross into James’s sector. I need to—”

“I’ll do it. You missed that.” He took another flag, marked a discarded candy wrapper. “You’re letting yourself get distracted. Stop it.”

Right again, she thought, and paused for a moment. She shut her eyes, let herself hear, scent, feel.

Orcas was a small island, a lot of ground to cover, yes, but limited. If his goal was to lure her into a trap, he’d have to have cover, and a vantage point.

“His route had to cross with the route he took with Starr. Somewhere he has to cross it, or parallel, but crossing from this direction . . .”

She had the map in her head, but took the one from her backpack to study again. No chances.

“Perry took high ground when he killed Greg. That was another kind of payment.”

“Perry got caught, put in prison. I don’t think Eckle is looking at prison as an option.” Over Fiona’s shoulder, Simon scanned the map, the trails, the routes. “Neither does Tawney.”

“He’s got work to do first,” she murmured. “He’s traveled in an arc—a wide curve, rounding west, now rounding east. Taking himself away from Starr, moving back toward her. Not to her. That doesn’t make sense. But near enough to watch. Maybe even hear the dogs, the radios when they get close enough. And in this direction, he’s going to start running into houses, Gary and Sue’s farm.”

“I don’t have your sense of direction, but your place is before the farm. How far are we out?”

“From my . . .” Her breath caught. “My place. You said it before. My own backyard. He’s taken everyone, even Starr, from their own place—school, routine area, work. He’s never deviated from that.”

She gripped Simon’s hand as certainty, and urgency, coursed through her in fast streams.

“Not just the island, my home. It’s empty, my house, because I’m out here looking for him. Or maybe he knows I’m at your place. Either way, he’d have the woods for cover.”

“And if he could get you inside, a place to take that last stand. How far, Fiona?”

“Maybe a half mile. Less. It depends on how far he circles, which point he’s picked for his hide.” She scanned the shadows, pools of gray and green. “The wind’s picking up, and that’ll affect the scent cone. We’re going to be crossing into James and Lori’s sector if we keep going east. We have to make the dogs stay in the trees, even if the trail goes into the open. We have to keep them quiet. And once we contact base, we have to turn the radio off.”

He considered telling her to stay there, but she wouldn’t. Considered telling her they’d both stay where they were and give Tawney her best guess of Eckle’s location. He knew the answer to that, too, but gave it a shot.

“We stay here, call it in, give Tawney the information.”

“And if Eckle changes direction? We can’t tell them where he’s going until we’re sure. We can only theorize.”

“That’s what I figured. Take out your gun. It’s in your hand from this point on.” He took out the radio. “Mai, put Tawney on.”

“They’re alerting again.” Fiona moved forward to flag the location.

“He wants to talk to you.” Simon passed her the radio.

“This is Fee. Over.”

“Fiona, I want you to listen to me. Stay where you are. We’ve triangulated your route with the other two search teams. We believe he’s on your property, or close. We’re dispatching a unit to your house, and pulling officers off search to join you and your unit. Do you copy?”

“Yes, I copy, Agent Tawney. Do any of your men know this area, have dogs who are giving stronger and stronger alerts? We’re just crossing into Team One’s sector. I see one of their flags.”

Getting closer, she thought and her blood pumped hard.

“He crossed here, too, crossed the area where he took her. James and Lori could . . . He could kill them. Simon and I are approaching from what should be his blind side. Send the cavalry, please God, but we’re following the dogs. I have to turn off the radio. We can’t risk him hearing us.”

She turned it off, handed it to Simon. “James won’t hold back. He might argue with Lori and convince her to wait, but he won’t. Not when there’s a chance he could find Starr alive. And I can’t wait, Simon, and take the chance someone else I love gets killed because of a vendetta against me.”

“Who’s arguing?”

It settled her, she realized, that faint edge of irritation in his tone. “We need to leash the dogs. Keep them close. And quiet.”

She glanced up when thunder rumbled. “We’re going to lose the light. It’s nearly dusk anyway. The wind’s good cover. Rain would be better. But both are affecting the scent. We’re all going to be going on instinct soon.”

“I want you behind me. That’s my instinct,” he said before she could object. “I need you to respect it.”

“I’m the one with the gun,” she pointed out.

“That’s right.” He kissed her lightly. “And I’m the one who’s counting on you using it if you need to.”

They continued in silence through air that cooled with the wind. The rising surf of wind through the trees made good cover, and would—she hoped—mask their approach. But she couldn’t hear over it either. And every sigh and shake of the trees caused her heart to jump.

They used hand signals, for each other and the dogs.

They came to the edge of the clearing where Simon found the stump. She saw the young sapling he’d planted without telling her. It made her galloping heart calm.

She touched her fingertips to him, just a brush of thanks.

She spotted another flag, and when the dogs wanted to cross into the open, she ordered them back.

Her blood froze when she heard the crackle of the radio, but even as her gaze flew to Simon’s belt she realized it wasn’t theirs.

James, she thought. Closer than she’d realized. She couldn’t make out the words, not all of them, but the excited tone translated. As did the happy bark.

“They’ve found her,” she whispered.

And a shadow moved in the shadows.

Her breath stuttered in her throat. He’d been sitting behind a tree, she saw, on the far side of the clearing. And now he used the wind, the gloom, those first quick patters of rain to mask his movements.

Simon laid his hand over her mouth, leaned close to her ear.

“You stay here. You keep the dogs right here. I’m going to circle around, cut him off. Stay here,” he repeated. “He won’t get past me. Cops’ll be here in minutes.”

She wanted to argue; couldn’t risk it. She ordered her confused dogs with a down and stay, a firm, angry hand signal that had their heads drooping, their eyes casting up at her whining with hurt feelings.

The game wasn’t over. The prize was right there, lurking in the shadows. Her unexpected anger had them letting out low whines until she silenced them with a furious look, a jabbing finger.

Satisfied, she eased out a little to look, and saw the gun in Eckle’s hand. His head cocked to the side—listening—as he turned slowly in the direction Simon took.

She thought, very simply, No. And stepped out into the clearing.

She held the gun up and aimed. Cursed that it trembled as he completed the turn and looked into her eyes.

“Drop your gun, Francis, or I swear on every life you and Perry took, I’ll shoot you.” She would live with it, could live with it. Had to live with it.

“He told me not to underestimate you.” As she did, Eckle held the gun up and aimed. But it didn’t tremble. He smiled as he might at the unexpected appearance of a friend. “You know when I kill you, your partner will rush in this direction. Then I’ll kill him, too. His dog. Yours. Where’s your dog, Fiona?”

“Put the gun down. You know the police and the FBI are coming. They’re spread all over this area. You’ll never get through them.”

“But I’ve finally lived. In a few short months I’ve lived and experienced more than I did in all the years before. All those gray years. I hope Tawney’s with the ones who come. If I have a chance to take him, it would be like a parting gift for Perry.”

“He betrayed you.”

“But first he freed me. I wish we had more time, Fiona. Your hand’s trembling.”

“It won’t stop me.” She drew a breath in, prepared to kill.

Simon charged out of the trees, his body low and between hers and Eckle’s. He rammed Eckle’s right side, making Fiona think briefly, crazily, of a speeding train.

The gun fired, the bullet digging a trench in the soft earth an instant before the gun flew from Eckle’s hand.

She rushed forward, grabbed it. Even as she aimed both guns she heard James shouting, and thrashing through the brush. Just, she thought, as Eckle had predicted. When he broke through, she shoved the guns at him.

“Hold these.”

“Fee, Jesus. Jesus.”

She simply dropped down beside Simon as he viciously, methodically battered Eckle’s face with his fists.

“Stop. Stop that now.” She struggled for the firm, no-nonsense tone she used with misbehaving dogs, and nearly succeeded. “Simon, stop. He’s finished.”

He flicked one furious glance at her. “I told you to stay under cover. I told you he wouldn’t get past me.”

“And he didn’t.” She took one of his balled fists, the knuckles bruised and bloody, and laid it on her cheek as her dogs shoved against her. “I told them to stay, but they didn’t. We all protect each other. That’s how it works.”

She barely spared Eckle a glance. “Is she alive?” she asked James.

“Yeah. But I don’t know if she’s going to stay that way. She’s in bad shape. I have to get back to Lori. You scared the shit out of us.”

He, however, took a long study of Eckle’s battered, slack face. “You do nice work, Simon. Here.” He handed the guns back to Fiona. “I hear the cops, or feds. Whichever. We’ve got to get the victim out and to the hospital. We’re going to do some serious talking in the debriefing,” he added, then shoved through the brush.

“I didn’t know if you saw the gun,” she told Simon. “I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t take a chance.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t just blast away at you. What if he hadn’t wanted to chat for a minute?”

“I’d have shot him.” She put her own gun back in her holster, then Eckle’s in her belt. “Another fraction of a second . . . I’m glad I didn’t have to. Glad you broke his goddamn face instead.”

She let out a long breath, then crouched. “Good dogs! You’re such good dogs. You found Eckle.”

She had her arms around the dogs and her head on Simon’s chest when the cops rushed the clearing.

IT TOOK HOURS MORE, hours that seemed like days. Questions, reports, more questions, the briefing.

Mantz walked over to shake her hand. “I still say you’d make a good agent.”

“Maybe, but I’m really looking forward to the quiet life.”

“Good luck with it.” Bending, she petted Newman, who’d yet to leave Fiona’s side. “Good dog,” she said, and when Fiona cocked a brow, laughed. “I guess they’ve changed my mind about the species. See you around.”

From Tawney, she got a hug.

“Don’t wait until there’s trouble to come see me,” she murmured. “Because I’m done with trouble, but not with you.”

“You gave me a whole new patch of gray hair today. I’d say take care of yourself, but you already do. We’re going to need to do some follow-ups.”

“Anytime.”

“Go home.” He kissed her forehead. “Get some sleep.”

Since she nearly dozed off on the drive home she didn’t think that would be a problem.

“I’m going to have a shower, then I’m going to eat whatever’s in the refrigerator, then I’m going to sleep for twelve hours.”

“I’ve got a couple things to do, then we’ll both eat whatever’s in the fridge.”

She started out, stopped. “Would you check, see if there’s any update on Starr’s condition? I know it looks bad for her, but maybe . . . We hate losing one.”

“I’ll check. Have your shower.”

She wallowed in it, basked, lingered. Then, tying her wet hair back in a tail, pulled on cotton pants and a soft, faded tee. Comfort, she thought. She wanted nothing but comfort.

And the start, please God, of her quiet life.

She picked up the little penknife she’d set on her dresser, pressed it to her cheek. “You’d be happy for me,” she murmured. Setting it down, she studied herself in the mirror. She looked a little tired, she thought, but she didn’t look like hell.

She looked, she thought with a smile, free.

As she started downstairs, she frowned at the quick toot of a horn. She loved her friends, but God, she just wanted to eat and sleep. No more talk.

But she found Simon in the kitchen, alone with the dogs.

“Who was here?”

“When? Oh, James. I needed a hand with something. Here.” He shoved a cracker with a thin slice of cheese on top into her mouth.

“Good,” she managed over it. “More.”

He shoved a second in. “That’s it. Now you make your own. Here.” He pushed a glass of wine in her hand.

“Did you call the hospital?”

“She’s critical. Exposure, dehydration, shock. She’s got broken fingers, a broken jaw. There’s more. He had considerable time to pound on her, and he used it. She’s got a decent shot.”

“Okay.”

“Eckle’s got a few problems of his own.” He glanced at his own bandaged hands.

“He earned them.” She took those bandaged hands and made him mutter to himself when she kissed them.

“He was writing a book.”

“What?”

“You took a long shower,” Simon pointed out. “Davey filled in some blanks. She was, too. It looks like Eckle did some editing on hers, added some material.”

“God.” Closing her eyes, she pressed the wineglass to her brow. “You were right. He wanted to be someone.”

“Still does. According to Davey, he waived a lawyer and hasn’t shut up. He wants to talk, wants to give details. He’s proud of himself.”

“Proud.” She repeated the word, gave in to one shudder.

“And he’s finished. He’s done. Like Perry.”

“Yes.” She opened her eyes, lowered the glass. She thought of the prison walls, the bars, the guns, the guards. “He didn’t get that blaze of glory, not the kind he wanted. I think we should sit outside, watch the dogs, drink this wine, then eat like maniacs. Because we can.”

“Not yet. Bring the wine. I want to show you something.”

“Is it more food?”

He took her arm and pulled her into the dining room—where the table, she noted, was sadly empty of food. “Okay. I really hope you don’t want fun on the dining room table because I don’t think I’ve got it in me tonight. Now tomorrow—” She broke off as she spotted the wine cabinet. “Oh!”

She rounded the table in a flash. “Oh, it’s wonderful. The wood’s like chocolate silk and heavy cream. And the doors? Those are dogwoods. It’s just, oh . . .” She opened the doors, danced in place. “It’s just absolutely fabulous. Every detail. It’s charming and fun and beautiful.”

“It suits you.”

She spun around. “Is it mine? Oh my God, Simon—”

Before she could rush him, he held up a hand. “It depends. I’m thinking a trade. I’ll give it to you, but since it’s going to stay here, that means you stay, too.”

She opened her mouth, shut it again. Picked up the wine she’d set on the table, sipped. “I can have the cabinet if I live here, with you?”

“I’m the one who lives here, so yeah, with me. This house is bigger than yours. You’ve got the woods, but I’ve got the woods and the beach. The dogs have more room. And I need my shop.”

“Hmmm.”

“You can keep doing your classes here, or you can move them back. Keep the house for the business. Or sell it. Or rent it out. But if you want that, you stay.”

“That’s some interesting bartering.”

“You started it.” He slid his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “I figure we got through some of the worst anybody gets through. And here we are. I don’t see the point in wasting time. So, you want the cabinet, you live here. We should probably get married.”

She choked, managed to swallow the wine. “We should probably?”

“I’m not coming up with some fancy proposal.”

“How about something between we-should-probably and fancy?”

“Do you want to get married?”

Now she laughed. “I guess that’s between. Well, I want the cabinet. I want you. So . . . yeah, I guess I want to get married.”

“It’s a good deal,” he said as he stepped to her.

“It’s a very good deal.” She laid her hands on his cheeks. “Simon.”

He pressed his lips to her right palm, then the left. “I love you.”

“I know.” She slid into his arms. “It’s the best feeling in the world, knowing. And every time I look at that cabinet, put a glass in, take a bottle out, I’ll know it. It’s an incredible gift.”

“It’s a trade.”

“Of course.” She laid her lips on his, lingered.

She was free, she thought, and she was loved. And she was home.

“Let’s go tell the boys,” she murmured.

“Right. I’m sure they’ll want champagne and cigars.” Still he took her hand to walk out. “Let’s make it fast. I’m starving.”

He made her laugh, and that, she thought, was another very good deal.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

INITIAL ATTACK

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

EXTENDED ATTACK

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

BLOW UP

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

ALSO BY NORA ROBERTS

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

Sanctuary

Homeport

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

The Reef

River’s End

Jewels of the Sun

Carolina Moon

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

The Villa

From the Heart

Midnight Bayou

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

Chesapeake Blue

Birthright

Remember When

(with J. D. Robb)

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

Northern Lights

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Blue Smoke

Red Lily

Angels Fall

Morrigan’s Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

High Noon

Tribute

Black Hills

Vision in White

Bed of Roses

Savor the Moment

The Search

Happy Ever After

WRITING AS J. D. ROBB

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

Kindred in Death

Fantasy in Death

Indulgence in Death

Treachery in Death

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

NEW YORK

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson

Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) •

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2011 by Nora Roberts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Nora.

Chasing fire / Nora Roberts.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-51378-1

1. Women firefighters—Fiction. 2. Montana—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.O243C

813’.54222

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Bruce

For understanding me,

and loving me anyway

INITIAL ATTACK

Soon kindled and soon burnt.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1

Caught in the crosshairs of wind above the Bitterroots, the jump ship fought to find its stream. Fire boiling over the land jabbed its fists up through towers of smoke as if trying for a knockout punch.

From her seat Rowan Tripp angled to watch a seriously pissed-off Mother Nature’s big show. In minutes she’d be inside it, enclosed in the mad world of searing heat, leaping flames, choking smoke. She’d wage war with shovel and saw, grit and guile. A war she didn’t intend to lose.

Her stomach bounced along with the plane, a sensation she’d taught herself to ignore. She’d flown all of her life, and had fought wildfires every season since her eighteenth birthday. For the last half of those eight years she’d jumped fire.

She’d studied, trained, bled and burned—outwilled pain and exhaustion to become a Zulie. A Missoula smoke jumper.

She stretched out her long legs as best she could for a moment, rolled her shoulders under her pack to keep them loose.

Beside her, her jump partner watched as she did. His fingers did a fast tap dance on his thighs. “She looks mean.”

“We’re meaner.”

He shot her a fast, toothy grin. “Bet your ass.”

Nerves. She could all but feel them riding along his skin.

Near the end of his first season, Rowan thought, and Jim Brayner needed to pump himself up before a jump. Some always would, she decided, while others caught short catnaps to bank sleep against the heavy withdrawals to come.

She was first jump on this load, and Jim would be right behind her. If he needed a little juice, she’d supply it.

“Kick her ass, more like. It’s the first real bitch we’ve jumped in a week.” She gave him an easy elbow jab. “Weren’t you the one who kept saying the season was done?”

He tapped those busy fingers on his thighs to some inner rhythm. “Nah, that was Matt,” he insisted, grin still wide as he deflected the claim onto his brother.

“That’s what you get with a couple Nebraska farm boys. Don’t you have a hot date tomorrow night?”

“My dates are always hot.”

She couldn’t argue, as she’d seen Jim snag women like rainbow trout anytime the unit had pulled a night off to kick it up in town. He’d hit on her, she remembered, about two short seconds after he’d arrived on base. Still, he’d been good-natured about her shutdown. She’d implemented a firm policy against dating within the unit.

Otherwise, she might’ve been tempted. He had that open, innocent face offset by the quick grin, and the gleam in the eye. For fun, she thought, for a careless pop of the cork out of the lust bottle. For serious—even if she’d been looking for serious—he’d never do the trick. Though they were the same age, he was just too young, too fresh off the farm—and maybe just a little too sweet under the thin layer of green that hadn’t burned off quite yet.

“Which girl’s going to bed sad and lonely if you’re still dancing with the dragon?” she asked him.

“Lucille.”

“That’s the little one—with the giggle.”

His fingers tapped, tapped, tapped on his knee. “She does more than giggle.”

“You’re a dog, Romeo.”

He tipped back his head, let out a series of sharp barks that made her laugh.

“Make sure Dolly doesn’t find out you’re out howling,” she commented. She knew—everyone knew—he’d been banging one of the base cooks like a drum all season.

“I can handle Dolly.” The tapping picked up pace. “Gonna handle Dolly.”

Okay, Rowan thought, something bent out of shape there, which was why smart people didn’t bang or get banged by people they worked with.

She gave him a little nudge because those busy fingers concerned her. “Everything okay with you, farm boy?”

His pale blue eyes met hers for an instant, then shifted away while his knees did a bounce under those drumming fingers. “No problems here. It’s going to be smooth sailing like always. I just need to get down there.”

She put a hand over his to still it. “You need to keep your head in the game, Jim.”

“It’s there. Right there. Look at her, swishing her tail,” he said. “Once us Zulies get down there, she won’t be so sassy. We’ll put her down, and I’ll be making time with Lucille tomorrow night.”

Unlikely, Rowan thought to herself. Her aerial view of the fire put her gauge at a solid two days of hard, sweaty work.

And that was if things went their way.

Rowan reached for her helmet, nodded toward their spotter. “Getting ready. Stay chilly, farm boy.”

“I’m ice.”

Cards—so dubbed as he carried a pack everywhere—wound his way through the load of ten jumpers and equipment to the rear of the plane, attached the tail of his harness to the restraining line.

Even as Cards shouted out the warning to guard their reserves, Rowan hooked her arm over hers. Cards, a tough-bodied vet, pulled the door open to a rush of wind tainted with smoke and fuel. As he reached for the first set of streamers, Rowan set her helmet over her short crown of blond hair, strapped it, adjusted her face mask.

She watched the streamers doing their colorful dance against the smoke-stained sky. Their long strips kicked in the turbulence, spiraled toward the southwest, seemed to roll, to rise, then caught another bounce before whisking into the trees.

Cards called, “Right!” into his headset, and the pilot turned the plane.

The second set of streamers snapped out, spun like a kid’s wind-up toy. The strips wrapped together, pulled apart, then dropped onto the tree-flanked patch of the jump site.

“The wind line’s running across that creek, down to the trees and across the site,” Rowan said to Jim.

Over her, the spotter and pilot made more adjustments, and another set of streamers snapped out into the slipstream.

“It’s got a bite to it.”

“Yeah. I saw.” Jim swiped the back of his hand over his mouth before strapping on his helmet and mask.

“Take her to three thousand,” Cards shouted.

Jump altitude. As first man, first stick, Rowan rose to take position. “About three hundred yards of drift,” she shouted to Jim, repeating what she’d heard Cards telling the pilot. “But there’s that bite. Don’t get caught downwind.”

“Not my first party.”

She saw his grin behind the bars of his face mask—confident, even eager. But something in his eyes, she thought. Just for a flash. She started to speak again, but Cards, already in position to the right of the door, called out, “Are you ready?”

“We’re ready,” she called back.

“Hook up.”

Rowan snapped the static line in place.

“Get in the door!”

She dropped to sitting, legs out in the wicked slipstream, body leaning back. Everything roared. Below her extended legs, fire ran in vibrant red and gold.

There was nothing but the moment, nothing but the wind and fire and the twist of exhilaration and fear that always, always surprised her.

“Did you see the streamers?”

“Yeah.”

“You see the spot?”

She nodded, bringing both into her head, following those colorful strips to the target.

Cards repeated what she’d told Jim, almost word for word. She only nodded again, eyes on the horizon, letting her breath come easy, visualizing herself flying, falling, navigating the sky down to the heart of the jump spot.

She went through her four-point check as the plane completed its circle and leveled out.

Cards pulled his head back in. “Get ready.”

Ready-steady, her father said in her head. She grabbed both sides of the door, sucked in a breath.

And when the spotter’s hand slapped her shoulder, she launched herself into the sky.

Nothing she knew topped that one instant of insanity, hurling herself into the void. She counted off in her mind, a task as automatic as breathing, and rolled in that charged sky to watch the plane fly past. She caught sight of Jim, hurtling after her.

Again, she turned her body, fighting the drag of wind until her feet were down. With a yank and jerk, her canopy burst open. She scouted out Jim again, felt a tiny pop of relief when she saw his chute spread against the empty sky. In that pocket of eerie silence, beyond the roar of the plane, above the voice of the fire, she gripped her steering toggles.

The wind wanted to drag her north, and was pretty insistent about it. Rowan was just as insistent on staying on the course she’d mapped out in her head. She watched the ground as she steered against the frisky crosscurrent that pinched its fingers on her canopy, doing its best to circle her into the tailwind.

The turbulence that had caught the streamers struck her in gusty slaps while the heat pumped up from the burning ground. If the wind had its way, she’d overshoot the jump spot, fly into the verge of trees, risk a hang-up. Or worse, it could shove her west, and into the flames.

She dragged hard on her toggle, glanced over in time to see Jim catch the downwind and go into a spin.

“Pull right! Pull right!”

“I got it! I got it.”

But to her horror, he pulled left.

“Right, goddamn it!”

She had to turn for her final, and the pleasure of a near seamless slide into the glide path drowned in sheer panic. Jim soared west, helplessly towed by a horizontal canopy.

Rowan hit the jump site, rolled. She gained her feet, slapped her release. And heard it as she stood in the center of the blaze.

She heard her jump partner’s scream.

THE SCREAM followed her as she shot up in bed, echoed in her head as she sat huddled in the dark.

Stop, stop, stop! she ordered herself. And dropped her head on her updrawn knees until she got her breath back.

No point in it, she thought. No point in reliving it, in going over all the details, all the moments, or asking herself, again, if she could’ve done just one thing differently.

Asking herself why Jim hadn’t followed her drop into the jump spot. Why he’d pulled the wrong toggle. Because, goddamn it, he’d pulled the wrong toggle.

And had flown straight into the towers and lethal branches of those burning trees.

Months ago now, she reminded herself. She’d had the long winter to get past it. And thought she had.

Being back on base triggered it, she admitted, and rubbed her hands over her face, back over the hair she’d had cut into a short, maintenance-free cap only days before.

Fire season was nearly on them. Refresher training started in a couple short hours. Memories, regrets, grief—they were bound to pay a return visit. But she needed sleep, another hour before she got up, geared up for the punishing three-mile run.

She was damn good at willing herself to sleep, anyplace, anytime. Coyote-ing in a safe zone during a fire, on a shuddering jump plane. She knew how to eat and sleep when the need and opportunity opened.

But when she closed her eyes again, she saw herself back on the plane, turning toward Jim’s grin.

Knowing she had to shake it off, she shoved out of bed. She’d grab a shower, some caffeine, stuff in some carbs, then do a light workout to warm up for the physical training test.

It continued to baffle her fellow jumpers that she never drank coffee unless it was her only choice. She liked the cold and sweet. After she’d dressed, Rowan hit her stash of Cokes, grabbed an energy bar. She took both outside where the sky was still shy of first light and the air stayed chill in the early spring of western Montana.

In the vast sky stars blinked out, little candles snuffed. She pulled the dark and quiet around her, found some comfort in it. In an hour, give or take, the base would wake, and testosterone would flood the air.

Since she generally preferred the company of men, for conversation, for companionship, she didn’t mind being outnumbered by them. But she prized her quiet time, those little pieces of alone that became rare and precious during the season. Next best thing to sleep before a day filled with pressure and stress, she thought.

She could tell herself not to worry about the run, remind herself she’d been vigilant about her PT all winter, was in the best shape of her life—and it didn’t mean a damn.

Anything could happen. A turned ankle, a mental lapse, a sudden, debilitating cramp. Or she could just have a bad run. Others had. Sometimes they came back from it, sometimes they didn’t.

And a negative attitude wasn’t going to help. She chowed down on the energy bar, gulped caffeine into her system and watched the day eke its first shimmer over the rugged, snow-tipped western peaks.

When she ducked into the gym minutes later, she noted her alone time was over.

“Hey, Trigger.” She nodded to the man doing crunches on a mat. “What do you know?”

“I know we’re all crazy. What the hell am I doing here, Ro? I’m forty-fucking-three years old.”

She unrolled a mat, started her stretches. “If you weren’t crazy, weren’t here, you’d still be forty-fucking-three.”

At six-five, barely making the height restrictions, Trigger Gulch was a lean, mean machine with a west Texas twang and an affection for cowboy boots.

He huffed through a quick series of pulsing crunches. “I could be lying on a beach in Waikiki.”

“You could be selling real estate in Amarillo.”

“I could do that.” He mopped his face, pointed at her. “Nine-to-five the next fifteen years, then retire to that beach in Waikiki.”

“Waikiki’s full of people, I hear.”

“Yeah, that’s the damn trouble.” He sat up, a good-looking man with gray liberally salted through his brown hair, and a scar snaked on his left knee from a meniscus repair. He smiled at her as she lay on her back, pulled her right leg up and toward her nose. “Looking good, Ro. How was your fat season?”

“Busy.” She repeated the stretch on her left leg. “I’ve been looking forward to coming back, getting me some rest.”

He laughed at that. “How’s your dad?”

“Good as gold.” Rowan sat up, then folded her long, curvy body in two. “Gets a little wistful this time of year.” She closed ice-blue eyes and pulled her flexed feet back toward the crown of her head. “He misses the start-up, everybody coming back, but the business doesn’t give him time to brood.”

“Even people who aren’t us like to jump out of planes.”

“Pay good money for it, too. Had a good one last week.” She spread her legs in a wide vee, grabbed her toes and again bent forward. “Couple celebrated their fiftieth anniversary with a jump. Gave me a bottle of French champagne as a tip.”

Trigger sat where he was, watching as she pushed to her feet to begin the first sun salutation. “Are you still teaching that hippie class?”

Rowan flowed from Up Dog to Down Dog, turned her head to shoot Trigger a pitying look. “It’s yoga, old man, and yeah, I’m still doing some personal trainer work off-season. Helps keep the lard out of my ass. How about you?”

“I pile the lard on. It gives me more to burn off when the real work starts.”

“If this season’s as slow as last, we’ll all be sitting on fat asses. Have you seen Cards? He doesn’t appear to have turned down any second helpings this winter.”

“Got a new woman.”

“No shit.” Looser, she picked up the pace, added lunges.

“He met her in the frozen food section of the grocery store in October, and moved in with her for New Year’s. She’s got a couple kids. Schoolteacher.”

“Schoolteacher, kids? Cards?” Rowan shook her head. “Must be love.”

“Must be something. He said the woman and the kids are coming out maybe late July, maybe spend the rest of the summer.”

“That sounds serious.” She shifted to a twist, eyeing Trigger as she held the position. “She must be something. Still, he’d better see how she handles a season. It’s one thing to hook up with a smoke jumper in the winter, and another to stick through the summer. Families crack like eggs,” she added, then wished she hadn’t as Matt Brayner stepped in.

She hadn’t seen him since Jim’s funeral, and though she’d spoken with his mother a few times, hadn’t been sure he’d come back.

He looked older, she thought, more worn around the eyes and mouth. And heartbreakingly like his brother with the floppy mop of bleached wheat hair, the pale blue eyes. His gaze tracked from Trigger, met hers. She wondered what the smile cost him.

“How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.” She straightened, wiped her palms on the thighs of her workout pants. “Just sweating off some nerves before the PT test.”

“I thought I’d do the same. Or just screw it and go into town and order a double stack of pancakes.”

“We’ll get ’em after the run.” Trigger walked over, held out a hand. “Good to see you, Hayseed.”

“You too.”

“I’m going for coffee. They’ll be loading us up before too long.”

As Trigger went out, Matt walked over, picked up a twenty-pound weight. Put it down again. “I guess it’s going to be weird, for a while anyway. Seeing me makes everybody . . . think.”

“Nobody’s going to forget. I’m glad you’re back.”

“I don’t know if I am, but I couldn’t seem to do anything else. Anyway. I wanted to say thanks for keeping in touch with my ma the way you have. It means a lot to her.”

“I wish . . . Well, if wishes were horses I’d have a rodeo. I’m glad you’re back. See you at the van.”

SHE UNDERSTOOD Matt’s sentiment, couldn’t seem to do anything else. It would sum up the core feelings of the men, and four women including herself, who piled into vans for the ride out to the start of the run for their jobs. She settled in, letting the ragging and bragging flow over her.

A lot of insults about winter weight, and the ever-popular lard-ass remarks. She closed her eyes, tried to let herself drift as the nerves riding under the good-natured bullshit winging around the van wanted to reach inside and shake hands with her own.

Janis Petrie, one of the four females in the unit, dropped down beside her. Her small, compact build had earned her the nickname Elf, and she looked like a perky head cheerleader.

This morning, her nails sported bright pink polish and her shiny brown hair bounced in a tail tied with a circle of butterflies.

She was pretty as a gumdrop, tended to giggle, and could—and did—work a saw line for fourteen hours straight.

“Ready to rock, Swede?”

“And roll. Why would you put on makeup before this bitch of a test?”

Janis fluttered her long, lush lashes. “So these poor guys’ll have something pretty to look at when they stumble over the finish line. Seeing as I’ll be there first.”

“You are pretty damn fast.”

“Small but mighty. Did you check out the rookies?”

“Not yet.”

“Six of our kind in there. Maybe we’ll add enough women for a nice little sewing circle. Or a book club.”

Rowan laughed. “And after, we’ll have a bake sale.”

“Cupcakes. Cupcakes are my weakness. It’s such pretty country.” Janis leaned forward a little to get a clearer view out the window. “I always miss it when I’m gone, always wonder what I’m doing living in the city doing physical therapy on country club types with tennis elbow.”

She blew out a breath. “Then by July I’ll be wondering what I’m doing out here, strung out on no sleep, hurting everywhere, when I could be taking my lunch break at the pool.”

“It’s a long way from Missoula to San Diego.”

“Damn right. You don’t have that pull-tug. You live here. For most of us, this is coming home. Until we finish the season and go home, then that feels like home. It can cross up the circuits.”

She rolled her warm brown eyes toward Rowan as the van stopped. “Here we go again.”

Rowan climbed out of the van, drew in the air. It smelled good, fresh and new. Spring, the kind with green and wildflowers and balmy breezes, wouldn’t be far off now. She scouted the flags marking the course as the base manager, Michael Little Bear, laid out requirements.

His long black braid streamed down his bright red jacket. Rowan knew there’d be a roll of Life Savers in the pocket, a substitute for the Marlboros he’d quit over the winter.

L.B. and his family lived a stone’s throw from the base, and his wife worked for Rowan’s father.

Everyone knew the rules. Run the course, and get it done in under 22:30, or walk away. Try it again in a week. Fail that? Find a new summer job.

Rowan stretched out—hamstrings, quads, calves.

“I hate this shit.”

“You’ll make it.” She gave him an elbow in the belly. “Think of a meat-lover’s pizza waiting for you on the other side of the line.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“The size it is now? That’d take me a while.”

He snorted out a laugh as they lined up.

She calmed herself. Got in her head, got in her body, as L.B. walked back to the van. When the van took off, so did the line. Rowan hit the timer button on her watch, merged with the pack. She knew every one of them—had worked with them, sweated with them, risked her life with them. And she wished them—every one—good luck and a good run.

But for the next twenty-two and thirty, it was every man—and woman—for himself.

She dug in, kicked up her pace and ran for, what was in a very large sense, her life. She made her way through the pack and, as others did, called out encouragement or jibes, whatever worked best to kick asses into gear. She knew there would be knees aching, chests hammering, stomachs churning. Spring training would have toned some, added insult to injuries on others.

She couldn’t think about it. She focused on mile one, and when she passed the marker, noted her time at 4:12.

Mile two, she ordered herself, and kept her stride smooth, her pace steady—even when Janis passed her with a grim smile. The burn rose up from her toes to her ankles, flowed up her calves. Sweat ran hot down her back, down her chest, over her galloping heart.

She could slow her pace—her time was good—but the stress of imagined stumbles, turned ankles, a lightning strike from beyond, pushed her.

Don’t let up.

When she passed mile two she’d moved beyond the burn, the sweat, into the mindless. One more mile. She passed some, was passed by others, while her pulse pounded in her ears. As before a jump, she kept her eyes on the horizon—land and sky. Her love of both whipped her through the final mile.

She blew past the last marker, heard L.B. call out her name and time. Tripp, fifteen-twenty. And ran another twenty yards before she could convince her legs it was okay to stop.

Bending from the waist, she caught her breath, squeezed her eyes tightly shut. As always after the PT test she wanted to weep. Not from the effort. She—all of them—faced worse, harder, tougher. But the stress clawing at her mind finally retracted.

She could continue to be what she wanted to be.

She walked off the run, tuning in now as other names and times were called out. She high-fived with Trigger as he crossed three miles.

Everyone who passed stayed on the line. A unit again, all but willing the rest to make it, make that time. She checked her watch, saw the deadline coming up, and four had yet to cross.

Cards, Matt, Yangtree, who’d celebrated—or mourned—his fiftyfourth birthday the month before, and Gibbons, whose bad knee had him nearly hobbling those last yards.

Cards wheezed in with three seconds to spare, with Yangtree right behind him. Gibbons’s face was a sweat-drenched study in pain and grit, but Matt? It seemed to Rowan he barely pushed.

His eyes met hers. She pumped her fist, imagined herself dragging him and Gibbons over the last few feet while the seconds counted down. She swore she could see the light come on, could see Matt reaching in, digging down.

He hit at 22:28, with Gibbons stumbling over a half second behind.

The cheer rose then, the triumph of one more season.

“Guess you two wanted to add a little suspense.” L.B. lowered his clipboard. “Welcome back. Take a minute to bask, then let’s get loaded.”

“Hey, Ro!” She glanced over at Cards’s shout, in time to see him turn, bend over and drop his pants. “Pucker up!”

And we’re back, she thought.

2

Gulliver Curry rolled out of his sleeping bag and took stock. Everything hurt, he decided. But that made a workable balance.

He smelled snow, and a look out of his tent showed him, yes, indeed, a couple fresh inches had fallen overnight. His breath streamed out in clouds as he pulled on pants. The blisters on his blisters made dressing for the day an . . . experience.

Then again, he valued experience.

The day before, he, along with twenty-five other recruits, had dug fire line for fourteen hours, then topped off that little task with a three-mile hike, carrying an eighty-five-pound pack.

They’d felled trees with crosscut saws, hiked, dug, sharpened tools, dug, hiked, scaled the towering pines, then dug some more.

Summer camp for the masochist, he thought. Otherwise known as rookie training for smoke jumpers. Four recruits had already washed out—two of them hadn’t gotten past the initial PT test. His seven years’ fire experience, the last four on a hotshot crew, gave Gull some advantage.

But that didn’t mean he felt fresh as a rosebud.

He rubbed a hand over his face, scratching his palm over bristles from nearly a week without a razor. God, he wanted a hot shower, a shave and an ice-cold beer. Tonight, after a fun-filled hike through the Bitterroots, this time hauling a hundred-and-ten-pound pack, he’d get all three.

And tomorrow, he’d start the next phase. Tomorrow he’d start learning how to fly.

Hotshots trained like maniacs, worked like dogs, primarily on highpriority wilderness fires. But they didn’t jump out of planes. That, he thought, added a whole new experience. He shoved a hand through his thick mass of dark hair, then crawled out of the tent into the crystal snowscape of predawn.

His eyes, feline green, tracked up to check the sky, and he stood for a moment in the still, tall and tough in his rough brown pants and bright yellow shirt. He had what he wanted here—or pieces of it—the knowledge that he could do what he’d come to do.

He measured the height of the ponderosa pine to his left. Ninety feet, give or take. He’d walked up that bastard the day before, biting his gaffs into bark. And from that height, hooked with spikes and harness, he’d gazed out over the forest.

An experience.

Through the scent of snow and pine, he headed toward the cook tent as the camp began to stir. And despite the aches, the blisters—maybe because of them—he looked forward to what the day would bring.

Shortly after noon, Gull watched the lodgepole pine topple. He shoved his hard hat back enough to wipe sweat off his forehead and nodded to his partner on the crosscut saw.

“Another one bites the dust.”

Dobie Karstain barely made the height requirement at five six. His beard and stream of dung brown hair gave him the look of a pint-sized mountain man, while the safety goggles seemed to emphasize the wild, wide eyes.

Dobie hefted a chain saw. “Let’s cut her into bite-sized pieces.”

They worked rhythmically. Gull had figured Dobie for a washout, but the native Kentuckian was stronger, and sturdier, than he looked. He liked Dobie well enough—despite the man’s distinctly red neck—and was working on reaching a level of trust.

If Dobie made it through, odds were they’d be sawing and digging together again. Not on a bright, clear spring afternoon, but in the center of fire where trust and teamwork were as essential as a sharp Pulaski, the two-headed tool with ax and grub hoe.

“Wouldn’t mind tapping that before she folds.”

Gull glanced over at one of the female recruits. “What makes you think she’ll fold?”

“Women ain’t built for this work, son.”

Gull drew the blade of the saw through the pine. “Just for babymaking, are they?”

Dobie grinned through his beard. “I didn’t design the model. I just like riding ’em.”

“You’re an asshole, Dobie.”

“Some say,” Dobie agreed in the same good-natured tone.

Gull studied the woman again. Perky blond, maybe an inch or two shy of Dobie’s height. And from his point of view, she’d held up as well as any of them. Ski instructor out of Colorado, he recalled. Libby. He’d seen her retaping her blisters that morning.

“I got twenty says she makes it all the way.”

Dobie chuckled as another log rolled. “I’ll take your twenty, son.”

When they finished their assignment, Gull retaped some of his own blisters. Then, as the instructors were busy, taped Dobie’s fresh ones.

They moved through the camp to their waiting packs. Three miles to go, Gull thought, then he’d end this fine day with that shave, shower and cold beer.

He sat, strapped on the pack, then pulled out a pack of gum. He offered a stick to Dobie.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Together they rolled over to their hands and knees, then pushed to standing.

“Just imagine you’re carrying a pretty little woman,” Dobie advised, with a wiggle of eyebrows in Libby’s direction.

“A buck-ten’s pretty scrawny for my taste.”

“She’ll feel like more by the time we’re done.”

No question about it, Gull mused, and the instructor didn’t set what you’d call a meandering pace along the rocky, quad-burning trail.

They pushed one another, that’s how it was done. Ragged one another, encouraged one another, insulted one another, to get the group another step, another yard. The spurring fact was, in a few weeks it would be real. And on the fire line everyone’s life depended on the other.

“What do you do back in Kentucky?” Gull asked Dobie while a hawk screamed overhead and the smell of group sweat competed with pine.

“Some of this, some of that. Last three seasons I doused fires in the national forest. One night after we beat one down, I got a little drunk, took a bet how I’d be a smoke jumper. So I got an application, and here I am.”

“You’re doing this on a bet?” The idea just appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.

“Hundred dollars on the line, son. And my pride that’s worth more. You ever jump out of a plane?”

“Yeah.”

“Takes the crazy.”

“Some might say.” Gull passed Dobie’s earlier words back to him.

“What’s it feel like? When you’re falling?”

“Like hot, screaming sex with a beautiful woman.”

“I was hoping.” Dobie shifted his pack, winced. “Because this fucking training better be worth it.”

“Libby’s holding up.”

“Who?”

Gull lifted his chin. “Your most recent bet.”

Dobie gritted his teeth as they started up yet another incline. “Day’s not over.”

By the time it was, Gull got his shower, his shave, and managed to grab a brew before falling facedown on his bunk.

MICHAEL LITTLE BEAR snagged Rowan on her way into the gym. “I need you to take rookie training this morning. Cards was on it, but he’s puking up his guts in the john.”

“Hangover?”

“No. Stomach flu or something. I need you to run them on the playground. Okay?”

“Sure. I’m already on with Yangtree, on the slam-ulator. I can make a day eating rooks. How many do we have?”

“Twenty-five left, and they look pretty damn good. One beat the base record on the mile-and-a-half course. Nailed it in six-thirty-nine.”

“Fast feet. We’ll see how the rest of him does today.”

She knocked thirty minutes off her planned ninety in the gym. Taking the recruits over the obstacle course would make up for it, and meant she’d just skated out of a stint sewing personal gear bags in the manufacturing room.

Damn good deal, Rowan thought as she put on her boots.

She grabbed the paperwork, a clipboard, a water bottle and, fixing a blue ball cap on her head, headed outside.

Clouds had rolled in overnight and tucked the warm in nicely. Activity swarmed the base—runners on the track or the road, trucks off-loaded supplies, men and women crossed from building to building. A plane taxied out taking a group up for a preseason practice jump.

Long before the fire siren screamed, work demanded attention. Sewing, stuffing, disassembling equipment, training, packing chutes.

She started toward the training field, pausing when she crossed paths with Matt.

“What’re you on?” he asked her.

“Rook detail. Cards is down with some stomach deal. You?”

“I’m up this afternoon.” He glanced skyward as the jump plane rose into the air. “I’m in the loadmaster’s room this morning.” He smiled. “Want to trade?”

“Hmm, stuck inside loading supplies or out here torturing rookies? No deal.”

“Figured.”

She continued on, noting the trainees were starting to gather on the field. They’d come in from a week of camping and line work, and if they had any brains would’ve focused on getting a good night’s sleep.

Those who had would probably feel pretty fresh this morning.

She’d soon take care of that.

A few of them wandered the obstacle course, trying to get a gauge. Smart, she judged. Know your enemy. Voices and laughter carried on the air. Pumping themselves up—and that was smart, too.

The obstacle course was a bitch of the first order, and it was only the start of a long, brutal day. She checked her watch as she moved through the wooden platforms, took her place on the field.

She took a swig from her water bottle, then set it aside. And let out a long, shrill whistle. “Line up,” she called out. “I’m Rowan Tripp, your instructor on this morning’s cakewalk. Each of you will be required to complete this course before moving on to the next exercise. The campfire songs and roasted marshmallows of the last week are over. It’s time to get serious.”

She got a few moans, a few chuckles, some nervous glances as she sized up the group. Twenty-one men, four women, different sizes, shapes, colors, ages. Her job was to give them one purpose.

Work through the pain.

She consulted her clipboard, did roll call, checked off the names of those who’d made it this far. “I hear one of you rooks beat the base record on the mile-and-a-half. Who’s the flash?”

“Go, Gull!” somebody shouted, and she watched the little guy elbow bump the man next to him.

About six-two, she judged, dark hair clean and shaggy, cocky smile, easy stance. “Gull Curry,” he said. “I like to run.”

“Good for you. Speed won’t get you through the playground. Stretch out, recruits. I don’t want anybody crying about pulled muscles.”

They’d already formed a unit, she determined, and the smaller connections within it. Friendships, rivalries—both could be useful.

“Fifty push-ups,” she ordered, noting them down as they were completed.

“I’m going to lead you over this course, starting here.” She gestured at the low platform of horizontal squares, moved on to the steep steel walls they’d need to hurdle, the ropes they’d climb, hand over hand, the trampoline flips, the ramps.

“Every one of these obstacles simulates something you will face during a fire. Get one done, hit the next. Drop out? You’re done. Finish it, you might just be good enough to jump fire.”

“Not exactly Saint Crispin’s Day.”

“Who?” Dobie asked at Gull’s mutter.

He only shrugged, and figured by the sidelong glance the bombshell blonde sent him, she’d heard the remark.

“You, Fast Feet, take the lead. The rest of you, fall in behind him. Single file. If you fall, get your ass out of the way, pick up the rear for a second shot.”

She pulled a stopwatch out of her pocket. “Are you ready?”

The group shouted back, and Rowan hit the timer. “Go!”

Okay, Rowan thought, fast feet and nimble feet.

“Pick up those knees!” she shouted. “Let’s see some energy. For Christ’s sake, you look like a bunch of girls strolling in the park.”

“I am a girl!” a steely-eyed blonde shouted back, and made Rowan grin.

“Then pick up those knees. Pretend you’re giving one of these assholes a shot in the balls.”

She kept pace with Gull, jogging back as he raced for, charged up, then hurdled the first ramp.

Then the little guy surprised her by all but launching over it like a cannon.

They climbed, hurdled, crawled, clawed. L.B. was right, she decided. They were a damn good group.

She watched Gull execute the required flips and rolls on the tramp, heard the little guy—she needed to check his name—let out a wild yeehaw as he did the same.

Fast feet, she thought again, still in the lead, and damned if he didn’t go up the rope like a monkey on a vine.

The blonde had made up ground, but when she hit the rope, she not only stalled, but started to slip.

“Don’t you slide!” Rowan shouted it out, put a whiplash into it. “Don’t you slide, Barbie, goddamn it, and embarrass me. Do you want to start this mother over?”

“No. God, no.”

“Do you want to jump fire or go back home and shop for shoes?”

“Both!”

“Climb it.” Rowan saw the blood on the rope. A slide ripped the skin right off the palms, and the pain was huge. “Climb!”

She climbed, forty torturous feet.

“Get down, move on. Go! Go!”

She climbed down, and when she hurdled the next wall, left a bloodstain on the ramp.

But she did it. They all did, Rowan thought, and gave them a moment to wheeze, to moan, to rub out sore muscles.

“Not bad. Next time you have to climb a rope or scale a wall it might be because the wind shifted and fire just washed over your safe zone. You’ll want to do better than not bad. What’s your name—I’m a Girl Barbie?”

“Libby.” The blonde rested her bloody hands on her knees, palms up. “Libby Rydor.”

“Anybody who can climb up a rope when her hands are bleeding did better than not bad.” Rowan opened the first-aid kit. “Let’s fix them up. If anybody else got any boo-boos, tend to them, then head in, get your gear. Full gear,” she added, “for practice landings. You got thirty.”

Gull watched her apply salve to Libby’s palms, competently bandage them. She said something that made Libby—and those hands had to hurt—laugh.

She’d pushed the group through the course, hitting the right combination of callous insult and nagging. And she’d zeroed in on a few as they’d had trouble, found the right thing to say at the right time.

That was an impressive skill, one he admired.

He could add it to his admiration of the rest of her.

That blonde was built, all maybe five feet ten inches of her. His uncle would have dubbed her statuesque, Gull mused. Himself? He just had to say that body was a killer. Add big, heavy-lidded blue eyes and a face that made a man want to look twice, then maybe linger a little longer for a third time, and you had a hell of a package.

A package with attitude. And God, he had a hard time resisting attitude. So he stalled until she crossed the field, then fell into step beside her.

“How are Libby’s hands?”

“She’ll be okay. Everybody loses a little skin on the playground.”

“Did you?”

“If you don’t bleed, how do they know you’ve been there?” She angled her head, studied him with eyes that made him think of stunning arctic ice. “Where are you out of, Shakespeare? I’ve read Henry the Fifth.”

“Monterey, mostly.”

“They’ve got a fine smoke-jumper unit in Northern California.”

“They do. I know most of them. I worked Redding IHC, five years.”

“I figured you for a hotshot. So, you’re wanted in California so you headed to Missoula?”

“The charges were dropped,” he said, and made her smile. “I’m in Missoula because of Iron Man Tripp.” He stopped when she did. “I’m figuring he must be your father.”

“That’s right. Do you know him?”

“Of course. Lucas ‘Iron Man’ Tripp’s a legend. You had a bad one out here in 2000.”

“Yeah.”

“I was in college. It was all over the news, and I caught this interview with Iron Man, right here on base, after he and his unit got back from four days in the mouth of it.”

Gull thought back, brought it into the now in his head. “His face is covered with soot, his hair’s layered with ash, his eyes are red. He looks like he’s been to war, which is accurate enough. The reporter’s asking the usual idiot questions. ‘How did it feel in there? Were you afraid?’ And he’s being patient. You can tell he’s exhausted, but he’s answering. And finally he says to the guy, ‘Boy, the simplest way to put it is the bitch tried to eat us, and we kicked her ass.’ And he walks away.”

She remembered it as clearly as he did—and remembered a lot more. “And that’s why you’re in Missoula looking to jump fire?”

“Consider it a springboard. I could give you the rest of it over a beer.”

“You’re going to be too busy for beer and life stories. Better get your gear on. You’ve got a long way to go yet.”

“Offer of beer’s always open. Life story optional.”

She gave him that look again, the slight angle of the head, the little smirk on the mouth that he found sexily bottom-heavy. “You don’t want to hit on me, hotshot. I don’t hook up with rookies, snookies or other smoke jumpers. When I’ve got the time and inclination for . . . entertainment, I look for a civilian. One I can play with when I’m in the mood over the long winter nights and forget about during the season.”

Oh, yeah, he did like attitude. “You might be due for a change of pace.”

“You’re wasting your time, rook.”

When she strolled off with her clipboard, he let himself grin. He figured it was his time to waste. And she struck him as a truly unique experience.

GULL SURVIVED being dragged up in the air by a cable, then dropped down to earth again. The not altogether fondly dubbed slam-ulator did a damn good job of simulating the body-jarring, ankle-and-knee-shocking slam of a parachute landing.

He slapped, tucked, dropped and rolled, and he took his lumps, bumps and bruises. He learned how to protect his head, how to use his body to preserve his body. And how to think when the ground was hurtling up toward him at a fast clip.

He faced the tower, climbing its fifty feet of murderous red with his jump partner for the drill.

“How ya doing?” he asked Libby.

“I feel like I fell off a mountain, so not too bad. You?”

“I’m not sure if I fell off the mountain or on it.” When he reached the platform, he grinned at Rowan. “Is this as much fun as it looks?”

“Oh, more.” Sarcasm dripped as she hooked him to the pully. “There’s your jump spot.” She gestured to a hill of sawdust across the training field. “There’s going to be some speed on the swing over, so you’re going to feel it when you hit. Tuck, protect your head, roll.”

He studied the view of the hill. It looked damn small from where he was standing, through the bars of his face mask.

“Got it.”

“Are you ready?” she asked them both.

Libby took a deep breath. “We’re ready.”

“Get in the door.”

Yeah, it had some speed, Gull thought as he flew across the training field. He barely had time to go through his landing list when the sawdust hill filled his vision. He slammed into it, thought fuck!, then tucked and rolled with his hands on either side of his helmet.

Willing his breath back into his lungs, he looked over at Libby. “Okay?”

“Definitely on the mountain that time. But you know what? That was fun. I’ve got to do it again.”

“Day’s young.” He shoved to his feet, held out a hand to pull her to hers.

After the tower came the classroom. His years on a hotshot crew meant most of the books, charts, lectures were refreshers on what he already knew. But there was always more to learn.

After the classroom there was time, at last, to nurse the bumps and bruises, to find a hot meal, to hang out a bit with the other recruits. Down to twenty-two, Gull noted. They’d lost three between the simulator and the tower.

More than half of those still in training turned in for the night, and Gull thought of doing so himself. The poker game currently underway tempted him so he made a bargain with himself. He’d get some air, then if the urge still tickled, he’d sit in on a few hands.

“Pull up a chair, son,” Dobie invited as Gull walked by the table. “I’m looking to add to my retirement account.”

“Land on your head a few more times, you’ll be retiring early.”

Gull kept walking. Outside the rain that had threatened all day fell cool and steady. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he walked into the wet. He turned toward the distant hangar. Maybe he’d wander over, take a look at the plane he’d soon be jumping out of.

He’d jumped three times before he’d applied for the program, just to make sure he had the stomach for it. Now he was anxious, eager to revisit that sensation, to defy his own instincts and shove himself into the high open air.

He’d studied the planes—the Twin Otter, the DC-9—the most commonly used for smoke jumping. He toyed with the idea of taking flying lessons in the off-season, maybe going for his pilot’s license. It never hurt to know you could take control if control needed to be taken.

Then he saw her striding toward him through the rain. Dark and gloom didn’t blur that body. He slowed his pace. Maybe he didn’t need to play poker for this to be his lucky night.

“Nice night,” he said.

“For otters.” Rain dripped off the bill of Rowan’s cap as she studied him. “Making a run for it?”

“Just taking a walk. But I’ve got a car if there’s somewhere you want to go.”

“I’ve got my own ride, thanks, but I’m not going anywhere. You did okay today.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s too bad about Doggett. Bad landing, and a hairline fracture takes him out of the program. I’m figuring he’ll come back next year.”

“He wants it,” Gull agreed.

“It takes more than want, but you’ve got to want it to get it.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

On a half laugh, Rowan shook her head. “Do women ever say no to you?”

“Sadly, yes. Then again, a man who just gives up never wins the prize.”

“Believe me, I’m no prize.”

“You’ve got hair like a Roman centurion, the body of a goddess and the face of a Nordic queen. That’s a hell of a package.”

“The package isn’t the prize.”

“No, it’s not. But it sure makes me want to open it up and see what’s in there.”

“A mean temper, a low bullshit threshold and a passion for catching fire. Do yourself a favor, hotshot, and pull somebody else’s shiny ribbon.”

“I’ve got this thing, this . . . focus. Once I focus on something, I just can’t seem to quit until I figure it all the way out.”

She gave a careless shrug, but she watched him, he noted, with care. “Nothing to figure.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said when she started into the dorm. “I got you to take a walk in the rain with me.”

With one hand on the door, she turned, gave him a pitying smile. “Don’t tell me there’s a romantic in there.”

“Might be.”

“Better be careful then. I might use you just because you’re handy, then crush that romantic heart.”

“My place or yours?”

She laughed—a steamy brothel laugh that shot straight to his loins—then shut the door, metaphorically at least, in his face.

Damned if he hadn’t given her a little itch, she admitted. She liked confident men—men who had the balls, the brains and the skills to back it up. That, and the cat-at-the-mousehole way he looked at her—desire and bottomless patience—brought on a low sexual hum.

And picking up that tune would be a mistake, she reminded herself, then tapped lightly on Cards’s door. She took his grunt as permission to poke her head in.

He looked, to her eye, a little pale, a lot bored and fairly grungy. “How’re you feeling?”

“Shit, I’m okay. Got some bug in my gut this morning. Puked it, and a few internal organs, up.” He sat on his bed, cards spread in front of him. “Managed some time in manufacturing, kept dinner down okay. Just taking it easy till tomorrow. Appreciate you covering for me.”

“No problem. We’re down to twenty-two. One of them’s out with an injury. I think we’ll see him back. See you in the morning then.”

“Hey, want to see a card trick? It’s a good one,” he said before she could retreat.

Tired of his own company, she decided, and gave in to friendship and sat across from him on the bed.

Besides, watching a few lame card tricks was a better segue into sleep than thinking about walking in the rain with Gulliver Curry.

3

Gull lined up in front of the ready room with the other recruits. Across the asphalt the plane that would take them up for their first jump roared, while along the line nerves jangled.

Instructors worked their way down, doing buddy checks. Gull figured his luck was in when Rowan stepped to him. “Have you been checked?”

“No.”

She knelt down so he studied the way her sunflower hair sculpted her head. She checked his boots, his stirrups, worked her way up—leg pockets, leg straps—checked his reserve chute’s expiration date, its retainer pins.

“You smell like peaches.” Her eyes flicked to his. “It’s nice.”

“Lower left reserve strap attached,” she said, continuing her buddy check without comment. “Lower right reserve strap attached. Head in the game, Fast Feet,” she added, then moved on up the list. “If either of us misses a detail, you could be a smear on the ground. Helmet, gloves. You got your letdown rope?”

“Check.”

“You’re good to go.”

“How about you?”

“I’ve been checked, thanks. You’re clear to board.” She moved down to the next recruit.

Gull climbed onto the plane, took a seat on the floor beside Dobie.

“You looking to tap that blonde?” Dobie asked. “The one they call Swede?”

“A man has to have his dreams. You’re getting closer to owing me twenty,” Gull added when Libby ducked through the door.

“Shit. She ain’t jumped yet. I got ten right now says she balks.”

“I can use ten.”

“Welcome aboard,” Rowan announced. “Please bring your seats to their full upright position. Our flying time today will depend on how many of you cry like babies once you’re in the door. Gibbons will be your spotter. Pay attention. Stay in your heads. Are you ready to jump?”

The answer was a resounding cheer.

“Let’s do it.”

The plane taxied, gained speed, lifted its nose. Gull felt the little dip in the gut as they left the ground. He watched Rowan, flat-out sexy to his mind in her jumpsuit, raise her voice over the engines and—once again—go over every step of the upcoming jump.

Gibbons passed her a note from the cockpit.

“There’s your jump site,” she told them, and every recruit angled for a window.

Gull studied the roll of the meadow—pretty as a picture—the rise of Douglas firs, lodgepole pines, the glint of a stream. The job—once he took the sky—would be to hit the meadow, avoid the trees, the water. He’d be the dart, he thought, and he wanted a bull’s-eye.

When Gibbons pigged in, Rowan shouted for everyone to guard their reserves. Gibbons grabbed the door handles, yanked, and air, cool and sweet with spring, rushed in.

“Holy shit.” Dobie whistled between his teeth. “We’re doing it. Real deal. Accept no substitutes.”

Gibbons stuck his head out into that rush of air, consulted with the cockpit through his headset. The plane banked right, bumped, steadied.

“Watch the streamers,” Rowan called out. “They’re you.”

They snapped and spun, circled out into miles of tender blue sky. And sucked into the dense tree line.

Gull adjusted his own jump in his head, mentally pulling on his toggles, considering the drift. Adjusted again as he studied the fall of a second set of streamers.

“Take her up!” Gibbons called out.

Dobie stuffed a stick of gum in his mouth before he put on his helmet, offered one to Gull. Behind his face mask, Dobie’s eyes were big as planets. “Feel a little sick.”

“Wait till you get down to puke,” Gull advised.

“Libby, you’re second jump.” Rowan put on her helmet. “You just follow me down. Got it?”

“I got it.”

At Gibbons’s signal, Rowan sat in the door, braced. The plane erupted into shouts of Libby’s name, gloved hands slammed together in encouragement as she took her position behind Rowan.

Then Gibbons’s hand slapped down on Rowan’s shoulder, and she was gone.

Gull watched her flight; couldn’t take his eyes off her. The blue-and-white canopy shot up, spilled open. A thing of beauty in that soft blue sky, over the greens and browns and glint of water.

The cheer brought him back. He’d missed Libby’s jump, but he saw her chute deploy, shifted to try to keep both chutes in his eye line as the plane flew beyond.

“Looks like you owe me ten.”

A smile winked into Dobie’s eyes. “Add a six-pack on it that I do better than her. Better than you.”

After the plane circled, Gibbons looked in Gull’s eyes, held them for a beat. “Are you ready?”

“We’re ready.”

“Hook up.”

Gull moved forward, attached his line.

“Get in the door.”

Gull leveled his breathing, and got in the door.

He listened to the spotter’s instructions, the drift, the wind, while the air battered his legs. He did his check while the plane circled to its final lineup, and kept his eyes on the horizon.

“Get ready,” Gibbons told him.

Oh, he was ready. Every bump, bruise, blister of the past weeks had led to this moment. When the slap came down on his right shoulder, he jumped into that moment.

Wind and sky, and the hard, breathless thrill of daring both. The speed like a drug blowing through the blood. All he could think was, Yes, Christ yes, he’d been born for this, even as he counted off, as he rolled his body until he could look through his feet at the ground below.

The chute billowed open, snapped him up. He looked right, then left and found Dobie, heard his jump partner’s wild, reckless laughter.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

Gull grinned, scanned the view. How many saw this, he wondered, this stunning spread of forest and mountain, this endless, open sky? He swept his gaze over the lacings of snow in the higher elevations, the green just beginning to haze the valley. He thought, though he knew it unlikely, he could smell both, the winter and the spring, as he floated down between them.

He worked his toggles, using instinct, training, the caprice of the wind. He could see Rowan now, the way the sun shone on her bright cap of hair, even the way she stood—legs spread and planted, hands on her hips. Watching him as he watched her.

He put himself beside her, judging the lineup, and felt the instant he caught it. The smoke jumpers called it on the wire, so he glided in on it, kept his breathing steady as he prepared for impact.

He glanced toward Dobie again, noted his partner would overshoot the spot. Then he hit, tucked, rolled. He dropped his gear, started gathering his chute.

He heard Rowan shouting, saw her running for the trees. Everything froze, then melted again when he heard Dobie’s shouted stream of curses.

Above, the plane tipped its wings and started its circle to deploy the next jumpers. He hauled up his gear, grinning as he walked over to where Dobie dragged his own out of the trees.

“I had it, then the wind bitched me into the trees. Hell of a ride though.” The thrill, the triumph lit up his face. “Hell of a goddamn ride.’Cept I swallowed my gum.”

“You’re on the ground,” Rowan told them. “Nothing’s broken. So, not bad.” She opened her personal gear bag, took out candy bars. “Congratulations.”

“There’s nothing like it.” Libby’s face glowed as she looked skyward. “Nothing else comes close.”

“You haven’t jumped fire yet.” Rowan sat, then stretched out in the meadow grass. “That’s a whole new world.” She watched the sky, waiting for the plane to come back, then glanced at Gull as he dropped down beside her. “You had a smooth one.”

“I targeted on you. The sun in your hair,” he added when she frowned at him.

“Jesus, Gull, you are a romantic. God help you.”

He’d flustered her, he realized, and gave himself a point on his personal scoreboard. Since he hadn’t swallowed his gum, he tucked the chocolate away for later. “What do you do when you’re not doing this?”

“For work? I put in some time in my dad’s business, jumping with tourists who want a thrill, teaching people who think they want, or decide they want, to jump as a hobby. Do some personal training.” She flexed her biceps.

“Bet you’re good at it.”

“Logging in time as a PT means I get paid to keep fit for this over the winter. What about you?”

“I get to play for a living. Fun World. It’s like a big arcade—video games, bowling, bumper cars, Skee-Ball.”

“You work at an arcade?”

He folded his arms behind his head. “It’s not work if it’s fun.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of guy to deal with kids and machines all day.”

“I like kids. They’re largely fearless and open to possibilities. Adults tend to forget how to be either.” He shrugged. “You spend yours trying to get couch potatoes to break a sweat.”

“Not all of my clients are couch potatoes. None are when I’m done with them.” She shoved up to sit. “Here comes the next group.”

With the first practice jump complete, they packed out, carrying their gear back to base. After another stint of physical training, classwork, they were up again for the second jump of the day.

They practiced letdown in full gear, outlined fire suppression strategies, studied maps, executed countless sit-ups, pull-ups, push-ups, ran miles and threw themselves out of planes. At the end of a brutal four weeks, the numbers had whittled down to sixteen. Those still standing ranged outside Operations answering their final roll call as recruits.

When Libby answered her name, Dobie slapped a twenty into Gull’s hand. “Smoke jumper Barbie. You gotta give it to her. Skinny woman like that toughs it through, and a big hoss like McGinty washes.”

“We didn’t,” Gull reminded him.

“Fucking tooting we didn’t.”

Even as they slapped hands a flood of ice water drenched them.

“Just washing off some of the rookie stink,” somebody called out. And with hoots and shouts, the men and woman on the roof tossed another wave of water from buckets.

“You’re now one of us.” From his position out of water range, L.B. shouted over the laughter and curses. “The best there is. Get cleaned up, then pack it in the vans. We’re heading into town, boys and girls. You’ve got one night to celebrate and drink yourself stupid. Tomorrow, you start your day as smoke jumpers—as Zulies.”

When Gull made a show out of wringing out his wet twenty, Dobie laughed so hard, he had to sit on the ground. “I’ll buy the first round. You’re in there, Libby.”

“Thanks.”

He smiled, stuffed the wet bill in his wet pocket. “I owe it all to you.”

Inside, Gull stripped off his dripping clothes. He took stock of his bruises—not too bad—and for the first time in a week took time to shave. Once he’d hunted up a clean shirt and pants, he spent a few minutes sending a quick e-mail home to let his family know he’d made it.

He expected that news to generate mixed reactions, though they’d all pretend to be as happy as he was. He slid a celebratory cigar into his breast pocket, then wandered outside.

The e-mail had cost him some time, so he loaded into the last of the vans and found a seat among the scatter of rookies and vets.

“Ready to party, rook?” Trigger asked him.

“I’ve been ready.”

“Just remember, nobody gets babysat. The vans leave and you’re not in one, you find your own way back to base. If you end up with a woman tonight, the smart thing is to end up with one who has a car.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You dance?”

“You asking?”

Trigger hooted out a laugh. “You’re almost pretty enough for me. The place we’re going has a dance floor. You do it right, dancing with a woman’s the same as foreplay.”

“Is that the case, in your experience?”

“It is, young Jedi. It surely is.”

“Interesting. So . . . does Rowan like to dance?”

Trigger raised his eyebrows. “That’s what we call barking up the wrong tree.”

“It’s the only tree that’s caught my interest and attention.”

“Then you’re going to have a long, dry summer.” He gave Gull a pat on the shoulder. “And let me tell you something else from my vast experience. When you’ve got calluses on your calluses and blisters on top of that, jerking off isn’t as pleasant as it’s meant to be.”

“Five years as a hotshot,” Gull reminded him. “If the summer proves long and dry, my hands’ll hold up.”

“Maybe so. But a woman’s better.”

“Indeed they are, Master Jedi. Indeed they are.”

“Have you got one back home?”

“No. Do you?”

“Had one. Twice. Married one of them. Just didn’t take. Matt’s got one. You got a woman back home in Nebraska, don’t you, Matt?”

Matt shifted, angled around to look back over his shoulder. “Annie’s back in Nebraska.”

“High-school sweethearts,” Trigger filled in. “Then she went off to college, but they got back together when she came home. Two minds, one heart. So Matt doesn’t dance, if you get my drift.”

“Got it. It’s nice,” Gull continued, “having somebody.”

“No point in the whole screwed-up world if you don’t.” Matt shrugged. “No point doing what we do if nobody’s waiting for us once we’ve done it.”

“Sweetens the pot,” Trigger agreed. “But some of us have to settle for a dance now and again.” He rubbed his hands together as the van pulled up in a lot packed with trucks and cars. “And my toes are already tapping.”

Gull scanned the long, low log building as he stepped out of the van, contemplated a moment on the flickering neon sign.

“‘Get a Rope,’ ” he read. “Seriously?”

“Cowboy up, partner.” Trigger slapped him on the shoulder, then strutted inside on his snakeskin boots.

An experience, Gull reminded himself. You could never have too many of them.

He stepped into the overamplified screech and twang of truly, deeply bad country music performed by a quartet of grungy-looking guys behind the dubious protection of a chicken-wire fence. At the moment the only things being hurled at them were shouted insults, but the night was young.

Still, people crowded the dance floor, kicking up boot heels, wiggling butts. Others ranged along the long bar or squeezed onto rickety chairs at tiny tables where they could scarf up dripping nachos or gnaw on buffalo wings coated with a suspicious substance that turned them cheesepuff orange. Most opted to wash that combo down with beer served in filmy plastic pitchers.

The lights were mercifully dim, and despite the smoking ban dingy blue clouds fogged the air that smelled like a sweat-soaked, deep-fried, overflowing ashtray.

The only reasonable thing to do, as Gull saw it, was to start drinking.

He moved to the bar, elbowed in and ordered a Bitter Root beer—in a bottle. Dobie squeezed beside him, punched him in the arm. “Why do you wanna drink that foreign shit?”

“Brewed in Montana.” He passed the bottle to Dobie, ordered another.

“Pretty good beer,” Dobie decided after a pull. “But it ain’t no Budweiser.”

“You’re not wrong.” Amused, Gull tapped his bottle to Dobie’s, drank. “Beer. The answer to so many questions.”

“I’m going to get this one in me, then cut one of these women out of the herd, drive ’em on the dance floor.”

Gull sipped again, studied the fat-fingered lead guitar player. “How do you dance to crap like this?”

Dobie’s eyes slitted, and his finger drilled into Gull’s chest. “You got a problem with country music?”

“You must’ve busted an eardrum on your last jump if you call this music. I like bluegrass,” he added, “when it’s done right.”

“Don’t bullshit me, city boy. You don’t know bluegrass from bindweed.”

Gull took another swig of beer. “I am a man of constant sorrow,” he sang in a strong, smooth tenor. “I’ve seen trouble all my days.”

Now Dobie punched him in the chest, but affectionately. “You’re a continual surprise to me, Gulliver. Got a voice in there, too. You oughta get up there and show those shit-kickers how it’s done.”

“I think I’ll just drink my beer.”

“Well.” Dobie tipped up the bottle, drained his. Let out a casual belch. “I’m going for a female.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Ain’t about luck. It’s about style.”

Gull watched Dobie bop over to a table of four women, and decided the man had a style all of his own.

Enjoying the moment, Gull leaned an elbow back on the bar, crossed his ankles. Trigger, true to his word, already had a partner on the dance floor, and Matt—true to his Annie—sat with Little Bear, a rookie named Stovic and one of the pilots they called Stetson for his battered and beloved black hat.

Then there was Rowan, chowing down on the orange-coated nachos at a table with Janis Petrie, Gibbons and Yangtree. She’d pulled on a blue T-shirt—snug, scoop-necked—that molded her breasts and torso. For the first time since he’d met her she wore earrings, something that glittered and swung from her ears when she shook her head and laughed.

She’d done something to her eyes, her lips, he noted, made them bolder. And when she let Cards pull her to her feet for a dance, Gull saw her jeans were as snug as her shirt.

She caught his eye when Cards swung her into a spin, then stopped his heart when she shot him a wide, wicked smile. He decided if she was going to kill him, she might as well do it at closer range. He ordered another beer, carried it over to her table.

“Hey, fresh meat.” Janis toasted him with a dripping nacho. “Want to dance, rookie?”

“I haven’t had enough beer to dance to whatever this is.”

“They’re so bad, they’re good.” Janis patted Rowan’s empty chair. “A few more drinks, they’ll be nearly good enough to be bad.”

“Your logic tells me you’ve walked this path before.”

“You’re not a Zulie until you’ve survived a night at Get a Rope.” She glanced toward the door as a group of three men swaggered in. “In all its glory.”

“Local boys?”

“Don’t think so. They’re all wearing new boots. High-dollar ones.” She topped off her beer from the pitcher on the table. “I’m guessing city, dude-ranch types come to take in some local color.”

They headed toward the bar, and the one in the lead shoulder-muscled his way through the line. He slapped a bill on the bar.

“Whiskey and a woman.” He punched his voice up, deliberately, Gull imagined, so it carried above the noise. The hoots and laughter from his friends told Gull it wouldn’t be their first drink of the night.

A few people at the bar edged over to give the group room while the bartender poured their drinks. The lead guy tossed it back, slapped down the glass, pointed at it.

“We need us some females.”

More group hilarity ensued. Looking for trouble, Gull concluded, and since he wasn’t, he went back to watching Rowan on the dance floor.

Janis leaned toward him as the band launched into a painful cover of “When the Sun Goes Down.” “Ro says you work in an arcade.”

“She talked to you about me?”

“Sure. We pass notes in study hall every day. I like arcades. You got pinball? I kill at pinball.”

“Yeah, new and vintage.”

“Vintage?” She aimed a narrow look with big brown eyes. “You don’t have High Speed, do you?”

“It’s a classic for a reason.”

“I love that one!” Her hand slapped the table. “They had this old, beat-up machine in this arcade when I was a kid. I got so good at it, I’d play all day on my first token. I traded this guy five free games on it for my first French kiss.” She sighed, sat back. “Good times.”

Following her gaze as it shifted to the bar, Gull glanced back in time to see the whiskey-drinker give a waitress passing by with a full tray a frisky slap on the ass. When the woman looked around, he held up both hands, smirked.

“Asshole. You can’t go anywhere,” Janis said, “without running into assholes.”

“Their numbers are legion.” He shifted a little more when Rowan stepped off the dance floor.

“That’s my seat.”

“I’m holding it for you.” He patted his knee.

She surprised him by dropping down on his lap, picking up his beer and drinking deep. “Big spender, buying local brew by the bottle. Don’t you dance, moneybags?”

“I might, if they ever play something that doesn’t make my ears bleed.”

“You can still hear them? I can fix that. Time for shots.”

“Count me out,” Gibbons said immediately. “The last time you talked me into that I couldn’t feel my fingers for a week.”

“Don’t do it, Gull,” Yangtree warned him. “The Swede has an iron gut. Got it from her old man.”

Rowan turned her face close to Gull’s and smirked. “Aw, do you have a tender tummy, hotshot?”

He imagined biting her heavy bottom lip, just one fast, hard nip. “What kind of shots?”

“There’s only one shot worth shooting. Te-qui-la,” she sang it, slapping her palm on the table with each syllable. “If you’ve got the balls for it.”

“You’re sitting on my balls, so you ought to know.”

She threw back her head on that sexy saloon girl laugh. “Hold them for a minute. I’ll get us set up.”

She hopped up, swung around a couple times when Dobie grabbed her hand and gave her a twirl. Titania to Puck, Gull thought.

Then she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets and joined him in some sort of boot-stomping clog thing that had some of the other dancers whistling and clapping.

She shot a finger at Gull—and damn, there went his heart again—then danced over to the bar.

“Hey, Big Nate.” Rowan leaned in, hailed the head bartender. “I need a dozen tequila shots, a couple saltshakers and some lime wedges to suck on.”

She glanced over, gave the man currently grabbing his crotch a bored look, shifted away again. “I can take them over if Molly’s busy.”

The crotch-grabber slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar in front of her. “I’ll buy your shots and ten minutes outside.”

Rowan gave the bartender a slight shake of the head before he could speak.

She turned, looked the drunk, insulting bastard in the eye. “I guess since you lack any charm, and the only way you can get a woman is to pay her, you think we’re all whores.”

“You’ve been wiggling that ass and those tits out there since I came in. I’m just offering to pay for what you’ve been advertising. I’ll buy you a drink first.”

At the table, Gull thought, shit, and started to rise. Gibbons put a hand on his arm. “You don’t want to get in her way. Trust me on this.”

“I don’t like drunks hassling women.”

He shoved up, noted the noise level had diminished, so he clearly heard Rowan say in a tone sweet as cotton candy, “Oh, if you’ll buy me a drink first. Is that your pitcher?”

She picked it up and, with her height, had no trouble upending it over the man’s head. “Suck on that, fuckwit.”

The man moved pretty quick for a sputtering drunk. He shoved Rowan back against the bar, grabbed her breasts and squeezed.

And she moved faster. Before Gull was halfway across the room she slammed her boot on the man’s instep, her knee into the crotch he’d been so proud of, then knocked him on his ass with an uppercut as fine as Gull had ever seen when the drunk doubled over.

She back-fisted one of his buddies who’d been foolish enough to try to yank her around. She grabbed his arm, dragged him forward, past her. The boot she planted on his ass sent him careening into his friend as the man started to struggle to his feet.

She whipped around to man number three. “You want to try for me?”

“No.” This one held up his hands in a don’t-shoot-me gesture. “No, ma’am, I don’t.”

“Maybe you’ve got half a brain. Use it and get your idiot friends out of here before I get mad. Because when I get mad, I just get crazy.”

“I guess she didn’t need any help,” Dobie observed.

“That does it.” Gull laid a hand over his heart, beat it there. “I’m in love.”

“I don’t think I’d want to fall in love with a woman who could wipe the floor with me.”

“No risk, no point.”

He hung back as a half dozen Zulies moved in to help the three men to the door. And out of it.

Rowan gave her T-shirt a fussy tug. “How about those shots, Big Nate?”

“Coming right out. On the house.”

Gull took his seat again, waiting for Rowan to carry the tray over.

“Are you ready?” she asked him.

“Line them up, sweetheart. You want some ice for your knuckles?”

She wiggled her fingers. “They’re okay. It was like punching the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

“I hear he’s a mean drunk, too.”

She laughed, then dropped down into the chair Gibbons pulled over for her. “Let’s see what kind of drunk you are.”

4

Gull watched her eyes as he and Rowan knocked back the first shot, as the tequila hit his tongue, his throat, and took that quick, hot slide to the belly.

That, he realized, was her first appeal for him. Those clear, cool blue eyes held so much life. They sparkled now with challenge, with humor, and there was something in the way they leveled on his that made the moment intimate—as much of a hot slide through the system as the tequila.

Matching his pace to hers, he picked up the next shot glass.

Then there was her mouth, just shy of wide, heavy on the bottom—and the way it so naturally, so habitually formed a smirk.

Small wonder he lusted for a good, strong taste of it.

“How ya doing, hotshot?”

“I’m good. How about you, Swede?”

In answer she tapped her third shot glass to his before they tossed back the contents together. She brought the lime wedge to her mouth. “Do you know what I love about tequila?”

“What do you love about tequila?”

“Everything.” After a wicked laugh, she drank the fourth with the same careless gusto as the first three. Together they slapped down the empties.

“What else do you love?” he asked her.

“Hmm.” She considered as she downed number five. “Smoke jumping and those who share the insanity.” She toasted them to a round of applause and rude comments, then sat back a moment with her full glass. “Fire and the catching of it, my dad, ear-busting rock and roll on a hot summer night and tiny little puppies. How about you?”

Like her, he sat back with his last shot. “I could go along with most of that, except I don’t know your dad.”

“Haven’t jumped fire yet either.”

“True, but I’m predisposed to love it. I have a fondness for loud rock and tiny little puppies, but would substitute heart-busting sex on a hot summer night and big, sloppy dogs.”

“Interesting.” They tossed back that last shot, in unison, to more applause. “I’d’ve pegged you for a cat man.”

“I’ve got nothing against cats, but a big, sloppy dog will always need his human.”

Her earrings swung as she cocked her head. “Like to be needed, do you?”

“I guess I do.”

She pointed at him in an aha gesture. “There’s that romantic streak again.”

“Wide and long. Want to go have heart-busting sex in anticipation of a hot summer night?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “That’s a generous offer—and no.” She slapped a hand on the table. “But I’ll go you another six.”

God help him. “You’re on.” He patted his pocket. “I believe I’ll take a short cigar break while we get the next setup.”

“Ten-minute recess,” Rowan announced. “Hey, Big Nate, how about some salsa and chips to soak up some of this tequila? And not the wimpy stuff.”

The woman of his dreams, Gull decided as he opted to go out the back for his smoke. A salsa-eating, tequila-downing, smoke-jumping stunner with brains and a wicked uppercut.

Now all he had to do was talk her into bed.

He lit up in the chilly dark, blew smoke up at a sky sizzling with stars. The night struck him as pretty damn perfect. Crappy music in a western dive, cheap tequila, the companionship of like-minded others and a compelling woman who engaged his mind and excited his body.

He thought of home and the winters that engaged and absorbed most of his time. He didn’t mind it, in fact enjoyed it. But if the past few years had taught him anything, it was he needed the heat and rush of the summers, the work and, yes, the risk of chasing fires.

Maybe it was just that, the combination of pride and pleasure in what he’d accomplished back home, the thrill and satisfaction of what he knew he could accomplish here that allowed him to stand in a chilly spring night in the middle of almost-nowhere and recognize perfection.

He wandered around the building, enjoying his cigar, thinking of facing Rowan over another six tequila shots. Next time—if there was a next time—he’d make damn sure they had a bottle of Patrón Silver. Then at least he’d feel more secure about the state of his stomach lining.

Amused, he came around the side of the building. He heard the grunts first, then the ugly sound of fist against flesh. He moved forward, toward the sounds, scanning the dark pockets of the parking lot.

Two of the men Rowan had dealt with in the bar held Dobie while the third—the big one—whaled on him.

“Shit,” Gull muttered, and, tossing down his cigar, rushed forward.

Over the buzz of rage in his ears, Gull heard one of the men shout. The big man swung around, face full of mean. Gull cocked back his fist, let it fly.

He didn’t think; didn’t have to. Instinct took over as the other two men dropped Dobie in a heap and came at him. He embraced the madness, the moment, punch, kick, elbow strike, as he scented blood, tasted his own.

He felt something crunch under his fist, heard the whoosh of expelled air as his foot slammed into belly fat. Someone dropped to his knees and gagged after his elbow jabbed an exposed throat. Out of the corner of his eye, Gull saw Dobie had managed to gain his feet and limped over to the retching man to deliver a solid kick in the ribs.

One of the others tried to run. Gull caught him, flung him so he skidded face-first over the gravel.

He didn’t clearly remember knocking the big guy down, getting on top of him, but it took three of his fellow jumpers to pull him off.

“He’s had enough. He’s out.” Little Bear’s voice penetrated that buzz of rage. “Ease off, Gull.”

“Okay. I’m good.” Gull held up a hand to signal he was done. As the grips on him loosened, he looked over at Dobie.

His friend sat on the ground surrounded by other jumpers, a few of the local women. His face and shirtfront were both a bloody mess, and his right eye was swollen shut.

“Did a number on you, pal,” Gull commented. Then he saw the dark stain on Dobie’s right pant leg, and the dripping pool. “Christ! Did they knife you?”

Before Gull reached him, Dobie two-fingered a broken bottle of Tabasco out of his pocket. “Nah. Busted this when I went down. Got a few nicks is all, and a waste of good Tabasco.”

L.B. crouched to get a better look at Dobie. “You carry Tabasco in your pocket?”

“Where else would I carry it?”

Shaking his head, Gull sat back on his heels. “He dumps it on everything.”

“Damn right.” To prove it, Dobie shook out the little left on the ass of one of the semiconscious men. “I came out for a little air, and the three of them jumped me. Laying for me—or any of us, I reckon. You sure came along at the right time,” he said to Gull. “You know kung fu or some shit?”

“Something like that. Better go get patched up.”

“Oh, I’m okay.”

Rowan moved through, crouched in front of Dobie. “They wouldn’t have gone after you if they hadn’t been pissed at me. Do me a favor, okay? Go get patched up so I don’t have to feel guilty.” Then she leaned over, kissed his bruised and bloody cheek. “I’ll owe you.”

“Well . . . if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Do you want me to call the law?” Big Nate asked him.

Dobie studied the three men, shrugged. “Looks to me more like they need an ambulance.” He shrugged again. “I don’t care if they go to jail, to fiery hell or back wherever they came from.”

“All right then.” Big Nate stepped over, toed the man sitting up nursing his face in his hands. “You fit to drive?” When the man managed a nod, Big Nate toed him again a little harder. “You’re going to get in your truck with the fuckers you travel with. You’re going to drive, and keep on driving. If I see you around my place or any other place I happen to be, you’re going to wish to God almighty I had called the law. Now get off my property.”

To expedite the matter, several of the men hoisted the barely conscious big guy and his moaning companions into the truck, then stood like a wall until it drove away.

Gull received a number of shoulder and back slaps, countless offers of a drink. He wisely accepted all of them to avoid an argument as he watched Libby, Cards and Gibbons help Dobie into one of the vans.

“Do you want a doc to look you over?” Little Bear asked him.

“No. I’ve had worse falling out of bed.”

Little Bear watched the van as Gull did. “He’ll be all right. It takes more than three assholes to down a smoke jumper.” He gave Gull a last shoulder slap, then turned back toward the bar when the van pulled out of the lot.

Gull stayed where he was, trying to reach for his calm again. He knew it was in there, somewhere, but at the moment, elusive.

“Is this yours?”

He turned to see Rowan holding his cigar.

“Yeah. I guess I dropped it.”

“Butterfingers.” She took a few puffs until the tip glowed true again, then helped herself to one long, deep drag. “Prime cigar, too,” she added, then offered it back. “Shame to waste it.”

Gull took it, studied it. “That’s it,” he decided.

He flung it down again and, grabbing her, yanked her against him. “That’s it,” he repeated before his mouth crushed down on hers.

A man could only take so much stimulation before demanding release.

She slapped both hands on his chest, shoved. “Hey.”

For a moment he figured he’d experience her excellent uppercut up close and personal. Then she mirrored his initial move and yanked him back.

Her mouth was as he’d imagined. Hot and soft and avid. It met his with equal fervor, as if a switch had been flipped in each of them from stop to go. She pressed that killer body to his without hesitation, without restraint, a gift and a challenge, until the chilly air under the sizzling stars seemed to smoke.

He tasted the sharp tang of tequila on her tongue, a fascinating contrast to the scent of ripe peaches that clung to her skin; felt the hard, steady gallop of her heart that matched the pace of his own.

Then she drew back, looked in his eyes, held there a moment before drawing away.

“You’ve got skills,” she stated.

“Ditto.”

She blew out a breath—a long one. “You’re a temptation, Gull, I can’t deny it. Stupid to deny it, and I’m not stupid.”

“Far from it.”

She rubbed her lips together as if revisiting his taste. “The thing is, once you mix sex into it, even smart people can get stupid. So . . . better not.”

“No’s your choice. Mine’s to keep trying.”

“I can’t hold that against you.” She smiled at him now, not her usual smirk but something warmer. “You fight like a maniac.”

“I tend to get carried away, so I try to avoid it when I can.”

“That’s a good policy. What do you say we postpone the tequila and get some ice on that jaw of yours.”

“That’s fine.”

As they started back, she glanced over at him. “What was that technique you were using on those bastards?”

“An ancient form called kicking ass.”

She laughed, gave him a friendly hip bump. “Impressive.”

He returned the hip bump. “Sleep with me and I’ll give you lessons.”

She laughed again. “You can try harder than that.”

“I’m just getting warmed up,” he told her, then opened the door to the overheated bar and lousy music.

ROWAN ZIPPED her warm-up jacket as she stepped outside. She’d put in some time in the gym, and checked the jump list on the board in Operations. She was first load, fourth man. Now she wanted a solid run on the track, maybe some chow. She’d already checked and rechecked her gear. If the siren sounded, she’d be ready.

Otherwise . . .

Otherwise, she thought as she shot a wave to one of the mechanics, there was always work, always training. But the fact was she was ready, more than ready, to jump her first fire of the season. She cast a look up at the sky as she walked toward the track. Clear, wide and as pretty a spring blue as anyone could want.

Below it, the base chugged along in early-season morning mode. Jumpers and support staff stayed busy, washing vehicles or tuning them up—or tuning themselves with calisthenics on the training field. After the night’s revelry plenty were getting a slow start, but she wanted air and effort.

And saw as she looked toward the track, she wasn’t the only one.

She recognized Gull not only by the body, but the speed. Fast feet, she thought again. Obviously tequila shots and a bar fight hadn’t slowed him down.

She had to admire that.

As she jogged closer she noted that despite the cool air he’d worked up a good sweat, one that ran a dark vee down the faded gray tee he wore.

She had to admire that, too. She liked a man who pushed himself, who tested his limits even when he was in his own world.

Though she’d already loosened up, she paused to stretch before peeling off her jacket. And timed her entrance to the track to veer on beside him.

“What’re you up to?”

He held up two fingers, saving his breath.

“Going for three?” When he nodded, she wondered if he could keep up that killing pace for another mile. “Me too. Go ahead, Flash, I can’t keep up with you.”

She fell off his pace, found her own rhythm.

She loved to run, loved it with a pure heart, but imagined if she’d had Gull’s speed, she’d have adored it. Then she forgot him, tuned into her own body, the air, the steady slap of her shoes on the track. She let her mind empty so it could fill again with scattered thoughts.

Personal supply list, juggling some time in for sewing some PG bags, Gull’s mouth, Dobie. She should give her father a buzz since she was on call and couldn’t get over to see him. Why did Janis paint her toenails when nobody saw them anyway? Gull’s teeth scraping over her bottom lip. Assholes who ganged up on a little guy.

Gull kicking ass in a dark parking lot.

Gull’s ass. Very nice.

Probably better to think of something else, she told herself as she hit the first mile. But hell, nothing else was as appealing. Besides, thinking wasn’t doing.

What she needed—what they all needed—was for the siren to blast. Then she’d be too busy to fantasize about, much less consider, getting tangled up with a man she worked with.

Too bad she hadn’t met him in the winter, though how she’d have run into him when he lived in California posed a problem. Still, say she’d taken a vacation, dropped into his arcade place. Would she have experienced that sizzle if she’d met him across the lane in the bowling alley, or over a hot game of Mortal Kombat?

Hard to say.

He’d have looked as good, she reminded herself. But would there have been that punch if she’d looked into those green eyes when he sold her some tokens?

Wasn’t at least part of the zip because of what they both did here, the training, the sweat, the anticipation, the intense satisfaction of knowing only a select few could make the cut and be what they were?

And, hello, wasn’t that the reason she didn’t get sexually or romantically involved with other jumpers? How could you trust your feelings when they were pumped through the adrenaline rush? And what did you do with those feelings when and if—and most likely when—things went south? You’d still have to work with, and trust your life to, somebody you’d been sleeping with and weren’t sleeping with anymore. And one or both of you had to be fairly pissed about it.

Entirely better to meet somebody, even if he sold you tokens in an arcade, have a nice, uncomplicated short-term relationship. Then go back to doing what you do.

She kicked up her pace to hit the last mile, then eased off to a cooldown jog. Her eyebrows lifted when Gull fell into pace beside her.

“You still here?”

“I did five. Felt good.”

“No tequila haze this morning?”

“I don’t get hangovers.”

“Ever? What’s your secret?” When he only smiled, she shook her head. “Yeah, yeah, if I sleep with you, you’ll tell me. How’s the jaw, et cetera?”

“It’s okay.” Banging like a drum after the five miles, but he knew that would subside.

“I heard Dobie nixed the overnight for observation. L.B.’s got him off the jump list until he’s fit.”

Gull nodded. He’d checked the list himself. “It won’t take him long. He’s a tough little bastard.”

She slowed to a walk, then stopped to stretch. “What were you listening to?” she asked, gesturing to the MP3 player strapped to his arm.

“Ear-busting rock,” he said with a smile. “You can borrow it the next time you run.”

“I don’t like music when I run. I like to think.”

“The best thing about running is not thinking.”

As he stretched, she checked out the body she’d been thinking about. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

They started the walk back together.

“I didn’t come out here because I saw you on the track.”

“Well, hell. Now my day’s ruined.”

“But I did admire your ass when you were whizzing by.”

“That’s marginally satisfying,” he considered, “but I find it doesn’t fully massage my ego.”

“You’re a funny guy, Gull. You tend to use fancy words, and read fancy books—I hear. You’re mean as a rattler in a fight, fast as a cheetah and spend your winters with foosball.”

He bent to snag her jacket off the ground. “I like a good game of foosball.”

As she tied the sleeves around her waist, she gave his face a long study. “You’re hard to figure.”

“Only if you’re looking for one size fits all.”

“Maybe, but—” She broke off as she spotted the truck pulling up in front of Operations. “Hey!” she shouted, waved her arms, then ran.

Gull watched the man get out of the truck, tall and solid in a battered leather jacket and scarred boots. Silver hair caught by the wind blew back from a tanned, strong-jawed face. He turned, then opened his arms so Rowan could jump into them. Gull might have experienced a twinge of jealousy, but he recognized Lucas “Iron Man” Tripp.

And it was a pretty thing, in his opinion, to see a man give his grown daughter a quick swing.

“I was just thinking about you,” Rowan told her father. “I was going to give you a call later. I’m on the second stick, so I couldn’t come by.”

“I missed you. I thought I’d check in, grab a minute and see how it’s all going.” He pulled off his sunglasses, hooked them in his pocket. “So, a strong crop of rooks this year.”

“Yeah. In fact . . .” Rowan glanced around, then signaled to Gull so he’d change direction and join them. “Here’s the one who broke the base record on the mile-and-a-half. Hotshot out of California.” She kept her arm around her father’s waist while Gull walked to them.

“Gulliver Curry, Lucas Tripp.”

“It’s a genuine pleasure, Mr. Tripp,” Gull told him as he extended a hand.

“You can drop the mister. Congratulations on the base record, and making the cut.”

“Thanks.”

She had her father’s eyes, Gull noted as they covered the small talk. And his bone structure. But what made more of an impression was the body language of both. It said, simply and unquestionably, they were an unassailable unit.

“There’s that son of a bitch.” Yangtree let the door of Operations slap behind him, and came forward to exchange one-armed hugs with Lucas.

“Man, it’s good to see you. So they let you skate through again this year?”

“Hell. Somebody’s got to keep these screwups in line.”

“When you’re tired of riding herd on the kids, I can always use another instructor.”

“Teaching rich boys to jump out of planes.”

“And girls,” Lucas added. “It’s a living.”

“No packing in, packing out, no twenty hours on a line. You miss it every day,” Yangtree said, and pointed at him.

“And twice on Sunday.” Tripp ran a hand down Rowan’s back. “But my knees don’t.”

“I hear that.”

“We’ll get you a couple rocking chairs,” Rowan suggested, “and maybe a nice pot of chamomile tea.”

Lucas tugged her earlobe. “Make it a beer and I’m there. Then again, I heard the bunch of you had plenty of those last night, and got into a little ruckus.”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Yangtree claimed, and winked at Gull. “Or you couldn’t handle, right, Kick Ass?”

“A momentary distraction.”

“Did the momentary distraction give you that bruise on your jaw?” Lucas wondered.

Gull rubbed a hand over it. “I’d say you should see the other guys, but it’s hard to be sure how they looked since they ran off with their tails tucked.”

“From having them rammed into your fists.” Lucas nodded at Gull’s scraped and swollen knuckles. “How’s the man they ganged up on?”

“Do you know everything?” Rowan demanded.

“Ear to the ground, darling.” Lucas kissed her temple. “My ear’s always to the ground.”

“Dobie’s a little guy, but he got some licks in.” Yangtree turned his head, spat on the ground. “They beat on him pretty good until Kick Ass here came along. Of course, before all that, your girl put two of them on their asses.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, too.”

“I didn’t start it.”

“So I’m told. Starting it’s stupid,” Lucas stated. “Finishing it’s necessary.”

Rowan narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t come by to check in, you came by to check on.”

“Maybe. Want to fight about it?”

She gave her father a poke in the chest, grinned.

And the siren went off.

Rowan kissed her father’s cheek. “See you later,” she said, and took off running. Yangtree slapped Lucas’s shoulder and did the same.

“It was good to meet you.”

Tripp took the hand Gull offered, studied the knuckles. “You’re off the list because of these.”

“Today.”

“There’s tomorrow.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Gull headed to the ready room. He was off the jump list, but he could lend a hand to those on it. Already jumpers were suiting up, taking their gear out of the tall cabinets, pulling on Kevlar suits over the fire-retardant undergarments. By the time he spotted her, Rowan had dropped into one of the folding chairs to put on her boots.

He helped with gear and equipment until he could work his way to her.

Over the sound of engines and raised voices, he shouted at her, “Where?”

“Got one in the Bitterroots, near Bass Creek.”

A short enough flight, he calculated, to warrant a buddy check prior to boarding. He started at her bootstraps, worked his way up. He’d already gotten past the state of his knuckles, and his temporary leave from the jump list.

No point in regrets.

“You’re clear.” Gull squeezed a hand to her shoulder, met her eyes. “Make it good.”

“It’s the only way I know.”

He watched her go, thought even the waddle enforced by the suit and gear looked strong and sexy on her.

As he walked out to watch the rest of the load, he saw Dobie hobbling over. And in the distance Lucas “Iron Man” Tripp stood, hands in his pockets.

“Fuckers screwed our chances.” Puffing a little, his face a crescendo of bruises, his brutalized eye a vivid mix of purple and red, Dobie stopped beside Gull.

“Others to come.”

“Yeah. Shit. Libby’s on there. I never thought she’d catch one before me.”

Together they stood as the plane taxied, as its nose lifted. Gull glanced down to where Lucas stood, saw him lift his face to the sky. And watch his daughter fly toward the flames.

5

The heart of the wildfire beat hot and hard. Cutting through it loosed a waterfall of sweat that ran down Rowan’s back in constant streams. Her chain saw shrieked through bark and wood, spitting out splinters and dust that layered her clothes, gloves, hard hat. The roar and screams of saws, of cracking wood, crashing trees fought to smother that hard, hot beat.

She paused only to chug down water to wet her throat and wash out the dust and smoke or to swipe off her goggles when the sweat running down her face blurred them.

She stepped back when the ponderosa she’d killed to save others whooshed its way to the forest floor.

“Hey, Swede.” Gibbons, acting as fire boss, hailed her over the din. Ash blackened his face, and the smoke he’d hiked through reddened his eyes. “I’m taking you, Matt and Yangtree off the saw line. The head’s shifted on us. It’s moving up the ridge to the south and building. We got spots frigging everywhere. We need to turn her while we can.”

He pulled out his map to show her positions. “We got hotshots working here, and Janis, Trigger, two of the rooks, flanking it here. We’ve got another load coming in, and they’ll take the saw line, chase down spots. We’ve got repellent on the way, should dump on the head in about ten, so make sure you’re clear.”

“Roger that.”

“Take them up. Watch your ass.”

She grabbed her gear, pulled in her teammates and began the half-mile climb through smoke and heat.

In her mind she plotted escape routes, the distance and direction to the safe zone. Small, frisky spot fires flashed along the steep route, so they beat them out, smothered them before continuing up.

Along their left flank an orange wall pulsed with heat and light, sucked oxygen out of the air to feed itself as it growled and gobbled through trees. She watched columns of smoke build tall and thick in the sky.

A section of the wall pushed out, skipped and jumped across the rough track in front of them, and began to burn merrily. She leaped forward kicking dirt over it, using her Pulaski to smother it while Yangtree beat at it with a pine bough.

They beat, shoveled and dug their way up the ridge.

Over the din she caught the rumble of the tanker, pulled out her radio to answer its signal. “Take cover!” she shouted to her team. “We’re good, Gibbons. Tell them to drop the mud. We’re clear.”

Through the smoke, she watched the retardant plane swing over the ridge, heard the thunder of its gates opening to make the drop, and the roar as the thick pink rain streaked down from the sky.

Those fighting closer to the head would take cover as well, and still be splattered with gel that burned and stung exposed skin.

“We’re clear,” she told her team as Yangtree gnawed off a bite of an energy bar. “We’re going to jag a little east, circle the head and meet up with Janis and the others. Gibbons says she’s moving pretty fast. We need to do the same to keep ahead of her. Let’s move! Keep it peeled for spots.”

She kept the map in her head, the caprices of the fire in her guts. They continued to chase down spot fires, some no bigger than a dinner platter, others the size of a kid’s swimming pool.

And all the while they moved up the ridge.

She heard the head before she saw it. It bellowed and clapped like thunder, followed that with a sly, pulsing roar. And felt it before she saw it, that rush of heat that washed over her face, pushed into her lungs.

Then everything filled with the flame, a world of vivid orange, gold, mean red spewing choking clouds of smoke. Through the clouds and eerie glimmer she saw the silhouettes, caught glimpses of the yellow shirts and hard hats of the smoke jumpers, waging the war.

Shifting her pack, she pushed her way up the ridge toward the ferocious burn. “Check in with Gibbons,” she shouted to Matt. “Let him know we made it. Yo, Elf!” Rowan hailed Janis as she hurried forward, waving her arms. “Cavalry’s here.”

“We need it. We got scratch lines around the hottest part of the head. The mud knocked her down some, and we’ve been scratching line down toward the tail. Need to widen it, and down the snags. Jesus.”

She took a minute to gulp some water, swipe at the sweat dripping into her eyes. The pink goo of repellent pasted her hat and shirt. “First fire of the season, and this bitch has a punch. Gibbons just told me they’re sending in another load of jumpers, and they put Idaho on alert. We gotta cut off her head, Swede.”

“We can start on widening the line, downing the snags. Hit a lot of spots on the way up. She keeps trying to jump.”

“Tell me. Get started. I got the rooks up there, Libby and Stovic. Keep ’em straight.”

“You got it.”

Rowan dug, cut, beat, hacked and sweated. Hours flashed by. She sliced down snags, the still-standing dead trees the fire would use for fuel. When she felt her energy flag, she stopped long enough to stuff her mouth with the peanut-butter crackers in her PG bag, wash it down with the prize of the single Coke—nearly hot now—she’d brought with her.

Her clothes sported the pink goo from a second drop of repellent, and under it her back, legs, shoulders burned from the heat and the hours of unrelenting effort.

But she felt it, the minute it started to turn their way.

The massive cloud of smoke thinned—just a little—and through it she saw a single hopeful wink of light from the North Star.

Day had burned into night while they’d battled.

She straightened, arched her back to relieve it, and looked back, into the black—the burned-out swatch of the forest the fire had consumed, the charred logs, stumps, ghostly spikes, dead pools of ash.

Nothing to eat there now, she thought, and they’d cut off the supply of fuel at the head.

Her energy swung back. It wasn’t over, but they’d beaten it. The dragon was beginning to lie down.

She downed a dead pine, then used one of its branches to beat out a small, sneaky spot. The cry of shock and pain had her swinging around in time to see Stovic go down. His chain saw bounced out of his hands, rolled, and the blood on its teeth dripped onto the trampled ground.

Rowan let her own drop where she stood, lunged toward him. She reached him as he struggled to sit up and grab at his thigh.

“Hold on! Hold on!” She pushed his hands away, tore at his pants to widen the jagged tear.

“I don’t know what happened. I’m cut!” Beneath the soot and ash, his face glowed ghastly white.

She knew. Fatigue had made him sloppy, caused him to lose his grip on the saw or use it carelessly enough, just for a second, to allow it to jerk back.

“How bad?” he demanded as she used a knife from her pack to cut the material back. “Is it bad?”

“It’s a scratch. Toughen up, rook.” She didn’t know either way, not yet. “Get the first-aid kit,” Rowan ordered when Libby dropped down beside her. “I’m going to clean this up some, Stovic, get a better look.”

A little shocky, she determined as she studied his eyes, but holding.

And his bitter litany of curses—a few of them Russian delivered in his Brooklyn accent—made her optimistic as she cleaned the wound.

“Got a nice gash.” She said it cheerfully, and thought, Jesus, Jesus, a little deeper, a little to the left, and bye-bye, Stovic. “The blade mostly got your pants.”

She looked him in the eye again. She’d have lied if necessary, and her stomach jittered with relief she didn’t need the lie. “You’re going to need a couple dozen stitches, but that shouldn’t slow you down for long. I’m going to do a field dressing that’ll hold you until you get back to base.”

He managed a wobbly smile, but she heard the click in his throat as he swallowed. “I didn’t cut off anything essential, right?”

“Your junk’s intact, Chainsaw.”

“Hurts like hell.”

“I bet.”

He gathered himself, took a couple slow breaths. Rowan felt another wave of relief when a little color eked back into his face. “First time I jump a fire, and look what I do. It won’t keep me grounded long, will it?”

“Nah.” She dressed the wound quickly, competently. “And you’ll have this sexy scar to impress the women.” She sat back on her haunches, smiled at him. “Women can’t resist a wounded warrior, right, Lib?”

“Damn right. In fact, I’m holding myself back from jumping you right now, Stovic.”

He gave her a twisted grin. “We beat it, didn’t we, Swede?”

“Yeah, we did.” She patted his knee, then got to her feet. Leaving Libby tending him, she walked apart to contact Gibbons and arrange for Stovic to be littered out.

Eighteen hours after jumping the fire, Rowan climbed back onto the plane for the short flight back to base.

Using her pack as a pillow, she stretched out on the floor, shut her eyes. “Steak,” she said, “medium rare. A football-size baked potato drowning in butter, a mountain of candied carrots, followed by a slab of chocolate cake the size of Utah smothered in half a gallon of ice cream.”

“Meat loaf.” Yangtree dropped down beside her while somebody else—or a couple of somebody elses by the stereophonics—snored like buzz saws. “An entire meat loaf, and I’ll take my mountain in mashed potatoes with a vat of gravy. Apple pie, and make that a gallon of ice cream.”

Rowan slid open her eyes to see Matt watching her with a sleepy smile. “What’s your pick, Matt?”

“My ma’s chicken and dumplings. Best ever. Just pour it in a fivegallon bucket so I can stick my head in and chow it down. Cherry cobbler and homemade whipped cream.”

“Everybody knows whipped cream comes in a can.”

“Not at my ma’s house. But I’m hungry enough to eat five-day-old pizza, and the box it came in.”

“Pizza,” Libby moaned, then tried to find a more comfortable curl on her seat. “I never thought I could be this empty and live.”

“Eighteen hours on the line’ll do it.” Rowan yawned, rolled over, and let the voices, the snoring, the engines lull her toward sleep.

“Gonna hit the kitchen when we get back, Ro?” Matt asked her.

“Mmm. Gotta eat. Gotta shower off the stink first.”

The next thing she knew they were down. She staggered off the plane through a fog of exhaustion. Once she’d dumped her gear she stumbled to her room, ripped the wrapper off a candy bar. She all but inhaled it while she stripped off her filthy clothes. Barely awake, she aimed for the shower, whimpered a little as the warm water slid over her. Through blurry eyes she watched it run dingy gray into the drain.

She lathered up, hair, body, face, inhaling the scent of peaches that apparently tripped Gull’s trigger. Rinse and repeat, she ordered herself. Rinse and repeat. And when, at last, the water ran clear, she made a halfhearted attempt to dry off.

Then fell onto the bed wrapped in the damp towel.

THE DREAM crept up on her in the twilight layer of sleep, as her mind began to float back from the deep pit of exhaustion.

Thundering engines, the whip of wind, the heady leap into the sky. The thrill turning to panic—the pound, pound, pound of heart against ribs as she watched, helplessly, Jim plunge toward the burning ground.

“Hey. Hey. You need to wake up.”

The voice cutting through the scream in her head, the rough shake on her shoulder, had her bolting up in bed.

“What? The siren? What?” She stared into Gull’s face, rubbing one hand over her own.

“No. You were having a nightmare.”

She breathed in, breathed out, slitting her eyes a little. It was morning—or maybe later—she could tell that much. And Gulliver Curry was in her room, without her permission.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

“Maybe you want to hitch that towel up some? Not that I mind the view. And, in fact, could probably spend the rest of the day admiring it.”

She glanced down, saw she was naked to the waist, and the towel that had slipped down wasn’t covering much below either. Baring her teeth, she yanked it up and around. “Answer the question before I kick your ass.”

“You missed breakfast, and you were heading toward missing lunch.”

“We worked the fire for eighteen hours. I didn’t get to bed till about three in the morning.”

“So I hear, and good job. But somebody mentioned you didn’t get to eat, and have a fondness for bacon-and-egg sandwiches, with Jack cheese. So . . .” He jerked his thumb at the bedside table. “I brought you one. I was going to leave it on the nightstand, but you were having a bad one. I woke you up, you flashed me—and just let me insert you have the most magnificent rack it’s ever been my privilege to view—and that brings us up to date.”

She studied the sandwich, the bottle of soda beside it. This time when she breathed in, the scent nearly made her weep with joy. “You brought me a bacon-and-egg sandwich?”

“With Jack cheese.”

“I’d say you earned the flash.”

“I can go get you another if that’s all it takes.”

She laughed, yawned, then secured the towel before grabbing the plate. The first bite had her closing her eyes in ecstasy. Wrapped in pleasure, she didn’t order him off the bed when she felt it give under his weight.

“Thanks,” she said with her mouth full of bite two. “Sincerely.”

“Let me respond, sincerely. It was way worth it.”

“I do have exceptional tits.” She reached for the drink, twisted the top off. “The fire kept changing direction on us, spitting out spots. We’d get a line down, and she’d say, Oh, you want to play that way? Try this. But in the end, she couldn’t beat the Zulies. Have you got any word this morning on Stovic?”

“Now known as Chainsaw. He and his twenty-seven stitches are doing fine.”

“I should’ve kept a closer eye on him.”

“He passed the audition, Rowan. Accidents happen. They’re part of the job description.”

“Can’t argue, but he was part of my team, and I was senior member in that sector.” She shrugged. “He’s okay, so that’s okay.”

She shifted her gaze. “Your hands look better.”

“Good enough.” He flexed them. “I’m back on the jump list.”

“Dobie?”

“He’s coming along, but it’ll be a couple more days anyway. Little Bear discovered Dobie can sew like Betsy Ross, so he’s been keeping Dobie chained to a machine. I won fifty-six dollars and change at poker last night, and Bicardi—one of the mechanics—got half lit and sang Italian opera. That, I believe, is all the news.”

“I appreciate the update, and the sandwich. Now go away so I can get dressed.”

“I’ve already seen you naked.”

“It’ll take more than a breakfast sandwich for you to see me naked again.”

“How about dinner?”

God, he made her laugh. “Out, hotshot. I need to hit the gym, put my time in and work out some of these kinks.”

“To show what a classy guy I am, I’ll refrain from making any of the obvious comments to that statement.” He rose, picked up the empty plate. “You’re one gorgeous female, Rowan,” he said as he walked out. “It keeps me up at night.”

“You’re one sexy male, Gulliver,” she murmured when he’d gone. “It’s messing with my head.”

She put in ninety in the gym, but kept it light and slow to avoid overworking her system, then hit the cookhouse.

Feeling human again, she texted the basics to her father.

Killed the fire. Am A-OK. Love you, Ro

She headed to the loft to check the chute she’d hung the night before. She began to check for holes, snags, defects.

She glanced up when Matt and Libby came in.

“Well, don’t you look flat-tailed and dull-eyed.”

“Remind me never to eat like a pig before crawling into bed.” Libby pressed a hand to her belly. “I couldn’t settle till after five, then lay there like a beached whale.”

“You didn’t make it to the cookhouse,” Matt commented when he brought his chute over.

“By the time I scraped off the stink, I barely made it from the shower to the bed. Slept like a rock,” she added, smiling at Libby. “Had room service, put in my ninety PT, ate more, and here I am ready to do it all again.”

“Sweet.” Libby spread out her chute. “Room service?”

“Gull brought me a breakfast sandwich.”

“Is that what they call it in Missoula?”

Rowan pointed a finger. “Just the sandwich, but he did earn some points. Have either of you seen Chainsaw?”

“Yeah, I poked in before I ran into Matt. He showed me his stitches.”

“Is that what they call it in California?”

“Walked right into that one.”

“He’s lucky,” Matt said. “Only hit meat. An inch either way, different story.”

“It comes down to inches, doesn’t it?” Libby ran her fingers over her chute. “Or seconds. Or one tiny lapse of focus. The difference between having an interesting scar or . . .”

She trailed off, paled a little. “I’m sorry, Matt. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t even know him.” He continued his inspection, cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know, not for sure, if I was going to be able to really do it again until yesterday. In the door, looking down at the fire, waiting for the spotter’s hand to come down on my shoulder. I didn’t know if I could jump fire again.”

“But you did,” Rowan murmured.

“Yeah. I told myself I did it for Jim, but until I actually did it . . . Because you’re right, Libby. It is about inches and seconds. It’s about fate. It’s why we can’t let up. Anyway.” He let out a long breath. “Did you know Dolly’s back?” he asked Rowan.

“No.” Surprised, Rowan stopped what she was doing. “When? I haven’t seen her on base.”

“She came back yesterday, while we were on the fire. She came by my room this morning after breakfast.” He kept his gaze fixed on his chute. “She looks okay. Wanted to apologize for how she was after Jim died.”

“That’s good.” But Rowan felt a twist in her belly as she completed her chute inspection.

“I told her she ought to do the same to you.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Can I ask who Dolly is?” Libby wondered. “Or should I mind my own business?”

“She was one of the cooks,” Rowan told her. “She and Jim had a thing. Actually, she tended to have things with a variety, but she’d narrowed it down to Jim most of last season. She took it hard when he died. Understandable.”

“She came at you with a kitchen knife,” Matt reminded her. “There’s nothing understandable about that.”

“Well, Jesus.”

“She sort of came at me,” Rowan corrected as Libby gaped at her.

“Why?”

“I was Jim’s jump partner that day. She needed to blame somebody. She went a little crazy, waved the knife at me. But basically she blamed all of us, said we’d all killed him.”

Rowan waited a beat to see if Matt would comment, but he kept his silence.

“She took off right after. I don’t think anyone expected she’d be back, or get hired back, for that matter.”

Matt shifted his feet, looked at her again. “Are you okay with it?”

“I don’t know.” Rowan rubbed the back of her neck. “I guess if she doesn’t wave sharp implements at me or try to poison me, I’m cool with it.”

“She’s got a baby.”

It was Rowan’s turn to gape. “Say what?”

“She told me she had a baby, a girl, in April.” His eyes watered up a little, so he looked away. “Dolly named her Shiloh. Her ma’s looking after her while Dolly’s working. She said it’s Jim’s.”

“Well, God, you didn’t know before? Your family doesn’t know?”

He shook his head. “That’s what she apologized for. She asked if I’d tell my mother, my family, and gave me some pictures. She said I could go see it—her—the baby—if I wanted.”

“Did Jim know?”

Color came and went in his face. “She said she told him that morning, before the jump. She said he was really excited, that he picked the name. Boy or girl, he told her, he wanted Shiloh. They were going to get married, she said, in the fall.”

He drew a wallet-sized photo out of his pocket. “Here she is. This is Shiloh.”

Libby took the picture. “She’s beautiful, Matt.”

His eyes cleared at that, and the smile spread. “Bald as a melon. Jim and I were, too, and my sister. I’ve got to call my ma,” he said as Libby passed the photo to Rowan. “I can’t figure out how to tell her.”

Rowan studied the chubby-cheeked, sparkle-eyed infant before handing the photo back. “Go take a walk, work it out in your head. Then call your mother. She’ll be happy. Maybe a little mad she didn’t know sooner, but overall she’ll be happy. Go on. I’ll take care of your chute.”

“I can’t get it off my mind, so I guess you’re right. I can finish the chute later.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks. Thanks,” he repeated, and wandered out like a man in a dream.

“It’s a lot to deal with,” Libby commented.

“Yeah, it’s a whole lot.”

She let it simmer in the back of her mind while she worked. Others came in, and since word of Dolly Brakeman’s return spread, it reigned as the hot topic of the day.

“Have you seen her yet?”

Rowan shook her head at Trigger. Since she’d finished clearing her own chute, she focused on Matt’s.

“Word is she came in yesterday afternoon, with her mother and her preacher.”

“Her what?”

“Yeah.” Trigger rolled his eyes. “Some Reverend Latterly. The word is it’s her mother’s preacher guy, and Dolly’s going to church regular now. And so they closeted up with L.B. for an hour. This morning, she’s in the kitchen with Lynn and Marg, frying up the bacon.”

“She can cook.”

“Yeah, that was never her problem.”

She met Trigger’s eyes, gave another quick shake of her head. “She’s got a kid now.” Rowan kept her voice low. “There’s no point shaking all that out.”

“You think the kid’s Jim’s, like she says?”

“They were banging like bunnies, so why not?” Because, neither of them said, she had a habit of hopping to lots of male bunnies. “Anyway, it’s not our business.”

“He was one of ours, so you know that makes it our business.”

She couldn’t deny it, but she tuned out the gossip and speculation until she had stowed the chutes. Then she hunted out Little Bear.

He straightened from his hunch over his desk, gestured for her to close the door. “I figured you’d be stopping by.”

“I just want to know if I need to watch my back. I’d as soon not end up with a bread knife between my shoulder blades.”

He rubbed a spot between his eyebrows. “Do you think I’d let her on base if I thought she’d give you any trouble?”

“No. But I wouldn’t mind hearing that right out loud.”

“She worked here three years before Jim. The only problem we ever had was the wind from how fast she’d throw up her skirts. And nobody much had a problem with that, either.”

“I don’t care if she gave every rookie, snookie, jumper and mechanic blow jobs in the ready room.” Rowan jammed her hands in her pockets, did a little turn around the room. “She’s a good cook.”

“She is. And from what I heard a lot of men missed those bj’s once she hooked up with Jim. And she’s got a kid now. From the timing of it, and from what she says, it’s his.” L.B. puffed out his cheeks. “She brought her preacher with her. Her mother got her going to church. She needs the work, wants to make amends.”

He waved a hand in the air. “I’m not going to deny I felt sorry for her, but I’d’ve turned her off if I hadn’t believed she wanted a fresh start for her and the baby. She knows if she gives you or anybody else any trouble, she’s out.”

“I don’t want that on my head, L.B.”

He gave Rowan a long look out of solemn brown eyes. “Then think of it on mine. If you’re not all right with this, I’ll take care of it.”

“Hell.”

“She’s singing in the choir on Sundays.”

“Give me a break.” She shoved her hands in her pockets again as L.B. grinned at her. “Fine, fine.” But she dropped down in a chair.

“Not fine?”

“Did she tell you she and Jim were going to get married, and he was all happy about the baby?”

“She did.”

“The thing is, L.B., I know he was seeing somebody else. We caught that fire last year in St. Joe, and were there three days. Jim hooked up with one of the women on the cook line; he seemed to go for cooks. And I know they met at a motel between here and there a few times when he was off the jump list. Others, too.”

“I know it. I had to talk to him about expecting me to cover for him with Dolly.”

“And the day of his accident, I told you, he was jittery on the plane. Not excited but nervous, jumpy. If Dolly dropped the pregnancy on him before we got called out, that’s probably why. Or part of why.”

He tapped a pencil on the desk. “I can’t see any reason Dolly has to know any of that. Do you?”

“No. I’m saying maybe she found God, or finds some comfort in singing for Jesus, but she’s either lying or delusional about Jim. So it’s fine with me if she’s back, as long as we understand that.”

“I asked Marg to keep an eye on her, let me know how she does.”

Satisfied, Rowan stood up again. “That’s good enough for me.”

“They’re getting some lightning strikes up north,” L.B. told her as she started out.

“Yeah? Maybe we’ll get lucky and jump a fire, then everybody can stop talking about the return of Dolly. Including me.”

She might as well clear it up altogether, Rowan decided, and made the cookhouse her next stop.

She found dinner prep under way, as she’d anticipated.

Marg, the queen of the cookhouse, where she’d reigned a dozen years, stood at the counter quartering red-skinned potatoes. She wore her usual bib apron over a T-shirt and jeans, and her mop of brown hair secured under a bright pink do-rag.

Steam puffed from pots on the stove while Lady Gaga belted out “Speechless” from the playlist on the MP3 Marg had on the counter.

Nobody but Marg determined kitchen music.

She sang along in a strong, smoky alto while keeping the beat with her knife.

Her Native American blood—from her mother’s grandmother—showed in her cheekbones, but the Irish dominated in the mild white skin dashed with freckles and the lively hazel eyes.

Those eyes caught Rowan’s now, and rolled toward the woman washing greens in the sink.

Rowan lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “Smells good in here.” She made sure her voice carried over the music.

At the sink, Dolly froze, then slowly switched off the water and turned.

Her face was a bit fuller, Rowan noted, and her breasts as well. She had her blond hair in a high, jaunty ponytail, and needed a root job.

But that was probably unkind, Rowan thought. A new mother had other priorities. The rose in her cheeks came from emotion rather than blush as she cast her gaze down and dried her hands on a cloth.

“We got pork roasting to go with the rosemary potatoes, butter beans and carrots. Veggies get three-cheese ravioli. Gonna put a big-ass Mediterranean salad together. Pound cake and blueberry crumble for dessert.”

“Sign me up.”

Rowan opened the refrigerator and took out a soda as Marg went back to her potatoes.

“How are you doing, Dolly?”

“I’m fine, and you?” She said it primly, chin in the air now.

“Good enough. Maybe you could take a quick break, catch a little air with me?”

“We’re busy. Lynn—”

“Better get her skinny ass back in here right quick,” Marg interrupted. “You go on out, and if you see her, send her in.”

“I need to dry these greens,” Dolly began, but shrunk—as all did—under Marg’s steely stare. “Okay, fine.” She tossed aside her cloth, headed for the door.

Rowan exchanged a look with Marg, then followed.

“I saw a picture of your baby,” Rowan began. “She’s beautiful.”

“Jim’s baby.”

“She’s beautiful,” Rowan repeated.

“She’s a gift from God.” Dolly folded her arms as she walked. “I need this job to provide for her. I hope you’re Christian enough not to do anything that gets me fired.”

“I don’t think about it being Christian or otherwise, Dolly. I think about it as being human. I never had a problem with you, and I’m not looking to have one now.”

“I’ll cook for you just like I cook for the rest. I hope you’ll show me the respect of staying clear of me and I’ll do the same. Reverend Latterly says I have to forgive you to get right with the Lord, but I don’t.”

“Forgive me for what?”

“You’re the reason my baby’s going to grow up without her daddy.”

Rowan said nothing for a moment. “Maybe you need to believe that to get through, and I find I don’t give a shit either way.”

“I expect that from you.”

“Then I’m happy not to disappoint you. You can claim to have tripped over God or to’ve been born again, I don’t care about that either. But you’ve got a baby, and you need work. You’re good at the work. What you’re going to have to suck up, Dolly, is to keep the work, you have to deal with me. When I feel like coming into the kitchen, I will, whether you’re around or not. I’m not going to live my life around your stipulations or misplaced grudges.”

She held up a hand before Dolly could speak. “One more thing. You got away with coming at me once. You won’t get away with it again. New baby or not, I’ll put you down. Other than that, we won’t have a problem.”

“You’re a heartless whore, and one day you’ll pay for all you’ve done. It should’ve been you instead of Jim that day. It should’ve been you, screaming your way to the ground.”

She ran back to the kitchen.

“Well,” Rowan mumbled, “that went well.”

6

Rowan slept poorly, and put the blame squarely on Dolly. She’d checked the radar, the logs, the maps before turning in. Fires sparked near Denali in Alaska and in the Marble Mountains of Northern California. She’d considered—half hoped—she’d be called up and spend part of her night on a transport plane. But no siren sounded, no knock banged on her door.

Instead, she’d dreamed of Jim for the second night in a row. She woke irritated and itchy, and annoyed with her own subconscious for being so easily manipulated.

Done with it, she promised herself, and decided to start her day with a good, hard run to blow the mood away.

As her muscles warmed toward the first quarter mile, Gull fell into step beside her.

She flicked him a glance. “Is this going to be a habit?”

“I was running first yesterday,” he reminded her. “I like putting in a few miles first thing. Wakes me up.”

He’d gotten a look at her, too, and decided she looked a little pissed off, a little shadowed around the eyes. “Are you going for time or distance?”

“I’m just going for the run.”

“We’ll call it distance then. I like having an agenda.”

“So I’ve noticed. I think three.”

He snorted. “You’ve got more than that. Five.”

“Four,” she said just to keep him from getting his way. “And don’t talk to me. I like being in my head when I run.”

Obligingly he tapped the MP3 playing on his arm and ran to his music.

They kept the pace steady for the first mile. She was aware of him beside her, of the sound of their feet slapping the track in unison. And found she didn’t mind it. She could speculate on what music he ran to, what agenda he’d laid out for the rest of his day. How that might tumble apart if they caught a fire.

They were both first stick on the jump list.

When they crossed the second mile she heard the sound of an engine above, and saw one of her father’s planes glide across the wide blue canvas of sky. Flying lesson, she determined—business was good. She wondered if her father or one of his three pilots sat as instructor, then saw the right wing tip down twice, followed by a single dip on the left.

Her dad.

Face lifted, she shot up her arm, fingers stretched high in her signal back.

The simple contact had the dregs of annoyance that the run and Gull’s companionship hadn’t quite washed away breaking apart.

Then her running companion picked up the pace. She increased hers to match, knowing he pushed her, tested her. Then again, life without competition was barely living as far as she was concerned. The building burn in her quads and her hamstrings scorched away even those shattered dregs.

Her stride lengthened at mile three. Her arms pumped, her lungs labored. The bold sun the forecasters had promised would spike the temperatures toward eighty by afternoon skinned her in a thin layer of sweat.

She felt alive, challenged, happy.

Then Gull glanced her way, sent her a wink. And left her in his dust.

He had some kind of extra gear, she thought once he kicked in. That’s all there was to it. And when he hit it, he was just fucking gone.

She dug for her own kick, found she had a little juice yet. Not enough to catch him—not unless she strapped herself to a rocket—but enough not to embarrass herself.

The last half-mile push left her a little light-headed, had her breath whooping as she simply rolled onto the grass beside the track.

“You’ll cramp up. Come on, Ro, you know better than that.”

He was winded—not gasping for air as she was, but winded, and she found a little satisfaction in that.

“Minute,” she managed, but he grabbed her hands, pulled her to her feet.

“Walk it off, Ro.”

She walked her heart rate down to reasonable, squeezed a stream from the water bottle she’d brought out with her into her mouth.

Watching him, she stood on one leg, stretched her quads by lifting the other behind her. He’d worked up a sweat, and it looked damn good on him. “It’s like you’ve got an engine in those Nikes.”

“You motor along pretty good yourself. And now you’re not pissed off or depressed anymore. Was that your father doing the flyover?”

“Yeah. Why do you say I was pissed off and depressed?”

“It was all over your face. I’ve been making a study of your face, and that’s how I tagged the mood.”

“I’m going to hit the gym.”

“Better stretch out those hamstrings first.”

Irritation crawled up her back like a beetle. “What are you, the track coach?”

“No point getting pissed at me because I noticed you were pissed.”

“Maybe not, but you’re right here.” Still, she dropped down into a hamstring stretch.

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve got cause to be.”

She lifted her head, aimed that icy blue stare.

“Let me sum up.” He opened the kit bag he’d tossed on the edge of the track, took out some water. “Matt’s brother and the blond cook spent a good portion of last season tangling the sheets. Historically, said cook tangled many other sheets with dexterity and aplomb.”

“Aplomb.”

“It’s a polite way of saying she banged often, well and without too much discrimination.”

“That also sounded polite.”

“I was raised well. In addition, Jim also tended to be generous with his attentions.”

“Get you.”

“However,” Gull continued, “during the tangling and banging, the cook decided she was in love with Jim—that I got from Lynn, who got it from the blonde—and the blonde broke the hearts of many by focusing her dexterity exclusively on Jim, and closed her ears and eyes to the fact he didn’t exactly reciprocate.”

“You could write a book.”

“The thought’s crossed. Toward the end of this long, hot summer, the cook gets pregnant, which, rumor has it, since she avoided this eventuality previously, may have been on purpose.”

“Probably.” It was one of the things she’d already considered, and one of the things that depressed her.

“Sad,” he said, and left it at that. “The cook claims she told Jim, who greeted the news with joy and exaltation. Though I didn’t know him, that strikes me as sketchy. Plans to marry were immediately launched, which strikes sketchier yet. Then more sadly yet, Jim’s killed during a jump which the ensuing investigation determines was his error—but the cook blamed his jump partner, which would be you, and tried to stab you with a kitchen knife.”

“She didn’t exactly try to stab me.” The hell of it was, Rowan thought, she couldn’t figure out why she kept defending the lunatic Dolly on that score. “Or didn’t have time to because Marg yanked the knife away from her almost as soon as she’d picked it up.”

“Points for Marg.” He watched her face as he spoke, cat eyes steady and patient. “Grief takes a lot of forms, and a lot of those are twisted and ugly. But blaming you, or anyone on that load, for Jim’s accident is just stupid. Continuing to is mean and stupid, and self-defeating.”

She didn’t want to talk about this. Why was she? She couldn’t seem to help it, she realized, with him watching her intently, speaking so calmly.

“How do you know she still blames me?”

The sunlight picked out the gold in his brown hair as he drank down more water. “To wind it up, the cook takes off, and finds religion—or so she claims and maybe even believes. Not enough grace and faith to tell the father’s grieving family about the baby, until she comes back to base looking for work. So I call bullshit on the God factor.”

“Okay.” Maybe she couldn’t help it because he’d laid it out flat, and in exactly the way she saw it. “Wow.”

“Not quite finished. You seek out the cook, engage her in private conversation. Though, of course, privacy is slim pickings around here. During the not-so-private conversation, the cook becomes very steamed, does a lot of snarling and pointing, then storms off. Which leads me to conclude finding religion didn’t include finding forgiveness, charity or good sense.”

“How did you get all this? And I do mean all.”

“I’m a good listener. If you care, the general consensus on base is she had Jim’s kid—and Matt’s niece—so she should get some support. In fact, Cards is taking donations for a college fund in Jim’s name.”

“Yeah,” Rowan replied. “He’d think of that. He’s just built that way.”

“The consensus continues that if she gives you grief or talks trash about you, she gets one warning. Second time, we meet with L.B., lay it out and she goes. You’ve got no say in it.”

“I—”

“None.” The single syllable remained calm, and absolutely final. “Everybody pretty much wants her to keep her job. And nobody’s going to let her keep it if she causes trouble. So if you don’t agree with that, you’re outvoted. You might as well stop being pissed off and depressed because it’s not going to do you any good.”

“I guess I don’t agree because it’s me. If it was somebody else, I’d be right there.”

“I get that.”

“Leaving out a lot of stuff I’m not in the mood to talk about, my mother died when I was twelve.”

“That’s hard.”

“They weren’t together, and . . . that’s the lot of stuff I’m not in the mood to talk about. My father raised me, with his parents taking a lot of the weight during the season when he was still jumping. What I’m saying is, I know it’s not easy to be a single parent, even with help and support. I’m willing to cut her some slack.”

“She’s getting slack already, Rowan. She’s working in the kitchen. It’ll be up to her if she stays.”

They’d walked back while they talked. Now he gestured toward the gym. “Feel like lifting?”

“Yeah. Can I use this?” She tapped his MP3 player. “I want to check out your playlist.”

“Working out without the tunes is a sacrifice.” He pulled it off, handed it to her. “Consider that when you’re lining up the reasons to sleep with me.”

“I’ll put it at the top of the list.”

“Nice. So . . . what did it bump down?”

She laughed and walked inside ahead of him.

Once she finished her daily PT, cleaned up, she hiked to the cookhouse to fuel up on carbs.

In the dining hall, Stovic chowed down on bacon and eggs and biscuits while Cards ragged on him for being a malingerer between forkfuls of pancakes. Gull had beaten her there and was already building a stack of his own from the breakfast buffet.

Rowan grabbed a plate. She flopped a pancake onto it, laid two slices of bacon over that, added another pancake, two more slices of bacon. She covered that with a third pancake over which she dumped a hefty spoonful of berries.

“What do you call that?” Gull asked her.

“Mine.” She carried it to the table, dropped into a chair. “What’s the word, Cards?”

“Plumbago.”

“That’s a good one. Sounds like a geriatric condition, but it’s a flower, right?”

“Shrub. Half point for you.”

“The flower on the shrub, or plant, is also called plumbago,” Gull pointed out.

Cards considered. “I guess that’s true. Full point.”

“Yippee.” Rowan dumped syrup over her bacon pancakes. “How’s the leg, Chainsaw?”

“Stitches itch.” He glanced over as Dobie wandered in, grinned. “But at least it’s not my face.”

“At least I didn’t do it to myself,” Dobie tossed back, and studied the offerings. “If I hadn’t lost that bet, I’d’ve joined up just for the breakfasts.” To prove it, he took a sample of everything.

“Your eye looks better,” Rowan told him.

He could open both now, and she recognized the symphonic bruising as healing.

“How are the ribs?”

“Colorful, but they don’t ache much. L.B.’s got me doing a shitload of sit-down work.” He pulled out a bottle of Tabasco, pumped it over his eggs. “I asked if I could have some time today. I figured I’d walk on down, check out your daddy’s operation. Watch some of those pay-to-jump types come down.”

“You should. A lot of people make a picnic of it. Marg would pack you up something.”

“Maybe I’ll go with you.”

Dobie wagged an impaled sausage at Stovic. “You’ve got that gimp leg.”

“The walk’ll take my mind off the itch.”

It probably would, Rowan thought, but just in case. “I’ll give you the number for the desk. If you can’t make it, they’ll send somebody to get you.”

Marg stepped in, scanned the table as she walked over and set a tall glass of juice in front of Rowan. “Are you all going to be wandering in and out of here all morning, and lingering at my table half the day? What you need is a fire.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Rowan picked up the glass, sampled. “Carrots, because there are always carrots, celery, I think, some oranges—and I’m pretty sure mango.”

“Good for you. Now drink it all.”

“Marg, you’re looking more beautiful than ever this morning.”

Marg cast a beady eye on Dobie. “What do you want, rookie?”

“I heard tell you might could put together a bag lunch if me and my fellow inmate here mosey on down to Rowan’s daddy’s place to watch the show.”

“I might could. You tell Lucas, if you see him, it’s past time he came in to pay a call on me.”

“I’ll sure do that.”

AS HE HAD a short window before a tandem jump, Lucas made a point of walking out when he got word a couple of the rookies from the base were on the grounds.

A lot of tourists and locals came by to watch the planes and the jumpers, with plenty of them hooking the trip to his place with a tour of the smoke jumpers’ base. He figured it was good for business.

He’d started with one plane, a part-time pilot and instructor, with his mother handling the phones. When they rang. His pop ran dispatch, helped with the books. Of course in those days, he’d only been able to give the half-assed business his attention off-season, or when he was off the jump list.

But he’d needed to build something for his daughter, something solid.

And he had. He took pride in that, in his fleet of planes, his full-time staff of twenty-five. He had the satisfaction of knowing one day, when she was ready, Rowan could stand on what he’d built and have that solidity under her.

Still there were days he watched a plane rise into the sky from the base, knew the men and women on it were flying to fire, that he missed it like a limb.

He knew, now, what it was to be on the ground and know someone he loved more than anything in the world and beyond was about to risk her life. He wondered how his parents, his daughter, even the wife he’d had so briefly had ever stood that constant mix of fear and resignation.

But today, so far, the sirens stayed silent.

He stopped a moment to watch one of the students—a sixty-three-year-old banker from town free-fall from the Otter. Applause broke out in the audience of watchers when the chute deployed.

Zeke had been Lucas’s banker for close to forty years, so Lucas watched a moment longer, gave a nod of approval at the form, before he walked over to the blanket where the two men from the base stretched out with what he recognized as one of Marg’s famous boxed lunches.

“How’s it going?” he asked, and crouched down beside them. “Lucas Tripp, and you must be Dobie. I heard you got in a scuffle at Get a Rope the other night.”

“Yeah. I’m usually prettier. It’s a pleasure meeting you,” Dobie added as he held out a hand. “This one’s Chainsaw, as he likes to use one to shave his legs.”

“Heard about that, too. If you’re going to get banged up, it might as well be early in the season, before things heat up.”

“It’s a real nice operation you got here, Mr. Tripp,” Stovic commented.

The polite deference made Lucas feel old as an alp. “You can hang the mister around my father. We’re doing pretty well here. See that one.” He gestured toward where Zeke touched down and rolled. “He won’t see sixty again. Bank manager out of Missoula. Granddaddy of eight with two more coming. Known him longer than either of you have been alive, and up until a couple months ago, he never said a word to me about wanting to jump. Bucket List,” Lucas told them with a grin. “Since that movie came out, we’re getting a lot of clients and students with some age on them coming in.

“I’ve got a tandem jump coming up. Client’s due in about fifteen. Fifty-seven-year-old woman. High-school principal. You never know who’s got a secret yen to fly.”

“Do you miss it?” Dobie asked him. “Jumping fire.”

“Every day.” Lucas shrugged as he watched his banker wave to a trio of his grandkids. “But old horses like me have to make room for you young stallions.”

“You must have a lot of stories from back in the day.”

And older yet, Lucas thought, but grinned at Stovic. “Get a couple beers in me, I’ll tell them all, whether you want to hear them or not.”

“Anytime,” Dobie said. “Anyplace.”

“I might take you up on it. I better get on, give the principal the thrill of her life.” Lucas pushed to his feet. “Enjoy your day off. You won’t get many more of them.”

“I don’t see how he could come to give it up,” Dobie commented. “I don’t think I could.”

“You haven’t jumped fire yet,” Stovic pointed out.

“In my head I have.” Dobie bit into a drumstick Marg had fried to a crispy turn. “And I didn’t try to castrate myself with a chain saw.”

Stovic gave him a good-natured punch in the arm. “It got the Swede’s hands on my thigh. Worth every stitch.”

“You try to move on that, Gull’ll give you more than a few stitches. His eyes’re homed in that direction.”

“I ain’t blind. But she’s sure got a nice touch.” Stovic dug into the potato salad as they watched the next jumper.

LUCAS CHECKED HIS LOGS, the aircraft, had a quick conversation with his mechanic and the pilot for the tandem. Even if the client arrived on time, Marcie—his service rep—would sit her down for an overall explanation, have the client fill out the necessary forms. Since she’d ordered the DVD package, he swung through to make sure his videographer was lined up for the go.

When he walked into the operations building, he spotted Marcie and the client at one of the tables dealing with the paperwork. His first thought was a cliché, but true nonetheless.

They hadn’t made principals like that when he’d been in high school.

She had red hair, and a lot of it, that kind of swept around her face, and eyes like forest shadows. Deep and green. When she smiled at something Marcie said, shallow dimples popped out in her cheeks, and her lips turned up in a pretty bow.

He wasn’t shy around women—unless he was attracted to one. He felt the wash of embarrassed heat run up the back of his neck as he approached the table.

“And here’s your jump master,” Marcie announced, “and the owner of Zulie Skydiving. Lucas, I was just telling Mrs. Frazier she’s about to experience the thrill of a lifetime, and she’s got the top dog to take her through it.”

“Well,” Lucas managed as the heat spread to the top of his skull.

“If I’m going to be thrilled, I like knowing it’s with the top dog.” She offered her hand—narrow, slender-fingered. Lucas took it loosely, released it quickly, worried he might crush it.

“Mrs. Frazier’s son bought her the package for Christmas,” Marcie added.

“Make it Ella, since we’ll be jumping out of a plane together. He heard me say I wanted to try skydiving one day, and took me seriously, even though I believe I’d had several glasses of wine at the time.” Those lips bowed up again; the dimples popped. “He and his family are out poking around, as are my daughter and hers. They’re all excited to watch.”

“That’s good. That’s nice.”

“So . . .” Ella waited a beat. “When do we start?”

“We’ll get you suited up.” Though she beamed smiles, Marcie slid a puzzled look up at Lucas. “While we do, you’ll watch a short instructional video. Then the boss will give you a little training, answer any questions. That’ll take about thirty minutes, so you’ll be familiar with the equipment, feel comfortable and learn how to land.”

“Landing would be key. I don’t want to traumatize my grandchildren.” She said it with a sparkle in her eye.

Married. Lucas’s brain caught up with the rest of him. With kids. With grandkids. Knowing she was married eased the shyness. Now he could just admire how pretty she was, seeing as she was off-limits.

“No worries about that.” He was able to grin back at her. “They’ll remember today as the day they watched their grandmother fly. If you’re done with the paperwork, we’ll get you your flight suit.”

He changed into his own while Marcie got the client outfitted. He generally enjoyed doing tandems with first-timers, soothing their nerves if they had them, answering questions, giving them the best experience possible, and a memory they’d carry for the rest of their lives. He expected this run would be no exception.

The client looked fit, which helped. He glanced at his copy of the form and noted he’d been on the mark on her statistics. Five-five, 123 pounds. No physical problems.

He stepped outside to wait for her.

“I feel official.” She laughed and did a little turn in her flight suit and jump boots.

“Looking good. I know Marcie went over the procedure with you, but I can go over it again, answer any questions you’ve got.”

“Marcie was thorough, and the video was great. The harness attaches me to you, start to finish, which is very important from my point of view.”

“It’s a good way to make a first jump. Low stress.”

She bubbled out a laugh. “Easy for you to say. I guess you’re used to screamers.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m betting you’re going to be too happy and too dazzled by the view to scream.” He led her to a small training field. “We’ll go up to about fourteen thousand feet. When you’re ready, I’ll take you on a trip into that big sky. The free fall’s a rush, exhilarating. It’ll last about a minute before the chute deploys. Once it does, you’ll float, and listen to the kind of quiet only jumpers know.”

“You love it.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First for my son. I just couldn’t disappoint him. And second, I realized on the way here, to remind myself I used to be fearless. Tell me, Mr. Tripp—”

“Lucas.”

“Lucas, how many people chicken out once they’re up there?”

“Oh, there’s some, sure. I can usually peg them before we get off the ground.” He gave her an easy smile. “You won’t be one of them.”

“Because?”

“You were fearless once. You don’t forget what you are. Sometimes you just put it aside awhile.”

The dimples fluttered in her cheeks. “You’re right. I’ve learned that lesson the last few years.”

He showed her how to land, how to use him, her own body for a soft touchdown. He strapped the harness so she could get accustomed to the feel of it, and having his body against hers.

The little jump in the belly he felt had him relieved to remind himself she was married.

“Any questions? Concerns?”

“I think I’ve got it. I’m supposed to relax and enjoy—and hope I don’t scream the whole way down so the DVD shows me with my mouth wide open and my eyes squeezed shut.”

“Hey, Mom!”

They looked over at the group hovering at the edge of the field.

“The family. Do you have time to meet them before we do this?”

“Sure.”

He walked over with her, made some small talk with her son—he looked pale and nervous now that it was zero hour—her daughter, the three children, including the one watching him like an owl from his daddy’s hip.

“You’re sure about this? Because if—”

“Tyler.” Ella rose to the toes of her jump boots, kissed her son’s cheek. “I’m revved and ready. Best Christmas present ever.”

“Nana’s gonna do this.” A boy of about five shot the toy parachutist from their gift shop into the air. It floated down on a bright red chute.

“You bet I am. Watch me.”

After hugs and kisses, she walked off with Lucas toward the waiting Twin Otter. “I’m not nervous. I’m not going to be nervous. I’m not going to scream. I’m not going to throw up.”

“Look at that sky. It doesn’t get prettier. Until you’re floating in it. Here’s Chuck. He’ll be videographing your entire experience.”

“Chuck.” She shook hands. “You’ll get my best side, right?”

“Guaranteed. Nobody gives a tandem like Iron Man, ma’am. Smooth as silk.”

“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “Let’s do it, Iron Man.”

She turned, waved to her family, then got onboard.

She shook hands with the pilot, and to Lucas’s eye stayed steady and attentive through the flight. He expected more questions—about the plane, the equipment, his experience—but she played it up for the camera, obviously determined to give her family a fun memento.

She mugged, pretended to faint and surprised Lucas by crawling into his lap and telling her kids she was flying off to Fiji with her jump master.

“We need to go back for a bigger plane,” he told her, and made her laugh.

When they reached jump altitude he winked at her. “Ready to harness up?”

Those lips bowed up with nerves around the edges. “Let’s rock and roll.”

He went over the procedure again, his voice soothing, easy, as he hooked them together.

“You’re going to feel a rush of air, hear more engine noise when we open the door. We’re miked, so Chuck will pick up what we say for your DVD.”

As he spoke he felt her breathing pick up. When the door opened, he felt her jerk, felt her tremble.

“We don’t go until you say go.”

“I swam naked in the Gulf of Mexico. I can do this. Let’s go.”

“We’re go.” He nodded to Chuck, who jumped first. “Watch the sky, Ella,” he murmured, and leaped with her.

She didn’t scream, but after a strangled gasp, he heard her clearly shout, “Holy fucking shit!” and wondered if they’d want that edited out for the grandchildren.

Then she laughed, shot her arms out like wings.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God ! I did it. Lucas!”

She vibrated against him, and in tune with her he recognized exhilaration rather than fear.

The chute deployed, a rush of wings, and the whippy dive became a graceful float.

“It was too fast, over too fast. But, oh, oh, you were right. This is beautiful. This is . . . religious.”

“Put your hands on the toggles. You can drive awhile.”

“Okay, wow. Look at Nana, Owen! I’m a skydiver. Thank you, Tyler! Hi, Melly, hi, Addy, hi, Sam!” She tipped her head back. “I’m in the sky, and it’s blue silk.”

She fell silent, then sighed. “You were right about the quiet. You were right about everything. I’ll never forget this. Oh, there they are! They’re waving. You’d better take over so I can wave back.”

“You have a beautiful family.”

“I really do. Oh, gosh, oh, wow, here comes the ground.”

“Trust me. Trust yourself. Stay relaxed.”

He brought her down soft.

With excited screams, wild cheers, her family jumped and waved. When Lucas detached the harness, she dropped into an exaggerated curtsy, blew kisses.

Then she spun around, her face glowing, and stunned him by throwing her arms around him and kissing him firmly on the mouth.

“I’d have done that in midair if I could have because, my God, that was orgasmic. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I think you just did.”

She laughed, made him laugh by doing a quick victory dance. “I jumped out of a damn plane. My ex-husband said I’d be crazy to do it, the jerk. But I feel crazy, because I’m going to do it again.”

Still laughing, she ran over, arms wide, to her family.

“Ex-husband,” Lucas managed. And the heat spread up the back of his neck again.

7

With the siren silent, Rowan spent most of her time in the loft checking, clearing or mending chutes. She’d caught up on paperwork, repacked her personal gear bag, checked and rechecked her own chute, readied her jump gear.

She remained first jumper, first stick.

“Going stir-crazy here,” Cards said when he got up from the machine.

“Aren’t we all. And the word of today is . . .”

“Fastidious. We’ve been doing dick-all but cleaning and organizing. The ready room’s freaking fastidious enough to suit my mother’s scary standards.”

“It can’t last much longer.”

“I hope to Christ not. I had to kick my own ass for cheating at solitaire yesterday, and I’m starting to think about crafts. We’ll be knitting next.”

“I’d like a nice scarf to match my eyes.”

“It could happen,” he said darkly. “At least I had phone sex with Vicki last night.” He pulled the deck of cards from his shirt pocket, shuffling as he paced. “It’s fun while it lasts, but it doesn’t really do the job.”

“And gone are the days you’d hunt up a companion for actual sex?”

“Long gone. She’s worth it. I told you she and the kids are coming out next month, right?”

“You mentioned it.” One or two thousand times, Rowan thought.

“Gotta get in some time now, so I can take a couple days next month. I need to work, need the pay, need—”

“To resist trolling the aisle of the craft store,” Rowan finished.

“I won’t be trolling alone if this lull lasts much longer. Have you got anything to read? All Gibbons has are books that give me a headache. I read one of Janis’s romance novels, but that doesn’t help keep my mind off sex.”

“Nothing deep, nothing sexy. Check.” She signed and dated the tag on the repaired chute. “What’re you after?”

“I want something gory, where people die miserable deaths at the hands of a psycho.”

“I could fix you up. Come on. We’ll peruse my library.”

“Dobie’s in the kitchen with Marg,” Cards told her, passing a hand over Rowan’s head, then flipped out an ace of spades. “He got some recipe of his mother’s, and he’s in there cooking up some pie or other.”

Cooking, knitting—that bake sale could be next. Then struck, Rowan paused. “Is Dobie hitting on Marg?”

Cards only shook his head. “She’s got twenty years on him.”

“Men routinely hit on women twenty years younger.”

“I’m bored, Ro, but not bored enough to get into a tangle on that with you.”

“Coward.” But when they stepped outside, she paused again. “Look, check out those clouds.”

“We got scouts.” His face brightened as he studied the clouds over the mountains. “A nice string of them.”

“Could mean smoke today. With any luck, we’ll have that ready room messed up again before afternoon. Do you still want that book?”

“Might as well. I’ll get myself all settled in, good book, good snack. It’s like guaranteeing we’ll fly today.”

“It’s the slowest start to a season I remember. Then again, my father once told me when it starts cool, it ends hot. Maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to get going.”

“If it doesn’t get going, what’re we here for?”

“No argument. So . . .” She tried for a casual tone as they crossed to her end of the barracks. “Have you seen Fast Feet this morning?”

“In the Map Room. Studying. At least he was about an hour ago.”

“Studying. Huh.” She wasn’t interested in settling down with a book, but a little byplay with Gull might be just the solution to boredom she needed.

Inside, she led the way to her quarters. “Gruesome murder,” she began. “Do you want just violence, or sex and violence? As opposed to romantic sexy.”

“I always want sex.”

“Again, it’s hard to—” She broke off as she opened her door. The slaughterhouse stench punched like a fist in the throat.

A pool of blood spread over the bed. Dark rivers of it ran down hills of clothes heaped on the floor. On the wall in letters wet and gleaming dripped the statement:

BURN IN HELL!

In the center of the ugliness, Dolly whirled to face the door. Some of the blood in the canister she held splattered on her shirt.

“Son of a bitch!” Fists up, her mind as red and vicious as the blood, Rowan charged. A war paint line of pig’s blood splatted on her face as Dolly screamed and dropped to the ground—seconds before Cards grabbed Rowan’s arms.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

“Fuck you.” Rowan pushed off her feet, adding to the blood when the back of her head connected sharply with Cards’s nose and had it spurting.

He yelped, and through sheer grit managed to hold on for another second or two.

“You’re so dead!” Rowan shouted at Dolly, and, blind to anything but payback, jabbed her elbow into Cards’s ribs, sprang free.

Shrieking, scrabbling back, Dolly pitched the canister. Globs of blood flew, striking wall, ceiling, furniture, when Rowan batted it away.

“You like blood? Let’s see how you like painting with yours, you crazy cunt.”

Rowan clamped her hands on Dolly’s ankles when Dolly tried to crawl under the bed. Even as she hauled Dolly across the blood-smeared floor, men who’d come running at the commotion dived in to grapple Rowan back.

Rowan didn’t waste her breath. She punched, kicked, jabbed and kneed, heedless of where blows landed, until she ended up facedown on the floor, pinned.

“Just stay down,” Gull said in her ear.

“Get off me. Goddamn you, get off me. Do you see what she did?”

“Everybody sees it. Jesus, somebody get that screaming idiot out of here before I punch her.”

“I’m going to kick every square inch of her skanky ass. Let me up! You hear that, you psycho? First chance I get it won’t be pig’s blood you’re wearing, it’ll be your own. Let me the fuck up!”

“You’re down until you calm down.”

“Fine. I’m calm.”

“Not even close.”

“She’s got Jim’s blood on her,” Dolly wept as Yangtree and Matt pulled her from the room. “You all have his blood on you. I hope you all die. I hope you all burn alive. All of you.”

“I think she lost her religion,” Gull commented. “Listen to me. Rowan, you listen. She’s gone, and if you try to go after her and take a shot at her now, we’re just going to put you down again. You already bloodied Cards’s nose, and I’m pretty sure Janis is going to be sporting a black eye.”

“They shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”

“If they, and the rest of us, hadn’t, you’d have punched a pathetic lunatic, and you’d be off the jump list until it got sorted out.”

That, he noted, had her taking the first calming breath. He signaled for Libby and Trigger to let go of her legs and, when she didn’t try to kick them, pointed to the door.

Libby shut it quietly behind them.

“I’m letting you up.” He eased his grip on her arms, braced to grab them again if necessary. Then, cautiously, he shifted off her, sat on the floor.

Blood covered both of them, but he was pretty sure she had the worst of it. It smeared her face, dripped from her hair, coated her arms, her shirt. She looked as if she’d been whacked with an ax. And it made him sick.

“You know, it’s a goddamn pigsty in here.”

“That’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not, but it’s the best I got.” He eyed her coolly as she pushed up to sit, watched her right hand bunch into a fist. “I can take a punch if you need to throw one.”

“Just get out.”

“No. We’re just going to sit here awhile.”

Rowan used her shoulder to wipe at her face, smeared it with more blood. “She got that crap all over me. All over my bed, the floor, the walls.”

“She’s sick and she’s stupid. And she deserved to have every square inch of her skanky ass kicked. She’ll get fired, and everybody on base and within fifty miles will know why. That might be worse.”

“It’s not as satisfying.” She looked away a moment as, with the wild heat of temper fading, tears wanted to sting. She clamped her hands together; they’d started to shake.

“It smells like a slaughterhouse in here.”

“You can sleep in my room tonight.” He hitched a bandanna out of his pocket, used it to wipe blood from her face. “But everybody who sleeps in my room has to be naked.”

She huffed out a tired breath. “I’ll bunk with Janis until I get it cleaned up. She has the naked rule, too.”

“Now that was just mean.”

She looked at him then, just sat and looked while he ruined his bandanna on a hopeless job. It helped to see he wasn’t as calm as he sounded, helped to see the temper and disgust on his face.

Oddly, seeing it calmed her just a little.

“Did I give you that bloody lip?”

“Yeah. Back fist. Not bad.”

“I’ll probably be sorry for it at some point, but I can’t work it up right now.”

“It took five of us to take you down.”

“That’s something. I have to go wash up.”

She started to rise when L.B. knocked briskly on the door, opened it. “Give us a minute, will you, Gull?”

“Sure.” Before he stood, Gull leaned over, laid a hand on Rowan’s knee. “People like her? They never get people like you. It’s their loss.”

He pushed to his feet, and closed the door on his way out.

L.B. looked around the room, rubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Ro. Jesus. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“I shouldn’t have hired her on. I shouldn’t have taken her back. This is on me.”

“It’s on her.”

“She got the chance to come at you this way because I gave her one.” He hunkered down so their faces were on level. “We’ve got her in my office, with a couple of the guys watching her. She’ll be fired, banned from base. I’m going to call the law on this. Do you want to press charges?”

“I do because she earned it.” The tears had backed off, thank God. Now she only felt sick, sick and tired. “But the baby didn’t. I just want her gone.”

“She’s gone,” he promised. “Come on, you need to get out of here. We’ll have some of the cleaning crew deal with it.”

“I need to get some air. Apologize to some people. I need to take a shower, wash this off me.” She blew out another breath as she looked down at herself. “I probably need the full Silkwood.”

“Take as long as you need. And nobody needs you to apologize.”

“I need me to. But this shit’s all over my stuff. I need to clean some of it up myself.”

She got up, opened the door. Looked back. “Did she love him this much? Is this love?”

L.B. stared at the bloody words on the wall. “It’s got nothing to do with love.”

THE SIREN SOUNDED as she stepped out of the shower.

“Perfect,” she muttered. She dragged on underwear without bothering to dry off, pulled on a shirt, her pants, and zipped them on the run.

The nine other jumpers on the list beat her to the ready room. She listened to the rundown as she suited up. Lightning strikes on Morrell Mountain. She and Cards had judged those morning clouds correctly. The lookout spotted the smoke about eleven, around the time she’d surprised Dolly and her goddamn pig’s blood.

Over the next hour or so, the fire manager officer had to consider letting it burn, do its work of clearing out some brush and fallen trees, or call in the smoke jumpers.

A few more lightning strikes and unseasonably dry conditions made the natural burn too big a risk.

“Ready for the real thing, Fast Feet?” She put her let-down rope in her pocket while Gull grabbed gear from the speed rack.

“Jumping the fire, or you and me making some?”

“You’d better keep your mind off impossible dreams. This isn’t a practice jump.”

“Looking good.” Dobie slapped Gull on the back. “Wish I was going with you.”

“You’ll be off the disabled list soon. Save me some pie,” Rowan called out, and shambled over to the waiting plane.

She tucked her helmet in the crook of her elbow. “Okay, boys and girls, I’ll be your fire boss today. For a couple of you, this is your first fire jump. Do it by the numbers, don’t screw up, and you’ll do fine. Remember, if you can’t avoid the trees . . .”

“Aim for the small ones,” the crew responded.

Once they were airborne she sat next to Cards. “At least the nose didn’t ground you.”

He pinched it gently to wag it back and forth. “So I don’t have to be pissed at you. Like I said, Swede, the girl’s batshit.”

“Yeah. And it’s done.” She took the note passed back to her from the cockpit. “We’re going to hold off while they drop a load of mud. It was a hard winter in that area, and there’s a lot of downed trees fueling this one. It’s moving faster than they figured.”

“Almost always does.”

She pulled out her map, scanned the area. But in moments she only had to look out the window to see what they were dealing with.

A tower of smoke spewed skyward, gliding along the mountain’s ridge. Trees, standing and downed, fueled the wall of fire. She scanned for and found the stream she’d scouted out on the map, calculated the amount of hose they had on board, and judged they’d be able to use the water source.

The plane bucked and trembled in the turbulence while jumpers lined the windows to study the burning ground. And bucking, they circled to wait for the mud drop on the head that shot up flames she estimated at a good thirty feet.

She waddled over to L.B., who’d come on as spotter.

“See that clearing?” he shouted. “That’s our jump spot. A little closer to the right flank than I’d like, but it’s the best in this terrain.”

“Saves us a hike.”

“The wind’s whipping her up. You want to keep clear of that slash just east of the spot.”

“You bet I do.”

Together they watched the tanker thunder its load onto the head. The reddened clouds of it made her think of the blood soiling her room.

No time for brooding, she reminded herself.

“That’ll knock her down a little.” When the tanker veered off, L.B. nodded at her. “Are you good?”

“I’m good.”

He gave her arm a squeeze, a tacit acknowledgment. “Guard your reserves,” he called out, and went to the door.

From his seat, Gull watched Rowan as the wind and noise rushed in. About an hour earlier she’d been spitting mad with blood on her face and blind vengeance in her fists. Now, as she consulted with their spotter over the flight of the first streamers, the cool was back in those gorgeous, icy eyes. She’d be the first out, taking that ice into fire.

He didn’t see how the fire had a chance.

He looked out the window to study the enemy below. In his hotshot days, he’d have gone in, one of twenty handcrew, transported in The Box—the crew truck that became their home away from home every season.

Now he’d get there by jumping out of a plane.

Different methods, same goal. Suppress and control.

Once he was down, he knew his job and he knew how to take orders. He shifted his gaze back to Rowan. No question she knew how to give them.

But right at the moment, it was all about the getting there. He watched the next set of streamers, tried to judge for himself the draft. With the plane bucking and rocking beneath them, he understood the wind wasn’t going to be a pal.

The plane bumped its way up to jump altitude at L.B.’s order, and as Rowan fixed on her helmet and face mask, as Cards—her jump partner—got into position behind her, Gull felt his breathing elevate. It climbed just as the plane climbed.

But he kept his face impassive as he worked to control it, as he visualized himself shoving out the door, into the slipstream and past it, hurtling down to do his job.

Rowan glanced over briefly so he caught that flash of blue behind her mask. Then she dropped down into position. Seconds later, she was gone. Gull shifted back to the window, watched her fly, and Cards after her. As the plane circled around, he changed angles, saw her chute open.

She slid into the smoke.

When the next jumpers took positions, he strapped on his helmet and mask, calmed and cleared his mind. He had everything he needed, equipment, training, skill. And a few thousand feet below was what he wanted. The woman and the blaze.

He made his way forward, felt the slap of the wind.

“Do you see the jump spot?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Wind’s going to kick, all the way down, and it’s going to want to shove you east. Try to stay out of that slash. See that lightning?”

Gull watched it rip through the sky, strike like an electric bullet.

“Hard not to.”

“Don’t get in its way.”

“Got it.”

“Are you ready?”

“We’re ready.”

“Get in the door.”

Gaze on the horizon, Gull dropped down, pushed his legs out into the power of the slipstream. Heat from the fire radiated against his face; the smell of smoke tanged the air he drew into his lungs.

Once again L.B. stuck his head out the door, scanning, studying the hills, the rise of trees, the roiling walls of flame.

“Get ready!”

When the slap came down on his shoulder, Gull propelled himself out. The world tipped and turned, earth, sky, fire, smoke, as he took a ninety-mile-an-hour dive. Greens, blues, red, black tumbled around him in a filmy blur while he counted in his head. The sounds—a roaring growl—amazed. The wind knocked him sideways, clawed him into a spin while he used strength, will, training to revolve until he was head up, feet down, stabilized by the drogue.

Heart knocking—adrenaline, awe, delight, fear—he found Trigger, his jump partner, in the sky.

Wait, he ordered himself. Wait.

Lightning flared, a blue-edged lance, and added a sting of ozone to the air.

Then the tip and tug. He dropped his head back, watched his chute fly up, open in the ripping air like a flower. He let out a shout of triumph, couldn’t help it, and heard Trigger answer it with a laugh as Gull gripped his steering toggles.

It was a fight to turn to face the wind, but he reveled in it. Even choking on the smoke that wind blew smugly in his face, hearing the bombburst of thunder that followed another crack of lightning, he grinned. And with his chute rocking, his eyes tracking the ugly slash, the line of trees, the angry walls of flames—close enough now to slap heat over his face—he aimed for the jump site.

For a moment he thought the wind would beat him after all, and imagined the discomfort, embarrassment and goddamn inconvenience of hitting those jack-sawed trees. And on his first jump.

He yanked down hard on his toggle, shouted, “No fucking way.”

He heard Trigger’s wild laugh, and seconds before he hit, Gull pulled west. His feet slapped ground, just on the east end of the jump spot. Momentum nearly tumbled him into the slash, but he flipped himself back in a sloppy somersault into the clearing.

He took a moment—maybe half a moment—to catch his breath, to congratulate himself on getting down in one piece, then rolled up to gather his chute.

“Not bad, rook.” Cards gave him a waggling thumbs-up. “Ride’s over, and the fun begins. The Swede’s setting up a team to dig fire line along the flank there.” He pointed toward the wicked, bellowing wall. “And you’re elected. Another team’s going to set up toward the head, hit it with the hoses. Mud knocked her back some, but the wind’s got her feeling sexy, and we’re getting lightning strikes out the ass. You’re with Trigger, Elf, Gibbons, Southern and me on the line. And shit, there goes one in the slash and the other in the trees. Let’s haul them in and get to work.”

Gull trooped over to assist Southern, but stopped when his fellow rookie got to his feet among the jagged, jack-sawed trees.

“You hurt?” Gull shouted.

“Nah. Damn it. A little banged, and my chute’s ripped up.”

“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been me. We’re on the fire line.”

He maneuvered through the slash to help Southern gather his tattered chute. After stowing his jumpsuit, Gull headed over to where Cards was ragging on Gibbons.

“Now that Tarzan here has finished swinging in the trees, let’s do what we get paid for.”

With his team, Gull hiked half a mile in full pack to the line Rowan had delegated Cards to dig.

They spread out, and with the fire licking closer the sounds of pick striking earth, saw and blade slicing tree filled the smoky air. Gull thought of the fire line as an invisible wall or, if they were lucky, a kind of force field that held the flames on the other side.

Heroic grunt work, he thought while sweat ran rivulets through the soot on his face. The term, and the job, satisfied him.

Twice the fire tried to jump the line, skipping testing spots like flat stones over a river. The air filled with sparks that swarmed like murderous fireflies. But they held the flank. Now and then, through the flying ash and huffing smoke, Gull spotted a quick beam of sunlight.

Little beacons of hope that glowed purple, then vanished.

Word came down the line that the hose crew had to fall back, and with the flank under control, they would move in to assist.

After more than six hours of laying line, they hiked their way up the mountain and across the black where the fire had already had her way.

If the line was the invisible wall, he thought of the black as the decimated kingdom where the battle had been waged and lost. The war continued, but here the enemy laid scourge and left what had been green and golden a smoldering, skeletal ruin.

The thin beams of sun that managed to struggle through the haze only served to amplify the destruction.

Limping a little, Southern fell into step beside him.

“How’re you holding up?” Gull asked him.

“I’d be doing better if I hadn’t landed in that godforsaken slash,” he said in the fluid Georgia drawl that gave him his nickname. “I thought I knew what it was. I’ve got two seasons in on wildfires, and that’s before we’ll-whoop-your-ass recruit training. But it’s shit-your-pants hard is what it is. I nearly did just that when I saw I was going to miss the jump spot.”

Gull took a heat-softened Snickers out of his pack, pulled it in two. “Snickers really satisfies,” Gull said in the upbeat tone of a TV voice-over.

Southern grinned, bit in. “It sure enough does.”

They hit the stream, veered northeast toward the sounds of engines and saws.

Rowan came out of a cloud of smoke, a Viking goddess through the stink of war.

“Dry lightning’s kicking our ass.” She paused only to chug down some water. “We’d beat the head down, nearly had her, then we had a triple strike. We got crown fire along the ridge due north, and the head’s building back up west of that. We gotta cut through the middle, stop them from meeting up. Hold here until we’re clear. They’re sending another load of mud. We got another load from base coming in to take the rear flanks and tail, keep them down. Bulldozer made it through, and he’s clearing brush and downed trees. But we need the line.”

She scanned faces. “You’ve got about five minutes till the drop. Make the most of it—eat, drink, because you won’t see another five minutes clear today.”

She went into a confab with Cards. Gull waited until they stepped apart, then walked to her. Before he could speak, she shook her head.

“Wind changed direction on a dime, and she just blew over. She melted fifty feet of hose before we got clear. Then boom! Boom! Boom! Fourth of July. Trees went up like torches, and the wind carried it right over the tops.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No. Don’t look for clean sheets and a pillow tonight. We’ll be setting up camp, and going back at her tomorrow. She’s not going to die easy.” She looked skyward. “Here comes the tanker.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Not yet. You can hear it.”

He closed his eyes, angled his head. “No. You must have super hearing. Okay, now I hear it.”

She pulled her radio, spoke with the tanker, then with the crew on the ridge.

“Let it rip,” she mumbled.

The pink rain tumbled down, caught little stray rainbows of sunlight.

“We’re clear!” Rowan shouted. “Let’s move. Watch your footing, but don’t dawdle.”

With that, she disappeared into the smoke.

THEY HACKED, CUT, BEAT at it into the night. Bodies trained to withstand all manner of hell began to weaken. But resolve didn’t. Gull caught sight of Rowan a few times, working the line, moving in and out as she coordinated with the other teams and with base.

Sometime toward one, more than twelve hours after he’d landed in the clearing, the fire began to lay down.

To rest, Gull thought, not to surrender. Just taking a little nap. And hell, he could use one himself. They worked another hour before word came down they’d camp a half mile east of the fire’s right flank.

“How’s the first day on the job going, rook?”

He glanced over at Cards’s exhausted face as they trudged. “I’m thinking of asking for a raise.”

“Hell, I’d settle for a ham on rye.”

“I’d rather have pizza.”

“Picky Irishman. You ever been there? Ireland?”

“A couple times, yeah.”

“Is it really as green as they say, as it looks in the pictures?”

“Greener.”

Cards looked off into the smoky dark. “And cool, right? Cool and damp. Lots of rain.”

“That’s why it’s green.”

“Maybe I’ll go there one of these days, take Vicki and the kids. Cool and damp and green sounds good after a day like this. There we are.” He lifted a chin to the lights up ahead. “Time to ring the supper bell.”

Those who’d already arrived had set up tents, or were doing so. Some just sat on the ground and shoveled their Meals Ready to Eat into their mouths.

Rowan, using a rock near the campfire as a table, worked over a map with Gibbons while she ate an apple. She’d taken off her helmet. Her hair shone nearly white against her filthy face.

He thought she looked beautiful, gloriously, eerily so—and was forced to admit she’d probably been right. He was, under it all, a romantic.

He dumped his gear, felt his back and shoulders weep with relief before they cramped like angry fists.

No Box to crawl into this time, he mused as he popped his tent. Then like the others, he dropped down by the campfire and ate like the starving. The cargo drop included more MREs, water, more tools, more hose and, God bless some thoughtful soul, a carton of apples, another of chocolate bars.

He ate his MRE, two apples, a candy bar—and stuffed another in his PG bag. The vague nausea that had plagued him on the hike to camp receded as his body refueled.

He rose, walked over to tap Rowan on the shoulder. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

She stood up, obviously punchy and distracted, and followed him away from the campfire, into the shadows.

“What’s the problem? I’ve got to hit the rack. We’re going to be—”

He just yanked her in, covered her mouth with his and feasted on her as he had on the food. Exhaustion became an easier fatigue as he fueled himself with her. The twinges in his back, his arms, his legs gave way to the curls of lust low in the belly.

She took back in equal measure, gripping his hips, his hair, pressing that amazing body against him, diving straight into those deep, greedy kisses.

And that, he thought, was what made it so damn good.

When he drew back he left his hands on her shoulders, studied her face.

“Is that all you have to say?” she demanded.

“I’d say more, but the rest of the conversation requires more privacy. Anyway, that should hold you for the night.”

Humor danced into her eyes. “Hold me?”

“The crew boss works harder than anybody, to my way of thinking. So, I wanted to give you a little something more to take to bed.”

“That’s very considerate of you.”

“No problem.” He watched her eyes shift from amused to puzzled as he tipped down, brushed a kiss on her sooty brow. “’Night, boss.”

“You’re a puzzle, Gulliver.”

“Maybe, but not that hard to solve. See you in the morning.”

He went to his tent, crawled in. He barely managed to get his boots off before he went under. But he went under with a smile on his face.

8

Rowan’s mental alarm dragged her out of sleep just before five A.M. She lay where she was, eyes closed, taking inventory. A world of aches, a lot of stiffness and a gut-deep hunger, but nothing major or unexpected. She rolled out of her sleeping bag and, in the dark, stretched out her sore muscles. She let herself fantasize about a hot shower, an ice-cold Coke, a plate heaped with one of Marg’s all-in omelets.

Then she crawled out of her tent to face reality.

The camp slept on—and could, she calculated, for about an hour more. To the west the fire painted the sky grimy red. A waiting light, she thought. Waiting for the day’s battle.

Well, they’d be ready for it.

She rinsed the dry from her mouth with water, spat it out, then used the glow of the campfire to grab some food. She ate, washing down the rations with instant coffee she despised but needed while reviewing her maps. The quiet wouldn’t last long, so she used it to strategize her tasks, directions, organizing teams and tools.

She radioed base for a status report, a weather forecast, scribbling notes, quick-drawing operational maps.

By first light, she’d organized her tools, restocked her PG bag, bolted another sandwich and an apple. Alert, energized, ready, she gathered in her small pocket of alone time.

She watched the forest come to life around the sleeping camp. Like something out of a fairy tale, the shadows of a small herd of elk slipped through morning mists veiling the trees like wisps of smoke. The shimmer of the rising sun haloed the ridge to the east, spreading its melting gold. The shine of it trickled down the tree line, flickering its glint on the stream, brushing the green of the valley below.

Birds sang their morning song, while overhead in that wakening sky a hawk soared, already on the hunt.

This, she thought, was just one more reason she did what she did, despite the risks, the pain, the hunger. There was, to her mind, nothing more magical or more intensely real than dawn in the wilderness.

She’d fight beyond exhaustion alongside the best men and women she knew to protect it.

When Cards rolled out of his tent, she smiled. He looked like a bear who’d spent his hibernation rolling in soot. With his hair standing up in grungy spikes, his eyes glazed with fatigue, he grunted at her before stumbling off for a little privacy to relieve his bladder.

The camp began to stir. More grunts and rustles, more dazed and glassy eyes as smoke jumpers grabbed food and coffee. Gull climbed out, his face shadowed by soot and scruff. But his eyes were alert, she noted, and glinted at her briefly before he wandered off into the trees.

“Wind’s already picking up.” Gibbons came to stand beside her, gulped coffee.

“Yeah.” She looked toward the smoke columns climbing the sky. Orange and gold flared through the red now. Like the sky, the magic, the camp, the dragon woke. “We’re not going to get any help from the weather gods today. Wind’s variable, fifteen to twenty, conditions remain dry with the temps spiking past eighty. She’ll eat that up.”

Rowan pulled out her hand-drawn maps. “We held her flank along here, but we lost ground at our water source, and when she crowned, she swept straight across this way. The hotshots hit that, kicked her back to about here, but she turned on them, about midnight, and then had to RTO,” she added, speaking of reverse tool order, “and retreat back to this line.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

“Minor burns, bumps and bruises. Nobody had to be evaced.” She glanced over her shoulder as Gull walked up. “They’re camped here.” She unfolded the main map to show Gibbons. “I’m thinking if we can pump water on the head from about here, and lay line along this sector, intersect the low point of the hotshot line, then cross. We’ll head up while they work over. We could box her in. It’s a hell of a climb, but we’d smother her tail, block her left flank, then meet up with the pump team and cut off her head.”

Gibbons nodded. “We’re going to have to hold this line here.” He jabbed a finger at the map. “If she gets through that, she could sweep up behind. Then it’s the line team that’s boxed in.”

“I scouted this area yesterday. We’ve got a couple of safe spots. And they’re sending in more jumpers this morning. We’ll be up to forty. I want ten on the water team, and for you to head that up, Gib. You’re damn good with a hose. Take the nine you want for it.”

“All right.” He glanced back at the fire. “Looks like recess is over.”

“Where do you want me?” Gull asked her when Gibbons stepped off to pick his team.

“Saw line, under Yangtree. You hold that line, or you’re going to need those fast feet. If she gets behind you, you make tracks, straight up the ridge and into the black. Here.” She looked into his eyes as she laid a finger on the map. “You got that?”

“We’ll hold it, then you can buy me a drink.”

“Hold the line, cut it up and around to the water team, and maybe I will. Get your gear.” She walked over toward the campfire, lifted her voice. “Okay, boys and girls, time to kick some ass.”

She caught a ride partway on a bulldozer, then hopped off for a brutal hike to check the hotshots’ progress firsthand.

“Winsor, right? Tripp,” she shouted at the lean, grim-faced man over the roar of saws. Fire sounded its throaty threat while its heat pulsed strong enough to tickle the skin. “I’ve got a team working its way up to cross with you. Maybe by one this afternoon.”

A scan of the handcrew told her what she’d suspected. They’d downplayed injuries. She gestured to one of the men wielding a Pulaski. His face glowed with sweat and showed raw and red where his eyebrows had been singed off. “You had a close one.”

“Shit-your-pants close. Wind bitched on us, and she turned on a freaking dime, rolled right at us. She let out that belly laugh. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” It was a sound designed to turn your bowels to ice. “Yeah, I do.”

“We RTO’d. Couldn’t see a goddamn thing through the smoke. I swear she chased us like she wanted to play tag. I smelled my own hair burning. We barely got clear.”

“You’re holding her now.”

“These guys’ll work her till they drop, but if we don’t knock that head down, I think she’s going to whip around and try for another bite.”

“We’re pumping on her now. I’m going to check in with the team leader, see if he wants another drop.” She faced the fire wall as ash swirled around her like snow. “They underestimated her, but we’re going to turn this around. Look for my team to meet up with yours about one.”

“Stay cool,” he called after her.

She hiked back around, filling her lungs when she moved into clearer air. Moving, always moving, she checked in with her teams, with base, with the fire coordinator. After jumping a narrow creek, she angled west again. Then stopped dead when a bear crossed her path.

She checked the impulse to run, she knew better. But her feet itched to move. “Oh, come on,” she said under her breath. “I’m doing this for you, too. Just move along.”

Her heart thumped as he studied her, and running didn’t seem like such a stupid idea after all. Then he swung his head away as if bored with her, and lumbered away.

“I love the wilderness and all it holds,” she reminded herself when she worked up enough spit to swallow.

She hiked another quarter of a mile before her heart settled down again. And still, she cast occasional cautious looks over her shoulder until she heard the muffled buzz of chain saws.

She picked up her speed and met up with the fresh saw line.

After a quick update with Yangtree, she joined the line. She’d give them an hour before hiking up and around again.

“Pretty day, huh?” Gull commented as they sliced a downed tree into logs.

She glanced up, and through a few windows in the smoke, the sky was a bold blue. “She’s a beauty.”

“Nice one for a picnic.”

Rowan stamped out a spot the size of a dinner plate that kindled at her feet. “Champagne picnic. I always wanted to have one of those.”

“Too bad I didn’t bring a bottle with me.”

She settled for water, then mopped her face. “We’re going to do it. I’m starting to feel it.”

“The picnic?”

“The fire’s a little more immediate. You’ve got a good hand with the saw. Keep it up.”

She headed up to confer with Yangtree again over the maps, then, ripping open a cookie wrapper, headed back into the smoke.

While she gobbled the cookie, she considered the bear—and told herself he was well east by now. She clawed her way up the ridge, checked the time when she met the hotshot line.

Just noon. Five hours into the day, and damn good progress.

She cut up and over, her legs burning and rubbery, to check on the pumpers.

Arcs of water struck the blaze, liquid arrows aimed to kill. Rowan gave in, bent over, resting her hands on her screaming thighs. She couldn’t say how many miles she’d covered so far that day, but she was damn sure she felt every inch of it.

She pushed herself up, made her way over to Gibbons. “Yangtree’s line is moving up well. He should meet up with the hotshots within the hour. She tried to swish her tail, but they’ve got that under control. Idaho’s on call if you need more on the hoses.”

“We’re holding her. We’re going to pump her hard, go through the neck here. If you get those lines down, cut them across, we’ll have her.”

“I want to pull out the fusees, start a backfire here.” She dug out her map. “We could fold her back in on herself, and she’d be out of fuel.”

“I like it. But it’s your call.”

“Then I’m making it.” She pulled her radio. “Yangtree, we’re going with the backfire. Split ten off, lead them up. I’m circling back down. Keep drowning that bitch, Gib.”

Rowan stuffed calories into her system by way of an energy bar, hydrated with water as she backtracked. And considered herself lucky when she didn’t repeat her encounter with a bear. Nothing stirred in the trees, in the brush. She cut across a trail where the trees still towered—trees they fought to save—and the wildflowers poked their heads toward the smoke-choked sky. Birds had taken wing so no song, no chatter played through the silence.

But the fire muttered and growled, shooting its flames up like angry fists and kicking feet.

She followed its flank, thought of the wildflowers, took their hope with her as she hiked to the man-made burn she’d ordered.

At Yangtree’s orders, Gull peeled off from the saw line to deal with spot fires the main blaze spat across the border. Most of his team were too weary for conversation, and as speed added a factor, breath for chat was in limited supply.

Water consumed poured off in sweat; food gulped down burned off and left a constant, nagging hunger.

The trick, he knew from his years as a hotshot, was not to think about it, about anything but the fire, and the next step toward killing it.

“Get your fusees.” Gibbons relayed the information in a voice harsh from shouting and smoke. “We’re going to burn her ass, pull her back till she eats herself.”

Gull looked back toward the direction of the tail. Their line was holding, the cross with the hotshots’ cut off her flank—so far. Spot fires flared up, but she’d lost her edge of steam here.

He considered the timing and strategy of the backfire dead-on. Despite his fatigue, it pleased him when Yangtree pulled him off the line and sent him down with a team to control the backfire.

With the others he hauled up his tools, left the line.

He saw the wildflowers as Rowan had, and the holes woodpeckers had drilled into the body of a Douglas fir, the scat of a bear—a big one—that had him scanning the hazy forest. Just in case.

Heading the line, Cards limped a little as he kept in contact with Rowan, other team leaders on his radio. Gull wondered what he’d hurt and how, but they kept moving, and at an urgent pace.

He heard the mumble of a dozer. It pushed through the haze, scooping brush and small trees. Rowan hopped off while it bumped its way along a new line.

“We’re going to work behind the Cat line. We got hose.” She pointed to the paracargo she’d ordered dropped. “We’ve got a water source with that stream. I want the backfire hemmed in here, so when she rolls back she burns herself out. Watch out for spots. She’s been spitting them out everywhere.”

She shifted her gaze to Gull. “Can you handle a hose as well as you do a saw?”

“I’ve been known to.”

“You, Matt, Cards. Let’s get pumping. Everybody else, hit those snags.”

He liked a woman with a plan, Gull thought as he got to work.

“We light it on my go.” Rowan offered Cards one of the peanut-butter crackers from her PG bag. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing. Tripped over my own feet.”

“Mine,” Matt corrected. “I got in the way.”

“My feet tripped over his feet. It was pretty crazy on the line for a while.”

“And now it’s so sane. Soak it down,” she told them. “Everything in front of the Cat line, soak it good.”

Manning a pumping fire hose took muscle, stability and sweat. Within ten minutes—and hours on the saw and scratch line—Gull’s arms stopped aching and just went numb. He dug in, sent his arcs of water raining over the trees, soaking into the ground. Over the cacophony of pump, saw and engine, he heard Rowan shout the order for the light.

“Here she goes!”

He watched fusees ignite, burst.

Special effects, he thought, nothing like it, as flames arrowed up, ignited the forest. It roared, full-throated, and would, if God was good, call to the dragon.

“Hold it here! We don’t give her another foot.”

In Rowan’s voice he heard what flooded him—wonder and determination, and a fresh energy that struck his blood like a drug.

Others shouted, too, infected with the same drug. Steam rose from the ground, melded with smoke as they pushed the backfire forward. Firebrands rocketed out only to sizzle and drown on the wet ground.

This was winning. Not just turning a corner, not just holding ground, but winning. An hour passed in smoke and steam and ungodly heat—then another—before she began to lie down, this time in defeat.

Rowan jogged over to the water line. “She’s rolled back. Head’s cut off and under control. Flanks are receding. Take her down. She’s done.”

The fire’s retreat ran fitful and weak. By evening she could barely manage a sputter. The pulse of the pump silenced, and Gull let his weeping arms drop. He dug into his pack, found a sandwich he’d ratted in at dawn. He didn’t taste it, but since it awakened the yawning hunger in his belly, he wished he’d grabbed more of whatever the hell it was.

He walked to the stream, took off his hard hat and filled it with water. He considered the sensation of having it rain cool over his head and shoulders nearly as good as sex.

“Nice work.”

He glanced over at Rowan, filled his hat again. Standing, he quirked a brow. She laughed, took off her helmet, lifted her face, closed her eyes. “Oh, yeah,” she sighed when he dumped the water on her. She blinked her eyes open, cool, crystal blue. “You handle yourself pretty well for an ex-hotshot rookie.”

“You handle yourself pretty well for a girl.”

She laughed again. “Okay, even trade.” Then lifted her hand.

He quirked his brow again, the grin spreading, but she shook her head. “You’re too filthy to kiss, and I’m still fire boss on this line. High five’s all you get.”

“I’ll take it.” He slapped hands with her. “We were holding her, kicking her back some, but we beat her the minute you called for the backfire.”

“I’m second-guessing if I should have called it earlier.” Then she shrugged. “No point in what-ifs. We took her down.” She put her hard hat back on, lifted her voice. “Okay, kids, let’s mop it up.”

They dug roots, tramped out embers, downed smoldering snags. When the final stage of the fight was finished, they packed out, all but asleep on their feet, shouldering tools and gear. Nobody spoke on the short flight back to base; most were too busy snoring. Some thirty-eight hours after the siren sounded, Gull dragged himself into the barracks, dumped his gear. On the way to his quarters he bumped into Rowan.

“How about a nightcap?”

She snorted out a laugh. He imagined she’d braced a hand on the wall just to stay on her feet. “While a cold beer might go down good, I believe that’s your clever code for sex. Even if my brain was fried enough to say sure, I don’t believe you could get it up tonight—today—this morning.”

“I strongly disagree, and would be willing to back that up with a demonstration.”

“Sweet.” She gave him a light slap on his grimy face. “Pass. ’Night.”

She slipped into her room, and he continued on to his. Once he stripped off his stinking shirt, pants, and fell facedown and filthy on top of his bed, he had time to think thank God she hadn’t taken him up on it before he zeroed out.

IN THE BUNK in his office, where he habitually stayed when Rowan caught a fire at night, Lucas heard the transport plane go out. Heard it come back. Still, he didn’t fully relax until his cell phone signaled a text.

Got nasty, but we put her down. I’m A-OK. Love, Ro

He put the phone aside, settled down, and slid into the first easy sleep since the siren sounded.

LUCAS JUMPED with an early-morning group of eight, posed for pictures, signed brochures, then took the time to discuss moving up to accelerated free fall with two of the group.

When he walked them in to Marcie to sign them up, his brain went wonky on him. Ella Frazier of the red hair and forest-green eyes turned to smile at him.

With dimples.

“Hello again.”

“Ah . . . again,” he managed, flustered. “Um, Marcie will take you through the rest, get you scheduled,” he told the couple with him.

“I watched your skydive.” Ella turned her smile on them. “I just did my first tandem the other day. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

He stood, struggling not to shuffle his feet while Ella chatted with his newest students.

“Have you got a minute for me?” she asked him.

“Sure. Sure. My office—”

“Could we walk outside? Marcie tells me you’ve got two more tandems coming in. I’d love to watch.”

“Okay.” He held the door open for her, then wondered what to do with his hands. In his pockets? At his sides? He wished he had a clipboard with him to keep them occupied.

“I know you’re busy today, and I probably should’ve called.”

“It’s no problem.”

“How’s your daughter? I followed the fire on the news,” she added.

“She’s fine. Back on base, safe and sound. Did I tell you about Rowan?”

“Not exactly.” She tucked her hair behind her ear as she angled her face toward his. “I Googled you before I signed up. I love my son, but I wasn’t about to jump out of an airplane unless I knew something about who I was hooked to.”

“Can’t blame you.” See, he told himself, sensible. Any man should be able to relax around a sensible woman. A grandmother, he reminded himself. An educator.

He managed to unknot his shoulders.

“Your experience and reputation turned the trick for me. So, Lucas, I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”

And his shoulders tensed like overwound springs while his brain went to sloppy mush. “Sorry?”

“To thank you for the experience, and giving me the chance to show off to my grandchildren.”

“Oh, well.” There went that flush of heat up the back of his neck. “You don’t have to . . . I mean to say—”

“I caught you off-guard, and probably sounded like half the women who come through here, hitting on you.”

“No, they . . . you—”

“I wasn’t. Hitting on you,” she added with a big, bright smile. “But now I have to confess to a secondary purpose. I have a project I’d love to speak to you about, and if I could buy you a drink, soften you up, I’m hoping you’ll get on board. If you’re in a relationship, you’re welcome to bring your lady with you.”

“No, I’m not. I mean, there isn’t any lady. Especially.”

“Would you be free tonight? I could meet you about seven, at the bar at Open Range. I could thank you, soften you up, and you can tell me more about training for the AFF.”

Business, he told himself. Friendly business. He discussed friendly business over drinks all the damn time. No reason he couldn’t do the same with her. “I don’t have any plans.”

“Then we’re set? Thanks so much.” She shot out a hand, shook his briskly. “I’ll see you at seven.”

He watched her walk away, so pretty, so breezy—and reminded himself it was just friendly business.

9

As she had done in her tent, Rowan lay with her eyes closed and took morning inventory. She decided she felt like a hundred-year-old woman who’d been on a starvation diet. But she’d come out of it—as fire boss—uninjured, her crew intact, and the fire down.

Added to it, she thought as she opened her eyes, tracked her gaze around her quarters, during her two days out the pig-blood fairies had not only mopped and scrubbed but rolled a fresh coat of paint on her walls.

She owed somebody, and if she could drag herself out of bed she’d find out who.

When she did, her calves twinged, her quads protested. The bis and tris, she noted, shed bitter tears. The hot shower she’d all but slept through had helped, a little, but the eight hours in the rack after two arduous days required more.

Fuel and movement, she ordered herself. And where was Gull with his breakfast sandwich when she needed one? She settled for a chocolate bar while she dressed, then hobbled off to the gym.

She wasn’t the only one hobbling.

She grunted at Gibbons, who grunted back, watched Trigger wince through some floor stretches. She studied Dobie—wiry little guy—as he bench-pressed what she judged to be his body weight.

“I’m back on the jump list tomorrow,” he told her as he pumped up with an explosion of breath. “I’m ready. Hell of a lot readier than you guys, from the looks of it.”

She shot him the finger, then moaned into a forward bend. She stayed down, just stayed down and breathed for as long as she could stand it, then with her palms on the floor, arched her back and looked up.

The yellow bruising on Dobie’s red-with-effort face made him look like a jaundiced burn victim. And he’d shaved off his scraggly excuse for a beard—an improvement, to her mind, since he looked less like a hillbilly leprechaun.

“Somebody cleaned up and painted my room.”

“Yeah.” With another explosion of breath, he pushed the weights up, then clicked them in the safety. “Stovic and me, we had time on our hands.”

She brought herself back to standing. “You guys did all that?”

“Mostly. Marg and Lynn did what they could with your clothes. Salt’s what gets blood out; that’s what my ma uses.”

“Is that so?”

“Doesn’t work so well on walls, so we got them painted up. It kept us from going stir-crazy while the rest of you were having all the fun. Hell of a mess in there, and smelled like a hog butchering. Made me homesick,” he added with a grin. “Anyhow, that broad must be crazy as a run-over lizard.”

She walked over, bent down, kissed him on the mouth. “Thanks.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “It was a big, stinkin’ hell of a mess.”

This time she drilled her finger into his belly. After walking back to her mat, she stretched out her muscles, soothed her mind with yoga. She’d moved to floor work when Gull came in. Fresh, she thought. He looked fresh and clean, with his gait loose and easy as he crossed to her.

“I heard you’d surfaced.” He crouched down. “You’re looking pretty limber for the morning after.”

“Just need some fine-tuning.”

“And a picnic.”

She lifted her nose from her knee. “I need a picnic?”

“With a big-ass hamper loaded with cuisine by Marg and a fine bottle of adult beverage enjoyed in the company of a charming companion.”

“Janis is going with me on a picnic?”

“I’ve got the big-ass hamper.”

“There’s always a catch.” Danger zone, she warned herself. The man was a walking temptation. “It’s a nice thought, but—”

“We’re not on the jump list, and L.B. cleared us for the day. Now that we’ve been through fire together, I think we can take a short break, have some food and conversation. Unless you’re afraid a little picnic will drive you into uncontrollable lust until you force yourself on me and take advantage of my friendly offer.”

Temptation and challenge—both equally hard to resist. “I’m reasonably sure I can control myself.”

“Okay then. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

What the hell, she decided. She lived and breathed danger zones. She could certainly handle one appealingly cocky guy on a picnic.

“Give me twenty. And you’d better pick your spot close by because I’m starving.”

“I’ll meet you out front.”

She hunted up Stovic first, gave him the same smack on the lips as Dobie. She paid her debts. She had a report to write and turn in on the fire, but that could wait a couple hours. Check and reorganize her gear, she thought as she pulled on cropped khakis. Deal with her chute, repack her PG bag. She buttoned on a white camp shirt, slapped on some makeup and sunscreen and considered it good enough for a friendly picnic with a fellow jumper.

She shoved on her sunglasses as she walked outside, then narrowed her eyes behind them. Gull leaned on the hood of a snazzy silver convertible chatting it up with Cards.

She sauntered over. “How’s the leg?” she asked Cards.

“Not bad. Knee’s a little puffy yet. I’m going to ice it down again.” He patted the hood beside Gull’s hip. “That’s some ride, Fast Feet. Some hot ride. Today’s word’s got to be virile, ’cause that machine’s got balls. You kids have fun.” He winked at Rowan and, still limping, went back in.

Hands on her hips, Rowan took a stroll around the hot ride. “This is Iron Man’s car.”

“Since I doubt you’re claiming I stole it from your father, I conclude you’re a woman who knows her superheroes and her motor vehicles.”

She stopped in front of him. “Where’s the suit?”

“In an undisclosed location. Villainy is everywhere.”

“Too true.” She angled her head, skimming a finger over the gleaming fender while she studied Gull. “Iron Man’s a rich superhero. That’s why he can afford the car.”

“Tony Stark has many cars.”

“Also true. I’m thinking, smoke jumping pays pretty well, in season. But I can’t see selling tokens and tracking games at an arcade’s something that pays for a car like this.”

“But it’s entertaining, and I get free pizza. It’s my car,” he said when she just kept staring at him. “Do you want to see the registration? My portfolio?”

“That means you have a portfolio, and I’m damned if you built one working an arcade.” Considering, she pursed her lips. “Maybe if you owned a piece of it.”

“You have remarkable deductive powers. You can be Pepper Potts.” He stepped over, opened her door. She slid in, looked up.

“How big a piece?”

“I’ll give you the life story while we eat if you want it.”

She thought it over as he skirted the hood, got behind the wheel. And decided she did.

He drove fast, had a smooth, competent hand on the stick shift—both of which she appreciated.

And God, she did love a slick machine.

“Do I have to sleep with you before you let me drive this machine?”

He spared her a single, mild glance. “Of course.”

“Seems fair.” Enjoying herself, she tipped her face up to the wind and sky, then lifted her hands up to both. “Riding in it’s a pretty decent compromise. How did you manage to get this all set up?”

“Staggering organizational skills. Plus I figured I’d grab a few hours while I had them. The food was the easy part. All I had to do was tell Marg I was taking you on a picnic, and she handled the rest of that section. She’s in love with you.”

“It’s mutual. Still, I’d’ve had a hard time planning anything when I managed to crawl out of bed.”

“I have staggering recuperative powers to go with the organizational skills.”

She tipped down her sunglasses to eye him over them. “I know sex bragging when I hear it.”

“Then I probably shouldn’t add that I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a sixteen-wheeler after I hauled a two-hundred-pound bag of bricks fifty miles. Through mud.”

“Yeah. And it’s barely June.”

When he turned off on Bass Creek Road, she nodded. “Nice choice.”

“It’s not a bad hike, and it ought to be pretty.”

“It is. I’ve lived here all my life,” she added as he pulled into the parking area at the end of the road. “Hiking the trails was what I did. It kept me in shape, gave me a good sense of the areas I’d jump one day—and gave me an appreciation for why I would.”

“We crossed into the black yesterday.” He hit the button to bring up the roof. “It’s harsh, and it’s hard. But you know it’s going to come back.”

They got out, and he opened the hood with its marginal storage space.

“Jesus, Gull, you weren’t kidding about big-ass hamper.”

“Getting it in was an exercise in geometry.” He hefted it out.

“There’s just two of us. What does that thing weigh?”

“A lot less than my gear. I think I can make it a mile on a trail.”

“We can switch off.”

He looked at her as they crossed to the trailhead. “I’m all about equal pay for equal work. A firm believer in ability, determination, brains having nothing to do with gender. I’m even cautiously open to women players in the MLB. Cautiously open, I repeat. But there are lines.”

“Carting a picnic hamper is a line?”

“Yeah.”

She slid her hands into her pockets, hummed a little as she strolled with a smirk on her face. “It’s a stupid line.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t make it less of a line.”

They walked through the forested canyon. She heard what she’d missed during the fire. The birdsong, the rustles—the life. Sun shimmered through the canopy, struck the bubbling, tumbling waters of the creek as they followed the curve of the water.

“Is this why you were studying maps?” she asked him. “Looking for a picnic spot?”

“That was a happy by-product. I haven’t lived here all my life, and I want to know where I am.” He scanned the canyon, the spills of water as they walked up the rising trail. “I like where I am.”

“Was it always Northern California? Is there any reason we have to wait for the food to start the life story?”

“I guess not. No, I started out in LA. My parents were in the entertainment industry. He was a cinematographer, she was a costume designer. They met on a set, and clicked.”

The creek fell below as they climbed higher on the hillside.

“So,” he continued, “they got married, had me a couple years later. I was four when they were killed in a plane crash. Little twin engine they were taking to the location for a movie.”

Her heart cracked a little. “Gull, I’m so sorry.”

“Me too. They didn’t take me, and they usually did if they were on the same project. But I had an ear infection, so they left me back with the nanny until it cleared up.”

“It’s hard, losing parents.”

“Vicious. There’s the log dam,” he announced. “Just as advertised.”

She let it go as the trail approached the creek once more. She could hardly blame him for not wanting to revisit a little boy’s grief.

“This is worth a lot more than a mile-and-a-half hike,” he said while the pond behind the dam sparkled as if strewn with jewels.

Beyond it the valley opened like a gift, and rolled to the ring of mountains.

“And the hamper’s going to be a lot lighter on the mile-and-a-half back.”

Near the pond, under the massive blue sky, he set it down.

“I worked a fire out there, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.” He stood, looking out. “Standing here, on a day like this, you’d never believe any of that could burn.”

“Jumping one’s different.”

“It’s sure a faster way in.” He flipped open the lid of the hamper, took out the blanket folded on top. She helped him spread it open, then sat on it cross-legged.

“What’s on the menu?”

He pulled out a bottle of champagne snugged in a cold sleeve. Surprised, touched, she laughed. “That’s a hell of a start—and you just don’t miss a trick.”

“You said champagne picnic. For our entrée, we have the traditional fried chicken à la Marg.”

“Best there is.”

“I’m told you favor thighs. I’m a breast man myself.”

“I’ve never known a man who isn’t.” She began to unload. “Oh, yeah, her red potato and green bean salad, and look at this cheese, the bread. We’ve got berries, deviled eggs. Fudge cake! Marg gave us damn near half of one of her fudge cakes.” She glanced up. “Maybe she’s in love with you.”

“I can only hope.” He popped the cork. “Hold out your glass.”

She reached for it, then caught the label on the bottle. “Dom Pérignon. Iron Man’s car and James Bond’s champagne.”

“I have heroic taste. Hold out the glass, Rowan.” He filled it, then his own. “To wilderness picnics.”

“All right.” She tapped, sipped. “Jesus, this is not cheap tequila at Get a Rope. I see why 007 goes for it. How’d you get this?”

“They carry it in town.”

“You’ve been into town today? What time did you get up?”

“About eight. I never made it to the shower last night, and smelled bad enough to wake myself up this morning.”

He opened one of the containers, and after breaking off a chunk of the baguette, spread it with soft, buttery cheese. Offered it. “I’m not especially rich, I don’t think.”

She studied him as flavors danced on her tongue. Caught in a pretty breeze, his hair danced around his face in an appealing tangle of brown and sun-struck gold.

“I want to know. But I don’t want bad memories to screw your picnic.”

“That’s about it for the bad. I’m not sure I’d remember them, or more than vaguely, if it wasn’t for my aunt and uncle. My mother’s sister,” he explained. “My parents named them as my legal guardians in their wills. They came and got me, took me up north, raised me.”

He took out plates, flatware as he spoke, while she gave him room for the story.

“They talked about my parents all the time, showed me pictures. They were tight, the four of them, and my aunt and uncle wanted me to keep the good memories. I have them.”

“You were lucky. After something horrible, you were lucky.”

His gaze met hers. “Really lucky. They didn’t just take me in. I was theirs, and I always felt that.”

“The difference between being an obligation, even a well-tended one, and belonging.”

“I never had to learn how wide that difference is. My cousins—one’s a year older, one’s a year younger—never made me feel like an outsider.”

That played a part in the balance of him, she decided, in the ease and confidence.

“They sound like great people.”

“They are. When I graduated from college, I had a trust fund, pretty big chunk. The money from my parents’ estate, the insurance, all that. They’d never used a penny, but invested it for me.”

“And you bought an arcade.”

He lifted his champagne. “I like arcades. The best ones are about families. Anyway, my younger cousin mostly runs it, and Jared—the older one—he’s a lawyer, and takes care of that sort of thing. My aunt supervises and helps plan events, and for the last couple years my uncle’s handled the PR.”

“For families by family. It’s a good thing.”

“It works for us.”

“How do they feel about your summers?”

“They’re okay with it. I guess they worry, but they don’t weigh me down with that. You grew up with a smoke jumper.” They added chicken and salad to plates. “How’d you handle it?”

“By thinking he was invincible. Talk about superheroes. Mmm,” she added when she bit through crisp skin to tender meat. “God bless Marg. I really considered him immortal,” Rowan added. “I never worried about him. I was never afraid for him, or myself. He was . . . Iron Man.”

Gull poured two more glasses. “I’ll definitely drink to Iron Man Tripp. He’s why we’re both here.”

“Weird, but true.” She ate, relaxed in the moment and felt easier with him, she realized, than she’d expected to be. “I don’t know how much of the story you’ve heard. About my parents.”

“Some.”

“A lot of some’s glossed over. My father—you’ve probably seen pictures—he was, still is, pretty wow.”

“He passed the wow down to you.”

“In a Valkyrie kind of way.”

“You’re not the sort who decides to die in the battle.”

“You know your Norse mythology.”

“I have many pockets of strange, inexplicable knowledge.”

“So I’ve noticed. In any case, a man who looks like Iron Man, does what he does . . . women flock.”

“I have the same problem. It’s a burden.”

She snorted, ate some potato salad. “But he wasn’t one for coming off a fire, or out of the season, and looking for the handy bang.”

She arched a brow as Gull merely grinned. “It’s not his way. Like me, he’s lived here all his life. If he’d had that kind of rep, it would’ve stuck. He met my mother when she came to Missoula, picked up work as a waitress. She was looking for adventure. She was beautiful, a little on the wild side. Anyway, they hooked up, and oops, she got knocked up. They got married. They met in early July, and by the middle of September they’re married. Stupid, from a rational point of view, but I have to be grateful seeing as I’m sitting here telling the tale.”

He’d known he’d been wanted, all of his life. How much did it change the angles when you, as she did, considered yourself an oops?

“We’ll both be grateful.”

“I think it must’ve been exciting for her.” Rowan popped a fat blackberry into her mouth as she spoke. “Here’s this gorgeous man who wore a flight suit like some movie star, one of the elite, one at the top of his game, and he picks her. At the same time, she’s rebelling against a pretty strict, stuffy upbringing. She was nearly ten years younger than Dad, and probably enjoyed the idea of playing house with him. Over the winter, he’s starting up his business, but he’s around. My grandparents are, too, and she’s carrying the child of their only son. She’s the center. Her parents have cut her off, just severed all ties.”

“How do people do that? How do they justify that, live with that?”

“They think they’re right. And I think that added to the excitement for her. And in the spring, there I am, so she’s got a new baby to show off. Doting grandparents—a husband who’s besotted, and still around.”

She chose another berry, let it lie on her tongue a moment, sweet and firm. “Then a month later, the season starts, and he’s not around every day. Now it’s about changing diapers, and walking a squalling baby in the middle of the night. It’s not such an adventure now, or so exciting.”

She reached for another piece of chicken. “He’s never, not once, said a word against her to me. What I know of that time I got from reading letters he’d locked up, riffling through papers, eavesdropping—or occasionally catching my grandmother when she was pissed off and her tongue was just loose enough.”

“You wanted to know,” Gull said simply.

“Yeah, I wanted to know. She left when I was five months old. Just took me over to my grandparents, asked if they’d watch me while she ran some errands, and never came back.”

“Cold.” He couldn’t quite get his mind around that kind of cold, or what that kind of cold would do to the child left behind. “And clueless,” he added. “It says she decided this isn’t what I want after all, so I’ll just run away.”

“That sums it. My dad tracked her down, a couple of times. Made phone calls, wrote letters. Her line, because I saw the letters she wrote back, was it was all his fault. He was the cold and selfish one, had wrecked her emotionally. The least he could do was send her some money while she was trying to recover. She’d promise to come back once she had, claimed she missed me and all that.”

“Did she come back?”

“Once, on my tenth birthday. She walks into my party, all smiles and tears, loaded down with presents. It’s not my birthday party anymore.”

“No, it’s her Big Return, putting her in the center again.”

Rowan stared at him for a long moment. “That’s exactly it. I hated her at that moment, the way a ten-year-old can. When she tried to hug me, I pushed her away. I told her to get out, to go to hell.”

“Sounds to me that at ten you had a good bullshit detector. How’d she handle it?”

“Big, fat tears, shock, hurt—and bitter accusations hurled at my father.”

“For turning you against her.”

“And again, you score. I stormed right out the back door, and I’d have kept on going if Dad hadn’t come out after me. He was pissed, all the way around. I knew better than to speak to anyone like that, and I was going back inside, apologizing to my mother. I said I wouldn’t, he couldn’t make me, and until he made her leave, I was never going back in that house. I was too mad to be scared. Respect was god in our house. You didn’t lie and you didn’t sass—the big two.”

“How did he handle it?”

“He picked me right up off the ground, and I know he was worked up enough to cart me right back in there. I punched him, kicked him, screamed, scratched, bit. I didn’t even know I was crying. I do know if he’d dragged me in, if he’d threatened me, ordered me, if he who’d never raised a hand to me had raised it, I wouldn’t have said I was sorry.”

“Then you’d’ve broken the other big one, by lying.”

“The next thing I knew we were sitting on the ground in the backyard, I’m crying all over his shoulder. And he’s hugging me, petting me and telling me I was right. He said, ‘You’re right, and I’m sorry.’ He told me to sit right there, and he’d go in and make her go away.”

She tipped back her glass. “And that’s what he did.”

“You got lucky, too.”

“Yeah, I did. She didn’t.”

Rowan paused, looked out over the pond. “A little over two years later, she goes into a convenience store to pick up something, walks in on a robbery. And she’s dead, wrong place, wrong time. Horrible. Nobody deserves to die bleeding on the floor of a quick market in Houston. God, how did I get on all this when there’s fudge cake and champagne?”

“Finish it.”

“Nothing much left. Dad asked me if I’d go to the funeral with him. He said he needed to go, that if I didn’t need or want to, that was okay. I said I’d think about it, then later my grandmother came into my room, sat on the bed. She told me I needed to go. That as hard as it might be now, it would be harder on me later if I didn’t. That if I did this one thing, I would never have to have any regrets. So I went, and she was right. I did what I needed to do, what my father needed me to do, and I’ve got no regrets.”

“What about her family?”

“Her parents cold-shouldered us. That’s who they are. I’ve never actually spoken to them. I know her sister, my aunt. She made a point of calling and writing over the years, even came out with her family a couple times. They’re nice people.

“And that concludes our exchange of life stories.”

“I imagine there’s another chapter or two, for another time.”

She eyed him as he refilled her glass. “You stopped drinking, and you keep filling my glass. Are you trying to get me drunk and naked?”

“Naked’s always the goal.” He said it lightly as he sensed she needed to change the mood. “Drunk? Not when I’ve witnessed you suck down tequila shots. I’m driving,” he reminded her.

“Responsible.” She toasted him. “And that leaves more for me. Did you know Dobie and Stovic scrubbed up and painted my room?”

“I heard Dobie got to first base with you.”

She let out that big, bawdy laugh. “If he considers that first base, he’s never hit a solid single.” She took her fork, carved off a big mouthful of cake right out of the container. Her eyes laughed as she stuffed it in, then closed on a long, low moan. “Now, that is cake, and the equivalent of a grand slam. Enough fire and chocolate, and I can go all season without sex.”

“Don’t be surprised if the supply of chocolate disappears in a fiftymile radius.”

“I like your style, Gull.” She forked up another hefty bite. “You’re pretty to look at, you’ve got a brain, you can fight and you do what needs doing when we’re on the line. Plus, you can definitely hit a solid single. But there are a couple of problems.”

She stabbed another forkful, this time offering it to him.

“First, I know you’ve got deep pockets. If I slept with you now, you might think I did it because you’re rich.”

“Not that rich. Anyway.” He considered, smiled. “I can live with that.”

“Second.” She held out more cake, then whipped it around, slid it into her own mouth. “You’re a smoke jumper in my unit.”

“You’re the kind of woman who breaks rules. Codes, no. Rules, yes.”

“That’s an interesting distinction.”

Full, she stretched out on the blanket, studied the sky. “Not a cloud,” she murmured. “The long-range forecast is for hot and dry. There won’t be a lot of champagne picnics this season.”

“Then we should appreciate this one.”

He leaned down, laid his lips on hers in a long, slow, upside-down kiss. She tasted of champagne and chocolate, smelled of peaches on a hot summer day.

She carried scars, body and heart, and still faced life with courage.

When her hands came to his face he lingered over those flavors, those scents, the fascinating contrasts of her, sliding just a little deeper into the lush.

Then she eased his face up. “You’re swinging for a double.”

“It worked for Spider-Man.”

“He was hanging upside down, in the rain—and that was after he’d kicked bad-guy ass. Not to mention, he didn’t get to second.”

“I’m in danger of being crazy about you, if only for your deep knowledge of superhero action films.”

“I’m trying to save you from that fate.” She patted the blanket beside her. “Why don’t you stretch out in the next stage of picnic tradition while I explain?”

Gull shifted the hamper aside, lay down hip-to-hip with her.

“If we slept together,” Rowan began, “there’s no doubt we’d bang all the drums, ring all the bells.”

“Sound all the trumpets.”

“Those, too. But after, there’s the inevitable tragedy. You’d fall in love with me. They all do.”

He heard the humor in her voice, idly linked his fingertips with hers. “You have that power?”

“I do and, though God knows I’ve tried, can’t control it. And you—I’m telling you this because, as I said, I like your style. You, helpless, hopeless, would be weak in love, barely able to eat or sleep. You’d spend all the profits you make off quarters pumped into Skee-Ball on elaborate gifts in a vain attempt to win my heart.”

“They could be pretty elaborate,” he told her. “Skee-Ball’s huge.”

“Still, my heart can’t be bought. I’d be forced to break yours, coldly and cruelly, to spare you from further humiliation. And also because your pathetic pleas would irritate the shit out of me.”

“All that,” he said after a moment, “from one round in the sack?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ve lost count of the shoes I’ve had to throw away because the soles were stained with the bleeding hearts I’ve crushed along the way.”

“That’s a fair warning. I’ll risk it.”

He rolled over, took her mouth.

For a moment, she thought the top of her head simply shot off. Explosions, heat, eruptions burst through her body like a fireball. She lost her breath, and what she thought of as simple common sense, in the wicked whir of want.

She arched up to him, her hands shoving under his shirt—eager to feel her need pressed to him, his skin, his muscles under her hands.

There was a wildness here. She knew it lived inside her, and now she felt whatever animal he caged in leap out to run with hers.

She made him crazy. That lush, greedy mouth, those quick, seeking hands, the body that moved under his with such strength, such purpose, even as, for just a moment, it yielded.

Her breasts, full and firm, filled his hands as her moan of pleasure vibrated against his lips. She was sensation, and bombarded him with feelings he could neither stop nor identify.

He imagined pulling off her clothes, his own, taking what they both wanted there, on a borrowed blanket beside a shining pond.

Then her hands came between them, pushed. He gave himself another moment, gorging on that feast of feelings, before he eased back to look down at her.

“That,” he said, “is the next step in a traditional picnic.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. And it’s a winner. It’s a good thing I got off on that fudge cake because you definitely know how to stir a woman up. In fact . . .” She wiggled out from under him, grabbed what was left of the cake and took a bite. “Mmm, yeah, that takes care of it.”

“Damn that Marg.”

Her lips curved as she licked chocolate from her fingers. “This was great—every step.”

“I’ve got a few more steps in me.”

“I’m sure you do, and I have no doubt they’d be winners. Which is why we’d better go.”

Her lips had curved, he thought when they began to pack up, but the smile hadn’t reached her eyes. He waited until they’d folded the blanket back into the well-depleted hamper.

“I got to second.”

She laughed, as he’d hoped, then snickered with the fun of it as they started the hike back.

10

Lucas poked his head in the kitchen of the cookhouse.

“I heard a rumor about blueberry pie.”

Marg glanced back as she finished basting a couple of turkeys the size of Hondas. “I might have saved a piece, and maybe could spare a cup of coffee to go with it. If somebody asked me nicely.”

He walked over, kissed her cheek.

“That might work. Sit on down.”

He took a seat at the work counter where Lynn prepped hills and mountains of vegetables. “How’s it going, Lynn?”

“Not bad considering we keep losing cooks.” She shot him a smile with a twinkle out of rich brown eyes. “If you sit here long enough, we’ll put you to work.”

“Will work for pie. I heard about the trouble. I was hoping to talk to Rowan, but they tell me she’s on a picnic with the rookie from California.”

“Fast Feet,” Lynn confirmed. “He sweet-talked Marg into putting a hamper together.”

“Nobody sweet-talks me unless I like the talk.” Marg set a warmed piece of blueberry pie, with a scoop of ice cream gently melting over the golden crust, in front of Lucas.

“He’s got a way though,” Lynn commented.

“Nobody has their way with Rowan unless she likes the way.” Marg put a thick mug of coffee beside the pie.

“I don’t worry about her.” Lucas shrugged.

“Liar.”

He smiled up at Marg. “Much. What’s your take on this business with Dolly?”

“First, the girl can cook but she doesn’t have the brains, or the sense, of that bunch of broccoli Lynn’s prepping.” Marg waved a pot holder at him. “And don’t think I don’t know she tried getting her flirt on with you a time or two.”

“Oh, golly,” Lynn said as both she and Lucas blushed to the hairline.

“For God’s sake, Marg, she’s Rowan’s age.”

“That and good sense stopped you, but it didn’t stop her from trying.”

“Neither here nor there,” Lucas mumbled, and focused on his pie.

“You can thank me for warning her off before Rowan got wind and scalped her. Anyway, I’d’ve butted heads with L.B. about hiring her back, but we needed the help. The cook we hired on didn’t last through training.”

“Too much work, she said.” Lynn rolled her eyes as she filled an enormous pot with the mountain of potatoes she’d peeled and quartered.

“I was thinking about seeing if we could bump one of the girls we have who helps with prep sometimes, and with cleanup, to full-time cook. But then Dolly has the experience, and I know what she can do. And, well, she’s got a baby now.”

“Jim Brayner’s baby.” Lucas nodded as he ate pie. “Everybody needs a chance.”

“Yeah, and that bromide ended up getting Ro’s quarters splattered with pig blood. Nasty business, let me tell you.”

“That girl’s had it in for Ro since their school days, but this?” Lucas shook his head. “It’s just senseless.”

“Dolly’s lucky Cards was there to hold Ro back long enough for some of the other guys to come on the run and wrestle her down. It would’ve been more than some oinker’s blood otherwise.”

“My girl’s got a temper.”

“And was in the right of it, if you ask me—or anybody else around here. And what does Dolly do after L.B. cans her?” Marg’s eyes went hot as she slapped a dishcloth on the counter. “She comes crying to me, asking, can’t I put in a word for her? I gave her a word, all right.”

Lynn snorted. “Surrounded by others, as in: Get the word out of my kitchen.”

“I’m sorry for her troubles, but it’s best she’s gone. And away from my girl,” Lucas added. As far as he was concerned, that ended that. “How would you rate the rookies this season?”

Marg hauled out a couple casserole dishes. “The rook your girl’s eating fried chicken with, or all of them?”

“All of them.” Lucas scraped up the last bit of pie. “Maybe one in particular.”

“They’re a good crop, including one in particular. I’d say most are just crazy enough to stick it out.”

“I guess we’ll see. That was damn good pie, Marg.”

“Are you after seconds?”

“Can’t do it.” He patted his belly. “My days of eating like a smoke jumper are over. And I’ve got some things I’ve got to get to,” he added when he rose to take his plate and mug to the sink. “When you see Ro, tell her I stopped by.”

“Will do. You’re close enough not to be such a stranger.”

“Business is good, and good keeps me pinned down. But I’ll make the time. Don’t work too hard, Lynn.”

“Come back and say that in October, and I might be able to listen.”

He headed out to walk down to where he’d left his truck. As always, nostalgia twinged, just a little. Some of the jumpers got in a run on the track. Others, he could see, stood jawing with some of the mechanics.

He spotted Yangtree, looking official in his uniform shirt and hat, leading a tour group out of Operations. Plenty of kids being herded along, he noted, getting a charge out of seeing parachutes, jumpsuits and the network of computer systems—vastly improved since his early days.

Maybe they’d get lucky and see somebody rigging a chute. Anyway, it was a nice stop for a kid on summer vacation.

That made him think of school, and school led him to the high-school principal he’d agreed to meet for a drink.

Probably should’ve just taken her into the office, had the sit-down there. Professional.

Friendly business started to seem more nerve-racking as the day went on.

No way around it now, he reminded himself, and dug his keys out of his pocket. As he did, he turned toward the lion’s purr of engine, frowned a little as he watched his daughter zip up in the passenger seat of an Audi Spyder convertible.

She waved at him, then jumped out when the sleek beast of a car growled to a stop.

“Hey! I was going to try to get over and see you later.” She threw her arms around him—was there anything more wonderful than a hard hug from your grown child? “Now I don’t have to, ’cause here you are.”

“I almost missed you. Gull, right?”

“That’s right. It’s good to see you again.”

“Some car.”

“I’m happy with it.”

“What’ll she do?”

“Theoretically, or in practice—with your daughter along?”

“That’s a good answer, without answering,” Lucas decided.

“Do you want to try her out?” Gull offered the key.

“Hey!” Rowan made a grab for them, missing as Gull closed his hand. “How come he rates?”

“He’s Iron Man.”

Rowan hooked her thumbs in her pockets. “He said I had to sleep with him before I could drive it.”

Gull sent her smirk a withering look. “She declined.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I wouldn’t mind giving her a run. I’ll take a rain check on it since I’ve got to get along.”

“Can’t you stay awhile?” Rowan asked. “We can hang out a little. You can stay and mooch dinner.”

“I wish I could, but I’ve got a couple of things to see to, then I’m meeting a client for a drink—a meeting. An appointment.”

Rowan slid off her sunglasses. “A client?”

“Yeah. Yeah. She’s, ah, got some project she wants to talk to me about, and she’s interested in trying for AFF. So I guess we’re going to talk about it. That. Anyway . . . I’ll get back over soon, mooch that dinner off you. Maybe try out that machine of yours, Gull.”

“Anytime.”

Lucas took Rowan’s chin in his hand. “See you later.”

She watched him get in the truck, watched him drive away.

“Meeting, my ass.”

Gull opened the nose to maneuver the hamper out. “Sorry?”

“He’s got a date. With a woman.”

“Wow! That’s shocking news. I think my heart skipped a beat.”

“He doesn’t date.” Rowan continued to scowl as her father’s truck shrunk in the distance. “He’s all fumbling and flustered around women, if he’s attracted. Didn’t you see how flustered he was when he talked about his appointment? And who the hell is she?”

“It’s hard, but you’ve got to let the kids leave the nest someday.”

“Oh, kiss ass. His brain goes to mush when he’s around a certain type of woman, and he can be manipulated.”

Fascinated with her reaction, Gull leaned on his car. “It’s just a wild shot, but it could be he’s going to meet a woman he’s attracted to, and who has no intention of manipulating him. And they’ll have a drink and conversation.”

“What the hell do you know?” she challenged, and stomped off toward the barracks.

Amused, Gull hauled the basket back to Marg.

He’d no more than set it down on the counter when someone tapped knuckles on the outside door.

“Excuse me. Margaret Colby?”

Gull gave the man a quick summing-up—dark suit with a tightly knotted tie in dark, vivid pink, shiny shoes, hair the color of ink brushed back from a high forehead.

Marg stood where she was. “That’s right.”

“I’m Reverend Latterly.”

“I remember you from before, from Irene and Dolly.”

Catching her tone, and the fact she didn’t invite the man in, Gull decided to stick around.

“May I speak with you for a moment?”

“You can, but you’re wasting your breath and my time if you’re here to ask me to try to convince Michael Little Bear to let Dolly Brakeman back in this kitchen.”

“Mrs. Colby.” He came in without invitation, smiled, showing a lot of big white teeth.

Gull decided he didn’t like the man’s tie, and helped himself to a cold can of ginger ale.

“If I could just have a moment in private.”

“We’re working.” She shot a warning glance at Lynn before the woman could ease out of the room. “This is as private as you’re going to get.”

“I know you’re very busy, and cooking for so many is hard work. Demanding work.”

“I get paid for it.”

“Yes.” Latterly stared at Gull, let the silence hang.

In response, Gull leaned back on the counter, drank some ginger ale. And made Marg’s lips twitch.

“Well, I wanted a word with you as you’re Dolly’s direct supervisor and—”

“Was,” Marg corrected.

“Yes. I’ve spoken with Mr. Little Bear, and I understand his reluctance to forgive Dolly’s transgression.”

“You call it a transgression. I call it snake-bite mean.”

Latterly spread his hands, then linked them together for a moment like a man at prayer. “I realize it’s a difficult situation, and there’s no excuse for Dolly’s behavior. But she was naturally upset after Miss Tripp threatened her and accused her of . . . having low morals.”

“Is that Dolly’s story?” Marg just shook her head, as much pity as disgust in the movement. “The girl lies half the time she opens her mouth. If you don’t know that, you’re not a very good judge of character. And I’d think that’d be an important skill to have in your profession.”

“As Dolly’s spiritual advisor—”

“Just stop there because I’m not overly interested in Dolly’s spirit. She’s had a mean on for Rowan as long as I’ve known her. She’s always been jealous, always wanted what somebody else had. She’s not coming back here, not getting another chance to kick at Rowan. Now, L.B. runs this base, but I run this kitchen. If he took it into his head to let Dolly back in here, he’d be looking for another head cook and he knows it.”

“That’s a very hard line.”

“I call it common sense. The girl can cook, but she’s wild, unreliable, and she’s a troublemaker. I can’t help her.”

“She is troubled, still trying to find her way. She’s also raising an infant on her own.”

“She’s not on her own,” Marg corrected. “I’ve known her mother since we were girls, and I know Irene and Leo are doing all they can for Dolly. Probably more than they should, considering. Now you’re going to have to excuse me.”

“Would you, at least, write a reference for her? I’m sure it would help her secure another position as a cook.”

“No, I won’t.”

Gull judged the shock that crossed the man’s face as sincere. Very likely the reverend wasn’t used to a flat-out no.

“As a Christian woman—”

“Who said I’m a Christian?” She jabbed a finger at him now, pointedly enough to take him back a step. “And how come that’s some sort of scale on right and wrong and good and bad? I won’t write her a reference because my word and my reputation mean something to me. You advise her spirit all you want, but don’t come into my kitchen and try advising me on mine. Dolly made her choices, now she’ll deal with the consequences of them.”

She took a step forward, and those hazel eyes breathed fire. “Do you think I haven’t heard what she’s been saying about Rowan around town? About me, L.B., even little Lynn there? About everybody? I hear everything, Reverend Jim, and I won’t give a damn thing to anyone who lies about me and mine. If it wasn’t for her mother, I’d give Dolly Brakeman a good swift kick myself.”

“Gossip is—”

“What plumps the grapes on the vine. If you want to do her a favor, tell Dolly to mind her mouth. Now I’ve got work to do, and I’ve given you and Dolly enough of my time.”

Deliberately she turned back to the stove.

“I apologize for intruding.” He spoke stiffly now, and without the big-toothed smile. “I’ll pray the anger leaves your heart.”

“I like my anger right where it is,” Marg shot back as Latterly backed out the door. “Lynn, those vegetables aren’t going to prep themselves.”

“No, ma’am.”

On a sigh, Marg turned around. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m not mad at you.”

“I know. I wish I had the courage to talk like that to people—to say exactly what I think and mean.”

“No, you don’t. You’re fine just the way you are. I just didn’t like the sanctimonious prick.” She aimed a look at Gull. “Nothing to say?”

“Just he’s a sanctimonious prick with too many teeth and an ugly tie. My only critique of your response is I think you should have told him you were a Buddhist woman, or maybe a Pagan.”

“I wish I’d thought of that.” She smiled. “You want some pie?”

He didn’t know where he’d put it after the fudge cake, but understanding the sentiment behind the offer, he couldn’t say no.

LUCAS’S STOMACH JITTERED when he walked into the bar, but he assured himself it would settle once they started talking about whatever she wanted to talk about.

Then he saw her, sitting at a table reading a book, and his tongue got thick.

She’d put on a dress, something all green and summery that showed off her arms and legs while her pretty red hair waved to her shoulders.

Should he have worn a tie? he wondered. He hardly ever wore ties, but he had a few.

She looked up, saw him, smiled. So he had no choice but to cross over to the table.

“I guess I’m late. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not.” She closed the book. “I got here a little early as the errands I had didn’t take as long as I thought.” She slipped the book into her purse. “I always carry a book in case I have some time on my hands.”

“I’ve read that one.” There, he thought, he was talking. He was sitting down. “I guess I figured doing what you do, you’d be reading educational books all the time.”

“I do plenty of that, but not with my purse book. I’m liking it a lot so far, but then I always enjoy Michael Connelly.”

“Yeah, it’s good stuff.”

The waitress stepped up. “Good evening. Can I get you a drink?”

When she shifted, Ella’s scent—something warm and spicy—drifted across the table and fogged Lucas’s brain.

“What am I in the mood for?” she wondered. “I think a Bombay and tonic, with a twist of lime.”

“And you, sir? Sir?” the waitress repeated when Lucas remained mute.

“Oh, sorry. Ah, I’ll have a beer. A Rolling Rock.”

“I’ll get those right out to you. Anything else? An appetizer?”

“You know what I’d love? Some of those sweet potato skins. They’re amazing,” she told Lucas. “You have to share some with me.”

“Sure. Okay. Great.”

“I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

“I so appreciate you taking the time to come in,” Ella began. “It gives me an excuse to sit in a pretty bar, have a summer drink and some sinful food.”

“It’s a nice place.”

“I like coming here, when I have an excuse. I’ve come to feel at home in Missoula in a fairly short time. I love the town, the countryside, my work. It’s hard to ask for more.”

“You’re not from here. From Montana.” He knew that. Hadn’t he known that?

“Born in Virginia, transplanted to Pennsylvania when I went to college, where I met my ex-husband.”

“That’s a ways from Montana.”

“I got closer as time went by. We moved to Denver when the kids were ten and twelve, when my husband—ex—got a difficult-to-refuse job offer. We were there about a dozen years before we moved to Washington State, another job offer. My son moved here, got married, started his family, and my girl settled in California, so after the divorce I wanted fresh. Since I like the mountains, I decided to try here. I get fresh, the mountains, and my son and his family, with my daughter close enough by air I can see her several times a year.”

He couldn’t imagine the picking up and going, going then picking it all up again. Though his work had taken him all over the West, he’d lived in Missoula all his life.

“That’s a lot of country, a lot of moving around.”

“Yes, and I’m happy to be done with it. You’re a native?”

“That’s right. Born and bred in Missoula. I’ve been east a few times. We get hired off season to work controlled burns, or insect eradication.”

“Exterminating bugs?”

He grinned. “Bugs that live up in tall trees,” he explained, jerking a thumb at the ceiling. “We—smoke jumpers, I mean—are trained to climb. But most of my life’s been spent west of St. Louis.”

The waitress served their drinks, and Ella lifted hers. “Here’s to roots—maintaining them and setting them down.”

“Washington State, that’s pretty country. I jumped some fires there. Colorado, too.”

“A lot of country.” Ella smiled at him. “You’ve seen the most pristine, and the most devastated. Alaska, too, right? I read you fought wildfires there.”

“Sure.”

She leaned forward. “Is it fantastic? I’ve always wanted to see it, to visit there.”

For a minute, he lost the rhythm of small talk in her eyes. “Ah . . . I’ve only seen it in the summer, and it’s fantastic. The green, the white, the water, the miles and miles of open. All that water’s a hazard for jumping fire, but they don’t have the trees like we do here, so it’s a trade-off.”

“Which is more hazardous? Water or trees?”

“Land in the water with all your gear, you’re going to go down, maybe not get up again. Land in the trees, land wrong, maybe you just get hung up, maybe you break your neck. The best thing to do is not land in either.”

“Have you?”

“Yeah. I hit my share of both. The worst part’s knowing you’re going to, and trying to correct enough so you’ll walk away from it. Any jump you walk away from is a good jump.”

She sat back. “I knew it. I knew you’d be perfect for what I’d like to do.”

“Ah—”

“I know they give tours of the base, and groups can see the operation, ask some questions. But I had this idea, specifically for students. Something more intimate, more in-depth. Hearing firsthand, from the source, what it takes, what you do, what you’ve done. Personal experiences of the work, the life, the risks, the rewards.”

“You want me to talk to kids?”

“Yes. I want you to talk to them. I want you to teach them. Hear me out,” she added when he just stared at her. “A lot of our students come from privilege, from parents who can afford to send them to a top-rated private school like ours. Everyone knows about the Zulies. The base is right here. But I’ll guarantee few, if any, unless they have a connection, understand what it really means to be what you are, do what you do.”

“I’m not a jumper anymore.”

“Lucas.” The soft smile teased out the dimples. “You’ll always be one. In any case, you gave it half of your life. You’ve seen the changes in the process, the equipment. You’ve fought wilderness fires all over the West. You’ve seen the beauty and the horror. You’ve felt it.”

She laid a fisted hand on her heart. “Some of these kids, the ones I’d especially like to reach with this, have attitudes. The hard work, the dirty work, that’s for somebody else—somebody who doesn’t have the money or brains to go to college, launch a lucrative career. The wilderness? What’s the big deal? Let somebody else worry about it.”

She’d tripped something in him the minute she’d said he’d always be a jumper. The minute he saw she understood that.

“I don’t know how me talking to them’s going to change that.”

“I think listening to you, being able to ask you questions, having you take them through, from training to fire, will open some of those young minds.”

“And that’s what your work is. Even though you don’t teach anymore, you’ll always be a teacher.”

“Yes. We understand that about each other.” She watched him as she sipped her drink. “I intend to talk to the operations officer at base. I’d like to, with parental permission, have a group, or groups, go through training. A shortened version obviously. Maybe over a weekend after the fire season.”

“You want to put them through the wringer,” he said with a glimmer of a smile.

“I want to show them, teach them, bring it home to them that the men and women who dedicate themselves to protecting our wilderness put themselves through the wringer. I have ideas about photographs and videos, and . . . I have ideas,” she said with a laugh. “And we’d have all summer to put the project together.”

“I think it’s a good thing you’re trying to do. I’m not much good at speaking. Public speaking.”

“I can help you with that. Besides, I’d rather you just be who you are. Believe me, that’s enough.”

She picked up one of the potato skins the waitress had served while she’d laid out her plan.

She’d caught him up in it, he couldn’t deny it. The idea of it, the passion behind it. “I can give it a try, I guess. At least see how it goes.”

“That would be great. I really think we can do something that has impact—and some fun. And that brings me to two things.” She took another drink. “Let me just get this off the table. I was married for twenty-eight years. I uprooted myself, then my kids as well to support and suit my husband. I loved him, almost all of those twenty-eight years, and for the last of them, I believed in the marriage, the life we’d built. I believed in him. Until on my fifty-second birthday, he took me out to dinner. A beautiful restaurant, candles, flowers, champagne. He even had a rather exquisite pair of diamond earrings for me to top it off.”

She sat back a little, crossed her legs. “All of this to set it up, so I wouldn’t cause a public scene when he told me he was having an affair with his personal assistant—a woman young enough to be his daughter, by the way. That he was in love with her and leaving me. He still thought the world of me, of course, and hoped I’d understand that these things happened. Oh, and the heart wants what the heart wants.”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to think what I should say, but nothing that’s coming into my head seems appropriate.”

“Oh, it can’t be any less appropriate than what I said—after I picked up the champagne bucket and dumped the ice over his head. When I went to a lawyer—the very next day—she asked if I wanted to play nice or cut him off at the balls. I went for castration. I’d finished playing nice.”

“Good for you.”

“I wondered if I would regret it. But so far, no. I’m telling you this because I think it’s only fair that you understand, right now, I can be mean, and that both my marriage and my divorce taught me to understand myself, virtue and flaw, and to not waste time in going after what I want.”

“Time’s always wasted if you’re not aiming for what you want.”

“An excellent point. Which brings me to the second thing. I lied to you earlier today when I said I wasn’t hitting on you. I was. I am.”

It wasn’t just that his mind went blank, but that his whole system hit overload and snapped to an abrupt halt. He couldn’t quite manage the simple act of swallowing as he stared into her sparkling eyes.

“I don’t believe in absolute honesty in all things,” she continued, “because I think a little shading now and then not only softens the edges, but makes things more interesting. But in this case, I decided on the bald truth. If it scares you off, it’s better to know at this point, where there really isn’t anything on the line for either of us.”

She took a small sip from her glass. “So . . . Have I scared you off?”

“I . . . I’m not very good at this.”

“I should have put in there that whether you’re interested or not, I’m very sincere and serious about the project, and about learning how to skydive. Both of those things might be connected to me being attracted to you, but they’re not contingent on it. Or you reciprocating.”

She sighed. “And that sounded like a high-school principal when I’d hoped not to. I’m a little nervous.”

The idea of that stopped the degeneration of his brain cells. “You are?”

“I like you, and I’m hoping you’re interested enough to want to spend time with me, on a personal level. So, yes, I’m a little nervous that pushing that forward so soon might put you off. But it’s part of my don’t-waste-time policy, so . . . If you’re interested, or inclined to consider being interested, I’d like to take you to dinner. There’s a nice restaurant a couple blocks away. It’s an easy walk—and I made a reservation, just in case.”

He considered, shook his head. “No.”

“Well. Then we’ll just—”

“I’d like to take you to dinner.” He could hardly believe the words came out of his mouth, and didn’t cause a single hitch. “I heard there’s a nice restaurant a couple blocks away, if you’d like to take a walk.”

He loved watching the way the smile bloomed on her face. “That sounds great. I’m just going to go freshen up first.”

She got up from the table, moved toward the restroom.

The minute the door closed behind her, she did a high-stepping dance in the bold purple peek-toe pumps she’d bought that afternoon.

On a foolish giggle, she walked to the sink, studied her giddy face in the mirror. “Let the adventure begin,” she said, then took out her lipstick.

A few years before, she’d wondered, worried, all but assumed her life was essentially over. In a way, it had been, had needed to be to push her to start again.

So far, the new life of Ella Frazier brimmed with interesting possibilities.

And one of them was about to take her to dinner.

She nodded to her reflection, dropped the lipstick back in her purse. “Thanks, Darrin,” she declared to her ex-husband. “It took that kick in the teeth to wake me up.” She tossed her hair, did a stylish half turn. “And just look at me now. I am wide awake.”

ROWAN RESISTED calling or texting her father’s cell. It struck her as a little too obviously checking up on him. Instead, she opted for his landline at home.

She fully expected him to answer. She’d waited until nine thirty, after all, busying herself with her paperwork. Or trying to. When his machine picked up, she was momentarily at a loss. She had to grope for the excuse it had taken her nearly a half hour to come up with.

“Oh, hey. I’m just taking a quick break from writing up my reports and realized I didn’t get the chance to tell you of my brilliance as fire boss. If I can’t brag to you, who can I brag to? I’ll be at this for another hour or so, then I’ll probably take a walk to clear the administrative BS out of my head. So give me a call. Hope your meeting went well.”

She rolled her eyes as she clicked off. “Meeting-schmeeting,” she muttered. “A drink with a client doesn’t go for two and a half hours.”

She brooded awhile. It wasn’t that she thought her father wasn’t entitled to a social life. But she didn’t even know who this client was. Lucas Tripp was handsome, interesting, a successful businessman. And a prime target for an opportunistic woman.

A daughter held a solemn duty to look after her single, successful, naive and overly-trusting-of-women father. She wanted him to get home and call her back, so she could do just that.

Maybe she should try him on his cell, just in case—

No, no, no, she ordered herself. That crossed the line into interfering. He was sixty, for God’s sake. He didn’t have a curfew.

She’d just finish the stupid report, take that walk. He was bound to call before she’d gotten it all done.

But she finished the report, sent it to L.B. She took a long, admittedly sulky walk, before going back to her quarters and taking twice as long as necessary to get ready for bed.

Annoyed with herself, she shut off the light. During a brutal mental debate about the justification of trying her father’s cell after midnight, she fell asleep.

VOICES WOKE HER. Voices raised outside her window, outside her door. For a bleary moment she thought herself in the recurring dream—the aftermath of Jim’s tragic jump when everyone had been shouting, rushing. Scared, angry.

But when her eyes opened in the half-light, the voices continued. Something’s wrong, she thought, and instinct had her out of bed, out the door before fully awake.

“What the hell?” she demanded as Dobie pushed by her.

“Somebody hit the ready room. Gibbons said it looks like a bomb went off.”

“What? That can’t—”

But Dobie continued to run, obviously wanting to see for himself. In the cotton pants and tank she’d slept in, Rowan raced out in her bare feet.

The morning chill hit her skin, but what she saw in the faces of those who hurried with her, or quick-stepped it toward Operations, heated her blood.

Something’s very wrong, she realized, and quickened her pace.

She hit the door to the ready room in step with Dobie.

A bomb wasn’t far off, she thought. Parachutes, so meticulously and laboriously rigged and packed, lay or draped like tangled, deflated balloons. Tools scattered on the torn silks with gear spilling chaotically out of lockers. From the looks of it, tools, once carefully cleaned and organized, had been used to hack and slice at packs, jumpsuits, boots, damaging or destroying everything needed to jump and contain a fire.

On the wall, splattered in bloody-red spray paint, the message read clearly:

JUMP AND DIE

BURN IN HELL

Rowan thought of pig’s blood.

“Dolly.”

With his hands fisted at his sides, Dobie stared at the destruction. “Then she’s worse than crazy.”

“Maybe she is.” Rowan squatted, slid a hand through the slice in silk. “Maybe she is.”

EXTENDED ATTACK

A little fire is quickly trodden out;

Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

11

Every able hand worked in manufacturing, in the loadmaster’s room, in the loft. They spread through the buildings, making Smitty bags, ponchos, finishing chutes already in for repair, rigging, repacking. Under the hum and clatter of machines, the mutters, Rowan knew everyone’s thoughts ran toward the same destination.

Let the siren stay silent.

Until they repaired and restocked, rerigged, inspected, there was no jump list.

Nothing in the ready room could be touched until the cops cleared it. So they worked with what they had in manufacturing, running against the clock and the moods of nature.

“We could maybe send eight in.” Cards worked opposite Rowan, painstakingly rigging a chute. “We can put eight together right now.”

“I can’t think about it. And we can’t rush it. It’s a damn good thing she didn’t get in here. Bad enough as it is.”

“Do you really think Dolly did that?”

“Who else?”

“That’s just fucked up. She was sort of one of us. I even . . .”

“A lot of the guys even.”

“Before Vicki,” Cards added. “Before Jim. Anyway, I mean, she worked right here on base, joking and flirting around in the dining hall. Like Marg and Lynn.”

“Dolly’s never been like Marg and Lynn.”

Focusing, Rowan arranged the chute’s lines into two perfect bundles. One tangled cord could be the difference between a good jump and a nightmare. “Who else is pissed off and crazy besides Dolly?”

“Painting that crap on the wall, too,” Cards agreed. “Like she did in your room. I was up till damn near one, and didn’t hear a goddamn thing. Wrecking the place that way, she had to make some noise.”

“She snuck onto base late, after everyone was bunked down.” Rowan shrugged. “It’s just not that hard, especially if you know your way around. It happened, that’s for damn sure.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Gull stopped on his way to another table with a repaired chute. “If there’s a fire when we’re not squared away, they’ll send in jumpers from other bases. Nobody’s going to jump until our equipment’s cleared. Who’s she trying to hurt?”

“Crazy doesn’t have to make sense.”

“You’ve got a point. But all that mess down there accomplishes is to cost time and money—and piss everybody off. Not to mention cops knocking at your door, when you slid by that one last time.”

“Vindictive doesn’t have to make sense either.”

Gull started to speak again, but Gibbons hailed Rowan. “Cops want to talk to you, Ro. To all of us,” he added as the machines hummed into silence. “But you’re up.”

“I’m going to finish packing this chute. Five minutes,” she estimated.

“L.B.’s office. Lieutenant Quinniock.”

“Five minutes.”

“Cards, when you’re finished there, you can go on over to the cookhouse. The other one, Detective Rubio’ll talk to you there.”

Cards jerked his head in acknowledgment. “Looks like you got the short straw, Ro. At least I’ll get some breakfast.”

“Gull, Matt, Janis, when the cops give us the go-ahead, you’ll be working with me on cleanup and inventory. You want chow, Marg’s got a buffet set up. Fill your bellies because we’re going to be at it awhile. Fucking mess,” he said in disgust as he walked out.

Cards signed his name, the time and date on the repacked chute.

“I’ll walk down with you,” Gull told Cards, and brushed a hand down Rowan’s back as he walked by her.

She finished the job, choking down everything but the task at hand. When she was done, she labeled the pack. Chute by Swede.

She shelved it, then gladly left the headachy din of manufacturing. But she detoured to the ready room.

She wanted to see it again. Maybe needed to.

Two police officers worked with a pair of civilians—forensics, Rowan concluded. She knew the woman currently taking photos of the painted message. Jamie Potts, Rowan thought. They’d been stuck in Mr. Brody’s insanely boring world history class together their junior year in high school. She recognized one of the cops as well, as she’d dated him awhile about the same time as Mr. Brody.

She started to speak, then just backed out, realizing she didn’t want conversation until she had no choice.

Besides, looking at the torn and trampled, the strewn and defaced, only heated up her already simmering temper.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of the hoodie she’d pulled on over her nightclothes.

Halfway to Operations, Gull cut across her path. He handed her a Coke. “I thought you could use it.”

“Yeah, thanks. I thought you’d headed down for breakfast.”

“I’ll get it. It’s a bump, Ro.”

“What?”

“This.” He gestured behind them, toward the ready room. “It’s a bump, the kind that gives you a nasty jolt, but it doesn’t stop you from getting where you’re going. Whoever did that? They didn’t accomplish a thing but make everybody on this base more determined to get where we’re going.”

“Glass half full?”

She honestly couldn’t say why that grated on her nerves. “Right now my glass is not only mostly empty, it has a jagged, lip-tearing chip in it. I’m not ready to look at it in sunny terms. I might be once her vindictive batshit crazy ass is sitting in a cell.”

“They’ll have to call in the rangers or the feds, I guess. U.S. Forest Service property that got messed with, so it’s probably a felony. I don’t know how it works.”

That stopped her. She hadn’t thought it through. “L.B. called the locals. The feds aren’t going to waste their time with this.”

“I don’t know. But I’d think if somebody wanted to push it, that’s where it would go. Destruction of federal property, that could land her a stiff stint in a cell. What she needs is a big dose of mandatory therapy.”

The man, she concluded, was a piece of work. Good work at the core, and right now that core of good made her want to punch something.

Possibly him.

“You’re telling me this because you’re not sure if I want her to do time in Leavenworth, or wherever.”

“Do you?”

“Damn it. Right now I wouldn’t shed a tear over that, but at the bottom of it, I just want her out of our hair, once and for all.”

“Nobody can argue with that. Whoever did that to the ready room has some serious problems.”

“Look, you’ve had a few weeks’ exposure to Dolly. I’ve had a lifetime, and I’m finished having her problems become mine.”

“Nobody can argue with that, either.” He cupped a hand at the back of her neck, catching her off-guard with the kiss. “Let’s see if we can squeeze in a run later. I could use one.”

“Will you stop trying to settle me down?”

“No, because you probably don’t want to talk to a cop when you’re pissed off enough to bite out his throat if he happens to push the wrong button.”

He took her shoulders, got a good grip. And, she noted, his eyes weren’t so calm, weren’t so patient. “You’re smart. Be smart. The ready room wasn’t a personal attack on you; it was a sucker punch at all of us. Remember that.”

“She’s—”

“She’s nothing. Make her nothing, and focus on what’s important. Give the cop what he needs, go back to work on fixing the damage. After that, take a run with me.”

He kissed her again, quick and hard, then walked away.

“Take a run. I’ll give you a run,” she muttered. She veered off toward L.B.’s office, and realized Gull unsettled her nearly as much as Dolly’s sudden bent for violence.

Lieutenant Quinniock sat at L.B.’s overburdened desk with a mug of coffee and a notebook. Black-framed cheaters perched on the end of his long, bladed nose while eyes of faded-denim blue peered over them. A small scar rode high on his right cheek, a pale fishhook against the ruddiness. And like a scar, a shock of white, like a lightning bolt blurred at the edges, shot through his salt-and-pepper hair between the left temple and the crown.

She’d seen him before, Rowan realized—in a bar or a shop—somewhere. His wasn’t a face easily overlooked.

He wore a dark, subtly pin-striped suit like an executive—pressed and tailored, with a perfectly knotted tie of flashy red.

The suit didn’t go with the face, she thought, and wondered if the contrast was deliberate.

He stood when she came into the room. “Ms. Tripp?”

“Yeah. Rowan Tripp.”

“I appreciate you taking a few minutes. I know it’s a stressful day. Would you mind closing the door?”

The voice, she decided, mild, polite, engaging, fit the suit.

“Have a seat,” he told her. “I have a few questions.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve met your father. I imagine most around these parts have at some time or other. You’re following in big footprints, and I’m told you’re doing a good job of filling them.”

“Thanks.”

“So . . . you and a Miss Dolly Brakeman had an altercation a few days ago.”

“You could call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

She wanted to rage, to jab a finger in the middle of that flashy tie. Be smart, Gull had said—and damn it, he was right.

So she ordered herself to relax in the chair and speak coolly. “Let’s see, I call it trespassing, vandalism, defacing private property and generally being a crazy bitch. But that’s just me.”

“Apparently not just you, as others I’ve spoken with share that point of view. You discovered Miss Brakeman in your quarters here on base in the act of pouring animal blood on your bed. Is that correct?”

“It is. And that would be after she’d poured it, tossed it, splattered it over the walls, the floor, my clothes and other assorted items. After she wrote on my wall with it. ‘Burn in hell,’ to be precise.”

“Yes, I’ve got the photographs of the damage Mr. Little Bear took before the area was cleaned and repainted.”

“Oh.” That set her back a moment. She hadn’t realized L.B. had documented with photos. Should have figured he would, she thought now. That’s why he was in charge.

“And what happened when you found her in your quarters?”

“What? Oh, I tried to kick her ass, but several of my colleagues stopped me. Which, given the current situation, is even more of a damn shame.”

“You didn’t notify the police.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Partially because I was too pissed off, and partially because she got fired and kicked off the base. That seemed enough, considering.”

“Considering?”

“Considering, at that time, I figured she was just sublimely stupid, that her stupidity was aimed solely at me—and she’s got a baby. Plus, within an hour we caught a fire, so she wasn’t a top priority for me after that.”

“You and your unit had a long, hard couple of days.”

“It’s what we do.”

“What you do is appreciated.” He sipped his coffee as he scanned his notes. “The baby you mentioned is purported to have been fathered by James Brayner, a Missoula smoke jumper who died in an accident last August.”

“That’s right.”

“Miss Brakeman blames you.”

It hurt still; she supposed it always would. “I was his jump partner. She blames the whole unit, and me in particular.”

“Just for my own edification, what does ‘jump partner’ mean?”

“We jump in two-man teams. One after the other once we get the go from the spotter. The first one out, that would’ve been me in this case, checks the location and status of the second man. You might want to make adjustments in direction, trajectory, give the second man a clear stream. If one of you has any problems, the other should be able to spot it. You look out for each other, as much as you can, in the air, on landing.”

“And Brayner’s accident was ruled, after investigation, as his error.”

Her throat burned, making it impossible to keep the emotion out of her voice. “He didn’t steer away. We hit some bad air, but he just rode on it. He pulled the wrong toggle, steered toward instead of away. There was nothing I could do. His chute deployed; I gave him space, but he didn’t come around. He overshot the jump site, kept riding, and went down into the fire.”

“It’s difficult to lose a partner.”

“Yeah. Difficult.”

“At that time Miss Brakeman was employed as a cook on base.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you and she have any problems prior to the accident?”

“She cooked. I ate. That’s pretty much it.”

“I’m under the impression the two of you knew each other for quite some time. That you went to school together.”

“We didn’t run in the same circle. We knew each other. For some reason she was always jealous of me. I know a lot of people. I know Jamie and Barry, down doing their cop thing in the ready room; went to school with them, too. Neither one of them ever pulled a Carrie-at-the-prom on my quarters.”

He watched her over that long, narrow nose. “Were you aware she was pregnant at the time of Brayner’s death?”

“No. As far as I know nobody was aware except, from what she said when she came back, Jim. She took off right after the accident—I don’t know where, and don’t care. As far as I can tell she came back with the baby, got religion and came here looking for work, armed with her mother, her minister and pictures of her chubby-cheeked baby. L.B. hired her.”

To give herself a moment, she took a long drink from her Coke. “I had one conversation with her, figuring we should clear the air, and during which she made it crystal she hated every linear inch of my guts, wished me to hell. She dumped blood all over my room. L.B. fired her. And that brings us up to date.”

She shifted in her chair, tired of sitting, tired of answering questions she suspected he already had the answers to. Focus on what’s important, she remembered. “Look, I know you’ve got ground to cover, but I don’t see why my past history with Dolly applies. She broke into the ready room and damaged equipment. Essential equipment. It’s a lot more than inconvenient and messy. If we’re not ready when we’re called, people can die. Wildlife and the forests they live in are destroyed.”

“Understood. We’ll be talking to Miss Brakeman. At this time, the only possible link between her and the vandalism in your ready room is her confirmed vandalism of your quarters.”

“She said she wanted us all to die. All of us to burn. Just like she wrote on the wall. I guess she couldn’t get her hands on any more pig’s blood, so she used spray paint this time.”

“Without equipment, you can’t jump. If you can’t jump, you’re not in harm’s way.”

“Logical. But then logic isn’t Dolly’s strong suit.”

“If it turns out she’s responsible for this situation, I’d have to agree. Thanks for your time, and your frankness.”

“No problem.” She pushed to her feet, stopped on her way to the door. “I don’t see how there’s any ‘if.’ People around here understand what we do. We’re part of the fabric. Everybody on base is a thread in the fabric, and we do what we do because we want to. We depend on each other. Dolly’s the only odd man out.”

“There are three men who got their asses kicked last month outside Get a Rope who might enjoy fraying those threads.”

She turned fully back into the room. “Do you really think those assholes came back to Missoula, snuck on base, found the ready room and did that crap?”

Quinniock removed his cheaters, folded them neatly on the desk. “It’s another ‘if.’ It’s my job to consider all the ‘ifs.’”

The interview left Rowan more annoyed than satisfied. Though her appetite barely stirred, she hit the buffet, built herself a breakfast sandwich. She ate on the way back to manufacturing.

Nobody complained. Not about the extra work or the tedium of doing it. While she’d been with Quinniock, Janis set up her MP3 with speakers so R&B, country, rock, hip-hop softened the clamor of the machines. She watched Dobie do a little boot-scoot across the floor to Shania Twain with a load of Smitty bags in his arms.

Could be worse, she thought. It could always be worse, so the smart thing to do was to make the best out of the bad. When Gull hauled in chutes for repair, she figured the cops had cleared the ready room.

She left her machine to go to the counter and help him spread the silks.

“How bad is it?” she asked him.

“Probably not as bad as it looked. Everything’s tossed around, but there’s not as much actual damage as we thought. Or I thought, anyway. A lot just needs to be sorted and repacked.”

“Silver lining.” She marked tears and cuts.

“With a rainbow. Maintenance is setting up tables outside. Rumor is Marg is putting a barbecue together, and she’s got a truckload of ribs.”

Rowan marked another tear. Men who hadn’t bothered to shave or shower that morning were singing along with Taylor Swift. It was just a little surreal.

“When the going gets tough,” she decided, “the tough eat ribs. We’ve got nearly all the chutes that were in for rigging and repair done, and nearly all of those packed. Coming along on PG bags, Smitties, ponchos and packs.”

She paused, met his eyes. “If it keeps moving, maybe we’ll fit in that run.”

“Ready when you are.”

“I hate being wrong.”

“Anybody who doesn’t probably has low self-esteem. Low self-esteem can lead to a lot of problems, many of them sexual.”

She knew when she was being ribbed, so nodded solemnly. “I’m lucky I have exceptionally high self-esteem. Anyway, I hate being wrong about thinking this was a shot at me. I’d rather she’d taken a shot at me. I’d rather be pissed off about a personal vendetta than this.”

“It sucks, but there’s something to be said about listening to Southern and Trigger singing a duet of ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.’”

“They weren’t bad. No Bon Jovi, but not bad.”

“If your glass is half empty and has a chip in it, you might as well belly up to the bar and order a fresh one. I’ve gotta get back.”

Bright side, she thought. Silver lining. Maybe it took her longer to find them—or want to—but what the hell. She might as well toss away her crappy glass.

She examined every inch of the chute before turning it over to repair, then started on the next. She was so focused on what she thought of as an assembly line of life and death, she didn’t hear L.B. walk up beside her.

His hand came down on her shoulder like a spotter’s in the door. “Take a break.”

“Some of these need rigging, but most of the ones coming up just need patching.”

“I’ve been getting updates. Let’s get some air.”

“Fine.” The bending, hunching, peering left her stiff and knotted up. She wanted that run, she decided, wanted to burn off the tension and hours of standing.

Then she caught a whiff of the ribs smoking on the grills, and decided she wanted those even more.

“Holy God, that smells good. Marg knows exactly the way to get the mind off problems and on the belly.”

“Wait’ll you see the cornbread. I just got off the phone with the police.”

“Did they arrest her? No,” she said before he could speak. “I can tell by your face. Goddamn it, L.B.”

“She claims she was home all night. Her mother’s backing her up.”

“Big surprise.”

“The thing is, they can’t prove she wasn’t. Maybe when they go through everything, they’ll find some evidence. You know, fingerprints or something.”

He thumbed out a Life Savers to go with the one already in his mouth, and made her realize the stress had him jonesing for a Marlboro.

“But right now,” he continued with cherry-scented breath, “she’s denying it. They talked to the neighbors, too. Nobody can say for sure if she was home or wasn’t. And since none of us saw her, they can’t charge her with anything.”

L.B. puffed out his cheeks. “Quinniock wanted us to know she’s making noises about suing us for slander.”

“Give me a break.”

“Right there with you, Ro. She won’t, but he thought we should know she got up a pretty good head of steam when he questioned her.”

“The best defense is offense.”

“That could be it, sure.” He looked out over the grill and she imagined the dozens of things on his mind, the load of weight on his shoulders.

“Hell, all that’s for cops and lawyers anyway.”

“Yeah. The main thing is if we get called out, we’re okay. We can send out twenty at this point.”

“Twenty?”

“Some of the mechanics pitched in to help out the ready room team. They’ve been working like dogs. We’ve got gear and supplies for twenty squared away. I’ve already requisitioned replacements for what’s damaged or ruined. This isn’t going to slow us down. You’re back on the jump list.”

“I guess it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“Well, it looked pretty damn bad.” She watched him, very deliberately, roll off some of that weight. “We’re smoke jumpers, Swede. We can saw a line from here to Canada. We can sure as hell handle this.”

“I want her to pay.”

“I know, and by God, so do I. If they find anything to link her to that ready room, I want them to toss her in a cell. I felt sorry for her,” he said in disgust. “I gave her a second chance, then a third one when I fired her instead of calling the cops. So believe me, nobody wants her to pay more than I do.”

The phone in her pocket jingled.

“Go ahead and take it. I’m going to pass the word on lunch.” He headed back, turned around briefly to walk backward. “Keep clear of the stampede,” he warned.

Laughing, she pulled out her phone. Seeing her father’s ID reminded her of the messages she’d left him.

“Well, it’s about time.”

“Honey, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you. I got in late, and didn’t want to chance waking you up. I’ve been busy all morning.”

“Here, too.” She told him about the ready room, the police, about Dolly.

“For God’s sake, Ro, what’s wrong with that girl? Do you want more help? I can reschedule some things, or at least send over a couple men.”

“I think we’ve got it, but I’ll ask L.B.”

“Quinniock, you said. I know him a little. I met him when I did one of those charity grip and grins last year. He came out with his kids. We gave them a tour.”

“That’s where I saw him. He’s been through here, too. So . . . how was your meeting last night?”

“It was good. I’m going to work on this project for some of the high-school kids. And Ella—the client—she’s signing up for AFF training.”

“All that? That was some drink.”

“Ha. Well. Ah, you’ll probably meet her. She wants to connect up with the base, too. For this project. I’ve got a group coming in, but you tell L.B. to let me know if he wants extra hands. I can put in some time.”

“I will, but I think we’re good. You could come over after you close up. You can always put in some time with me.”

“I’ve got a dinner meeting with the accountant on the slate tonight. How about we plan on it tomorrow? I’ll come by after work.”

“Works for me. See you tomorrow.”

She clicked off, then started over to join the horde spilling out of manufacturing in a beeline for the tables.

Her mood improved. Progress, a full stomach, an upcoming date with her best guy. After which, she promised herself, she’d turn in early and bank some sleep.

It lifted her a little more to hear Matt laugh at something Libby said, to watch Cards dazzle one of the rookies with some sleight of hand, to listen to Trigger and Janis bitterly debate baseball.

As irritating as it was, Gull had been right. The Dolly crap? Just a bump.

She nudged him as they started back to their respective work areas. “Four o’clock, on the track.”

“I’ll be there.”

Asking for trouble, she thought, and admitted she liked it. So maybe she’d bend her rule just a little—or a whole lot—for him. Maybe think about it awhile, and stretch out the heat, that sizzle of tension. Or just jump in, go full blast, burn it up, burn it out.

They were both grown-ups. They both knew the score. When the fire between them lay down, they could just step away again. No scars, no worries.

If she opted for the jump, that’s just how she’d approach it. Two healthy, single adults who liked each other enjoying some good, tension-snapping sex.

“That’s a big, smug smile you’re wearing,” Janis said as she joined Rowan at the table.

“I’m deciding if I’m going to have sex with Gull sooner or later.”

“That would put a big, smug smile on my face. He’s just sooo purty—” She gave a shoulder wiggle that sent her ponytail, circled with bluebirds, dancing. “In a manly way. But what happened to the rule?”

“I’m thinking I’ll temporarily rescind it. But do I wait, keep getting off, so to speak, on the sexual tension, innuendo, byplay and pursuit? Or do I dive headlong into the hot, steamy, sexy goodness?”

“Both are excellent uses of time. However, I’ve found, occasionally, that building anticipation can also overbuild expectation. Then nobody can fully meet the overbuild.”

“That’s a problem, and another factor to consider. The thing is, I don’t think I’d be considering it, at least not yet, if this hadn’t happened. The Dolly Crapathon. It’s thrown me off, Janis.”

“If you let that tiny-brained, coldhearted, self-pitying skank throw you off, you’re letting her win. If you let her win, you’re going to piss me off. If you piss me off, I’m going to beat the snot out of you.”

Rowan went pfftt. “You know you can’t take me.”

“That has not yet been put to the test. I got my fourth-degree black belt this winter. When I make martial arts noises, thousands flee in terror. Don’t test me.”

“Can you hear that? It’s my knees knocking.”

“They’re wise to fear me. Go, have sex for fun and orgasms, and forget about the Dolly Crapathon.”

“You are wise as well as short.”

“I can also break bricks with my bare hands.” And examined her manicure.

“That’s a handy skill if you ever find yourself walled up in the basement of an abandoned house by a psychopath.”

“I keep it in my pocket for just that eventuality.” She glanced over as Trigger walked between tables on his hands. “A sure sign we’re going stir-crazy. Plenty to do, but we’re doing it grounded.”

“The way we’re going, especially with Super-Sewer Dobie, we’re going to be in better shape on gear and equipment than before The Nightmare on Dolly Street.”

“I hope the cops put the fear of God into her.” Janis lowered her voice. “Matt gave her five thousand.”

“What?”

“For the baby. I heard her crying to Matt after L.B. gave her the boot. How was she going to pay off the hospital bills now, and the pediatrician? He said he could spare five thousand to help her clear up the bills, tide her over until she got work. I guess I get it. His brother’s kid and all. But she’s going to keep tapping him, you know she is.”

“Why work when you can sob-story your dead lover’s brother into passing you cash? If he wants to help out with the baby, he should give money to Dolly’s mother, or pay some of those bills directly.”

“Are you going to tell him that?”

“I just might.” Rowan gathered up the chute to take to repair. “I damn well might.”

She considered offering unsolicited advice and opinion—which everybody hated—or just staying out of it. By the time she took a break for her run, she’d all but exhausted ideas for a third choice. Maybe the PT would help her think of one.

She changed into her running gear, grabbed a bottle of water. Gull joined her as she walked out of the barracks.

“Right on time,” he commented.

“If I’d had to spend another hour indoors, I’d’ve hurt someone. What’ve you got in you today?”

“We’ll have to find out. I’ll tell you this, the ready room looks like Martha Stewart stocked and organized it. And I’m well past done with anything approaching domestic work, but I am looking to get some more rigger training.”

“So you’ve been studying there, too?”

“Knowing how something works isn’t the same as making it work. You’re a certified Master Rigger. You could tutor me.”

“Maybe.” She already knew him for a quick study. “Are you looking to work toward your Senior Rigger certification, or to spend more time with me?”

“I’d call it multitasking.”

They stopped on the side of the track where Rowan shed her warm-up jacket, laid her water bottle on it. “Distance or time?”

“How about a race?”

“Easy for you to say, Fast Feet.”

“I’ll give you a head start. Quarter mile of three.”

“A quarter mile?” She did a little toe-heel to loosen her ankles. “You think you can beat me with that much of a spread?”

“If I don’t, I’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the view.”

“Okay, sport, if you want my ass in your sights, you’ve got it.”

She took the inside lane, cued her stopwatch, then took off.

Damn nice view, Gull thought as he strolled onto the track, plugged in his earbuds. He took a moment to loosen up, shaking out his arms, lifting his knees. When she hit the quarter mile, he ran.

And God, it felt good to move, to breathe, to have music banging in his head. Warm, dry air streamed over him, the sun splashed on the track, and he had Rowan’s curvy body racing ahead of him.

It didn’t get much better.

He built up his pace gradually so by the first mile had cut her lead in half. She’d changed into shorts that clung to her thighs, and a tank that molded her torso. As he closed more distance he let himself enjoy the sexy cut of her calf muscles, the way the sun played on those strong shoulders.

He wanted his hands on both.

Totally in lust with that body, he admitted. Completely fascinated with her mind. The combo left him unable to think of anyone else, and uninterested.

At two miles he advanced to a handful of paces behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder, shook her head and dug for more speed.

Still, at two and a half, he ran with her, shoulder to shoulder. He considered easing off—a sop to her labored breathing—but his competitive spirit kicked in. He hit mile three a dozen strides ahead.

“Jesus, Jesus!” Rowan bent over to catch her wind. “I ought to be pissed off. That was humiliating.”

“I thought about letting you win, but I respect you too much to patronize.”

She wheezed out a laugh. “Gee, thanks.”

“You bet.”

“Still.” She examined the stopwatch she’d clicked at the finish. “That was a personal best for me. Apparently you push me to excel.”

Her face glowed with exertion and sweat; her eyes held his, cool and clear.

He hadn’t run far enough, Gull realized. He hadn’t nearly run off the need. He hooked his fingers in the bodice of the tank, jerked her to him.

“Hold on. I haven’t got my breath back.”

“Exactly.”

He wanted her breathless, he thought as he took her mouth. Hot and breathless and as needy as he. She tasted like a melted lemon drop, tart and warm. The heat from the run, and from that dominating lust, pulsed off both of them while her heart galloped against his.

For the first time she trembled, just a little. He didn’t know whether it came from the run or the kiss. He didn’t care.

From somewhere nearby, someone let out a hoot and whistle of approval. And for the first time, like a lemon drop in the sun, she began to melt.

The siren sounded.

They tore themselves apart, their breath quick and jerky as they looked toward the barracks.

“To be continued,” Gull told her.

12

In the air the next afternoon, with a golf pro harnessed to him, Lucas watched the base scramble below. He and his daughter wouldn’t eat dinner together tonight after all.

The disappointment ran keen, reminding him how many times he’d had to cancel plans with her during his seasons. He wished her safe; he wished her strong.

“This is the best time of my life!” his client shouted.

You’re young yet, Lucas thought. Best times come and go. If you’re lucky enough, they keep coming.

Once they’d landed, once the routine of photographs, replays, thanks wound down, he read the text on his phone.

Sorry about dinner. Caught one. See you later.

“See you later,” he murmured.

Lucas called base to get a summary of the fire.

The one the day before had only required a four-man crew, and they’d been in and out inside ten hours.

This one looked trickier.

Camper fire, off Lee Ridge, load of sixteen jumping it. And his girl was in that load.

Though he could bring the area into his head, he consulted his wall map. Ponderosa and lodgepole pines, he mused, Douglas fir. Might be able to use Lee Creek as a water source or, depending on the situation, one of the pretty little streams.

He studied the map, considered jump sites, and the tricky business of jumping into those thick and quiet forests.

She’d be fine, he assured himself. He’d do some paperwork, then grab some dinner. Then settle in to wait.

He stared at his computer screen for five full minutes before accepting defeat. Too much on his mind, he admitted.

He considered going over to the base, using the gym, maybe scoring a meal from Marg. But it felt too much like what it was. Hovering.

It had been nice to eat in a restaurant the other night, he remembered. Drink a little wine, have some conversation over a hot meal. He’d gotten too used to the grab-and-go when Rowan wasn’t around. Not that either of them excelled at cooking, but they managed to get by.

Alone, he tended to hit the little cafe attached to his gift shop, if he remembered before business closed for the day. Or slap a sandwich together unless he wandered down to base. He could mic a packaged meal, he always stocked plenty at home. But he’d never gotten used to sitting down to one without the company of teammates.

There had been times, he knew, when he’d been jumping that he’d felt intensely lonely. Yet he’d come to know he hadn’t fully understood loneliness until the nights spun out in front of him in an empty house.

He pulled out his phone. If he let himself think about it, he’d never go through with it. So he called Ella before he had a clear idea what to say, or how to say it.

“Hello?”

Her voice sounded so cheerful, so breezy. He nearly panicked.

Iron Man, my ass, he thought.

“Ah, Ella, it’s Lucas.”

“Hello, Lucas.”

“Yeah, hello.”

“How are you?” she asked after ten seconds of silence.

“Good. I’m good. I had a really good time the other night.” Jesus Christ, Lucas.

“So did I. I’ve had a lovely time thinking about it, and you, since.”

“You did?”

“I did. Now that you’ve called, I’m hoping you’re going to ask to do it again.”

He felt the pleasure rise up from his toes and end in a big, stupid grin. This wasn’t so hard. “I’d like to have dinner with you again.”

“I’d like that, too. When?”

“Actually, I—Tonight? I know it’s short notice, but—”

“Let’s call it spontaneous. I like spontaneity.”

“That’s good. That’s great. I could pick you up at seven.”

“You could. Or we can both be spontaneous. Come to dinner, Lucas, I’m in the mood to cook. Do you like pasta?”

“Sure, but I don’t want to put you out.”

“Nothing fancy. It’s supposed to be a pretty evening; we could eat out on the deck. I’ve been working on my garden, and you’d give me a chance to show it off.”

“That sounds nice.” A home-cooked meal, an evening on a deck by a garden—two dinners within three days with a pretty woman? It sounded flat-out amazing.

“Do you need directions?”

“I’ll find you.”

“Then I’ll see you around seven. Bye, Lucas.”

“Bye.”

He had a date, he thought, just a little stunned. An official one.

God, he hoped he didn’t screw it up.

HE THOUGHT ABOUT ROWAN while he drove home to change for dinner. She’d be in the thick of it now, in the smoke and heat, taking action, making decisions. Every cell in her body and mind focused on killing the fire and staying alive.

He thought of her when he walked in the house, only minutes from the base. A good-sized place, he reflected. But when Rowan was home, she needed her space, and his parents came home several times a year and needed theirs.

Still, during the long stretches without them, the empty seemed to grow.

He kept it neat. All the years of needing to grab whatever he needed the minute he needed it carried over to his private life. And he kept it simple.

His mother liked to fuss, enjoyed having things around the place, which he packed up whenever she wasn’t in residence and stored away until the next time she was.

Less to dust.

He did the same with the colorful pillows she liked to toss all over the sofa, the chairs. It saved him from shoving them on the floor every time he wanted to stretch out.

In his room a plain brown spread covered his bed, a straight-backed tan chair stood in the corner. Dark wood blinds covered the windows. Even Rowan despaired at the lack of color or style, but he found it easy to keep clean.

Shirts hung tidily in his closet, sectioned off from pants by a set of open shelves he’d built himself for shoes.

Nothing fancy, Ella had said, but what did that mean? Exactly?

When panic tried to tickle his throat, he grabbed his basics. Khaki trousers and a blue shirt. After he’d dressed, he checked in for another fire report.

Nothing to do but wait, he thought, and for a few hours, this time, he wouldn’t wait alone.

Because Ella had mentioned her garden, he stopped on the way and bought flowers. Flowers were never wrong, that much he knew.

He plugged her address into the GPS in his truck as backup. He knew the area, the street.

He wondered what they’d talk about. He wondered if he should’ve bought wine. He hadn’t thought of wine. Would wine and flowers be too much?

It was too late to buy wine anyway, plus how would he know what kind?

He pulled into the drive, parked in front of the garage of a pretty, multilevel house in a bold orange stucco he thought suited her. A lot of windows to take in the mountains, flowers in the yard, with more in an explosion of color and shape spiking and tumbling in big native pots on the stones of the covered front entrance.

Now he wondered if the yellow roses he’d bought were overkill. “Flowers are never wrong,” he mumbled to himself as he stepped out of the truck on legs gone just a little bit weak.

He probably should’ve gotten a burger and fries from the cafe, hunkered down in his office. He didn’t know how to do this. He was too old to be doing this. Women had never made any sense to him, so how could he make sense to a woman?

He felt stupid and clumsy and tongue-tied, but since retreat wasn’t an option, rang the bell.

She answered, her hair swept back and up, her face warm and welcoming.

“You found me. Oh, these are beautiful.” She took the roses, and as a woman would, buried her face in the buds. “Thank you.”

“They reminded me of your voice.”

“My voice?”

“They’re pretty and cheerful.”

“That’s a lovely thing to say. Come in,” she said, and, taking his hand, drew him inside.

Color filled the house, and the things his mother would have approved of. Bright and bold, soft and textured, a mix of patterns played throughout the living area where candles filled a river stone fireplace.

“It’s a great house.”

“I love it a lot.” She scanned the living area with him with an expression of quiet satisfaction. “It’s the first one I’ve ever bought, furnished and decorated on my own. It’s probably too big, but the kids are here a lot, so I like having plenty of room. Let’s go on back so I can put these in water.”

It was big, he noted, and all open so one space sort of spilled casually into the next. He didn’t know much—or anything, really—about decorating, but it felt like it looked. Bright, happy, relaxed.

Then the kitchen made his eyes pop. It flowed into a dining area on one side and a big gathering space—another sofa, chairs, big flat-screen—on the other. But the hub was like a magazine shot with granite counters, a central island, shiny steel appliances, dark wood cabinets, many of them glass-fronted to display glass and dishware. A few complicated small appliances, in that same shiny steel, stood on the counters.

“This is a serious kitchen.”

“That and the view sold me on the place. I wanted it the minute I saw it.” She chose a bottle of red from a glass rack, set it and a corkscrew on the counter. “Why don’t you open this while I get a vase?”

She opened a door, scanned shelves and selected a tall, cobalt vase. He opened the wine while she trimmed the stems under running water in the central island’s sink.

“I’m glad you called. This is a much nicer way to spend the evening than working on my doctorate.”

“You’re working on your doctorate?”

“Nearly there.” She held up one hand, fingers crossed. “I put it off way too long, so I’m making up time. Red-wine glasses,” she told him, “second shelf in the cupboard to the right of the sink. Mmm, I love the way these roses look against the blue. How did work go today?”

“Fine. We had a big group down from Canada, another in from Arizona, along with some students. Crowded day. Yesterday even more. I barely had time to get over to the base and check after they had the trouble.”

“Trouble?” She looked up from her arranging.

“I guess you wouldn’t have heard. Somebody got into the ready room over there yesterday—or sometime during the night—tore the place up.”

“Who’d do such a stupid thing?”

“Well, odds are it was Dolly Brakeman. She’s a local girl who had a . . . a relationship with the jumper who was killed last summer. She had his baby back in the spring.”

“Oh, God, I know her mother. We’re friends. Irene works at the school. She’s one of our cooks.”

He’d known that, Lucas realized, known Irene worked in the school’s kitchen. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything about Dolly.”

“Irene’s one thing, Dolly’s another—and believe me, I know that very well.” Ella stabbed a trimmed stem into the vase. “That girl’s put Irene through hell. In any case, what happened to the father of Dolly’s baby—that’s tragic for her, but why would she want to vandalize the base?”

“You know Dolly used to be a cook there, and they hired her back on?”

“I knew she’d worked there. I haven’t talked to Irene since I went by to take a baby gift. I knew she and Leo went out to . . . Bozeman, I think it was—to bring her and the baby home—so I’ve been hanging back a little, giving them all time to settle in. I didn’t realize Dolly had gone back to work at the base.”

“They gave her a chance. You know? She went off after Jim’s accident. Before she did, she went after Rowan.”

“Your daughter? Irene never mentioned . . . Well, there’s a lot she doesn’t mention about Dolly. Why?”

“Ro was Jim’s partner on that jump. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how Dolly reacted. And she hadn’t been back at base but a handful of days when Ro walked in on her splashing pig’s blood all over Ro’s room.”

“For God’s sake.”

When she planted fisted hands on her hips, Lucas dubbed it her hardline principal look.

He liked it.

“I haven’t heard anything about this.” Those deep green eyes flashed as she poured wine. “I’ll have to call Irene tomorrow, see if she needs . . . anything. I know Dolly’s troublesome, to put it mildly, but Irene really believed the baby, getting Dolly to go to church, taking her back in the house, would settle her down. Obviously not.”

Full of sympathy now, and a touch of worry, her eyes met his. “How’s your daughter dealing with it?”

“Ro? She deals. They’ve been working on repairs and manufacturing since, and must’ve gotten enough done to take some calls. A four-man jump yesterday, basically an in-and-out.”

“That’s good. Maybe they’ll have time to catch their breath.”

“Not much chance of that. The siren went off about four-thirty today.”

“Rowan’s out on a fire? Now? I didn’t hear about that, either. I haven’t had the news on all day. Lucas, you must be worried.”

“No more than usual. It’s part of the deal.”

“Now I’m even more glad you called.”

“And got you upset and worried about Irene.”

“I’m glad I know what’s going on with her. I can’t help if I don’t know.” She reached out, laid a hand over his. “Why don’t you take your wine and the bottle out on the deck? I’ll be right out.”

He went out wide glass doors to the deck that offered views of the mountains, the endless sky—and her yard that struck him—again—like something out of a magazine.

A squared-off area covered by the colorful, springy mulch he’d seen in playgrounds held a play area for her grandkids. Swings, ladders, bars, seesaws, even a little playhouse with a pint-sized umbrella table and chairs.

He found it as cheerful as the house—and it told him she’d made a home here not just for herself, but for her family to enjoy.

And still, her flowers stole the show.

He recognized roses—he knew that much—but the rest, to his eyes, created fairyland rivers and pools of color and shape all linked together with narrow stone paths. Little nooks afforded space for benches, an arbor covered with a trailing vine, a small, bubbling copper fountain.

While he watched, a Western meadowlark darted to the wide bowl of a bird feeder to help himself to dinner.

Lucas turned when she came out with a tray.

“Ella, this is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it outside the movies.”

Her dimples winked in cheeks pinked up with pleasure. “My pride and joy, and maybe just a little bit of an obsession. The people who owned the house before were keen gardeners, so I had a wonderful foundation. With some changes, some additions and a whole lot of work, I’ve made it my own.”

She set the tray on a table between two bright blue deck chairs.

“I thought you said no fuss.” He looked at the fancy appetizers arranged on the tray.

“I’ll have to confess my secret vice. I love to fuss.” She picked up her wine. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“My mother didn’t raise a fool.”

She sat, angling toward him while her wind chimes picked up the tune of the summer breeze. The meadowlark sang for his supper.

“I love sitting out here, especially this time of day, or early in the morning.”

“Your grandkids must love playing out here.”

They drank wine, ate her fancy appetizers, talked of her grandchildren, which boosted him to relate anecdotes from Rowan’s childhood.

He wondered why he’d had those moments of panic. Being with her was so comfortable once he got off the starting blocks. And every time she smiled something stirred inside him. After a while it—almost—didn’t seem strange to find himself enjoying a pretty summer evening, drinking soft wine, admiring the view while talking easily with a beautiful woman.

It—almost—blocked out memories of how he’d spent so many other summer evenings. How his daughter was spending hers now.

“You’re thinking of her. Your Ro.”

“I guess it stays in the back of my mind. She’s good, and she’s with a solid unit. They’ll get the job done.”

“What would she be doing now?”

“Oh, it depends.” So many things, he thought, and all of them hard, dangerous, necessary. “She might be on a saw line. They’d plot out a position, factor in how the fire’s reacting, the wind and so on, and take down trees, cut out brush.”

“Because those are fuel.”

“Yeah. They’ve got a couple water sources, so she might be on the hose. I know they dropped mud on her earlier.”

“Why would they drop mud on Rowan?”

His laugh broke out, long, delighted. “Sorry. I meant the fire. Mud’s what we call the retardant the tanker drops. Believe me, no smoke jumper wants to be under that.”

“And you call the fire her because men always refer to dangerous or annoying things they have to deal with as female.”

“Ah . . .”

“I’m teasing you. More or less. Come inside while I start dinner. You can keep me company and tell me about mud.”

“You don’t want to hear about mud.”

“You’re wrong,” she told him as they gathered up the tray, the glasses, the wine. “I’m interested.”

“It’s thick pink goo, and burns if it hits your skin.”

“Why pink? It’s kind of girlie.”

He grinned as she got out a skillet. “They add ferric oxide to make it red, but it looks like pink rain when it’s coming down. The color marks the drop area.”

She drizzled oil into the skillet from a spouted container, diced up garlic, some plump oval-shaped tomatoes, all the while asking him questions, making comments.

She certainly seemed interested, he thought, but he was having a hard time concentrating. The way she moved, the way her hands looked when she chopped and diced, the way she smiled and smelled, the way his name sounded when it came from her lips.

Her lips.

He didn’t mean to do it. That’s what happened when he acted before he thought. But he was a little in her way when she turned away from the work island, and their bodies bumped and brushed. She tipped her face up, smiled, maybe she started to speak, but then . . .

A question in her eyes, or an invitation? He didn’t know, didn’t think. Just acted. His hands slid onto her shoulders, and he laid his lips over hers.

So soft. So sweet. Yielding under his even as her hands ran up his back, linked there to hold them together. She rose onto her toes, and the sensation of her body sliding up his simmered heat under the soft.

He wanted to burrow into her as he would a blanket at the end of a cold winter’s night.

He gave up her lips, rested his forehead to hers.

“It’s your smile,” he murmured. “It makes it hard for me to think straight.”

She framed his face, lifted his head until she could look in his eyes. Sweet man, she thought. Sweet, sweet man.

“I think dinner can wait.” She eased away, turned the heat off under the oil, then leaned back to look at him again. “Do you want to go upstairs with me, Lucas?”

“I—”

“We’re not kids. We’ve both got more years behind us than ahead. When we have a chance for something good, we ought to take it. So . . .” She held out a hand. “Come upstairs with me.”

He took her hand, let out a shaky breath as she led him through the house. “You don’t just feel sorry for me, do you?”

“Why would I?”

“Because I so obviously want . . . this.”

“Lucas, if you didn’t, I’d feel sorry for me.” Humor sparkled over her face when she tipped it up to his. “I’ve wondered since you called if we’d take each other to bed tonight, then I had to do thirty minutes of yoga to stop being nervous.”

“Nervous? You?”

“I’m not a kid,” she reminded him as she drew him into her bedroom, where the light through the windows glowed soft. “Men your age often look at thirty-somethings, not fifty-somethings. That’s twenty years of gravity against me.”

“What would I want with someone young enough to be my kid?”

When she laughed at that, he grinned. “Hell. It’d just make me feel old. I’m already worried I’ll mess this up. I’m out of practice, Ella.”

“I’m pretty rusty myself. I guess we’ll see if we tune up as we go. You could start by kissing me again. We both seemed to have that part down.”

He reached for her, and this time her arms went around his neck. He felt her rise up to her toes again as their lips met, as they parted for the slow, seductive slide of tongues.

He let himself stop thinking, stop worrying what if. Just act. His hands stroked down her back, over her hips, up her sides, then up again to pull the pins out of her hair.

It tumbled over his hands, slid through his fingers while she tipped back her head so his lips could find the line of her throat.

Nerves floated away on an indescribable mix of comfort and excitement. She shivered when he eased back to unbutton her shirt. As he did when she did the same for him.

She slipped out of her sandals; he toed off his shoes.

“So far . . .”

“So good,” he finished, and kissed her again.

And, oh, yes, she thought, he definitely had that part down.

She pushed his shirt aside, splayed her hands over his chest. Hard and fit from a lifetime of training, scarred from a lifetime of duty. She laid her lips on it as he drew her shirt off to join his on the floor. When he took her breasts in his hands, she forgot about gravity. How could she worry when he looked at her as though she were beautiful? When he kissed her with such quiet, such total intensity?

She unhooked his belt, thrilled to touch and be touched, to remember all the things a body felt when it desired, and was desired. The pants it had taken her twenty minutes to decide on after he’d called slid to the floor. Then her heart simply soared as he lifted her into his arms.

“Lucas.” Overcome, she dropped her head to his shoulder. “My whole life I’ve wanted someone to do that. To just sweep me up. You’re the first who has.”

He looked into her dazzled eyes, and felt like a king as he carried her to bed.

In the half-light, they touched and tasted. They remembered, and discovered. Rounded curves, hard angles, with all the points of pleasure to be savored.

When he filled her, she breathed his name—the sweetest music. Moving inside her, each long, slow stroke struck his heart, hammer to anvil. She met him, matched him, her fingers digging into his hips to urge him on.

The king became a stallion, rearing over his mate.

When she cried out, fisting around him in climax, his blood beat in triumph. And letting himself go, he rode that triumph over the edge.

“Well, God,” she said after several moments where they both lay in stunned, sated silence. “I have all these applicable clichés, like it is just like riding a bike, or it just gets better with age like wine and cheese. But it’s probably enough to simply say: Wow.”

He drew her over where she obligingly curled at his side, her head on his shoulder. “Wow covers it. Everything about you is wow to me.”

“Lucas.” She turned her face into the side of his throat. “I swear, you make my heart skip. Nobody’s ever said those kind of things to me.”

“Then a lot of men are just stupid.” He twirled her hair around his finger, delighted he could. “I’d write a poem to your hair, if I knew how to write one.”

She laughed and had to blink back tears at the same time. “You are the sweetest, sweetest man.” She pushed up to kiss him. “I’m going to make you the best pasta you’ve ever eaten.”

“You don’t have to go to all that trouble. We could just make sandwiches or something.”

“Pasta,” she said, “with fresh Roma tomatoes and basil out of my garden. You’re going to need the fuel, for later.”

As her eyes twinkled into his, he patted her bare butt. “In that case, we’d better get down there and start cooking.”

13

As her father slept the sleep of the righteously exhausted in Ella’s bed, Rowan headed into her eighth hour of the battle. They’d had the fire cornered, and nearly under control, when a chain of spot fires ignited over the line from a rocket shower of firebrands. In a heartbeat, the crew found itself caught between the main fire and the fresh, spreading spots.

Like hail from hell, embers ripped through the haze, battering helmets, searing exposed skin. With a bellowing roar, a ponderosa torched, whipping flame through clouds of eye-stinging smoke. Catapulted by the wind the fire created, burning coal flew over the disintegrating line, turning near victory into a new, desperate battle.

On the shouted orders, Rowan broke away with half the crew, hauling gear at a run toward the new active blaze.

“Escape route’s back down the ridge,” she called out, knowing they’d be trapped if the shifting flank fed into the head. “If we have to go, drop the gear and run like hell.”

“We’re going to catch her. We’re going to kill her,” Cards yelled back, his face fervent with dragon fever.

They knocked down spots as they went, beating, digging, sawing.

“There’s a stream about fifty yards over,” Gull said, jogging beside her.

“I know it.” But she was surprised he did. “We’ll get the pump in, get the hoses going and build a wet line. We’ll drown the sister.”

“Nearly had her back there.”

“Gibbons and the rest will knock the head down.” She looked at him, his face glowing in the reflection of the fire while hoarse shouts and wild laughter tangled with the animal growl of the fire.

Dragon fever, she knew, could spread like a virus—for good or ill. It pumped in her own blood now, because make or break was coming.

“If they don’t, Fast Feet, grab what gear you can, haul it as far as you can. The way you run, you ought to be able to outrace the dragon.”

“You got it.”

They worked with demonic speed, dumping gear to set up the pump, run the hose, while others cut a quick saw line.

“Let her rip!” Rowan shouted, planting her feet, bracing her body as she gripped the hose. When it filled, punched out its powerful stream, she let out a crazed whoop.

Her arms, already taxed with the effort of hours of hard, physical work, vibrated. But her lips peeled back in a fierce grin. “Drink this!”

She glanced back over at Gull, laughed like a loon. “Just another lazy, hazy summer night. Look.” She jerked her chin. “She’s going down. The head’s dying. That’s a beautiful sight.”

AN HOUR shy of dawn, the wildfire surrendered. Rather than pack out, the weary crew coyote’d by the stream, heads pillowed on packs to catch a couple hours’ sleep before the mop-up. Rowan didn’t object when Gull plopped down beside her, especially when he offered her a swig of his beer.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I have my ways.”

She drank deep, then lay back to watch the stars break through the thinning haze of smoke.

This, she thought, was the best—the timeless moment between night and day—the hush of forest, mountain and sky. No one who hadn’t fought the war could ever feel such intense satisfaction in winning it.

“A good night’s work should always be followed by beer and starlight,” she decided.

“Now who’s the romantic?”

“That’s just because I’m dazed by the smoke, like a honeybee.”

“I dated a beekeeper once.”

“Seriously?”

“Katherine Anne Westfield.” He gave a little sigh of remembrance. “Long-legged brunette with eyes like melted chocolate. I had the hots enough to help her out with the hives for a while. But it didn’t work out.”

“You got stung.”

“Ha. The thing was, she insisted on being called Katherine Anne. Not Katherine, not Kathy or Kate or Kat, not K.A. It had to be the full shot. Got to be too much trouble.”

“You broke up with a woman because her name had too many syllables?”

“You could say. Plus, I have to admit, the bees started to creep me out, too.”

“I like to listen to them. Sleepy sound. Cassiopeia’s out,” she said as the constellation cleared. Then her eyes closed, and she went out.

SHE WOKE curled up against him with her head nested on his shoulder. She didn’t snuggle, Rowan thought. She liked her space—and she sure as hell didn’t snuggle while coyote camping with the crew.

It was just embarrassing.

She started to untangle herself, but his arm tucked her in, just a little closer.

“Give it a minute.”

“We’ve got to get started.”

“Yeah, yeah. Where’s my coffee, woman?”

“Very funny.” Actually, it did make her lips twitch. “Back off.”

“You’ll note I’m the one still in his assigned space, and you’re the one who scooted over and wrapped around me. But am I complaining?”

“I guess I got cold.”

He turned his head to kiss the top of hers. “You feel plenty warm to me.”

“You know, Gull, this isn’t some romantic camping trip in the mountains. We’ve got a full day’s mop-up ahead of us.”

“Which I’m happy to put off for another couple minutes while I fantasize we’re about to have wake-up sex on our romantic camping trip in the mountains. After which you’ll make me coffee and fry me up some bacon and eggs, while wearing Daisy Duke shorts and one of those really skinny tank jobs. After that I have to wrestle the bear that lumbers into camp. Naturally, I dispatch him after a brutal battle. And after that you tenderly nurse my wounds, and after that, we have more sex.”

She didn’t snuggle, Rowan thought, and charm cut no ice with her. So why was she snuggling, and why was she charmed? “That’s an active fantasy life you’ve got there.”

“Don’t leave home without it.”

“What kind of bear?”

“It has to be a grizzly or what’s the point?”

“And I suppose I’m wearing stilettos with my Daisy Dukes.”

“Again, what would be the point otherwise?”

“Well, all that sex and cooking and tending your wounds made me hungry.” She pushed away, sat up. “Twenty minutes in a hot, bubbling Jacuzzi, followed by a hot stone massage. That’s my morning fantasy.”

Rowan dug into her pack for an energy bar. Devoured it while she studied him. He’d scrubbed some of the dirt off his face, but there was plenty left, and his hair looked like he’d used it to mop the basement floor.

Then she looked away, to the mountains, the forest, shimmering away under the bright yellow sun. Who needed fantasies, she thought, when you could wake up here?

“Get moving, rook.” She gave him a light slap on the leg. “The morning’s wasting.”

Gull helped break out some of the paracargo so he could get to a breakfast MRE—and more importantly, the coffee. He dropped down next to Dobie.

“How’d it go for you?”

“Son, it was the hardest day of my young life.” Dobie drenched his hash browns and bacon with Tabasco before shoveling them in as if they were about to be banned. “And maybe the best. You think you know,” he added, wagging the bacon, “but you don’t. You can’t know till you do.”

“She gave you a few kisses.”

Dobie reached up to rub the burns on the back of his neck. “Yeah, she got in a couple licks. I thought when she started raining fire we might be cooked. Just for a minute. But we beat her back down. You ought to see Trigger. Piece of wood blew back off a snag he was taking down. Got him right here.” Dobie tapped a finger to the side of his throat. “When he yanked it out, the hole it left looked like he’d been stabbed with a jackknife.”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“It happened after your team hightailed it toward the spot on the ridge. Blood all over. So he slaps some cotton on it, tapes it up and hits the next snag. It made me think, if I got cooked, I’d be cooked with the best there is.”

“And now we get to sit here and eat breakfast with this view.”

“Can’t knock it with a hammer,” Dobie said, and grabbed another MRE. “What’re you going to do about that woman?”

He didn’t have to ask what woman, and glanced over in Rowan’s direction. “All I can.”

“Better pick up the pace, son.” Dobie shook his ever-present bottle of Tabasco. “Summer don’t last forever.”

GULL THOUGHT about that as he worked, sweating through the morning and into the afternoon. He’d approached her along the lines he might have if they’d met outside—where time was abundant, as were opportunities to go to dinner, or the movies, a long drive, a day at the beach. This world and that didn’t have much crossover when you came down to it.

Maybe it was time to approach her as he did the work. Nothing wrong with champagne picnics, but there were times a situation required a less . . . elegant approach.

By the time they packed out, Gull figured all he wanted in the world was to feel clean again, to enjoy a real mattress under him for eight straight.

Hardly a wonder, he decided as he dropped down in the plane, women, despite their wondrous appeal, hit so low on his priority list most seasons.

He shut off his mind and was asleep before the plane nosed into the sky.

With the rest of the crew, he trudged off, dealt with his gear, hung his chute. He watched Rowan texting as she headed for the barracks. He went in behind her, fully intending to walk straight to his quarters, peel off his fire shirt and pants, get his feet out of the damn boots that currently weighed like lead. Everything in him pulsed with fatigue, tension and an irritation that stemmed from both.

If he was hungry, it wasn’t for a woman, or for Rowan Tripp in particular. If he was tired, it was because if he wasn’t knocked-out exhausted, he spent too much time thinking about her in the middle of the night. So he’d stop. He’d just stop thinking about her.

When she turned into her room, he went in right behind her.

“What do—”

He shut the door—and her mouth—by pushing her back against it. The kiss burned with temper, smoldered with the frustration he’d managed to ignore for the past weeks. Now he let them both go. The hell with it.

He jerked back an inch, his gaze snapping to hers. “I’m tired. I’m pissed off. I don’t know exactly why, but I don’t give a damn.”

“Then why don’t you—”

“Shut up. I have something to say.” He crushed his mouth to hers again, cuffing her wrists in his hands. “This has gotten stupid. I’m stupid, or maybe you’re stupid. I don’t care.”

“What the hell do you care about?” she demanded.

“Apparently you. Maybe it’s because you’re goddamn beautiful, and built, and manage to be smart and fearless at the same time. Maybe it’s just because I’m horny. That could be it. But something’s clicked here; we both know it.”

Since she hadn’t told him to go to hell, or kneed him in the groin—yet—he calculated he had a short window to make his case.

“So it’s time to stop playing around, Rowan. It’s time to toss that asinine rule of yours out the window. Whatever we’ve got going here, we need to hit it head-on. If it’s just a flash, fine, we’ll take it down and move on. No harm, no foul. But I’m damned if I’m going to keep slapping away at the spot fires. You’re in or you’re out. Now how do you want to play it?”

She hadn’t expected temper and force from him, which, considering she’d seen him take on three men with a ferocity she’d admired, made that her mistake. She hadn’t expected anything could stir up her juices after a thirty-six-hour jump, but here he was, looking at her as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss her or strangle her, and those juices were not only stirring, but pumping strong.

“How do I want to play it?”

“That’s right.”

“Let’s drown it.” She fisted her hands in his hair, yanked his mouth back to hers. Then she reversed their positions, shoved him back against the door. “In the shower, rookie.” She made quick work unbuttoning his shirt.

“Funny, that was first on my list before I got pissed off.” He pulled her shirt off as he backed her toward the bathroom. “Then all I could think about was getting my hands on you.” He unhooked her pants.

“Boots,” she managed as they groped each other. She dropped down on the toilet, fingers flying on laces. He dropped to the floor to do the same.

“This shouldn’t be sexy. Maybe I am just horny.”

“Just hurry up!” Laughing, she yanked off her pants, then stood to peel off the tank, the bra beneath.

“Sing hallelujah,” Gull murmured.

“Get naked!” she ordered, then, wiggling out of her panties, flicked on the water in the shower.

Crazy, she thought. A crazy thing to do, but she felt crazy. Another type of dragon fever, she decided, and turned to pull him in with her under the spray.

“We’re very dirty,” she said, linking her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his.

“And about to get dirtier. Let’s turn up the heat.” Reaching behind her, he clicked the hot water up a notch, then gave himself the pleasure of those waiting, willing lips.

Good, so good, she thought, the water on her skin, his hands spreading the wet and hot over her. Why deny what she’d known the first time they’d locked eyes? They’d always been heading here, to this. She ran her hands down his back, over hard planes, tough muscle, instinctively working her fingers over the knots tied tight by hours of brutal effort.

He moaned as she worked her way to his shoulders.

He fixed his teeth at the side of her neck, pressed his own fingers in a line down her spine, then up again until he found points of pain and pleasure at the base of her neck.

“Let me take care of this.” She poured shampoo in her palm, rubbed her hands together lightly as she watched him, then slid her fingers through his hair. While she rubbed, massaged, he filled his hands with her shower gel. The shower filled with the scent of ripe peaches as he glided circles, slow circles, over her breasts, her belly.

Lather foamed and dripped, frothing fragrantly between their bodies as he trailed a hand down, his fingers teasing, just teasing when he cupped her.

Her head fell back, and a low sound of pleasure hummed in her throat. Watching her absorb sensation, he gave her a little more, a little more until her hips, her breath picked up the rhythm.

Not yet, he thought, not yet, and made her groan when he turned her to face the wet wall.

“Gull, Jesus—”

“I need to wash your back. Love your back.” At the small of it, a tattoo of a red dragon breathed gold flame. He ran his lathered hands over her, followed them with his lips. “Your skin’s like milk.”

He indulged himself with the subtle curve of the back of her neck, exposed and vulnerable to his teeth and tongue, and when her arm hooked back to press him closer, he glided his hands around, filled them with her breasts.

So firm, so full.

He spun her around, replaced his hands with his mouth.

Not what she’d expected or prepared for. Never what she expected, she thought as her body quivered. The angry man who’d shoved her against the door should have stormed her. Instead he seduced. She didn’t know if she could bear it.

With steam billowing like smoke, he trailed that mouth down her body, until every muscle trembled, until anticipation and sensation squeezed to a pulsing ache inside her.

Then he used his mouth on her until the hot flood of release swamped her.

When she was weak, in that shivering instant where body and mind surrendered, he plunged inside her.

No seduction now, no slow hands or teasing mouth. He gripped her hips and let himself take, and take, and take. Need raged through him, incited by the harsh sound of wet flesh slapping wet flesh, the pounding beat of the water, the wild thrust of her hips as she gave herself over to what they fueled in each other.

The chains of control shattered; madness broke free.

Through the haze of steam and passion he watched her eyes go blind. Still he drove her, himself, greedy for more until pleasure ripped through him and emptied him out.

She let her head drop on his shoulder until she could get her breath back. Might be a while, she realized, as she was currently panting like an old woman.

“Need a minute.”

She made some sound of agreement to the statement.

“If we try to move now, we’re both going to end up going down and drowning—after we fracture our skulls.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t do that already.”

“Probably. But we’d die clean and satisfied. I’m going to turn off the water. It’s going cold.”

She’d have to take his word for it. Her body still pumped enough heat to melt an ice floe. She managed her first full breath when he brushed his lips over her hair. She simply didn’t know how to react to sweetness—after.

“Got your legs under you?” he asked her.

“Steady as a rock.” Hopefully.

He let her go to reach out and grab towels. “It’s a sacrifice to give you anything to cover up that body with.” Before she could take it, he wrapped it around her, laid a warm, lingering kiss on her lips.

“Problem?” he asked her.

“No. Why?”

He trailed a fingertip between her eyebrows. “You’re frowning.”

“My face is reflecting the mood of my stomach, which is wondering why it’s still empty.” Which was true enough. “I’m starving.” She relaxed again, smiled again. “Between the jump and the shower bonus, I’m out.”

“Right there with you. Let’s go eat.”

She started to move past him to the bedroom, turned. “I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. You’ve got skills.”

“I also work well horizontally.”

Her laugh rolled out as she pulled out a T-shirt and jeans. “I think you’re going to have to prove it.”

“Now or after food?”

She shook her head as she pulled on clothes. “After, definitely. I’m in the mood for . . . Aren’t you getting dressed?”

“I’m not putting that stinking mess back on. I need to borrow your towel.”

She thought of the state of the clothes they’d both dragged off. “Just hang on a minute. I’ll get you some clothes.”

“Really?”

“I know where your quarters are.” She breezed out, strolled into his room.

He kept it tidy, she thought as she pulled open a drawer. Inside spaces, too. She grabbed what she figured he needed, took another quick look around. When she noticed the photograph, she stepped over for a closer study.

Gull, she noted, with what had to be his aunt and uncle, his cousins, all arm in arm in front of big, bright red doors.

Great-looking group, she thought, and the body language spoke of affection and happy. In front of the arcade, which, she realized by what she could see of it, was a lot bigger than she’d envisioned.

She took the clothes back, pushed them into his hands. “Hurry up and get dressed before I start gnawing on my own hand.”

“Hurry up and get undressed, hurry up and get dressed. Orders, orders.” He sent her an exaggerated smoldering look. “Dominant females make me hot.”

“I’ll see if I can find my whip and chain later.”

“Ah, a brand-new fantasy to explore.”

“Don’t forget to call me ‘Mistress.’ ”

“If you promise to be gentle. By the way, I like the tat.”

“Good-luck charm,” she told him. “If I wear the dragon, the dragon doesn’t wear me. How about yours?” She walked around to tap the letters scrolled over his left shoulder blade. “Teine,” she said.

“It’s pronounced ‘teen,’ not ‘The-ine.’ Old Irish for fire. I guess if I wear the fire, it doesn’t wear me.”

“It just gets to try us both on from time to time. How’d you get that one?” she asked, gesturing to the scar along his left ribs.

“Bar fight in New Orleans.”

“No, seriously.”

“Well, it was, technically, outside the bar. I went down for Mardi Gras one year. Have you ever been?”

“No.”

“Not to be missed.” His hair, still damp from the shower, curled at the collar of the shirt he pulled on. “I was in college, went down with some friends. After the revelry, we hit a bar. This asshole went after this girl. Sort of like the asshole who hassled you, but this one was drunker and meaner, and she didn’t have your style.”

“Few do,” she said with a grin.

“No argument. So, when I suggested he cease and desist, he objected. One thing led to another. Apparently he didn’t like the fact I was kicking his ass in front of witnesses, so he pulled a knife.”

The grin changed to openmouthed shock. “Well, sweet baby Jesus, he stabbed you?”

“Not exactly. The knife sort of skimmed along my ribs.” Gull motioned a careless finger over the spot. “He didn’t get much of me, and I had the pleasure of breaking his jaw. The girl was really grateful, so a night well spent.”

He tied his sneakers. “I have a spotted and unruly past.”

“You’re a puzzler.”

“Okay.” He held out a hand. “How about I buy you dinner and a couple of cold beers?”

“I say since meals come with the job, that makes you a cheapskate, but what the hell.”

LATER, AFTER GULL PROVED he did indeed work well horizontally, Rowan gave him a sleepy nudge. “Go home.”

“Nope.” He simply tucked her in against his side.

“Gull, neither of us is what you’d call petite, and this bed isn’t exactly built for two.” Besides, sleeping with a guy was different from sex.

“It worked pretty well so far. We’ll manage. Besides, you saw the jump list. We’re first and second man, first stick. If we get a call, all we have to do is put on the clothes currently strewn all over the floor, and hit it. It’s efficient.”

“So you always sleep with your jump partner for the sake of efficiency.”

“I’m trying it out with you first. Who knows, if it saves enough time, it might become regulation. If we’re clear, do you want to take a run in the morning?”

His hand, trailing lightly up and down her back, felt good—soothing. It was late anyway, she thought, she could make an exception on the sleeping rule this one time. Except she’d already made an exception on the sex, and now . . .

“Are we going to keep doing this?” she wondered.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to give me about twenty minutes.”

“Not tonight. I think we’ve rung the bell on that.”

“Oh, you mean as a continuing series.” He gave her ass a light, friendly pat. “Definitely.”

“If we continue the series, there’s a rule.”

“Of course there is.”

“If I sleep with a guy, I don’t sleep with other guys, or sleep with that guy if he’s banging anyone else. If either of us decide someone else looks good, that’s fine. Series over. That one’s firm. No exceptions.”

“That’s fair. One question. Why would I want anybody else when I get to take showers with you?”

“Because people tend to want what they don’t have.”

“I like what I’ve got.” He gave her an easy squeeze. “Ergo, I’m happy to abide by your rule on this matter.”

“Ergo.” She chuckled, closed her eyes. “You’re something else, Gulliver.”

Right then, tucked up with Rowan in bed, an owl hooting dourly in the night and the moon shafting through the window, Gull figured he was exactly who, and where, he wanted to be.

IT TOOK LESS TIME to burn a body than a forest. An uglier business, but quicker. Still, collateral damage couldn’t be avoided, and probably served as an advantage. She didn’t weigh much, considering, so carrying her up the trail, through the lodgepole pines, wasn’t as hard as it might have been.

The shimmer of moonlight helped light the way—like a sign—and the music of night creatures soothed.

The trail forked, steepened, but the climb wasn’t altogether unpleasant in the cool, pine-scented air.

Better not to think of the unpleasant, of the horror. Better to think of moonlight and cool air and night birds.

In the distance, a coyote called out, high and bright. A wild sound, a hungry sound. Burning her would be humane. Better than leaving her for the animals.

They’d probably come far enough.

The task didn’t take much effort or require too many tools. Just hacking away some dried brush and twigs, soaking them, her clothes. Her.

Don’t think.

Soaking it all with gas from the spare can.

Try not to look at her face, try not to think of what she’d said and done. What had happened. Stick to what had to be done now.

Light the fire. Feel the heat. See the color and shape. Hear the crackle and snap. Then the whoosh of air and flame as that fire began to breathe.

A thing of beauty. Dazzling, dangerous, destructive.

So beautiful and fierce, and personal, when started with your own hands. Never realized, never knew.

It would purge. Erase her. Send her to hell. She belonged there. The animals wouldn’t get her, tear at her as the dogs had torn at Jezebel. But she’d earned hell.

No more harm, no more threat. No more. In the fire, she would cease to be.

Watching it take her brought a horrible thrill, a bright tingle of unexpected excitement. Power tasted. No tears, no regrets—not anymore.

That thrill, and the rising voice of the fire, followed down the trail while smoke began to climb toward the shimmering moon.

14

For the second time Rowan woke curled up to Gull with her head on his shoulder. This time she wondered how the hell he could sleep with her weight pressing on him.

Then she wondered, since she was shoehorned into the narrow bed with him, why the hell she wasn’t taking advantage of it. She bit his earlobe as her hand trailed down his chest. As she’d expected, she found him already primed.

“I’d’ve put money on it,” she murmured.

“I like your hand on it better.”

“Now this . . .” She swung a leg over him, taking him in slowly. Slowly until she sheathed him in the warm and the wet. “This is what I call efficient.”

Thinking there was no finer way to greet the morning, he got a firm grip on her hips. “A plus.”

When she bowed back, the sun slanting light and shadow over her body, casting diamonds through her crown of hair, a snippet of Tennyson flitted through his mind.

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair.

She was that, in that moment, and in that moment took command of his romantic heart.

His grip gentled to a caress. And she began to move, undulating over him in a slow, fluid rhythm. Sensation spooled through him, unwinding a lovely, lazy delight.

Her eyes closed, her hands stroked up her own body, inciting them both.

Through the bars of light, the building beauty, he reached for her. He thought they could drift like this, leisurely awakening body, blood, heart, forever.

The siren screamed.

“Shit!” Her eyes popped open.

“Give me a fucking break.” He held on to her for one frustrating moment, then they broke apart to scramble for clothes.

“You did this,” she accused him. “You called it last night with that damn efficiency crack.”

“Ten minutes more, it would’ve been worth it.”

Instead, in ten minutes they suited up in the ready room.

“Spotted smoke at first light.” L.B. gave the outline. “Lolo National Forest, between Grave Creek and Lolo Pass. It’s fully active on the south slope above Lolo Creek. Conditions dry. Rowan, I want you in as fire boss; Gibbons, you’re on the line.”

The ground thundered as the tanker began to roll with the first load of mud.

The minute she boarded the jump ship, Rowan pulled out the egg sandwich and Coke she’d stuck in pockets. She ate and drank while she coordinated with the pilot, the spotter.

“There she is.” She pressed her face to the window. “And, damn, she’s frisky this morning.”

A hundred acres, maybe a hundred and twenty, she estimated, already fully active in some of the most primitive and pristine areas of Lolo. Lewis and Clark had traveled there, and now the fire wanted it for breakfast.

Here we come, she thought, and guarded her reserves as wind rushed in through the open door.

She felt fresh and fueled and ready—and couldn’t deny the ride down was beautiful. She checked on Gull, shot him a huge grin. “It’s not sex, but it doesn’t suck,” she shouted.

She heard his laugh, understood exactly what ran through him. It ran through her, free and strong into the sky, the smoke, and down to the soft landing on a sweet little meadow.

Once the unit and the paracargo hit the ground, she strategized with Gibbons. She decided to do a recon up the right flank while the crew headed in to start the line.

She traveled at a trot, gauging the area, the wind, and keeping twenty yards off the flank as the fire burned hot. She heard the head calling in that grumbling, greedy roar as it tossed spot fires into the unburned majesty of forest.

Not going to have it, she thought, using her Pulaski and her bladder pump to smother the spots as she went. It wants to run, wants to feed. She smelled the sharp resin as trees burned, heard their crackling cries, felt the air tremble with the power already unleashed. Smoke spiraled up where spitting embers met dry ground.

She yanked out her radio. “She wants to run, and she’s fast, L.B. She’s fast. We need another load of mud on the head, and another down the right flank. She’s throwing a lot of spots along that line.”

“Copy that. Are you clear?”

“I will be.” She kept moving, away from a spot that ate ground the size of a tennis court. “We need to contain these spots now, L.B. We’re at critical. Gibbons is on the line, southwest, and I’m doubling back.”

“Stay clear. We’ve got another load of jumpers on alert. Say the word and we’ll send them in.”

“Copy that. Let me finish this recon, check in with Gibbons.”

“Tankers on the way. Don’t get slimed, Swede.”

“I’m clear,” she repeated. “And I’m out.”

She ran, charging her way down as she checked in with Gibbons, making for the trail where Lewis and Clark had once traveled. At the roar behind her, she cursed, ran through the falling embers, the missiles of burning pinecones hurled by the blasting wind of a blowup. When the ground shook under her feet, she charged through the heart of the fire.

Safer inside it, she thought while smoke gushed through the lick of orange flames.

In the black she took a moment to pull out her compass and get her bearings, to plot the next moves. Gibbons would have sent the crew up the ridge on attack, she thought, and then—

She nearly ran over it. Instinct and atavistic horror stumbled her back three paces from the charred and blackened remains of what had been human. It lay, the crisp bones of its arms and legs curled in. Contracted by the heat, she knew that, but in that terrible moment it seemed as if the dead or dying had tried to tuck into a ball the fire might overlook.

Her fingers felt numb when she pulled out her radio. “Base.”

“Base here, come back, Swede.”

“I’ve got a body.”

“Say again?”

“I’m maybe ten yards from the Lobo Trail, near the southeast switchback, in the black. There’s a body, L.B.” She blew out a breath. “It’s crisp.”

“Ah, Christ. Copy that. Are you safe there?”

“Yeah. I’m in the black. I’m clear.”

“Hold there. I’ll contact the Forest Service, then get back to you.”

“L.B.” She rubbed her fingers between her eyebrows. “I can’t tell for sure, but the ground under and around the remains, the pattern of the burn . . . Hell, I think maybe somebody lit him—her—up. And there’s . . . I don’t know, but the angle of the head. It looks like the neck’s broken.”

“Sweet Jesus. Don’t touch anything. Do you copy, Rowan? Don’t touch anything.”

“Believe me, I won’t. I’ll radio Gibbons, give him a SITREP. Jesus, L.B., I think it’s a woman or a kid. The size . . .”

“Hang in, Rowan. I’ll come back.”

“Copy that. Out.”

She steeled herself. She’d seen burned bodies before. She’d seen Jim, she thought, when they’d finally recovered his remains. But she’d never stumbled over one, alone, in the middle of an operation.

So she took a breath, then radioed Gibbons.

It took her more than an hour and a half to get back to her crew, after holding her position, and guiding two rangers in. She welcomed the heat, the smoke, the battle after her vigil with the dead.

As she’d expected, Gibbons had the crew up the ridge, and the line held.

“Holy shit, Ro.” Gibbons swiped a forearm over his blackened face. “You okay?”

The time, the vigil, the hard reality of giving a statement hadn’t completely settled the raw sickness in her belly. “I’m a lot better than whoever’s back there. The rangers are down there now, and a Special Agent Somebody’s coming in. And an arson guy.”

“Arson.”

“It might be this fire was deliberately set, to cover up murder.” Because it felt as if it squeezed her skull, she shifted her helmet—but it did nothing to relieve the steady throbbing.

“They don’t know yet,” she told him as he cursed. “Maybe it was some dumb kid messing around, but it looked to me like that could’ve been the point of origin. Putting the fire down’s first priority. The feds’ll handle the other. Where do you want me?”

“You know you can pack out, Ro. Nobody’ll blame you.”

“Let’s finish this.”

She worked the saw line, while another part of the crew reinforced the scratch lines riding up toward the head. A fresher crew of jumpers attacked the other flank, down toward the tail.

Countless times during the hours on the line, she pulled off to radio the other crew for progress, updated base, consulted with Gibbons.

A few more hours to finish her off and mop up, she thought, and the crew would sleep in beds tonight.

“What’s up?” Gull stopped by her side. “There are rumors up and down the line something is, and you’re the source.”

She started to brush him off, but he looked her dead in the eye.

“You can tell me now or tell me later. You might as well get it done.”

She’d shared her body with him, she reminded herself, and her bed. “We’ve got her caged. If Gibbons can spare you, you can come with me to scout out smokes.”

Cleared, they moved away from the line. Rowan beat out a spot the size of a basketball, moved on.

And told him.

“You think the person was murdered, and whoever did it started the fire to try to cover it up?”

“I can’t know.” But her gut, roiling still, told her differently.

“Smarter to bury it.” His matter-of-fact tone slowed the churning. “A fire like this brings attention. Obviously.”

“I’ve never done it, but it seems to me killing somebody might impair logic. Or maybe the fire added to it. Plenty of people get off starting fires.”

“They spotted this one at first light. From the progress it made by the time we jumped, it must’ve started late last night, early this morning. It was burning damn hot, had at least a hundred acres involved when we jumped at, what, about eight?”

Odd, she realized, that talking it through, picking out the practical, calmed the jitters. “Yeah.”

“The campground’s not that far west, but with that burned-out area between where you found the body and the campground, the fire sniffed east. Lucky for the campers.”

The drumming inside her skull backed off, a little. Thinking was doing, she decided. Up until now she’d done too much reacting, not enough doing.

“Maybe they were from the camp,” she speculated. “And came out on the trail, got into a fight. By accident or design, he kills her.”

“Her?”

“The size of the body. I think it was a woman or a kid, and since I don’t want to think it was a kid, I’m going with woman. He’d drag or carry her off the trail. Maybe he thinks about burying her, and went back to get tools. Fire’s quicker and takes less effort. Dry conditions, some brush.”

“If you started it around two, three in the morning,” Gull calculated, “it would get a pretty good blaze up by dawn, and buy you a few hours.”

Yes, she thought. Sure. Survival had to be the first priority.

“Pack it up, and you’re way gone by dawn.” She nodded, steadied by working it as a problem to be solved. “It’ll take time to identify her, so that buys you more yet. And the fact is, if I hadn’t taken that route back to the line, maybe it’s hours more, even days, before she’s found. I wasn’t going that route, but the blowup sent me in and over.”

They continued to find and kill spots as they talked. Then she stopped. “I didn’t think I wanted to think about it. I found her, I called it in, now it’s for the USFS to deal with. But it’s been gnawing at me ever since. It . . . it shook me,” she confessed.

“It would shake anybody, Rowan.”

“Have you ever seen somebody after they’ve been—”

“Yeah. It sticks with you.” And he knew talking about it, thinking about the hows and whys, helped.

“Summers are usually about this.” She drowned a bucket-sized spot before it had a chance to grow. “Putting out fires, mopping them up, training and prepping to jump the next. But this summer? We’ve got crazy Dolly, my father going on a date, dead people.”

“Your father dating ranks with vandalism and possible homicide and arson?”

“It’s just different. Unusual. Like me sleeping with a rookie—which I haven’t done, by the way, since I was one.”

“Points for me.”

She shifted direction, angled south. Points for him, maybe, but to her mind change, exceptions, the different screwed up the order of things.

After nearly two hours on spots, they rejoined the crew and shifted to mop-up mode.

She pulled out her radio to take a call from the operations desk.

“We want the first load to demob,” L.B. told her. “Second load and ground crew will complete the mop-up.”

“I hear that.”

“The fed wants to talk to you when you get back.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I talked to the rangers, gave them all the details.”

“Doesn’t look like it. You can pack out. There’ll be ground transportation for you at the trailhead.”

“Copy that.” What the hell, she thought, at least this way she’d get it all over with in one day.

SHE’D PLANNED on getting a shower first, but she’d no more than dumped her gear when the fed came looking for her.

“Rowan Tripp?”

“That’s right.”

“Special Agent Kimberly DiCicco. I have some questions.”

“The rangers already have my answers, but since we both work for a bureaucracy, I know how it goes.”

“Mr. Little Bear offered his office so we can speak in private.”

“I’m not stinking up L.B.’s office. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty ripe with smoke and sweat.”

She had to notice, Rowan thought. The agent’s compact body was tucked into a black suit of classic lines with a pristine white shirt. Without a hair out of place, her sleek nape-of-the-neck bun left her refinedboned, coffee-with-a-splash-of-cream face unframed.

DiCicco’s eyebrows arched over tawny eyes as she angled her head. “You’ve put in a long day. I’m aware. I’ll make it as brief as possible.”

“Then let’s walk and talk.” Rowan stripped down to her tank and trousers. “Maybe I’ll air out a little.”

“Heads up.”

She turned, caught the cold bottle of Coke Gull sent her in a smooth underhand pass. “Thanks. Save me some lasagna.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Okay, Agent DiCicco.” At Rowan’s gesture, they walked outside. “You ask, I’ll answer.”

“You could start by telling me how you came upon the body.”

Already covered, Rowan thought, but went through it again. “With the way the fire was running,” she continued, “I had to cut off the recon and make for a safe zone. I headed in, then hiked across the old burnout section and into the black. The area adjacent to where the fire had passed through. I was heading for Lolo Trail. I could take that most of the way back to my crew. And I found her.”

“Her?”

“I don’t know. The remains were on the small side for a grown man.”

“You’d be correct. The victim was female.”

“Oh. Well.” Rowan stopped, blew out a breath. “That’s better than the alternative.”

“Excuse me?”

“It could’ve been a kid. The size again.”

“You contacted your operations desk immediately on the discovery?”

“That’s right.”

“So, if I have this correct.” DiCicco read back Rowan’s movements, the times she’d radioed in her position and the situation through her recon to the report of the body. “That’s a considerable area in a short amount of time.”

“When you catch fire, you’re not out on a stroll or a nature hike. You move, and you move fast. It’s my job to assess the situation on the ground, strategize a plan and approach with Gibbons, the line boss on this one, to recon and to keep Ops apprised of the situation and any additional support we might need.”

“Understood. When you contacted Operations, you stated you believed the victim had been murdered and the fire started to cover up the crime.”

Should she have kept her mouth shut? Rowan wondered. Would this be done if she’d kept her speculations to herself?

Too late now, she reminded herself.

“I said what it looked like. I’ve been jumping fires for five years, and I worked with a hotshot crew for two before that. I’m not an arson expert, but I know when a fire looks suspicious. I’m not a doctor, but I know when a head’s twisted wrong on a neck.”

And now, damn it, damn it, that image carved in her brain again. “I acted on what I observed so the proper authorities could be contacted. Is that a problem?”

“I’m gathering facts, Ms. Tripp.” DiCicco’s tone made a mild counterpoint to Rowan’s snap. “The medical examiner’s preliminary findings indicate the victim’s neck had been broken.”

“She was murdered.” Better or worse? Rowan wondered.

“The ME will determine if this is homicide, accidental, whether the neck injury was cause of death or postmortem.”

“Have you checked with the campground? Lolo Campground isn’t far from where I found her, not for a day hike.”

“We’re working on identifying her. You had some trouble here recently?”

“What?” Rowan pulled her mind back from speculating on just how much force it took to break a neck. “The vandalism?”

“That’s plural, isn’t it?” DiCicco kept unreadable eyes on Rowan’s face. “According to my information, one Dolly Brakeman, employed at that time as a cook here, vandalized your room. You caught her in the act and had to be physically restrained from assaulting her.”

Temper burned through fatigue like a brushfire. “You walk into your quarters, DiCicco, and find somebody pouring animal blood on your bed. See how you react. If you want to call my reaction ‘attempted assault,’ you go right ahead.”

“Ms. Brakeman was also questioned by the police regarding the vandalism of the ready room here on base.”

“That’s right. That little number cost us hours of time and could have cost more if we’d gotten a call out before we’d repaired the damage.”

“You and Ms. Brakeman have a history.”

“Since you already know that, I’m not going over the ground again. She’s a pain in the ass, a vindictive one, and an unstable one. If the locals turned over the vandalism here to your agency, good. I hope it scares the shit out of her. Now look, I’m tired, I’m hungry and I want a goddamn shower.”

“Nearly done. When did you last see Dolly Brakeman?”

“Jesus, when she trashed my room.”

“You haven’t seen or spoken with her since?”

“No, I haven’t, and I’d be thrilled if I can keep that record. What the hell does Dolly have to do with me finding a dead woman burned to a crisp in Lolo?”

“We’ll need to wait for confirmation of identification, but as Dolly Brakeman failed to return home last night—a home she shares with her parents and her infant daughter—as the victim and Ms. Brakeman are the same height, and thus far the investigation has turned up no other female missing, it’s a strong possibility the victim is Dolly Brakeman.”

“That’s . . .” Rowan felt her belly drop, the blood just drain out of her head while those unreadable eyes never shifted off her face. “A lot of women are Dolly’s height.”

“But none of them has been reported missing in this area.”

“She’s probably hooked up with some guy. Take a look at that part of her history.” But she had a baby now, Rowan thought. Jim’s baby. “Dolly wouldn’t be on the trail, in the forest. She likes town.”

“Can you tell me your whereabouts last night, from eight P.M. until you reported to the ready room this morning?”

“I’m a suspect?” Anger and shock warred—a short, bloody battle before anger won. “You actually think I snapped her neck, hauled her into the forest, then started a fire? A fire men and women I work with, live with, eat with every day would have to jump. Would have to risk their lives, their lives, to beat down?”

“You tried to assault her. Threatened to kill her.”

“Fucking A right I did. I was pissed. Who wouldn’t be pissed? I wish I’d gotten a punch in, and that’s a hell of a long way from killing somebody.”

“It’d be easier if you could tell me where you were last night between—”

“I’ll make it real easy,” Rowan interrupted. “I had dinner in the cookhouse about seven, maybe seven-thirty. About thirty of the crew were in there at the same time, and the kitchen staff. We hung out, bullshitting until close to ten. Then I went to my quarters, where I stayed until the siren went off this morning. Squeezed into bed with the hottie you saw toss me this Coke.”

“And his name?” DiCicco asked without a blink of reaction.

“Gulliver Curry. He’s probably in the cookhouse by now. Go ask him. I’m getting a goddamn shower.”

She stormed off, outrage burning a storm in her belly, slammed into the barracks.

Trigger had the misfortune of getting in her way. “Hey, Ro, are you—”

“Shut up and move.” She shoved him aside, then slammed into her quarters. She kicked the door, then the dresser, causing the little dish she tossed loose change into to jump off and crash onto the floor.

Her boots stamped the shards.

“Stiff-necked, tight-assed bitch! And it wasn’t Dolly!” Fuming, she tore at the laces of her jump boots, then hurled them.

Dolly was the type who just kept rolling, she thought as she yanked off her clothes, balled them up and threw them. She made people feel sorry for her, or—if they were men—sweetened the pot with sex or the promise of it. She was the type who did whatever the hell she wanted, then blamed somebody else if it didn’t work out.

Her mother’s type, Rowan decided, and maybe that was just one more reason she’d never liked Dolly Brakeman. Selfish, scheming, whining . . .

Her mother’s type, she thought again. Her mother had died bleeding on the floor. Murdered.

Not the same, she told herself firmly. Absolutely not the same.

In the shower, she turned the water on full, braced her hands on the wall and let it run over her. Watched it run black, then sooty gray.

She’d had enough of this shit, enough of the sucker punches.

What right did that federal bitch have to accuse her? She was the reason the body was found so quickly, the reason the feds had been called in the first damn place.

By the time she’d all but scrubbed herself raw, the leading edge of temper had dulled into a sick fear.

Her hands shook as she dressed, but she told herself it was hunger. She hadn’t eaten in hours and had burned thousands of calories. So she was shaky. That’s all it was.

When the door opened, she whirled, felt the shaking increase as Gull closed it quietly behind him.

“Did you tell that bitch you spent the night nailing me?”

“I told her we spent the night in here, in a bed small enough if you’d managed to roll over I’d’ve known it.”

“Good. Good. She can stick that up her federal ass.” She pushed him back when he came to her. “I don’t want to be coddled. Appreciate the alibi and all that. It looks like breaking my rule just keeps paying off. Whoopee.”

She pushed at him again, but this time he got his arms around her, hard and tight, and just held on while she struggled against him.

“I said I didn’t want to be coddled. I’ve got a right to blow off some steam after being questioned as a killer, an arsonist, as somebody who’d betray everything that matters to squash some little pissant—”

She broke off, broke down. “Oh, God, oh, God, they think it’s Dolly. They think Dolly’s dead and I killed her.”

“Listen to me.” His hands firm on her shoulders, he eased her back until he could see her eyes. “They don’t know who it is at this point. Maybe it is Dolly.”

“Oh, Jesus, Gull. Oh, God.”

“There’s nothing anybody can do about that if it is. If it is, nobody thinks you had anything to do with it.”

“DiCicco—”

“Was just informed you and I were together all night. There are plenty of people in the barracks who know we came in here together, and we came out together. So, if you’re a suspect, I’m one, too. I don’t think that’s going to play for DiCicco or anyone else. She had a job to do. She did it, and now that part’s over.”

He ran his hands down her arms until he could link them with hers. “You’re beat, you’re shaky. She wouldn’t have gotten to you like this if you’d been in top form.”

“Maybe not, but boy, did she.”

“Screw her.” He kissed Rowan’s forehead, then her lips. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go get dinner. You can listen to the rest of the unit express their pithy and colorful opinions over the fed asking you for an alibi.”

“Pithy.” That nearly got a smirk out of her. “I guess that would feel good.”

“Nothing like solidarity. Then, we’re going to come back here so I can give you an alibi for tonight.”

Now the smirk formed, quick and cocky. “Maybe I’ll be the one giving you an alibi.”

“Either way works. Let’s go before those hogs suck down all the lasagna.” He gave her ass a light pat as they started out. “And, Ro? Don’t worry. If they arrest you, I’ll make your bail.”

The laugh surprised her. And smoothed out some of the jitters in her belly.

15

After her morning PT, Rowan made a point of going to the cookhouse kitchen. If there was one person who knew something about everything, and most everything about something, it was Marg.

“Lynn’s reloading the buffet now,” Marg told her. “Or are you looking for a handout?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

With silver hoops dancing at the sides of her do-rag—yellow smiley faces over bright blue today—Marg reached for a pitcher. “You don’t want to have breakfast with your boyfriend?”

Rowan answered Marg’s smirk with an eye roll. “I don’t have boyfriends, I have lovers. And I take them and cast them off at my will.”

“Ha.” Marg poured a glass of juice. “That one won’t cast off so easy. Drink this.”

Obliging, Rowan pursed her lips. “Your carrot base, some cranberry, and . . .” She sipped again. “It’s not really orange. Tangerine?”

“Blood orange. Gotcha.”

“Sounds disgusting, and yet it’s not. Any word on Dolly?”

Marg shook her head as she whisked eggs. Not a negative gesture, Rowan recognized, but a pitying one.

“They found her car, down one of the service roads in the woods off of Twelve, with a flat tire.”

“Just her car?”

“What I heard is her keys were still in it, but not her purse. Like maybe she had some car trouble, pulled off.”

“Why would she pull off the main highway if she had a flat?”

“I’m just saying what I heard.” After pouring the eggs into an omelet pan, Marg added chunks of ham, cheese, tomatoes, some spinach. “Some of the thinking is maybe she walked on back to the highway, or somebody followed her onto the service road. And they took her.”

“They still don’t know if the remains in the fire . . . they can’t know that for sure.”

“Then there’s no point in worrying about it.”

Marg tried for brisk, but Rowan heard the hitch in her voice that told her Marg worried plenty.

“I wanted to hurt her, and seriously regretted not getting my fist in her face at least once. Now, knowing somebody might’ve hurt her, or worse? I don’t want to feel guilty about Dolly. I hate feeling guilty about anything, but I hate feeling guilty about Dolly.”

“I’ve never known anybody better at bringing trouble and drama onto herself than Dolly Brakeman. And if L.B. hadn’t fired her, I’d have told him flat he’d have to choose between her and me. I don’t feel guilty about that. I can be sorry if something’s happened to her without feeling guilty I wanted to give her the back of my hand more than once.”

Marg set the omelet and the wheat toast with plum preserves she’d prepared in front of Rowan. “Eat. You’ve shed a few pounds, and it’s too early in the season for that.”

“It’s the first season I’ve needed an alibi for a murder investigation.”

“I wouldn’t mind having an alibi like yours.”

Rowan dug into the omelet. “Do you want him when I’m done with him? Ow.” Rowan laughed when Marg cuffed the side of her head. “And after I offer you such a studly guy.” She smiled, shooting for winsome.

“When do you think you’ll be done with him? In case I’m in the market for a stud.”

“Can’t say. So far he’s playing my tune, but I’ll let you know.”

When Marg set a Coke down by her plate, Rowan leaned into her just a little. “Thanks, Marg. Really.”

In acknowledgment, Marg gave her a hard one-armed hug. “Clean your plate,” she ordered.

After breakfast, she tracked down L.B. in the gym where he’d worked up a sweat with bench presses.

“I’m on the bottom of the jump list,” she said without preamble.

He sat up, wiped his face with his towel. His long braid trailed down his sweaty, sleeveless workout shirt. “That’s right.” He picked up a twenty-pound free weight and started smooth, two-count bicep curls.

“Why?”

“Because that’s where I put you. I’d have taken you off completely for a day or two, but they’ve caught one down in Payette, and Idaho might need some Zulies in there.”

“I’m fit and I’m fine. Move me up. Christ, L.B., you’ve got Stovic ahead of me, and he’s still limping a little.”

“You’ve been on nearly every jump we’ve had this month. You need a breather.”

“I don’t—”

“I say you do,” he interrupted, and switched the weight to his other arm while he studied her face. “It’s my job to decide that.”

“This is about what happened yesterday, and that’s not right. I need the work, I need the pay. I’m not injured, I’m not sick.”

“You need a breather,” he repeated. “Put some time in the loft. We’re still catching up there. I’ll take a look at the list tomorrow.”

“I find remains, which I dutifully report, and I get grounded.”

“You’re still on the list,” he reminded her. “And you know jumping fire’s not all we do here.”

She also knew that when Michael Little Bear used that mild, reasonable tone, she’d have better luck arguing with smoke. She could sulk, she could steam, but she wouldn’t change his mind.

“Maybe I’ll go down and see my father for a bit.”

“That’s a good idea. Let me know if you decide you want to go farther off base.”

“I know the drill,” she grumbled. She started to shove her hands in her pockets, then went stiff when Lieutenant Quinniock walked in. “Cops are here,” she said quietly.

L.B. set down his weight, got to his feet.

“Mr. Little Bear, Ms. Tripp. I’ve got a few follow-up questions.”

“I’ll get out of your way,” Rowan began.

“Actually, I’d like to speak with you, too. Why don’t we step out. You can finish your workout,” he said to L.B., “then we could talk in your office.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

“That works. Miss?” Quinniock, in his polished shoes and stone-gray suit, gestured toward the gym doors.

“Don’t ‘Miss’ me. Make it Tripp,” she said as she shoved open the door ahead of him. “Or Rowan, or Ro, but don’t ‘Miss’ me unless you’re sad I’ve gone away.”

He smiled. “Rowan. Would you mind if we sat outside? This is a busy place.”

“Do you want me to go over my—what would you call it?—altercation with Dolly?”

“Do you have anything to add to what you’ve already told me?”

“No.”

“She got the pig’s blood from a ranch, if you’re interested. From one of the people who goes to her church.”

“Onward, Christian soldiers.” She dropped down on a bench outside the barracks.

“She acquired it the day before she came here to ask for work.” He nodded when Rowan turned to stare at him. “It leads me to conclude she meant to cause you trouble, even before you and she spoke the day she was hired back on.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered what I said or did.”

“Probably not. I understand you spoke with Special Agent DiCicco.”

“She’s a snappy dresser. You too.”

“I like a good suit. It complicated things for you, finding the remains.”

“Complicated because it was during a fire, or because Dolly’s missing?”

“Both. The missing person’s end is MPD’s case, at this time. We’re cooperating with the USFS while they work to identify the body. In that spirit, I’ve shared information with Agent DiCicco.”

“My history, as she called it, with Dolly.”

“That, and the fact Dolly told several people you were to blame for what happened to James Brayner. You, and everyone here. She’s been vocal about her resentment for some time, including the period of time she was away from Missoula.”

It didn’t surprise her, could no longer anger her. “I don’t know how she could work here, be involved with jumpers, and not understand what we do, how we do it, what we deal with.”

She looked at Quinniock then, the dramatic hair, the perfectly knotted tie. “And I’m not sure I understand why you’re telling me this.”

“It’s possible she planned to continue to cause trouble—for you, for the base. It’s possible she came back here for work so she had easier access. And it’s possible she had help. Someone she convinced to help her. Did you see her with anyone in particular after she came back?”

“No.”

“She and Matthew Brayner, the brother.”

Rowan’s back went up. “She blindsided Matt, the Brayner family, with the baby. I know they all took a natural interest in the baby and, being the kind of people they are, would do whatever they could for Dolly. It took guts for Matt to come back here, to work here after what happened to Jim. Any idea you may have that he’d help Dolly destroy my quarters or equipment is wrong and insulting.”

“Were they friendly while his brother was alive?”

“I don’t think Matt gave Dolly two thoughts, but he was, and is, friendly with everyone. And I’m not talking about another jumper behind his back.”

“I’m just trying to get a feel for the dynamics. I’m also told several of the men on base had relationships with Dolly, at least until she became involved with James Brayner.”

“Sex isn’t a relationship, especially blow-off-some-steam sex with a woman who was willing to pop the cork with pretty much anybody. She popped plenty of corks in town, too.”

“Until James Brayner.”

“She zeroed in on him last season, and as far as I know that was a first for her. Look, he was a cute guy, fun, charming. Maybe she fell for him, I don’t know. Dolly and I didn’t share our secrets, hopes and dreams.”

“You’re probably aware by now that we found her car.”

“Yeah, word travels.” She squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “It’s going to be her, when they finish the ID. I know that. You just have to triangulate the town, where you found the car, where I found the remains, and it’s heavy weight on it. I didn’t like her. I didn’t like her a whole bunch of a lot, but she didn’t deserve the way she ended up. Nobody deserves the way she ended up.”

“People are always getting what they don’t deserve. One way or the other. Thanks for the time.”

“When will they know?” she asked when he stood up. “When will they know for sure?”

“Her dentist is local. They’ll verify with her dental records, and should have confirmation later today. It’s not my case, but just out of curiosity, in your opinion, how long would it take to get from the trailhead to where you found the remains, adding in carrying about a hundred and ten pounds, in the dark.”

She got to her feet so they’d be eye to eye. “It depends. It could take an hour. But if you were fit, an experienced hiker, and you knew the area, you could do it in less than half that.”

“Interesting. Thanks again.”

She sat back down when he walked toward Operations, tried to work her mind around the conversation, the information.

And decided, as much as she hated to admit it, maybe L.B. was right. Maybe she did need a breather. So she’d walk down to see her father, touch base with the rest of his crew. The walk might clear her head, and God knew having a little time with her father never hurt.

She went back in for a bottle of water and a ball cap, then crossed paths with Gull as she came back out.

“I saw you with the cop. Do I need to post that bail?”

“Not so far. They found her car, Gull.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“And . . . there’s other stuff. I have to get my head around it. I’m going to walk down to the school, see my father.”

“Do you want company?”

“I need some solo time.”

He ran his knuckles down her cheek in a casually affectionate gesture that threw her off. “Look me up when you get back.”

“Sure. You’re second load,” she called back as she started the walk. “Idaho might need some Zulies. If you jump, jump good.”

She watched the show as she walked. Planes nosing up; skydivers drifting down. Clouds gathered in the west, hard and white over the mountains. Smaller, she noted, and puffier overhead and north, drifting east on a slow, leisurely sail.

She heard mechanics working in the hangars, the twang of music, the clink of metal, the roll of voices, but didn’t stop as she might have another day. Conversation wasn’t what she was after.

Solo time.

The killer had a car, or truck, she decided. Nobody would’ve carried Dolly from where she’d stopped to where she ended up. Did he kill her when she pulled off 12, dump her body in the trunk of the car, bed of the truck? Or did he give her a ride, maybe park at the trailhead, then do it? Or force her up the trail, then—

Jesus, any way it had happened, she’d ended up dead, and her baby daughter an orphan.

Why had she been heading south on 12, or had she been heading back from farther away? To meet a lover? To meet this theoretical person she’d enlisted to cause trouble? Plenty of motels to choose from. Hard to meet a lover—and Dolly had been famous for using sex as barter—when you lived at home with your parents and your baby.

Why couldn’t she have loved the baby enough to just make a life? To treasure what she had, and put some goddamn effort into being a good mother instead of letting this obsession eat away at her?

All the time she’d spent planning her weird revenge, harboring all that hate, could’ve been spent on living, on nuzzling her baby.

“Oh, mother issues much?” Annoyed with herself, she quickened her pace.

Enough solo time, she decided. Solo time was overrated. She should’ve taken Gull up on his offer to come with her. He’d have distracted her out of this mood, made her laugh, or at least annoyed her so she’d stop feeling sad and angry.

When she moved around the people scattered over the lawn, the picnic tables at her father’s place, she looked up, as they were.

Coming on final, she thought, watching the plane. She crossed to the fence, tucked her hands in her back pockets and decided to enjoy the show. Her smile bloomed as the skydiver jumped—and taking a breather didn’t seem so bad after all. When the second figure leaped out, she settled in, studying their forms on the free fall.

The first, definitely a student, but not bad. Not shabby. Arms out, taking it in. Check out that view! Feel that wind!

And the second . . . Rowan angled her head, narrowed her eyes. She couldn’t be sure, not yet, but she’d have laid decent money down Iron Man Tripp rocketed down toward the student.

Then came the moment. The chutes deployed, one then two—to applause and cheers—the blue-and-white stripes of the student’s, and the chute she’d designed and rigged for her father’s sixtieth birthday with the boldly lettered IRON MAN in red (his favorite color) over a figure of a smoke jumper.

She loved watching him like this, and always had. Perfect form, she thought, absolute control, riding the air from sky to earth while the sun streamed through those drifting clouds.

She’d been exactly right to come here, she realized, when the world tipped crazily all around her. Here, what she loved held constant. Whatever happened, she could count on him.

She willed the stress of the morning into a corner. She couldn’t dismiss it, but she could shove it back a little and focus on what made her happy.

She’d hang out here with her father for a while, have lunch with him, talk over what was going on. He’d listen, let her spew, and somehow pull her back in, steady her again.

She always thought more clearly, felt less overwhelmed, after a session with her father.

The student handled the drop well, Rowan observed, managed a very decent landing and was up on his—no her, Rowan realized—feet quickly. Then the Iron Man touched down, soft as butter, smooth as silk.

She added her applause to the rest, sent out a high whistle of approval before waving her arms in hopes of snagging her father’s attention.

The student unhooked her harness, pulled off her helmet. Gorgeous red hair seemed to explode in the sunlight. As the woman raced toward her father, Rowan grinned. She understood the exuberance, the charge of excitement, had seen this same scene play out countless times between student and instructor. She continued to grin as the woman leaped into Lucas’s arms, something else she’d seen again and again.

What she hadn’t seen, and what had her grin shifting to a puzzled frown, was her father swinging a student in giddy circles while said student locked her arms around his neck.

And when Lucas “Iron Man” Tripp leaned down and planted a long, very enthusiastic kiss (and the crowd went wild) on the student’s mouth, Rowan’s jaw dropped to the toes of her Nikes.

She would’ve been more shocked if Lucas had pulled out a Luger and shot the redhead between the eyes, but it would’ve been a close call.

The woman had her hands on Lucas’s cheeks, a gesture somehow more intimate than the kiss itself. It spoke of knowledge, familiarity, of privilege.

Who the hell was this bimbo, and when the hell had Iron Man started kissing students? Kissing anyone?

And in public.

The woman turned, her face—which didn’t look bimbo-ish—warm from the kiss, bright with laughter, and executed a deep, exaggerated curtsy for the still cheering crowd. To Rowan’s continued shock, Lucas simply stood there grinning like the village idiot.

Was he on drugs?

Her brain told her to ease back, to find some quiet place to absorb the shock. Her gut told her to hurdle the fence, march right up and demand what the fuck?!

But her fingers had curled around the fence, and she couldn’t seem to uncurl them.

Then her father spotted her. His loopy grin aimed her way as he—Jesus—took the redhead’s hand, gave it a little swing. He waved at Rowan with his free hand before he said something to the face-caressing redhead, who actually had the nerve to smile in Rowan’s direction.

Still holding hands, they strolled toward the fence and Rowan.

“Hi, honey. I didn’t realize you were here.”

“I . . . I’m low on the jump list, so.”

“I’m glad you came by.” He laid his fingers over the ones she had curled on the fence, effectively linking the three of them. “Ella, this is my daughter, Rowan. Ro, Ella Frazier. She just did her first AFF.”

“It’s great to meet you. Lucas has told me so much about you.”

“Oh, yeah? Funny, he hasn’t told me a thing about you.”

“You’ve been pretty busy.” Obviously oblivious, Lucas spoke cheerfully. “We keep missing each other. Ella’s principal of Orchard Homes Academy.”

A high-school principal. Tony private school. Another strike against bimbo status. Damn it.

“Her son bought her a tandem jump as a gift,” Lucas went on, “and she got hooked. You should’ve had your family here for this, Ella,” he continued. “Your grandkids would’ve loved it.”

And a grandmother ? What kind of father-face-sucking bimbo was this?

“I wanted to make sure I handled it before they came to watch. Next time. In fact, I’m going to go in and talk to Marcie about setting it up. It was nice to meet you, Rowan. I hope we see more of each other.”

Though her voice was mild and polite, the quick clash when the two women’s gazes met made it clear they understood each other.

“I’ll see you inside, Lucas.”

Yeah, keep walking, Rowan thought. Make tracks.

“So what did you think?” Lucas asked, eagerly. “I’ve been hoping you’d get a break so you could meet Ella. It’s cool you happened to be here for her first AFF.”

“Her form’s not bad. She had a good flight. Listen, Dad, why don’t we grab some lunch in the cafe? There’s—”

“Ella and I are having a picnic lunch out here to celebrate her dive. Why don’t you join us? It’ll give the two of you a chance to get to know each other.”

Was he kidding? “I don’t think so, but thanks. Riding third wheel doesn’t suit me.”

“Don’t be silly. If I know Ella, she made plenty. She’s a hell of a cook.”

“Just—just—” She had to untangle her tongue. “How long has this been going on? What’s going on? Kissing on the jump spot, hand-holding, picnic lunches? Jesus, Dad, are you sleeping with her?”

He pokered up, a look she knew meant she’d hit a nerve.

“I think that would come under the heading of my personal business, Rowan. What’s your problem here?”

“My problem, other than the kissing, holding and so on in front of God, crew and visitors, is I came over here because I needed to talk to my father, but you’re obviously too busy with Principal Hotpants to spare any for me.”

“Watch it.” His fingers tightened on hers before she could jerk away. “Don’t you use that tone with me. I don’t give a damn how old you are. If you need to talk to me, come inside. We’ll talk.”

“No, thanks,” she said, coldly polite. “Go ahead and take care of your personal business. I’ll take care of my own. Excuse me.” She pulled her fingers free. “I have to get back to base.”

She recognized the combination of anger and disappointment on his face, something rarely seen and instantly understood. She swung away from it, strode away from him, her back stiff with resentment. And her heart aching with what she told herself was betrayal.

Her temper only built on the walk back, then took a bitter spike when she heard the siren blast. She broke into a run, covering the remaining distance to the base where she could already see jumpers on the scramble and the jump plane taxiing onto the runway.

She hit the ready room, shoving aside the bitterness as she had the stress—as something to be taken out and examined later.

She grabbed gear off the speed rack for Cards. “Payette?”

“That’s the one.” He zipped his let-down rope into the proper pocket. “Zulies to the rescue!”

She looked in his eyes. “Have a good one.”

“It’s in the cards.” He let out a chortle before waddling toward the waiting plane.

She went through the same procedure with Trigger while Gull helped Dobie.

In minutes she stood watching the plane take off without her.

“Secondary blaze blew up,” Gull told her. “Idaho’s already spread thin. One of their second load got hung up on the jump, broke his arm, and they’ve got two more injuries on the ground.”

“Aren’t you well informed?”

“I like to keep up with current events.” He re-angled his ball cap to gain more shade from the bill as he followed the plane into the sky. “Such as the dry lightning doing a smackdown up in Flathead. You didn’t spend much time at your dad’s.”

“Are you keeping track of me?”

“Just using my keen powers of observation. They also tell me you’re severely pissed.”

“I don’t like being grounded when I’m fit to jump.”

“You’re on the list,” he reminded her. “And?”

“And, what?”

“And what else has you severely pissed?”

“You and your keen powers of observation are about to, so aim them elsewhere.” She started to stalk off, then, too riled to hold it in, stalked back. “I go up to see my father, spend some time with him, talk this crap over with him because that’s what we do. When I get there he’s doing an AFF with a student. A student who happens to be a woman. A redhead. One who, the minute they’re on the ground, jumps him like my old dog Butch used to jump a Frisbee. Then he’s swinging her around, and then he’s kissing her. Kissing her, right there, a serious lip-locking, body-twining kiss no doubt involving tongues.”

“The best do. So . . . I’m working my way through that report, trying to pinpoint what pissed you off.”

“Did I just tell you my father kissed that redhead?”

“You did, but I’m having a tough time seeing why that flipped your switch. You’re acting like you’ve never seen your old man kiss a woman before.”

When she said nothing, only stood with her eyes like smoldering blue ice, he let out a half laugh of genuine surprise. “Seriously? You’ve seriously never seen him kiss a woman? The man has to have superhuman discretion.”

Gull stopped again, shook his head and gave her a light slap on the shoulder. “Come on, Ro. You’re not going to tell me you think he actually hasn’t bumped lips with a female in—how old are you, exactly?”

“He doesn’t date.”

“So you said when he had the date with the lady client for drinks . . . Aha. Now my intrepid deductive skills mesh with my keen powers of observation to conclude this would be the same woman.”

“She says she’s a high-school principal. It’s pretty damn clear they’re sleeping together.”

“I guess getting called into the principal’s office has taken on a whole new meaning for your dad.”

“Fuck you.”

“Whoa.” He caught her arm as she spun around. “You’re jealous? You’re actually jealous because your father’s interested in a woman—who’s not you?”

Heat—temper, embarrassment—slapped into her cheeks. “That’s disgusting and untrue.”

“You’re pissed and jealous, and genuinely hurt because your father may be in a romantic relationship with a woman. That’s not disgusting or untrue, Rowan, but it sure strikes me as petty and selfish.”

Something very akin to the disappointment she’d just seen on her father’s face moved over Gull’s. “When’s the last time he threw a tantrum because you were involved with someone?”

Now she felt petty, and that only fueled her temper. “My feelings and my relationship with my father are none of your business. You don’t know a damn thing about it, or me. And you know what, I’m pretty goddamn sick of being dumped on, from Dolly and vindictive bullshit, to tight-assed special agents, my father’s disappointment to your crappy opinion of me. So you can just—”

The shrilling siren sliced off her words.

“Looks like me and my crappy opinion have to get going.” Gull turned his back on her and walked back to the ready room.

It was almost more than she could swallow, standing on the ground again while the plane flew north.

“If this keeps up, they’ll have to send us up.”

She glanced over at Matt. “The way my luck’s going, L.B.’ll cross me off and send Marg if we get another call. How did you rate the basement?”

“He feels like I’m too twisted up about Dolly, because of my niece. Maybe I am.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. I keep expecting them to come back, say it’s all a mistake.” He held his cap in his hands, turning it around and around in them and leaving his floppy cornsilk hair uncovered.

“It can’t be right, you know, for a baby to lose her father before she’s even born, then her mother so soon after.” He turned to Rowan, and she thought he looked unbearably young and exposed.

“It isn’t right,” she said.

“But things, I guess things just aren’t always right. I guess . . . it’s like fate.”

He leaned into her a little when she hooked an arm around his waist. “It’s harder on you, maybe,” he said, “than me.”

“Me?”

“You found her. If it’s her. Even if it’s not, finding whoever it was. It’s awful you were the one who found her.”

“We’ll both get through it, Matt.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. I keep thinking of Shiloh, and telling myself that whatever happens, we’ll make sure she’s okay. I mean, she’s just a baby.”

“The Brakemans and your family will take care of her.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’ll go up to the loft, try to get my mind on something else.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

She went back to her quarters first, locked herself in. Though she knew it was self-pity, that it was useless, she sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed and had a good cry.

16

The cry emptied out the temper and the self-pity. For a trade-off she accepted the splitting headache, and downed the medication before splashing cold water on her face.

One of the problems with being a true blonde with fair skin, she mused, giving herself the hard eye in the mirror, was that after a jag she resembled someone who’d gotten a brutal sunburn, through cheesecloth.

She splashed some more, then wrung out a cold cloth. She gave herself ten minutes flat on her back on the bed, the cloth over her face, to let the meds and the cool do their job.

So she’d overreacted, she thought. Beat her with a brick.

She’d apologize to her father for sticking her nose in his business since he now had business he didn’t want her to stick her nose into.

And she damn well expected the same courtesy from a certain fastfooted, hotshot rookie, so he’d better come back safe.

She checked her face again, decided she’d do. Maybe she didn’t look her best, but she didn’t look as if she’d spent the last twenty minutes curled up on the floor, blubbering like a big baby.

On her way toward Operations to check on the status of the crews, she caught sight of Special Agent DiCicco walking toward her.

“Ms. Tripp.”

“Look, I know you’ve got a job to do, but we’ve got two loads out. I’m heading to Ops, and don’t have time to go over ground I’ve already gone over.”

“I’m sorry, but I will need to speak with you, as well as members of the crew and staff. The remains you discovered yesterday have been positively identified as Dolly Brakeman.”

“Hell.” Sick, Rowan pressed her forehead, and rubbed it side to side. “Oh, hell. How? How did she die?”

“Since some of those details will make the evening news, I can tell you cause of death was a broken neck, possibly incurred in a fall.”

“A fall? You’d have to fall really hard and really wrong. Not an accidental fall, not when she left her car one place and ended up in another.”

DiCicco’s face remained impassive, her eyes level. “This is a homicide investigation, coordinated with an arson investigation. Your instincts on both counts appear to have been right on target.”

“And being right makes me a suspect.”

“I’m not prepared to eliminate anyone as a suspect, but you have an alibi for the time frame. The fact is, you and the victim had an adversarial relationship. It’s an avenue I need to explore.”

“Explore away. Be Magellan. I didn’t look for trouble with her. If I could’ve punched her on the infamous day of the blood of the pigs, I would have. And she’d have earned it. I think she should’ve been charged for what she did to our equipment, and spent some quality time in jail. I don’t think she should’ve died for either of those offenses. She was—”

Rowan broke off as a truck roared in, fishtailing as it swerved in her direction. She grabbed DiCicco’s arm to yank her back even as DiCicco grabbed hers to do the same.

The truck braked with a shriek, spewed up clouds of road dust.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell are you . . .” She trailed off as she recognized the man leaping out of the truck as Leo Brakeman, Dolly’s father.

“My daughter is dead.” He stood there, meaty hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides, his former All-State left tackle’s body quivering, his face—wide and hard—reddened.

“Mr. Brakeman, I’m sorry for—”

“You’re responsible. There’s nothing left of her but burned bones, and you’re responsible.”

“Mr. Brakeman.” DiCicco stepped between Rowan and Brakeman, but Rowan shifted to the side, refusing the shield. “I explained to you that I and the full resources of my agency will do everything possible to identify your daughter’s killer. You need to go home, be with your wife and your granddaughter.”

“You’ll just cover it up. You work for the same people. My daughter would be alive today if not for that one.” When he pointed his finger, Rowan felt the raging grief behind it stab like a blade.

“She got Dolly fired because she couldn’t stand being reminded of how she let Jim Brayner die. She got her fired so Dolly had to drive all the way down to Florence to find work. If she didn’t kill my girl with her own hands, she’s the reason for it.

“You think you’re so important?” he raged at Rowan. “You think you can ride on your father’s coattails, and because your name’s Tripp you can push people around? You were jealous of my girl, jealous because Jim tossed you over for her, and you couldn’t stand it. You let him die so she couldn’t have him.”

“Leo.” L.B., with a wall of men behind him, moved forward. “I’m sorry about Dolly. Every one of us is sorry for your loss. But I’m going to ask you once to get off this property.”

“Why don’t you fire her? Why don’t you kick her off this base like she was trash, the way you did my girl? Now my girl’s dead, and she’s standing there like it was nothing.”

“This isn’t a good time for you to be here, Leo.” L.B. kept his voice low, quiet. “You need to go home and be with Irene.”

“Don’t tell me what I need. There’s a baby needs her ma. And none of you give a damn about that. You’re going to pay for what happened to my Dolly. You’re going to pay dear, all of you.”

He spat on the ground, slammed back into his truck. Rowan saw tears spilling down his cheeks as he spun the wheel and sped away.

“Ro.”

“Not now, L.B. Please.” She shook her head.

“Now,” he corrected, and put an arm firm around her shoulders. “You come inside with me. Agent DiCicco, if you need to talk to Rowan, it’s going to be later.”

DiCicco watched the wall of men close ranks like a barricade, then move into the building behind Rowan.

Inside, L.B. steered her straight to his office, shut the door on the rest of the men. “Sit,” he ordered.

When she did, he shoved his hands through his hair, leaned back on his desk. “You know Leo Brakeman’s a hard-ass under the best of circumstances.”

“Yeah.”

“And these are beyond shitty circumstances.”

“I get it. It has to be somebody’s fault, and Dolly blamed me for everything else, so I’m the obvious choice. I get it. If she told him—people—I was doing the deed with Jim before he tossed me over, why wouldn’t her father think I had it out for his kid? And just to clarify, Jim and I were never—”

“You think I don’t know you? I’ll be talking to DiCicco and setting her straight on that front.”

Rowan shrugged. Oddly she’d felt her spine steel up again under Brakeman’s assault. “She’ll either believe it or she won’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m okay, or close to being okay. You don’t have time to babysit me, L.B., not with our crews out.

“I’m sorry for Brakeman,” she said, “but that’s the last time he’ll use me as an emotional punching bag. Dolly was a liar, and her being dead doesn’t change that.”

She got to her feet. “I told you this morning I was fit and fine. That wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t completely true, either. Now it is. Nobody’s going to treat me like Dolly and her father have and make me feel bad about it. I’m not responsible for the baggage full of shit they’ve hauled around. I’ve got plenty of my own.”

“That sounds like you’re fit and fine.”

“I can help out in Ops if you want, or head up to the loft, see what needs doing there.”

“Let’s go see how our boys and girls are doing.”

DICICCO MADE HER WAY to the cookhouse kitchen, found it empty, unless she counted the aromas she dubbed as both comforting and sinful. She started to move into the dining area when a movement out the window caught her eye.

She watched the head cook, Margaret Colby, weeding a patch of an impressive garden.

Marg looked up at the sound of the back door opening, pushed at the wide brim of the straw hat she wore over her kitchen bandanna.

“That’s some very pretty oregano.”

“It’s coming along. Are you looking for me, or just out for a stroll?”

“I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. And to the other cook, Lynn Dorchester.”

“I let Lynn go on home for the afternoon since she was upset. She’ll be back around four.” Marg tossed weeds into the plastic bucket at her feet, then brushed off her hands. “I could use some lemonade. Do you want some?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“If it was, I wouldn’t be getting it. You can have a seat there. I spend enough time in the kitchen on pretty days, so I take advantage of being out when I can.”

DiCicco sat in one of the lawn chairs, contemplated the garden, the lay of the land beyond it. The big hangars and outbuildings, the curve of the track some distance off. And the rise and sweep of the mountains dusted with clouds.

Marg came out with the lemonade, and a plate of cookies with hefty chocolate chunks.

“Oh. You hit my biggest weakness.”

“Everybody’s got one.” Marg set the tray down, sat comfortably and toed off her rubber-soled garden shoes.

“We heard it was Dolly. I let Lynn go as it hit her hard. They weren’t best of friends, Dolly didn’t have girlfriends. But they’d worked together awhile now, and got along all right for the most of it. Lynn’s got a soft core, and punched right into it.”

“You worked with Dolly for some time, too. Were her supervisor.”

“That’s right. She could cook—she had a good hand with it, and she never gave me a problem in the kitchen. Her problem was, or one of them, was she looked at sex as an accomplishment, and as something to bargain with.”

Marg picked up a cookie, took a bite. “The men around here, they’re strong. They’re brave. They’ve got bodies you’d be hard-pressed not to notice. Dolly wasn’t hard-pressed.

“A lot of them are young, too,” she continued, “and most all of them are away from home. They’re going to risk life and limb and work like dogs, sometimes for days at a time in the worst conditions going. If they get a chance to roll onto a naked woman, there’s not many who’d say no thanks. Dolly gave plenty of them a chance.”

“Was there resentment? When a woman gives one man a chance, then turns around and gives the same chance to another, resentment’s natural.”

“I don’t know a single one who ever took Dolly seriously. And that includes Jim. I know she said he was going to marry her, and I know she was lying. Or just dreaming. It’s kinder to say just dreaming.”

Though he’d used different words, L.B. had stated the same opinion.

“Was Jim serious about Rowan Tripp?”

“Ro? Well, she helped train him as a recruit, and worked with him. . . .” Marg trailed off as the actual meaning of serious got through. Then she sat back in the chair and laughed until her sides ached. She waved a hand in the air, drank some lemonade to settle down.

“I don’t know where you got that idea, Agent DiCicco, but if Jim had tried to get serious with Ro, she’d’ve flicked him off like a fly. He flirted with everything female, myself included. It was his way, and he was so damn good-natured about it. But there was nothing between him and Ro but what’s between all of them. A kind of friendship I expect war buddies understand. Added to it, Rowan’s never gotten involved with anybody in her unit—until this season. Until Gulliver Curry. I’m enjoying watching how that one comes along.”

“Leo Brakeman claims that Rowan and Jim were involved before he broke it off to be with Dolly.”

Marg drank more lemonade and contemplated the mountains as DiCicco had. “Leo’s grieving, and my heart hurts for him and Irene, but he’s wrong. It sounds to me like something Dolly might’ve said.”

“Why would she?”

“For the drama, and to try to take some of the shine off Rowan. I told you, Dolly didn’t have girlfriends. She got on with Lynn because she didn’t see Lynn as a threat. Lynn’s married and happy, and the men tend to think of her as a sister, or a daughter. Dolly always saw Rowan as a threat, and more, she knew Rowan considered her . . . cheap, we’ll say.”

“It’s obvious they didn’t get along.”

“Up until Jim died they tolerated each other well enough. I’ve known both of them since they were kids. Rowan barely noticed Dolly. Dolly always noticed Ro. And if you’re still thinking Rowan had anything to do with what happened, you’re wasting a lot of time better spent finding out who did.”

Time wasn’t wasted, in DiCicco’s opinion, if you found out something.

“Did you know anything about Dolly getting work in Florence?”

“No. I don’t know why she would. Plenty of places right around here would hire her on, at least for the season.”

Marg loosed a long sigh. “I wouldn’t give her a reference. Her preacher came out, tried to get me to write her one. I didn’t like his way, that’s one thing, but I wouldn’t do it anyway. She didn’t earn it with the way she behaved.

“I guess I’m sorry for that if she felt she had to leave Missoula to work. But there are plenty of places she could’ve gotten work without a reference.”

Marg sat a moment, saying nothing. Just studying the mountains.

“Was she coming back from there when it happened? From work in Florence?”

“It’s something I’ll have to check out. I hate exaggeration, so you know I’m giving it to you straight when I say this is the best cookie I’ve ever eaten.”

“I’ll give you some to take with you.”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

THE CREW IN IDAHO had the fire caged in by sundown. But up north, the battle raged on.

She could see it. As Rowan stepped outside to take the air, she could see the fire and smoke, and the figures in yellow shirts brandishing tools like weapons.

If they called for another load, if they needed relief or reenforcement, L.B. would send her. And she’d be ready.

Her back stiffened at the glint of headlights, the silhouette of an approaching pickup. Then loosened again, a little, when she saw it wasn’t Leo Brakeman back for another shot at her.

Lucas stepped out of the truck, walked to her.

Some anger there, she noted. Still some mad on.

He proved it when he clamped his hands on her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me what happened? Finding the remains, about Dolly, about any of it.”

“I figured you knew.”

“Well, I damn well didn’t.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Don’t pull that crap with me, Rowan. Your landing text said A-OK.”

“I was. I wasn’t hurt.”

“Rowan.”

“I didn’t want to tell you in a text, or on the phone. Then it was one thing and another. I came down this morning to talk to you about it, but—”

He simply yanked her against him and hugged.

“I’m a suspect.”

“Stop it,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to the top of her head.

“The Forest Service agent’s questioned me twice. I had altercations with Dolly, then out of all the acres up there, I stumble right over what’s left of her. Then, Leo Brakeman came here today.”

She unburdened, stripped it out and off because he was there to cover her again.

“Leo’s half mad with grief. In his place, I don’t know what I’d do.” Couldn’t bear to think of it. “They’ll find whoever did it. Maybe it’ll help like they say it does, though I swear I don’t know how.”

“He was crying when he drove away. I think that was the moment I stopped feeling sorry for myself, because I’d been having a real good time with that.”

“You were never able to stretch that out for long.”

“I was going for the record. Dad, about before. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” He wiped a hand through the air, a familiar gesture. “Clean slate.”

“Squeaky clean.”

“Where’s that guy you’ve been hanging around with?”

“He’s on the Flathead fire.”

“Let’s go check with Ops, see how they’re doing.”

“I want him back safe, want all of them back safe. Even though I’m pissed at him. Especially pissed because I think he had a point about a couple things.”

“I hate when that happens. Besides, who does he think he is, having a point?”

She laughed, tipped her head to his shoulder. “Thanks.”

SHE KEPT VIGIL in Operations, helped update the map tracking the crew’s progress and the fire’s twists and turns, and watched the lightning strikes blast on radar.

Sometime after two while a booming thunderstorm swept over the base, and up north Gull and his crewmates crawled into tents, she dropped into bed.

And almost immediately dropped into the dream.

The roar of thunder became the roar of engines, the scream of wind the air blasting through the plane’s open door. She saw the nerves in Jim’s eyes, heard them in his voice and, tossing in bed, ordered herself to stop him. To contact base, alert the spotter, talk to the fire boss.

Something.

“It is what it is,” he said to her, with eyes now filled with sorrow. “It’s, you know, my fate.”

And he jumped as he always did, taking that last leap behind her. Into the mouth of the fire, screaming as its teeth tore through him.

This time she landed alone, the flames behind her snarling, throaty growls that built until the ground shook. She ran, sprinting up the incline, heat drenching her skin while she shoved through billowing clouds of smoke.

She shouted for Jim—there was a chance, always a chance—searching blindly. Fire climbed the trees in pulsing strings of light, blew over the ground in a deadly dance. Through it, someone called her name.

She changed direction and, shouting until her throat burned, stumbled into the black. Charred branches punched out of smoldering spots and beckoned like bony fingers. Snags hunched and towered, seemed to shift and sway behind the curtain of smoke. The scorched earth crackled under her feet as she continued to run toward the sound of her name.

Silence dropped, like a breath held. She stood in that void of sound, dismayed, disoriented. For a moment it was as if she’d become trapped in a black-and-white photo. Nothing moved, even as she ran on. The ground stayed silent under her feet.

She saw him, lying on the ground the fire had stripped bare, facing west, as if positioned to watch the sunset. Her voice echoed inside her head as she called his name. Dizzy with relief, she dropped down beside him.

Jim. Thank God.

She pulled out her radio, but like the air around her, it answered with silence.

I found him! Somebody answer. Somebody help me!

“They can’t.”

She tumbled back when Jim’s voice broke the silence, when behind his mask his eyes opened, behind his mask his lips curved in a horrible smile.

“We burn here. We all burn here.”

Flames ignited behind his mask. Even as she drew breath to scream, he gripped her hand. Fire fused her flesh to his.

She screamed, and kept screaming as the flames engulfed them both.

ROWAN DRAGGED HERSELF out of bed, stumbled to the window. She shoved it up, gulping in the air that streamed in. The storm had moved east, taking the rain and the boiling thunder with it. Sometime during the hideous dream the sky had broken clear of the clouds. She studied the stars to steady herself, taking comfort in their cool bright shine.

A bad day, that was all, she thought. She’d had a bad day that had brought on a bad night. Now it was done, out of her system. Put to rest.

But she left the window open, wanting that play of air as she got back in bed, and lay for a time, eyes open, looking at the stars.

As she started to drift something about the dream tapped at the back of her brain. She closed down to it, thought of the stars instead. She kept that cool, bright light in her mind’s eye as she slipped into quiet, dreamless sleep.

ROWAN AND A MOP-UP TEAM jumped the Flathead mid-morning. While grateful for the work, the routine—however tedious—she couldn’t deny some disappointment that Gull and his team packed out as she came in.

While she did her job, Special Agent Kimberly DiCicco did hers. She met Quinniock at a diner off Highway 12. He slid into the booth across from her, nodded. “Agent.”

“Lieutenant. Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem. Just coffee,” he told the waitress.

“I’ll get right down to it, if that’s okay,” DiCicco began when the waitress had turned over the cup already in place, filled it and moved off.

“Saves time.”

“You know the area better than I do, the people better than I do. You know more of the connections, the frictions, and you just recently questioned the victim over the vandalism. I could use your help.”

“The department’s always happy to cooperate, especially since your asking saves me from coming to you trying to wrangle a way in. Or working around you if you refused.”

“Saves time,” she said, echoing him, “and trouble. You have a good reputation, Lieutenant.”

“As do you. And according to Rowan Tripp, we’re both snappy dressers.”

DiCicco smiled, very faintly. “That is a nice tie.”

“Thanks. It appears we’ve taken the time and trouble to check each other out. My thinking, it’s your jurisdiction, Agent DiCicco, but the victim is one of mine. We’ll get what we both want quicker if we play to our strengths. Why don’t you tell me who you’re looking at, and I might be able to give you some insight.”

“Let’s take the victim first. I think I have a sense of her after reviewing the evidence, compiling interviews and observations. My leading conclusion is Dolly Brakeman was a liar, by nature and design, with some selfdeception thrown in.”

“I wouldn’t argue with that conclusion. She was also impulsive, while at the same time being what I call a stewer. She tended to hoard bad feelings, perceived insults, and let them stew—then act impulsively with the switch flipped.”

“Taking off when Jim Brayner died,” DiCicco said, “even though it was a time she’d have most needed and benefited from home, family, support.”

“She had a fight with her father.”

DiCicco sat back. “I wondered.”

“I got this from Mrs. Brakeman, when I talked to her after the vandalism at the base. Dolly came home out of her mind after learning of Jim’s accident, and that’s when she told her parents she was pregnant, and that she’d quit her job. Brakeman didn’t take it well. They went at each other, and he said something along the lines of her getting her ass back to base, getting her job back or finding somebody else to freeload on. Dolly packed up and lit out. A little more maneuvering got me the fact that she packed up her parents’ five-hundred-dollar cash emergency envelope for good measure.”

“Five hundred doesn’t take you far.”

“Her mother sent her money now and again. And when Dolly called from Bozeman, in labor, the Brakemans drove out, patched things up.”

“Babies are excellent glue.”

“Dolly claimed to have been saved, and joined her mother’s church when they all came home.”

“Reverend Latterly’s church. I got that, and I’ve spoken to him. He made a point of telling me Leo Brakeman didn’t attend church.” She thought of what Marg had said over lemonade and cookies. “I can’t say I liked his way. His passive-aggressive way,” she added, and Quinniock nodded agreement. “He seems to feel Little Bear, Rowan Tripp, the rest of them failed to show Christian charity to a troubled soul. As harsh as it was, I prefer Leo Brakeman’s honest grief and rage.”

“Whatever his way, Irene Brakeman claims he helped the three of them—herself, her husband and Dolly, come to terms once she was back. What Dolly left out when she called her parents for help, and I found after some poking around, was she’d made arrangements for a private adoption in Bozeman, which had paid her expenses.”

“She planned to give the baby up?”

“She’s the only one who knows what she planned, but she didn’t contact the adoptive parents when she went into labor, nor the OB they’d paid for. Instead she went to the ER of a hospital across town and gave her Missoula address. By the time the other party found out what had happened, she was on her way back here. Since birth mothers have a right to change their minds, there wasn’t much they could do.”

DiCicco flipped open her notebook. “Do you have their names?”

“Yeah. I’ll give you all of it, but I don’t think we’re going to find either of these people tracked Dolly down here and killed her, then set fire to the forest.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a strong motive.”

“Are you still looking at Rowan Tripp?”

DiCicco sat back as the waitress breezed by to top off their coffee. “Let me tell you about Rowan Tripp. She’s got a temper. She’s got considerable power—physical strength, strength of will. She disliked Dolly intensely, on a personal level and in general terms. Her alibi is a man she’s currently sleeping with. Men will lie for sex.”

DiCicco paused to tip a fraction of a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee. “Dolly claimed Rowan had it in for her because Brayner tossed Rowan over for her. She was a liar,” DiCicco added before Quinniock could respond. “Rowan Tripp isn’t. In fact, she’s almost brutally upfront. If Dolly had had her face punched in, I’d put my finger on Tripp. But the kill spot off the road, the broken neck, the arson? That doesn’t jibe with my observations. Whoever killed her and put her in the forest might have expected the fire to burn her to ash, or at least for it to take more time for the remains to be discovered. It would’ve been monumentally stupid for Tripp to call the discovery in, and she’s not stupid.”

“We agree on that.”

“Sticking with the victim, I’ve spent some time trying to verify her claim she had work in Florence. So far, I haven’t been able to verify. I’ve started checking places like this, along the highway, but I haven’t found any that hired her, or anyone who remembers her coming in looking for work. And, given her history, I’m wondering why she’d go to the trouble of looking for work down this way when she recently deposited ten thousand dollars in two hits of five—I traced it back to Matthew Brayner—in a bank in Lolo. Not her usual bank,” DiCicco added, “which leads me to believe she didn’t want anyone knowing about it. Which likely includes her parents.”

He hadn’t hit on the money—yet—and money always mattered. “She might’ve been thinking about running again.”

“She might have. There’s another pattern in her history. Men. Which is why I’m going to start checking motels along the route from Florence to Missoula. Maybe she decided to try out the other Brayner brother.”

“Sex and money and guilt.” Quinniock nodded. “The trifecta of motives. Want to get started?”

17

Gull sat on his bed with his laptop. He’d answered personal e-mail, attached a couple of pictures he’d taken that morning of the mountains, of the camp. He’d done a little business and now brought up his hometown paper to scan the sports section.

He knew the jump ship was back, and wondered how long it would take Rowan to knock on his door.

She would, he thought, even if just to pick up the fight where they’d left off. She wasn’t the avoid-and-evade type, and, even if she were, it was damn near impossible to avoid and evade him while working on the same base.

He could wait.

Out of curiosity he did a Google search for wildfire arson investigation, and while he shifted through the results, considered heading into the lounge to see what was up, or maybe see if Dobie wanted to drive into town.

Always easier to wait when you’re occupied, he thought. Then an article caught his interest. He answered the knock on the door absently.

“Yeah, it’s open.”

“Unlocked is different than open.”

He glanced over. Rowan leaned on the jamb.

“It’s open now.”

She left the door ajar as she stepped in, and angled to see the laptop screen. “You’re boning up on arson?”

“Specific to wildfire. It seemed relevant at the moment. How’d the mop-up go?”

“You left a hell of a mess.” She shifted her gaze from the screen to his face. “I heard things got hairy up there.”

“There were moments.” He smiled. “Missed you.”

“Because I’m so good or so good-looking?”

“All of the above.” He shut down the computer. “Why don’t we take a walk, catch the sunset.”

“Yeah, all right.”

When they went out, she pulled her sunglasses out of her pocket. “The fact that I’m surprised and not happy that my father’s involved with a woman I don’t know and he didn’t tell me about doesn’t make me jealous.”

“Is that what we’re calling it? Surprised and not happy. I’d’ve defined it as outraged and incensed.”

“Due to the surprise.” She clipped the words off.

“I’ll give you that,” Gull decided, “since you’ve apparently gone your entire life without witnessing a lip-lock.”

“I don’t think I overreacted. Very much.”

“Why quibble about degrees?”

“I’m not apologizing for telling you to butt the hell out.”

“Then I don’t have to be gracious and accept a nonexistent apology. I’m not apologizing for expressing my opinion over your not very much of an overreaction.”

“Then I guess we’re even.”

“Close enough. It’s a hell of a sunset.”

She stood with him, watching the sun sink toward the western peaks, watched it drown in the sea of red and gold and delicate lavender it spawned.

“I don’t have to like her, and I sure as hell don’t have to trust her.”

“You’re like a dog with a bone, Rowan.”

“Maybe. But it’s my bone.”

Silence, Gull thought, could express an opinion as succinctly as words. “So. I heard about Dolly’s father coming down on you.”

“Over and done.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you butting in again, Gull?”

“If you want to call it that. You’ve got to have sympathy for a man dealing with what he’s dealing with, so maybe he gets a pass this time. But that’s what’s over and done. Nobody lays into my girl.”

“Your girl? I’m not your girl.”

“Are we or are we not together here and watching the sunset? And isn’t it most likely you and I will end up naked in bed together tonight?”

“Regardless—”

“Regardless, my ass.” He grabbed her chin, pulled her in for a kiss. “That makes you my girl.”

“Holy hell, Gull, you’re making my back itch.”

Amused, he scratched it, then hooked an arm around her shoulders and kept walking. “So, later. Your place or mine?”

With the light softening, she pulled her sunglasses off, then swung them by the earpiece. “Some people are intimidated or put off by a certain level of confidence.”

“You’re not.”

“No, I’m not. Fortunately for you, I like it. Let’s—” She jerked back at the sharp crack in the air. “Jesus, was that—”

The breath whooshed out of her lungs when Gull knocked her to the ground and landed on top of her.

“Stay down,” he ordered, and saw a bullet dig into the ground six feet away. “Hold on to me. We’re going to roll.” The minute her arms clamped around him, he pushed his body over, felt her do the same, so they covered the ground in a fast, ungainly roll to shield themselves behind one of the jeeps parked outside a hangar.

A third report snapped, pinging metal overhead.

“Where’s it coming from? Can you tell?”

Gull shook his head, keeping his body over hers while he waited for the next shot. But silence held as seconds ticked by, then shattered with the shouts and rushing feet.

“For Christ’s sake, get down, get cover,” he called out. “There’s a sniper.”

Dobie bolted for the jeep, dived. “Are you hit? Are you—Goddamn, Gull, you’re bleeding.”

Rowan bucked under him. “Get off, get off. Let me see.”

“Just scraped up from the asphalt. I’m not shot. Stay down.”

“Rifle.” Dobie shifted to a crouch. “I know a rifle shot when I hear one. From over there in the trees, I think. Damn good thing he’s a shitty shot ’cause the two of you were sitting ducks. Standing ducks.”

“Hey!” Trigger called from the far side of the hangar. “Is anybody hurt?”

“We’re okay,” Rowan answered. “Don’t come out here. He may be waiting for somebody to step into the clear.”

“L.B.’s got the cops coming. Just stay where you are for now.”

“Copy that. Get off me, Gull.”

“He tackled you good,” Dobie commented when Gull pushed off. “You know he played football in high school. Quarterback.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Rowan muttered it as she turned Gull’s arm over to examine the bloody scrapes on his elbows and forearms. “You got grit in these.”

“I liked basketball better,” Gull said conversationally. “But I didn’t have the height to compete. Had the speed, but I’d topped out at six feet until senior year when I had a spurt and added two more. Baseball, now, I like that better than either. Had a pretty good arm back in the day.”

Maybe talking kept his mind off the scrapes, she decided, because they had to sting like hell.

“I thought you were the track star.”

“My best thing, but I like sports, so I dabbled. Anyway, I liked collecting letters. I graduated a four-letter man.”

Rowan studied him in the fading light. “We’re sitting behind this jeep, hiding from some nutcase with a rifle, and you’re actually bragging about your high-school glory days?”

“It passes the time. Plus I had very impressive glory days.” He brushed dirt off her cheek. “We’re okay.”

“If you two are going to get sloppy, I’m not looking the other way.” Dobie leaned back against the tire. “Wish I had a beer.”

“Once this little interlude’s over,” Gull told him, “the first round’s on me.”

“I was thinking about going to the lounge, kicking back with some screen and a beer. Just stepped outside for a minute, and bam! bam!”

“So you ran out, in the open, instead of back in?” Rowan demanded.

“I wasn’t sure if either of you were hit or not, the way you both went down.”

Rowan leaned over Gull, kissed Dobie on the mouth. “Thanks.”

“I’m not kissing you. He’s gone,” Gull added. “He took off after the third shot.”

“I expect so,” Dobie agreed. “It’s full dusk now. He can’t see squat, unless he’s got infrared.”

“Let’s go.” Rowan pushed up to her haunches. “If he wants to shoot us, he could circle around in the dark and get us while we’re sitting here.”

“She’s got a point. Don’t run in a straight line. That’s what they say in the movies,” Gull pointed out. “Barracks?”

“Barracks,” Dobie agreed.

Before either man could react, Rowan sprang up, a runner off the blocks, and revved straight into a sprint.

“Goddamn it.”

Gull raced after her—could have caught her, passed her, they both knew. But he stayed at her back, zigging when she zigged, zagging when she zagged.

“We’re coming in!” Rowan called out, then hit the door.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Gull grabbed her, spun her around. “Taking off like that?”

“I was thinking you weren’t going to be my human shield twice in one day. I appreciate the first, I’m not stupid.”

“You don’t get to decide for me.”

“Right back at you.”

They shouted at each other while people shouted around them. Libby let out a piercing whistle. “Shut up! Shut the hell up. Everybody!” She shoved her hands through the hair dripping from the shower she’d leaped out of. “Gull, you’re bleeding on the floor. Somebody get a first-aid kit and clean him up. The cops are on their way. Okay, the cops are here,” she amended when the sirens sounded. “L.B. wants everybody inside until . . . until we know something.”

“Come on, Gull.” Janis gave him a light pat on the butt. “I’ll be Nurse Betty.”

“Is everybody accounted for?” Rowan asked.

“Between here, the cookhouse and Operations, we’re all good.” Yangtree stepped forward, drew her in for a hug that nearly cracked her ribs. “I was watching TV. I thought it was a backfire. Then Trig came running through, said somebody was shooting, and you were out there.” He drew her back. “What the fuck, Ro?”

“My thought exactly. Why would somebody shoot at us?”

“People are batshit.” Dobie shrugged. “Maybe one of those government’s-our-enemy types. Y’all got those militia types out here.”

“Three shots isn’t much of a statement.”

“It would’ve been,” Trigger pointed out, “if one of them had hit you or Gull.”

“Your father’s going to hear about this, Ro,” Yangtree commented. “You call him now before he does, tell him you’re okay.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She glanced down toward Gull’s quarters before she stepped into her own to make the call.

Steaming, Gull endured the sting as Janis cleaned out cuts and scrapes. “What the hell’s wrong with her?”

“Since the blood on her appeared to be mostly yours, not much. And I know you’re talking about how she thinks or acts, but you’ll have to be more specific.”

“How can somebody trained to be a team player, who is a team player in ninety percent of her life, be the damn opposite the other ten?”

“First, smoke jumpers work as a crew, but you know damn well we all have to think, act and react individually. But more to the point, with Rowan it’s defense mechanism, pride, an instinctive hesitation to trust.”

“Defense against what?”

“Against having her pride smacked and her trust betrayed. Personally, I think she’s dealt pretty well with being abandoned by her mother as an infant. But I don’t think anybody ever gets all the way over being abandoned. Okay, I’m going to need to use the tweezers to get some of this debris out. Feel free to curse me.”

He said, “Fuck,” then gritted his teeth. “You trust every time you get in the door. The spotter, the pilot, yourself. Hell, you have to trust fate isn’t going to send a speeding bus your way every time you step out of your house. If you can’t take that same leap with another human being, you end up alone.”

“I think she’s always figured she would. She’s got her father, us, a tight pack of people. But a serious, committed one-to-one? She’s not sure she believes in them in general, much less for herself.”

A bit of gravel hit the bowl with a tiny ting. “I’ve worked with Ro a long time. She’s a proactive optimist in general. In that she—or we, depending—will find a way to make this work. In her personal life, she’s a proactive pessimist who has no problem living in the moment because this isn’t going to last anyway.”

“She’s wrong.”

“Nobody’s proven that to her yet.” She glanced up. “Can you?”

“If I don’t bleed to death from this sadistic game of Operation you’re playing.”

“I haven’t hit the buzzer yet. You’re the first guy, in my opinion, who has a shot at proving her wrong. So don’t screw it up. There.” She dropped more grit into the bowl. “I think that’s it. You lost a lot of skin here, Gull,” she began as she applied antiseptic. “Banged up your elbows pretty good, but it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.”

“Not to knock the results, but I keep wondering why it wasn’t a hell of a lot worse.”

He looked over at the rap on the door frame. As she had earlier, Rowan leaned on the jamb, but now she had two beers hooked in her fingers. “I brought the patient a beer.”

“He could probably use one.” Janis bandaged the gouges around his right elbow. “Any word?”

“The cops have the grounds lit up like Christmas. If they’ve found anything, they’re not sharing it yet.”

“Okay. You’re as done as I can do.” Janis picked up the bowl filled with grit, bloodied cloths and cotton swipes. “Take two ibuprofen and call me in the morning.”

“Thanks, Janis.”

She gave his leg a squeeze as she rose. “None but the brave,” she said, then walked out.

Rowan stepped over, offered a beer. “Do you want to fight?”

Watching her over the bottle, he took a long swallow. “Yeah.”

“Seems like a waste, considering, but fine. Pick your topic.”

“Let’s start with the latest—we can always work back—and how you ran, alone, into the open out there.”

“We’d decided to try for the barracks, so I did.”

“Of the three of us, I’m the fastest—and the one best qualified to draw and evade fire, if there’d been any.”

“I said I like overconfidence, but this idea you can dodge bullets might be taking it too far. I can and do take care of myself, Gull. I do it every day. I’m going to keep doing it.”

He considered himself a patient, reasonable man—mostly. But she’d just about flipped his last switch.

“The fact you can and do take care of yourself is one of the most appealing things about you. You idiot. Handling yourself on a jump, in a fire or in general, no problem. This was different.”

“How?”

“Have you ever been shot at before?”

“No. Have you?”

“First time for both of us, and clearly a situation where you should have trusted me to take care of you.”

“I don’t want anybody to take care of me.”

“You know, that’s just stupid. Janis just took care of me, yet somehow my pride and self-esteem remain unbattered and unbowed.”

“Bandaging somebody up isn’t the same as falling on them like they were a grenade you were going to smother with your own body to save the guys in the trenches. And look at you, Gull. I’ve barely got a scrape because you took the brunt of that roll instead of letting me take my share.”

“I protect what I care about. If you’ve got a problem with that, you’ve got a problem with me.”

“I protect what I care about,” she tossed back at him.

“Were you protecting a fellow smoke jumper, or me?”

“You are a fellow smoke jumper.”

He stepped closer. “Is it what I do, or who I am? And don’t try the ‘you are what you do’ because I’m a hell of a lot more, and less, and dozens of other things. So are you. I care about you, Rowan. The you who’s got a laugh like an Old West saloon girl, the you who picks out constellations in the night sky and smells like peaches. I care about that woman as much as I do the fearless, smart, tireless one who puts her life on the line every time the siren goes off.”

Wariness clouded her eyes. “I don’t know what to say when you talk like that.”

“Is the only thing you see when you look at me another jumper you’ll work with for the season?”

“No.” She let out an unsteady breath. “No, that’s not all, but—”

“Stop at no.” He cupped a hand at the back of her neck. “Do us both a favor and stop at no. That’s enough for now.”

She moved into him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist when their lips met. She felt her equilibrium shift, as if she’d nearly overbalanced on a high ledge. With it came a flutter, under her heart, at the base of her throat. She gripped harder, wanting to find the heat, the buzz, an affirmation that they were both alive and whole.

Nothing more than that, she told herself. It didn’t have to be more than that.

“Getting a room’s not always enough,” Trigger said from the doorway. “Sometimes you gotta close the door.”

“Go ahead,” Gull invited him, then slid back into the kiss.

“Sorry, they want you in the lounge.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Rowan demanded, and gave Gull’s bottom lip a nip.

“The lieutenant guy and the tree cop. If you’re not interested in finding out who the hell shot at you tonight, I can tell them, gee, you’re out on a date.”

Gull lifted his head. “Be right there.” He looked at Rowan, ran his hands over her shoulders, down her arms. “My place,” he said. “The decision that was so rudely interrupted earlier. My place tonight because it’s closer to the lounge.”

“Not a bad reason.” She picked up the beers, handed him his. “Let’s get this done so we can close the door.”

DiCicco sat with Quinniock and L.B. in the lounge. Generally at that time of the evening, people sprawled on sofas and chairs watching TV, or gathered around one of the tables playing cards. Somebody might’ve buzzed up some microwave pizza or popcorn. And there would always be somebody willing to talk fire.

But now the TV screen remained blank and silent, the sofas empty.

L.B. got up from the table, walked quickly over to wrap an arm around Gull and Rowan in turn. “You’re okay. That matters most. Next is finding the bastard.”

“Did they find anything?” Rowan asked.

“If we could get your statements first.” DiCicco gestured to the table. “It should help us get a clearer picture.”

“The picture’s clear,” Rowan countered. “Somebody shot at us. He missed.”

“And when you file a fire report, does it just say: ‘Fire started. We put it out’?”

“If we could just take it from the beginning.” Quinniock held up his hands for peace. “The witness, Dobie Karstain, says he stepped outside the barracks around nine thirty. A few minutes later, he noticed the two of you walking together between the training field and the hangar area, approximately thirty yards from the trees. Does that sound accurate?”

“That’s about right.” Gull took the lead as it seemed obvious to him DiCicco put Rowan’s back up. “We went for a walk, took a couple of beers, watched the sunset. You’d narrow down where we were if you find the bottles. We dropped them when the shooting started.”

He took them through it, step by step.

“Dobie said it sounded like rifle fire,” he continued, “and it was coming from the trees. He grew up hunting in rural Kentucky, so I’m inclined to believe he’s right. We couldn’t see anyone. The first shot fired right around sunset. The whole thing probably only lasted about ten minutes. It seemed longer.”

“Have either of you had trouble with anyone, been threatened?” When Rowan merely arched her eyebrows, DiCicco inclined her head. “Other than Leo Brakeman.”

“We’re a little too busy around here to get into arguments with the locals or tourists.”

“Actually, there was an incident with you, Mr. Curry, Ms. Tripp and Mr. Karstain in the spring.”

“That would be when Rowan objected to one of those three yahoos’ behavior toward her, and them sopping their pride by ganging up on Dobie when he came out of the bar.”

“And you kicking their asses,” Rowan concluded. “Good times.”

“The same holds true on them as it did when we had the vandalism,” Gull continued. “It’s pretty hard to see them coming back here. And harder still to see any one of them staking us out from the woods and taking shots at us when we went for a walk. We’re in and out all the damn time anyway. Together, separately. It’s stretching it even more to figure those bozos from Illinois came all the way back, then got lucky when Ro and I walked out to give them some target practice.”

“How do you know they’re from Illinois?” DiCicco asked.

“Because that’s what the plate on the pickup said—and I did some checking on it after the ready room business.”

“You never told me that.”

Gull shrugged at Rowan. “It didn’t amount to anything to tell you. The big guy—and he was the alpha—owns a garage out in Rockford. He’s an asshole, and he’s had a few bumps for assaults—bar fights his specialty—but nothing major.” He shrugged again when DiCicco studied him. “The Internet. You can find out anything if you keep looking.”

“All right. You two have recently become involved,” DiCicco said. “Is there anyone who might resent that? Any former relationship?”

“I don’t date the kind of woman who’d take a shot at me.” He gave Rowan the eye. “Until maybe now.”

“I shoot all my former lovers, so your fate’s already set.”

“Only if we get to the former part.” He covered her hand with his. “It was either a local with a grudge against one or both of us specially, or the base in general. Or a wacko who wanted to shoot up a federal facility.”

“A terrorist?”

“I think a terrorist would’ve used more ammo,” Gull said to DiCicco. “But any way you slice it, he was a crap shot. Unless he’s a really good shot and was just trying to scare and intimidate.”

Rowan’s gaze sharpened. “I didn’t think of that.”

“I think a lot. I can’t swear to it, but I think the closest one hit about six or seven feet away from where we hit the ground. That’s not a comfortable distance when bullets are involved, but it’s a distance. Another sounded like it hit metal, the hangar. Way above our heads. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a couple of kids on a dare. Smoke jumpers think they’re so cool, let’s go make them piss their pants.

“It’s a theory,” he claimed when Rowan rolled her eyes.

“Lieutenant.” A uniformed cop stepped in.

“Hi, Barry.”

“Ro. Glad you’re okay. Sir, we found the weapon, or what we believe to be the weapon.”

“Where?”

“About twenty yards into the trees. A Remington 700 model—bolt action. The special edition. It was covered up with leaves.”

“Stupid,” Rowan mumbled. “Stupid to leave it there.”

“More stupid if it’s got a brass name plaque on the stock,” L.B. said. “I went hunting with Leo Brakeman last fall, and he carried a special edition 700. He was real proud of it.”

Rowan’s hand balled into a fist under Gull’s. “So much for theories.”

When DiCicco and Quinniock went out to examine the weapon, L.B. walked over to the coffeemaker.

“You know,” Ro said, “she told those lies to her father. All those lies, and they drove him to come out here with a gun and try to kill me.”

“I’d say you’re half right.” L.B. sat with his coffee, sighed. “The lies drove him to come out here with a gun, but, like I said, I’ve been hunting with Leo. I saw him take down a buck with that rifle, at thirty yards with the buck on the run. If he’d wanted to put a bullet in you, you’d have a bullet in you.”

“I guess it was my lucky day then.”

“Something snapped in him. I’m not excusing him, Ro. There’s no excuse for this. But something’s snapped in him. What the hell’s Irene going to do now? Her daughter murdered, and her husband likely locked up, an infant to care for. She hasn’t even buried Dolly yet, and now this.”

“I’m sorry for them. For all of them.”

“Yeah, it’s a damn sorry situation. I’m going to go see if the cops will tell me what happens next.” He went out, leaving his untouched coffee behind.

18

Too wound up to sit, Rowan pushed up, wandered the room, peeked out the window, circled back. Gull propped his feet on the chair she’d vacated and decided to drink L.B.’s abandoned coffee.

“I want to do something,” Rowan complained. “Just sitting here doesn’t feel right. How can you just sit here?”

“I’m doing something.”

“Drinking coffee doesn’t count as something.”

“I’m sitting here, I’m drinking coffee. And I’m thinking. I’m thinking if it’s Brakeman’s rifle, and if Brakeman was the one shooting it, did he just go stand in the trees and assume you’d eventually wander out into range?”

“I don’t know if it had to be me. He’s pissed at all of us, just mostly at me.”

“Okay, possible.” He found the coffee bitter, wished for a little sugar to cut the edge. But just didn’t feel like getting up for it. “So Brakeman stands in the woods with his rifle, staking out the base. He gets lucky and we come along. If he’s as good a shot as advertised, why did he miss?”

“Because it has to be a hell of a lot different to shoot a human being than a buck. Nerves. Or he couldn’t bring himself to kill me—us—and decided to scare us to death instead.”

“Also possible. Why leave the weapon? Why leave a special edition, which had to cost, which he cared enough about to put his name on, under a pile of leaves? Why leave it behind at all when he had to know the cops would do a search?”

“Panic. Impulse. He wasn’t thinking clearly—obviously. Hide it, get out, come back for it another time. And maybe take a few more shots.” She stopped, rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck as she studied Gull. “And you don’t think Leo Brakeman shot at us.”

“I think it might be interesting to know who had access to his gun. Who might’ve liked causing him trouble, and wouldn’t feel too bad about scaring you doing it.” He sipped at the coffee. “But it could’ve been Brakeman following impulse, getting lucky, being nervous and panicking.”

“When you say it like that, it’s a lot to swallow.”

She plopped down in L.B.’s chair as Gull had opened her mind to alternatives. And thinking was doing, she reminded herself.

“I guess his wife would have access, but I have a hard time seeing her doing this. Plus, I’ve never heard of her going hunting or target shooting. She’s more the church-bake-sale type. And it’s easier to believe she might panic because she’s more the quiet, even a little timid, type. If you get past the first step, her actually coming out here with a rifle, the rest goes down.”

“Maybe a double bluff,” she considered aloud. “He left the rifle so he could say, hey, would anybody be that stupid? But I don’t know if he’d be that cagey. I just don’t know these people very well. We’ve never had much interaction, even when Dolly worked here. Which means I don’t know if anybody’s got a grudge against Brakeman, or would know enough to use him as a fall guy. It’s easier if it’s Brakeman. Then it would be done, and there wouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

“It’s up to the cops anyway. We can let it go.”

“That’s passive, and that’s what’s driving me crazy. Who killed Dolly? That’s the first question. Jesus, Gull, what if her father did?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She hooked her feet around the legs of the chair, leaned forward. “Say they had a fight. Say she’s coming back from Florence—if she got work there like she claimed—gets the flat. Calls her father to come fix it. I can’t picture Dolly with a lug wrench and jack. He comes out, and they get into it over something. Her dumping the baby on her mother so much, maybe having the kid in the first place, or just dragging him out that time of night. Things get out of hand. She takes a fall, lands wrong, breaks her neck. He freaks, puts her body in the truck. He’s got to figure out what to do, decides to destroy the evidence—and the rest follows. He knows the area, the trails, and he’s strong enough to have carried her in.”

“Plausible,” Gull decided. “Maybe he confesses to his wife, and you get part two. There’s another hypothesis.”

“Share.”

“You said you didn’t know Dolly that well, but you had definite opinions about her. Jim died last August. We’re moving toward July. Is she the type to be without a man for a year?”

Rowan opened her mouth, shut it again, then sat back. “No. And why didn’t I think of that? No, she’d never go this long without a man. There’s a stronger case for that knowing that her whole I-found-Jesus deal was bogus.”

“Maybe the current guy’s in Florence. Maybe that’s why she got work there, or said she did. Or maybe they just met up in a motel on Twelve or thereabouts.”

“Lovers’ quarrel, and he kills her. If there’s a he. There had to be—it’s Dolly. Or her father found out, and so on. But if she had one on the line in Florence, why come back here anyway? Why not just go there, be with him? Because he’s married,” Rowan said before Gull could comment. “She fooled around with married men all the time.”

“If so, it’s more likely he’s in Missoula. She came back here, got work here at the base. She’d want to be close to whoever she was sleeping with. Say, he’s married, or there’s some other reason why they can’t be open about a relationship. Then you have the meet-up somewhere away from where people know you, would recognize you.”

“You’re good at this.”

“It’s like playing a game. You work the levels.” He took her hand again. “Except it’s not characters, it’s real people.”

“It still feels better to play it through. And here’s another thing. Dolly wasn’t nearly as smart or clever as she liked to think. If she was sleeping with somebody, she’d have dropped hints. Maybe to Marg. More likely to Lynn. She was going to church, so maybe to somebody she made friends with there.”

“It would be interesting to find out.”

“It would.” She needed to move again, do more than think. “Why don’t we go outside, see what’s going on?”

“Good idea.”

“Quinniock likes me, I think. Maybe he’ll give us a couple of nibbles.”

When they went out, she spotted Barry heading toward his patrol car. “Hey, Barry. Is Lieutenant Quinniock around?”

“He and Agent DiCicco just left. Do you need something, Ro?”

She gave Gull a quick glance. “I could sure use a little reassurance. I’d sleep better tonight.”

“I can tell you the weapon we found is Leo Brakeman’s. The lieutenant and DiCicco are on their way to his place to talk to him.”

“Talk.”

“That’s the first step. I had to back up Little Bear when he told them Leo’s a damn good shot. I don’t know if it makes you feel better or not, but I don’t think he was aiming for you.”

“It doesn’t make me feel worse.”

“He was wrong blaming you for what happened to Dolly. Some people just can’t get their lives together.”

“I meant to ask Lieutenant Quinniock if they found out where she’d gotten work. Maybe somebody she knew or met there killed her.”

Barry hesitated, then shrugged. “It doesn’t look like she was working. It’s nothing for you to worry about, Ro.”

“Barry.” She put a hand on his arm. “Come on. I’m in the middle of this whether I want to be or not. What was she doing coming back from down that way if she didn’t have a job?”

“I can’t say for sure, and I shouldn’t say at all.” He puffed out his cheeks as she kept looking into his eyes. “All I know is the police artist is scheduled to work with somebody tomorrow. The word is it’s a maid from some motel down off Twelve. Whoever he is, if we can ID him, the lieutenant’s going to want to talk to him.”

“Thanks, Barry.” She moved in to hug him. “Erin got lucky with you. Tell her I said so.”

“I’ll do that. And you don’t worry. We’re looking out for you.”

Gull slipped his hands in his pockets as Barry got in the car. “You didn’t come down on him for saying he was looking out for you.”

“Cops are supposed to look out for everybody. Besides, Barry gets a pass. He was my first. Actually we were each other’s firsts, a scenario I don’t necessarily recommend unless both participants have a solid sense of humor. That was several years before he met Erin, his wife, and the mother of his two kids.”

“My first was Becca Rhodes. She was a year older and experienced. It went quite smoothly.”

“Are you still friends with Becca Rhodes?”

“I haven’t seen her since high school.”

“See? Humor wins out. Dolly never worked in Florence,” Rowan added. “Our little what-if session hit a mark. A man, a motel—possibly a murderer.” She tipped her head back, found the sky. “I feel less useless and victimized. That counts for a lot. I’m going to talk to Lynn first chance I get, just to see if Dolly dropped any crumbs.”

Time to put it away for the night, Gull decided, and draped an arm over her shoulder. “Pick one out for me. A constellation. Not the Dippers. Even I can find them. Usually.”

“Okay. Then you’ll spot Ursa Minor there.” She took his hand, used it to outline the connection of stars. “Now, the stars in this one aren’t very bright, but if you follow that west, connect the dots, going south and over—it winds around the Little Dipper, see? There. You’ve got Draco. The dragon. It seems apt for a couple of smoke jumpers.”

“Yeah, I get it. Pretty cool. Now that we’ve got our constellation, we just need to decide on our song.”

He lightened her load, she thought. No doubt about it. “You’re so full of it, Gulliver.”

“Only because I have so much depth.”

“Hell.” She turned into him, indulged them both with a deep, dreamy kiss. “Let’s go to bed.”

“You read my mind.”

“DID YOU FIND who killed my girl?” Leo demanded the minute he opened the door.

“Let’s go inside and sit down,” Quinniock suggested.

He and DiCicco had discussed their approach on the drive, and, as agreed, Quinniock took the lead. “Mrs. Brakeman, we’d like to talk with both of you.”

Irene Brakeman linked her hands together at her heart. “It’s about Dolly. You know who hurt Dolly.”

“We’re pursuing several avenues of investigation.” DiCicco kept her voice clipped. It wasn’t quite good cop/bad cop, but more cold cop/warm cop. “There are some matters we need to clear up with you. To start with, Mr. Brakeman—”

Quinniock touched a hand to her arm. “Why don’t we all sit down? I know it’s late, but we’d appreciate if you gave us some time.”

“We answered questions. We let you go through Dolly’s room, through her things.” Leo continued to bar the door with his knuckles white on the knob. “We were going up to bed. If you don’t have anything new to tell us, just leave us in peace.”

“There is no peace until we know who did this to Dolly.” Irene’s voice pitched, broke. “Go up to bed if you want to,” Irene told her husband with a tinge of disgust. “I’ll talk to the police. Go on upstairs and shake your fists at God, see if that helps. Please, come in.”

She moved forward, a small woman who pushed her burly husband aside so that he stepped back, his head hung down like a scolded child’s.

“I’m just tired, Reenie. I’m so damn tired. And you’re wearing yourself to the bone, tending the baby and worrying.”

“We’re not asked to lift more than we can carry. So we’ll lift this. Do you want some coffee, or tea, or anything?”

“Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Brakeman.” Quinniock took a seat in the living room on a chair covered with blue and red flowers. “I know this is hard.”

“We can’t even bury her yet. They said you need to keep her awhile more, so we can’t give our daughter a Christian burial.”

“We’ll release her to you as soon as we can. Mrs. Brakeman, the last time we spoke, you said Dolly got a job in Florence, as a cook.”

“That’s right.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap, a working woman’s hands wearing a plain gold band. “She felt like she didn’t want to take a job in Missoula after what went on at the base. I think she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed, Leo,” Irene snapped as he started to object. “Or she should have been.”

“They never treated her decent there.”

“You know that’s not true.” She spoke more quietly now, briefly touched a hand to his. “You can’t take her word as gospel now that she’s gone when you know Dolly didn’t tell the real truth half the time or more. They gave her a chance there,” she said to Quinniock when Leo lapsed into brooding silence. “And Reverend Latterly and I vouched for her. She shamed herself, and us. She got work down there in Florence,” Irene continued after she’d firmed quivering lips. “She was a good cook, our girl. It was something she liked, even when she was just a little thing. She could be a good worker when she put her mind to it. The hours were hard, especially with the baby, but the pay was good, and she said she could go places.”

“You didn’t remember the name of the restaurant when we spoke before,” DiCicco prompted.

“I guess she never mentioned it.” Irene pressed her lips together again. “I was angry with her about what she did to Rowan Tripp, and embarrassed my own self. It’s hard knowing Dolly and I were at odds when she died. It’s hard knowing that.”

“I have to tell you, both of you, that Agent DiCicco and I have contacted or gone to every restaurant, diner, coffee shop between here and Florence, and Dolly didn’t work in any of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She wasn’t working in a restaurant,” DiCicco said briskly. “She didn’t get a job, didn’t leave here the night she died to go to work.”

“Hell she didn’t,” Leo protested.

“On the night she died, and on the afternoon prior, the evening prior to that, Dolly spent several hours in a room at the Big Sky Motel, off Highway Twelve.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Leo, hush.” Irene gripped her hands together tighter.

“Several witnesses identified her photograph,” Quinniock continued. “I’m sorry. She didn’t spend those hours alone. She met a man there, the same man each time. We have a witness who’ll be working with our police artist to reconstruct his face.”

With tears trickling down her face, Irene nodded. “I was afraid of it. I knew in my heart she was lying, but I was so upset with her. I didn’t care. Just go on then, I thought. Go on and do what you want, and I’ll have this baby to tend. Then, after . . . after it happened, I took that out of my mind. I told myself I’d been harsh and judgmental, a cold mother.

“I knew she was lying,” she said, turning to her husband. “I knew all the signs. But I couldn’t let myself believe it when she was dead. I just couldn’t have that inside me.”

“Do you have any idea who she was involved with?”

“I swear to you I don’t. But I think maybe it’d been going on awhile now. I know the signs. The way she’d whisper on the phone, or how she’d say she just needed to go out for a drive and clear her head, or had to run some errands so could I watch Shiloh? And she’d come home again with that look in her eye.”

She let out a shuddering breath. “She never meant to change.” Dissolving, Irene turned to press her face to Leo’s shoulder. “Maybe she just couldn’t.”

“Why do we have to know this?” Leo demanded. “Why do you have to tell us this? You don’t leave us anything.”

“I’m sorry, but Dolly was with this man the night she died. We need to identify him and question him.”

“He killed her. This man she gave herself to, this man she lied to us about.”

“We need to question him,” Quinniock repeated. “If you have any idea who she was meeting, we need to know.”

“She lied to us. We don’t know anything. We don’t have anything. Just leave us alone.”

“There’s something else, Mr. Brakeman, we need to discuss.” DiCicco took the ball. “At approximately nine thirty tonight, Rowan Tripp and Gulliver Curry were fired on while walking on the base.”

“That’s nothing to do with us.”

“On the contrary, a Remington 700 special edition rifle was found hidden in the woods flanking the base. It has your name engraved in a plaque on the stock.”

“You’re accusing me of trying to kill that woman? You come into my home, tell me my daughter was a liar and a whore and say I’m a killer?”

“It’s your gun, Mr. Brakeman, and you recently threatened Ms. Tripp.”

“My daughter was murdered, and she . . . My rifle’s in the gun safe. I haven’t had it out in weeks.”

“If that’s the case, we’d like you to show us.” DiCicco got to her feet.

“I’ll show you, then I want you out of my house.”

He lunged up, stomped his way back to the kitchen to yank open a door that led to a basement.

Or a man cave, DiCicco thought as she followed. Dead animal heads hung on the paneled wall in a wildlife menagerie that loomed over the oversized recliner and lumpy sofa. The table that fronted the sofa showed scars from years of boot heels and faced an enormous flat-screen television.

The room boasted an ancient refrigerator she imagined held manly drinks, a worktable for loading shot into shells, a utility shelf that held boxes of clay pigeons, shooting vests, hunting caps—and, oddly, she thought, several framed family photos, including a large one of a pretty baby girl with one of those elasticized pink bows circling her bald head.

A football lamp, a computer and piles of paperwork sat on a gray metal desk shoved in a corner. Above it hung a picture of Leo and several other men beside what she thought was a 747 aircraft, reminding her he worked at the airport as a mechanic.

And against the side wall stood a big, orange-doored gun safe.

Pumping off waves of heat and resentment, Leo marched to the safe, spun the dial for the combination, wrenched it open.

DiCicco had no problems with guns; in fact she believed in them. But the small arsenal inside the safe had her eyes widening. Rifles, shotguns, handguns—bolt action, semiauto, revolvers, under and overs, scopes. All showing the gloss of the well-cleaned, well-oiled, well-tended weapon.

But her scan didn’t turn up the weapon in question, and her hand edged toward her own as Leo Brakeman’s breathing went short and quick.

“You have an excellent collection of firearms, Mr. Brakeman, but you seem to be missing a Remington 700.”

“Somebody stole it.”

Her hand closed over the butt of her weapon when he whirled around, his face red, his fists clenched.

“Somebody broke in here and stole it.”

“There’s no record of you reporting a break-in.” Quinniock stepped up.

“Because I didn’t know. Somebody’s doing this to us. You have to find out who’s doing this to us.”

“Mr. Brakeman, you’re going to have to come with us now.” She didn’t want to draw on the man, hoped she wouldn’t have to, but DiCicco readied to do so.

“You’re not taking me out of my home.”

“Leo.” Quinniock spoke calmly. “Don’t make it worse now. You come quietly, and we’ll go in and talk about this. Or I’m going to have to cuff you and take you in forcibly.”

“Leo.” Irene simply collapsed onto a step. “My God, Leo.”

“I didn’t do anything. Irene, as God is my witness. I’ve never lied to you in my life, Reenie. I didn’t do anything.”

“Then let’s go in and talk this out.” Quinniock moved a step closer, laid a hand on Leo’s quivering shoulder. “Let’s try to get to the bottom of it.”

“Somebody’s doing this to us. I never shot at anybody out at the base, or anywhere else.” He jerked away from Quinniock’s hand. “I’ll walk out on my own.”

“All right, Leo. That would be best.”

Stiff-legged, he walked toward the steps. He stopped, reached for his wife’s hands. “Irene, on my life, I didn’t shoot at anybody. I need you to believe me.”

“I believe you.” But she dropped her gaze when she said it.

“You need to lock up now. You be sure to lock up the house. I’ll be home as soon as we straighten this out.”

ROWAN GOT THE WORD when she slipped into the cookhouse kitchen the next morning.

Lynn set down the hot bin of pancakes she carried, then wrapped Rowan in a hug. “I’m glad you’re all right. I’m glad everybody’s all right.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say.” Shaking her head, she picked up the bin again. “I have to get these on the buffet.”

At the stove, Marg scooped bacon from the grill, set it aside to drain before shifting over to pour a glass of juice. She held it out to Rowan. “Drink what’s good for you,” she ordered, then turned back to pull a batch of fresh biscuits from the oven. “They picked up Leo Brakeman last night.”

Rowan drank the juice. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

“I don’t know a lot, but I know they talked to him for a long time last night, and they’re holding him. I know he’s saying he didn’t do it. I’m feeling like Lynn. I don’t know what to think.”

“I think it was stupid to leave the rifle. Then again, the cops would do their CSI thing since they found at least one of the bullets. Then again, with his skill, at that range, he could’ve put all three of them into me.”

“Don’t say that.”

At the crack of Marg’s voice, Rowan walked over, rubbed a hand down Marg’s back. “He didn’t, so I can come in here and drink a juice combo of carrots, apples, pears and parsnips.”

“You missed the beets.”

“So that’s what that was. They’re better in juice than on a plate.”

Marg moved aside to take a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. “Go on in and eat your breakfast. I’ve got hungry mouths to feed.”

“I wanted to ask you. I wanted to ask both of you,” she said when Lynn came back with another empty tub. “Was Dolly seeing someone? Did she say anything about being involved?”

“She knew better than to start that business up around me,” Marg began, “when she kept saying how she was next thing to a grieving widow, and finding her comfort in God and her baby. But I doubt she stepped outside on a break to giggle on her cell phone because she’d called Dial-A-Joke.”

“She didn’t tell me anything, not directly,” Lynn put in. “But she said, a couple of times, how lucky I was to have a daddy for my kids, and how she knew her baby needed one, too. She said she spent a lot of time praying on it, and had faith God would provide.”

Lynn shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “I don’t like talking about her this way, but the thing is, she was a little sly when she said it, you know? And I thought, well, she’s already got her eye on a candidate. It wasn’t very nice of me, but it’s what I thought.”

“Did you tell the cops?”

“They just asked if she had a boyfriend, and like that. I told them I didn’t know of anybody. I wouldn’t have felt right telling them I thought she was looking for one. Do you think I should have?”

“You told them what you knew. I think I’m going to go get in my run, work up an appetite.” She saw Lynn bite her lip. “The cops have the rifle, and they have Brakeman. I can’t spend my life indoors. I’ll be back with an appetite.”

She walked outside. The shudder that went through her as she glanced toward the trees only stiffened her spine. She couldn’t live her life worried she had a target on her back. She put on the sunglasses—the ones Cards found where Gull had tackled her—and started the walk toward the track.

She could run on the road, she considered, but she was on the jump list, first load. The clouds over the mountains confirmed the forecast from the morning briefing. Cumulus overtimus, she thought, knowing the buildup could hurl lightning. She’d likely jump fire today, and get plenty of that overtime.

Better to stay on base in case.

“Hey.” Gull caught up with her at a light jog. “We running?”

“I thought you had things to do.”

“I said I wanted coffee, maybe some calories. And that was mostly to give you time to talk to Marg and Lynn. A straight three miles?”

“I . . .” Behind him, she saw Matt, Cards and Trigger come out of the cookhouse and head in her direction. Her eyes narrowed. “Did Lynn go in and tell the dining hall I was heading to the track?”

“What do you think?”

Now Dobie, Stovic and Gibbons herded out.

“Did she call up the Marines while she was at it? I don’t need a bunch of bodyguards.”

“What you’ve got is people who care about you. Are you really going to carp about that?”

“No, but I don’t see why . . .” Yangtree, Libby and Janis headed out from the direction of the gym. “For Christ’s sake, in another minute the whole unit’s going to be out here.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Half of you aren’t even in running gear,” she called out.

Trigger, in jeans and boots, reached her first. “We don’t wear running gear on a fire.”

She considered him. “Nice save.”

“When you run, we all run,” Cards told her. “At least everybody who’s not on duty with something else. We voted on it.”

“I didn’t get a vote.” She jabbed a finger at Gull. “Did you get a vote?”

“I got to add mine to the unanimous results this morning, so your vote is moot.”

“Fine. Dandy. We run.”

She took off for the track, then geared up to a sprint the minute she hit its surface. Just to see who’d keep up, besides Gull, who matched her stride for stride. She heard the scramble and pounding of feet behind her, then the hoots and catcalls as Libby zipped up to pass.

“Have a heart, Ro,” she shouted. “We’ve got old men like Yangtree out here.”

“Who’re you calling old!” He kicked it up a notch, edged out of the pack on the turn.

“Gimps like Cards hobbling back there in his boots.”

Amused, Ro glanced over her shoulder to see Cards shoot up his middle finger. And Dobie begin to run backward to taunt him.

She cut her pace back a bit because he was hobbling just a little, then laughed herself nearly breathless when Gibbons jogged by with Janis riding on his shoulders pumping her arms in the air.

“Bunch of lunatics,” Rowan decided.

“Yeah. The best bunch of lunatics I know.” Gull’s grin widened as Southern puffed by with Dobie on board. “Want a ride?”

“I’ll spare you the buck and a half on your back. Show them how it’s done, Fast Feet. You know you wanna.”

He gave her a pat on the ass and took off like a bullet to a chorus of cheers, insults and whistles.

By the time she made her three, Gull was sprawled on the grass, braced on his elbows to watch the show. Highly entertained, she stood, hands on hips, doing the same. Until she saw her father drive up.

“It’s a good thing he didn’t get here sooner,” she commented, “or he’d have been out on the track, too.”

“I’m betting he can hold his own.”

“Yeah, he can.” She started toward him, trying for an easy smile. But the expression on his face told her easy wouldn’t work.

He grabbed her, pulled her hard against him.

“I’m okay. I told you I was A-OK.”

“I didn’t come to see for myself last night because you asked me not to, because you said you had to talk to the cops, and needed to get some sleep afterward.” He drew her back, took a long study of her face. “But I needed to see for myself.”

“Then you can stop worrying. The cops have Brakeman. I texted you they found his gun and were going to get him. And they got him.”

“I want to see him. I want to look him in the eye when I ask him if he thinks hurting my daughter will bring his back. I want to ask him that before I bloody him.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But he didn’t hurt me, and he’s not going to hurt me. Look at that bunch.” She gestured toward the track. “I came out here for my run, and every one of them came out of their various holes.”

“All for one,” he murmured. “I need to talk to your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my . . . Dad, I’m not sixteen.”

“Boyfriend’s the easiest term for me. Have you had breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“Go on in, and I’ll sweet-talk Marg into feeding me with you—when I’m done talking to your boyfriend.”

“Just use his name. That should be easy.”

Lucas merely smiled, kissed her forehead. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

He crossed over to Gull, slapped hands with Gibbons, gave Yangtree a pat on the back as the man bent over to catch his breath.

“I want to talk to you a minute,” he said to Gull.

“Sure.” Gull pushed to his feet. His eyebrows lifted when Lucas walked away from the group, but he followed.

“I heard what you did for Rowan. You took care of her.”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say that to her.”

“I know better, but I’m saying it to you. I’m saying I’m grateful. She’s the world to me. She’s the goddamn universe to me. If you ever need anything—”

“Mr. Tripp—”

“Lucas.”

“Lucas, first, I figure mostly anyone would’ve done what I did, which wasn’t that big a deal. If Rowan’s instincts had kicked in first, she’d have knocked me down, and I’d’ve been under her. And second, I didn’t do it so you’d owe me a favor.”

“You scraped a lot of bark off those arms.”

“They’ll heal up, and they’re not keeping me off the jump list. So. No big.”

Lucas nodded, looked off toward the trees. “Am I supposed to ask what your intentions are regarding my daughter?”

“God, I hope not.”

“Because to my way of thinking, if you were just in it for the fun, me saying I owed you wouldn’t put your back up. So I’m going to give you that favor whether you want it or not. And here it is.” He looked back into Gull’s eyes. “If you’re serious about her, don’t let her push you back. You’ll have to hold on until she believes you. She’s a hard sell, but once she believes, she sticks.

“So.” Lucas held out a hand, shook Gull’s. “I’m going to go have breakfast with my girl. Are you coming?”

“Yeah. Shortly,” Gull decided.

He stood alone a moment, absorbing the fact that Iron Man Tripp had just given his blessing. And thinking over just what he wanted to do with it.

He mulled it over, taking his time walking toward the cookhouse. The siren sounded just before he reached it. Cursing the missed chance of breakfast, Gull turned on his heel and ran for the ready room.

19

After forty-eight hours battling a two-hundred-acre wildfire in the Beaverhead National Forest, getting shot at a few times added up to small change. Once she’d bolted down the last of a sandwich she’d ratted away, Rowan worked with her team, lighting fusees in a bitter attempt to kick the angry fire back before it rode west toward the national battlefield.

The head changed direction three times in two days, snarling at the rain of retardant and spitting it out.

The initial attack, a miserable failure, moved into a protracted, vicious extended one.

“Gull, Matt, Libby, you’re on spots. Cards, Dobie, we’re going to move west, take down any snags. Dig and cut and smother. We stop her here.”

Nobody spoke as they pushed, shoved, lashed the backfire east. The world was smoke and heat and noise with every inch forward a victory. About time, Rowan thought, about damn time their luck changed.

The snag she cut fell with a crack. She positioned to slice it into smaller, less appetizing logs. They’d shovel and drag limbs and coals away from the green, into the black, into a bone pile.

Starve her, Rowan thought. Just keep starving her.

She straightened a moment to stretch her back.

She saw it happen, so fast she couldn’t shout out much less leap forward. A knife-point of wood blew out of the cut Cards was carving and shot straight into his face.

She dropped her saw, rushing toward him even as he yelped in shock and pain and lost his footing.

“How bad? How bad?” she shouted, grabbing him as he staggered. She saw for herself the point embedded in his cheek, half an inch below his right eye. Blood spilled down to his jaw.

“For fuck’s sake,” he managed. “Get it out.”

“Hold on. Just hold on.”

Dobie trotted up. “What’re you two . . . Jesus, Cards, how the hell did you do that?”

“Hold his hands,” Rowan ordered as she dug into her pack.

“What?”

“Get behind him and hold his hands down. I think it’s going to hurt when I pull it out.” She set a boot on either side of Cards’s legs, pulled off her right glove. She clamped her fingers on the inch of jagged wood protruding from his cheek. “On three now. Get ready. One. Two—”

She yanked on two, watched the blood slop out, watched his eyes go a little glassy. Quickly, she pressed the pad of gauze she’d taken out of her pack to the wound.

“You’ve got a hell of a hole in your face,” she told him.

“You said on three.”

“Yeah, well, I lost count. Dobie, hold the pad, keep the pressure on. I have to clean that out.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Cards objected. “Just tape it over. We’ll worry about it later.”

“Two minutes. Lean back against Dobie.”

She tossed the bloody pad aside, poured water over the wound, hoping to flush out tiny splinters. “And try not to scream like a girl,” she added, following up the water with a hefty dose of peroxide.

“Goddamn it, Ro! Goddamn, fucking shit!”

Ruthless, she waited while the peroxide bubbled out dirt and wood, then doused it with more water. She coated another pad with antibiotic cream, added another, then taped it over what she noted was a hole in his cheek the size of a marble.

“We can get you out to the west.”

“Screw that. I’m not packing out. It was just a damn splinter.”

“Yeah.” Dobie held up the three-inch spear of wood. “If you’re fifty feet tall. I saved it for you.”

“Holy shit, that’s a fucking missile. I got hit with a wood missile. In the face. My luck,” he said in disgust, “has been for shit all season.” He waved off Rowan’s extended hand. “I can stand on my own.”

He wobbled a moment, then steadied.

“Take some of the ibuprofen in your PG bag. If you’re sure you’re fit, I want you to go switch off to scout spots. You’re not running a saw, Cards. You know better. Switch off, or I’ll have to report the injury to Ops.”

“I’m not leaving this here until she’s dead.”

“Then switch off. If that hole in your ugly face bleeds through those pads, have one of your team change it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He touched his fingers to the pad. “You’d think I cut off a leg,” he muttered, but headed down the line. When he’d gone far enough, she pulled out her radio, contacted Gull. “Cards is headed to you. He had a minor injury. I want one of you to head up to me, and he’ll take your place down there.”

“Copy that.”

“Okay, Dobie, get that saw working. And watch out for flying wood missiles. I don’t want any more drama.”

The backfire held. It took another ten hours, but reports from head to tail called the fire contained.

The sunset ignited the sky as she hiked back to camp. It reminded her of watching the sun set with Gull. Of bullets and blind hate. She dropped down to eat, wishing she could find that euphoria that always rose in her once a fire surrendered.

Yangtree sat down beside her. “We’re going to get some food in our bellies before we start mop-up. Ops has eight on tap for that. It’s up to you since he was on your team, but I think Cards should demob, get that wound looked at proper.”

“Agreed. I’m going to pack out with him. If they can send eight, let’s spring eight from camp.”

“My thinking, too. I tell you, Ro, I say I’m too old for this, but I’m starting to mean it. I might just ask your daddy for a job come the end of the season.”

“Hell. Cards is the one with the hole in his face.”

He looked toward the west, the setting sun, the black mountain. “I’m thinking I may want to see what it’s like to sit on my own porch on a summer night, drink a beer, with some female company if I can get it, and not have to think about fire.”

“You’ll always think about fire, and sitting on a porch, you’d wish you were here.”

He gave her a pat on the knee as he rose. “It might be time to find out.”

She had to browbeat Cards into packing out. Smoke jumpers, she thought, treated injuries like points of pride, or challenges.

He sulked on the flight home.

“I get why he’s in a mood.” Gull settled down beside her. “Why are you?”

“Sixty hours on fire might have something to do with it.”

“No. That’s why you’re whipped and more vulnerable to the mood, but not the reason for the mood.”

“Here’s what I don’t get, hotshot: why, after a handful of months, you think you know me so damn well. And another is why you spend so much time psychoanalyzing people.”

“Those are both pretty easy to get. The first is it may be a handful of months, but people who live and work together, particularly under intense conditions, tend to know and understand each other quicker than those who don’t. Add sleeping together, and it increases the learning curve. Second.”

He pulled out a bag of shelled peanuts, offered her some, then shrugged and dug in himself when she just glowered at him.

“Second,” he repeated. “People interest me, so I like figuring them out.”

He munched nuts. Whatever her mood or the reasons for it, he wasn’t inclined to lower his to match it. A hot shower and hot food, followed by a bed with a warm woman in it, ranged in his immediate future.

Who could ask for better?

“You’re starting to think about what’s waiting back at base. All the crap we’ve been too busy to worry about. What’s happened while we were catching fire, if the cops charged Brakeman, found Dolly’s killer. If not, what next?”

He glanced over toward Cards, who snored with his head on his pack, a fresh bandage snowy white against his soot-smeared face. “And you’re mixing in worrying how bad Cards messed his face up. Whatever Yangtree and you talked about before we demobbed topped it off.”

She said nothing for a moment. “Know-it-alls are irritating.” Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes. “I’m getting some sleep.”

“Funny, I think having somebody understand you is comforting.”

She opened one eye, cool, crystal blue. “I didn’t say you were an understand-it-all.”

“You’ve got me there.” Gull shut his eyes as well, and dropped off.

ROWAN HEADED STRAIGHT to the barracks after unloading her gear. To settle down, Gull decided, as much as clean up. Maybe she’d label it as “taking care of her,” and that was too damn bad, but he postponed his own agenda to hunt down L.B.

He waited in Operations while L.B. coordinated with the mop-up crew boss.

“Got a minute?”

“For the first time in three days, I’ve got a few. I’m stepping out,” L.B. announced, then jerked his head toward the door. “What’s on your mind?”

“You telling me the status of things around here so I can pass it on to Rowan.”

“I don’t know how much they’re keeping me in the loop, but let’s find a place to sit down.”

WHEN ROWAN STEPPED OUT of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, a still filthy Gull was sitting on the floor.

“Is something wrong with your shower?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been in it yet.”

“I’ve got a lot to do before I’m done, so we’ll have to reschedule the hot sex portion of the evening.”

“You’ve got a one-track mind, Swede. I like the track, but there are more than one.”

She opened a drawer, selected yoga pants and a top.

“I’ll give you the rundown,” Gull began. “Trigger dragged Cards to the infirmary. The wound’s clean. No infection, but it’s pretty damn deep. Plastic surgeon recommended, and after some bullshit, he’s going into town to see one in the morning. He wants to keep his pretty face.”

“That’s good.” She pulled on the pants and top without bothering with underwear—something Gull appreciated whatever the circumstances. “And it’ll be fun to rag him about plastic surgery,” she added, stepping back into the bath to hang the towel. “We ought to get some fun out of it.”

“Trigger already suggested they suck the lard out of his ass while they’re at it.”

“That’s a start.”

“They’ve charged Leo Brakeman.”

He watched her jerk, just a little, then cross over to sit on the side of the bed. “Okay. All right.”

“His rifle, prior threats and the fact he can’t verify his whereabouts for the time of the shooting. He admitted he and his wife had a fight, and he went out to drive around for a couple hours. He’d only just gotten back when the cops showed up at the door.”

“His wife could’ve lied for him.”

“He never asked her to. Some of this came from the cops, some of it’s via Marg. I could separate it out, but being a know-it-all, I figure Marg’s intel is as solid as the cops’.”

“You’d be right.”

“They fought about him coming out here, going off on you. About Dolly in general. I think losing a child either sticks the parents together like cement, or rips them up.”

“My father had a brother. A younger one. You probably know that, too, since you studied Iron Man.”

Gull said nothing, gave her room. “He died when he was three of some weird infection. He’d never been what you’d call robust, and, well, they couldn’t fix it. I guess it cemented my grandparents. Has he admitted it? Brakeman?”

“No. He’s claiming he was driving around, just tooling the backroads, that somebody broke in, took his rifle. Somebody’s framing him. His wife finally convinced him to get a lawyer. They held the bail hearing this morning. She put up their house to post his bond.”

“Jesus.”

“He’s not coming back around here, Ro.”

“That’s not what I mean. She’s dealing with more than anybody should have to deal with, and it just doesn’t feel like any of it’s her doing. I don’t know how she’s standing up to it.”

“She’s dealing with more yet. They identified a man Dolly met at a motel off Twelve the night she died. One she met there a number of times in the past few months. Reverend Latterly.”

“Their pastor? For the love of—” She broke off, slumped back. “Dolly was putting out for her mother’s padre, all the while claiming she’d been washed in the light of the Lord or whatever. It makes sense,” she said immediately. “Now it makes sense. God will provide. That’s what she said to Lynn. Her baby would need a father, and God would provide.”

“I don’t think God had the notion to provide Dolly with a married man who’s already got three kids. He’s denying it, all righteously outraged, and so far, anyway, his wife’s sticking with him. The cops are working on picking that apart.”

“He met her the night she was killed. She wanted a father for her baby, and Dolly always pushed when she wanted something. She pushed, maybe threatened to tell his wife, ruin him with his congregation. And he kills her.”

“Logical,” Gull agreed.

“It still doesn’t explain why he didn’t just leave her, why he took her into the forest, started the fire. But odds are it’s the first time he killed anyone. It’s probably hard to be rational after doing something like that.

“Gull . . . If he and Dolly were heating the sheets, all this time—and he’s been preaching to Mrs. Brakeman for years—he could’ve gotten into their house.”

She tilted her head. “And you’ve already thought about that.”

“Speculated. I expect he’s had Sunday dinner there a time or two, he and his wife probably brought a covered dish to summer cookouts and so on. Yeah, I think he knew how to get in, and he might’ve known or been able to access the combination to the safe.”

“It would be a way to have the cops looking at Brakeman, and that worked. Maybe have them speculating. This violent man, this man with a violent temper, one who’d already pushed his daughter out of the house once, has been known to have heated arguments with her. It could be.”

“It’s not out of the realm. You lost your mood.”

She smirked, just a little. “Know-it-all. Maybe I was feeling useless again, a comedown from three days when I know everything I did mattered, made a difference, was needed. Then I’m coming back here where I can’t do a damn thing. I can’t be in charge, so I guess it helps some to think it all through, and to figure out what I’d do if I could be in charge. Maybe it helps to talk it through with somebody who understands me.” She smirked again. “At least understands parts of me.”

“You know, I could sit here and look at you all night. All gold and cream and smelling like a summer orchard. It’s a nice way to transition back after an extended attack. But, how about I clean up, and we go get ourselves a late supper?”

“That’s a solid affirmative.”

“Great.” He pushed to his feet. “Can I use your shower?”

She laughed, waved toward the bathroom. Since she had some time she decided to call the other man who understood her.

“Hi, Dad.”

ELLA TURNED when Lucas opened the door to the deck. She’d slipped out when his cell phone rang to give him some privacy for the call, and to admire the fairy lights she’d strung on the slender branches of her weeping plum.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Rowan just wanted to check in, and to update me on what’s going on.”

“Is there anything new?”

“Not really.” As he sipped a glass of the wine they’d enjoyed with dinner, he brushed his fingertips up and down her arm.

She loved the way he touched her—often, like a reassurance she was with him.

“She sounded steady, so I feel better about that. With Ro, when bad things happen, or wrong things, she tends to take it in. What could she have done to prevent it, or what should she do to fix it?”

“I can’t imagine where she gets that from. Who’s been fiddling around here every chance he gets? Fixing the dripping faucet in the laundry room sink, the drawer that kept sticking in that old table I bought at the flea market?”

“I have to pay for all those dinners you cook me. And breakfasts,” he added, gliding his hand down to her waist.

“It’s nice to have a handy man around the house.”

“It’s nice to be around the house, with you.” He hooked his arm around her waist so they looked out at the garden together, at the pretty lights, the soft shadows. “It’s nice to be with you.”

“I’m happy,” she told him. “I tend to be a happy person, and I learned how to be happy on my own. It was good for me, to have that time, to find out a little bit more about myself. What I could do, what I could do without. I’m happier with you.”

She hooked an arm around his waist in turn. “I was standing here before you came out thinking how lucky I am. I’ve got a family I love and who loves me, a career I’m proud of, this place, good friends. Now the bonus round. You.”

Lights sparkling, she thought, in her garden, and in her heart. And all the while her friend lived in the terrible dark.

“I talked with Irene earlier.”

“She’s got a terrible load to carry now.”

“I went to see her, hoping to help, but . . . I can’t even begin to conceive what she’s lost. The most devastating loss a mother can know. What she may lose yet. Nothing in her life is certain now, or steady or happy. She’s burying her daughter, Lucas. She’s facing the very real possibility her husband will go to prison. The man she trusted with her spiritual guidance, her faith, betrayed her in a horrible way. The only thing she has to hold on to now is her grandchild, and caring for that sweet little girl must bring Irene incredible pain and joy.

“I’m lucky. And I guess I’m enough like you and Rowan to wish there were some way I could fix things. I wish I knew what I could do or say or be to help Irene.”

“You’re helping her plan the service, and you’ll be there for her. That’ll matter. Do you want me to go with you?”

“Selfishly yes. But I think it would embarrass her if you did.”

He nodded, having thought the same. “If you think it’s right, you could tell her I’m sorry for her loss, sorry for what she’s going through.”

“I’ve made us both sad, and here I was thinking about being happy.”

“People who are together get to share both. I want to . . . share both with you.”

Almost, she thought as butterflies on the wing filled her belly. They were both almost ready to say it. Had she said she felt lucky? She’d been blessed.

“Let’s take a walk in the moonlight,” she decided. “In the garden. We can finish drinking this wine, and make out.”

“You always have the best ideas.”

USING A DEAD WOMAN’S phone to lure a man to his death felt . . . just. A man of God should understand that, should approve of the sentiment of an eye for an eye. Though Latterly was no man of God, but a fraud, a liar, an adulterer, a fornicator.

In a very real sense Latterly had killed Dolly. He’d tempted her, led her onto the path—or if the temptation and leading had been hers, he had certainly followed.

He should have counseled her, advised her, helped her be the decent person, the honorable woman, the good mother. Instead he’d betrayed his wife, his family, his God, his church, for sex with the daughter of one of his faithful.

His death would be justice, and retribution and holy vengeance.

The text had done its job, so simple really.

it wasnt me u have 2 come bring money dont tell not yet talk first need to know what 2 do meet me 1 am Lolo Pass Vistor Center fs rd 373 2 gate URGENT Can help u Dolly

Of course, the soon-to-be-dead man called the dead woman. The return text when the call went unanswered had been full of shock, panic, demands. Easy enough to deflect.

must c u face 2 face explain then will do what u say when you know what i know cant txt more they might find out

He’d come. If he didn’t, there would be another way.

Planning murder wasn’t the same as an accident. How would it feel?

The car rolled in ten minutes early, going slow. A creep along the service road.

Easy after all. So easy. Should there be talk first? Should the dead man know why he was dead? Why he would burn in fiery hell?

He called for Dolly, his voice a harsh whisper in the utter peace of the night. At the gate, he sat in his car, silhouetted in the moonlight.

Death waited patiently.

He got out, his head turning right, left, as he continued to call Dolly’s name. As he continued up the road.

Yes, it was easy after all.

“An eye for an eye.”

Latterly looked over, his face struck with terror as shadow moved to moonlight.

The first bullet struck him in the center of the forehead, a small black hole that turned terror to blank shock. The second pierced his heart, releasing a slow trickle of blood that gleamed black in the shimmer of light.

Easy. A steady hand, a just heart.

No shock, no grief, no trembling, not this time.

A long way to drag a body, but it had to be done right, didn’t it? Anything worth doing was worth doing well. And the forest at night held such beauty, such mystery. Peace. Yes, for a little while, peace.

All the effort came to nothing in that moment when the body rested at the burn site, on the pyre, already prepared.

Reverend Latterly didn’t look so good, didn’t look so pious now with his clothes and flesh torn and dirty from the trail.

A click of the lighter, that’s all it took to send him to hell.

Flames kindled with a whoosh as they gulped fuel and oxygen. Burning the body as the soul would burn. Peace settled while the fire climbed and spread.

How did it feel to murder and burn?

It felt right.

20

The fire chewed its way east, consuming forest and meadow, its head a rage of hunger and greedy glee leading the body across two states.

Gull dug his spikes into a lodgepole pine, climbing up, up into a sky of sooty red. Sweat dripped down his face to soak the bandanna he’d tied on like a latter-day outlaw as he ground the teeth of his saw through bark and wood. Logs tumbled, crashed below as he worked his way down.

The blaze they sought to cage danced, leaped nimbly up trees to string their branches with light as it roared its song.

He hit the ground, unhooked his harness, then moved down the saw line.

He knew Rowan worked the head. Word traveled down the crew, and the jumpers from Idaho had twice had to retreat due to unstable winds.

He heard the roll of thunder, watched the tanker pitch through the smoke. So far the dragon seemed to swallow the retardant like candy.

He’d lost track of the hours spent in the belly of the beast since the siren had sounded that morning. Only that morning, looking into Rowan’s eyes as she moved under him, feeling her body rise and fall beneath him. Only that morning he’d had the taste of her skin, warm from sleep, on his tongue.

Now he tasted smoke. Now he felt the ground move as another sacrificial tree fell to earth. He looked into the eyes of the enemy, and knew her lust.

What he didn’t know, as he set down his saw to gulp down water, was if it was day or night. And what did it matter? The only world that mattered lived in this perpetual red twilight.

“We’re moving east.” Dobie jogged out of the smoke, his eyes red-rimmed over his bandanna. “Gibbons is taking us east, digging line as we go. The hoses are holding her back on the right flank at Pack Creek, and the mud knocked her back some.”

“Okay.” Gull grabbed his gear.

“I volunteered you and me to go on south through the burnout and scout spots and snags along the rim, circle on up toward the head.”

“That was real considerate of you to include me in your mission.”

“Somebody’s got to do it, son.” Those red-rimmed eyes laughed. “It’s a longer trip, but I bet we beat the rest of the crew to the head, get back into the real action sooner.”

“Maybe. The head’s where I want to be.”

“Fighting ass-to-ass with your woman. Let’s get humping.”

Spots bloomed like flowers, burst like grenades, simmered like shallow pools. The wind colluded, thickened the smoke, giving loft to sailing firebrands.

Gull smothered, dug, doused, beat, then laughed his way through the nasty work as Dobie started naming the spots.

“Fucking Assistant Principal Brewster!” Dobie stomped out the licking flames. “Suspended me for smoking in the bathroom.”

“High school sucks.”

“Middle school. I got an early start.”

“Priming your lungs for your life’s work,” Gull decided as he moved on to another.

“That’s fucking Gigi Japper. Let me at her. She dumped me for a ball player.”

“Middle school?”

“Last year. Bastard plays slow-pitch softball. Can you beat that? Slow-pitch softball. How does that count for anything?”

“You’re better off without her.”

“Damn straight. Well, Captain, I believe we’ve secured this line, and recommend we cut across from here and start scouting north. I’m still looking for crazy old Mr. Cotter, used to shoot at my dog just because the pup liked to shit in his petunias.”

“We’ll beat the hell out of old Mr. Cotter together.”

“That’s a true friend.”

They ate lunch, dinner, breakfast—who the hell knew?—on the quickstep hike, chowing down on Hooah! bars, peanut-butter crackers, and the single apple from Gull’s pack they passed back and forth.

“I love this job,” Dobie told him. “I didn’t know as I would. I knew I could do it, knew I would. Figured I’d like it okay. But I didn’t know it’s what I was after. Didn’t know I was after anything.”

“If it gets its hooks in you, you know it’s what you were after.” That, Gull thought, covered smoke jumping and women.

Murdered trees stood, black skeletons in the thinning smoke. Wind trickled through, sending them to moan, scooping up ash that swirled like dirty fairy dust.

“It’s like one of those end-of-the-world movies,” Dobie decided. “Where some meteor destroys most every goddamn thing, and what’s left are mutant scavengers and a handful of brave warriors trying to protect the innocent. We can be the warriors.”

“I was counting on being a mutant, but all right. Look at that.” Gull pointed east where the sky glowed red above towers of flame. “Half the time I can’t understand how I can hate it and still think it’s beautiful.”

“I felt that way about fucking Gigi Japper.”

Laughing, somehow completely happy to be hot and filthy alongside his strangely endearing friend, Gull studied the fire as they hiked—the breadth of it, the colors and tones, the shapes.

On impulse, he pulled his camera out of his PG bag. A photo couldn’t translate its terrifying magnificence, but it would remind him, over the winter. It would remind him.

Dobie stepped into the frame, set his Pulaski on his shoulder, spread his legs, fixed a fierce expression on his face. “Now, take a picture. ‘Dragon-slayer.’ ”

Actually, Gull thought when he framed it in, the title seemed both apt and accurate. He took two. “Eat your heart out, Gigi.”

“Fucking A! Come on, son, time’s a’wasting.”

He took off with a swagger as Gull secured his camera.

“Gull.”

“Yeah.” He glanced up from zipping his PG bag to see Dobie in nearly the same pose, reversed with his back to him. “Camera’s secured, handsome.”

“You better come on over here. Take a look at this.”

Alerted by the tone, Gull moved fast, stared when Dobie pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Aw, shit.”

The remains lay, a grim signpost on the charred trail.

“Jesus, Gull, looks like the mutants have been through here.” Dobie staggered a few feet away, braced his hands on his knees, and puked up his energy bars.

“Like Dolly,” Gull murmured. “Except . . .”

“Christ, I feel like a pussy. Losing my lunch.” Bone-white beneath the layer of soot, Dobie took a pull of water, spat it out. “He started the fire, the cocksucker, right here. Like with Dolly.” He rinsed again, spat again, then drank. “He did all this.”

“Yeah, except I don’t think he did this to try to hide the body, or destroy it. Maybe it’s so we’d find it, or for attention, or because the son of a bitch likes fire. And it’s not like Dolly because this one’s got what’s got to be a bullet hole dead in the forehead.”

Bracing himself, Dobie stepped over again, looked. “Christ, I think you’re right about that.”

“I guess I should’ve taken that bet.” Gull pulled out his radio. “Because I don’t think we’re going to get back to action before the rest of the crew.”

While they waited, Dobie took two mini bottles of Kentucky bourbon from his bag, took a swig. “Who do you think it is?” he asked, and passed the second bottle to Gull.

“Maybe we’ve just got some homicidal firebug picking people at random. More likely it’s somebody connected to Dolly.”

“Jesus please us, I hope it’s not her ma. I really hope it’s not her ma. Somebody’s got to take care of that baby.”

“I saw her mother that day she and the preacher came to thank L.B. for hiring Dolly again. She’s short, little like Dolly was. I think what’s there’s too tall. Pretty tall, I think.”

“Her daddy, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“If I hadn’t volunteered us, somebody else would’ve found it. It’s right on the damn trail. Ro said Dolly was off it. Right on the trail. The rangers would’ve found it if we hadn’t. It really makes you think about what the fire’ll do to you, it gets the chance.”

Gull looked out at the red, the black, the stubborn lashing gold. And downed the bourbon.

The rangers let them go to rejoin the war. The fury built up in Gull all the way up to that snarling, snapping head. He channeled that fury into the attack so every strike of his ax fed his anger. This war wasn’t fought against God or nature or fate, but against the human being who’d given birth to the fire for his own pleasure or purpose or weakness.

For those hours the battle burned, he didn’t care about the reasons why. He only cared about stopping it.

“Take a breath,” Rowan told him. “We’ve got her now. You can feel it. Take a breath, Gull. This isn’t a one-man show.”

“I’ll take a breath when she’s down.”

“Look, I know how you feel. I know exactly how—”

“I’m not in the mood to be reasonable.” He pushed her hand off his arm, eyes hot and vivid. “I’m in the mood to kill this bitch. We can discuss our mutual traumas later. Now let me do my job.”

“Okay, fine. We need men up on that ridge digging line before she rides this wind and shifts this way for fresh eats and builds again.”

“All right.”

“Take Dobie, Matt, Libby and Stovic.”

NIGHT, HE THOUGHT—or morning, probably—when he dragged himself to the creek. The fire trembled in its death throes, coughing and sputtering. Overhead, stars winked hopefully through thinning smoke.

He pulled off his boots, his socks, and stuck his abused feet in the gorgeously cool water. The postfire chatter ran behind him in voices raw with smoke and adrenaline. Jokes, insults, rewinds of the long fight. And the expected what-the-fuck? question about what he and Dobie had found.

More work waited, but would keep until daybreak. The fire hadn’t lain down to rest. She’d lain down to die.

Rowan sat down beside him, dropped an MRE in his lap, pushed a drink into his hand. “They dropped a nice load down for camp, so I made you dinner.”

“A woman’s work is never done.”

“More in the mood to be reasonable, I see.”

“I needed to burn it off.”

“I know.” She touched a hand to his briefly, then picked up the fork to shovel in beef stew. “I put some of Dobie’s famous Tabasco in this. Nice kick.”

“I was taking his picture. Him standing there in the black, and behind him the fire, and the sky. Surreal. I’d just taken his picture when we found it. It didn’t get to me, really, until we started up to meet you, and it just got bigger and bigger in me. Christ, I wasn’t even thinking about some guy burned to bone after taking a shot in the head.”

“Shot?”

Gull nodded. “Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking about him. All I could think about was this, and us. All the loss and waste, the risks, the sweat and blood. And for what, Ro? Since I couldn’t beat the hell out of whoever caused it, I had to beat the hell out of the fire.”

“Matt got hung up on the jump. He let down okay, but it could’ve gone bad. A widowmaker as thick as my arm nearly hit Elf when we had to retreat, and Yangtree’s got a Pulaski gash on his calf to go with his swollen knee. One of the Idaho crew took a bad fall, broke his leg. You were right to be mad.”

For a while, they ate in silence. “They want you back in the morning, you and Dobie, so DiCicco and Quinniock can talk to you. I can pack out with you.”

He glanced over, grateful—grateful enough not to mention she was taking care of him. “That’d be good.”

“I figured you’re pretty tired, so I can save you the time popping your tent. You can share mine.”

“That’d be even better. I love this job,” he said after a moment, thinking of Dobie. “I don’t know why exactly but what this bastard’s done makes me love it even more. The cops have to find him, catch him, stop him. But we’re the ones cleaning up his goddamn mess. We’re the ones doing whatever it takes to keep it from being worse. The wild doesn’t mean anything to him, what lives in it, lives off it. It means something to us.”

He looked at her then, slowly leaned in to take her lips in a kiss of surprising gentleness. “I found you in the wild, Rowan. That’s a hell of a thing.”

She smiled, a little uncertainly. “I wasn’t lost.”

“Neither was I. But I’m found, too, just the same.”

When they walked the short distance to the tents, they crossed paths with Libby.

“How you doing, Gull?”

“Okay. Better since I hear I get to skate out of mop-up. Have you seen Dobie?”

“Yeah, he just turned in. He was feeling . . . I guess you know. Matt and I sat up with him awhile after the rest bunked down. He’s doing okay.”

“You did good work today, Barbie,” Rowan told her.

“Never plan to do any other kind. Good night.”

Rowan yawned her way into the tent and, with her mind and body already shutting down, worked off her boots. “Don’t wake me unless there’s a bear attack. In fact, even then.”

She stripped down to her tank and panties. As she rolled toward the sleeping bag, Gull considered.

“You know, thirty seconds ago I figure I was too tired to scratch my own ass. And now, strangely, I’m filled with this renewed energy.”

She opened one eye, shut it again. “Do what you gotta do. Just don’t wake me up doing it.”

He climbed in beside her, smiling, drew her already limp-with-sleep body to his. When he closed his eyes he thought of her, of nothing but her, and slid quietly into the dark.

IT WAS HER KNEE pressing firmly into his crotch that woke him. His eyes crossed before they opened. Easing back relieved the worst of the pressure on his now throbbing balls.

Had she aimed, he wondered, or had it just been blind luck? Either way, perfect shot.

She didn’t budge when he rolled out to pull on his pants, fresh socks, boots. He left the pants and boots unfastened and crawled out into soft morning light.

Nothing and no one stirred. Then again, as far as he knew the other tents held occupants of one—with no one to jab a knee into their balls. Should they have them.

He stood, adjusted himself—carefully—then chose a direction out of camp to empty his bladder. Coffee, and filling his belly, would be next on the list, he decided. Being the first awake meant he had first dibs on the breakfast MREs. He’d sit outside, maybe down by the creek, give Rowan the tent for more sleep and enjoy a quiet, solitary if crappy meal until . . .

He stopped and looked. Looked over a meadow brilliant with wild lupines, regally purple. The faintest ground mist shimmered through them, giving them the illusion of floating on a thin, white river while dozens of deep blue butterflies danced over those bold lances.

Untouched, he thought. The fire hadn’t touched this. They’d stopped it, and now the wildflowers bloomed, the butterflies danced in the misty morning light.

It was, he thought, as beautiful, as vivid as the finest work of art. Maybe more. And he’d had a part in saving it, and the trees beyond it, and whatever lay beyond the beyond.

He’d fought in the smoke and the blistering red air, walked through the black that stank with death. And to here, where life lived, where it thrived in quiet and simple grace.

To here, which held all the answers to why.

HE BROUGHT HER THERE, dragging her away from camp before they packed out.

“We’ve got to get going,” she protested. “If we haul our asses down to the visitors’ center, they can van us back to base. Clean bodies, clean clothes. And, God, I want a Coke.”

“This is better than a Coke.”

“Nothing’s better than a Coke first thing in the morning. You coffee hounds have it all wrong.”

“Just look.” He gestured. “That’s better than anything.”

She’d seen meadows before, seen the wild lupine and the butterflies it seduced. She started to say so, grumpy with caffeine withdrawal, but he looked so . . . struck.

And she got it. Of course she got it. Who better?

Still, she had to give him a dig, one with the elbow in the side, the other verbal. “There’s that mushy romantic streak again.”

“Stand right there. I’m going to get a picture.”

“Hell you are. Jesus, Gull, look at me.”

“One of my favorite occupations.”

“If you want a shot of a woman in front of a meadow of flowers, get one with clean, shiny hair and a flowy white dress.”

“Don’t be stupid, you look exactly right. Because you’re part of why it’s here. This is like a bookend to the one I took of Dobie in the black. It shows how and why and who go into everything between those two points.”

“Romantic slob,” she repeated. But it moved her, the truth of it, the knowing they shared.

So she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets, cocked her hip and sent him and his camera a big, bold grin.

He took the shot, lowered the camera slowly and just stared at her as he had at the meadow. Struck.

“Here, switch off. I’ll take one of you.”

“No. It’s you. It’s Dobie in the black, the fire raging behind him, telling me how much he loves this job, what he’s found in it. And it’s you, Rowan, in the sunlight with preserved beauty at your back. You’re the end of the goddamn rainbow.”

“Come on.” Mildly embarrassed, she shrugged it off, started toward him. “You must be punchy.”

“You’re the answer before I even asked the question.”

“Gull, it weirds me out when you start talking like that.”

“I think you’re going to have to get used to it. I’ve fallen pretty deep in . . . care with you. We’ll go with that for now, because I think it’s more, and that’s a lot to figure out.”

A touch of panic speared through embarrassment. “Gull, getting wound up in . . . care for people like us—for people like me—it’s a sucker bet.”

“I don’t think so. I like the odds.”

“Because you’re crazy.”

“You have to be crazy to do this job.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Just one more thing.”

He took her shoulders, drawing her in. His fingers glided up to her face as he guided them into a kiss made for meadows and summer shine, the flutter of butterflies and music of birdsong.

Unable to find a foothold, she tumbled into it, lost herself in the sweetness, the promise she told herself she didn’t want. Her heart trembled in her chest, ached there.

And, for the first time in her life, yearned there.

Unsteady, she stepped away. “That’s just heat.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” He hooked an arm around her shoulders in a lightning switch to friendly. The man, she thought, could make her dizzy.

DICICCO AND QUINNIOCK stepped out of Operations even as the vans pulled up to base.

“It’d be nice if they let us clean up first,” Gull commented, then he got off the van, nodded to the cop and the fed. “Where do you want to do this?”

“L.B.’s office is available for us,” Quinniock told him.

“Look, there are tables outside the cookhouse. I wouldn’t mind airing out some and getting some food while we’re at it. I expect Dobie feels the same.”

“You got that right, son. Did you figure out who’s dead?”

“We’ll talk about it,” DiCicco told him.

“We’ll take care of your gear.” Rowan gestured to Matt, Janis. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Appreciate it.” Gull gave her a quick look.

“Are we suspects?” Dobie wanted to know as they walked toward the cookhouse.

“We haven’t made any determinations, Mr. Karstain.”

“Loosen up, Kim,” Quinniock suggested. “We have no reason to suspect you in this matter. You can tell us where you were the night before you jumped the fire, between eleven P.M. and three A.M., if you’d like.”

“Me? I was playing cards with Libby and Yangtree and Trigger till about midnight. Trig and me had a last beer after. I guess we bunked down about one.”

“I was with Rowan,” Gull said, and left it at that.

“We’d like to go over the statements you gave the rangers on scene.” DiCicco sat at the picnic table, pulled out her notebook, her mini recorder. “I’d like to record this.”

“Dobie, why don’t you go ahead? I’ll go see what Marg can put together for us. Do you two want anything?” Gull asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a cold drink,” Quinniock told him, and, remembering the lemonade, DiCicco nodded.

“That’d be good. Now, Mr. Karstain—”

“Can you leave off calling me mister? Just Dobie.”

“Dobie.”

He went over what happened. What he’d seen, done, what he’d already told the rangers.

“You know, the black looks like a horror show anyhow, then you add that. Gull said it must be connected to Dolly.”

“Did he?” DiCicco said.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Dobie looked from one to the other. “Is it?”

“Dobie, how was it only you and Mr. Curry were in that area?”

Dobie shrugged at DiCicco just as Gull came out, two steps in front of Lynn. Both carried trays.

“We needed most everybody up at the head, digging line toward it, but somebody still needed to scout spots along the flank. So I volunteered me and Gull.”

“You suggested that you and Mr. Curry take that route?”

“She’s big on the misters,” he said to Gull. “Yeah. It’s a longer hike, but I like killing spots. Me and Gull, we work good together. Thanks.” He gave Lynn a smile when she set a loaded plate in front of him. “It sure looks good.”

“Marg said to save room for cherry pie. You just let me know if you need anything else.”

“Let’s save some time.” Gull took his seat. “We took that route because we were scouting spots. You see a spot, you put it out, and you move on. We had that duty while making our way east to join the rest of the crew. The fire’d been moving east, but the winds kept changing, so the flanks shifted. We found the remains because we cut across the burnout, heading to the far flank in case any spots broke out and took hold. If they did, and we didn’t, it could’ve put the visitor center in the line. Nobody wanted that. Clear?”

“That’s the way it is.” Dobie took his bottle of Tabasco out of his pocket, lifted the top of his Kaiser roll and dumped some on the horseradish Marg had piled on his roast beef.

Gull shook his head when Dobie offered the bottle. “Mine’s fine as it is. And, yeah, I speculated this body was related to Dolly. It could be we’ve got a serial killer–arsonist picking victims at random, but I like the odds on connection a lot better.”

“Shot this one,” Dobie said with his mouth full. “Couldn’t miss the bullet hole.”

“Jumpers got hurt on that fire. I heard on the way in a couple of hotshots I know were injured. I watched acres of wilderness go up. I want the person responsible to pay for it, and I want to know why killing wasn’t enough. Because I can speculate again that the fire was just as important as the kill. Otherwise, there wasn’t a reason for it. The fire itself had to matter.”

“That’s an interesting speculation,” DiCicco commented.

“Since we’ve already told you what we know, speculation’s all that’s left. And since neither of you look particularly stupid, I have to assume you’ve already entertained those same speculations.”

“He’s feeling a little pissed off ’cause he’s out here talking to cops instead of taking a shower with the Swede.”

“Jesus, Dobie.” Then Gull laughed. “Yeah, I am. So, since you cost me, maybe you could tell us if you’ve identified the remains.”

“That information . . .” DiCicco caught Quinniock’s look, huffed out a breath. “While we’re waiting for verification, we found Reverend Latterly’s car parked on the service road alongside the visitors’ center. His wife can’t tell us his whereabouts, only that he wasn’t home or at his church when she got up this morning.”

“Somebody shot a preacher?” Dobie demanded. “That’s hell for sure.”

“The Brakemans’ preacher,” Gull added. “And the one rumor has it Dolly was screwing around with. I heard Leo Brakeman made bail.”

“Sumbitch better not come back around here.”

DiCicco gave Dobie a glance, but kept her focus primarily on Gull. “We’ll be speaking to Mr. Brakeman after his daughter’s funeral this afternoon.”

“I’ve got a couple of men on him,” Quinniock added. “We’ve got a list of his registered weapons, and we’ll take another look at his gun safe.”

“It’d be pretty stupid to use one of his own guns, at least a registered weapon, to kill the man who was screwing his daughter and preaching to his wife.”

“Regardless, we’ll pursue every avenue of the investigation. We can speculate, too, Mr. Curry,” DiCicco added. “But we have to work with facts, with data, with evidence. Two people are dead, and that’s priority. But those wildfires matter. I work for the Forest Service, too. Believe me, it all matters.”

She got to her feet. “Thanks for your time.” She offered Gull the ghost of a smile. “Sorry about the shower.”

“Why, Agent DiCicco,” Quinniock said as they walked away, “I believe you just made an amusing, smart-ass comment. I feel warm inside.”

“Well, hold on to it. Funerals tend to cool things off.”

BLOW UP

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame,

to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

WALTER PATER

21

Rowan dawdled. She lingered in the shower, took her time selecting shorts and a top as if it mattered. She even put in a few minutes with makeup, pleased when the dawdling transformed her into a girl.

Time enough, she decided, and went to hunt for Gull.

When she stepped out of her quarters, Matt stepped out of his.

“Wow.” She gave him and his dark suit and tie a lusty eyebrow wiggle. “And I thought I looked good.”

“You do.”

“What, do you have a hot date? Going to a wedding, a funer—” She broke off, mentally slapped herself. “Oh, God, Matt, I forgot. I wasn’t thinking. You’re going to Dolly’s funeral.”

“I thought I should, since we’re off the fire.”

“You’re not going by yourself? I’d go with you, but I’ve got to be the last person the Brakemans want to see today.”

“It’s okay. I’m just . . . I feel like I have to, to represent Jim, you know? I don’t want to, but . . . the baby.” He shoved at his floppy, sun-bleached hair with his fingers. “I almost wish we were still out on the fire, so I couldn’t go.”

“Get somebody to go with you. Janis packed out with us, or Cards would go if he’s up to it. Or—”

“L.B.’s going.” Matt stuck his hands in his pockets, pulled them out again to tap his fingers on his thigh. It reminded her painfully of Jim. “And Marg and Lynn.”

“Okay then.” She walked over, fussed with his tie though it didn’t need it. “You’re doing the right thing by your family by going. If you want to talk later, or just hang out, I’ll be around.”

“Thanks.” He put a hand over hers until she met his eyes. “Thanks, Rowan. I know she caused you a lot of trouble.”

“It doesn’t matter. Matt, it really doesn’t. It’s a hard day for a lot of people. That’s what matters.”

He gave her hand one hard squeeze. “I’d better get going.”

She changed direction when he left, headed to the lounge. Cards sprawled on the sofa watching one of the soaps on TV.

“This girl’s telling this guy she’s knocked up, even though she’s not, because he’s in love with her sister but banged her—the one who’s not knocked up—when she put something in his drink when she went over to his place to tell him the sister was cheating on him, which she wasn’t.”

He slugged down some Gatorade. “Women suck.”

“Hey.”

“Fact is fact,” he said grimly. “So I’m riveted. I could get hooked on this stuff taking my afternoon, medically ordered lie-down. I get to malinger for another day while I get pretty again.”

She sat, studied the bandage over his cheek. “I don’t know. The hole in your face added interest, and it would’ve distracted from the fact your eyes are too close together.”

“I have the eyes of an angel. And a hawk. An angel hawk.”

“Matt’s leaving to go to Dolly’s funeral.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s wearing Yangtree’s tie.”

“We should get a couple more of the guys to go with him. Libby’s still on mop-up, but Janis packed out.”

“Let it be, Ro. You can’t fix every damn thing.”

He hissed through his teeth when she said nothing. “Look, L.B.’s going to stand for the base, and Marg and Lynn, because they worked with her. Matt, well, he’s like kin now with Jim’s baby and all. But L.B. and I talked about it. The way things ended up here with Dolly, it’s probably best to keep it to a minimum. Probably be easier on Dolly’s mom.”

“Probably,” she agreed, but frowned as she studied him. She knew that face, with or without the hole, and those big camel eyes. “What’s up?”

“Nothing except your interrupting my soap opera. Orchid’s going to get hers when Payton finds out she’s been playing him for a sap.”

She knew a brood when she was sitting next to one. “You’re sulking.”

“I’ve got a frigging hole in my face and I’m watching soap operas, then you come along and start carping about dead Dolly and funerals.” He shot her a single hot look. “Go find somebody else to rag on.”

“Fine.”

She shoved up.

“Women suck,” he repeated with a baffled bitterness that had her easing down again. “We’re better off without them.”

She opted not to remind him she happened to be a woman. “Altogether, or one in particular?”

“You know the one I hooked up with last winter.”

Since he’d mentioned her about a hundred times, shown off her picture, Rowan had a pretty good idea. “Vicki, sure.”

“She was coming out in a couple weeks, with the kids. I was getting a few days off to show her around. The kids were all juiced up to see the base.”

Were, Rowan thought. “What happened?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. She changed her mind, that’s all. She doesn’t think it’s a good idea—I’ve got my life, she’s got hers. She dumped me; that’s it. She won’t even tell me why, exactly, just how she has to think of the kids, how she needs a stable, honest relationship and all that shit.”

He turned, aiming those angry, baffled eyes at Rowan. “I never lied to her, that’s the thing. I told her how it was, and she said she was okay with it. Even that she was proud of what I did. Now she’s done, just like that. Pissed off, too. And . . . she cried. What the hell did I do?”

“I guess . . . the theory of being attached to somebody who does what we do is different from the reality. It’s hard.”

“So I’m supposed to give it up? Do something else? Be something else? That’s not right.”

“No, it’s not right.”

“I was going to ask her to marry me when she came out.”

“Hell. I’m sorry.”

“She won’t even talk to me now. I keep leaving messages, and she won’t answer. She won’t let me talk to the kids. I’m crazy about those kids.”

“Write her a letter.”

“Do what?”

“Nobody writes letters anymore. Write her a letter. Tell her how you feel. Lay it all out.”

“Shit, I’m not good at that.”

“And that’ll make it even better. If you’re hung up enough to want to marry her, you can write a damn letter.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Hell.”

“Women suck.”

“Tell me about it. Write a letter,” he repeated, brooded into his Gatorade. “Maybe. Talk about something else. If I keep talking about her, I’m going to try to call her again. It’s humiliating.”

“How about those Cubs?”

He snorted. “I need more than baseball to get my mind off heartbreak, especially since the Cubbies suck more than women this year. We’ve got murder, and fire starters. I heard there was another one, another body. And whoever did it started the fire. The cops better catch this bastard before he burns half of western Montana. We can all use the fat wallet, but nobody wants to earn it that way.”

“He got a good chunk of Idaho, too. It’s scary,” she said because they were alone. “We know fire wants to kill us when we’re going there. We know nature couldn’t give a damn either way. But going in, knowing there’s somebody out there killing people and lighting it up who maybe wants to see some of us burn. Maybe doesn’t give a shit either way. That’s scary. It’s scary not knowing if he’s done, or if the next time the siren sounds, it’s because of him.”

She looked over as Gull came in. “What did the cops say?” she demanded.

“It’s not official, but it’s a pretty good bet what we found out there is what’s left of Reverend Latterly.”

Cards bolted up. “The priest?”

“Loosely.” Gull dropped down in a chair. “They found his car out there, and nobody can find him. So, either we did, or he’s taken off. They’re going to be talking to Brakeman after the funeral.”

“They think he killed him and burned him up?” Cards said. “But . . . wouldn’t that mean . . . or do they think he killed Dolly and—Her own father? Come on.”

“I don’t know what they think.”

“What do you think?” Rowan asked him.

“I’m still working on it. So far I think we’ve got somebody who’s seriously pissed off, and likes fire. I’ve got to clean up.”

Rowan followed him into his quarters. “Why do you say ‘likes fire’? Using it’s not the same as liking it.”

“I guess since you’re dressed—and you look good, by the way—you’re not going to wash my back.”

“No. Why do you say ‘likes fire’?”

Gull pulled off his shirt. “I increased my passing acquaintance with arson after Dolly.”

“Yeah, you study. It’s a thing with you.”

“I like to learn. Anyway,” he continued, dragging off his boots. “Arsonists usually fall into camps. There’s your for-profit—somebody burning property to collect insurance, say, or the torch who lights them up for a fee. That’s not this.”

“You’ve got the torching to cover up another crime. I have a passing acquaintance, too,” she reminded him as he took off his pants. “Murder’s sure as hell another crime.”

“Maybe that’s what it was with Dolly.” Naked, he walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower. “The accident or on purpose, the panic, the cover-up. But this, coming on top of it, when the first didn’t really work?”

He stepped under the spray, let out a long, relieved groan. “All hail the god of water.”

“Maybe it was a copycat. Somebody wanted to kill Latterly. Brakeman had motive, so did Latterly’s wife if she found out about him and Dolly. One of his congregation who felt outraged and betrayed. And they mirrored Dolly because of the connection. It’s the same motive.”

“Could be.”

She whipped back the shower curtain. “It makes the most sense.”

“In or out, Blondie.” He skimmed those feline eyes down her body. “I’d rather in.”

She whipped the curtain back closed. “The third type doesn’t play out, Gull. The firebug who gets off starting fires, watching them burn. It doesn’t play because of the murders.”

“Maybe he’s getting a twofer.”

“It’s bad enough if it’s to cover the murders. That’s plenty bad enough. What you’re thinking’s worse.”

“I know it. If the vibe I got from the cops is right, it’s something they’re thinking about, too.”

She leaned her hands on the sink, stared at her own reflection. “I don’t want it to be somebody I know.”

“You don’t know everybody, Ro.”

No, she didn’t know everybody, and was suddenly, desperately grateful she knew only a few people who connected with Dolly and Latterly.

But . . . what if it was one of those few?

“Dolly’s funeral. Where can they have it?” she wondered. “They couldn’t have planned on Mrs. Brakeman’s church, even before this happened.”

“Marg said they’re having the service in the funeral parlor. They don’t expect much of a crowd.”

“God.” She shut her eyes. “I hated her like a hemorrhoid, but that’s just depressing.”

He shut off the water, pulled back the curtain. “You know what you need?” He reached for a towel.

“What do I need? Gee, let me guess.”

“Gutter brain. You need a drive with the top down and an icecream cone.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you do. We’re third load on the jump list, so we can cruise into town, find ourselves an ice-cream parlor.”

“I happen to know where one is.”

“Perfect. And you look nice. I should take my girl out for ice cream.”

“Cut that out, Gull.”

“Uh-uh.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and, still dripping, grabbed her in for a kiss.

“You’re getting me wet!”

“Sex, sex, sex. Fine, if that’s what you want.”

He managed to chase the blues away, make her laugh as she shoved him back. “I want ice cream.” Since he’d already dampened her shirt, she grabbed his face, kissed him again. “First. Get dressed, big spender. I’ll go check with Ops, make sure we’re clear for a few hours.”

PHOTOGRAPHS OF DOLLY BRAKEMAN, from birth to death, were grouped together in a smiling display. Pink roses softened with sprigs of baby’s breath flanked them. The coffin, closed, bore a blanket of girlish pink and white mums over polished gloss.

As she’d helped Irene by ordering her choice of flowers, Ella sent pink and white lilies. She noted a couple other floral offerings, and even such a sparse tribute overpowered the tiny room with scent.

Irene, pale and stark-eyed in unrelieved black, sat on the somber burgundy sofa with her sister, a woman Ella knew a little who’d come in from Billings with her husband. The man sat, stiff and grim, on a twin sofa across the narrow room with Leo.

Sacred music played softly through the speakers. No one spoke.

In her life, Ella thought, she’d never seen such a sad testament to a short life, violently ended.

Ella crossed the room, took her friend’s limp hands. “Irene.”

“The flowers look nice.”

“They do.”

“I appreciate you taking care of that for me, Ella.”

“It was no trouble at all.”

Irene’s sister nodded at Ella, then rose to sit with her husband. “The photographs are lovely. You made good choices.”

“Dolly always liked having her picture taken. Even as a baby,” she said as Ella sat down beside her, “she’d look right at the camera. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to bury my girl.”

Saying nothing—what was there to say?—Ella put her arms around Irene.

“I’ve got pictures. All I’ve got’s a lot of pictures. That one there, of Dolly and the baby, is the last one I have. My sister Carrie’s bringing the baby soon. She’s been a help to me, coming up from Billings. She’s bringing Shiloh. I know Shiloh won’t understand or remember, but I thought she should be here.”

“Of course. You know you can call me, anytime, for anything.”

“I don’t know what to do, with her things, with her clothes.”

“I’ll help you with that when you’re ready. There’s Reverend Meece now.”

Irene’s hand clutched at Ella’s. “I don’t know him. It’s good you asked him to come do the service, but—”

“He’s kind, Irene. He’ll be kind to Dolly.”

“Leo didn’t want any preacher. Not after what . . .” Her eyes welled again. “I can’t think about that now. I’ll go crazy if I think about that now.”

“Don’t. Remember the pretty girl in the photographs. Let me bring Reverend Meece over. I think he’ll be a comfort to you. I promise.”

Though she wasn’t much of a churchgoer, Ella liked Meece, his gentle ways. Irene needed gentle now.

“Thank you so much for doing this, Robert.”

“No need for thanks. It’s a hard day,” he said, looking at the coffin. “The kind of day that shakes a mother’s faith. I hope I can help her.”

As she led him to Irene, she saw a trio of staff from the school come in. Thank God, she thought. Someone came. Leaving Irene with Meece, she went over to take on greeter duties as Irene’s older sister seemed unwilling or unable to shoulder the task.

She excused herself when Irene’s younger sister arrived with the baby, her husband and her two children. “Carrie, would you like me to take the baby? I think Irene could use you.”

As people formed their groups, quiet conversations began, Ella cuddled the chubby, bright-eyed orphan.

And Leo surged to his feet. “You’ve got no business here. You’ve got no right to be here.”

The outraged tone had Shiloh’s lip quivering with a whimper. Ella murmured reassurance as she turned, saw the small contingent from the base.

“After what you did? The way you treated my girl? You get out. You get the hell out!”

“Leo.” Across the room, Irene sank back into the sofa. “Stop. Stop.” Covering her face with her hands, she burst into harsh sobs.

Ignoring Leo, Marg marched straight to Irene, sat to embrace the woman, to let Irene cry on her shoulder.

“Mr. Brakeman.” Irene watched a ruddy-faced, towheaded young man step forward—his jaw as clenched as Leo’s fists. “That baby there is my blood as much as yours, and Dolly was her ma. Wasn’t a year ago I buried my brother. We both lost something, and Shiloh’s what we’ve got left. We’ve come to pay Shiloh’s ma our respects.”

The livid color in Leo’s cheeks only deepened. For one horrible moment, Ella imagined the worst. Fists, blood, chaos. Then Lieutenant Quinniock and a woman stepped in, and fear flickered briefly in Leo’s eyes.

“Stay away from me,” he told the young man. Matt, Ella realized. Matt Brayner.

“That’s your uncle,” Ella whispered. “That’s Uncle Matt. It’s okay now.”

Leo turned his back, moved as far away as the narrow confines of the room allowed, folded his arms over his chest.

Ella stepped to Matt. “Would you hold her? I’d like to take Irene out for a minute or two, get her some fresh air.”

“I’d be pleased.” Matt’s eyes watered up when the baby reached a chubby hand to his face.

“She favors Jim a little.” Lynn spoke quietly. “Don’t you think, Matt? She favors Jim?”

Matt’s throat worked as he nodded, as he bent his head to press his cheek to Shiloh’s.

“Come on with us, Irene.” With Marg’s help, Ella got Irene to her feet. “Come on with us for a bit.”

As they led the sobbing woman out, Ella heard Meece’s gentle voice coat over the ugly tension in the room.

ROWAN LICKED her strawberry swirl, enjoying the buzz of pedestrian and street traffic as she strolled with Gull.

“That’s not really ice cream,” she told him.

“Maple walnut is not only really ice cream, it’s macho ice cream.”

“Maple’s for syrup. It’s like a condiment. It’s like mustard. Would you eat mustard ice cream?”

“I’m open to all flavors, even your girlie strawberry parfait.”

“This is refreshing.” As the drive had been, she thought. A long, aimless drive on winding roads, and now a slow, purposeless stroll along the green shade of boulevard trees toward one of the city’s parks.

With two of the four-hour breaks ahead of them, she could let go, relax. Unless the phones in their pockets signaled a call back to base.

For now she’d just appreciate the respite, the ice cream, the company and the blissful rarity of a free summer afternoon.

“I’ll ignore your syrup ice cream because you had a really good idea. Twenty-four hours ago, we’re in the belly of the beast, and here we are poking along like a couple of tourists.”

“One makes the other all the more worthwhile.”

“You know what, if we’re not catching fire, we should complete our tequila shot competition tonight. We can pick up a bottle of the good stuff before we head back.”

“You just want to get me drunk and take advantage of me.”

“I don’t have to get you drunk for that.”

“Suddenly I feel cheap and easy. I like it.”

“Maybe we can get Cards into it. He could use the distraction.”

She’d told Gull the situation on the drive in. “The letter’s a good idea. He should follow through.”

“Maybe you could help him.”

“Me?”

“You’ve got good words.”

“I don’t think Cards wants me playing Cyrano for his Roxanne.”

“See?” She drilled a finger into his arm, and put on a bumpkin accent. “You got all that there book-larning.”

“Rowan?”

She glanced over at the sound of her name. Feeling awkward, mildly annoyed and uncertain what came next, Rowan lowered her ice cream. “Ah, yeah. Hi.”

Ella stayed seated on the bench. “It’s nice to see you. I heard you got back this morning.” Ella mustered up a smile for Gull. “I’m Ella Frazier, a friend of Rowan’s father.”

“Gulliver Curry.” He stepped over, offered his free hand. “How’re you doing?”

“Honestly? Not very well. I’ve just come from Dolly’s funeral, which was as bad as you can imagine. I wanted to walk it off, then I thought I could sit it off. It’s so pretty here. But it’s not working.”

“Why were you . . . Mrs. Brakeman works at your school,” Rowan remembered.

“Yes. We’ve gotten to be friends the last year or so.”

“How is she . . . It’s stupid to ask how she’s doing, if she’s okay. She couldn’t be okay.”

“She’s not, and I think it may be worse yet. The police were there, too, and took Leo in for questioning after the service. Irene’s in the middle of a nightmare. It’s hard to watch a friend going through all this, knowing there’s little to nothing you can do to help. And I’m sorry.” She caught herself, shook her head. “Here you are on what I’m sure is very rare and precious free time, and I’m full of gloom.”

“You need ice cream,” Gull decided. “What flavor?”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Ice cream,” he repeated, “is guaranteed to cut the gloom. What would you like?”

“You might as well pick something,” Rowan told her. “He’ll just keep at you otherwise.”

“Mint chocolate chip. Thank you.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Only more awkward now, Rowan thought as Gull jogged back in the direction of the ice-cream parlor. “I guess you saw the group from the base.”

“Yes. Leo started to cause a scene, which might have escalated. But between Matt, then the police coming in, it died off into awful tension, resentment, grief, smothered rage. And, enough.” She closed her eyes. “Just enough of all that. Will you sit? You know your delightful man took off not only to get me ice cream but to give us a few minutes on our own.”

“Probably. He likes to put things in motion.”

“He’s gorgeous, and strikes me as tough and sweet. That’s an appealing blend in a man.” Ella angled on the bench, putting them face-to-face. “You’re uncomfortable with me, with my relationship with your father.”

“I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t. I feel like I know you, at least a little, because Lucas talks about you all the time. He loves you so much, is so proud of you. You have to know there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.”

“It’s mutual.”

“I know it. Just as I know if you made it a choice between you and me, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not going to—”

“Just let me finish, because you don’t know me and, at this point, don’t particularly like me. Why should you? But since we have this opportunity I’m going to tell you your father is the most wonderful, the most endearing, the most exciting man I’ve ever known. I made the first move, he was so shy. Oh, God.” She pressed a hand to her heart, her face lighting up in the dappled sunlight. “I’d hoped we’d get to know each other, date, enjoy each other’s company. And we did. What I never expected was I’d fall in love with him.”

Battling a dozen conflicting emotions, Rowan stared at her melting ice cream.

“You’re so young. And I know you don’t think you are. But you’re so young, and it has to be impossible to understand how someone my age can fall just as hard, as deep and terrifyingly as someone yours. But I have, and I know where the power is, Rowan. I hope you’ll give me a chance.”

“He’s never . . . He hasn’t been involved with anyone since my mother.”

“I know. That makes me very, very lucky. Here comes Gull. From where I’m sitting, we’re both very lucky.”

Gull skimmed his gaze over Rowan’s face before shifting to Ella. “Here you go.”

“That was quick.”

“We call him Fast Feet.” Not sure what to think, Rowan attacked the drips running down her cone.

“Thank you.” After the first taste, Ella smiled, tasted again. “You were right, this cuts the gloom. Take my seat,” she said as she got up. “I think I can walk this off now. It was nice to talk to you, Rowan.”

“Yeah. You too.” Sort of, Rowan thought, as Ella walked away.

Gull sat, looked after her. “She’s hot.”

“Jesus Christ. She’s old enough to be your mother.”

“My aunt’s also hot. A guy doesn’t have to want to sleep with a woman to acknowledge the hotness.”

“She said she’s in love with my father. What am I supposed to say to that? Do about that? Feel about that?”

“Maybe that she has good taste in men.” He patted her thigh. “You’ve got to let these crazy kids work these things out on their own. Anyway, my first—if brief—impression. I liked her.”

“Because she’s hot.”

“Hot is a separate issue. She was sitting here grieving for a friend’s loss, worried for that friend and what she might still have to face. Empathy and compassion. She’s pissed off at Leo Brakeman, which shows good sense and a lack of hypocrisy. She told you how she felt about your father, when it’s pretty clear you’re not too crazy about the whole matchup. That took guts, and honesty.”

“Maybe you could be her campaign manager.” Rowan sat back. “She dropped it in my court, and that was smart. I have the power. So you can add smart to her list of virtues.”

“Would you rather see your dad with somebody dumb, selfish, coldhearted and hypocritical?”

“You’re no dummy, either. Hell, let’s buy two bottles of tequila. I could use a good drunk tonight.”

“Who says I’m a good drunk?”

ROWAN CHECKED in on Matt when they got back to base, and found him sitting on the side of his bed tying his running shoes.

“I heard it was pretty bad.”

“It was, but it could’ve been worse. Why he wants to blame me and L.B. and, jeez, Marg and Lynn for Dolly getting fired? She brought that on herself.”

Good, she thought, he was pissed off, not broody. “Because people suck and generally want anything crappy to be somebody else’s fault.”

“At the damn funeral? He starts yelling and threatening us at his daughter’s funeral?”

“At my mother’s funeral, her parents wouldn’t even speak to me. They wouldn’t speak to me really loud.”

“You’re right. People suck.”

“We’re going to have a tequila shooter contest in the lounge later. You’re on third load, too. I’ll float your entry fee.”

That got a smile. “You know I can’t compete with you there. I’m going for a run. It’s cooled off a little.” He fixed on his cap. “I got to see the baby anyway, and even held her a few minutes. I’m thinking my parents ought to talk to a lawyer, about custody or rights and all that.”

“That’s a tough call, Matt.”

He gave the bill of his cap a quick jerk into place as he frowned at Rowan. “She’s their blood, too. I don’t want to screw with Mrs. Brakeman. I think she’s a good person. But if that dickhead she’s married to goes to jail, how is she supposed to take care of Shiloh all alone? How’s she supposed to pay for all the stuff Shiloh needs on her salary cooking in the school cafeteria?”

“It’s a hard situation, and, well, I know you already gave Dolly money for the baby.”

Those faded blue eyes flattened out. “It’s my money, and my blood.”

“I know that. It was good of you to want to help with Shiloh’s expenses, to stand in for Jim that way.”

He relaxed a little. “It was the right thing to do.”

“And it’s not always easy to do the right thing in a hard situation. I guess I’d worry bringing lawyers in might murk it up even more. At least right now.”

“It doesn’t hurt to talk. Everybody should do whatever’s best for the baby, right?”

“They should. I . . . I’m probably the wrong person to ask about something like this. Maybe, I don’t know, Matt, if your mother came out . . . if she and Mrs. Brakeman talked about everything, they could work out what’s best, what’s right.”

“Maybe. She looks like a Brayner, you know? The baby? Even Lynn said so. I’ve got to think about it.”

She supposed they did, Rowan decided when he headed out for his run. Matt, his family, the Brakemans, they’d all have to think about it. But she knew what it was to be the child everybody was thinking about.

It wasn’t an easy place to be.

22

Rowan watched Dobie painfully swallow shot number ten. His eyes had gone glassy on eight, and now his cheeks took on a faint, sickly green hue.

“That’s twenty.”

“Count’s ten, Dobie,” Cards, official scorekeeper, told him.

“I’m seeing double, so it’s twenty.” Laughing like a loon, he nearly tipped out of his chair.

Janis, official pourer, filled shot number eleven for Yangtree. “Experience,” he said, and knocked it back smooth. “That’s the key.”

Rowan smirked, licked salt off the back of her hand, then drank hers down. “I’d like to thank the soon-to-be loser for springing for the prime.”

“You’re welcome.” Gull polished off eleven.

“I got another in me.” Stovic lifted his glass, proved he did—before he slid bonelessly to the floor.

“And he’s out.” Cards crossed Stovic off the board.

“I am not out.” From the floor, Stovic waved a hand. “I’m fully conscious.”

“You leave your chair without calling for a piss break, you’re out.”

“Who left the chair?”

“Come on, Chainsaw.” Gibbons got his hands under Stovic’s arms and dragged him out from under the table.

Dobie made it to thirteen before surrendering. “It’s this foreign liquor, that’s what it is. Oughta be homegrown bourbon.” He got down, crawled on his hands and knees and lay down next to a snoring Stovic.

“Rookies.” Yangtree got number fourteen down, then laid his head on the table and moaned, “Mommy.”

“Did you mean uncle?” Cards demanded, and Yangtree managed to shoot up his middle finger.

Rowan and Gull went head-to-head until Janis split the last shot between them. “That’s all there is, there ain’t no more.”

“Shoulda bought three bottles.” Rowan closed one eye to focus and click her glass to Gull’s. “On three?”

Those still conscious in the room counted off, then cheered when the last drops went down.

“And that’s a draw,” Cards announced.

“I’m proud to know you.” Janis dropped a hand on each shoulder. “And wish you the best of luck with tomorrow’s hangover.”

“Gull doesn’t get ’em.”

He smiled, a little stupidly, into Rowan’s eyes. “This might be the exception. Let’s go have lotsa drunk sex before it hits.”

“’Kay. Drunk sex for everybody!” She waved her hands and smacked a barely awake Yangtree in the face. “Oops.”

“No, I needed that. Everybody still alive?”

“Can’t make that much noise dead.” Rowan gestured to snoring-in-stereo Stovic and Dobie as she swayed to her feet. “Follow me, stud.”

“I’m with the blonde.” Gull staggered after her.

“We can do this.” She fumbled at his shirt when he booted the door shut on the third try. “Soon as the room stops spinning around.”

“Pretend we’re doing it on a merry-go-round.”

“Naked at the carnival.” On a wild laugh she defeated his shirt, but started to teeter. When he grabbed for her, she took them both onto the floor, hard.

“I think that hurt, but it’s better down here, ’cause of the gravity.”

“Okay.” He shifted off her to struggle with her clothes. “We should do naked tequila shots. Then we wouldn’t have to take them off after.”

“Now you think of it. Alley-oop!” She held up her arms to help him strip off her shirt. “Gimme, gimme.” She locked her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, then latched her mouth onto his.

The heat burned through the tequila haze, fired in the senses. The world rolled and turned, yet she remained constant, chained around him. Caged, he met the desperate demand of her mouth, rocking center to center until he thought he’d go mad.

The chains broke. She rolled on top of him, biting, grasping, lapping, then rolled off again.

“Get naked,” she ordered. “Beat ya.”

They tugged at shoes, clothes in a panting race. With clothes still landing in heaps, they dived at each other. Wrestling now, skin damp and slick, they rolled over the floor. Knees and elbows banged, and still her laughter rang out. The moonlight turned her dewed skin to silver, glowing and precious, irresistible.

Breathless with pleasure, crazed with a whirling, spinning need, she threw her head back when he plunged into her.

“Take me like you mean it.”

And he did, God, he did, filling her up, wringing her out while she pushed for more. Catching fire, she thought, leaping into the heart of the blaze. She rode the heat until it simply consumed her.

“Merry-go-round,” she murmured. “Still turning. Stay right here.” This time she drew him close before they slept.

ANOTHER FIRE WOKE HER, the fire that killed, that hunted and destroyed. It growled behind her, pawing at the ground as she ran. She flew through the black, yet still it came, stalking her to the graveyard where the dead lay unburied on the ground. Waiting for her.

Jim’s eyes rolled up in the sockets of the charred skull. “Killed me dead.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Plenty of that going around. Plenty of dragon fever. It’s not finished. More to come. Fire can’t burn it away. But it can sure try.”

From behind her, it breathed, and its breath ignited her like kindling.

“HEY, HEY.” Gull pulled her to sitting, shaking her by the shoulders on the way. “Snap out of it.”

She shoved at him, gulping for air, but he tightened his grip. He couldn’t see her clearly, but he could feel her, hear her. The shakes and tremors, the cold sweat, the whistle of air as she fought for breath.

“You had a nightmare.” He spoke more calmly now. “A bad one. It’s done.”

“Can’t breathe.”

“You can. You are, just too fast. You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep it up. Slow it down, Rowan.”

Even as she shook her head, he started rubbing her shoulders, moving up her neck where the muscles strained stiff as wire. “It’s a panic attack. You know that in your head. Let the rest of you catch up. Slow it down.”

He saw her eyes now as his own vision adjusted, wide as planets. She pressed a hand to her chest where he imagined the pressure crushed like an anvil. “Breathe out, long breath out. Long out, slow in. That’s the way. Let go of it. Do it again, smooth it out. You’re okay. Keep it up, in and out. I’m going to get you some water.”

He let her go to roll to her cooler, grab a bottle.

“Don’t guzzle,” he warned her. “We’re in slow mode.” When she gulped the first swallow, he tipped the bottle down. “Easy.”

“Okay.” She took another, slower sip. She stopped, went back to breathing, with more control, less trembling. “Wow.”

He touched her face, leaned in to rest his brow on hers. The shudder he’d held back rocked through him.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“That makes two of us. I didn’t scream, did I?” She glanced toward the door as she asked.

Trust her, Gull thought, to worry about embarrassing herself with the rest of the crew. “No. It was like you were trying to and couldn’t get it out.”

“I was on fire. I swear I could feel my skin burning, smell my hair going up. Pretty damn awful.”

“How often do you have them?” Now that the crisis had passed, he could coddle her a little—a comfort to himself, too. So he touched his lips to her forehead as he shifted to rub her back and shoulders.

“I never used to have them. Or just the usual monster-in-the-closet deal once in a while when I was a kid. But I started having them after Jim. Replaying the jump, then how we found him. They eased off over the winter, but started coming back at the start of the season. And they’re getting worse.”

“You found another fire victim, someone else you knew. That would kick it up some.”

“He’s started to talk to me in them—cryptic warnings. I know it’s my head putting words in his mouth, but I can’t figure it out.”

“What did he say tonight?”

“That it wasn’t finished. There’d be more coming. I guess I’m worried there will be, and that’s probably all there is to it.”

“Why are you worried?”

“Well, Jesus, Gull, who isn’t?”

“No, be specific.”

“Be specific at half past whatever in the morning after twisting myself up into a panic attack?”

The irritation in her tone settled him down. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know. If I knew, I’d . . . Dolly and Latterly, obviously that’s connected. The odds of them both running afoul of some homicidal arsonist are just short of nil. If we were dealing with random, that would be cause for some serious worry. But this isn’t, and they’re probably going to bust Brakeman for the whole shot. But . . .”

“But you’re having a hard time buying he’d set fire to his own daughter’s body. So am I.”

“Yeah, but that’s what makes the most sense. He finds out Dolly’s not only lying but screwing the preacher. They fight about it, he kills her—in a rage, by accident, however. Then panics, does the rest. It broke something in him.”

Tears running down his face, she remembered.

“He shoots at us, kills Latterly. Case closed.”

“Except you don’t quite believe it. Hence—”

“Hence,” she repeated, and snickered.

“That’s right. Hence you have nightmares where Jim—who’s connected to you and to Dolly—verbalizes what you’re already thinking, at least on a subconscious level.”

“Thanks, Dr. Freud.”

“And your fifty minutes are up. You should catch the couple hours’ sleep we’ve got left.”

“We’re still on the floor. The floor was most excellent, but for sleep, the bed’s better.”

“The bed it is.” He rose, grabbed her hand to pull her up. Then, to make her laugh, swept her up in his arms.

Laugh she did. “I may have shed a few this season, but I’m still no lightweight.”

“You’re right.” He dropped her onto the bed. “Next time, you carry me.” He stretched out beside her. “One thing, it looks like your nightmare blew any potential tequila hangover out of me.”

“Always the bright side.”

He snuggled her in, gently stroking her back until he felt her drop off.

AFTER THE MORNING BRIEFING, she got in her run, some weight training and power yoga with Gull for company. She had to admit, having someone who could keep up with her, and more, made the daily routine more fun.

They hit the dining hall together where Dobie slumped over a plate of toast and what Rowan recognized as a glass of Marg’s famed hangover cure.

“Mmm, look at these big, fat sausages.” Rowan clattered the top back on the warmer. “Nothing like pig grease in the morning.”

“I’ll hurt you when I can move without my head blowing up.”

“Hangover?” she asked sweetly. “Gosh, I feel great.” There might have been a dull, gnawing ache at the base of her skull, but all things considered, small price to pay.

“Hurt you, and all your kin. Your pets, too.”

She only grinned as she sat down with a full plate. “Not much appetite this morning?”

“I woke up on the floor with Stovic. I may never eat again.”

“How’s Stovic?” Gull asked.

“Last I saw him, his eyes were full of blood, and he was crawling toward his quarters. If I ever pick up a glass of tequila again, shoot me. It’d be a mercy.”

“Drink that,” Rowan advised. “It won’t make you jump up and belt out ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,’ but it’ll take the edge off.”

“It’s brown. And I think something’s moving in there.”

“Trust me.”

When he picked up the Tabasco Lynn kept on the table for him, Rowan started to tell him he wouldn’t need it—then smiled to herself as she cut into a sausage.

Dobie doused the concoction liberally, gave a brisk, bracing nod. “Down the hatch,” he announced. Closing his eyes, he drank it down fast.

And his eyes popped open as his face went from hangover gray to lobster red. “Holy shitfire!”

“Burns like a helitorch.” Struggling with laughter, Rowan ate more sausage. “It may scorch some brain cells while it’s at it, but it fires through the bloodstream. You’ve been purified, my child.”

“He’s not going to speak in tongues, is he?” Gull asked.

“Holy shitfire. That’s a drink. All it needs is a shot of bourbon. Man, makes me sweat.”

Fascinated, Gull watched sweat pop out on Dobie’s red face. “Flushing out the toxins, I guess. What the hell’s in there?”

“She won’t tell. She makes you start with the M-and-M Breakfast—Motrin and Move-Free—with a full glass of water, then drink that, eat toast, drink more water.”

“Said I had to do my run, too.”

“Yeah.” Rowan nodded at Dobie. “And by lunchtime, you’ll feel mostly human and be able to eat. Somebody ought to drag Stovic down here—and Yangtree. Hey, Cards,” she said when he walked in. “How about hauling Stovic’s and Yangtree’s pitiful asses down here so we can pour some of Marg’s hangover antidote into them?”

He said nothing until he’d taken the chair beside hers, angled it toward her. “L.B. just got word from the cops. The rangers found a gun, half buried a few yards from where they found the preacher’s car. They ran it. It’s one of Brakeman’s.”

“Well.” Deliberately she spread huckleberry jelly on a breakfast biscuit. “I guess that answers that.”

“They went to pick him up this morning. He’s gone, his truck’s gone.”

Jelly dripped off her knife as she stared at him. “You don’t mean as in gone to work.”

“No. It looks like he took camping gear, a shotgun, a rifle, two handguns and a whole hell of a lot of ammo. His wife said she didn’t know where he’d gone, or that he’d packed up in the first place. I don’t know if they believe her or not, but from what L.B. says, nobody seems to have the first goddamn clue where he is.”

“I thought—I heard they were going to take him in after the funeral yesterday.”

“For questioning, yeah. But he has a lawyer and all that, and until they had the gun, Ro, they didn’t have anything on him for this shit.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Gull exploded. “Didn’t they have him under surveillance?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know dick-all about it, Gull. But L.B. says he wants you to stay on base, Ro, unless we catch a fire. He wants you to stay inside as much as possible until we know what the fuck. And he doesn’t want to hear any carping about it.”

“I’ll work in the loft.”

“They’ll get him, Ro. It won’t take them long.”

“Sure.”

He gave her arm an awkward pat. “I’ll roust Yangtree and Stovic. It’ll be fun watching the smoke come out of their ears when they drink the hangover cure.”

In the silence that followed Cards’s exit, Dobie got up, poured himself coffee. “I’m going to say this ’cause I have a lot of respect for you. And because Gull’s got more than that for you. If I took off into the hills back home, if I had the gear—hell, even without it, but if I had the gear, a good gun, a good knife, I could live up there for months. Nobody’d find me I didn’t want finding me.”

Rowan made herself continue eating. “They’ll find his truck, maybe, but they won’t find him. He’ll lose himself in the Bitterroots, or the Rockies. His wife’ll lose her home. She put it up for his bond, and he just fucking broke that. I didn’t believe he’d done it—or not Dolly. He’s running, and left his wife and granddaughter twisting in the wind. He abandoned them.

“I hope he screws up.” She shoved to her feet. “I hope he screws up and they catch him, and they toss him in a hole for the rest of his life. I’ll be in the loft, sewing goddamn Smitty bags.”

As she stomped out, Dobie dumped three heaping spoons of sugar into his coffee. “How do you want to play this, son?”

“Intellectually, I don’t think Brakeman’s coming back around here, or worrying about Rowan right now.”

“Mmm-hmm. How do you want to play it?”

He looked over. Sometimes the most unlikely person became the most trusted friend. “When we’re on base, somebody’s with her, round the clock. We make sure she has plenty to do inside. But she needs to get out. If we hole her in, she’ll blow. I guess we mix up the routine. We usually run in the mornings, early. We’ll start running in the evening.”

“If everybody wore caps, sunglasses, it’d be a little harder to tell who’s who at a distance. The trouble is, that woman’s built like a brick shithouse. You just can’t hide that talent. I don’t guess she’d transfer to West Yellowstone, or maybe over to Idaho for a stretch.”

“No. She’d see that as running. Abandonment.”

“Maybe. But maybe not, if you went, too.”

“She’s not there yet, Dobie.”

Dobie pursed his lips, watching Gull as he drank coffee. “But you are?”

Gull stared down at his half-eaten breakfast. “Fucking lupines.”

“What the hell’s lupines?”

Gull just shook his head. “Yeah, I’m there,” he said as he got to his feet. “Goddamn it.”

Southern, Gibbons and Janis came in, still sweaty from PT, as Gull stormed out.

“What’s that about?” Gibbons demanded.

“Sit down, boys and girls, and I’ll tell you.”

TEMPER BUBBLING, Gull tracked down L.B. outside a hangar in conversation with one of the pilots.

“How the fuck did this happen?”

“Do you think I didn’t ask the same damn thing?” L.B. tossed back. “Do you think I’m not pissed off?”

“I don’t care if you’re pissed off. I want some answers.”

L.B. jerked a thumb, headed away from the hangar and toward one of the service roads. “If you want to jump somebody’s ass, find a cop. They’re the ones who screwed this up.”

“I want to know how.”

“You want to know how? I’ll tell you how.” L.B. picked up a palm-sized rock, heaved it. “They had two cops outside the Brakeman house. Shit, probably looking at skin mags and eating donuts.”

He found another rock, heaved that. “My fucking brother’s a cop, over in Helena, and I know he doesn’t do that shit. But goddamn it.”

Gull leaned over, picked up a rock, offered it. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” After hurling it, L.B. rolled his shoulder. “They were out in the front, watching the house. Brakeman’s truck is around the side, under a carport. So he loads it up sometime in the middle of the night, then he pushes it right across the backyard, cuts a truck-sized hole in the frigging fence, then pushes it right across the neighbor’s yard to the road. Then God knows where he went.”

“And the cops don’t see the truck’s gone until this morning.”

“No, they fucking don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s it?”

“It’s an answer. I do better with answers. She’s third load. Can you put her on Ops if we get a call for one or two?”

“Yeah.” L.B. picked up another rock, just stared at it a moment, then dropped it again. “I’d figured on it. I just wanted to wait until she’d cooled off.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“She’s been known to kill the messenger. That’s why I sent Cards,” L.B. added with a slow smile. “He’s just off the DL, so I figured she’d take it easy on him.”

“That’s why you’re chief.”

Gull swung by the barracks to grab a Coke, considered, and though he thought it the lamest form of camouflage outside a Groucho mustache, he grabbed caps and sunglasses.

On the way to the loft, he pulled out his phone, called Lucas.

Since most of the unit was doing PT or still at breakfast, he found only a handful working in the loft along with Rowan. She inspected, gore by gore, a canopy hanging in the tower.

“Busy,” she said shortly.

He tipped the Coke from side to side. “You know you’re jonesing by now.”

“Very busy.” Using tweezers, she removed some pine needles lodged in the cloth.

“Fine, I’ll drink it.” He popped the top. “L.B. wants you in Ops if we catch a fire.”

She jerked around. “He’s not grounding me.”

“I didn’t say that. You’re third load, so unless we catch a holocaust, you’re probably not going to jump on the first call. You’re a qualified assistant Ops manager, aren’t you?”

She grabbed the Coke from him, gulped some down. “Yeah.” She shoved it back at him, returned to her inspection. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem. About this situation.”

“I don’t want or need to be reassured, protected, advised or—”

“Jesus, shut up.” He shook his head at the ceiling towering above, took another drink.

“You shut up.”

He had to grin. “I’m rubber; you’re glue. You really want to sink that low? I don’t think Brakeman’s your problem.”

“I’m not worried about him. I can take care of myself, and I’m not stupid. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy, here, in manufacturing, in the gym when I’m not out on a fire.”

Meticulously she removed a twig, marked a small, one-inch tear for repair before she lowered the apex to examine higher areas.

“Last night, Brakeman eluded two cops by pushing his full-size pickup across his backyard, cutting a fence, pushing it across another yard until he reached the road. He loaded up everything he’d need to live in the wild. That tells me he’s not stupid, either.”

“So he’s not stupid. Points for him.”

“But he leaves weapons, twice, so they’re easily found. A handgun properly registered to him, a rifle that has his name on it. That’s pretty damn stupid.”

“You’re back to thinking he didn’t do any of this.”

“I’m back to that. I’d rather not be, because this way, we’ve got nothing. We don’t know who or why. Not really. On the other hand, I’m also thinking it’s unlikely anyone’s going to be using you or the base for target practice. Unlikely isn’t enough, but it’s comforting.”

“Because it would be stupid for somebody else to shoot at me, when Brakeman’s on the run and the cops know what weapons he’s got with him.”

No, she wasn’t stupid, she reminded herself, but she’d been too angry to think clearly. Gull, it seemed, didn’t have the same problem.

“But if it’s not him, Gull, why is somebody working so hard to make it look like him?”

“Because he’s an asshole? Because he’s plausible? Because they want to see him go down? Maybe all three. But the point is, you’ve got to be smart—and you are—but I don’t think you have to sweat this.”

She nodded, inspected the apex bridle cords, then the vent hoods.

“I wasn’t sweating it. I’m pissed off.”

“Your subconscious sweats it, then.”

“All right, all right.” She inspected the top of each slot, then the anti-inversion net. There she marked a line of broken stitching.

Gull waited her out until she’d attached the inspection tag to the riser.

“I guess I have to call my father. Word travels, and he’ll get worried.”

“I talked to him before I came up. We went over it.”

“He came by? Why didn’t he—”

“I called him.”

She faced him with one quick pivot. “You did what? What do you mean calling my father about all this before I—”

“It’s called male bonding. You’ll never get it. I believe women are as capable as men, deserve equal pay—and that one day, should be sooner than later, in my opinion, the right woman can and should be leader of the free world. But you can’t understand the male bonding rituals any more than men can understand why the vast majority of women are obsessed with shoes and other footwear.”

“I’m not obsessed with shoes, so don’t try to make this something cultural or—or gender-based.”

“You have three pairs of jump boots. Two is enough. You have four pairs of running shoes. Again, two’s plenty.”

“I’m breaking in a third pair of jump boots before the first pair gets tossed so I don’t get boot-bit. And I have four pairs of running shoes because . . . you’re trying to distract me from the point.”

“Yes, but I’m not done. You also have hiking boots—two pairs—three pairs of sandals and three of really sexy heels. And this is just on base. God knows what you’ve got in your closet at home.”

“You’ve been counting my shoes? Talk about obsessed.”

“I’m just observant. Lucas wants you to call him when you get a chance. Leave him a text or voice message if he’s in the air, and he’ll come by to see you tonight. He likes knowing I’ve got your back. You’d have mine, wouldn’t you?” he asked before she could snap at him.

So she sighed. “Yes. You defeat me with your reason and your diatribe over shoes. Over which I am not obsessed.”

“You also have a good dozen pairs of earrings, none of which you wear routinely. But we can discuss that another time.”

“Oh, go away. Go study something.”

“You could give me a rigging lesson. I want to work on getting certified.”

“Maybe. Come back in an hour, and we’ll—”

When the siren sounded she stepped back. “I guess not. I’m switching to Ops.”

“I’ll walk you over. Here.”

He handed her her cap and sunglasses, then put on his own while she frowned at them.

“What is this?”

“A disguise.” He grinned at her. “Dobie wants you to wear them. Let’s give him a break, or he might order fake mustaches and clown noses off the Internet.”

She rolled her eyes, but put them on. “And what, this makes us look like twins? Where are your tits?”

“You’re wearing them, and may I say they look spectacular on you.”

“I can’t disagree with that. Still, everybody should stop worrying about Rowan and do their jobs.”

By four P.M., she was jumping fire, doing hers.

23

July burned. Hot and dry, the wild ignited, inflamed by lightning strikes, negligence, an errant spark bellowed by a gust of wind.

For eighteen straight days and nights Zulies jumped and fought fire. In Montana, in Idaho, Colorado, California, the Dakotas, New Mexico. Bodies shed weight, lived with pain, exhaustion, injury, battling in canyons, on ridges, in forests.

The constant war left little time to think about what lived outside the fire. The manhunt for Leo Brakeman heading into its third week hardly mattered when the enemy shot firebrands the size of cannonballs or swept on turbulent winds over barriers so effortfully created.

Along with her crew, Rowan rushed up the side of Mount Blackmore, like a battalion charging into hell. Beside her another tree torched off, spewing embers like flaming confetti. They felled burning trees on the charge, sawed and cut the low-hanging branches the fire could climb like snakes.

Can’t let her climb, Rowan thought as they hacked and dug. Can’t let her crown.

Can’t let her win.

So they fought their way up the burning mountain, sweat running in salty rivers in the scorched air.

When Gull climbed up the line to her position, she pulled down her bandanna to pour water down her aching throat.

“The line’s holding.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “A couple of spots jumped it, but we pissed them out. Gibbons is going to leave a couple down there to scout for more, and send the rest up to you.”

“Good deal.” She took another drink, scanning and counting yellow shirts and helmets through the smoke. On the left the world glowed, eerie orange with an occasional spurt of flame that picked out a hardened, weary face, tossed it into sharp relief.

In that moment, she loved them, loved them all with a near religious fervor. Every ass and elbow, she thought, every blister and burn.

Her eyes lit when she looked at Gull. “Best job ever.”

“If you don’t mind starving, sweating and eating smoke.”

Grinning, she shouldered her Pulaski. “Who would? Head on up. We’re still making line here so—” She broke off, grabbed his arm.

It spun out of the orange wall, whipped by the wind. The funnel of flame whirled and danced, spinning a hundred feet into the air. In seconds, screaming like a banshee, it uprooted two trees.

“Fire devil. Run! ” She pointed toward the front of the line as its wind blasted the furnace heat in her face. She grabbed her radio, watching the flaming column’s spin as she shouted to the crew, “Go up, go up! Move your asses. Gibbons, fire devil, south flank. Stay clear.”

It roared toward the line, a tornadic gold light as gorgeous as it was terrifying, spewing flame, hurling fiery debris. The air exploded with the call of it, with its lung-searing heat. She watched Matt go down, saw Gull haul him up, take his weight. Keeping her eye on the fire devil, she shifted, got her shoulder under Matt’s other arm.

“Just my ankle. I’m okay.”

“Keep moving! Keep moving!”

It snaked toward them, undulating. They’d never outrun it, she thought, not with Matt stumbling and limping between them. Behind Matt’s back, Gull’s hand gripped her elbow, and in acknowledgment, she did the same.

This is it. Even thinking it she pushed up the ridge. No time for emergency gear, for the shelters.

“There!” Gull jerked her, with Matt between them, to the right, and another five precious feet. He shoved her under the enormous boulder first, then Matt, before crawling under behind them.

“Here we go,” Gull breathed, and stared into Rowan’s eyes while the world erupted.

Rock exploded and rained down like bullets. Through smoke black as pitch, Rowan saw a blazing tree crash and vomit out a flood of flame and sparks.

“Short, shallow breaths, Matt.” She gripped his hand, squeezed hard. “Just like in a shake and bake.”

“Is this what Jim felt?” Tears and sweat rolled down his face. “Is this what he felt?”

“Short and shallow,” she repeated. “Through your bandanna, just like in a shelter.”

For an instant, another, the heat built to such mad intensity she wondered if they’d all just torch like a tree. She worked her other hand free, found Gull’s. And held on.

Then the screaming wind silenced.

“It’s cooling. We’re okay. We’re okay?” she repeated, in a question this time.

“What can you see?” Gull asked her.

“The smoke’s starting to thin, a little. We’ve got a lot of spots. Spots, no wall, no devil.” She shifted as much as she could. “Get behind me, Matt, so I can look out.” She angled beside Gull, cautiously eased her head out to look out, up. “It didn’t crown, didn’t roll the wall. Just spots. Jesus, Gull, your jacket’s smoking.” She beat at it with her hands as he worked to shrug out of it. “Are you burned?” she demanded. “Did it get you?”

“I don’t think so.” He crab-walked back. “The ground’s still hot. Watch yourselves.”

Rowan crawled out, reaching for her radio. On it Gibbons shouted her name.

“It’s Ro, Gull, Matt. We’re good. We’re clear. Is everybody all right? Is everybody accounted for?”

“We are now.” Relief flooded his voice. “Where the hell are you?”

She stood, scanned the area to give him the best coordinates. “Matt’s bunged up his ankle. Gull and I can handle these spots, but we dumped most of the gear on the run so . . . Never mind,” she said as she heard the shouts, saw the yellow shirts through the smoke. “Cavalry’s coming this way.”

Dobie came on the run with Trigger right behind him. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you just give us all heart attacks and get it over with?”

He grabbed Gull, slapped his back. “What the hell happened to you?”

“A little dance with the devil. Better put out those spots before we end up having to run again.”

Trigger crouched beside Matt, held out a scorched and mangled helmet. “Found your brainbucket, snookie. You’re a lucky bastard.” He put Matt in a headlock, a sign of relief and affection. “A lucky son of a bitch. Have a souvenir.”

He set the helmet beside Matt before hurrying over to help Dobie with the spot fires.

“Let’s check that ankle out.” Rowan knelt to undo his boot.

“I thought we were finished. I would’ve been finished if you and Gull hadn’t gotten me in there. You saved my life. You could’ve lost yours trying.”

She probed gently at his swollen ankle. “We’re Zulies. When one of us goes down, we pick them up. I don’t think it’s broken. Just sprained bad enough to earn you a short vacation.”

She looked up, smiled at him as she started to wrap it. “Lucky bastard.”

Though he protested, they medevaced Matt out, while the rest of the crew beat the fire back, finally killing it in the early hours of the morning. Mop-up took another full day of digging, beating, dousing.

“You volunteered to stay back, confirm the put-out,” Rowan told Gull.

“I’ve got to quit all this volunteering.”

“With me. The rest are packing out.”

“That’s not such a bad deal.”

“We’ve got MREs, a cool mountain spring, in which the beer fairy has snugged a six-pack.”

“And people say she doesn’t exist.”

“What do people know? I wanted to see this one through, all the way, and take a breath, I guess. So you’re good with it?”

“What do you think?”

“Then let’s take a hike, start doing a check before the sun goes down.”

They moved through the burnout at an easy pace, looking for smoke and smolder.

“I wanted to wait until it was over—all the way—before I said anything about it,” Rowan began. “I didn’t think we were going to make it back there against the fire devil. If you hadn’t spotted those boulders, reacted fast, we’d have all ended up like Matt’s now-famous helmet.”

“I don’t plan on losing you. Anyway, if you’d been on my side, you’d’ve seen the boulders.”

“I like to think so. It was beautiful,” she said after a moment, and with reverence. “It might be crazy to say that, think that, about something that really wants to kill you, but it was beautiful. That spinning column of fire, like something from another world. In a way, I guess it is.”

“Once you see one, it changes things because you know you can’t beat it. You run and hide and you pray, and if you live through it, for a while, all the bullshit in real life doesn’t mean dick.”

“For a while. I guess that’s why I wanted to stay out, stick with it a little longer. There’s a lot of bullshit waiting out there. Leo Brakeman’s still out there. He’s no fire devil, but he’s still out there.”

She blew out a breath. “Every time we get a call, I wonder if we’re going to stumble over another body. His, someone else’s. Because he’s out there. And if he didn’t start those fires, whoever did is out there, too.”

“It’s been three weeks. That’s a long time between.”

“But it doesn’t feel over and done.”

“No. It doesn’t feel over and done.”

“That’s the bullshit waiting.” She gestured. “Why don’t you take that direction, I’ll take this one. We’ll cover more ground, then meet back at camp.” She checked her watch. “Say six-thirty.”

“In time for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”

SHE BEAT HIM BACK to the clearing by the bubbling stream. The campsite, a hive the night before of very tired, very grungy bees, held quiet as a church now, and shimmered in the rays of evening sun. She stowed her gear, checked on the six-pack of beer and the six-pack of Coke she’d asked L.B. to drop.

She’d rather have that, she realized, in this remote spot on the mountain than a bottle of the finest champagne in the fanciest restaurant in Montana.

In anywhere.

She went back for her PG bag and her little bottles of liquid soap and shampoo.

Alone in the sunlight, she pulled off her boots, socks, stripped off the tired work clothes. The stream barely hit her knees, but the cool rush of the water felt like heaven. She sat down, let it bubble over her skin as she looked up to the rise of trees, the spread of sky.

She took time washing, as another woman might in a hot, fragrant bubble bath, enjoying the cool, the clean, the way the water rushed away with the froth she made.

Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them, laid her cheek on her knees, closed her eyes.

She opened them again as a shadow fell over her, and smiled lazily up at Gull. Until she saw the camera.

“You did not take my picture like this. Am I going to have to break that thing?”

“It’s for my private collection. You’re a fantasy, Rowan. Goddess of the brook. How’s the water?”

“Cold.”

He, as she did, pulled off his boots. “I could use some cold.”

“You’re late. It’s got to be close to seven.”

“I had a little detour.”

“Did you find fresh spots?”

“No, all clear. But I found these.” He picked up a water bottle filled with wildflowers.

“You know you’re not supposed to pick flowers up here.” But she couldn’t stop the smile.

“Since we save them, I figured the mountain could spare a few. Yeah, it’s pretty damn cold,” he said as he stepped into the water. “Feels great.”

She pulled out the bottle of soap she’d shoehorned between rocks, tossed it to him. “Help yourself. It feels like we’re the only two people in the world. I wouldn’t want to be the only two people in the world for long—who’d do the cooking?—but it’s nice for right now.”

“I heard birds in the black. They’re already coming back, at least to see what the hell happened. And in the green, across the meadow where I got the flowers, I saw a herd of elk. We may be the only people here, but life rolls on.”

“I’m going to get dressed before I freeze.” She stood, water sliding down her body, sun glinting to turn it to tiny diamonds.

“Wow,” Gull said.

“For that, and the bottle of wildflowers, I guess you’ve earned a beer.” She got out, shivering now, rubbing her skin to warm and dry it. “We’ve got spaghetti and meat sauce, fruit cups, crackers and cheese spread and pound cake for dinner.”

“Right now I could eat cardboard and be happy, so that sounds amazing.”

“I’ll get the campfire going,” she told him as she dressed. “And you get the beer when you get out. I guess cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will consist of—Holy shit.”

“That I don’t want to eat, even now.”

“Don’t move. Or do—really fast.”

“Why?”

“Life rolls along, including the big-ass bear on the other bank.”

“Oh, fuck me.” Gull turned slowly, watched the big-ass bear lumber up toward the stream.

“This may be your fantasy come true, but I really think you should get out of the water.”

“Crap. Throw something at him,” Gull suggested as he stayed low, edging through the water.

“Like what, harsh words? Shit, shit, he’s looking at us.”

“Get one of the Pulaskis. I’m damned if I’m going to be eaten by a bear when I’m naked.”

“I’m sure it’s a more pleasant experience dressed. He’s not going to eat us. They eat berries and fish. Get out of the water so he doesn’t think you’re a really big fish.”

Gull pulled himself out, stood dripping, eyeing the bear and being eyed. “Retreat. Slowly. He’s probably just screwing with us, and he’ll go away, but in case.”

Even as Rowan reached down for the gear, the bear turned its back on them. It squatted, shat, then lumbered away the way it came.

“Well, I guess he showed us what he thinks of us.” Overcome, Rowan sat on the ground, roared with laughter. “A real man would go after him, make him pay for that insult—so I could then tend your wounds.”

“Too bad, you’re stuck with me.” Gull scooped both hands through his dripping hair. “Christ, I want that beer.”

AS FAR AS GULL was concerned, ready-to-eat pasta and beer by a crackling campfire in the remote mountain wilderness scored as romantic as candlelight and fine wine in crystal. And beat the traditional trappings on the fun scale by a mile.

She’d relaxed for the first time in weeks, he thought, basking in the aftermath of a job well done and the solitude of what they’d preserved.

“Does your family do the camping thing?” she asked him.

“Not so much. My aunt’s more the is-there-room-service? type. I used to go with some buddies. We’d head up the coast—road trip, you know? Pick a spot. I always figured to head east, take on the Appalachian Trail, but between this and the arcade, I haven’t pulled that one off.”

“That’d be a good one. We mostly stuck to Montana, for recreation. There’s so much here anyway. My dad would work it out so he’d have two consecutive days off every summer, and take me. We’d never know when he’d get them, so it was always spur-of-the-moment.”

“That made it cooler,” Gull commented, and she just beamed at him.

“It really did. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d joined the unit that wilderness camping on his days off probably wouldn’t have been his first choice. I imagine he could’ve used that room service.”

“Kids come first, right? The universal parental code.”

“I guess it should be. I was thinking about Dolly and her father earlier, and the way they’d tear into each other. Was it their fractured dynamic that made her the way she was, or did the way she was fracture the dynamic?”

“Things are hardly ever all one way or the other.”

“More a blend,” she agreed. “A little from each column. Don’t you wonder what aimed her at Latterly? There are plenty of unmarried men she could’ve hooked up with. And he was, what, about fifteen years older and not what you’d call studly.”

“Maybe he was a maniac in bed.”

“Yeah, still waters and so on, but you’ve got to get into bed to find that out. A married guy with three kids. A God guy. If she’d really planned on reeling him in toward the ‘I do’s,’ didn’t she consider what her life would be like? A preacher’s wife, and stepmother of three? She’d have hated it.”

“It might just have been a matter of proving something. Married God guy, father of three. And she thinks, I could get him if I wanted.”

“I don’t get that kind of thinking,” she stated. “For a one-night stand, I can see it. You’ve got an itch, you scope out the talent in the bar, rope one out of the herd to scratch it. I don’t see wrecking a family for another notch on the bedpost.”

“Because you’re thinking like you.” Gull opened the last two beers. “The older-man thing. He’d probably be inclined to indulge her, and be really grateful that a woman her age, with her looks, wanted to sleep with him. It’s a pretty good recipe for infatuation on both sides.”

She angled her head. “You know, you’re right. A guy a little bored in his marriage, a needy young single mother. There’s a recipe. Of course, for all we know Latterly might’ve been a hound dog boning half the women in his congregation, and Dolly was just the latest.”

“If so, the cops’ll find out, if they haven’t already. Sex is never off the radar.”

“Maybe they’ll have this thing wrapped up when we get back.” She broke off a piece of pound cake. “Nobody talks about it much, but it’s on everybody’s mind. L.B.’s especially because he’s got to think about everybody, evaluate everybody, worry about everybody.”

“Yeah, he’s handling a lot. He has a smooth way of juggling.”

“My rookie season, we had Bootstrap. He was okay, ran things pretty smooth, but you could tell, even a rook could tell, his head was already halfway into retirement. He had this cabin up in Washington State, and that’s where he wanted to be. Everybody knew it was his last season. He kept a distance, if you know what I mean, with the rookies especially.”

Gull nodded, sampled pound cake. Ambrosia. “He didn’t want to get close. Didn’t want to make any more personal bonds.”

“I think that was a good part of it. Then L.B. took over. You know how he is. He’s the boss, but he’s one of us. Everybody knows if you need to bitch or whine or let off steam, you can go to him.”

“Here’s to L.B.”

“Bet your ass.” She tipped her head as they clinked beer cans. “I like having sex with you.”

Those cat eyes gleamed in the firelight. “That’s a nonsequitur I can get behind.”

“Seriously. It occurs to me that the season’s half over, and I’ve never had another one like it. Murder, arson, mayhem, and I’m having sex regularly.”

“Let’s hope the last element is the only one that spills over into the second half.”

“Absolutely. The thing is, Gulliver, while I really like sex with you, I also realize that if we stopped having sex—”

“Bite your tongue.”

“If we did,” she said with a laugh, “I’d still like sitting around the fire with you, and talking about whatever.”

“Same here. Only I want the sex.”

“Handy for both of us. What makes it better, over and above the regular, is you don’t secretly wish I’d be something else. Less tied up with the job, more inclined to fancy underwear.”

He pulled out a cigar, lit it. Blew out a long stream. “I like fancy underwear. Just for the record.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I had a hand in training you, and I might be the one giving you orders on a fire.”

She took the cigar when he offered it, enjoyed the tang. “Because you know who you are, and that matters. I can’t push you around, and that matters, too. And there’s this thing I didn’t think mattered because it never did. But it does when it’s mixed in with the rest. When it’s blended, like we said before. You bring me flowers in a bottle.”

“I think of you,” he said simply.

She pulled on the cigar again, giving her emotions time to settle, then passed it back to him. “I know, and that’s another new element for the season. And here’s one more. I guess the thing is, Gull, I’m in care with you, too.”

He reached out for her hand. “I know. But it’s nice to hear you say it.”

“Know-it-all.” Still holding his hand, she tipped her head back, looked at the star-swept sky. “It’d be nice to just stay here a couple of days. No worries, no wondering.”

“We’ll come back, after the season’s over.”

She couldn’t see that far. Next month, she thought, next year? As distant as the stars. As murky as smoke. Always better, to her way of thinking, to concentrate on the right now.

TOWARD DAWN, Gull slipped through a dream of swimming under a waterfall. He dove deep into the blue crystal of the pool where sunbeams washed the gilded bottom in shimmering streaks. Overhead water struck water in a steady, muted drumbeat while Rowan, skin as gold and sparkling as the sand, eyes as clear and cool as the pool, swam toward him.

Their arms entwined, their mouths met, and his pulse beat like the drumming water.

As he lay against her, his hand lazily stroking along her hip, he thought himself dreaming still. He drifted toward the surface, in the dream and out of the dream, and the water drummed on.

It echoed in the confines of the tent when he opened his eyes. Smiling in the dark, he gave Rowan a little shake.

“Hey, do you hear that?”

“What?” Her tone, sleepy and annoyed, matched the nudge back she gave him. “What?” she repeated, more lucidly. “Is it the bear? Is it back?”

“No. Listen.”

“I don’t want . . . It’s rain.” She shoved him with more force as she pushed to sit up. “It’s raining!”

She crawled to the front of the tent, opened the flap. “Oh, yeah, baby! Rain, rain, don’t go away. Do you hear that?”

“Yeah, but I’m a little distracted by the view right this minute.”

He caught the glint of her eyes as she glanced over her shoulder, grinned. Then she was out of the tent and letting out a long, wild cheer.

What the hell, he thought, and climbed out after her.

She threw her arms up, lifted her face. “This isn’t a storm, or a quick summer shower. This is what my grandfather likes to call a soaker. And about damn time.”

She pumped her fists, her hips, high stepped. “Give it up, Gulliver! Dance! Dance to honor the god of rain!”

So he danced with her, naked, in the rainy gloom of dawn, then dragged her back in the tent to honor the rain gods his way.

The steady, soaking rain watered the thirsty earth, and made for a wet pack-out. Rowan held on to the cheer with every step of every mile.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” she said as rain slid off their ponchos, dripped off the bills of their caps. “Maybe it’s one of those turning points, and means the worst of the crap’s behind us.”

Gull figured it was a lot to expect from one good rain in a dry summer—but he never argued against hope.

24

Rowan refused to let the news that Leo Brakeman remained at large discourage her, and instead opted for Gull’s glass half full of no further arson fires or connected murders in almost a month.

Maybe the cops would never find him, never solve those crimes. It didn’t, and wouldn’t, change her life.

While she and Gull packed out, a twelve-man team jumped a fire in Shoshone, putting the two of them back on the jump list as soon as they’d checked in.

That was her life, she thought as she unpacked and reorganized her gear. Training, preparing, doing, then cleaning up to go again.

Besides, when she studied the big picture, she couldn’t complain. As the season edged toward August, she’d had no injuries, had managed to maintain a good, fighting weight by losing only about ten pounds, and had justified L.B.’s faith in her by proving herself a solid fire boss on the line. Most important, she’d had a part in saving countless acres of wildland.

The fact she’d managed to accomplish that and build what she had to admit had become an actual relationship was cause to celebrate, not a reason to niggle with the downsides.

She decided to do just that with something sweet and indulgent from the cookhouse.

She found Marg out harvesting herbs in the cool, damp air.

“We brought the rain down with us,” Rowan told her. “It followed us all the way in. Didn’t stop until we flew over Missoula.”

“It’s the first time I haven’t had to water the garden in weeks. Ground soaked it right up, though. We’re going to need more. Brought out the damn gnats, too.” Marg swatted at them as she lifted her basket. She spritzed a little of her homemade bug repellant on her hands, patted her face with it and sweetened the air with eucalyptus and pennyroyal. “I guess you’re looking for some food.”

“Anything with a lot of sugar.”

“I can fix you up.” Marg cocked her head. “You look pretty damn good for a woman who hiked a few hours in the rain.”

“I feel pretty damn good, and I think that’s why.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain good-looking, green-eyed jumper?”

“Well, he was hiking with me. It didn’t hurt.”

“It’s a little bright spot for me.” Inside, Marg set her herb basket on the counter. “Watching the romances. Yours, your father’s.”

“I don’t know if it’s . . . My father’s?”

“I ran into Lucas and his lady friend at the fireworks, and again a couple days ago at the nursery. She was helping him pick out some plants.”

“Plants? You’re talking about my father? Lucas black-thumb Tripp?”

“One and the same.” As she spoke, Marg cut a huge slice of Black Forest cake. “Ella’s helping him put in a flower bed. A little one to start. He was looking at arbors.”

“Arbors? You mean the . . .” Rowan drew an arch with her forefingers. “Come on. Dad’s gardening skills start and stop with mowing the lawn.”

“Things change.” She set the cake and a tall glass of milk in front of Rowan. “As they should or we all just stand in the same place. It’s good to see him lit up about something that doesn’t involve a parachute or an engine. You ought to be happy about that, Rowan, especially since there’s a lot of lights dimming around here right now.”

“I just don’t know, that’s all. What’s wrong with standing in the same place if it’s a good place?”

“Even a good place gets to be a rut, especially if you’re standing in it alone. Honey, alone and lonely share the same root. Eat your cake.”

“I don’t see how Dad could be lonely. He’s always got so much going on. He has so many friends.”

“And nobody there when he turns off the lights—until recently. If you can’t see how much happier he is since Ella, then you’re not paying attention.”

Rowan searched around for a response, then noticed Marg’s face when the cook turned away to wash her herbs in the sink. Obviously she hadn’t been paying attention here, Rowan realized, or she’d have seen the sadness.

“What’s wrong, Marg?”

“Oh, just tough times. Tougher for some. I know you’d probably be fine if Leo Brakeman wasn’t seen or heard from again. And I don’t blame you a bit for it. But it’s beating down on Irene.”

“If he comes back, or they find him, he’ll probably go to prison. I don’t know if that’s better for her.”

“Knowing’s always better. In the meanwhile, she had to take on another job as her pay from the school isn’t enough to cover the bills. Especially since she leveraged the house for his bail. And taking on the work, she can’t see to the baby.”

“Can’t her family help her through it?”

“Not enough, I guess. It’s the money, but it’s also the time, the energy, the wherewithal. The last time I saw her, she looked worn to the nub. She’s ready to give up, and I don’t know how much longer she can hold out.”

“I’m sorry, Marg. Really. We could take up a collection. I guess it wouldn’t be more than a finger in the dike for a bit, but the baby’s Jim’s. Everybody’d do what they could.”

“Honestly, Ro, I don’t think she’d accept it. On top of it all, that woman’s shamed down to the root of her soul. What her husband and her daughter did here, that weighs on her. I don’t think she could take money from us. I’ve known Irene since we were girls, and she could hardly look at me. That breaks my heart.”

Rowan rose, cut another, smaller slice of cake, poured another glass of milk. “You sit down. Eat some cake. We’ll fix it,” she added. “There’s always a way to fix something if you keep at it long enough.”

“I like to think so, but I don’t know how much long enough Irene’s got left.”

WHEN ELLA CAME BACK DOWNSTAIRS, Irene continued to sit on the couch, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. Deliberately Ella fixed an easy smile on her face.

“She’s down. I swear that’s the sweetest baby, Irene. Just so sunny and bright.” She didn’t mention the time she’d spent folding and putting away the laundry in the basket by the crib, or the disarray she’d noticed in Irene’s usually tidy home.

“She makes me want more grandbabies,” Ella went on, determinedly cheerful. “I’m going to go make us some tea.”

“The kitchen’s a mess. I don’t know if I even have any tea. I didn’t make it to the store.”

“I’ll go find out.”

Dishes piled in the sink of the little kitchen Ella always found cozy and charming. The near-empty cupboards, the sparsely filled refrigerator, clearly needed restocking.

That, at least, she could do.

She found a box of tea bags, filled the kettle. As she began filling the dishwasher, Irene shuffled in.

“I’m too tired to even be ashamed of the state of my own kitchen, or to see you doing my dishes.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, and you’d insult our friendship if you were.”

“I used to have pride in my home, but it’s not really my home now. It’s the bank’s. It’s just a place to live now, until it’s not.”

“Don’t talk like that. You’re going to get through this. You’re just worn out. Why don’t you let me take the baby for a day or two, give yourself a chance to catch your breath? You know I’d love it. Then we could sit down, and if you’d let me, we could go over your financial situation, see if there’s anything—”

She broke off when she turned to see tears rolling down Irene’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Abandoning the dishes, she hurried over to wrap Irene in her arms.

“I can’t do it, Ella. I just can’t. I’ve got no fight left. No heart.”

“You’re just so tired.”

“I am. I am tired. The baby’s teething, and when she’s fretful in the night, I lie there wishing she’d just stop. Just be quiet, give me some peace. I’m passing her off to anybody who’ll take her for a few hours while I work, and even with the extra work, I’m not going to make the house payments, unless I let something else go.”

“Let me help you.”

“Help me what? Pay my bills, raise my grandchild, keep my house?” Even the hard words held no life. “For how long, Ella? Until Leo gets back, if he comes back? Until he gets out of prison, if he goes to prison?”

“With whatever you need to get you through this, Irene.”

“I know you mean well, but I don’t see getting through. I wanted to believe him. He’s my husband, and I wanted to believe him when he told me he didn’t do any of it.”

With nothing to say, Ella kept silent while Irene looked around the room.

“Now he’s left me like this, left me alone, and taking money I need out of the ATM on the way gone. What do I believe now?”

“Sit down here at the table. Tea’s a small thing, but it’s something.”

Irene sat, looked out the window at the yard she’d once loved to putter in. The yard her husband had used to escape, to run from her.

“I know what people are saying, even though it doesn’t come out of their mouths in my hearing. Leo killed Reverend Latterly, and if he killed him, he must’ve killed Dolly. His own flesh and blood.”

“People say and think a lot of hard things, Irene.”

The bones in Irene’s face stood out too harshly under skin aged a decade in two short months. “I’m one of them now. I may not be ready to say it, but I think it. I think how he and Dolly used to fight, shouting at each other, saying awful things. Still . . . he loved her. I know that.”

She stared down at the tea Ella put in front of her. “Maybe loved her too much. Maybe more than I did. So it cut more, the things she’d do and say. It cut him more than me. Love can turn, can’t it? It can turn into something dark in a minute’s time.”

“I don’t know the answers there. But I do know that you can’t find them in despair. I think the best thing for you now is to concentrate on the baby and yourself, to do what you have to do to make the best life you can make for the two of you, until you have those answers.”

“That’s what I’m doing. I called Mrs. Brayner this morning before I went into work. Shiloh’s other grandmother. She and her husband are going to drive out from Nebraska, and they’ll take Shiloh back with them.”

“Oh, Irene.”

“It’s what’s best for her.” She swiped a tear away. “That precious baby deserves better than I can give her now. She’s the innocent in all this, the only one of us who truly is. She deserves better than me leaving her with friends and neighbors most of the day, better than me barely able to take care of her when I’m here. Not being sure how long I can keep a roof over her head, much less buy her clothes or pay the baby doctor.”

Her voice cracked, and she lifted the tea, sipped a little. “I’ve prayed on this, and I talked with Reverend Meece about it. He is kind, Ella, like you told me.”

“He and his church could help you,” Ella began, but Irene shook her head.

“I know in my heart I can’t give Shiloh a good life the way things are, and I can’t keep her knowing she has family who can. I can’t keep her wondering if her grandpa’s the reason she doesn’t have her mother.”

Ella reached over, linked her hands with Irene’s. “I know this isn’t a decision you’ve come to lightly. I know how much you love that child. Is there anything I can do? Anything?”

“You didn’t say it was the wrong decision, or selfish, or weak. That helps.” She took a breath, drank a little more tea. “I think they’re good people. And she said—Kate, her name’s Kate. Kate said they’d stay in Missoula a couple days or so, to give Shiloh time to get used to them. And how we’d all work together so Shiloh could have all of us in her life. I . . . I said how they could have all the baby stuff, her crib and all, and Kate, she said no, didn’t I want to keep that? Didn’t I want it so when we fixed it so Shiloh could come see me, it would all be ready for her?”

Ella squeezed Irene’s hands tighter as tears plopped into the tea. “They do sound like good people, don’t they?”

“I believe they are. I’m content they are. Still, I feel like another part of me’s dying. I don’t know how much is left.”

HER CONVERSATION WITH MARG had Rowan’s wheels turning. The time had come, she decided, for a serious sit-down with her father. Since she wanted to have that sit-down off base, she walked over to L.B.’s office.

She saw Matt step out. “Hi. Is he in there?”

“Yeah, I just asked him for a couple days at the end of the week.” His face exploded into a grin she’d rarely seen on his face since Jim’s accident. “My parents are driving in.”

“That’s great. They get to see you, and Jim’s baby.”

“Even more. They’re taking Shiloh home with them.”

“They got custody? That’s so fast. I didn’t think it worked so fast.”

“They didn’t get a lawyer. They were talking about maybe, but they didn’t get one yet. Mrs. Brakeman called my ma this morning and said she needed—wanted—them to have Shiloh.”

“Oh.” Not enough long enough, Rowan thought, and felt a pang of sympathy. “That’s great for your family, Matt. Really. It’s got to be awfully rough on Mrs. Brakeman.”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry for her. She’s a good woman. I guess she proved it by doing this, thinking of Shiloh first. They’re going to spend a couple days, you know, give everybody a chance to adjust and all that. I figured I could help out. Shiloh knows me, so that should make it easier. It’s like I’m standing in for Jim.”

“I guess it is. It’s a lot, for everybody.”

“The way Brakeman ran?” The light in his face died into something dark. “He’s a coward. He doesn’t deserve to even see that baby again, if you ask me. Mrs. Brakeman’s probably going to lose her house because of him.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Rowan agreed, “for one person to lose so much.”

“She could move to Nebraska if she wanted, and be closer to Shiloh. She ought to, and I hope she does. I don’t see how there’s anything here for her now anyway. She oughta go on and move to Nebraska so the baby has both her grans. Anyway, I’ve got to go call my folks, let them know I got the time off.”

One family’s tragedy, another family’s celebration, Rowan supposed as Matt rushed off. The world could be a harsh place. She gave L.B.’s door a tap, poked her head in.

“Got another minute for somebody looking for time off?”

“Jesus, maybe we should just blow and piss on the next fire.”

“An interesting new strategy, but I’m only looking for a few hours.”

“When?”

“Pretty much now. I wanted to hook up with my father.”

“Suddenly everybody wants family reunions.” Then he shrugged. “A night off’s okay. We’ve got smoke over in Payette, and up in Alaska. The Denali area’s getting hammered with dry lightning. Yellowstone’s on first attack on another. You should count on jumping tomorrow.”

“I’ll be ready.” She started to back out before he changed his mind, then hesitated. “I guess Matt told you why he wanted the time.”

“Yeah.” L.B. rubbed his eyes. “It’s hard to know what to think. I guess it’s the best thing when it comes down to it, but it sure feels like kicking a woman in the teeth when she’s already taken a couple hard shots in the gut.”

“Still no word on Leo?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. Fucker. It makes me sick he could do all this. I went hunting with the bastard, even went on a big trip up to Canada with him and some other guys once.”

“Did you tell the cops all the places you knew he liked to go?”

“Every one, and I didn’t feel a single pang of guilt. Fucker,” he repeated, with relish. “Irene’s a decent woman. She doesn’t deserve this. You’d better go while the going’s good. If we get a call from Alaska, we’ll be rolling tonight.”

“I’m already gone.” As she left, Rowan pulled out her phone and opted to text, hoping that would make her plans a fait accompli.

Got a couple hours. Meet you at the house. I’m cooking! Really want to talk to you.

Now she had to hope he had something in the house she could actually cook. She stopped by the barracks, grabbed her keys, then stepped into the open doorway of Gull’s quarters.

“I cleared a few hours so I can go over and see my father.”

Gull shifted his laptop aside. “Okay.”

“There are some things I want to air out with him. One-on-one.” She jingled her car keys. “We’ve got potential situations out in Yellowstone, down in Wyoming, up in Alaska. We could be up before morning. I won’t be gone very long.”

“Are you waiting to see if I’m going to complain because you’re going off base without me?”

“Maybe I was wondering if you would.”

“I’m not built that way. Just FYI, I wouldn’t mind maybe having dinner with you and your father sometime, maybe when things slow down.”

“So noted. See you when I get back.” She jingled her keys again. “Hey, I just remembered, my car’s low on gas. Maybe I can borrow yours?”

“You know where the base pumps are.”

“Had to try.”

She’d talk him into letting her drive it before the end of the season, she promised herself as she headed out to her much less sexy Dodge. She just had to outline the right attack plan.

The minute she drove off the base, something shifted inside her. As much as she loved what she did, she felt just a bit lighter driving down the open road. Alone, away from the pressure, the intensity, the dramas, even the interaction.

Maybe, for the moment, she realized, especially the interaction. A little time to reconnect with Rowan, she thought, then in turn for Rowan to reconnect with her father.

She could admit to the contrary aspect of the feeling. If L.B. had insisted she take time off, had pulled her off the jump list, she’d have fought him tooth and nail. Asking for the little crack in the window was more a little gift to herself, and one where she chose the wrapping and the contents.

Maybe, too, it hit just close enough to the camping trips her father had always carved out during the season—this one evening together, her making dinner in the house they shared half the year. Just the two of them, sitting at the table with some decent grub and some good conversation.

Too much had happened, too many things that kept running around inside her head. So much of the summer boomeranged on her, making her think of her mother, and all those hard feelings. She’d shaken off most of them, but there remained a thin and sticky layer she’d never been able to peel away.

She liked to think that layer helped make her tougher, stronger—and she believed it—but she’d started to wonder if it had hardened into a shield as well.

Did she use it as an excuse, an escape? If she did, was that smart, or just stupid?

Something to think about in this short time alone, and again in the company of the single person in the world who knew her through and through, and loved her anyway.

When she pulled up in front of the house, the simple white two-story with the wide covered porch—the porch she’d helped her father build when she was fourteen—she just sat and stared.

The slope of lawn showed the brittleness of the dry summer, even in the patches of shade from the big, old maple on the east corner.

But skirting that porch, on either side of the short steps, an area of flowers sprang out of a deep brown blanket of mulch. Baskets hung from decorative brackets off the flanking posts and spilled out a tangle of red and white flowers and green trailing vines.

“I’m looking at it,” she said aloud as she got out of the car, “but I still can’t quite believe it.”

She remembered summers during her youth when her grandmother had done pots and planters, and even dug in a little vegetable garden in the back. How she’d cursed the deer and rabbits for mowing them down, every single season.

She remembered, too, her father’s rep for killing even the hardiest of houseplants. Now he’d planted—she didn’t know what half of them were, but the beds hit hot, rich notes with a lot of deep reds and purples, with some white accents.

And she had to admit they added a nice touch, just as she had to admit the creativity of the layout hadn’t come from the nongardening brain of Iron Man Tripp.

She mulled it over as she let herself into the house.

Here, too, the difference struck.

Flowers? Since when did her father have flowers sitting around the house? And candles—fat white columns that smelled, when she sniffed them, faintly of vanilla. Plus, he’d gotten a new rug in the living room, a pattern of bold-colored blocks that spread over a floor that had certainly been polished. And looked pretty good, she had to admit, but still . . .

Hands on hips, she did a turn around the living room until her jaw nearly landed on her toes. Glossy magazines fanned on the old coffee table. Home and garden magazines, and since when had her father . . . ?

Stupid question, she admitted. Since Ella.

A little leery of what she’d find next, she started toward the kitchen, poked into her father’s home office. Bamboo shades in spicy tones replaced the beige curtains.

Ugly curtains, she remembered.

But the powder room was a revelation. No generic liquid soap sat on the sink, no tan towels on the rack. Instead, a shiny and sleek chrome dispenser shot a spurt of lemon-scented liquid into her hand. Dazed, she washed, then dried her hands on one of the fluffy navy hand towels layered on the rack with washcloths in cranberry.

He’d added a bowl of potpourri—potpourri—and a framed print of a mountain meadow on a freshly painted wall that matched the washcloths.

Her father had cranberry walls in the powder room. She might never get over it.

Dazed, she continued on to the kitchen, and there stood blinking.

Clean and efficient had always been the Tripp watchwords. Apparently fuss had been added to them since she’d last stood in the room.

A long oval dish she thought might be bamboo and had never seen before held a selection of fresh fruit. Herbs grew in small red clay pots on the windowsill over the sink. An iron wine rack—a filled wine rack, she noted—graced the top of the refrigerator. He’d replaced the worn cushions on the stools at the breakfast counter, and she was pretty damn sure the glossy magazines in the living room would call that color pumpkin.

In the dining area, two place mats—bamboo again—lay ready with cloth napkins rolled in rings beside them. If that didn’t beat all, the pot of white daisies and the tea lights in amber dishes sure rang the bell.

She considered going upstairs, decided she needed a drink first, and a little time to absorb the shocks already dealt. A little time, like maybe a year, she thought as she opened the refrigerator.

Okay, there was beer, that at least was constant. But what the hell, since he had an open bottle of white, plugged with a fancy topper, she’d go with that.

She sipped, forced to give it high marks as she explored supplies.

She felt more at home and less like an intruder as she got down to it, setting out chicken breasts to soften, scrubbing potatoes. Maybe she shook her head as she spotted the deck chairs out the kitchen window. He painted them every other year, she knew, but never before in chili pepper red.

By the time she heard him come in, she had dinner simmering in the big skillet. She poured a second glass of wine.

At least he looked the same.

“Smells good.” He folded her in, held her hard. “Best surprise of the day.”

“I’ve had a few of them myself. I poured you this.” She offered him the second glass. “Since you’re the wine buff now.”

He grinned, toasted her. “Pretty good stuff. Have we got time to sit outside awhile?”

“Yeah. That’d be good. You’ve been busy around here,” she commented as they walked out onto the deck.

“Fixing things up a little. What do you think?”

“It’s colorful.”

“A few steps out of my comfort zone.” He sat in one of the hot-colored deck chairs, sighed happily.

“Dad, you planted flowers. That’s acres outside your zone.”

“And I haven’t killed them yet. Soaker hose.”

“Sorry?”

“I put in a soaker hose. Keeps them from getting thirsty.”

Wine, soaker hoses, cranberry walls. Who was this guy?

But when he looked at her, laid his hand over hers, she saw him. She knew him. “What’s on your mind, baby?”

“A lot. Bunches.”

“Lay it on me.”

She did just that.

“I feel like I can’t get a handle on things, or keep a handle on. This morning, I thought I did, then it started slipping again. I’ve been having the dreams about Jim again, only worse. But with everything that’s gone on this season, how am I supposed to put that aside anyway? Everything Dolly did, then what happened to her. Add on her crazy father. And the thing is, if he did what they say he did, if he killed her, the preacher, started the fires—and he probably did—why am I more pissed off and disgusted that he ran, left his wife twisting in the wind? And I know the answer,” she said, pushing back to her feet.

“I know the answer, and that pisses me off. My mother ditching us doesn’t define my life. I sure as hell don’t want it to define me. I’m smarter than that, damn it.”

“You always have been,” he said when she turned to him.

“I’m tangled up with Gull so I’m not sure I’m thinking straight. Really, where can that go? And why am I even thinking that because why would I want it to go anywhere? And you, you’re planting flowers and drinking wine, and you have potpourri.”

He had to smile. “It smells nicer than those plug-in jobs.”

“It has berries, and little white flowers in it. While that’s screwing with my head, Dolly’s mother’s giving the baby to the Brayners because she can’t handle it all by herself. It’s probably the best thing, it’s probably the right thing, but it makes me feel sick and sad, which pisses me off all over again because I know I’m projecting, and I know the situation with that baby isn’t the same as with me.

“I may be jumping fire in Alaska tomorrow, and I’m stuck on pumpkin-colored cushions, a baby I’ve never even seen and a guy who’s talking about being with me after the season. How the hell did this happen?”

Lucas nodded slowly, drank a little wine. “That is a lot. Let’s see if we can sift through it. I don’t like hearing you’re having those nightmares again, but I can’t say I’m surprised. The pressure of any season wears on you, and this hasn’t been just any season. You’re probably not the only one having hard dreams.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Have you talked to L.B.?”

“Not about that. Piling my stress on his doesn’t work for anybody. That’s why I pile it on you.”

“I can tell you what we talked about before, after it happened. We all live with the risks, and train body and mind to minimize them. When a jumper has a mental lapse, sometimes he gets lucky. Sometimes he doesn’t. Jim didn’t, and that’s a tragedy. It’s a hard blow for his family, and like his kin, the crew’s his family.”

“I’ve never lost anybody before. She doesn’t count,” she said, referring to her mother. “Not the same way.”

“I know it. You want to save him, to go back to that jump and save him. And you can’t, baby. I think when you’ve really settled your mind on that, the dreams will stop.”

He got up, put an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know if you’ll really be able to settle your mind until this business with Leo is resolved. It’s in your face, so it’s in your head. Dolly tried to put the blame for what happened to Jim on you, and it looks like her telling him she was pregnant right before a jump contributed to his mental lapse. Then Leo came at you about Jim, about Dolly—and the cops think he’s the one responsible for her murder. Time to use your head, Ro.” He kissed the top of it. “And stop letting the people most responsible lay the weight on you. Feeling sorry for Irene Brakeman, that’s just human. Maybe you and me tend to be a little more human than most on that score. Ella’s over there right now helping her get through it, and I feel better knowing that.”

“I guess it’s good that she—Mrs. Brakeman—has somebody.”

“I had your grandparents, and I leaned on them pretty hard. I had my friends, my work. Most of all I had you. When somebody walks out, it leaves a hole in you. Some people fill it up, the good and the bad, and get on that way. Some people leave it open, maybe long enough to heal, maybe too long, picking at it now and then so it doesn’t heal all the way. I hate knowing it as much as you, but I think we’ve been like the last.”

“I don’t even think about it, most of the time.”

“Neither do I. Most of the time. Now you’ve got this guy, who’d be the first one you’ve ever mentioned to me as giving you trouble. And that makes me wonder if you’ve got feelings for him you’ve managed to avoid up till now. Are you in love with him?”

“How does anybody answer that?” she demanded. “How does anyone know? Are you in love with this Ella?”

“Yes.”

Stunned, Rowan stepped back. “Just like that? You can just . . . poof, I’m in love.”

“She filled the hole, baby. I don’t know how to explain it to you. I never knew how to talk about this kind of thing, and maybe that’s where I fell down with you. But she filled that hole I never let all the way heal, because if I did, there could be another. But I’d rather take that chance than not have her. I wish you’d get to know her. She . . .”

He lifted his hands as if to grab something just out of reach. “She’s funny and smart, and has a way of speaking her mind that’s honest instead of hurtful. She can do damn near anything. You should see her on a dive. I swear she’s a joy to watch. She could give Marg a run for her money in the kitchen, and don’t repeat that or I’ll call you a liar. She knows about wine and books and flowers. She has her own toolbox and knows how to use it. She’s got great kids and they’ve got kids. She listens when you talk to her. She’ll try anything.

“She makes me feel . . . She makes me feel.”

There it was, Rowan realized. If there’d been an image in the dictionary for the definition of “in love,” it would be her father’s face.

“I have to get dinner on the table.” She turned away to the door, then turned back to see him looking after her, that light dimmed. “Are you, more or less, asking for my blessing?”

“I guess. More or less.”

“Anybody who makes you this happy—and who talked you into getting rid of those ugly curtains in your office—is good with me. You can tell me more about her while we eat.”

“Ro. That means more than I can say.”

“You don’t have heart-shaped pillows on your bed now, do you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because that’s going to be my line in the sand. Anything else I think I can adjust to. Oh, and none of those crocheted things over spare toilet paper. That’s definitely a deal breaker.”

“I’ll take notes.”

“Good idea because I probably have a few more.” She walked to the stove, pleased that light had turned back on full.

25

Feeling sociable, Gull plopped down in the lounge with his book. That way he could ease out of the story from time to time, tune in on conversations, the ball game running on TV and the progress of the poker game he wasn’t yet interested in joining.

Or he could just let all of it hum at the edges of his mind like white noise.

With the idea he might be called up at any time, he opted for a ginger ale and a bag of chips to snack him through the next chapter or two.

“Afraid of losing your paycheck?” Dobie called out from the poker table.

“Terrified.”

“Out?” An outraged Trigger lurched out of his chair at a call on second. “That runner was safe by a mile. Out my ass! Did you see that?” he demanded.

He hadn’t, but Gull’s mood hit both agreeable and sociable. “Damn right. The ump’s an asshole.”

“He oughta have his eyes popped out if he can’t use them better than that. Where’s the ball to your chain tonight?”

Amused, Gull turned a page. “Ditched me for another man.”

“Women. They’re worse than umps. Can’t live with them, can’t beat them with a brick.”

“Hey.” Janis discarded two cards at the poker table. “Having tits doesn’t mean I can’t hear, buddy.”

“Aw, you’re not a woman. You’re a jumper.”

“I’m a jumper with tits.”

“Unless you’re going to toss them in the pot,” Cards told her, “the bet’s five to you.”

“They’re worth a lot more than five.”

Better than white noise, Gull decided, and likely better than his book.

Across the room, Yangtree—with an ice bag on his knee—and Southern played an intense, nearly silent game of chess. Earbuds in, Libby ticked her head back and forth like a metronome to her MP3 while she worked a crossword puzzle.

A lot of sociable going around, he mused. About half the jumpers on base gathered, some in groups, some solo, more than a few sprawled on the floor, attention glued to the Cardinals v. Phillies matchup on-screen.

Waiting mode, he decided. Everybody knew the siren could sound anytime, sending them north, east, south, west, where there would be camaraderie but little leisure. No time to insult umpires or figure out 32 Across. Instead of raking in the pot, as Cards did now with relish, they’d rake through smoldering embers and ash.

He watched Trigger throw up his hands in triumph as the runner scored, saw Yangtree take Southern’s bishop and Dobie toss in chips to raise the bet, causing Stovic to fold on a grunt of disgust.

“What’s a five-letter word for boredom?” Libby asked the room.

“TV ads,” Trigger volunteered. “Ought to be outlawed.”

“Boredom, not boring. Besides, some of them are funny.”

“Not funny enough.”

“Ennui,” Gull told her.

“Damn it, I knew that.”

“He can spout off all those pussy words,” Dobie commented.

Gull only smiled. He definitely didn’t feel ennui. Contentment, he thought, best described his current state. He’d be ready to roll if and when the call came, but for now knew the contentment of lounging with friends, enjoying the cross talk and bullshit while he waited for his woman to come home.

He’d found his place. He didn’t know, not for certain, when he’d first understood that. Maybe the first time he’d seen Rowan. Maybe his first jump. Maybe that night at the bar when he’d kicked some ass.

Maybe looking over a meadow of wild lupine.

It didn’t matter when.

He’d liked his hotshot work, and the people he’d worked with. Or most of them. He’d learned to combine patience, action and endurance, learned to love the fight—the violence, the brutality, the science. But what he found here dug deeper, and deep kindled an irresistible love and passion.

He knew he’d sprawl out in the lounge, listening to cross talk and bullshit season after season, as long as he was able.

He knew, he thought as Rowan came in, he’d wait for her to come home whenever she went away.

“Man, they let anybody in the country club these days.” She dropped down beside Gull, shot a hand into the chip bag. “Score?”

“Tied,” Trigger told her, “one to one due to seriously blind ump. Top of the fifth.”

She stole Gull’s ginger ale, found it empty. “What, were you waiting for me to get back, fetch you a refill?”

“Caught me.”

She pushed up, got a Coke. “You’ll drink this and like it.” She downed some first, then passed it to him.

“Thanks. And how’s the ball to my chain?”

“What did you call me?”

“He said it.” Gull narked on Trigger without remorse.

“Skinny Texas bastard.” She angled her head to read the cover of the book Gull set aside. “Ethan Frome? If you’ve been reading that I’m surprised I didn’t find you lapsed into a coma drooling down your chin.”

He gave the Coke back to her. “I thought I’d like it better now, being older, wiser, more erudite. But it’s just as blindingly boring as it was when I was twenty. Thank God you’re back, or I might have been paralyzed with ennui.”

“Get you.”

“It was a crossword answer a while ago. How’s your dad?”

“He’s in love.”

“With the hot redhead.”

Rowan’s eyebrows beetled. “I wish you wouldn’t call her the hot redhead.”

“I call them like I see them. How’s by you?”

“I had to get by the flower beds he’s planted, the flowers in vases, candles, the potpourri in the powder room—”

“Mother of God! Potpourri in the powder room. We need to get a posse together ASAP, go get him. He can be deprogrammed. Don’t lose hope.”

Since he’d stretched his legs across her lap, she twisted his toe. Hard. “He’s got all this color in the place all of a sudden. Or all of an Ella. I told myself it was fussy, she’d pushed all this fussy stuff on him. But it’s not. It’s style, with an edge of charm. She brought color to the beige and bone and brown. It makes him happy. She makes him happy. She filled the hole he couldn’t let heal—that’s what he said. And I realized something, that she was right that day we saw her in town. Ice cream day. She said that if I made him choose between her and me, she didn’t stand a chance. And if I’d done that, I’d be just enough like my mother to make myself sick. Either/or, pal, you can’t have both.”

“But you’re not.”

“No. I’m not. I have to get used to it—to her, but she’s put a light in him so I think I’m going to be a fan.”

“You’re a stand-up gal, Swede.”

“If she screws him up, I’ll peel the skin off her ass with a dull razor blade.”

“Fair’s fair.”

“And then some. I need to walk off the not-too-shabby skillet cuisine I prepared, then I’m going to turn in.”

“Wait a minute. You cooked?”

“I have a full dozen entrées in my repertoire. Four of them are variations on the classic grilled cheese sandwich.”

“A whole new side of you to explore while we walk. I want my shoes.”

Gibbons came in as Gull tossed the Edith Wharton onto the table for someone else.

“You might want to wrap up that card game. Everybody’s on standby. It’s not official, but it looks like we’ll roll two loads to Fairbanks tonight, or maybe straight to the fire. L.B.’s working out some details. And it’s looking like Bighorn might need some help come tomorrow.”

“Just when my luck’s starting to turn,” Dobie complained.

“New shoes for baby,” Cards reminded him.

“I rake another couple pots in, I can buy the new shoes without eating smoke.”

“Anybody on the first and second loads might want to check their gear while they’ve got a chance,” Gibbons added.

“I’ve never been to Alaska,” Gull commented.

“It’s an experience.” Rowan shoved his feet off her lap.

“I’m all about them.”

SHE STUFFED more energy bars into her PG bag, and after a short debate added two cans of Coke. She’d rather haul the weight than do without. She changed from the off-duty clothes she’d worn to her father’s, and was just buckling her belt when the siren sang out.

Along with the others, she ran to the ready room to suit up.

The minute she stepped onto the plane, she staked her claim, arranging her gear and stretching out with her head on her chute. She intended to sleep through the flight.

“What’s it like?” Gull poked her with the toe of his boot.

“Big.”

“Really? I hear it’s cold and dark in the winter, too. Can that be true?”

She let the vibration of the engines lull her as other jumpers settled in. “Plenty of daylight this time of year. It’s not the trees as much there to worry about on the jump. It’s the water. They’ve got a lot of it, and you don’t want to miss the spot and land in it. A lot of water, a lot of land, mountains. Not a lot of people, that’s an advantage.”

She shifted, found a more comfortable position. “The Alaskan smoke jumpers know their stuff. It’s been dry up there this season, too, so they’re probably spread pretty thin, probably feeling that midseason fatigue.”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “It’s beautiful. The snow that never melts off those huge peaks, the lakes and rivers, the glow of the midnight sun. They’ve also got mosquitoes the size of your fist and bears big as an armored truck. But in the fire, it’s pretty much the same. Kill the bitch; stay alive. Everybody comes back.”

She closed her eyes. “Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

She slept like a rock; woke stiff as a board. And grateful they put down at Fairbanks, giving the crew time to loosen up, fuel up, and the bosses time to cement a strategy.

With nearly four hundred acres involved, and the wind kicking flareups, they’d need solid communication with the Alaskan team. She managed to scrounge up a cold soda, preserving the two in her bag, before they performed a last buddy check and loaded.

“You’re right,” Gull said when they flew southwest out of Fairbanks. “It’s beautiful. Not far off midnight, either, local time, and bright as afternoon.”

“Don’t get enchanted. You’ll lose focus. And she’ll eat you alive.”

He had to change his angle to get his first glimpse of the fire, shift his balance as the plane hit turbulence and began to buck.

“Just another maw of hell. I’m focused,” he added when she sent him a hard look.

He saw the white peaks of the mountain through the billows of smoke. Denali, the sacred, with the wild to her north and east burning bright.

He continued to study and absorb as she moved to the rear to confer with Yangtree, and with Cards, who worked as spotter. Others lined the windows now, looking down on what they’d come to fight.

“We’re going to try for a clearing in some birch, east side. The Alaska crew used it for their jump spot. Cards is going to throw some streamers, see how they fly.”

“Jesus, did you see that?” somebody asked.

“Looks like a blowup,” Gull said.

“It’s well west of the target jump spot. Everybody stay chilly,” she called out. “Settle in, settle down. Stay in your heads.”

“Guard your reserves!” Cards pulled in the door.

Gull watched the streamers fly, adjusted with the bank and bounce of the plane. The wind dragged the stench and haze of smoke inside, a small taste of what would come.

Rowan got in the door, shot him a last grin. She propelled herself out, with Stovic seconds behind her.

When it came his turn, he evened his breathing, listened to Cards tell him about the drag. He fixed the clearing in his head and, at the slap on his shoulder, flew.

Gorgeous. He could think it while the wind whipped him. The staggering white peaks, the impossibly deep blue in glints and curls of water, the high green of summer, and all of it in sharp contrast with the wicked blacks, reds, oranges of the fire.

His chute ballooned open, turning fall into glide, and he shot Gibbons, his jump partner, a thumbs-up.

He caught some hard air that tried to push him south, and he fought it, pushing back through the smoke that rolled over him. It caught him again, gave him a good, hard tug. Again he saw that deep dreamy blue through the haze. And he thought no way, goddamn it, no way he’d end up hitting the water after Rowan had warned him.

He bore down on the toggles, saw and accepted he’d miss the jump spot, adjusted again.

He winged through the birch, cursing. He didn’t land in the water, but it was a near thing as his momentum on landing nearly sent him rolling into it anyway.

Mildly annoyed, he gathered his chute as Rowan and Yangtree came running.

“I thought for sure you’d be in the drink.”

“Hit some bad air.”

“Me too. I nearly got frogged. Be grateful you’re not wet or limping.”

“Tore up my canopy some.”

“I bet.” Then she grinned as she had before jumping into space. “What a ride!”

Once all jumpers were on the ground, Yangtree called a briefing with Rowan and Gibbons while the others dealt with the paracargo.

“They thought they could catch it, had forty jumpers on it, and for the first two days, it looked like they had it. Then it turned on them. A series of blowups, some equipment problems, a couple injuries.”

“The usual clusterfuck,” Gibbons suggested.

“You got it. I’ll be coordinating with the Alaska division boss, the BLM and USFS guys. I’m going to take me a copter ride, get a better look at things, but for right now.”

He picked up a stick, drew a rough map in the dirt. “Gibbons, take a crew and start working the left flank. They’ve got a Cat line across here. That’s where you’ll tie in with the Alaska crew. You’ve got a water source here for the pumpers. Swede, you take the right, work it up, burn it out, drown it.”

“Take it by the tail,” she said, following his dirt map. “Starve the belly.”

“Show’em what Zulies can do. We catch her good, shake her by the tail and push up to the head.” He checked the time. “Should reach the head in fifteen, sixteen hours if we haul our asses.”

They discussed strategy, details, directions, crouched in the stand of birch, while on the jump site the crew unpacked chain saws, boxes of fusees, pumpers and hose.

Gibbons leaped up, waved his Pulaski toward the sky. “Let’s do it!” he shouted.

“Ten men each.” Yangtree clapped his hands together like a team captain before the big game. “Get humping, Zulies.”

They got humping.

As planned, Rowan and her team used fusees to set burnouts between the raging right flank and the service road, sawing snags and widening the scratch line as they moved north from the jump spot.

If the dragon tried to swing east to cross the roads, move on to homesteads and cabins, she’d go hungry before she got there. They worked through what was left of the night, into the day with the flank crackling and snarling, vomiting out firebrands the wind took in arches to the dry tundra.

“Chow time,” she announced. “I’m going to scout through the burn, see if I can find how close Gibbons’s crew is.”

Dobie pulled a smashed sandwich out of his bag, looked up at the towering columns of smoke and flame. “Biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“She’s a romper,” Rowan agreed, “but you know what they say about Alaska. Everything’s bigger. Fuel up. We’ve got a long way to go.”

She couldn’t give them long to rest, she thought as she headed out. Timing and momentum were as vital tools as Pulaski and saw because Dobie hadn’t been wrong. This was one big mother, bigger, she’d concluded, than anticipated and, she’d already estimated by the staggered formation of her own line, wider in the body.

Pine tar and pitch tanged in the air, soured by the stench of smoke that rose like gray ribbons from the peat floor of the once, she imagined, pristine forest. Now mangled, blackened trees lay like fallen soldiers on a lost battlefield.

She could hear no sound of saw, no shout of man through the voice of the fire. Gibbons wasn’t as close as she’d hoped, and she couldn’t afford to scout farther.

She ate a banana and an energy bar on the quickstep hike back to her men. Gull gulped down Gatorade as he walked to her.

“What’s the word, boss?”

“We’re shaking her tail, as ordered, but she’s got a damn long one. We’ll be hard-pressed to meet Yangtree’s ETA. We’ve got a water source coming up. It should be about a hundred yards, and a little to the west. We’ll put the baby hoses on her, pump it up and douse her like Dorothy doused the Wicked Witch.”

She took his Gatorade, chugged some down. “She’s burning hot, Gull. Some desk jockey waited too long to call in more troops, and now she’s riding this wind. If she rides it hard enough, she can get behind us. We’ve got to bust our humps, get to the water, hose her down and back.”

“Busting humps is what we do.”

Still, it took brutal, backbreaking time to reach the rushing mountain stream, while the fire fought to advance, while it threw brands like a school-yard bully throws rocks, its roar a constant barrage of taunts and threats.

“Dobie, Chainsaw, beat out those spots! Libby, Trigger, Southern, snags and brush. The rest of you, get those pumps set up, lay the hose.”

She grabbed one of the pumps, connected the fuel can line to the pump, vented it. Moving fast, sweat dripping, she attached the foot valve, checked the gasket, tightened it with a spanner wrench from her tool bag.

Beat it back here, she thought, had to, or they’d be forced to backtrack and round east, giving up hundreds of acres, risk letting the fire snake behind them and drive them farther away from the head, from Gibbons. From victory.

She set the wye valve on the discharge side of the pump, began to hand-tighten it. And found it simply circled like a drain.

“Come on, come on.” She fixed it on again, blaming her rush, but when she got the same result, examined the valve closely.

“Jesus Christ. Jesus, it’s stripped. The wye valve’s threads are stripped on this pump.”

Gull looked over from where he worked. “I’ve got the same deal here.”

“I’m good,” Janis called out on the third pump. “It’s priming.”

“Get it warmed up, get it going.”

But one pump wouldn’t do the job, she thought. Might as well try a goddamn piss bag.

“We’re screwed.” She slapped a fist on the useless pump.

Gull caught her eye. “No way two stripped valves end up on the pumps by accident.”

“Can’t worry about that now. We’ll hold her with one as long as we can, use the time to saw and dig a line. We’ll double back to that old Cat line we crossed, then retreat east. Goddamn it, give up all that ground. There’s no time to get more pumps or manpower in here. Maybe if I had some damn duct tape we could jerry-rig them.”

“Duct tape. Hold on.” He straightened, ran to where Dobie shoveled dirt over a dying spot fire.

Rowan watched in amazement as he ran back with a roll of duct tape. “For Dobie it’s like his Tabasco. He doesn’t leave home without it.”

“It could work, or work long enough.”

They worked together, placing the faulty valve, wrapping it tight and snug to the discharge. She added another insurance layer, continued the setup.

“Fingers crossed,” she said to Gull, and began to stroke the primer. “She’s priming,” she mumbled as water squirted out of the holes. “Come on, keep going. Duct tape heals all wounds. Keep those fingers crossed.”

She closed the valve to the primer, opened it to the collapsible hose.

“It’s going to work.”

“It is working,” she corrected, and flicked the switch to start and warm the engine. “Trigger, on the pump! Let’s get the other one going,” she said to Gull.

“Not two of them,” Gull repeated while they worked.

“No, not two of them. Somebody majorly fucked up or—”

“Deliberately.”

She let the word hang when she met his eyes. “Let’s get it running. We’ll deal with that when we get out of this mess.”

They beat it back, held the ground, laying a wet line with hoses, hot shoveling embers right back in the fire’s gullet. But Rowan’s satisfaction was tempered with a simmering rage. Accident or deliberate, carelessness or sabotage, she’d put her crew at risk because she’d trusted the equipment.

When they reached Yangtree’s proposed rendezvous time, they were still over a half mile south of the head with fourteen hours’ bitter labor on their backs. She deployed most of the crew north, sending two back to check the burnout, and once again cut across the burn.

She took the time to calm, to radio back to Ops with a report of the faulty equipment and the progress. But this time when she crossed the dead land, she heard the buzz of saws.

Encouraged, she followed the sound until she came to Gibbons’s line.

“Did I call this a clusterfuck?” He paused long enough to swipe his forearm over his brow. “What’s the next step up from that?”

“Whatever this is. We’ve run into everything but Bigfoot on this. I had two pumps with stripped wye valves.”

“I had three messed-up chain saws. Two with dead spark plugs, one with a frayed starter cord that snapped first pull. We had to—” He stopped, and his face reflected the shock and suspicion in hers. “What the fuck, Ro?”

“We need to brief on this, but I’ve got to get back to my crew. We’ll be lucky to make the head in another three hours the way it’s going.”

“How far east are you now?”

“A little more than a third of a mile. We’re tightening her up. We’ll talk about this when we camp. We may catch her tonight, but we’re not going to kill her.”

“The crew’s going to need rest. We’ll see how it goes. Check back in—if we don’t tie up before—around ten, let’s say.”

“You’ll hear from me.”

She caught up with her men, following the sound of saws as she had with Gibbons, found them sawing line through black spruce.

They’d been actively fighting for nearly eighteen hours. She could see the exhaustion, the hollow eyes, slack jaws.

She laid a hand on Libby’s arm, waited until the woman took out her earplugs. “Extended break. An hour. Nappie time. Pass it up the line.”

“Praise Jesus.”

“I’m going to recon toward the head, see what we have in store for us.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll kick its ass, if I have my nappie time.”

She signaled to Gull. “I’m going to recon the head. You could come with me, but you’d miss an hour’s downtime.”

“I’d rather walk through the wilderness with my woman.”

“Then let’s go.”

They walked through the spruce while around them jumpers dumped their tools, dropped down on the ground or sprawled on rocks.

“Gibbons had three defective chain saws—two dead spark plugs, one bad starter cord.”

“I’d say that makes it officially sabotage.”

“That’s unofficial until the review, but, yeah, that’s what it was.”

“Cards was spotter. That puts him as loadmaster.”

“Load being the operative word,” she reminded him. “He wouldn’t check every valve and spark plug. He just makes sure everything gets loaded on, and loaded right.”

“Yeah, that’s true enough. Look, I like Cards. I don’t want to point fingers at anybody, but this kind of thing? It has to be one of us.”

She didn’t want to hear it. “A lot of people could get to the equipment. Support staff, mechanics, pilots, cleaning crews. It’s not just who the hell—it’s why the hell.”

“Another good point.”

Because she felt shaky, she took out one of her precious Cokes for a shot of caffeine and sugar, and used it to make yet another energy bar more palatable.

“We wouldn’t have been trapped,” she added. “We had time to take an escape route, get to a safe zone. If we hadn’t fixed the hoses and held that line, we’d have gotten out okay.”

“But,” he prompted.

“Yeah, but if the situation had been different, if we’d gotten in a fix and needed the hoses to get out, some of us could’ve been hurt, or worse.”

“So the why could be one, wanting to screw around, cause trouble. Two, wanting to give fire an advantage. Or three, wanting somebody to get hurt or worse.”

“I don’t like any of those options.” Each one of them made her sick. “But the way this summer’s been going, I’m afraid it might be three. L.B.’s ordering a full inspection of all equipment, right down to boot snaps.” She pulled off her gloves to rub her tired eyes.

“I don’t want to waste the energy being pissed about it,” she told him, “not until we demob anyway. God, Gull. Look at her burn.”

They stopped a moment, stood staring at the searing wall.

She’d fought fire on more than one front before. She knew how.

But she’d never fought two enemies in the same war.

26

Ella studied Lucas across the pretty breakfast table she’d set up on the deck. She’d gone to a little trouble—crepes and shirred eggs on her best china, fat mixed berries in pretty glass bowls, mimosas in tall, crystal flutes, and one of her Nikko Blue hydrangeas sunk into a low, square glass vase for a centerpiece.

She liked to go to the trouble now and again, and Lucas usually showed such appreciation. Even for cold cereal and a mug of black coffee, she thought, he always thanked her for the trouble.

But this morning he said little, and only toyed with the food she’d so carefully prepared.

She wondered if he was regretting taking the day off to be with her, to go poking around the Missoula Antique Mall. Her idea, she reminded herself, and really, did any man enjoy the prospect of spending the day shopping?

“You know, it occurs to me you might like to do something else today. Lucas,” she said when he didn’t respond.

“What?” His gaze lifted from his plate. “I’m sorry.”

“If you could do anything, what would you want to do today?”

“Honestly. I’d be up in Alaska with Rowan.”

“You’re really worried about her.” She reached over for his hand. “I know you must worry every time, but this seems more. Is it more?”

“I talked to L.B. while you were fixing breakfast. He thought I should know—No, she’s fine. They’re fine,” he said when her fingers jerked in his. “But the fire’s tougher and bigger than they thought. You get that,” he added with a shrug. “The thing that’s got me worried is it turns out they jumped with several pieces of defective equipment, tools.”

“Aren’t those kind of things inspected and maintained? That shouldn’t happen.”

“Yeah, they’re checked and tested. Ella, they think these tools may have been tampered with.”

“You mean . . . Well, God, Lucas, no wonder you’re worried. What happens now?”

“They’ll examine the equipment, investigate, review. L.B.’s already ordered a complete inspection of everything on base.”

“That’s good, but it doesn’t help Rowan or the rest of them on the fire.”

“When you’re on a fire, you’ve got to depend on yourself, your crew and, by God, on your equipment. It could’ve gone south on my girl.”

“But she’s all right? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. They worked nearly twenty-four hours before making camp. She’s getting some sleep now. They’ll hit it early today; they’ll have the light. They dropped them more equipment, and they’re sending in another load of jumpers, more hotshots. They’re sending in another tanker, and . . .” He trailed off, smiled a little, waved his hand. “Enough fire talk.”

She shook her head. “No. You talk it through. I want you to be able to talk it through with me.”

“What they had was your basic clusterfuck. Delays in calling in more men and equipment, erratic winds and a hundred percent active perimeter. Fire makes its own weather,” he continued, and pleased her when talking relaxed him enough to have him cutting into a crepe. “This one kicked up a storm, kept bumping the line—that means it spots and rolls, delays containment. Blowups, eighty-foot flames across the head.”

“Oh, my God.”

“She’s impressive,” he said, and amazed Ella by smiling.

“You really do wish you were there.” She narrowed her eyes, pointed at him. “And not just for Rowan.”

“I guess it never goes away, all the way away. Bottom line is they’ve made good progress. They’re going to have a hell of a day ahead of them, but they’ll have her crying uncle by tonight.”

“You know what you should do—the next best thing to flying yourself to Alaska and jumping out over Rowan’s campsite? You should go on over to the base.”

“They don’t need me over there.”

“You may have retired, but you’re still Iron Man Tripp. I bet they could use your expertise and experience. And you’d feel closer to Rowan and to the action.”

“We had plans for the day,” he reminded her.

“Lucas, don’t you know me better by now?”

He looked at her, then took her hand to his lips. “I guess I do. I guess you know me, too.”

“I like to think so.”

“I wonder how you’d feel . . . I’d like to ask if I could move in here with you. If I could live with you.”

It took a minute for her brain to catch up. “You—you want to live together? Here?”

“I know you’ve got everything you want here, and we’ve only been seeing each other a few months. Maybe you need to—”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I mean, I’ll have everything I want here when you are. So, yes, absolutely yes.” Delighted by his blank stare, she laughed. “How soon can you pack?”

He let out a breath, then picked up the mimosa, drank deep. “I thought you’d say no, or that we should wait awhile more.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked. Now you’re stuck.”

“Stuck with a beautiful woman who knows me and wants me around anyway. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what I did right.” He set the glass back down. “I did this backward because first I should’ve said—I should’ve said, I love you, Ella. I love you.”

“Lucas.” She got up, went around the table to sit in his lap. Took his face in her hands. “I love you.” She kissed him, sinking in. “I’m so happy my son wanted me to jump out of a plane.” She sighed as she laid her cheek against his. “I’m so happy.”

WHEN HE LEFT, she adjusted her plans for the day. She had to make room for a man. For her man. Closet space, drawer space. Space for manly things. The house she’d made completely her own would become a blend, picking up pieces of him, shades of him.

It amazed her how much she wanted that, how very much she wanted to see what those shades would be once blended.

She needed to make a list, she realized, of what should be done. He’d want some office space, she decided as she took out a notebook and pen to write it down. Then she tapped the pen on the table, calculating which area might work best.

“Oh, who can think!” Laughing, she tossed down the pen to dance around the kitchen.

She had to call her kids and tell them. But she’d wait until she’d settled down a little so they didn’t think she’d gone giddy as a teenager on prom night.

But she felt like one.

When the phone rang, she boogied to it, then sobered when she saw Irene’s readout.

She took two quiet breaths. “Hello.”

“Ella, Ella, can you come? Leo. Leo called.”

“Slow down,” she urged when Irene rushed over the words. “Leo called you?”

“He turned himself in. He’s at the police station, and he wants to talk to me. They let him call me, and he said he’s not saying anything about anything until he talks to me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t do anything. I’ll be right over.”

She grabbed her cell phone out of the charger, snagged her purse on the run. On the way out the door, she called Lucas.

“I’m on my way over to Irene’s. Leo’s turned himself in.”

“Where?” Lucas demanded. “Where is he?”

“He called her from the police station.” She slammed her car door, shifted the phone to yank on her seat belt. “He says he won’t talk to anyone until he talks to her. I’m going with her.”

“Don’t you go near him, Ella.”

“I won’t, but I don’t want her to go alone. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back.”

She closed the phone, tossed it in her purse as she reversed down the drive.

WAKING TO THE VIEW of the Alaska Range and Denali lifted the spirits. As she stood in camp, Rowan felt the mountain was on their side.

The crews had worked their hearts out, had the burns and bruises, the aches and pains to prove it. They hadn’t slayed the dragon, not yet, but they’d sure as hell wounded it. And today, she had a good, strong feeling, today they’d plunge the sword right through its heart.

She knew the crew was banged up, strung out, but they’d gotten a solid four hours’ sleep and even now filled their bellies. With more equipment, more men, an additional fire engine and two bulldozers, she believed they could be flying home by that evening, and leave the final beat-down and mopping up to Alaska.

Sleep, she decided, the mother of optimism.

She pulled out her radio when it signaled. “Ro at base camp, go ahead.”

“L.B., Ops. I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”

“How’s my girl?”

“Hey, Dad. A-OK. Just standing here thinking and looking at a big-ass mountain. Wish you were here. Over.”

“Copy that. It’s good to hear your voice. Heard you had some trouble yesterday. Over.”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle with some bubble gum and duct tape. We softened her up yesterday.” She watched the cloud buildup over the park, and puffs of smoke twining up from islands of green. We’re coming for you, she thought. “Today, we’ll kick her ass. Over.”

“That’s a roger. Ro, I’ve got something you should know,” he began, and told her about Leo.

When she’d finished the radio call, Rowan walked over, sat down by Gull.

“Hell of a view,” he commented. “Libby’s in love. She’s talking about moving up here. Ditching us for the Alaska unit.”

“People fall for the mountain. Gull, Leo turned himself in this morning. He’s in custody.”

He studied her, then drank more coffee. “Then it’s a damn good day.”

“I guess it is.” She heaved out a breath. “Yeah, I guess it is. Let’s make it better and kill this dragon dead.”

“I hear that,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

IT SHOOK IRENE to the core to walk into the room and see Leo shackled to the single table. He’d lost weight, and his hair, thinner, straggly, hung over the collar of the bright orange prison suit. He hadn’t shaved for God knew how long, she thought, and the beard had grown in shockingly gray around his gaunt face.

He looked wild. He looked like a criminal.

He looked like a stranger.

Had it only been a month since she’d seen him?

“Irene.” His voice broke on her name, and the shackles rattled obscenely in her ears when he reached out.

She had to look away for a moment, compose herself.

The room seemed airless, and much too bright. She saw the reflection in the wide mirror—two-way glass, she thought. She watched Law & Order, and she knew how it worked.

But the reflection stunned her. Who was that woman, that old, bony woman with dingy hair scraped back from her haggard face?

It’s me, she thought. I’m a stranger, too.

We’re not who we were. We’re not who we’re supposed to be.

Were they watching behind that glass? Of course they were. Watching, judging, condemning.

The idea struck what little pride she had left, kindled it. She straightened her shoulders, firmed her chin and looked into her husband’s eyes. She walked to the table, sat, but refused to take the hands he held out to her.

“You left me.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it’d be better for you. They were looking to arrest me, Irene, for murder. I thought if I was gone, you’d be better off, and they’d find the real killer so I could come back.”

“Where did you go?”

“I went up in the mountains. I kept moving. I had the radio, so I kept listening for word they’d arrested somebody. But they didn’t. Somebody did this to me, Reenie. I just—”

“To you? To you, Leo? I signed my name with yours, putting up our home for your bail. You left, and now I’m going to lose my home because even taking another job isn’t enough to meet the payments.”

Pain, and she judged it sincere, cut across his face. “I didn’t think about that until I’d already gone. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just thought you and the baby would do better if I left. I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t think I’d be alone with no idea where my husband was, if he was dead or alive? You didn’t think I’d have a baby to tend to, bills to pay, questions to answer, and all this right after I put my daughter’s bones in the ground?”

“Our daughter, Reenie.” Under the beard his cheeks reddened as he pounded his fist on the table. “And they think I killed my own girl. That I broke her neck, then burned her like trash in a barrel. Is that what you think? Is it?”

“I stopped thinking, Leo.” She heard her own voice, thought it as dull as her hair, her face. “I had to, just to get from one day to the next, one chore to the next, one bill to the next. I lost my child, my husband, my faith. I’m going to lose my home, and my grandchild.”

“I’ve been living like an animal,” he began. Then stopped, squinted at her. “What are you talking about? They can’t take Shiloh away.”

“I don’t know if they can or not. But I know I can’t raise her right on my own without a good home to give her, or enough time. The Brayners will be here tomorrow, and they’re taking her home to Nebraska.”

“No.” That stranger’s face lit with fury. “Irene, no. Goddamn it, you listen to me now.”

“Don’t you swear at me.” The slap in her voice had his head snapping back. “I’m going to do what’s right by that baby, Leo, and this is what’s best. You’ve got no say in it. You left us.”

“You’re doing this to punish me.”

She sat back. Funny, she realized, she didn’t feel so tired now, so worn, so full of grief. No, she felt stronger, surer, clearer of mind than she had since they’d come to tell her Dolly was dead.

“Punish you? Look at yourself, Leo. Even if I had a mind to punish you, and I just don’t, you’ve already done plenty of it on your own. You say you lived like an animal—well, that was your choice.”

“I did it for you!”

“Maybe you believe that. Maybe you need to. I don’t care. There’s an innocent baby in all this, and she comes first. And for the first time in my life I’m putting myself next. Ahead of you, Leo. Ahead of everydamn-body else.”

Something stirred in her. Not rage, she thought. She was sick of rage, and sick of despair. Maybe, just maybe, what stirred in her was faith—in herself.

“I’m going to do what I have to do for me. I have some thinking to do about that, but I’ll be leaving, most likely to move closer to Shiloh. I’ll take my half of whatever’s left once this is said and done, and leave you yours.”

He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “You’re going to leave me like this, when I’m locked up, when I need my wife to stand with me?”

“You need,” she repeated, and shook her head. “You’re going to have to get used to your needs being down the line. After Shiloh’s and after mine. I’d’ve stood with you, Leo. I’d’ve done my duty as your wife and stuck by you, whatever it took and for however long. But you changed that when you proved you wouldn’t do the same for me.”

“Now you listen to me, Irene. You listen to me. Somebody took that rifle, took that gun, right out of my house. They did that to ruin me.”

“I hope for the sake of your soul that’s true. But you and Dolly made our house a battlefield, and neither one of you cared enough about me to stop the war. She left me without a second thought, and when we took her back, because that’s what a parent does for a child, she lied and schemed just like always. And you fought and clawed at each other, just like always. With me in the middle, just like always.”

God help her, Irene thought. She’d mourn her child for the rest of her life, but she wouldn’t mourn the war.

“Now she’s gone, and my faith’s so broken I don’t even have the comfort of believing it was God’s will. I don’t have that. You left me alone in the dark when I most needed a strong hand to hold on to.

“I don’t know what you’ve done or haven’t done, but I know that much. I know I can’t depend on you to give me that strong hand, so I have to start depending on me. It’s past time I did.”

She got to her feet. “You should call your lawyer. He’s what you need now.”

“I know you’re upset. I know you’re mad at me, and I guess you’ve got a right to be. But please, don’t leave me here alone, Irene. I’m begging you.”

She tried, one last time, to reach down inside herself for love, or at least for pity. But found nothing.

“I’ll come back when I can, and I’ll bring you what they say I’m allowed to bring. Now I’ve got to go to work. I can’t afford to take any more time off today. If I can find it in me to pray again, I’ll pray for you.”

L.B. HAILED MATT as Matt came back from his run.

“Have you got your PT in for the day?”

“Yeah. I was going to grab a shower and some breakfast. Have you got something you want me to do?”

“We could use some help restocking gear and equipment as it gets inspected. The crew got in from Wyoming while you were out.”

“I saw the plane overhead. Man, L.B., did they have trouble, too?”

“Another bad pumper.”

“Well, shit.”

“We’ve got mechanics going over every inch of the rest of them, the saws and so on. We’re unpacking all the chutes, and I’ve got master riggers going over them. Iron Man’s here, so he’s helping with that.”

“Jesus Christ, L.B., you don’t think somebody messed with the chutes?”

“Are you willing to risk it?”

Matt pulled off his cap, scrubbed a hand over his hair. “I guess not. Who the hell would do something like this?”

“We’re damn sure going to find out. Iron Man had news. Leo Brakeman turned himself in this morning.”

“He’s back? In Missoula? The cops have him?”

“That’s exactly right. It makes me wonder how long he’s been around these parts.”

“And he could’ve done this. Screwed with us like this.” Matt looked away, stared off, shaking his head. “Threatening Ro, shooting at her, for God’s sake. Now messing with equipment. We never did anything to him or his. Never did a damn thing, and he can’t say the same.”

“Right now, we take care of our own, so grab that shower and some chow, then report to the ready room.”

“Okay. Listen, if you need me back on the jump list—”

“We’ll leave you off for now.”

“I appreciate it, a lot. My parents should be in late this afternoon. I’m going to let them know I might have to cut it short. I don’t want you having to shuffle somebody into my spot with the other crap on your plate, too. You call me in if you need me.”

“Copy that.” He gave Matt a slap on the shoulder.

He headed back into Operations. He had twenty-one men in Alaska, and didn’t expect to see them back until the next day, soonest. Another load barely touched down, and a fire in California where they might need some Zulies before it was said and done. Dry conditions predicted for the next two weeks.

He’d be damned if he’d send the first load up without being sure, absolutely sure, every strap, every buckle, every fucking zipper and switch passed the most rigorous inspection.

He thought of Jim, felt the familiar heartsickness. Accidents couldn’t be controlled, but he could and would control this human-generated bullshit.

AT THE END of a very long day, Lieutenant Quinniock drove out to the base. He wanted to go home, see his wife and kids, have dinner with them the way men did who weren’t cops.

Most of all he wanted to be done with Leo Brakeman.

The man was a stone wall, wouldn’t give an inch.

Every pass he or DiCicco had taken at him—together or separately—met with the same result.

Zero.

Brakeman just sat there, arms folded, eyes hard, jaw tight under that scruffy man-of-the-mountain beard. He’d lost ten pounds, gained ten years, and still wouldn’t budge from his I’m-being-framed routine.

Now he demanded—through his lawyer, as he’d stopped talking al-together—a polygraph. So they’d have to go through that dance and shuffle.

Quinniock suspected if the polygraph results indicated Brakeman was a lying sack of shit who couldn’t tell the truth over the size of his own dick, he’d claim the polygraph framed him.

They had circumstantial evidence aplenty. They had motive, means, opportunity and the fact that he’d run. What they didn’t have was a confession.

The DA didn’t want to charge Leo Brakeman, former All-State tackle, a Missoula native, with no priors and deep ties to the community, with the murder of his own daughter without a confession.

And since every goddamn bit of that evidence tied Dolly’s murder with Latterly’s, they couldn’t charge him with that, either.

Need a break, Quinniock thought. Need a little off-the-clock before going back the next day to beat his head against the DA’s. But first he had to see what the hell Michael Little Bear wanted.

Once on base, he aimed directly for Little Bear’s office.

“You looking for L.B.?”

Quinniock stopped, nodded at the man who hailed him. “That’s right.”

“He just walked over to the loft. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He changed direction. It struck him how quiet the base seemed. None of the crew training outside or hustling from building to building, though he had seen a couple of them hauling ass down one of the service roads in a jeep. Either a test or a joyride, he decided.

When he made his way to the loft, passed what he knew they called the ready room, he saw why.

Here the hive of activity buzzed. Men and a handful of women worked on tools, taking them apart or putting them back together. Others pulled equipment off shelves or replaced it.

Routine inspection? he wondered, considered the organized chaos as he entered the loft.

There he saw chutes spread on counters, being unpacked or meticulously repacked. More hung in the tower waiting to be inspected or already tagged for repair or repacking.

He spotted Little Bear standing beside Lucas Tripp at one of the counters.

“Iron Man.” Quinniock offered a hand with genuine pleasure. “Have they talked you back on the team?”

“Just helping out for the day. How’s it going, Lieutenant?”

“I’ve had better days, and I’ve had worse. You wanted to talk to me?” he said to L.B.

“Yeah. Where’s the tree cop?”

“Seeing to some tree cop business. Did you want her here?”

“Not especially. I have crews in Alaska, and another just back this morning from Wyoming.”

“I heard about the fires in Alaska, threatening Denali Park. What’s the status?”

“They hope to have it contained within a few hours. It’s been a long, hard haul and my people jumped that fire with defective equipment.”

“Is that what this is about?” Quinniock took another look around the loft. “You’re running an equipment inspection?”

“What this is about is the fact that the equipment was tampered with. Stripped valves in pumpers, and one of them went into Wyoming. Chain saws with burned-out spark plugs and a frayed starter cord.”

“I don’t want to tell you your business, but all of that sounds like it could easily be simple wear and tear, something that got overlooked during the height of a busy season.”

L.B.’s face went hard as stone. “We don’t overlook a damn thing. Equipment comes in from a fire, it’s gone over, checked out and checked off before it goes back in rotation. The same valve stripped on three pumpers, and two in the load that went to Denali?”

“Okay, that’s a stretch.”

“You’re damn right. We’re inspecting everything, and we’ve already found two more defective saws, and four piss bags with the nozzles clogged with putty. We’re not careless; we can’t afford to be. We don’t overlook.”

“All right.”

“We have to inspect every chute, drogue, reserve. And thank God so far none of the ones we’ve gone over show any signs of tampering. Do you know how long it takes to repack a single chute?”

“About forty-five minutes. I’ve taken the tour. All right,” Quinniock repeated, and took out his notebook. “You have a list of who checked off the equipment?”

“Sure I do, and I’ve gone over it. I’ll give you the names, and the names of the mechanics who did any of the repairs or cleaning. It doesn’t fall on one person.”

“Are any of your crew dealing with more than the usual stress?”

“My people in Alaska who had to jerry-rig pumpers with duct tape, goddamn it, or lose their ground.”

As he also sent men out into the field, bore the weight of those decisions, Quinniock understood the simmering rage. He kept his own tone brisk. “Have you had to discipline anyone, remove anyone from active?”

“No, and no. Do you think one of the crew did this? These people don’t know when they’ll have to jump or where or into what conditions until they do. Why in the hell would somebody do this when they might be the one with a starter cord snapping off in their hands, or scrambling with a useless pump with a fire bearing down on him?”

“Your support staff, your mechanics, your pilots and so on don’t jump.”

“And Leo Brakeman walked into your house this morning. He’s already shot up mine, and isn’t shy about starting fires. Tampering with the equipment here takes a little mechanical know-how.”

“And he has more than a little.” Quinniock blew out a breath. “I’ll look into it. If it was him, I can promise you he’s going to be sitting just where he’s sitting for some time to come.”

“His wife’s leaving him,” Lucas put in. He’d finished packing the chute, tagged it, then turned to address Quinniock. “She’s giving the baby to the Brayners, the father’s parents. They’re coming in from Nebraska. She’s making arrangements to turn the house over, to sell whatever she can sell, cash out whatever she can cash out. She’s thinking about moving out near the Brayners so she can be near the baby, help out, watch her grow up.”

“You’re well informed.”

“My . . .” Did a sixty-year-old man have a girlfriend? he wondered. “The woman I’m involved with is a close friend of Irene’s.”

“Ella Frazier. I’m well informed, too,” Quinniock added. “I met her at the funeral.”

“She’s helping Irene as much as she can. Irene told Leo all this when she went to see him this morning.”

Quinniock passed a weary hand over his face. “That explains why he shut down.”

“It seems to me he’s got nothing left to lose now.”

“He wants to take a polygraph, but that could be the lawyer’s idea. He’s sticking with the same story, and the more we twist it up, the harder he bears down. Maybe tossing this tampering at him will shake him. I want the timelines, when each piece was last used, last inspected, by whom in both cases if you can get that for me. I have to make a call first.”

He flipped out his phone, called the sergeant on duty and ordered a suicide watch on Leo Brakeman.

27

The plane touched down in Missoula shortly after ten A.M. They’d hit very rocky air over Canada, with hail flying like bullets while the plane rode the roller coaster of the storm.

Half the crew landed queasy or downright sick.

Since she’d slept the entire flight, Rowan calculated she felt nearly three-quarters human. Human enough to take a yearlong shower, and eat like a starving horse.

As she and Gull walked to the barracks, she spotted L.B. with Cards, supervising the off-loading. She suspected L.B. had been waging his own war while they had waged theirs.

She didn’t want to think about either battle for a little while.

She dropped down to sit on the bed in her quarters, remove her boots. “I want lots and lots of sex.”

“You really are the woman of my dreams.”

“First round, wet shower sex, after we scrape off a few layers of the Alaskan tundra, then a short and satisfying lunch break.” She unbuckled her belt, dropped her pants. “Then a second round of make-themattress-sing sex.”

“I feel a tear of gratitude and awe forming in the corner of my eye. Don’t think less of me.”

God, the man just tickled every inch of her. And, she decided, even with the scruff on his face, his hair matted, twanged her lust chords.

“Then a quickie just to top things off before I start my reports. I’ll have to brief with L.B. at some point, and squeeze in daily PT, after which there must be more food.”

“There must.”

“Then I believe it’s going to be a time for relax-into-a-nap sex.”

“I can write up an agenda on this, just so we don’t miss anything.”

“It’s all here.” She tapped her temple. “So . . .” She strolled naked into the bathroom. “Let’s get this party started.”

Rowan considered the first round a knockout. Now that she felt a hundred percent human, and with Gull shaving off the scruff in her bathroom, she went out to dress.

She picked up the note someone must have shoved under her door in the last forty minutes.

FULL BRIEFING ALL CREW

OPS

THIRTEEN HUNDRED

“Oh, well. Round two’s going to have to be postponed.” She held the note up for Gull to read.

“Maybe he has some answers.”

“Or maybe he’s just got a whole lot of questions. Either way, we’d better scramble if we’re going to get any food before thirteen hundred.”

“Marg might know something.”

“I’m thinking the same.”

Since Marg liked him well enough, Gull went with Rowan to the kitchen.

Probably not the best timing, he realized as they walked into the heat and the rush. Marg, Lynn and the new cook—Shelley, he remembered—turned, hauled, chopped and scooped with a creative symmetry that made him think of a culinary Cirque du Soleil.

“Hey.” Lynn filled a tub with some sort of pasta medley. “Shelley, we need more rolls, and the chicken salad’s getting low.”

“I’m all over it!”

“Bring the barbecue pan back when you come,” Marg told Lynn while she swiped a cloth over her heat-flushed face. “They’ll be ready for it by then. I know how they suck this stuff down.

“Briefing at one o’clock,” she muttered, and wagged a spoon at Rowan. “Right in the middle of things, so they all storm this place before noon like Henry the Fifth stormed, wherever the hell that was.”

“I could chop something,” Rowan volunteered.

“Just stay clear. Once we get this second round of barbecue out to them, they’ll hold awhile.”

“You were right.” Lynn bustled back in with a near-empty pan. Together, she and Marg filled it.

“This tops everything off but the dessert buffet. Shelley and I can get that.”

“Good girl.” Marg flipped out two plates, tossed the open rolls on them, dumped barbecue on the bottom, scooped the pasta medley beside it, added a serving of summer squash. Then pointed at Gull. “Get three beers and bring ’em out to my table. Take this.” She shoved one of the plates at Rowan before grabbing up flatware setups.

She sailed outside and, after setting the plate and setups down, pressed her hands to her lower back. “God.”

“Sit down, Marg.”

“I need to stretch this out some first. Go on and eat.”

“Aren’t you going to?”

Marg just waved a hand in the negative. “That’s what I’m after,” she said, taking the beer Gull held out to her. “I’ve got the AC set to arctic blast, but by the time we’re into the middle of the lunch shift, it’s like Nairobi. Eat. And don’t bolt it down.”

Gull lifted the sloppy sandwich, got in the first bite. Warm, tangy, with the pork melting into sauce and the combination melding into something like spiced bliss.

“Marg, what’ll it take for you to come and live with me?”

“A lot of sex.”

“I’m good for that,” he said over another bite, pointing to Rowan for verification. “I’m good for that.”

“Everybody’s got to be good for something,” Rowan commented. “What’s the word, Marg?”

“L.B.’s on a tear, that’s for certain. You don’t see that man get up a head of steam often. It’s why he’s good at the job. But he’s been puffing it out the last couple days. He had every chute, every pack, every jumpsuit gone over. He’d have used microscopes on them if he could have. Every piece of equipment, every tool, every damn thing. He’s having the jeeps gone over, the Rolligons, the planes.”

She took a long, slow sip of beer, set it aside, then surprised Gull by lowering smoothly into a yoga down dog. “God, that feels better. He called Quinniock out here.”

“He wants a police investigation?” Rowan asked.

“He’s made up his mind Leo managed to do this. He may be right.” She walked her feet up to a forward fold, hung there a moment, then straightened. “Irene’s leaving him. She’s already packing up. The Brayners are taking the baby tomorrow, and I don’t think she plans to be far behind. She’s going to move into your daddy’s place for a couple weeks, until she clears up her business.”

“She’s moving in with Dad?”

“No, into the house. He offered it to her. He’ll be in Ella’s.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t give me that WTF look. Talk to your father about it. Meanwhile, I hear they have Leo on suicide watch and he’s clammed up tight. He wants to take a lie detector test. I think they’re going to do that today or tomorrow.

“That’s about it. I’ve got to get back.”

Gull waited a moment, then scooped up some pasta. “All that, and I bet the only thing you’re thinking is your father’s going to be living with the hot redhead.”

“Shut up. Besides, he’s just doing a favor for Mrs. Brakeman.”

“Yeah, I bet it’s a real sacrifice. You know what I’m thinking?”

Deliberately she stared up at the sky. “I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. I’m thinking, the way this is working out, I’ll move in with you. You’re going to have the room, then I can be closer to Marg and get this barbecue on a regular basis.”

“I don’t think this is something to joke about.”

“Babe, I never joke about barbecue.” He licked some off his thumb. “I wonder how a Fun World would go over in Missoula.”

Rowan tried to squeeze out some stress by pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m losing my appetite.”

“Too bad. Can I have the rest of your sandwich?”

The snort of laughter snuck up on her. “Damn it. Every time I should be annoyed with you, you manage to slide around it. And no.” With a smirk, she stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth.

“Just for that I’m going to get some pie. And I’m not bringing you any.”

“You don’t have time.” She tapped her watch. “Briefing.”

“I’ll take it to go.”

He didn’t get her any pie, but he did bring her a slab of chocolate cake. They ate dessert out of their palms on the way to Ops.

Jumpers poured out of the woodwork, heading in from the training field and track, striding out of the barracks, filing in from the loft. A grim-faced Cards, shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets, turned out of the ready room.

Rowan nudged Gull’s arm with her elbow and shifted direction to intersect.

“You look like somebody stole your last deck,” she commented.

“Do you think I didn’t do my job? Didn’t pay attention to what I load?”

“I know you did. You do.”

“That equipment was inspected and checked. I’ve got the goddamn paperwork. I checked the goddamn manifest.”

“Are you taking heat on this?” Rowan demanded.

“It’s got to go up the chain, something like this, and when shit goes up the chain, the hook drops on somebody. What’re we supposed to do, check every valve, nozzle, cord and strap before we load it, when every damn thing’s been checked before it goes into rotation? Are we supposed to start everything up before we put it on the damn plane?

“Fuck it. Just fuck it. I don’t know why I do this damn job anyway.”

He stalked off, leaving Rowan looking after him with a handful of cake crumbs and smeared icing. “He shouldn’t take a knock for this. This is nobody’s fault except whoever messed up the equipment.”

“He’s right about the way things drop back down the chain. Even if they pin it on Brakeman, on anybody, Cards could take a hit.”

“It’s not right. L.B. will go to bat for him. It’s bad enough, what we’ve been dealing with, without one of us getting dinged for it.” She stared down at her chocolate-smeared hand. “Hell.”

“Here.” Gull dug a couple of wet naps out of his pocket. “Some problems have easy solutions.”

“He’s a damn fine jumper.” She swiped at the chocolate. “As good a spotter as they come. He can be annoying with the card games and tricks, but he puts a lot into this job. More than most of us.”

Gull could have pointed out that putting more than most into it meant Cards had regular and easy access to all the equipment, and that as spotter he hadn’t jumped the Alaska fire.

No point in it, he decided. Her attachment there ran deep.

“He’ll be all right.”

They went into the building where people milled and muttered.

He saw Yangtree sitting, rubbing his knee, and Dobie leaning against a wall, eyes closed in a standing-up power nap. Libby played around with her iPhone while Gibbons sat with a hip hitched on a counter, his nose in a book.

Some drank coffee, some huddled in conversations, talking fire, sports, women—the three top categories—or speculating about the briefing to come. Some zoned out, sitting on the floor, backs braced against the wall or a desk.

Every one of them had dropped weight since the start of the season, and plenty of them, like Yangtree, nursed aching knees. The smoke jumper’s Achilles’ heel. Strained shoulders, pulled hamstrings, burns, bruises. Some of the men had given up shaving, sporting beards in a variety of styles.

Every one of them understood true exhaustion, real hunger, intense fear. And every one of them would suit up if the siren called. Some would fight hurt, but they’d fight all the same.

He’d never known people so stubbornly resilient or so willing to put body, mind and life on the line, day after day.

And more, to love it.

“L.B. hasn’t started.” Matt maneuvered in beside him. “I thought I’d be late.”

“Not yet. I didn’t expect to see you for a couple more days.”

“I’m just in for this. L.B. wanted all of us, unless we caught a fire. What’s the word?”

“As far as I know they’re still inspecting. They found a few more pieces of equipment tampered with.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Did your parents get in all right?” Rowan asked him.

“Yeah. They’re over visiting with Shiloh. We’re going to take her out for a couple hours later, so she gets used to being with us. She’s already taken to my ma.”

“How’s Mrs. Brakeman doing?”

He lifted his shoulders, stared toward the Ops desk. “She’s being real decent about it. It shows how much she loves the baby.” He let out a little sigh. “She and my ma had a good cry together. L.B.’s getting ready to start.”

“All right, settle down,” L.B. called out. “I’ve got some things to say, so pay attention. Everybody knows about the equipment failures on the jumps in Alaska and Wyoming. I want to tell you all that we’re continuing a full inspection, any equipment or gear not yet inspected and passed doesn’t go out. I called in a couple extra master riggers to help reinspect, clear, repack every chute on this base. I don’t want anybody worrying about the safety of their gear.”

He paused a moment.

“We’ve got a good system of checks on this base, and nobody cuts corners. Everyone here knows it’s not just important, it’s fucking essential that every jumper have confidence the gear and equipment needed to jump and attack will be safe, meet the highest standards and be in good working order. That didn’t happen on these jumps, and I take responsibility.”

He hard-eyed the protests until they died off.

“I’ve been in touch with the Management Council so they’re aware of what we’re dealing with. The local police and the USFS are also aware and conducting their own investigations.”

“They know damn well Leo Brakeman did this,” somebody shouted out and started everybody else up again.

“He shouldn’t have been able to.” L.B. roared it over the rise of chatter, smashing it like a boot heel on an anthill. “He shouldn’t have been able to get to us the way he did. The fact he’s locked up is all fine and good, but we’re going to be a lot more security-conscious around here. We’re going to do spot checks, regular patrols. If I could suspend the tours, I would, but since that’s not an option, two staff members will go with each group.

“Until the investigations and reviews are complete, and we know who and how, we’re not taking any chances.”

He stopped again, took a breath. “And I’m recommending everybody toss a roll of duct tape into their PG bags.”

That got a laugh, succeeding in lowering the tension.

“I want you to know I’ve got your backs, on base, in the air and on a fire. I’ve posted a new jump list and a rotation of assignments. If you don’t like it, come see me in my office so I can kick your ass. Anybody’s got any questions, suggestions, public bitching, now’s the time.”

“Can we get the feds to pay for the duct tape?” Dobie asked, and earned hoots and applause.

Gull sent his friend an appreciative look. The right attitude, he thought. Keep it cocky, keep it steady, maintain unity.

Whether the sabotage had been an inside or outside job, unity equaled strength.

He had questions, but not the sort he wanted to ask here.

“I’ve got something I need to work on,” he told Rowan over the cross talk. “Catch up with you later.”

He noted her disapproving frown, but slipped out and walked straight to his quarters. There, he booted up his laptop and got to work.

He shut down, passcoding his work when the siren sounded. He wasn’t on the first or second loads, but he ran to the ready room to assist those who were. He loaded gear on speed racks, hefted already packed and strapped paracargo onto the electric cart.

He listened, and he observed.

With Rowan and Dobie, he watched the plane rise into the wide blue cup of the sky.

“It’s good L.B. got that briefing in before the call.” Rowan shaded her eyes from the sun with the flat of her hand. “The sky looks a little dicey to the east.”

“Might be jumping ourselves before long.”

Hearing the eagerness in his voice, Rowan angled her body toward Dobie. “You’ve got jump fever. The best thing for you is to go sleep it off.”

“I got me an assignment. I’m on PC,” he said, using the shorthand for paracargo. “Packing and strapping in the loadmaster’s room. You, too, pal,” he told Gull. “Swede pulled the loft.”

“Yeah, I saw that, and that anybody on the Alaska jump could take a two-hour break first. But what the hell.” He leaned over, kissed Rowan. “We’ll get back to our agenda later.”

“Count on it.”

“I don’t see how it’s right and fair you got a woman right on base,” Dobie said as they walked toward the loadmaster’s room together. “The rest of us have to hunt one up, if we’re lucky and get a turn at a bar.”

“Life’s just full of not right and not fair. Otherwise I’d be stretched out on a white sand beach with that woman, drinking postcoital mai tais.”

“Postcoital.” Dobie snickered like a twelve-year-old. “You beat all, Gull. Beat all and back again.”

SINCE HE DIDN’T FIND her in her quarters, Gull assumed he’d finished up his duties before her, and went back to his room to continue on his project.

He sat on the bed, left the door open in a casual, nothing-to-see-here mode.

People walked by now and then, but for the most part his section stayed quiet.

Since he’d left his window open as well, he caught snippets of conversation as people wandered outside. A small group not on the jump list made plans to go into town. Somebody muttered to himself about women as the shimmering afternoon light dimmed.

He took a moment to shift to look out, and saw Rowan had been right about the eastern sky. Clouds gathered now, sailing in like warships.

A storm waiting to happen, he thought, toying with getting his run in before it did, then decided to wait for Rowan.

She and the first grumble of thunder arrived at the same time.

“Lightning strikes all over hell and back,” she told him, and flopped on the bed. “I ran up to check the radar. Tornadoes whipping things up in South Dakota.”

She circled her neck, rubbing hard at the back of her left shoulder as she spoke.

“We’ll probably have to run on the damn treadmill. I hate that.”

He pressed his fingers where she rubbed. “Jesus, Rowan, you got concrete in here.”

“Don’t I know it. I haven’t had a chance to work it out today. I need that run, some yoga . . . or that.” She sighed when he shifted and dug his fingers and thumbs into the knotted muscles.

“We’ll do our run after the storm’s over,” he said. “Use the track.”

Lightning struck, a flash and burn, and the wind rattled the blinds at his window. But no rain followed.

“When things slow down, we’ll hit L.B. up for a night off and get a fancy hotel suite. One with a jet tub in the bathroom. We’ll soak in it half the night.”

“Mmm.” She sighed her way into the image he painted. “Room service with fat, juicy steaks, and a great big bed to play on. Sleeping with somebody who has money and doesn’t mind spending it has advantages.”

“If you’ve got money and mind spending it, you can’t be having much fun.”

“I like that attitude. Are you e-mailing back home?”

“No, something else. You’re not going to like it.”

“If you’re e-mailing your pregnant wife to ask about your two adorable children and frisky puppy, I’m not going to like it.” She angled around. “That’s the kind of tone you used. Like you were going to tell me something that meant I had to punch you in the face.”

“My wife’s not pregnant, and we have a cat.” He gave her shoulders a last squeeze, then got up to close the door.

“You didn’t do that because we’re going to continue our planned agenda from this morning.”

“No. It’s the tampering, Rowan. Brakeman thinking of it, then pulling it off—all while eluding the cops. That’s just not working for me.”

“He knows this area better than most. He’s a mechanic, and he has a grudge against us. It works for me.”

On the surface, he thought, but you only had to scratch off a layer.

“Why tamper with some of the equipment?” Gull began working off his mental list. “He doesn’t know how we roll here, or in a fire. Not all the ins and outs.”

“His daughter worked here three seasons,” Rowan pointed out. “She had a working knowledge of how we roll, and he’s spent time on base.”

“If he wanted to hurt us, there are more direct ways. He had weapons; he could’ve used them. Sure, he could’ve known or found out where the equipment is,” Gull conceded, “and he could’ve gotten to it. This stretch of the season, most of us would sleep through a bomb blast. We’d hear the siren, the same way a mother hears her baby crying in the night even when she’s exhausted. We’re tuned, but otherwise, we’re out for the count.

“This was subtle, and sneaky, and it was the kind of thing, it seems to me, you’d know to do if you knew just how broken equipment could impact a crew on a fire. Because you’ve been there.”

He was right, Rowan thought. She didn’t like it. “You’re actually saying one of us did this?”

“I’m saying one of us could have done it, because we know how to access the equipment, how to screw it up and how it could impact an attack.”

“How stupid would that be since you could be the one impacted?”

“There’s that. Let’s take that first. Who didn’t jump either fire?”

He toggled his screen back to the document he’d worked on.

“You’re right; I don’t like it one damn bit. And first, Yangtree jumped with us.”

“He spent nearly the entire jump coordinating, doing flyovers.”

“That’s crap. And L.B.? Seriously?”

“He didn’t jump. Cards worked as spotter, so he didn’t jump. Neither did any of these. That’s over twenty, with six of them off the list altogether for personal reasons or injuries.”

“Yangtree’s been jumping thirty years. What, suddenly he decides to find out what’ll happen if he screws up equipment? Cards has ten years in, and L.B. more than a dozen. And—”

“Look, I know how you feel about them. They’re friends—they’re family. I feel the same.”

“In my world people don’t make up a suspect list of friends and family.”

“How often in your world has your equipment been sabotaged?” He laid a hand on her knee to soften the words. “Look, it’s more with you because you’ve been with them a long time. But I trained with a lot of the names on this list, and you know going through that makes a tight bond.”

“I don’t even know why you’re doing this.”

“Because, damn it, Rowan, if it wasn’t Brakeman, then we can do our patrols, our rechecks and spot checks, but . . . If you wanted to get in the ready room, the loadmaster’s room, any damn place on base tonight and mess something up, could you?”

She didn’t speak for a moment. “Yeah. I could. Why would I? Why would any of us?”

“That’s another deal entirely. Before that, there’s the possibility, if it’s one of us, it is somebody who jumped, who knew they were high on the list. Who wanted to be there, be part of it. We’re in a stressful line of work. People snap, or go too far. The firefighter who starts fires, then risks himself and his crew to put it out. It happens.”

“I know it happens.”

He hit another key, took her to another page.

“I divided the crews, the way we were that day.”

“You’re missing some names.”

“I think we can eliminate ourselves.”

“Dobie’s not here.”

“He had the duct tape.”

“Yeah, that was real handy.”

“He always carries . . . Okay, you’re right.” It burned his belly and his conscience, but he added Dobie’s name. “I should add us because you wished for the damn tape, and I remembered he’d have it.”

“What’s our motive?”

“Maybe I want to scare you off the job so you’ll stay home and cook me a hot dinner every night.”

“As if. But I mean the question. What’s any motive?”

“Okay, let’s roll with that. Yangtree.” He toggled back again. “He’s talking about giving it up. His knees are shot. Thirty years, like you said. He’s given this more than half his life, and now he knows he can’t keep it up. The younger and stronger are moving in. That’s a pisser.”

“He’s not like that.” She snapped it out—knee-jerk—then subsided when Gull only looked at her. “All right. This is bogus, but all right.”

“Cards? He’s had a bad-luck season. Injuries, illness. It wears. The woman he wanted to marry dumped him. Last summer, when he was spotter, Jim Brayner died.”

“That wasn’t—”

“His fault. I agree. It wasn’t yours, either, Rowan, but you have nightmares.”

“Okay. Okay. I get it. We could walk down your lists and find a plausible motive for everyone. That doesn’t make it true. And if it’s such a good theory, the cops would’ve thought of it.”

“What makes you think they haven’t?”

That stopped her. “That’s a really ugly thought. The idea they’re looking at us, investigating us, scraping away to hunt for weaknesses, secrets. That they’re doing what we’re doing here, only more.”

“It is ugly, but I’d rather take a hard look than ignore what might be right here with us.”

“I want it to be Brakeman.”

“Me too.”

“But if it’s not,” she said before he could, “we have to think of the safety of the unit. It’s not L.B.”

He started to argue, then backed off. “What’s your reasoning?”

“He worked hard for his position, and he takes a lot of pride in it. He loves the unit and he also loves its rep. Anything that damages or threatens that reflects on him. He could’ve closed ranks and kept this internal, but he opened it up. He’s the one shining the light on it when he knows he may pay consequences.”

Good points, Gull decided. Every one a good point. “I’ll agree with that.”

“And it’s not Dobie. He’s too damn good-natured under it all. And he loves what he’s doing. He loves it all. Mostly he loves you. He’d never do anything that put you at risk.”

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t say that for you.”

“I know.” But it soothed both his belly and his conscience. “Thanks anyway.”

She looked out the window where lightning flashed, and thunder echoed over the gloom-shrouded peaks. “The wind’s pushing the rain south. We just can’t catch a break.”

“We don’t have to do this now. We can let it alone, hit the gym.”

“I’m not a weak sister. Let’s work it through. I’ll tell you why it’s not Janis.”

“All right.” He took her hand, disconcerting her by bringing it briefly to his lips. “I’m listening.”

28

Gull figured he had an hour, tops. With Rowan hip-deep on her reports for the Alaska fire, she’d be occupied for at least that long. He came down from his duties in the loft, checking the time as he struck out on the service road at a light jog.

Nobody would question a man doing his PT, and there’d be no reason to suspect he’d arranged a meeting away from any casual observers.

Especially Rowan.

In any case, he liked being out, taking a short extra run, getting inside his own head.

The storm the night before hadn’t squeezed out more than a piss pot of rain, but it had managed to drop the temperature. They’d rolled a load that morning to jump a fire east, so he didn’t want to go far in case the siren went off.

He didn’t have to.

Half a mile out, Lucas stood in running sweats and a T-shirt talking on his cell.

“Sure, that’d be great.” He gave Gull a slight nod. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.” After closing the phone, he tucked it in the pocket of his sweats. “Gull.”

“Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem. I still run here some days, so I got a mile or so in. I have to figure this has to do with Rowan since you didn’t want to talk to me on base.”

“With her, with everybody. Nobody knows the players better than you, Lucas. The staff and crew, the Brakemans, the cops. Maybe not the rookies as much as the long-timers, but I’m betting you’ve got some insight there, as they jump with your daughter.”

Lucas cocked an eyebrow at that, but Gull just shrugged.

“You’d size them up, ask some questions, get some answers.”

“I know you’re fast on your feet, had a good rep with the hotshots, and L.B. considers you a solid asset to the crew. You don’t mind a fight, like fast cars, have a head for business and good taste in women.”

“We’ve got the last in common. Let me ask you straight out, does Leo Brakeman have the brains, the canniness, let’s say, the aptitude to do all that’s being laid down here? Forget motive and opportunity and all that cop shit.” Gull shrugged it off. “Is he the man for this?”

Lucas said nothing for a moment, only nodding his head as if affirming his own thoughts. “He’s not stupid, and he’s a damn good mechanic. Starting from the back, yeah, he could’ve figured how to disable equipment without it showing until it was too late. Killing Latterly . . .”

Lucas stuck his hands in his pockets, looked away at the mountains. “I’d see him going after the son of a bitch once he found out Latterly was messing with his daughter. I’d see him beating the man bloody for it, especially considering Irene’s connection to the church. It’s harder to see Leo putting a bullet in him, but not impossible to see.”

He sighed once. “No, not impossible. He’d be capable of shooting up the base. Aiming for anybody, I don’t think so. But if he had, he wouldn’t have missed. And that’s one I’ve thought long and hard on since he’d have had Rowan in the crosshairs.

“Dolly? They kept at each other like rottweilers over the same bone. He’s got a temper, that’s no secret, and it’s no secret she caused him a lot of shame and disappointment.”

“But?”

“Yeah, but. The only way I can see him killing her is an accident. I don’t know if I’m putting myself into it, or if that’s a fact, but it’s how I see it. I guess what I’m saying is I can see him doing any of those things, in the heat. He’s got a short fuse, burns hot. But it burns out.”

“You’ve been giving all of this some long, hard thought.”

“Rowan’s in the middle of it.”

“Exactly. Hot temper. Hot and physical.” And, Gull thought, straight down the line of his own take on it. “Latterly and the tampering. Those were cold and calculated.”

“You’re thinking some of this, maybe all of it, comes from somebody who works on base. Maybe even one of your own.”

He thought of the men and women he’d trained with, the ones he fought with. “I haven’t wanted to think it.”

“Neither have I, but I started asking myself these same questions after L.B. told me about the tampering. After I settled down some. We’ve skirted around it, but I’m pretty sure L.B.’s asking himself the same.”

“Are you leaning in any particular direction?”

“I worked with some of these people. You know as well as I that’s not like sharing an office or a watercooler. I can’t see anyone I know the way I know those men and women in this kind of light. And I don’t know if that’s because of what we were—still are—to each other or because it’s just God’s truth.”

He waited a beat, watching Gull’s face carefully. “You haven’t told Rowan your line of thinking?”

“I did.”

Approval and a little humor curved Lucas’s lips. “We can add you’ve got balls to what I know about you.”

“I’m not going behind her back.” He thought of where he stood right now, and with whom. And grinned. “Much. Anyway, I made a spreadsheet. I like spreadsheets,” he said when Lucas let out a surprised laugh. “They’re efficient and orderly. She doesn’t want to think it could be true, but she listened.”

“If she listened, and didn’t kick the balls I know you have up past your eyes for suggesting it, it must be serious between the two of you.”

“I’m in love with her. She’s in love with me, too. She just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

“Well.” Lucas studied Gull’s face for a long moment. “Well,” he repeated, and sighed a second time. “She’s got a hard view of relationships and their staying power. That’s my fault.”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s circumstances. And she may have a hard head and a guarded heart, but she’s not closed up. She’s too smart, too self-aware, not to mention a bred-in-the-bone risk-taker to deny herself what she wants once she’s decided she wants it. She’ll figure out she wants me.”

“Cocky bastard, aren’t you? I like you.”

“That’s a good thing, because if you didn’t, she’d give me the boot. Then she’d be sad and sorry the rest of her life.”

At Lucas’s quick, helpless laugh, Gull glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to start heading back.”

“I’ll walk back with you. I run here off and on,” he reminded Gull. “And I have something I need to tell Rowan, face-to-face.”

“If it’s that you’re moving in with Ella, she heard.”

“Hell.” Lucas scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as they walked. “I should’ve known it’d bounce through the base once I so much as thought about doing it. You’d think with everything going on, my personal life wouldn’t make the cut.

“Well?” Lucas jabbed an elbow in Gull’s ribs. “How’d she take it?”

“It knocked her back some. She’ll get used to it because she loves you, she respects Ella, and she’s not an idiot. Anyway, before we get back—and I’d as soon, unless she asks directly, Rowan assume we ran into each other on the road.”

“Probably for the best.”

“Generally I don’t mind pissing her off, but she’s got a lot on her plate. So, before we get back, I wanted to ask if I can e-mail you the spreadsheet.”

“Jesus Christ. A spreadsheet.”

“I’ve listed names in multiple categories, along with general data, then my take on each. Rowan’s take. Adding yours might help narrow the field.”

“Send me the damn spreadsheet.” Lucas rattled off his e-mail address. “Want me to write it down?”

“No, I’ve got it.”

“Even if Brakeman didn’t do all this—or any of it, for that matter—as long as he’s behind bars it should end. You can’t frame him if you do any of this crap when the cops know exactly where he is twenty-four/ seven. I guess the question we should ask is, who’s got this kind of grudge against Leo?”

Lucas lifted his eyebrows when Gull said nothing. “You’re thinking something else?”

“I think it could be that, just exactly that. But I also think Brakeman, with his temper, his history with Dolly, makes a pretty good patsy. And I know whoever’s responsible for this is one sick son of a bitch. I don’t think sick sons of bitches stop just because it’s smart.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that and made me think the same. Fear the same. If I could I’d make Rowan take the rest of the season off, get the hell away from this.”

“I won’t let anything happen to her.” Gull looked Lucas dead in the eye. “I know that’s a stupid and too usual a thing to say, but I won’t. She can handle just about anything that comes at her. What she can’t, I will.”

“I’m going to hold you to that. Now, you might want to make yourself scarce while I go talk to her. Not too scarce,” Lucas added. “It’s likely she’ll need to take out how she feels about my new living arrangements on somebody after I’m gone. It might as well be you.”

ROWAN FINISHED HER REPORTS, rechecked the attached list of paracargo she’d requested and received the second day of the attack. All in order, she decided.

Once she’d turned it over to L.B., she could get the hell outside for a while, and then . . .

“It’s open,” she called out at the two-tap knock on her door. “Hey.” Her face brightened as she rose to greet her father. “Great timing. I just finished my reports. Got your run in?”

“I thought I’d take it this way, get a twofer and see my girl.”

“I tell you what, I’ll dig out a cold drink from the cooler, trade you for glancing over my work here.”

“If you’ve got any 7UP, you’ve got a deal.”

“I always keep my best guy’s favorite in stock,” she reminded him as he braced his hands on her desk, scanning the work on her laptop.

“Thorough and to the point,” he said after a moment. “Are you bucking for L.B.’s job?”

“Oh, that’s a big hell no. I don’t mind spending the time on reports, but if I had to deal with all the paperwork, personalities, politics and bullshit L.B. does, I’d just shoot myself and get it over with. You could’ve done it,” she added. “Gotten in a couple more years.”

“If I’m going to do administrative crap, it’s going to be my administrative crap.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s where I got it. Do you want to walk over to the lounge? Or maybe the cookhouse? I imagine Marg has some pie we could talk her out of.”

“I don’t really have enough time. Ella’s picking me up in a little bit.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to see you, talk to you about some things.”

“I heard Irene Brakeman’s letting her house go, and she’s probably moving to Nebraska. That you’re letting her use your house until she’s got it all dealt with. That was good of you, Dad. It has to be hard for her, being alone in the house, with all the memories. Added on to knowing it’s not really hers anymore.”

“She’s moving in tomorrow. I need to pack up a few more things I’ll need with me now. Ella’s been helping her do the same—pack up what she’ll need—and pack up what she wants to take with her when she goes.”

“It’s a big step she’s taking. A lot of big steps. Leaving Missoula, leaving her husband, her friends, her job.”

“I think she needs it. She looks better than she has since this all started. Once she decided what she needed to do for herself, for the baby, I think it took some of the weight off.”

He took a long, slow drink. “Speaking of decisions, big ones. I won’t be moving back into the house. I’m going to live with Ella.”

“Jesus, are you going to marry her?”

He didn’t choke, but he swallowed hard. “One step at a time, but I think that one’s right down the road.”

“I’m just getting used to you dating her, now you’re moving in together.”

“I love her, Rowan. We love each other.”

“Okay, I guess I’m going to sit down for a minute.” She chose the side of the bed. “Her place?”

“She’s got a great place. A lot of room, her gardens. She’s done it up just the way she wants it. Her house means a lot to her. Ours?” He let his shoulders lift and fall. “Half the year or more it’s just where I sleep most nights.”

“Well.” She didn’t know what she felt because there was too much to feel. “I guess if I’d known that would be our last dinner in the house together, I’d’ve . . . I don’t know, done something more important than skillet chicken.”

“I’m not selling the house, Ro.” He sat beside her, laid a hand on her knee. “Unless you don’t want it. I figured you’d take it over. We can get somebody to cut the grass and all that during the season.”

“Maybe I can think about that awhile.”

“As long as you want.”

“Big changes,” she managed. “You know how it takes me a while to navigate changes.”

“Whenever you got sick as a kid, we had to dig out the same pajamas.”

“The blue puppies.”

“Yeah, the blue ones with puppies. When you outgrew them there was hell to pay.”

“You cut them up and made me a little pillow out of the fabric. And it was okay again. Crap, Dad, you look so happy.” Her eyes stung as she reached for his face. “And I didn’t even notice you weren’t.”

“I wasn’t unhappy, baby.”

“You’re happier now. She’s not the only one who loves you,” she told him, and kissed his cheeks. “So consider I’ve got my blue puppy pillow, and it’s okay.”

“Okay enough that you’ll take some time when you have it to get to know her?”

“Yeah. Gull thinks she’s hot.”

Lucas’s eyebrows winged up. “So do I, but he’d better not get any ideas.”

“I’m running interference there.”

“You’ve had some changes yourself since he came along.”

“Apparently. This is the damnedest season. Gull’s got it into his head that somebody on base might be responsible for what’s been going on, instead of Brakeman.”

“Does he?”

“Yeah, and in his Gull way he’s got all the data and suppositions organized in a file. I think it’s whacked, but then I start wondering, once he’s done laying it out. Then I go about my business and decide it’s whacked again. Until he points out this and that. I end up not sure what to think. I hate not knowing what to think.”

Gently, he skimmed a hand over her crown of hair. “Maybe the best thing to do is keep your eyes, your ears and your mind open.”

“The first two are easy. It’s the last that’s hard. Everybody’s edgy and trying to pretend they aren’t. We’ve jumped nearly twice as many fires as we did by this time last season, and the success rate’s good, injuries not too bad. But outside of that? This season’s FUBAR, and we’re all feeling it.”

“Do me a favor. Stick close to the hotshot, as much as you can. Do it for me,” he added before she could speak. “Not because I think you can’t take care of yourself, but because I’ll worry less if I know somebody’s got your back.”

“Well, he’s hard to shake off anyway.”

“Good.” He patted her leg. “Walk me out.”

She got up with him, chewing over everything they’d talked about while they walked outside. “Is it different with her, with Ella, than it was with my mother? Not the circumstances, or rate of maturity, or any of that. I mean . . .” She tapped a fist on her heart. “I’m okay with however you answer. I’d just like to know.”

He took a moment, and she knew he sought out the words.

“I was dazzled by your mother. Maybe a little overwhelmed, a lot excited. When she told me she was pregnant, I loved her. And I think it was because I loved what was inside her, what we’d started without meaning to. Sometimes I wonder if she knew that, even before I did. That would’ve been hurtful. I cared about her, Rowan, and I did my best by her. But you were why.

“I can say Ella dazzled me, overwhelmed me, excited me. But it’s different. I know what I didn’t feel for your mother because I feel it now, for Ella.”

“What is it you’re supposed to feel?” she demanded. “I can never figure it out.”

He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should ask another woman about this kind of thing.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Ah, hell.” Now he shuffled his feet, the big man, the Iron Man. “I’m not going to talk about sex. I did that with you once already, and that was scarier than any fire I ever jumped.”

“And embarrassing for both of us. I’m not asking about sex, Dad. I know about sex. You tell me you love her, and I can see it all over you. I can see it, but I don’t know how it feels—how it’s supposed to feel.”

“There’s a lot that goes around it. Trust and respect and—” He cleared his throat again. “Attraction. But the center’s a reflection of all of those things, all your strengths and weaknesses, hopes and dreams. They catch fire there, in the center. Maybe it blazes, maybe it simmers, smolders, but there’s the heat and the light, all those colors, and what’s around it feeds it.

“Fire doesn’t only destroy, Rowan. Sometimes it creates. The best of it creates, and when love’s a fire, whether it’s bright or a steady glow, hot or warm, it creates. It makes you better than you were without it.”

He stopped, colored a little. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“It’s the first time anyone ever explained it so I could understand it. Dad.” She took his hands, looked into his eyes. “I’m really happy for you. I mean it, all the way through. Really happy for you.”

“That means more than I can tell you.” He drew her in, held her tight as Ella drove up. “You were my first love,” he whispered in Rowan’s ear. “You always will be.”

She knew it, but now let go enough to accept he could love someone else, too. She nodded as Ella stepped out of the car.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Ella smiled at Lucas. “Am I late?”

“Right on time.” Keeping his hand in Rowan’s, he leaned down, kissed Ella. “How’d it go with Irene?”

“Packing up, organizing, deciding over the contents of a house a woman’s lived in for twenty-five years is a monumental project—and you know I love projects. It’s helping her, I think, the work, the planning. Helping her get through the now.”

“Did Jim’s parents . . .” Rowan trailed off.

“They’re leaving this afternoon. I met them, and they’re lovely people. Kate’s asked Irene to come stay with them if and when she goes to Nebraska. To stay until she finds a place of her own. I don’t think she will, but the offer touched her.”

“Don’t be sad,” Lucas said, sliding an arm around Ella’s shoulders as her eyes filled.

“I can’t figure out what I am.” She blinked the tears back. “But I called my son, asked him to bring the kids over later. I know how I feel after a few hours with my grandchildren. Happy and exhausted.”

Grandchildren, Rowan thought. She’d forgotten. Did that make her father kind of an unofficial grandfather? What did he think about that? How did he—

“Oh, hell, I forgot I need to run something by L.B. Two minutes,” he promised Ella, and loped off.

“So,” Ella began, “are we okay?”

“We’re okay. It’s . . . strange, but we’re okay. I guess you’ve told your son and daughter.”

“Yes. My daughter’s thrilled, which may be partially due to hormones as she’s pregnant and that was just great news.”

Another one? she thought. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. My son’s . . . a little embarrassed right now, I think, at the distinct possibility Lucas and I do more than jigsaw puzzles and watch TV together.”

“He shouldn’t be embarrassed that you guys play gin rummy now and then.”

Ella let out an appreciative laugh. “He’ll get over it. I’d like to have you over for dinner, all the kids, when you can manage it. Nothing formal, just a family meal.”

“Sounds good.” Or manageable, she decided, which had the potential for good. “You should know, straight off, I don’t need a mother.”

“Oh, of course you do. Everyone does. A woman who’ll listen, take your side, tell the truth—or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who’ll love you no matter how much you screw up. But since you’ve already got that in Marg, I’m happy to settle for being your friend.”

“We can see how that goes.”

The siren shrilled.

“Hell. I’m up.”

“Oh, God! You have to go. You have to—Can I watch? Lucas told me how this part works, but I’d like to see it.”

“Fine with me. But you have to run.” Without waiting, Rowan tore toward the ready room.

She breezed by Cards, so he kicked it to keep pace.

“What’s the word?” she asked.

“Laborious. Got one up in Flathead, tearing down the canyon. That’s all I know.”

“Are you spotting?”

“Jumping.”

They rushed into the controlled chaos of the ready room, grabbing gear out of lockers. Rowan pulled on her jumpsuit, checked pockets, zippers, snaps, secured her gloves, her let-down rope. She shoved her feet into her boots and caught sight of Matt doing the same.

“How’d you get back on the list?”

“Just my luck. I checked back in twenty minutes ago.” He shook his head, then snagged his chute and reserve off the speed rack. “I guess the fire god decided I’d had enough time off.”

Rowan secured her chutes, her PG bag. “See you on the ship,” she told him, and tucked her helmet under her arm.

She shuffled toward the door, surprised to see Gull, already suited up, standing with her father and Ella.

“That was quick.”

“I was in the loadmaster’s room when the siren went off. Handy. Are you set?”

“Always.” Rowan tapped her fingers to her forehead, flashed her father a grin. “See you later.”

“See you later.” He echoed the good-bye they’d given each other all her life.

“I asked if it was allowed, and since it is, I’m going to say stay safe.”

Rowan nodded at Ella. “I plan on it. Let’s roll, rook.”

“I know you told me it all moves fast,” Ella said as Rowan walked with Gull toward the waiting plane, “but I didn’t realize just how fast. There’s no time to think. The siren goes off, and they go from drinking coffee or packing boxes to flying to a fire, in minutes.”

“It’s a routine, like getting dressed in the morning. Only on fast forward. And they’re always thinking. Kick some ass,” he told Yangtree.

“Kicking ass, taking names. And counting the days. Catch you on the flip side, buddy.”

He spoke to others as they waddled toward the plane, some he’d worked with, others who seemed as young as saplings to him. He slipped his hand in Ella’s as the plane’s door closed.

One of them might be a killer.

“They’ll be fine.” She squeezed his fingers. “And back soon.”

“Yeah.” Still, he felt the comfort of having her hand in his as he watched the plane taxi, rev, then rise.

AFTER THE BRIEFING IN FLIGHT, Rowan huddled with Yangtree and Trigger over maps and strategy.

Gull plugged his MP3 in, slid on his sunglasses. The music cut the engine noise, left his mind free to think. Behind the shaded glasses, he scanned the faces, the body language of the other jumpers.

Maybe it felt wrong, this suspicion, but he’d rather suffer a few pangs of guilt than suffer the consequences of more sabotage.

Cards and Dobie passed some time with liar’s poker while Gibbons read a tattered paperback copy of Cat’s Cradle. Libby huddled with Matt, patting his knee in one of her there-there gestures. The spotter got up from his seat behind the cockpit to pick his way through to confer with Yangtree.

When the call came out for buddy checks, Gull walked back himself to perform the ritual with Rowan.

“Yangtree’s dumping us,” Rowan told him.

Yangtree shook his head with a smile. “I’m going to work for Iron Man the first of the year. I’m going to take the fall off, buy myself a house, get my other knee fixed, do some fishing. I’ll have a lot more fishing time without having to ride herd over the bunch of you every summer.”

“You’re giving up this life of travel, glamour and romance?” Gull asked him.

“I’ve had all the glamour I want, and might just find some romance when I’m not eating smoke.”

“Maybe you should take up knitting while you’re at it,” Trigger suggested.

“I might just. I can knit you a real pretty sling since you like keeping your ass in one.” He climbed over men and gear for another consult with the spotter and pilot.

“He’s barely fifty.” Trigger folded gum into his mouth. “Hell, I’m going to be fifty one of these days. What’s he want to quit for?”

“I think he’s just tired, and his knee’s killing him.” Rowan glanced forward. “He’ll probably change his mind after he gets it fixed.”

Once again, the spotter moved to the door. “Guard your reserves!”

Hot summer air, scorched with smoke, blasted in through the opening. Rowan repositioned to get a look out the window, at the blaze crowning through the tops of thick pines and firs. Red balls of ignited gases boomed up like antiaircraft fire.

“She’s fast,” Rowan said, “and getting a nice lift from the wind through the canyon. We’re going to hit some serious crosswinds on the way down.”

The first set of streamers confirmed her estimate.

“Do you see the jump spot?” she asked Gull. “There, that gap, at eight o’clock. You’ll want to come in from the south, avoid doing a face-plant in the rock face. You’re second man, third stick, so—”

“No. First man, second stick.” He shrugged when she frowned at him, knowing Lucas had asked L.B. to switch him to her jump partner. “I guess L.B. shuffled things when he put Matt back on.”

“Okay, I’ll catch the drift behind you.” She nodded out the window at the next set of streamers. “Looks like we’ve got three hundred yards.”

He studied the streamers himself, and the towers of smoke, glinting silver at the fire’s crown, mottled black at its base.

On final, Trigger snapped the chin strap of his helmet, pulled down his mesh face mask before reaching for the overhead cable to waddle his way toward the door. Matt, second man, followed.

Rowan studied the fire, the ground, then the flight. Canopies billowed in the black and the blue as the plane came around for its second pass.

“We’re ready,” Gull answered at the spotter’s call. With Rowan behind him, he got in the door, braced to the roar of wind and fire. The slap on his shoulder sent him out, diving through it, buffeted by it. He found the horizon, steadied himself as the drogue stabilized him, as the main put the brakes on to a glide.

He found Rowan, watched her canopy billow, watched the sun arrow through the smoke for an instant to illuminate her face.

Then he had a fight on his hands as the crosswinds tried to push him into a spin. A gust whipped up, blew him uncomfortably close to the cliff face. He compensated, then overcompensated as the wind yanked, tugged.

He drifted wide of the jump spot, adjusted, then let the wind take him, so he landed neat and soft on the edge of the gap.

He rolled, watched Rowan land three yards to his left.

“That was some fancy maneuvering up there,” she called out to him.

“It worked.”

Gathering their chutes, they joined Matt and Trigger at the edge of the jump spot. “Third stick’s coming down,” Trigger commented. “And shit, Cards is going into the trees. He can’t buy luck this season.”

Rowan clearly heard Cards curse as the wind flipped him into the pines.

“Come on, Matt, let’s go make sure he ain’t broke nothing important.”

Since she could still hear Cards cursing, meaning he hadn’t been knocked unconscious, she kept her eyes on the sky.

“Yangtree and Libby,” she said as the plane positioned for the next pass. “Janis and Gibbons.” She rattled off the remaining jumpers. “When they’re all on the ground, I want you to take charge of the paracargo.”

She put her hands on her hips, watching the next person hurtle out of the plane. Yangtree, she thought. He’d instruct, and he’d keep jumping out of planes. But doing free falls with sports groups and tourists was a far cry from . . .

“His drogue. His drogue hasn’t opened.” She ran forward, shouting for the others on the ground. “Drogue in tow! Jesus, Jesus, cut away! Cut away. Pull the reserve. Come on, Yangtree, for Christ’s sake.”

Gull’s belly roiled, his heart hammered as he watched his friend, his family, tumble through the sky and smoke. Others shouted now, Trigger all but screaming into his radio.

The reserve opened with a jerky shudder, caught air—but too late, Gull realized. Yangtree’s fall barely slowed as he crashed into the trees.

29

She ran, bursting through brush, leaping fallen logs, rocks, whatever lay in her path. Gull winged past her; her own fear raced with her. With her emotions in pandemonium, she ordered herself to think, to act.

His reserve had deployed at the last minute. There was a chance, always a chance. She slowed as she reached Cards, face bloody, shimmying down a lodgepole pine with his let-down rope.

“Are you hurt bad?”

“No. No. Go! Jesus, go.”

Matt stumbled through the forest behind her, his cheeks gray, eyes dull. “Stay with Cards. Make sure he’s okay.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, just kept running.

When she heard Gull’s shout, she angled left, dry pine needles crunching under her feet like thin bones.

She caught sight of the reserve, a tattered mangle of white draped in the branches high overhead. And the blood, dripping like a leaky faucet, splatting on the forest floor.

Caught in the gnarled branches seventy feet above, Yangtree’s limp body dangled. A two-foot spur jutted through his side, the point of it piercing through like a pin through a moth.

Gull, spurs snapped on, climbed. Rowan dumped her gear, snapped on her own and started up after him.

Broken, she could see he’d been broken—his leg, his arm and likely more. But broken didn’t mean dead.

“Can you get to him? Is he alive?”

“I’ll get to him.” Gull climbed over, then used his rope to ease himself onto the branch, testing the weight as he went. He reached out to unsnap the helmet, laid his fingers on Yangtree’s throat.

“He’s got a pulse—weak, thready. Multiple fractures. Deep gash on his right thigh, but it missed the femur. The puncture wound—” He cursed as he moved closer. “This goddamn spur’s holding him onto the branch like a railroad spike. I can’t maneuver to stabilize him from here.”

“We secure him with the ropes.” Rowan leaned out as far as she could, trying to assess the situation for herself. “Cut the branch, bring him down with it.”

“It’s not going to take my weight and a saw.” He crawled back. “It cracked some at the base. I don’t know if it’ll hold for you.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Dobie or Libby. It would hold one of them.”

“I’m up here, they’re not. He’s losing a lot of blood. Let me see what I can do. Get me more rope, a saw, a first-aid kit.”

“How bad?” Trigger called up. “How bad is it?”

“He’s breathing.”

“Thank Christ. I’ve got a medevac team coming. Is he conscious?”

“No. Fill him in, okay?” She and Gull switched positions. “We need rope, first-aid kit, a chain saw. Gull’s heading down.”

Rowan leaned back in her harness, stripped off her shirt, cut strips and pads with her pocketknife. Tying herself off, she scooted out onto the branch. It would hold, she vowed, because she damn well needed it to.

“Yangtree, can you hear me?” She began to field-dress the jagged gash in his thigh. “You hold on, goddamn it. We’ll get you out of this.”

She used what rope she had, wrapped it around his waist, then shimmied back to secure it. Gull was there, handing her more.

“I’m going to secure it to the branch just above, get it under his arms.” She watched Trigger and Matt scaling the neighboring tree, nodded as she saw the plan.

“Get another over to them, and we lower him down in a vee after I cut away the harness, saw off the branch.”

Fear sweat dripped into her eyes as she worked, and, forced to shift the shattered leg, she prayed Yangtree stayed unconscious until they’d finished. She padded the wound around the spur as best she could, used her belt to strap him even more securely to the branch.

Then she hesitated. If it didn’t work, she might kill him. But his pulse was growing weaker, and left no choice.

“I’m going to release his harness. Get ready.”

Once she’d freed him from the ruined chute, she reached back for the saw. “It’s going to work,” she said to Gull.

“Medevac’s no more than ten minutes out.”

She planted her feet, yanked the starter cord. The buzz sent a tremor through her. She saw Trigger and Matt brace to take the weight, knew Gull and Dobie did the same behind her.

Trusting the rope, for him, for herself, she inched out onto the branch to set the blade into bark and wood as close to Yangtree’s body as she dared.

“Hold him steady!” she shouted. “Don’t let him drop.”

She cut clean, felt the branch shimmy from the shock. Then Yangtree hung suspended, the spur and the lever of branch fixed in his side like a corkscrew. His body swayed as they lowered him slowly, hand over hand, to where Libby and Stovic waited to take his weight.

“We’ve got him! We’ve got him! Oh, Jesus.” Stovic’s voice trembled. “Jesus, he’s a mess.”

But breathing, Rowan thought, as she heard the clatter of the chopper. He just had to keep breathing.

IT CUT HER in two, standing on safe ground, watching as the copter lifted off with her friend. Shattered, she thought, as the wind from the blades whipped over her. His arms, his legs, and God knew what else—and there was nothing more she could do.

She shouted into her radio, updating base, realigning strategy while Cards, battered face in his hands, sat on the ground. Trigger watched the copter, then slowly turned to her. Everything she felt—the shock, the grief, the stupefying rage—was reflected on his face.

“Paracargo,” she began, and Gull squeezed her arm.

“I’ve got that. I’ve got it,” he repeated when she just stared at him. “Dobie, Matt, give me a hand?”

Pull it together, Rowan ordered herself. “Trig.” She took a breath, then walked over to draw in the dirt. “She’s moving northeast, gaining steam. I need you,” she said quietly when he just stood, shaking his head.

“Give me a sec, okay? Just a goddamn fucking second.”

Crouched, she laid a hand on his boot. “We’ve got to slay this dragon, then get back to Yangtree. The delay.” Rowan had to stop, steady her voice. “The fire’s taken advantage. She’s burning hot, Trig. They’ve dumped some mud on her head, but she caught some wind, jumped this ridge line, and she’s climbing fast.”

“Okay.” He swiped the back of his hand under his nose, crouched with her. “I can take the left flank, cut line with five, hold her in.”

“Take seven. L.B.’s sending us another crew, and I’ll pull from that. You got a water source here.” She drew an X in the dirt. “So take pumper and hose. I’ll get a crew heading up the right, and do some scouting.”

When he reached for her hand, she linked fingers. “We’re going to kill her,” he said. “Then we’re going to find out what the hell happened.”

“Damn right we are.”

They talked Cat lines, safe spots, two possible fire camps.

When he’d culled out his seven, gathered the gear, Rowan turned to the rest. “Cards, I need you to stay here and—”

“Fuck that, Swede.” His snarl had blood leaking from his split lip. “I’m not hanging back.”

“I’m not asking you to hang back. I need you to wait for the next load, take half and start up the left flank after Trigger. Send the rest to me. I need Gibbons on my crew, and Janis. And make it clear they’re going to bust their asses. I need you to take charge of this,” she said before he could speak. “And Trigger’s going to need you on the line.”

She turned away when he nodded. “Gull, Dobie, Libby, Stovic. Tool up.”

No time to waste. No time to think beyond the fire. Everything else had to stay locked outside.

They dug and cut, with every strike of Pulaski or buzz of blade echoing to Rowan like vengeance. And the fire reared and snapped.

“I need you to take charge here until Gibbons makes it in,” she told Gull. “He just checked in. Everybody hit the jump spot safely. I’m going to work my way toward the head, get a better sense of her. If you tie in with the Cat line before I get back, let me know.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got a water source about fifty yards up, this same course. You’re going to end up with a crooked line, and Gibbons is going to be coming double time, but if you get there before he meets up, get Stovic and Libby on the hose. Any change in the wind or—”

“I’ve got it, Rowan. Go do what you need to do; we’ll work it from here. Just stay in touch.”

“Don’t let them think about it. Keep them focused. I’ll be back.”

She set off fast, moving through the trees, up the rough incline, and vanished in smoke.

All she heard was the fire, the muttering glee of it. It crackled over the dry timber, lapped at molten pine resin, chewed through leaves, twigs littering the ground. She dodged a firebrand as she climbed, beat out the spot.

She thought of bodies charred to the bone.

When she crested the ridge she stopped to check her bearings. She could see the red-orange fury, gobbling up fuel. They’d given her a head start, she thought; they’d had no choice. The dragon ran strong and free.

She called in to request retardant drops, and received a brief, unsatisfying report on Yangtree.

They were working on him.

She felt the change in the wind, just a flutter, and saw the fire grab its tail to ride. A cut to the west now, still north of Trigger’s crew, she noted, but moving toward them.

She circled around, contacting him by radio.

“She’s shifting, curling back toward you.”

“We’ve got a Cat line here, a good, wide one. I don’t think she can jump it. Escape route due south.”

“They’re bringing mud. I just called to tell them to dump a load west, down your flank. Stay clear.”

“Roger that. Cards just got here with reinforcements. We’re going to hold this line, Swede.”

“After the mud drops, I’m going to get an air report. I want to take four from your team, same from mine, get them up to the head. Squeeze it. But if she jumps the road, get gone.”

“Bet your ass. And watch yours.”

As she worked her way through the fire, she coordinated with Gibbons, with base, kept her ears and eyes peeled for the tankers. She cut east, eyes smarting with smoke, then jumped back, skidding onto her back as a burning limb thick as a man’s thigh crashed to the ground in front of her.

It caught fresh fuel on the forest floor, ignited with a whoosh to claw at the soles of her boots before she scrambled clear.

“Widowmaker,” she shouted to Gibbons. “I’m good, but I’m going to be busy for a minute.”

She beat at the fresh flames, chopping at the ground to smother what she could with dirt. She heard the thunder of a tanker, muttered curses as she fought her small, personal war.

“I’m clear.” Shoveling, stomping, she signaled Gibbons, then the tanker pilot. “I’m clear.”

And ran.

The thick pink rain fell, smothering flame, billowing smoke, thudding onto the ground, the trees, with heavy splats. She sprinted for shelter as globs of it struck her helmet, her jacket. A volley of firebrands sent her on a zigzagging dash for higher, clearer ground.

She heard the telltale roar at her back, felt the ground shimmy under her feet. Following instinct, she leaped through the undulating curtain of fire, all but heard it slam shut behind her before the blowup burst. Rocks skidded under her feet as she pushed herself up an incline above the hungry, murderous blaze.

“I’m clear.” She shouted it as her radio popped with voices. “Had a little detour.”

She wheezed in a breath, wheezed one out. “Give me a minute to orient.”

A wall of fire, solid as steel, cut off her route back to her team.

She pulled out her compass to confirm direction, accepted that her hand shook lightly.

Cut across to Trigger’s line, she calculated, regroup, then circle down and around to her own.

She relayed her plan, then took a moment to hydrate and settle her nerves.

Back on the line, Gull looked straight into Gibbons’s eyes.

“Is she hurt?”

“She says no. She’s playing it down, but I think she had a close one.” He swiped at sweat. “She’s cutting over to Trig, then she’ll circle around back to us. The mud knocked it back some on their flank, and they’re working the pumps up toward the head. They’re in good position.”

He shook his head. “We can’t say the same. The wind’s whipping her up this way. Elf, take Gull, Stovic and Dobie and get these pumps up there. Follow the Cat line. Start drowning her. I’ll send you up four more as soon as we get the men.”

“Spot!” Libby shouted, and two of the team leaped to action.

“We’re getting hammered over here,” Gibbons told Trigger over the radio. “Can you spare anybody?”

“Give you two. That’ll be three when Swede gets around.”

“Tell them to hump it!”

GULL MANNED the hose and swore the force of water only made the fire dance. The wind chose sides, blew flames into massive walls.

“L.B.’s sending in another load, and pulling in jumpers from Idaho,” Janis told him.

“Did Rowan make it to Trigger?”

“Rowan changed tactics. She’s doubling back to Gibbons. We’ve got to catch this thing here, catch her here, or fall back.” She yanked out her radio. “Gibbons, we need help up here.”

“I’m waiting on Matt and Cards from Trigger’s line. And the Swede. Fresh jumpers coming. ETA’s thirty.”

“Thirty’s no good. I need more hands or we’re pulling back.”

“Your call, Elf. I’ll get locations and come back. If you’ve got to move, move.”

“Goddamn it, goddamn it. Stovic, get those snags. If she crowns, we’re screwed.” As water arced and sizzled, she looked over at Gull. “We can’t hold her for thirty without more hands.”

Something stirred in his gut. “Rowan, Cards and Matt should’ve gotten through by now. Radio her, get her location.”

“Gibbons is—”

“Radio her, Janis,” he interrupted. “This has been going south since the jump.”

And maybe it wasn’t just nature they fought.

He listened to her try to raise Rowan once, twice, a third time. And with each nonresponse his blood ran colder.

She tried Matt, then Cards, then answered swiftly when Gibbons hailed her.

“I can’t reach any of them on the radio,” Gibbons told her. “I’m going to send somebody in to their last known location.”

But Janis had her eye on Gull. “Negative. Gull’s going. He’s the fastest we’ve got. Send me somebody. We’re going to try to hold it.”

“Libby’s heading up now. I’ll get more mud, call in another Cat. If you have to retreat, head southwest.”

“Copy that. Find her,” she said to Gull.

“Count on it.” He turned to Dobie. “Hold it as long as you can.”

“As long as you need,” Dobie vowed, and took the hose.

He ran, using his compass and the map in his head to gauge direction. She’d been forced west, then south before she’d angled toward the left flank. He tried to judge her speed, her most probable route before she’d reversed to head east again to assist the right flank.

She’d have met up with Matt and Cards if possible, he calculated, but she wouldn’t have wasted time waiting for them or changing from the best route back, not when her team needed help.

A spot burst to his left, flames snaking from ground to tree. He ignored the instinct to deal with it, kept running.

But she wouldn’t have, he thought. She’d have fought the fire as she went, and doing so shifted her direction at any time.

And if another enemy had crossed her path, she wouldn’t have recognized him. She would see a fellow soldier, a friend. Someone trusted, even loved.

He jumped a narrow stream, pushing himself through the heat and smoke and growing fear.

She was smart, and strong, and canny. She’d fight, he reminded himself—maybe more fiercely when the enemy had disguised himself as friend.

He forced himself to stop, check his compass, reorient. And to listen, listen, for another under the growling voice of the fire.

North, he decided. Northeast from here, and prayed he was right. A tree crashed, spewing out a whirlwind of sparks that stung his exposed skin like bees.

The next sound he heard came sharper, more deadly. He raced toward the echo of the gunshot, even as his heart leaped as if struck by the bullet.

30

When she could, Rowan moved at a steady jog. She’d bruised her hip avoiding the widowmaker, but the pain barely registered—just a dull, distant ache.

They were losing the war, she thought, had been losing it since Yangtree’s chute failed to open.

Everything felt off, felt wrong, felt out of balance.

The wind continued to rise, to shift and stir, adding to the fire’s speed and potency. Here and there, small, sly dust devils danced on it. The air remained dry enough to crack like a twig.

She’d never made it to Trigger’s crew to judge the progress or lack of it for herself, to check that flank, sense just what the fire was thinking, plotting. No, she thought now, not when she’d heard the urgency in Gibbons’s voice. No choice but to reverse.

She’d cut north, through the fire, to carve off a little distance, and calculating her path might cross with Matt and Cards.

Spots sprang up so fast and often, she began to feel like she was playing a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole.

She gulped down water on the run, splashed more on her sweaty face. And resisted the constant urge to call into base, again, for a report on Yangtree.

Better to believe he was alive and fighting. To believe it and make it true.

Under that remained the nagging fear that it hadn’t been an accident but sabotage.

How many others harbored that same fear? she wondered. How did they bear down and focus with that clawing at the mind? How could she when she kept going over every minute and move in the ready room, on the flight, on the jump sequence?

Had something been off even then? Should she have seen it?

Later, she ordered herself, relive it later. Right now, just live.

With her stamina flagging, she pulled an energy bar out of her bag, started to tear the wrapper.

She dropped it, ran, when she heard the scream.

Smoke blinded her, disoriented her. She forced herself to stop, close her eyes. Think.

Due north. Yes, north, she decided, and sprinted forward.

She spotted the radio smoldering and sparking on the ground, and the blood smeared on the ground at the base of a snag that burned like a candle. Nearby a full engulfed branch snaked fire over the ground.

Alarmed for her friends, she cupped her hands to her mouth, started to shout. Then dropped them again with sickness countering fear. She saw the blood trail, heading east, and followed it as she slowly drew her radio out of her belt.

Because she knew now, and somewhere inside her she wondered if she’d always known—or at least wondered. But loyalty hadn’t allowed it, she admitted. It simply hadn’t allowed her to cross the line—except in dreams.

Now with her heart heavy with grief, she prepared to cross the line.

Before she could flick on her radio, he was there, just there, a lit fusee in his hand, and his eyes full of misery. He heaved it when he saw her, setting off his tiny bomb. A black spruce went off like a Roman candle.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Not you.”

“Why would you hurt me?” She met those sad eyes. “We’re friends.”

“I don’t want to.” Matt pulled the gun out of his belt. “But I will. Throw away the radio.”

“Matt—” She jolted a little when Gibbons spoke her name through the radio.

“If you answer it, I’ll shoot you. I’ll be sorry for it, but I’ll do what has to be done. I’m doing what has to be done.”

“Where’s Cards?”

“Throw the radio away, Rowan. Throw it!” he snapped. “Or I’ll use this. I’ll put a bullet in your leg, then let the fire decide.”

“Okay. All right.” She opened her hand, let it drop, but he shook his head.

“Kick it away. Don’t test me.”

“I’m not. I won’t.” She heard Janis’s voice now as she kicked it aside. “We’ve got to get out of here, Matt. The place is coming apart. It’s not safe.”

She struggled to keep her eyes level with his, but she’d seen the Pulaski hooked in his belt, and the blood gleaming on the pick.

Cards.

“I never wanted it to be you. It wasn’t your fault. And you came to the funeral. You sat with my mother.”

“What happened to Jim wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“Dolly got him worked up, got him all twisted around. Got us both all twisted around so the last things we said to each other were ugly things. And Cards was his spotter. He should’ve seen Jim wasn’t right to jump. You know that’s so.”

“Where’s Cards?”

“He got away from me. Maybe the fire’s got him. It’s about fate anyway. I should’ve shot him to be sure of it, but it’s about fate and destiny. Luck, maybe. I don’t decide. Dolly fell. I didn’t kill her; she fell.”

“I believe you, Matt. We need to head north, then we can talk when—”

“I gave her money, you know, for the baby. But she wanted more. I was just going to talk to her, have it out with her when I went by her house. And she was just driving off, without the baby. She was a bad mother.”

“I know.” Calm, agreeable, understanding. “Matt, who’d know better than me about that? About Shiloh being better off now? I’m on your side.”

“She went to that motel. She was a tramp. I saw him, the preacher, come to the door to let her in. My brother’s dead, and she’s balling that preacher in a motel room. I wanted to go in, but I was afraid of what I might do. I waited, and she came out and drove away.”

She heard another tree torch off. “Matt—”

“She got that flat tire. That was fate, wasn’t it? She was surprised to see me—guilt all over her—when I pulled in behind her. I told her to pull off onto the service road. I was going to have it out with her. But the things she said . . . If she hadn’t been screwing around, hadn’t been a liar, a cheat, a selfish bitch, I wouldn’t have pushed her that way. She was just going to up and leave that baby. Did you know? What kind of mother does that?”

“We have to move,” she told him, keeping her tone calm but firm. “I want you to tell me everything, Matt. I want to listen, but we’re going to be cut off if we don’t move.”

“Shiloh’s . . . may be my baby.”

He wiped his free hand over his mouth as Rowan stared at him. “It was just one time, when I was so lonely and missing Annie so much, and drinking a little. It was just one time.”

“I understand.” It made her sick inside, for all of them. “I get lonely, too.”

“You don’t! She told me it was mine, and she told Jim it was his. Then she said it was mine, maybe, because she knew he didn’t want a baby, didn’t want her. She knew I’d do what I had to do, and I’d have to tell Annie. And we fought about it right before the siren went off, me and Jim. He was on the list. I wasn’t. He’s dead. I’m not.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What do you know about it! I told him to go to hell, and he did. This is hell. I was just going to fix Cards so he couldn’t jump because that’s what he loves most. Like I loved my brother. Put something in his food, trip him up. And I was just going to get the baby from Dolly, have her for my ma. That was the right thing. But she fell, and I had to do something, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I sent her to hell. That’s when I knew I had to do what needed doing. I had to get the baby for my ma, so I had to get Leo out of the way. Make him pay, too. He was always giving Jim grief, never had a good thing to say.”

“So you got his rifle out of his gun safe, and you shot at me. You shot at me and Gull.”

“Not at you. I wasn’t going to hurt you. Dolly told Jim the combination, and he told me. It was like he was showing me what to do. Leo had to pay, and he did. I got the baby for my ma. Jim would’ve wanted that.”

“Okay.” Firebrands flew like missiles. “You were getting justice for Jim, and doing what you could for your family. And I’ll listen to you, do whatever you want, just tell me. But not here. The wind’s changed. Matt, for God’s sake, we’re going to be trapped in this if we don’t move.”

Those sad eyes never wavered. “It’s up to fate, like I said. Up to fate who got the bad pumps and saws, who got the bad chute.”

“You played Russian roulette with our chutes?” She regretted it immediately, but the fury just bubbled out. “Yangtree never did anything to you. He might die.”

“I could’ve gotten the doctored one just as easy as him. It was a fair deal. In the end, Ro, it was all of us killed Jim. All of us doing what we do, getting him to do it, too. And everybody had the same chance. I didn’t want it to be you, even though I saw how you looked at me when I said how we’d get a lawyer over the baby, how my ma was going to raise her. I saw how everybody looked at me because I was alive, and Jim wasn’t.”

She couldn’t outrun a bullet, Rowan thought as her heart kicked in her chest. Before much longer, she wouldn’t be able to outrun the fire.

She could hear the whoosh and the roar as it built, as it rolled toward them.

“We need to go, so you can be there for the baby, Matt. She needs a father.”

“She has my parents. They’ll be good to her.” Fire glowed red and gold on his sweat-sheened face. His eyes had gone from sad to mad. “I broke it off with Annie last night. I’ve got nothing for her. And I knew when I got in the door today, it had to be the last time. One way or the other. I thought it would be me, going like Jim did. The fire’s all I got left.”

“You have the baby.”

“Jim’s dead. I see him dead when I look at her. I see him burning. It’s just the fire now. I liked it. Not the killing, but the fire, making it, watching it, seeing what it did. I liked making it more than I ever did fighting it. Maybe I’ll like hell.”

“I’m not ready to go there.” She rolled to the balls of her feet.

A tree fell with a shrieking crash, shaking the ground when it landed less than a yard away. Rowan sprang to her right, dug in to run blind. She heard the crack of the gunshot, her spine snapping tight as she braced for a bullet in the back.

She heard a whine, like an angry hornet wing by her ear, then jagged left again as a firebrand burst at her feet.

If Matt didn’t kill her, the fire would.

She preferred the fire, and like a moth, flew toward the flames.

For a moment, they wrapped around her, a fiery embrace that stole her breath. The scream shrieked inside her head, escaping in a wild call of fear and triumph as she burst free. Momentum pitched her forward, had her skidding onto the heels of her hands and her knees. Her pack weighed like lead as she struggled up again, hacking out smoke. Around her, the forest burned in a merry cavalcade with a deep, guttural roar as mad as the man who pursued her.

At the snap of another gunshot, she fled deeper into the belly of the beast.

She heard him coming, even over the bellow of the fire. The thud of his footsteps sounded closer than she wanted to believe. She scanned smoke and flame.

Fight or flight.

She was done with flight, finished letting him drive her like cattle to the slaughter. With the burn towering around her, she planted her feet, yanked out her Pulaski. Gripping it in both hands, she set for fight.

He might kill her. Hell, he probably would. But she’d damn well do some damage first.

For herself, for Yangtree. Even, she thought, for poor, pathetic Dolly.

“You’ll bleed,” she told herself. “You’ll bleed before I’m done.”

She saw the yellow shirt through the haze of smoke, then the silhouette coming fast.

Deliberately she panted air in and out, pumping adrenaline. She had an instant, maybe two, to decide whether to hurl her weapon, hope for a solid strike, or to charge swinging.

Charge. Better to keep the ax in her hands than risk a miss.

She sucked in more filthy air, cocked the Pulaski over her shoulder, gritting her teeth as she judged the timing.

Coming fast, she thought again—then her arms trembled.

Coming really fast. Oh, God.

“Gull.” She choked out his name as he tore through the smoke.

She ran toward him, felt his hands close tight around her shoulders. Nothing, she realized, no caress, no embrace, had ever felt so glorious.

“Matt.”

“I got that.”

“He’s got a gun.”

“Yeah, I got that, too. Are you hurt?” He scanned her face when she shook her head, as if verifying for himself. “Can you run?”

“What do you take me for?”

“Then we run because Matt’s not our only problem.”

She started to agree, then stiffened. “Wait. Do you hear that?”

“You’re the one with ears like a . . . Yeah. Now I do.”

“He’s coming. That way,” she added, pointing. “It sounds like he’s crying.”

“I feel real bad for him. Best shot’s south, I think.”

“If we can reach the black. But if we can, so can he.”

“I sure as hell hope so. That’s where we’ll take him down. Run now; talk later.”

“Don’t hold up for me,” she began.

“Oh, bullshit.” He grabbed her hand, yanked her into a run.

She bore down. She’d be damned if he held back because she couldn’t keep pace. It didn’t matter if her lungs burned, if her legs ached, if the sweat ran into her eyes like acid.

She ran through a world gone mad with violence, stunning in its kaleidoscope lights of red and orange and molten blue. She flung herself through fetid smoke, leaping or dodging burning branches, hurdling burning spots that snapped over the ground like bear traps.

If they could get into the black, they’d fight. They’d find a way.

She risked a glance at Gull. Sweat poured down his soot-smeared face. Somewhere along the run he’d lost his helmet, and his hair was gray with ash.

But his eyes, she thought as she pushed, pushed, pushed herself on. Clear, focused, determined. Eyes that didn’t lie, she thought. Eyes she could trust.

Did trust.

They’d make it.

Something exploded behind them.

Breath snagging, she looked back to see an orange column of smoke climb toward the sky. Even as she watched, it brightened.

“Gull.”

He only nodded. He’d seen it as well.

No time to talk, to plan, even to think. The ground shook; the wind whipped. With its roaring breath, the fire blew brands, coals, burning pinecones that burst like grenades.

Blue-orange flames clawed up on their left, hissing like snakes. A snag burst in its coils, showered them with embers. The smoke thickened like cotton with the firefly swirl of sparks flooding through it.

A fountain of yellow flame spewed up in front of them, forcing them to angle away from the ferocious heat. Gull grunted when a burning branch hit his back, but didn’t break stride as they flung themselves up an incline.

Rocks avalanched under their boots, and still the hellhound fire pursued. Came the roar, that long, throaty war cry, as the blowup thundered toward them.

A fire devil swirled out of the smoke to dance.

Nowhere to run.

“Shake and bake.” Gull yanked the bandanna around Rowan’s throat over her mouth, did the same with his own.

It screamed, Rowan thought as she tore the protective case off her fire shelter, shook it out. Or Matt screamed, but a madman with a gun had become the least of their problems.

She stepped on the bottom corners of the foil, grabbed the tops to stretch it over her back. Mirroring her moves, Gull sent her a last look and shot her a grin that seared straight into her heart.

“See you later,” he said.

“See you later.”

They flopped forward, cocooned.

Working quickly, Rowan dug a hole for her face, down to the cooler air. Eyes shut, she took short, shallow breaths into the bandanna. Even one breath of the super-heated gases that blew outside her shelter would scorch her lungs, poison her.

The fire hit, a freight train of sound, a tidal wave of heat. Wind tore at the shelter, tried to lift and launch it like a sail. Sparks shimmered around her, but she kept her eyes closed.

And saw her father, frying fish over a campfire, the flames dancing in his eyes as he laughed with her. Saw herself spreading her arms under his on her first tandem jump. Saw him open his as she ran to him after he’d come back from a fire.

Saw him, his face lit now by an inner flame as he told her about Ella.

See you later, she thought as the impossible heat built.

She saw Gull, cocky grin and swagger, pouring a helmet of water over her head. Saw him tip back a beer, cool as you please, then fight off a pack of bullies as ferocious as a fire devil.

Felt him yank her into his arms. Turn to her in the dark. Fight with her in the light. Run with her. Run to her.

He’d come through fire for her.

The fear speared into her belly. She’d been afraid before, but she realized most of it was because she damn well wasn’t ready to die. Now she feared for him.

So close, she thought while the fire screamed, crashed, burst. And yet completely separate. Nothing to do for each other now but wait. Wait.

See you later.

She held on. Thought of Yangtree, of Jim. Of Matt.

Cards—God, Cards. Had Matt killed him, too?

She wanted to see him again, see all of them again. She wanted to tell her father she loved him, just one more time. To tell Ella she was glad her father had found someone to make him happy.

She wanted to joke with Trigger, rag on Cards, sit in the kitchen with Marg. To be with all of them, her family.

But more, she realized, even more, she wanted to look into Gull’s eyes again, and watch that grin flash over his face.

She wanted to tell him . . . everything.

Why the hell hadn’t she? Why had she been so stubborn or stupid or—face it—afraid?

If he didn’t make it through this so she could, she’d kick his ass.

Dizzy, she realized, sick. Too much heat. Can’t pass out. Won’t pass out. As she regulated her breathing again, she realized something else.

Quiet.

She heard the fire, but the distant snarl and song. The ground held steady under her body, and the jet-plane thunder had passed.

She was alive. Still alive.

She reached out, laid a hand on her shelter. Still hot to the touch, she thought. But she could wait. She could be patient.

And if she lived, he’d damn well better live, too.

“Rowan.”

Tears smarted her already stinging eyes at his voice, rough and ragged. “Still here.”

“How’s it going there?”

“Five-by-five. You?”

“The same. It’s cooling down a little.”

“Don’t get out yet, rook.”

“I know the drill. I’m calling base. Anything you want me to pass on?”

“Have L.B. tell my dad I’m A-OK. I don’t know about Cards. There was blood. They need to look for him. And for Matt.”

She closed her eyes again, let herself drift, passing the next hour thinking of swimming in a moonlit lagoon, drinking straight from a garden hose, making snow angels—naked snow angels, with Gull.

“Cards made it back,” he called out. “They had to medevac him. He lost a lot of blood.”

“He’s alive.”

Alone in her shelter, she allowed herself tears.

When her shelter cooled to the touch, she called to Gull. “Coming out.”

She eased her head out into the smoky air, looked over at Gull. She imagined they both looked like a couple of sweaty, parboiled turtles climbing out of their shells.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

She laughed. It hurt her throat, but she laughed. “Hey, handsome.”

They crawled to each other over the blackened, ash-covered ground. She found his lips with hers, her belly quivering with a wrecked combination of laughter and tears.

“I was going to be so pissed off at you if you died.”

“Glad we avoided that.” He touched her face. “Heck of a ride.”

“Oh, yeah.” She lowered her forehead to his. “He might still be alive.”

“I know. We’d better figure out where we are, then we’ll worry about where he is.”

She took out her compass, checking their bearings as she drank what water she had left in her bottle. “If we head east, we’ll backtrack over some of the area, plus it’s the best course for the camp. We need water.”

“I’ll call it in.”

Though her legs still weren’t steady, Rowan got to her feet to examine the shelters.

“Inner skin’s melted,” she told Gull. “We hit over sixteen hundred degrees. I’d say we topped a good one-eighty inside.”

“My candy bar’s melted, and that’s a crying shame.” He reached for her hand. “Want to take a walk in the woods?”

“Love to.”

They walked through the black with ash still swirling. Training outweighed exhaustion, and had them smothering smoldering spots.

“You came for me.”

Gull glanced up. “Sure I did. You’d have done the same.”

“I would have. But I thought I was dead—not going down easy, but dead all the same. And you came for me. It counts. A lot.”

“Is there a scoreboard? Am I winning?”

“Gull.” She didn’t laugh this time, not when everything she felt rose up in her raw throat. “I need to tell you—” She broke off, grabbed his arm. “I heard something.” She closed her eyes, concentrated. Pointed.

She looked in his eyes again. Toward or away? He nodded, and they moved toward the sound.

They found him, curled behind a huddle of rocks. They’d protected him a little. But not nearly enough.

His eyes, filled with blood, stared up from his ruined face. She thought of her dream of Jim, of his brother. The fire had turned them into mirror images.

He moaned again, tried to speak. His body shook violently as his breath came in rapid pants. Raw, blistered burns scored the left side of his body, the most exposed, where the fire had scorched the protective clothing away.

He’d nearly made it out, Rowan noted. Another fifty yards, and he might’ve been clear. Had he thought he could make it, left his life to fate rather than shake out his shelter?

Gull handed her the radio. “Call it in,” he told her, then crouched. He took one of Matt’s ruined hands carefully in his.

He had that in him, Rowan thought. He had that compassion for a man suffering toward death, even though the man was a murderer.

“Base, this is Swede. We found Matt.”

His eyes tracked to hers when she said his name. Could he still think? she wondered. Could he still reason?

For an instant she saw sorrow in them. Then they fixed as the panting breaths cut off.

“He didn’t make it,” she said, steady as she handed the radio back to Gull.

Steady until she sat on the ground beside a man who’d been a friend, and wept for him.

SHE WANTED TO STAY and fight, termed it a matter of pride and honor to be in on the kill. She rehydrated, refueled, replaced lost and damaged equipment. Then complained all the way when ordered to copter out.

“We’re not injured,” she pointed out.

“You sound like a frog,” Gull observed as he took his seat in the chopper. “A sexy one, but a frog.”

“So we ate some smoke. So what?”

“You lost most of your eyebrows.”

Stunned, she pressed her fingers above her eyes. “Shit! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s a look. They’ve got it on the run,” he added, scanning down as they lifted off.

“That’s the point. That bitch tried to kill us. We should be in on the takedown.”

“Don’t worry, babe.” He reached over to pat her knee. “There’ll be other fires that try to kill us.”

“Don’t try to smooth it over. L.B.’s letting the cops push us around. What the hell difference does it make when we give them a statement? Matt’s dead.” She turned her face, stared out at the sky. “I guess most of him, the best of him, died last year when Jim did. You held his hand so he didn’t die alone.”

Though Gull said nothing, she clearly felt his discomfort so turned to him again. “That counts a lot, too. You’re really racking them up today.”

“People have a choice when life takes a slice out of them. He made the wrong one. A lot of wrong ones.”

“You didn’t. We didn’t,” Rowan corrected. “Good for us.”

“Don’t cry anymore. It kills me.”

“My eyes are watering, that’s all. From all the smoke.”

He figured it couldn’t hurt for both of them to pretend that was it. But he took her hand. “I want a beer. I want a giant, ice-cold bottle of beer. And shower sex.”

The idea made her smile. “I want eyebrows.”

“Well, you’re not getting mine.” He tipped his head back, closed his eyes.

She watched out the window, the roll of land, the rise of mountain. Home—she was going home. But the meaning had changed, deepened. Time to man up and tell him.

“I need to say some things to you,” she began. “I don’t know how you’re going to feel about it, but it is what it is. So . . .”

She shifted back, narrowed her eyes.

No point baring her soul to a man who was sound asleep.

It could wait, she decided, and watched the sun lower toward the western peaks.

SHE SAW HER FATHER running toward the pad, and L.B., and the flying tangle of Ella’s hair as she rushed after them.

Marg sprinting out of the cookhouse. Lynn stopping to bury her face in her apron. Mechanics, jumpers not cleared for the list pouring out of hangars, the tower, the barracks.

The cop and the fed standing together in their snappy suits just outside Ops.

She gave Gull an elbow poke. “We’ve got a welcoming committee.”

She climbed out the second the chopper touched ground, then ran hunched over under the blades to jump into her father’s arms.

“There’s my baby. There’s my girl.”

“A-OK.” She breathed him in, squeezed hard. And, seeing Ella over his shoulder, seeing the roll of tears, held out a hand. “It’s nice to see you.”

Ella gripped her hand, pressed it to her cheek, then wrapped her arms as best she could around both Lucas and Rowan.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Lucas murmured, then, setting Rowan down, walked over to Gull. “You took care of our girl.”

“That’s the job. But mostly she took care of herself.”

Lucas pulled him into a bear hug. “Keep it up.”

They both looked over when Rowan let out a shout, broke from Marg and ran toward the man slowly walking toward the pad.

“I told that son of a bitch he could only check out of the hospital if he stayed in bed.” L.B. shook his head at Cards.

“Yangtree?” Gull asked.

“Fifty-fifty. They didn’t expect him to make it this far, so I’m putting my money on him. Got a cold one for you.”

“Let’s not keep it waiting.”

“Do you want me to tell the cops to back off until you and Rowan settle in?”

“We might as well get it done and over. She needs it finished. I guess I do, too.”

“He just started talking crazy,” Cards told Rowan. “About me letting Jim die, about Dolly. And he said . . . he said Dolly called Vicki, and told her we’d been screwing around. Hinted to her the baby was mine, for God’s sake. That it was his idea.”

“You can fix it with her.”

“I’m going to try. But . . . Ro, he came at me. Jesus.” He touched his shoulder where the pick had dug in. “Matt came at me. I knocked him back, or down. I told the cops it’s like this crazy reel inside my head. I ran. He was coming after me. I think he was, then he wasn’t. I just kept running. Got all screwed around until I found the saw line. I followed it.”

“Good thinking.”

“I don’t know how he could’ve done what he did, Ro. I worked right beside him. All of us did. Yangtree . . .” His eyes watered up. “Then to come after you, to die like he did. I can’t get my head around it.”

“You’re worn out. Go on and lie down. I’ll come in and see you later.”

“I loved the fucker.”

“We all did,” Rowan said, as Cards walked back into the barracks.

Gull stepped up. “Unless you want to do it otherwise, we can talk with the cops now. Marg’s throwing on some steaks.”

“There is a God.”

“We can get it done while we eat.”

They took seats at one of the picnic tables.

“First, I want to say it’s good to see both of you back here, safe.” Quinniock folded his hands on the table. “It doesn’t do much good, but you should know after some digging, a little pressure, Agent DiCicco learned earlier today that Matthew Brayner ended his engagement a short time ago, cut off communication with his fiancée. Also, that he quit his job.”

“I also learned a few days ago that he has a number of trophies and awards. Marksmanship. There are several people in your unit who have sharpshooter experience.”

Rowan nodded at DiCicco. “You’ve been investigating all of us.”

“That’s my job. We arrived here to question him about the same time he assaulted your associate,” DiCicco continued. “We were able to convince Mr. Little Bear to let us search Brayner’s quarters. He kept a journal. It’s all there. What he did, how, why.”

“He was grieving,” Rowan said.

“Yes.”

She looked at Quinniock. “He blamed himself, at the bottom of it, for what happened to Jim. For being weak, sleeping with Dolly, for fighting with his brother before that jump. He couldn’t live with that, so he had to blame Cards, Dolly, all of us.”

“Very likely.”

“But it was more.” She looked at Gull now. “He fell in love with the fire. Found a kind of purpose in it, and that justified the rest. He said he left it up to fate, but he lied to himself. He gave it all to the fire, turning what he loved and had trained to do into a punishment. Maybe he thought he could burn away the guilt and the grief, but he never did. He died, grieving for everything he’d lost.”

“It would help,” DiCicco told her, “if you could tell us exactly what happened, what was said and done.”

“Yeah, I can do that. Then I’m never talking about it again, because he paid for all of it. There’s nothing more to wring out of him, and no changing anything that happened.”

She went through it like a fire report. Precisely, briefly, pausing only to lean into Marg’s side when the cook set down still sizzling steaks.

She ate while Gull did the same from his perspective.

“You knew it was Matt when you caught up with me,” Rowan interrupted.

“Cards has had nothing but shit for luck all season. Cards was Jim’s spotter. You have to respect the streak, good or bad, but when you break it down it seemed like maybe it wasn’t a matter of bad luck. Then Matt couldn’t bring himself to look at Yangtree once we got him down.

“You were too busy to notice,” he added, “but Matt was the only one who couldn’t. When Janis said none of the three of you answered the radio, it was point A to B.”

He looked back over at DiCicco. “That’s it. There’s nothing more to tell you.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to close this without bothering you again,” DiCicco said to Rowan. “And I’m pulling for your friend, for Yangtree.”

“Thanks. What happens with Leo Brakeman?”

“He’s cleared of the murders, and as Brayner detailed the shooting at the base in his journal, how he had the combination for the safe—from Jim through Dolly—he’s clear of those charges. Regardless, he jumped bail, but given the circumstances, we’re recommending leniency there.”

“Matt didn’t kill him,” Rowan murmured, “but he shattered his life. He did it so he could get the baby for his mother.”

Quinniock rose. “A smart man would head to Nebraska and work to put his life back together. That’ll be up to Brakeman. Despite the circumstances, it was a pleasure meeting both of you. Thank you for your service.”

“I’ll say the same.”

Rowan chewed over a bite of steak as they walked away. “That was kind of weird at the end.”

“Just at the end?”

She laughed. “You know what I mean. I need to spend some time with my father. You could get in on that.”

“Sure. Is that before or after shower sex?”

“After, for a variety of reasons. Right now, I need a walk. Moon’s rising.”

“So it is.” He got up, reached for her hand.

It would probably be more appropriate, she thought, if they got cleaned up first, if she waited until the base slept and they were alone.

Then again, covered with soot, smelling of smoke and sweat? Wasn’t that who they were?

“I did a lot of thinking in the shake and bake,” she began as they strolled toward the training field.

“Not much else to do in there.”

“I thought about my father. The two of us at little moments. About him and Ella. I’m only going to admit this once, but you were right about my first reaction to them, and the reasons for it. I’m done with that.”

“You don’t have to say it again, but maybe you could write it down, for my files.”

“Shut up.” She hip-bumped him. “I thought about Jim and Matt, about all the guys. Yangtree.”

“He’s going to make it. I’d put money on it.”

“I believe that because he’s a tough bastard, and because there’s been enough loss this season. I thought about you.”

“I hoped I was in there somewhere.”

“Little moments. And when you narrow it, look at them really close, they can turn out to be key.” She stopped, faced him. “So. I want to get married.”

“To me?”

“No, to Timothy Olyphant, but I’m settling for you.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?”

“I’m still dealing with Timothy Olyphant, so give me a minute. I think I’m better-looking.”

“You would.”

“No, seriously. I’ve got better hair. But anyway.” He swooped her in, right up to her toes. The kiss wasn’t casual or lighthearted, but raw and deep and real. “I was going to take you on another picnic and ask you. This is better.”

“I like picnics. We could—”

He laid his hands on either side of her face. “I love you. I love everything about you. Your voice, your laugh. Your eyebrows when they grow back. Your face, your body, your hard head and your cautious heart. I want to spend the rest of my life looking at you, listening to you, working with you, just being with you. Rowan of the purple lupines.”

“Wow.” He’d literally taken her breath away. “You’re really good at this.”

“I’ve been saving up.”

“I didn’t want to fall for anybody. It’s so messy. I’m so happy it was you. I’m so happy to love you, Gulliver. So happy to know I’ll have a life with you, a home, a family with you.” She pressed her lips to his. “But I want a bigger bed.”

“Big as you want.”

“Where are we going to put it? After the season, I mean.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

Naturally, she thought. “Have you?”

“First, I think I should get my pilot’s license. We’ll be doing a lot of zipping between Montana and California.”

He took her hand and, as she’d once seen her father do with Ella, gave their linked arms a playful swing.

“Maybe we’ll find a place between, but I’m fine setting down here most of the year.”

She cocked her head. “Because Missoula needs a family fun center?”

He grinned, kissing her knuckles as they walked again. “I’ve been doing some research on that.”

“I really do love you,” she told him. “It’s kind of astonishing.”

“I’m a hell of a catch. Really better than Olyphant. Where we dig in, that’s just details. We’ll work them out.”

She stopped and, trusting them both, linked her arms around his neck. “We’ll work them out,” she repeated.

“Hey!” L.B. shouted across the field. “Thought you’d want to know, they’ve got her contained. They caught her, and they’re taking her down.”

“Go Zulies,” Gull called back.

She grinned at him. More good news, she thought. They’d go in soon, give their own good news to her father, to their family.

But for now, she’d caught her own fire and wanted to walk awhile sharing the warmth of it, just with him, under the rising moon.

ALSO BY NORA ROBERTS

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

Sanctuary

Homeport

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

The Reef

River’s End

Jewels of the Sun

Carolina Moon

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

The Villa

From the Heart

Midnight Bayou

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

Chesapeake Blue

Birthright

Remember When

(with J. D. Robb)

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

Northern Lights

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Blue Smoke

Red Lily

Angels Fall

Morrigan’s Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

High Noon

Tribute

Black Hills

Vision in White

Bed of Roses

Savor the Moment

The Search

Happy Ever After

WRITING AS J. D. ROBB

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

Kindred in Death

Fantasy in Death

Indulgence in Death

Treachery in Death

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Black Hills

The Search

Chasing Fire