Kit Hagen sighed as the softly moving hospital bed came to a gentle stop. The air was cool here, smelled of lemons and antiseptic. She listened to the light clicks of things being plugged in around her, the muffled rattle of a curtain being drawn.
“You’re here in your room now, okay?” said a woman’s voice.
“Okay,” Kit said, smiling as she allowed herself to sink even deeper into the delightfully soft, warm, clean and dry sheets.
She listened to the soft footsteps trail off. When she peeked down at herself under the white towel-like blankets, she thought about when she was little again. Saying prayers with her mother after her bath and then giggling with her father as he tucked her in tighter and tighter until she was wrapped like a mummy.
Wow, was she wasted, she thought. She peered up at the ceiling. She must be on a massive amount of painkillers. The good stuff, too. The top-drawer stuff they kept under lock and key.
Sometime later, she lifted her cotton-filled head as the sound of something close cut through her drowsiness.
“Hi, Kit. Do you who I am?” said a new voice.
She turned her gaze to her right and blinked up at the woman there at her bedside. It was a blond woman with a pinched-looking tight face.
It definitely wasn’t her mom.
How many guesses do I get? she thought and laughed.
“Kit? Are you awake? Can you talk?” the blond woman asked.
“Are you my doctor?” she said.
“No. I’m from Justice, Kit. I cover environmental stuff with the Parks. I was actually at a conference nearby and came as soon as I heard.”
Kit squinted at her.
Justice?
Then she frowned.
Work? Ugh!
“I’m Dawn Warner,” the woman said.
Who gives a shit? Kit thought.
Then her eyes shot wide as she remembered it all in cut flash images. The sheriff dropping with half of his head gone. Then Dennis. The horror of them facedown on the raw bloody rock. She remembered the ranger. The calm in his voice reaching through her terror. The pops of his cover fire as she ran for her life.
Something stung in her arm as she tried to sit up. As she opened her eyes wider, she noticed there were two men there beside the blond woman. They were agents, she saw. A tall younger one and a squat veteran dad-like one. The tall one was holding a cell phone and the other had a notebook out.
Locals, she thought. From the Denver office probably. Dennis and she had been coordinating with Denver. They had crime scene people ready to go waiting on the word from Dennis the second that he confirmed the victim was the NATPARK killer’s latest.
“You got him, right? Tell me you got the son of a bitch,” Kit said, looking at the agents pleadingly.
“We’ll get to that,” Dawn Warner said. “This is Agent Fitzgerald and Agent Harris from my team, Kit. Tell us what happened.”
“The sheriff met us at the airport, and we drove straight to the mountain. We had to off-road up the slope and then the ranger—” she paused and took a deep breath “—the ranger who had found the body led us down into a rock ravine. We saw the foot of a body among the rocks, and we were about to get closer when there was a rifle shot.
“The sheriff was killed first. Shot in the head. Then Dennis was shot in the head a second later. The ranger and I got down in some cover, and he shot back so I could run. But then I was shot, too. Then I jumped into the water to get away.”
“Did you see who the shooter was?” asked the shorter agent. “Did you see his face?”
“No. He was hidden in the rock at a distance up above us somewhere. He must have used a rifle with a scope. Was the ranger killed, too? Did he make it? Just before I jumped into the water, I heard him scream.”
Dawn Warner shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, Kit. The park ranger is dead, too. You’re the only one who made it out alive.”
Kit started to cry.
“He was a good man. A good, good man. The ranger. He...he saved my life. There was no way I would have gotten out without him.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Warner said after a bit.
She looked down at the bottom of her bed as she shook her head.
“Wait. There is something,” Kit said. “The ranger filmed the shooter or at least where the shots came from. It’s on the sheriff’s phone. He used the sheriff’s phone. You need to look at the sheriff’s phone. Do you have it?”
“We’ll look, Kit,” Warner said. “That’s good info. Good enough for now. You need to get your rest now, okay?”
“No, wait. You didn’t tell me. Did you get the shooter? Did you catch him?”
“No, Kit,” Warner said. “No, we didn’t. But we will, okay? I promise. Now get your rest. We’ll talk later.”