THEY both dug out flashlights to take stock of the situation. The body, dressed in ash-smudged camouflage trousers, khaki shirt, and leather boots, lay mostly in Elk Creek, which was now a slow trickle of sludge. The face was turned into the scorched ferns along the bank, the visible portion a mass of blisters interrupted by a singed eyebrow. Blackened hair was clumped into snarls by congealing blood that flowed from a gaping wound at the back of the head.
Sam’s stomach lurched at the odor of charred flesh. Not even an illegal hunter deserved this end. “Is he—”
A dribble of blood slid over her lower lip. She wiped it on her sleeve and pressed her lips together to lessen the flow from the gash her teeth had cut.
Mack pressed his fingers to the victim’s neck. After a few seconds, he said, “Can’t feel a pulse.” He placed his hand in front of the blistered lips, then, after another interval, shook his head. “We’re going to need a body bag.”
Slipping his fingers under the web belt at the broad waist, he tugged. With an obscene sucking sound, the body broke free of the mud and flopped over onto its back. A hand, its fingers curled, came to rest on the toe of Sam’s boot.
The transformation made her gasp. The side of the face that had been pressed to the ground was untouched by fire. An ivory cheek shone through streaks of gray mud. The wisp of hair that hung over the half-moon eyebrow was a warm honey blond. Gold loops threaded both earlobes.
“Holy shit,” Mack said again. “It’s Lisa Glass.”
The name didn’t mean anything to Sam. “Who’s Lisa Glass?”
“Trail crew,” he murmured.
The trail crew, a group of seasonal workers Sam hadn’t met, had started work about ten weeks earlier in the north section of the park. The job—clearing existing trails of debris and hacking new paths out of the mountainous terrain—was grueling physical labor, most often performed by teenage delinquents working off community service sentences from juvenile court. It surprised her that this girl had been among them, although judging by her long muscular body, Lisa Glass would be physically able to wield a pickaxe and sledgehammer. Sam regretted not getting to know this tough young woman.
Mack’s head jerked up. “She’s alive! I just saw her take a breath.”
“What?” Sam knelt and gently pushed up an eyelid.
The pupil that stared back at her flashlight beam was an unmoving black well surrounded by ice blue iris. Suddenly the victim’s chest moved with a jerky breath.
“She’s unconscious,” Mack confirmed. “And I moved her. Oh God.” He wadded his jacket front in a fist, his sooty brow creased with anxiety. “I couldn’t feel a pulse or breath, I swear.”
“It’s okay, Mack, I would have done the same. You didn’t know she was still alive.” Sam brushed a tangle of burned hair away from Lisa’s blistered face. A wedge-shaped piece of skin from the girl’s cheek peeled away with the strand, and Sam froze, paralyzed by the horrible sight. In Lisa’s case, life might not be a blessing.
IT was midmorning by the time Sam arrived at Mack’s apartment building. In its first life, the structure had been a rambling farmhouse, as evidenced by its wide covered wooden porch and cedar plank floors. The flower-stenciled front door opened onto a tiny lobby with a sitting area and mailboxes for the three tenants. After stepping into the interior gloom, Sam raised her eyebrows at the unexpected sight of a lanky form sprawled across one of the two chairs.
The man had stretched out his gray-trousered legs and slouched down into the faded brown velvet armchair until he could rest his head atop the back cushion. A lightweight gray sports jacket had hiked up around his shoulders and waist. At least twenty-four hours’ worth of beard darkened his square jaw line, lending the olive skin a bluish cast above the neckline of his navy shirt. A loosened gray-and-white tie hung limply around his neck like a broken leash. His eyes were closed.
As she approached on tiptoe, the hand that had been lying relaxed on his thigh slipped back beneath the jacket. One eye opened a crack, revealing a deep brown iris and alert pupil.
She held up both hands. “Don’t shoot.”
His fingers slid away from the holster at the back of his belt out onto his thigh. “Sorry.” He pushed himself into a more upright position. “Reflex action.”
Special Agent Starchaser J. Perez rose and wrapped his arms around her. She tilted her face up. Their lips met briefly, a not-unpleasant pressure on her lidocaine-numbed mouth. He tasted like coffee. Suddenly she craved an espresso from Mack’s stovetop maker. “Come with me.” She motioned toward the stairs.
“Blake told me I could find you at this address. What gives? Last time we met, you were a writer.”
Sam grimaced. “Try to keep up, will you, FBI? The life of a freelancer is hectic. When we met, I was writing for the Save the Wilderness Fund. Then I had a weekly gig writing articles about hiking and outdoor equipment for an e-zine called The Edge, but a few months back they decided there’s not enough money in GORE-TEX jackets and hiking socks. In an attempt to fool us into believing that the economy’s recovering, they’ve switched from rugged individualists conquering the great outdoors to beautiful people conquering luxury spas. Now they’re selling designer yoga wear.”
The last three words were especially difficult to enunciate, but her mangled mouth must have worked better than she thought, because Chase said only, “Really?”
“Really. So, courtesy of the park service, I’m a biologist again. A big area of national forest land is being added to Olympic National Park to create a protected continuous wildlife corridor from the mountains to the coast. They hired me to do an environmental survey and management plan for the new area. It’s only a twelve-week contract, unfortunately, and I’m already more than two-thirds of the way through it.” She dreaded the end of her contract. She had always wanted to be a park ranger, but her timing had never been right. After college, she was too short and too female; now the NPS budgets were too small.
“You’re living in this…place?” She could tell that he really wanted to say dump.
“It belongs to my friend Mack. We shared a cubicle during my online encyclopedia days at Key Inc.”
Chase raised an eyebrow.
“Another job I had before we met,” she explained. “Mack was botany; I was zoology.” Post-lidocaine talking was definitely easier than her pre-lidocaine efforts, although she still slurred the plosives. “We commiserated about seeing plants and animals only on computers. Then he up and abandoned hi-tech for Olympic National Park. He lets me crash here once in a while.”
“You outdoor adventure types do like to sleep around.” His steps echoed on the wooden treads behind her.
“What about you?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
“I just happened to be in the vicinity.”
“Chase, there’s nobody in this vicinity except hunters and fishers and hikers. I figured you were hot on the trail of those robbers in Salt Lake. The armored car bandits?” She’d seen the story on the news two weeks ago. Or was it three? Four?
“I was. I am. The trail led to Boise, and now it looks like the perps have moved to Washington State. We’ve been chasing these guys across three, no, four states for months. Now they’re taking on banks, too.”
Sounded like a major crime spree. “How are they getting away with it?”
“There’s always a distraction for the local police at the same time. We’re beginning to think it’s a huge group, not just a few individuals. It’s become a road show.” He sighed wearily. “On a tip, we staked out a First Interstate in Olympia through the wee hours, but nothing happened.”
That explained the whiskers. The “we” reminded Sam of Chase’s partner. “Where’s Nicole?” she asked.
“Some fancy resort in the San Juan Islands. Hubby picked her up in his private plane for a romantic weekend.”
The plane reference made her think about Lili’s school friend. Just how many people had their own planes, anyway? Was she living that far out of the mainstream?
She unlocked the door, pushed it open into the foyer off Mack’s compact kitchen. Although a pair of blue jeans dangled from a chair, she was relieved to see that no jockey shorts or balled-up socks littered the front room this time.
Opening the freezer door, she rummaged for the bag of coffee. She poured the last of the dark-roasted beans into the grinder and pressed the button.
Perez put his hands on the countertop, leaning close to be heard over the racket. His lips tickled her ear. “I was hoping for a romantic weekend myself.” His tone promised steamy embraces. He inhaled deeply. Wrinkling his nose, he drew back.
She released the grinder button, grinning. “I know. Smoke. Singed hair. Sweat. I even find myself disgusting. I wondered why you didn’t comment on my appearance.”
He blinked. “Why? Have you done something different?”
“As well as ruining my coiffure”—she patted a few sticky strands for effect—“I banged my head and cut my tongue and lip. I’m surprised I can talk at all.” She balled up the empty coffee bag and aimed it at his nose.
He easily caught the bag and crumpled it into a smaller sphere. “I thought you were trying to seduce me with a sexy lisp.” His last two words came out “thexy lithp.”
So much for sympathy. She placed the double pot on the burner and turned up the heat. “Watch that, will you? When it stops hissing, it’s done. I’m off to the shower.”
He smiled. “I’ll join you.”
“Not this time, FBI.”
She closed the bathroom door behind her. Her relationship with Chase Perez consisted of a kidnapping drama they’d floundered through in Utah, and a handful of encounters here in Washington State when he was passing through. They’d dated off and on for nearly ten months, but hadn’t yet progressed to mutual nakedness. Something always prevented the time from being right. Like now; filthy, thick-lipped, and headachy, she felt far from sexy.
She pressed her face into the shower spray, wincing as the water glanced off her blistered cheek. With a liberal application of almond soap, her greasy coating of perspiration and smoke disappeared down the drain in a dark swirl.
“So tell me about your bad hair day.” Chase’s voice came from the other side of the shower curtain, in the direction of the vanity. He probably had his handsome backside perched on the beige Formica.
She gingerly rubbed shampoo over the sore spot at the back of her head, enjoying the vanilla scent. No wonder Mack smelled like a candy bar.
“It was night, not day,” she told him. “You would have loved it. Just your kind of thing.” Her lower lip still felt like a block of wood. She hoped she wouldn’t dribble her coffee.
“Murder? Mayhem? High-powered shoot-out?”
“Definitely mayhem. Some firebugs lit a couple blazes. While we were putting out the flames, we found a body.” She shivered, remembering Lisa facedown in the ashes.
How old was Lisa Glass? No. He was asking how recently the victim had died. “This body was still alive. Barely. A girl from the trail crew. Head injury, smoke inhalation. Second- and third-degree burns.” Sam raised a hand to her own face and was reassured to find the skin was for the most part still smooth and intact, except for that dang blister on her temple. She turned off the shower and squeezed the excess water from her long rope of silver-blond hair.
“So, what’s the story?”
“The espresso’s done, Chase. Go take it off the burner.” She raised her hand to the shower curtain. “I’m coming out now.”
Silence.
“Get out of here!”
“Spoilsport,” he mumbled. She heard the soft thud of the door closing.
When she emerged into the kitchen, he had poured the espresso into decorated mugs, a great white shark for him and a wolf howling at the moon for her. To hers, he added a small dash of milk, just the way she liked it. He’d only seen her prepare coffee once, but his mind recorded every detail. A remarkable talent. Her thoughts constantly strayed away from the here and now like dogs that wouldn’t stay on the porch.
His gaze traveled from the new Band-Aid on her temple down her uniform to the thick hiking socks on her feet. “You keep clothes here? You’ve moved in with Mack?”
She raised an eyebrow at his tone. “Why not? He’s a good-looking guy and—”
“At least a decade your junior.”
“Watch it,” she hissed. “That gap is a piddly eight years.” She finished French-braiding her hair, secured the end with an elastic band. “Actually”—she dropped her voice to a stage whisper—“it’s not Mack I’ve got the hots for. It’s his couch.”
The sagging, stained brown futon clearly dated from Mack’s college days. Chase looked at her, tried to keep a straight face but failed, and they burst into laughter simultaneously. She pressed her fingers over her lips to quell the resulting pain, then bent her aching head and struggled to pin her park service ID onto the khaki shirt.
“Uh-oh,” he groaned, coming over to help. “You’re still on duty? I assumed that after fighting fires all night, you’d get the rest of the day off.”
“That’s because you feebs are pansy-asses. We outdoor adventure types don’t need rest breaks.” She couldn’t stop a wistful sigh at the thought of lounging around with Chase. A strand of inky hair slipped onto his forehead as he fastened her pin. She had the urge to caress it back into place, but was afraid of starting something she didn’t have the energy to finish. “I have to go back; the usual fire lookout’s off on emergency leave. There’s nobody else to fill in. Besides arson, there are other hinky things going on.”
“Kinky things?” He raised an eyebrow. “Then I better come for sure.”
“Hinky things. Strange, weird things.”
“Well, kinky or hinky, sounds like you could use a trained special agent at that fire lookout.” When she didn’t protest, he grinned. “It’ll be like old times—getting in trouble together in the wilderness.”
SHE fired up the truck.
“Four U.S. troops were killed when a roadside bomb detonated near Kabul,” the radio informed them. Sam quickly turned off the NPR news station she normally listened to, not wanting the latest grim details from the Middle East to intrude on her time with Chase. She didn’t like to think about the billions of dollars that had drained into that sinkhole instead of flowing into wildlife conservation or education or health care or anything worthwhile. She hoped those four soldiers had not died in vain.
As she drove from Forks to the new section of the park, Chase questioned her about the fire and the discovery of Lisa Glass.
“No chance of identifying the vehicles, I suppose?” he asked.
“I was five miles away; it was night.” Her mouth seemed to be working fine, but now that the lidocaine was wearing off, she could feel the ragged bite marks on her tongue and the insides of her cheeks. “At least six vehicles have driven up and down that road since the firebugs took off, so there’s virtually no chance of identifying tire tracks.”
She stole a quick glance sideways. He’d changed into jeans, boots, and flannel shirt. The informal clothes made him look less intimidating, less hard-edged. Was his gun in the pack he’d brought or in the pocket of his jacket in the backseat?
“How did the fire first get your attention?”
She slapped a hand against the steering wheel. “I completely forgot about the explosion!”
He perked up. “Explosion?”
“A big bang.”
“The creation of the universe?”
She groaned at his humor. “It seemed earth-shaking at the time. And then came the fire.”
He considered for a second. “Could it have been a Molotov cocktail?”
She wasn’t even sure what a Molotov cocktail was. “They explode?”
He shrugged. “Frequently.”
“Then it might have been that. Or maybe a firecracker. It sounded powerful.” A suspicion flashed through her thoughts. How could she have forgotten? “Raider!” She gripped the wheel with both hands and applied her foot more forcefully to the gas pedal.
Chase braced a hand against the dashboard. “What?”
She hit a chuckhole head on. They bounced hard, but she didn’t slow down. “It could have been a high-powered rifle. The bastards might have been after my bear.”