The Only One Left

by Pamela Beason

  “Sounds magical.” He mashed the spatula into a burger, checking for doneness.

  “There have already been four hundred and thirty-two orders, and it’s just getting started.” She shook her head in amazement. “Money in the bank! Robin told me she was a wiz at online sales, but I had no idea. If it keeps up, I’ll bring in enough money to actually hire staff again.”

  “That’s fantastic. Even better is the cabin in the San Juan Islands.”

  The Valdezes had offered Finn and Grace the use of their vacation home on Lopez Island for two weeks in July, in gratitude for Finn saving their daughter.

  “It’s not luxurious,” Keith had warned. “No television. Solar power, wood stove, composting toilet. But the location is beautiful. You might even see orcas.”

  “Sounds like heaven,” Finn told him.

  “Mia and I will come to Evansburg to watch over the gorillas while you’re gone,” Robin volunteered. Mother-daughter bonding, Robin had called it, saying she needed to get to know her daughter better.

  While Finn felt slightly guilty about taking their offer for merely doing his job, he wasn’t about to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. He and Grace rarely had whole days to themselves, let alone two weeks. He’d have time to finish his painting. Wildflowers were going to make up the foreground of the barn picture. He’d had enough of fire for a while.

  Turning toward him, Grace said, “I can’t believe you beat your chest and faced down Gumu.”

  “Robin told you about that?” He felt his cheeks flush. “I can’t believe it, either.”

  “You are now the chief silverback in the troop.”

  “That’s always been my secret ambition.” Finn poured two glasses of red wine. Handing one to her, he sat down with the other on the lawn chair next to hers. “Grace, just for the record, I would have been okay with it.”

  She looked at him, her lips parted, a quizzical expression on her face.

  “I would have been happy about the baby.”

  “How’d you know?”

  It had taken him a while to clue in. The hospital had steadfastly refused to tell him anything, but Grace’s recent behavior, the signs on the day she collapsed, and the doctor’s odd inflection when she’d said, “She’ll be okay,” had led him to the conclusion that Grace had suffered a miscarriage.

  He shrugged. “I’m a detective.”

  She studied his face. “How do you feel about it now?”

  He reached for her hand. “I’m okay with it. How about you?”

  “I’m a little sad. Neema signed me cry sad you, like she knew, too.”

  “She pays attention to your moods.”

  Grace sighed. “I have to admit, I’m also a little relieved. And that makes me feel guilty.”

  Across the yard, Neema lifted her head and gazed in their direction. Maybe she’d heard Grace say her name.

  As the gorilla signed, Grace translated for Finn. “Gorilla good love baby.”

  Robin Valdez, watching from below, turned to face Finn and Grace, and then she also signed my baby good love my baby. She touched Mia on the shoulder, and then, meeting Finn’s gaze, finished with the hand gesture that meant thank you.

  He was getting pretty good at reading sign language, but the world didn’t need to know that. Finn simply waved at her, and Robin turned her back again.

  “It’s been a hell of a week.” He took a sip of wine. “I’m glad that everything turned out okay for that family.”

  “I’ll be okay, too.” Grace squeezed Finn’s fingers. “And we already have our family.” Lifting her chin, she indicated the gorillas, then patted Cargo. The dog moaned with pleasure.

  “Our family is a little hairy,” Finn commented.

  “I know you never planned to take care of two cats and a dog,” she murmured.

  “But I can’t imagine my house without the menagerie now.” He took another sip of wine. “You probably never imagined you were living with a skeleton in your barn.”

  “Or that I’d become involved in kidnapping cases,” she reminded him of their shared past.

  He snorted. “And I never thought I’d need clues from gorillas.”

  She laughed. “Matt, just so you know, I don’t intend to be a gorilla keeper for the rest of my life. I want to find a sanctuary for Gumu and Neema and Kanoni, where they can be part of a bigger gorilla family like they would be in the wild. But until I can make that happen . . .” She smiled at him over her wine glass. “Most people’s lives are not nearly as interesting as ours, are they?”

  Finn held up his wine glass in a toast. “Here’s to interesting lives.”

  ~ END ~

  If you enjoyed The Only One Left, please consider

  writing a review on any online book site.

  Reviews help authors sell books.

  Thank you!

  Discussion Questions for Reading Groups

  Dr. Grace McKenna clearly loves her gorillas, but has mixed feelings about keeping them. How do you feel about exotic animals kept in zoos or as pets?

  On a whim, Darcy and Mia rode off with two strange boys on motorcycles. Did you ever do anything similarly risky in your life that could have ended in disaster? Do you feel that boys do not have to be as cautious as young girls do?

  At times, Detective Matthew Finn feels defensive around smart women. Do you believe he has a right to?

  Kanoni contracts measles from an unvaccinated human playmate. Did you know that humans and animals share some diseases? Do you think all humans should be vaccinated against common communicable diseases?

  Grace is conflicted about her pregnancy so late in life. Did you sympathize with her reasoning?

  How would you feel about living next door to Grace and Neema, Gumu, and Kanoni?

  Are you familiar with Pamela Beason’s

  Sam Westin wilderness mysteries?

  If you haven’t read any, you’ll probably want to start

  with Endangered, the first novel in the series.

  On the following pages you can read the beginning of

  Backcountry, number four in the series.

  Preview of BACKCOUNTRY

  1

  Sam Westin stared at the photo on her cell phone. The jagged granite mountains, ivory-barked alders, and cloudless azure sky were so perfectly mirrored in Pinnacle Lake that she couldn’t tell the difference between the reflection in the water and the reality of peaks and vegetation above the shoreline.

  This picture would make a perfect enlargement to replace the faded print of Table Mountain above her fireplace.

  Except that every time she looked at the image, she might cry.

  She thumbed the screen back to the selfie that had arrived in her e-mail three weeks ago. Kimberly Quintana, her curly brown hair frizzed around her head, her petite blond daughter Kyla Quintana-Johnson posed in front of her, the lake sparkling behind them.

  Kim and Kyla died here.

  “They probably sat right in this spot,” Sam said aloud, touching her fingers to the rock ledge beneath her. Biting her lip, she turned away from the lake. Behind her, Chase was inspecting a small clearing in the shrubbery. “Who comes to such a beautiful place to commit murder?”

  He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze fixed on the ground. “Whoever he or she was, the killer—or killers—didn’t leave behind many clues. I can’t even tell where it happened.”

  The word “it” wafted over Sam like a cold breeze. There was no blood. No outline where the bodies had lain, no yellow crime scene tape. Rain showers had drenched the site since the murders. Dozens of boot and shoe prints were etched into the mud near the lake shore, but they were smudged by weather and trampling; it was impossible to tell when they had been laid down. Sam recognized the tread patterns left by several brands of hiking boots and athletic shoes, but those might have been worn by the law enforcement personnel who had visited the site over the last several weeks.

  The trees and bushes were myriad shades of green, only start
ing to change colors for the coming autumn. The ground cover was the usual mix of grass, lichens, and ferns. There were even a few blossoms left late in the alpine season; fuchsia monkeyflowers and violet penstemons and one lonely white trillium.

  The lushness of the surroundings felt almost shameful. Violent death should not go unmarked. But wasn’t this what she loved about nature? If left to her own devices, nature could heal all the wounds inflicted by humans. Wasn’t that what Kim and Kyla loved, too? Sam hoped they’d had a chance to enjoy the beauty of this place before...

  She didn’t want to finish the sentence, even in her mind.

  Chase lowered himself onto the rock ledge beside her, extending his long legs out to rest his heels in a patch of moss. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the memorial service.”

  “You didn’t know them. I met them less than a year ago.” She’d instantly bonded with the mother and daughter on a trail maintenance crew last November.

  Chase studied her face. “Are you glad we came?”

  “Glad” was a poor word choice, too. Sometimes human language was simply inadequate. She swallowed around the lump that partially blocked her throat. “I had to see it. Thanks for coming with me.”

  She and Chase had the place to themselves. They were not supposed to be here at all. The Forest Service trail was officially closed. But years of experience with lack of staff in wild places had taught Sam that there would be no ranger or deputy to stop them. If by chance they had been challenged after passing the “Closed—No Entry” sign, Chase could argue that as an FBI agent, he had cause to investigate a crime site on federal land.

  On the way into the trailhead parking lot, they had passed a lone driver, a man in a baseball cap driving a silver Subaru Forester. Others had come as well, at least as far as the parking lot: an informal memorial had grown up by the trail register. Soggy sympathy cards and a heart woven out of grass nestled among two incongruous teddy bears and a pink Valentine-shaped Mylar balloon that had no business defiling a natural area.

  Balloons were notorious for killing wildlife.

  Both Kyla and Kim would have been outraged to find one here.

  A faint scratching sound made her turn to check the rocks that flanked both sides of her. A Townsend’s chipmunk, its tail flicking up and down, edged away from her pack and the remains of their brunch. The striped rodent froze, eyeing her. Its cheeks bulged suspiciously.

  Sam pulled the leftover crackers and cheese into her lap. The chipmunk dashed to the top of a boulder a few feet away, where he twitched and chittered, loudly broadcasting the news of these giant intruders in his territory.

  “Were you here when they were murdered?” she asked the animal. “Did you see what happened?”

  The chipmunk leapt from the rock and vanished into the underbrush.

  “That’s what I figured.” Sam stuffed a wheat cracker into her mouth and chewed. “Nobody saw anything.”

  Nobody except for Kyla and Kim, of course. And whoever killed them.

  If she hadn’t been in Idaho with Chase at his family reunion, she would have been hiking here on August second with her friends. After conquering all the familiar trails off the road to Mount Baker, they’d been on a mission to explore the trails further south along the Mountain Loop Highway. If she had been here at Pinnacle Lake instead of partying with Chase’s Latino-Lakota clan, would Kim and Kyla still be alive?

  Chase matched a cracker with a piece of cheese, inspecting both carefully before raising the snack to his lips. “I’m so sorry about Kyla and Kim. But if you’d been here, you might have been killed, too.”

  Sam didn’t respond. As a child, she’d been sleeping, absent from her mother’s deathbed. Absent, out kayaking alone when her colleague died in the Galapagos Islands. Absent, away in Idaho when her friends died right here.

  In age, Sam was nearly equidistant between Kyla and Kim. But she shared a special bond with Kyla, perhaps because they resembled each other, at least superficially. Like Sam, Kyla was petite with long white-blond hair, although Kyla had warm brown eyes and a splash of playful freckles across her nose, while Sam’s skin was uniformly pale and her eyes were a cool gray-green. Also like Sam, Kyla spent weeks at a time backpacking in the wild, while Kim worked behind a desk, escaping only for occasional day hikes with her daughter and Sam.

  Kindred spirits were hard to find. The loss of her friends felt like a bruise that might never heal. Sam touched her fingers to Chase’s thigh. “You checked the case file for me, right? What do they have?”

  Chase covered her cold fingers with his own warm ones. “You really want to know?”

  She nodded. “It can’t hurt any more than it does already.”

  Letting go of her hand, he pulled a wad of pages from the pocket of his windbreaker, smoothed them across his thigh, and read. “Kyla Quintana-Johnson was shot in the back with a 30-06 rifle bullet. A second bullet, most likely from a .357 revolver, was lodged in her brain. That bullet entered her forehead.”

  Sam sucked in a breath that made her heart hurt.

  “Kimberly Quintana was killed by a single .357 bullet to the brain that entered through her forehead.”

  At least, Sam tried to console herself, their deaths sounded like they’d happened quickly. The women hadn’t been raped or tortured.

  “No bullet casings or other bullets were found in the vicinity of the bodies, and unfortunately, those are very common weapons. The surrounding ground was hard and dry; the only footprints found were near the lakeshore. Imprints were taken of those; bits and pieces of trash collected from around the scene, but there are no links to anything substantive yet. The trail register was checked, but the pages were wet and the pencil was missing and no hikers had signed in on that day.”

  That figures, Sam thought. The registers, which were supposed to be used by the Forest Service to record trail usage by hikers, were rarely collected. Often the pages inside the crude wooden boxes had no place left to write and there was no implement provided to write with.

  “No witnesses found so far.”

  The lake in front of her morphed into an impressionist painting. Sam wiped at her tear-filled eyes but only succeeded in blurring her vision even more. “Can I see the crime scene photos?”

  “No.” Chase folded the pages and stuffed them back in his pocket. “Trust me; you don’t want to remember your friends that way.” He checked his watch, then stood up. “We both need to get moving.”

  Taking his hand, she pulled herself up from the rock. “Was there anything in there about suspects?”

  “Christopher Rawlins and Troy Johnson are regarded as persons of interest.”

  “No way.” Sam shook her head. She’d spent time with both Kyla’s boyfriend and Kim’s husband. Neither seemed remotely capable of premeditated murder. “Troy’s the one who convinced me to take this damn job.”

  “At least it’s a normal job,” Chase said.

  “Is it?” She’d had so many crazy assignments in the past, she couldn’t be sure.

  In less than three hours, she needed to be back in Bellingham at the offices of Washington Wilderness Quest. There she would take charge of a troop of troubled teens whose surly attitudes would supposedly be changed forever by a twenty-one-day trek into the backcountry.

  * * * * *

  “Please, Sam, I’m desperate,” Troy Johnson had begged her only a week ago.

  Troy was Kim’s grieving husband, Kyla’s grieving father. Although their talk was supposed to be about business, and they were in a busy brewpub, it was proving to be a painful experience for both of them.

  “I can more or less cope with Kim’s admin jobs,” he confided, sliding his eyeglasses up his nose. The glasses were thickly framed in black, an old style that was all the latest rage. “I can’t take Kyla’s place out in the field. Our other field guide already left for his teaching job in Montana.” He drew a line down the side of his sweating beer glass with his fingertip. “We have seve
ral grant applications out right now, and there’s no way we’ll land a single one if we don’t have a full contingent of qualified staff. You’d be a perfect field guide, Sam.”

  She’d scoffed at that idea. “I am a wildlife biologist, Troy. I have zero experience with counseling troubled kids. Zero experience with kids, period.”

  If Kim were still alive, she could have told her husband that humans were Sam’s least favorite species.

  They were seated in a corner of the tap room at Boundary Bay, and the ambient roar was growing as the pub filled with drinkers.

  “You have all the skills we need in the field.” Troy leaned in to be heard, his elbows on the table as he ticked off the requirements on his long fingers. “You have a college degree. You’re a mature, stable adult.”

  Sam speculated that the “stable” part might be stretching the truth a bit.

  “You have extensive wilderness experience in all sorts of weather; and you are a certified Wilderness First Responder for medical emergencies. And since you taught tracking skills for us earlier this year, you already know the system.”

  “I was only there for a few days,” she argued, leaning forward, too.

  “We’ll teach you some techniques for dealing with the kids. Maya will be with you. She knows the ropes now. Aidan Callahan will be your other peer counselor. He knows what he’s doing. The peer counselors carry gear, help set up and break down camp, keep watch on the client kids, and generally do whatever you tell them to. In the field, you’re their boss.”

  Wow. She’d never had assistants before; she was usually a team of one.

  “You’ll have the backup of the mental health counselors in the office, and they’ll take your place for two days halfway through the session to give you a break and check up on the kids.”

  Lifting his beer, Troy took a sip. Deep lines carved his forehead above weary gray eyes, and his cheeks were hollowed above his carefully trimmed white beard. Like Kyla’s, Troy’s hair was straight and pale, although his was more white than blond now. “You can’t say you’re not experienced in working with challenging teens; I see what you’ve done for Maya.”