Endangered (A Sam Westin Mystery Book 1)

by Pamela Beason

  Sam shouted again. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Yeah, right. She’d never shot anything but tranquilizer guns. But how hard could it be? Thousands of people did it every year, and some of them were idiots. Warning shot first; she really didn’t want to kill anyone. She aimed just above Davinski’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet pinged exactly where she was aiming, releasing a little puff of dust, then smacked off the wall behind Davinski and then off the wall just inches away from Perez’s ear. Davinski flinched, but Perez amazingly did not. He delivered a blow to the side of Davinski’s head that gave Sam an instant headache. As the other man went limp beneath him, Perez rolled off him and whipped a zip tie from his jeans pocket. Then Davinski shot up, managing to get his hands on the edge of the kiva, pulling himself up to the rim.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Sam groaned. As his head emerged from the rim of the kiva, she drew back her foot and kicked out hard, connecting with his temple. Davinski dropped from the rim, hitting his head hard on the packed earth floor; he stayed down this time. Flipping Davinski over, Perez quickly bound his wrists together and then moved down to Davinski’s legs, tying his ankles together only a second before Davinski started thrashing again.

  Perez pulled himself to his feet. His hair was wet with sweat; his face was covered with blood and dirt. “God, Summer,” he said, “Haven’t you ever heard of ricochet?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He hefted the ladder into place, leaned on it panting for a minute, and then climbed up.

  Davinski rolled over and lay looking up at them. Across his left temple and cheek was the deep red imprint of her hiking boot. Sam was glad to see she hadn’t killed him.

  “Are you going to leave him down there?” she asked.

  “Hell yes.” Blood dribbled from a cut on Perez’s bottom lip onto the collar of his white T-shirt as he leaned over and pulled the ladder out of the kiva.

  Zachary ran to Sam and threw his arms around her thigh. Glaring at Davinski in the kiva, he spat, “Bad man! I hate you!”

  “That’s right, Zack. He’s a bad man.”

  The little boy picked up a loose rock and threw it, hitting Davinski in the thigh. Then Zack turned and grinned. Probably not a behavior that should be encouraged, Sam thought, but she couldn’t really blame the kid.

  She pulled the camera from her pack and captured a shot of Zack standing above his kidnapper. Zack happily obliged her by tossing another pebble down onto Davinski.

  Sam put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “That’s enough, Zack.” She stared down at Davinski, who lay quietly, his pale blue eyes staring up, focused on nothing. “How could you let it all go so wrong, Karl?” she murmured.

  “It was perfect,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Then Barbie got sick and left me . . .” A tear rolled down his weathered cheek.

  “I know you loved her, Karl. And David’s death was an accident, wasn’t it?” she said softly. “Maybe he was just playing on those rocks?”

  “He won’t stay put unless I leave him on the island.”

  The pile of rocks in the Wreck Room, surrounded by Curtain Creek, would look like an island.

  “And I have to go out hunting. I have to be a good father.” Davinski groaned. “David’s afraid of the water. I tell him he’ll go over the falls.” His gaze shifted to meet hers. “We live off the land. This is the Anasazi Garden of Eden, you know.” Davinski’s cracked lips curved into an eerie smile. “I was reborn here. And now David is, too. He was lost but now is found.”

  Perez had one eyebrow raised. “Guess that about sums it up,” he said. “I’ll come back for him and for the . . . David . . . as soon as we can get a copter up here.”

  Outside, somewhere far away, she heard the crack of a rifle shot. Then another. “The phone, Perez! Give me my phone.” Grabbing it from him, she galloped to the edge of the plaza and lowered herself painfully down the steps onto the mesa, punching in numbers as she went.

  She entered the wrong number, got a gas station in Las Rojas. “Shit!” she yelled in the unlucky attendant’s ear. She punched End, made herself take a deep breath. Two more pops drifted up from somewhere below. Definitely gunfire. She carefully punched in the park headquarters’ number.

  “Heritage National Monument.” A woman’s voice. Didn’t sound familiar. She could barely hear it at all. The battery was nearly dead.

  “Stop the hunt!” she yelled.

  “Madam,” began the answerer, “I understand that you’re upset—”

  “This is Summer Westin, up on the plateau. I’m with an agent from the FBI—”

  “And I’m Cinderella,” the woman snapped. “Look, ma’am—”

  Perez, holding Zack in one arm, plucked the phone from her grip. He identified himself, then said, “I’m holding Zachary Fischer in my arms right now.” He listened for a minute, then held the phone to Zack’s mouth. “Say hi, Zack.”

  “Hi!” the little boy screeched. “Mommy?”

  Perez moved the phone to his ear again. “We need a helicopter up here immediately. We’re on the path below the ruins, starting down toward . . .”

  “Village Falls,” Sam supplied. “A helicopter could land near the bottom.”

  “Village Falls,” he repeated into the phone. He paused. “I’m ordering you to stop the cougar hunt immediately.”

  Sam chewed a fingernail to the quick in the long silence that ensued.

  “Well, you’d better damn well figure it out,” Perez finally snarled. He punched End.

  The look on his face was not encouraging. “What did she say?”

  He pushed Zack up onto his shoulders. “She’s on loan from Canyonlands. She’s not sure who to call about the helicopter. And she didn’t know how to contact the hunters.”

  * * * * *

  They hiked down the rocky trail through the rain, which was now a mere drizzle.

  “Fischer’s still unaccounted for,” Perez told his partner through heavy static. “I’ll tell you the details later. I need you to call off the federal guns. Now.”

  “Nicole promised that she would try to end it ASAP,” he told Sam when he’d ended the call. “At least that’s what I thought she was saying. The phone went dead before she finished the sentence.”

  It wasn’t enough for Sam, who watched her boots descend the trail as if they belonged to someone else. She should be running, screaming, anything to stop the senseless slaughter. Zack was finally safe and sound, but the cougars were going to die anyway. But even as her mind was on fire, her body was, too. Every muscle ached. She felt every scratch and gouge: the cougar stripes on her thigh, the scrapes along her backbone. Her shredded clothing chafed against the welts and glued itself to the bloody areas. Her scalp throbbed nearly as much outside as her head ached inside.

  Zack, wearing one of her black garbage bags for a raincoat, rode on top of the agent’s pack. Perez kept a protective hand clutched around one of the child’s ankles. Zack’s fingers formed a pale headband across the FBI agent’s bronze forehead.

  The storm had transformed the bone-dry park into a spectacular display of falling water. Village Falls was a thundering cascade, and Sam shivered, watching it. She and Zack had almost plunged over along with all that water. The rain dissolved into a light mist. As a helicopter rocketed toward them, they waited near the shimmering pool cradled by red rock. Their clothing steamed in the sunshine.

  “Take us to the hunters,” Sam ordered the pilot. Perez rode next to the man, and Sam strapped herself, with Zack on her lap, into the seat in back, crowding in with a pile of equipment.

  “My orders are to deliver you to park headquarters,” the pilot said. “Medics are standing by to give you and the boy aid. And the press is waiting, too.”

  “Has the hunt been called off?” she asked.

  “Don’t know.” The pilot swiveled his head in her direction and she found herself staring at her own reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. “I’m not part of that.”

  �
�You’re about to become part of that,” Perez snapped.

  There were three groups of hunters. They found one cluster near the top of Powell Trail, where it flattened out over the mesa. Their dogs were still on leashes and there was no wildlife in sight. The pilot contacted the leader on his radio, then handed it to Perez, who delivered the order to cease and return to base. Looking up, the man in fatigues waved in acknowledgment.

  They flew over the plateau toward the northern border of the park. The helicopter, buzzing low over the mesa, scattered a group of mule deer, and Sam watched the does and fawns dart frantically in all directions. In its panic, one fawn, trying to make an impossible leap to the top of a boulder, crashed into the rock and collapsed in a heap below.

  Sam pressed her hand to the window and leaned close as they passed over.

  “Bambi!” Zack chirped from her lap. “Bambi hurt!” He flattened his nose against the glass.

  They both breathed a sigh of relief as the fawn unfolded its long legs and staggered after its mother.

  The second group of hunters, only a couple of miles from the northern border of the park, seemed relieved to turn around and head back to their vehicles. The pilot was on his radio, quizzing someone about the location of the final group. He pulled a lever and they swung in a circle back in the direction from which they’d come.

  “They’re on Horsehip Mesa,” he said. “Near Rainbow Bridge.”

  A cold dread gripped Sam. Leto’s territory. She watched the helicopter’s shadow slide over the mesas and canyons below. Life seemed distant and passing way too fast from up here. In one treed valley, she spotted two black hulks crouched in the sparse underbrush between the aspens. Black bears? She’d seen droppings during her tenure in the park but never an actual bear.

  ZigZag Passage appeared below, then the yellow markers and two blue-coated workers of the FBI forensics team, shoulder to shoulder, discussing something. They looked up and, spotting Perez in the front passenger seat, waved.

  The canyon fell away beneath them, and the pilot hovered over the chasm briefly, searching. Perez was the first to spot the hunt. “There.” He pointed to the ridgeline.

  Just east of Rainbow Bridge, two tawny shapes hurtled over the rough terrain toward the canyon lip. Sam sucked in a breath. Leto, Artemis. From the maze of hoodoos farther back, a third cat appeared, running full out after the others, with a pair of spotted hounds fifty feet behind. Oh God, Apollo, too.

  Zack wriggled in her lap, digging a hard little kneecap into her thigh as he pressed closer to window. “Cougie!” he chirped. “Cougie run!”

  The mountain lions were only a hundred yards or so from the hoodoos when the men appeared, four of them in desert camouflage gear, galloping after their dogs. One of them paused to sight down his rifle barrel, gave up, continued the pursuit on foot. The baying of the dogs was audible even inside the helicopter.

  Perez picked up the radio. “Hunters below, hunters below. This is the FBI. Stop the hunt. I repeat, stop the hunt! Lay down your weapons!”

  The chase below continued without interruption. The female cats had reached the rock bridge now and streaked across, running low and close to the wet rock. Steam rising from the arch rendered the scene surreal, mountain lions speeding through desert fog. Sam hoped that the arch escape route would finish the chase, but Apollo stopped at the eastern end and turned to face the hounds on his tail. A hundred yards back, the hunters halted. Two dropped to one knee. They raised their rifles.

  “Set this thing down!” Sam yelled. “We’ve got to land.”

  The pilot shook his head. Apollo and the dogs danced close together, the hounds rushing in to nip at the cat, then retreating from the bared teeth and razor-sharp claws. They were directly overhead now and the cacophony of barking was loud.

  “You have a public address system on this thing?” Perez shouted to the pilot. The man flipped a switch and handed Perez a set of headphones with a tiny microphone attached.

  “Federal hunters below!” Perez shouted. “FBI. Cease fire! This is the FBI. Cease fire!”

  One hunter looked up briefly. But then a puff of dust erupted from the rock near Apollo’s feet, and the hunter sighted down his own rifle barrel again.

  “Max volume!” Perez ordered.

  “That’s it,” the pilot said. “Maybe it’s not working right.”

  “Cease fire! Lay down your weapons!” Perez bellowed into the mike.

  He might as well have been shouting out the window for all the impact it had. Sam watched in horror as a hunter shifted from his rifle’s recoil. Another puff of dust exploded under Apollo’s belly. “Damn it!” she yelled in frustration.

  Zack shifted under their mutual seat belt and started to cry. Sam’s gaze searched the interior of the chopper, landed on a bright yellow nylon sack just to the left of her feet. The word emergency was printed on it in large block letters. Well, this was an emergency. She leaned over, dug her fingers into the slick material. Zack, squeezed beneath the seat belt in her lap, screeched. She hauled the sack up onto the bench seat next to her. Heavy.

  Two more shots sounded below. Zack sobbed and kicked her as she struggled to drag the yellow bag across them both.

  The pilot turned in his seat to look at them.

  “Perez!” she yelled. “Open your door!”

  He stopped his litany into the microphone.

  “Open your goddamn door!” she shouted over Zack’s screams.

  “No!” the pilot yelled.

  “Chase! Just do it!” Sam screeched.

  Perez’s form shifted to the right. Something clicked, and the door swung out. The dogs’ barking was louder now, but nothing in comparison to Zack’s screaming. The bag stuck in the confined space between seat and door. She punched it into position with her feet, booted it out into space.

  The yellow bag hurtled down, spinning as it fell. It landed between Apollo and one of the dogs with a loud whump. Dogs and mountain lion all leapt into the air as if propelled by the impact, the dogs turning away toward their owners and the cougar launching himself from the canyon rim. At the corner of her vision, Sam registered the upright hunter stumbling, startled by the bag’s impact, but her gaze was centered on Apollo, who seemed to hang suspended in midair as he leapt for the bridge. For an instant, the distance seemed impossible, the fall to the sandstone canyon floor below a certainty. But then his forepaws impacted the rock arch. The cat swung his hindquarters around, skidding slightly to the side as he corrected his course, then bounded across the bridge to disappear between the boulders at the far side.

  The wind buffeted her face. Zack screamed into her ear. The pilot was swearing, something about a life raft and thousands of dollars. In the midst of the cacophony, she heard Perez ask, “Are you done?”

  “I think so.” She patted him on the shoulder in case he couldn’t hear.

  He closed the door with a thump, cupped his hand over the microphone and issued the cease and desist orders again. The hunters finally responded by shouldering their weapons.

  “Return to base,” Perez’s voice said over the loudspeaker.

  One of the hunters raised his arms in a questioning gesture.

  “Zachary Fischer has been recovered.” Perez answered. “Alive and well.”

  At the mention of his name, the little boy stopped screaming. “Me Zack,” he said softly. “I want Mommy!”

  Sam ruffled the silky hair on the top of his head. “Okay, Zack. Let’s go find her.”

  Their arrival had obviously been announced; a crowd awaited them in the headquarters parking lot. Even from five hundred feet above the valley floor, Sam could make out Jerry Thompson’s rotund shape. Tanner’s grizzled head was bent close to Jenny Fischer’s bedraggled figure. Carolyn Perry’s crimson KUTV blazer stood out like a flame. And worse, a blond man in a navy windbreaker and handsome enough to be an actor stood close by, holding a microphone and talking earnestly at a camera in front of him.

  What was Adam doing here? Walking backward
, he positioned himself between the camera and the helicopter as they touched down on the asphalt.

  As soon as the rotor slowed, Thompson was at the door.

  The little boy tugged on Sam’s braid. “Mommy?” he whispered hopefully.

  Turning Zack around, Sam pointed into the crowd. “Mommy’s right there. Why don’t you wave at her?” She grasped his tiny hand and waggled it back and forth.

  Jenny Fischer staggered forward, her hands clutched to her chest. The young mother’s face was rigid with the tension of hope too long suppressed. She trotted toward them, her eyes fixed on her son. When only a hundred feet remained between them, Sam set the toddler on the ground.

  “Zack?” Jenny’s voice cracked.

  “Mommy!” The little boy ran toward Jenny, then tripped on the long shirt and fell to his knees on the rocky ground. But his mother was there before the first sob could come out, wrapping her arms around him, lifting him up.

  “Oh Zachary, Zack, Zack!” she cried, fiercely kissing the blond curls as she rocked him back and forth. “Mommy missed you so much! So very, very much.”

  She raised her eyes to Sam. Tears streamed down her face. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The press pushed in around them. Sam was conscious of the multiple TV cameras focused on the scene. A microphone was in her face now, so close it was only a silvery blur. “Summer Westin, you’re the hero of the day. What can you tell us?” Adam’s voice. She pushed it away and crawled out of the helicopter, staggering on stiff legs.

  “Babe?” Adam said in a low tone. “Are you all right?” Then his arms were around her. “I am so damned lucky! I came down for the cougar kill, but you delivered the real story. Are we the dream team or what?”

  Over Adam’s arm she could see Perez observing them, his expression cool, inscrutable. Thompson came forward to escort Jenny and Zack through the crowd; the TV crew and onlookers followed the reunited family toward the parking lot. Adam turned his head in that direction. Sam roughly pushed him away. After a surprised glance at her, he followed the media hounds, gesturing for his cameraman to shadow him.