“It’s okay, son.” He smiled at the boy. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’ll never let them get you.”
He wished he felt as sure as he sounded. The helicopters, the hunters. They’d violated the Canyon of Souls, handling his beloved like she was garbage. He fingered the pistol that lay in his lap. He’d never shot one before; he didn’t even know if this one worked.
The boy was sitting up now. The dim lantern light revealed the swallows returning from their sundown hunt and settling into their nests with high-pitched chirps. Then the child’s wide blue eyes turned toward the water burbling below them. He held out a chubby arm in the direction of the shining liquid and raised himself onto his knees.
The man grabbed the boy’s sweatshirt. “Don’t you even think of going near that water!” the man growled. “How many times do I have to tell you? You could die there.”
A wave of dizziness swept over Sam. She pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, lowered her forehead onto her knees. The fabric of her pants was scratchy, stiff with dried blood. Kent’s blood. Cougar blood. What she wouldn’t give to have Perez’s magic fingers massaging her neck right now.
She wanted to hate Adam, but she felt only numbness toward him. He’d challenged her to prove that a cougar hadn’t killed Zack, and so far she’d failed.
What a horrible world. She’d come to Heritage National Monument to write happy stories and take pretty pictures to show that nature was a precious jewel, that wildlife deserved to be protected. She felt as if a tornado had touched down and sucked her up into a vortex of missing children, skulls, pedophiles, self-serving TV reporters, and trigger-happy hunters.
A trio of twinkling lights moved slowly across the sky in a steady line, passing in and out of the clouds. Strange to think of people flying at hundreds of miles per hour while she had labored all day to hike a dozen on earth.
The chorus of tree frogs rose in volume. It was a comforting sound, a nonhuman sound, the true music of earth. She shouldn’t sleep, she really shouldn’t. Zack was still missing. Fred and Charlie were out there somewhere, their secrets still intact.
Kent and the cougar had been shot, and the USDAWS hunters were coming at noon tomorrow. And she’d accomplished nothing. How could she sleep?
Her head was spinning, her ears humming with tiny fever voices. Her leg throbbed. The deep rhythmic croaking enveloped her. She dreamed of trying to catch packages falling from helicopters overhead. On close inspection, the fallen objects turned out to be corpses of babies and cats.
A gentle percussion woke her. Tap. Tap-tap. Distant gunfire? Had the slaughter begun before sunrise? Raising her head sent a sharp pain through her neck and shoulders. She shook out her hands and lowered her legs, gritting her teeth as she straightened her injured leg. The thigh was swollen with infection, but bearable; she could make it back to camp and doctor herself there. She was glad to be alive; grateful that the rain of bodies was only a nightmare. The helicopter, though, was real; she could hear the rumble of its engine fading away down the valley.
The sky was a dark mauve. Dawn would be brightening the eastern edge of the mesa above, but the sun had not yet pierced the shadows of the Temple Rock overhang. She leaned toward the edge of the roof on which she sat. Her hand brushed something metallic. She picked it up. Her energy bar, intact in its foil wrapper. How strange. Had she had it with her all the time? A pile of cashews was heaped beside it. A chill ran down her spine. She hadn’t been carrying any nuts. She glanced around, her eyes wide.
A movement in the brush beyond the ruins caught her attention: a fawn, its hooves echoing a hesitant trail across the rocks. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Ready to bolt at any moment, probably spooked by the helicopter. It sniffed the air delicately. Had the racket scared off the doe, leaving the white-rumped baby alone? The dark nostrils flared. Sam wondered if the fawn smelled her; she was certainly fragrant enough.
The fawn tensed and pricked its ears, its liquid eyes focused on the plaza below her. Probably waiting for a signal from its mother. Sam shoved the nuts and energy bar into her vest pockets, rolled onto her hands and knees, and crawled carefully to the edge of the roof to get a look. Instead of another deer on the plaza, a man slunk toward the ruins.
19
WITH the rising sun still behind the cliff, the man was in deep shadow; she couldn’t make out his features. Fred Fischer? Coyote Charlie? She had to get a look at his face.
After leaping down the ladder, she hugged the wall as she crept to the doorway. There. Only a few yards away. He would cross in front of her in a matter of seconds. Crap! Was he coming inside? Coming for her?
She leapt out of the doorway, landed with her feet spread shoulder width apart, the pepper spray clutched in both hands and trained on him. “Freeze!”
The figure stopped, his arms dropping to his sides, a shapeless hulk in the dim light. Clothing rustled. Was he pulling a gun? The blood roared in her head.
Her finger pressed against the trigger of the pepper spray. “I said freeze!” Thank God her voice sounded stronger than she felt.
“This is as frozen as I get.”
Chase Perez.
She ran to him, threw her arms around his waist. His nylon jacket parted and she laid her cheek against his chest. The flannel shirt he wore underneath was soft as velvet. Her fingers slid beneath his daypack, identified the holster at the back of his belt. She breathed him in. Soap, deodorant, shaving lotion. Then her thoughts flashed to her own strong scent, to her filthy hair and bloody clothes. What the heck was she was doing?
Abruptly, she broke away, stepped back. The dawn air was frigid on her neck and hands. Only her cheeks were hot. “Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry.” He grinned. “I can’t remember when a woman was so glad to see me.”
His cheeks and chin were freshly shaven, his dark hair barely tousled from the breeze. She must look a wreck. Her braid had slithered down inside her vest during the night. She pulled it out, patted down the wisps at her temples, and clasped her hands in front of her. Her fingernails were filthy, she noted with disgust. She tried to make her voice casual. “I’ve had a rough night.”
“So I gathered. I tried to call you, but your phone was turned off.”
She told him about the phantom in the ruins last night, about the energy bar and nuts she’d found this morning. She apologized again for grabbing him. “I think hunger made me a little hysterical.” Not to mention a teensy fear of death. She leaned toward his pack and sniffed. “Is that turkey I smell?”
“Are you part bloodhound or something?” Perez reached into his daypack, pulled out a plastic-wrapped sandwich.
Her mouth immediately filled with saliva. “Is that your lunch?” Not that she really cared. “I’ll trade you an energy bar and some nuts of questionable origin.”
He dismissed the trade with a flick of his hand. “It’s okay, I had a big breakfast. Pancakes, eggs, sausage.”
“You probably had dinner last night, too.” She tore the plastic wrap from the sandwich. “How’s Kent?” she said through a mouthful.
“He’s in intensive care.”
Still? That didn’t sound hopeful.
Perez noted her expression. “He took a bullet through the lung; that’s never easy. But he’s young. He’s tough.”
All that blood. Puddles and streams of it. Sam wasn’t as certain of Kent’s chances as Perez sounded.
“The cat’s in great shape. But you might want to try a little higher dosage next time. I had to hold him down while we were landing.”
She smiled at the image, took another bite.
“You’ll have to get someone else to sit on him when you bring him back,” he continued. “FBI agents are allowed to wrestle cougars only once a year. It’s in the rule book.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“You look flushed.” He held the back of his hand up to her brow.
She shied away from his long cool fingers. If he caressed her right now, she
’d start blubbering or something equally humiliating. “Did you find Fred Fischer? Or the hunters? Or—please, God—Zack?”
“No Fischer, no hunters. The gate guards didn’t spot any of ’em. No sign of Zack. But you’ll be happy to know that the police in Floral showed up at Buck Ferguson’s house with a search warrant last night.”
She was surprised. “But Kent said it probably wasn’t Ferguson.”
Perez shrugged. “I neglected to pass on that tidbit. One hunter was wearing an Eagle Tours cap, and for all we know, one or more of Ferguson’s rifles had been used. Besides, we wanted to see his reaction.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Apoplectic.”
Sam grinned. “I suppose it’s too much to hope a television news crew was there?”
“No coverage. Sorry. We confiscated his weapons to check them against the bullet we recovered.”
The scene in Sam’s mind made her feel so good that for a fleeting moment she wondered if Perez had orchestrated the raid to please her.
“We can’t let anyone believe that violating federal laws will go unpunished,” he said, dispelling her crazy notion. “Maybe Ferguson will think twice next time about inciting his followers to bring loaded weapons into the park.”
She choked down the last mouthful of sandwich. “Have you checked Ferguson’s whereabouts at the time of Zack’s disappearance?”
Perez handed her a water bottle. “At home, eating dinner, or so he says. No witnesses; the wife was off visiting relatives in Idaho.”
So Ferguson had no alibi. He and Fischer knew each other. Sam’s thoughts tumbled wildly. Ferguson wanted to hunt cougars again; Fischer wanted . . . to kill people? In the bright light of day, that notion seemed bizarre beyond reason.
“Fred Fischer really tried to ransom his own son?” she asked.
“Looks like it. He was sure that Jenny’s parents would come up with the dough. He just didn’t count on us showing up to manage the process.” Perez shook his head. “What a rank amateur. He didn’t even get his hands on the money. His connection with Ferguson is troubling, though.”
“Maybe Ferguson and Fischer are collaborating to sell Zack on the adoption market. Someone brought Zack up here.”
“Oh yeah, Castillo told me. Let’s see it.”
She pulled the small wheel from her pants pocket.
Perez stared at it blankly.
“It’s the wheel from Zack’s truck.”
He slipped a plastic bag from his pants pocket, held it out in a familiar gesture. She dropped the wheel inside. He examined it through the plastic. “Might be from the kid’s toy. And Fischer was probably your thief,” he added. “The timing’s right.”
She shook her head. “No, Fischer would have taken my money. All that was missing from my knapsack was survival gear. Which sounds more like Coyote Charlie; McElroy said he stole food from them at the fire circle. I’ve been doing more research, too. I think Charlie may be an environmental activist from Oregon, a member of a group called Earth Spirits.”
“Speaking of Oregon . . .” Perez pulled a rolled-up tube of fax paper from his jacket pocket.
She studied the crumpled photo he gave her. Slender face, fine straight hair, thin, slightly parted lips. Pale eyes fringed with long dark lashes stared back defiantly, as if the teenager resented having her picture taken. “Am I supposed to know this girl?”
“Dental records matched our skeleton to her. Barbara Jean Bronwin, reported missing from Portland, Oregon, three years ago.”
Bronwin . . . something about the name seemed familiar. “How’d she end up here all the way from Portland, Oregon?”
Perez shrugged. “According to her parents, at sixteen Barbara Jean joined a radical environmental group and spent her days chained to trees. The Bronwins own Portland Plywood, so you can guess how well Barbara’s new political passion went over. Then she got pregnant.”
In the photo, Barbara Jean Bronwin’s huge dark eyes gazed earnestly into the camera. Like a curious deer. “Fawn Bronwin!” Sam blurted.
Perez raised an eyebrow. She told him about the Earth Spirits and their “Native American” names.
“Sounds like a match,” he agreed.
Sam stared at the photo of the girl. So young, so righteous. Pregnant. She grabbed his arm. “Perez, remember the homeless girl Kent described? The one with the beautiful brown eyes, the one that was ‘out to here’?” She held her arm out in the same gesture Kent had used. “It could have been Barbara. Kent said she was with a man back then. Maybe it was one of the Earth Spirits.”
“Her parents couldn’t supply any names,” Perez said, “and we haven’t located any of her friends yet. Apparently Barbara didn’t live at home much; she’d been reported as a runaway several times. According to the report, a girlfriend said Barbara Jean was going to meet her boyfriend in Arizona. She was last seen hitching a ride in a semi.”
Sam raised her head. “A semi? Fischer—”
He finished for her. “Has been a truck driver for years. And he drives all over the West.”
Had Fred Fischer been the man in the park with Barbara? Sam’s head was spinning. She’d found Barbara Jean “Fawn” Bronwin among the Earth Spirits while searching for Coyote Charlie. But Barbara Jean had a link to Fred Fischer? Fischer, Ferguson, Barbara, Coyote Charlie? Could they all know each other? The six degrees of separation theory was starting to feel very real. “How’d Barbara Jean die?”
“Her skeleton showed no signs of foul play. But that doesn’t mean much. She could have been strangled or stabbed or suffocated.”
Sam rubbed a hand across her brow. He raised his hands. “Who knows?” So many causes of death, so easily enumerated. Perez went on. “She could have died somewhere else and been dumped here. We have only bones to go on; and they’ve been exposed to the elements for six to twelve months.”
“What happened to Barbara Jean’s baby? Have they found more skeletons?”
He shook his head. “They’re still looking. You may be right that Coyote Charlie’s probably involved in this somehow—the fact that both he and Barbara are from Oregon is a heck of a coincidence. If he knew Barbara, maybe he came looking for her. But Fred Fischer’s our current priority, and our first victim is still unaccounted for. Fred Fischer had means and motive, and Zack would go with him without a fight. We’ve got to find both of them.”
A helicopter roared by overhead, flying low over the ruins. It rose higher and drifted out over the valley. She prayed it wasn’t full of hunters.
Sam held her hands to her ears as she watched the chopper grow smaller, thinking about Fred Fischer. “Yesterday, you said Ferguson saved Fischer from reform school. Did you find anything more about that?”
“Ferguson got Fred into a ‘tough love’ sort of school. Woodland Challenge? Something like that.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Wilderness Challenge?”
“That sounds right.”
A small flare of real hope ignited in Sam. She hefted Perez’s daypack, shoved it at him. “We’ve got to go to the Curtain.”
He nodded. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like a good place to cache a body. Or multiple bodies.”
“It could hold half the bodies in Arlington National Cemetery. But that’s not the main reason we need to go there. Wilderness Challenge was the precursor to Outward Bound. They developed the climbing course.”
“So Fischer knows the Curtain.” Perez’s brown eyes gleamed. “Is your leg up to the hike?”
She lifted the torn flap of her trousers to reveal the red weals, now puffy and edged with yellow ooze. “It smarts, but I’ll live. We’d better hustle. It’s five miles away and straight up most of the way.”
His gaze rose to the cliffs above. “That’s the only way in?”
“There’s an opening in the cliffside about three hundred feet below here, where Curtain Creek empties out of the last chamber. We’ll come out there, beside the waterfall.”
“Can’t we go in
that way?”
“We’d have to climb up through the chambers instead of down. It’d take us just as long, and it’d be harder going—the walls are straight up in the uppermost room. We wouldn’t be able to climb out that way without equipment. Let’s get going. It’ll take us at least two hours to get there.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He stalked away toward the open area near the trail, his cell phone in hand.
She shouldered her knapsack. A helicopter roared close again. Damn machine. Pulling out the camera, she snapped a photo as the helicopter hovered low, ripping leaves from the aspens in a golden tornado. Then Perez was by her side again, his hand on her arm.
“C’mon,” he yelled in her ear. “I got us a ride.”
20
CRAWLING onto the helicopter felt like joining the enemy. Sam had signed dozens of petitions against aerial tours in wild areas.
Perez jumped in. Squeezing through the door, she dropped into the seat beside him, wincing at a sudden sharp pain from her leg wound. She was surprised to find Meg Tanner riding shotgun beside the pilot. The woman interrupted her conversation with the pilot only briefly to acknowledge them. “Agent Perez, Westin.”
“Top of the Curtain, where Outward Bound goes in,” Perez instructed. Tanner pointed to the map she held stretched over the instrument panel. The pilot nodded, and the helicopter rose from the ground.
“The Curtain’s off limits to most visitors. What do you hope to find there?” Tanner asked. She scowled in Sam’s direction. “And why is Westin with you?”
Perez leaned toward her. “FBI business.”
Tanner glared at him for a few seconds, then turned and continued her previous conversation in a loud voice. “The press won’t leave Jenny Fischer alone. I took her home with me last night so the poor woman could get some rest. The damn media! Even the locals have gone berserk—did you hear Mrs. Mendez shot the Carellis’ dog?”
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