Jake shot Chuck a cruel smile, his face framed by the flickering light of the flames curling from the truck’s engine compartment. He set off at a brisk walk down the drive toward the conference center, disappearing into the darkness, as the fire enveloped the cab of the truck.
Chuck dashed around the truck and climbed the wrecker’s undercarriage hand over hand, flames flickering around him. He reached into the open driver’s door to grab the key ring from where it hung in the ignition.
Black smoke enveloped him as he sidestepped along the truck’s drive shaft to the toolbox. He climbed higher, leaning against the underside of the flatbed. He pulled his flashlight from where it was still wedged in his back pocket and aimed its beam at the ring of keys, flipping to the one he’d used earlier.
The smoke grew thicker as he unlocked the toolbox, threw open the lid, and latched onto two ram horns as they tumbled from the sideways box along with the sacks of calaverite. He pinned the horns to his chest and pulled the heavy rifle case out of the box.
He jumped to the ground and ran from the burning truck, kicking one of the fallen sacks of calaverite ahead of him. Free of the smoke, he stopped and filled his lungs with fresh air, the sack of calaverite at his feet, the horns and case clutched in his arms.
The truck exploded behind him, the force of the blast sending him sprawling to the road. The horns and rifle case tumbled to the ground. He covered his head as flaming bits of metal fell around him.
A sudden quiet followed the explosion. Chuck rose to his knees. The light of the crackling flames, bright around the burning truck, revealed a metal culvert extending beneath the road a few yards away. Chuck ran to the drainage pipe and shoved the horns, rifle case, and sack of calaverite deep into its black mouth.
He turned to see the scrub oak at the edge of the drive beside the truck burst into flames. He watched in horror as the fire climbed from the brush into the branches of a tall, roadside ponderosa. The water-starved tree lit up like a Roman candle, the flames sweeping upward from branch to branch. The heat of the fire radiated off Chuck’s face. In seconds, the flames leapt up the slope to the next ponderosa in the forest.
Chuck calculated the advancing flames’ natural line of travel. From the first ponderosa to the second, and on up the forested slope, the fire would burn straight for Janelle and the girls in the cabin, less than three hundred yards away.
He sprinted into the forest, paralleling the flames. Already the blaze had a twenty-yard head start on him as it burned from tree to tree up the slope.
A sudden gust surged past him, drawn by the voracious appetite of the flames. Ponderosas exploded into fireballs one after another, sending blasts of heat rolling back past him before the breeze again rushed into the fire. Light from the exploding trees probed the forest ahead, illuminating his way.
Digging for traction in the soft forest duff, Chuck gained on the conflagration. Dodging tree trunks and leaping fallen logs, he drew even with the head of the fire, then, as he neared the cabin, drew a few yards ahead of the blaze.
He burst from the trees onto the driveway in front of the cabin just as Janelle and the girls, lit by the oncoming flames, rushed across the deck and down the front stairs. Chuck dove into the driver’s seat of the pickup while Janelle hoisted the girls into the back seat and tumbled in behind them.
Chuck grabbed the keys from the console, fired up the engine, and executed a T-turn off the parking area, the rear bumper ramming the trunk of a tree with a solid chunk. Flaming cinders floated past the windshield as he threw the truck into drive and floored it, spinning the pickup back onto the driveway. Smoke obscured the beams of the headlights as he sped along the two-track away from the cabin and accelerated down the driveway through the forest.
Twenty-five yards ahead, an arm of the racing fire leapt the rutted drive, leaving a solid sheet of flames in its wake.
FORTY-SEVEN
Chuck gripped the steering wheel and gunned the engine, aiming for the wall of flames. The girls screamed from the back seat as the truck rushed into the blazing barrier.
For a long second, all was black and flickering orange. Then the pickup broke through the fire. Burning embers fell away from the hood as they sped down the drive, the acrid scent of wood smoke thick in the truck’s cab.
The headlights lit the driveway, now free of fire, as it descended through the trees. Chuck glanced in the rearview mirror. The girls clung, whimpering, to each other.
“It’s okay,” he told them. “It’s all right. We’re safe now.”
“What happened?” Janelle asked from her seat beside the girls, her voice shaking.
“Truck wreck. The fire took off from there. I’ve never seen anything move so fast.”
“Parker?”
“No. A tow-truck driver.”
“Did anybody get hurt?” Carmelita asked.
“The driver wasn’t injured,” Chuck told her. Unfortunately.
Janelle looked back at the flames obscuring the driveway. “The cabin,” she moaned.
“It’s gone,” Chuck said. “Or it will be.” Shame sliced through him—he had set in motion the chain of events that had led Jake to start the fire.
“My dollies!” Rosie sobbed. “My clothes!”
“Hush, bambina,” Janelle consoled her. “We’re safe. Understand? That’s all that matters.”
In his side mirror, Chuck caught sight of the flames climbing into the night sky above the forest canopy. He twisted his hands on the steering wheel, unable to convince himself that what he saw was real.
They exited the forest behind the lodge and conference center. Guests’ faces plastered the lodge’s rear windows. Chuck swung the truck around to the front of the lodge, where a stream of fire trucks and volunteer firefighter vehicles turned into the resort entrance and poured down the entry road to the open valley floor.
He spun the wheel, skidding away from the oncoming vehicles and speeding along the road around the grass fields toward the dormitories. He glanced over his shoulder, taking in the clogged entry road behind them. “We can’t get out of here right now,” he told Janelle.
He slid to a stop in front of Raven House, hopped from the truck, and looked back the way they’d come. A broad stretch of forest behind the lodge and conference center was ablaze, flames leaping more than a hundred feet into the air. Across the fields, the screech of sirens from emergency vehicles intermingled with the roar of the flames as firefighters aligned their trucks in a defensive perimeter around the two massive log structures. Guests streamed from the lodge, past the emergency personnel, and onto the grass, most dragging suitcases or lugging duffles, many with youngsters by the hand.
Chuck swallowed, his mouth parched, reminding himself over and over that it was Jake who had flicked his cigarette beneath the wrecker, igniting the blaze.
The flames already extended well beyond the cabin. If the fire maintained its present speed, it would burn its way up and out of the broad valley that was home to the resort in less than an hour. From there, it would cross the boundary line into the national park. Not until running out of fuel upon reaching tree line high in the Mummy Range would the flames die out. A huge swath of forest—ponderosa lower down, white fir and blue spruce at higher elevations—would be incinerated.
Janelle and the girls climbed out of the truck, huddling near Chuck as they took in the awful spectacle. He drew them close. Rosie wrapped her arms around his waist. He cupped the back of her head in his hand. “The fire can’t get to us here,” he told her.
Janelle looked west, past the dormitories and dining hall, at the dark forest rising beyond. “You’re sure?”
Chuck pointed to the southwest, equidistant between the cabin, by now surely burned, and the dormitories. “The valley slopes uphill away from us. The fire should keep running that way.”
“Good.” Janelle pressed her palm to Rosie’s head over the back of Chuck’s hand. “Let’s go find your uncle,” she told the girls.
“Yeah,” Car
melita whispered, her eyes fixed on the fire. “Uncle Clarence.”
Chuck turned with Janelle and the girls to find the students filing out the front door of Raven House carrying their personal belongings. Kirina and Clarence followed the last of the students down the front steps and away from the building.
The girls ran to their uncle, who knelt and pulled them to him. He stared over their heads at the towering flames to the south.
Next door to Raven House, the international workers made their way out of Falcon House and gathered at the edge of the fields.
More guests emerged from the cabins and condos arrayed along the north side of the fields, opposite the lodge and conference center. Additional emergency vehicles flowed through the resort entrance—wildland fire trucks, police cars, and more private vehicles of volunteer firefighters, magnetic lights flashing on their roofs. The vehicles joined the defensive perimeter around the historic log lodge and conference center, closest to the flames.
Chuck counted the students as they made their way onto the green expanse of fields in front of Raven House. Eleven.
He hurried over to Clarence and Kirina as they joined the students. “We’re one short. Who’s missing?”
Clarence and Kirina scanned the students.
“Sheila,” Kirina said.
Chuck clenched his jaw. “Check her room, would you?”
Kirina ran back inside as a firefighter, hustling across the fields in floppy rubber boots, approached from the direction of the lodge. His large stomach pressed against his fluorescent-yellow slicker and waterproof pants. Sideburns extended below his broad-brimmed helmet.
“I’m Lieutenant Robinson,” he said between heavy breaths, coming to a stop midway between the students and the employees from Falcon House and addressing both groups. “I need all of you to remain where you are, out here on the grass where it’s safe, until we can find a way to get you into town. A shelter is being arranged at the high school.”
Jeremy spoke up. “What makes you think it’s safe where we’re at?”
The lieutenant aimed a thick finger at the fire. “As long as it maintains its course, you’ll be fine out here in the open.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We’ll deal with it then. The fire is still very active behind the lodge. We’re concentrating our resources there right now.”
“Yeah, but—” Jeremy began.
The firefighter held up a hand. “I have to keep moving.” He set off toward the resort guests grouped at the north end of the fields.
Chuck turned to the students. “You heard him,” he said, aware that the employees from Falcon House, huddled twenty yards away, were listening as well. “We’re okay out here in the fields.”
“For now,” Jeremy said, prompting several students to cast apprehensive glances at the flames rising to the south. Smoke billowed into the sky above the fire, obscuring the stars.
“That’s right.”
“I don’t see why we should wait,” Jeremy insisted. “I say we take the van and head for town.”
“You heard the lieutenant,” Chuck said. “We won’t be going anywhere for a while. Besides, all roads through and around Estes Park will need to remain clear for emergency vehicles.” The students stood so close together their shoulders touched, their eyes on Chuck. “I suggest you make some calls, let your folks know you’re safe.”
Samuel held up his phone. “I’ve been trying. I can’t even get a text to go through. The system’s crashed or something.”
The students groused to one another until Chuck waved his hands for quiet. “I’m sure it’s programmed to let emergency traffic through first.” He pointed at the leaping flames. “Big as this is, I wouldn’t be surprised if we won’t be able to text or make calls for quite a while, maybe all night.” He took a breath. “The thing for you to understand is that you’re safe, all of you. We’re in for a long night, but we’ll be okay. Even if the fire circles around, it won’t get to us out here.”
“It might circle around?” Samuel asked, fear in his voice.
Chuck toed one of the students’ duffle bags resting on the grass in front of him. “That’s why you brought your stuff from your rooms, right? Just in case.”
Kirina exited Raven House, leaving the front door open behind her, the lights of the common room shining onto the front steps. “Sheila’s not in there,” she hollered.
At Chuck’s side, Clarence drew a sharp breath.
FORTY-EIGHT
Clarence put his mouth close to Chuck’s ear. “I was with her,” he said, his voice low.
Chuck blanched. Before he could respond, he spotted Parker’s bright blue pickup speeding around the fields, headed their way.
Jeremy scoffed, “Look there. It’s Peeping Tom, come to make our day.”
Clarence’s words echoed in Chuck’s head as he turned to Jeremy. “Peeping who?”
“The jerk with the binoculars glued to his face.” Jeremy directed an accusatory finger across the fields at Parker’s office window, a black rectangle beneath the eaves of the conference center. “Pervert,” he concluded forcefully.
Chuck drew his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard. Nicoleta, dead. Sheila, missing. And Parker’s admission of his long history of failure with the opposite sex.
Chuck gripped Clarence’s arm. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ve got to find Sheila.”
He left the students to meet the oncoming truck. He halted abruptly when he saw a second figure in the passenger seat.
Parker slid the truck to a stop in the middle of the road and climbed out, slamming the driver’s door behind him. A wiry-framed man exited the passenger side of the truck—Jake.
They met Chuck at the edge of the grass, halfway between the employees and students, Parker’s eyes blazing.
“Jake found me,” Parker snapped. He jerked his head at the fire. “What the hell did you do?”
“Me?” Chuck said. “It was Jake. He started it.”
Jake crossed his arms, his face set.
“Don’t try that with me,” Parker said to Chuck. “He told me how you tricked him into coming out here, and how you threatened him with some crazy idea about his being a poacher. He said you made him wreck; that the fire started from leaking gas.”
“Jake threw his cigarette at the wreck to start the fire and cover his tracks.”
“What tracks?”
“He is a poacher. He’s been killing sheep, rams, for their horns, up on Mount Landen.”
Parker wind-milled his arms at the raging fire, the firefighters building their defensive line around the lodge and conference center, the dozens of guests staring at the flames from the fields. He stuck his finger in Chuck’s face, inches from his nose. “You’ve destroyed everything,” the resort manager cried. “Don’t you understand that? Everything I’ve worked for.”
“I’m telling you, Parker,” Chuck said. “Jake started it. Deliberately. There were horns in a lock box, and the rifle he used.”
Jake smirked.
Parker took half a step away from Chuck. “Horns? A rifle?” He snorted. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
“Parker, please,” Chuck begged.
Jake’s smirk twisted into an oily grin.
Chuck started over. “There’s…there’s…” He almost said the word aloud: gold. But what good would that do at this point? Parker already considered him crazy.
The resort manager drilled into him: “It hasn’t been lost on anyone in Estes Park that the murdered girl died in your arms, Chuck. In your arms. Plus, there’s your brother-in-law’s knife.” Parker waved at the flames. “And now this. I thought I knew you. I trusted you.”
“I didn’t start—”
“Shut up. Just shut up. At this point, I don’t care who started what.” Parker held his palm out to Chuck. “Stay away from me. You’ve done enough.” He surveyed the guests gathered around the edge of the fields. “I’ve got to make sure everyone’s accounted for.”
Chuck bit his tongue. Sheila. He couldn’t say anything to Parker about her, not now.
As Parker’s gaze roamed from the students to his Falcon House employees, Anca detached herself from the group of workers and approached, her satchel over her shoulder, heading straight for Jake.
“You,” she said, fire in her eyes, stopping in front of him. “Why is it you that is here?”
Jake pointed at Chuck. “Him. I’m here because of him.”
Parker looked from Jake to Anca. “What?” he asked. “Who?”
The young woman reached into her handbag. Chuck caught her eye, silently willing her to restrain herself. He was a step ahead of Jake at this point—at least, he believed he was—and he wanted to keep it that way.
Anca hesitated. She jutted her elbow at Jake, her hand still in her bag, and told Parker, “He know her. He know Nicoleta.”
Jake deflected Anca’s allegation with a flip of his fingers. “Of course, I knew her. That piece-of-crap car of hers. Twice she had to call me.”
“You towed her?” Chuck asked.
Jake turned to him. “Didn’t have to. Idle adjustment the first time. She was conked out way up on Trail Ridge. The second time was a flat. I shot some No Leak into her tire and pumped it back up. Didn’t have to tow her in either time. I’m telling you, I saved her a ton of money.”
“You told Hemphill?”
“It didn’t have anything to do with the murder,” Jake said.
Anca said to Chuck, “I was on the Trail Ridge Road with Nicoleta when the car, it would not run. The car-worker man is right, he made it go again.”
“The second time?” Chuck asked her.
“I was not there.” Anca’s eyes narrowed with distrust as she looked at Jake, her hand still in her shoulder bag.
Jake turned to Parker. “Let’s get this over with.”
Anca rooted around inside her cavernous bag.
Chuck stepped between her and Jake. Janelle listened from a few steps away, the girls pressed to her sides. He faced Parker and spoke. “Get what over with?”
Mountain Rampage Page 20