Bones

THURSDAY MORNING, MAY 18

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

Ben and David soon began the next phase of their work, and with the same painstaking care they had taken at Julia Sayre’s grave. Duke and Earl decided to get a little shut-eye, but made Thompson promise to wake them if the anthropologists found anything.

Merrick and Manton took their prisoner some distance from the grave, where Thompson tried to question him, but Parrish was unwilling to say anything about this victim. That is not to say he was silent.

“Do you know why those coyotes died?” Parrish asked, staring at me again.

“No, tell me,” Thompson coaxed.

“For disturbing the peace,” he answered, not so much as glancing away from me. “Now, look at Dr. Sheridan and Dr. Niles. Are they any better than coyotes?”

“What do you mean?” Thompson asked.

“Requiescat in pace.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ask Ms. Kelly. She grew up hearing Latin — at least on Sundays.”

Thompson turned to me.

“It means ‘rest in peace,’ ” I said. “The R.I.P. on old gravestones.”

“You see?” Parrish said. “Do you know the habits of coyotes, Ms. Kelly?”

I didn’t answer.

“They rob graves. They will steal bones and gnaw on them.”

“Coyotes aren’t the only animals that will do that,” Thompson said.

“I don’t like coyotes,” Parrish said, smiling.

I walked away, headed back toward the grave.

Bingle was pleased to see me, and David as well. “Would you mind dog-sitting again?” he asked. “He’s especially restless for some reason.”

I had already realized this. Bingle had been dividing his time between trying to sneak closer to David and turning to bark fiercely toward Parrish.

“Duke and Earl must be ready to kill me,” David said. “They probably managed to fall asleep just in time to have him wake them with all his racket. I don’t know what his problem is.”

“With J.C. and Andy here yesterday, he could command more of your attention.”

“He’s had to sit quietly while I worked on other cases. He’s not usually so unruly. And he seldom reacts to anyone the way he has to Nick Parrish.”

“They should make him a judge,” I said.

David laughed. He showed me that they had already reached a layer of large stones, and could see green plastic in some places. “If this grave wasn’t made by Nick Parrish, he has an imitator,” he said.

“David,” Ben said, on a note of exasperation. He was in one of his crankier moods, and had been frowning throughout the time he had been working on the grave. He didn’t scold me for getting too close to it, though. Progress, I supposed.

Bingle decided to bark at Parrish again.

“Maybe I should take Bingle for a walk,” I said. “Get him away from Parrish for a while. God knows, I’d like to get away from him.” And the smell of decomposition, I thought, but didn’t say so.

“That would be great!” David said. He stopped working and went to get a leash from the dog equipment bag.

“A good idea, Ms. Kelly,” Ben said, carefully scraping soil off the plastic. “I’d prefer to work without curiosity seekers this time.”

“Curiosity seekers?” I said, outraged. “I’m a professional here on a job. If you could just get that idea through your thick skull—”

“What a profession. You profit from other people’s suffering—”

“Excuse me, Saint Ben of the Bones, but—”

“—you’ll peddle the details of another person’s misery to anyone who’s willing to drop a coin at a newsstand—”

“Ben,” I heard a voice say behind me. “Please.” David was back with the leash.

Ben looked away, but couldn’t hide the effort required to keep his anger in check. He scowled at his gloved hands for a long moment, then went back to scraping soil.

David leashed Bingle and made sure that the dog would heel at my command, then he walked with us toward the forest. He seemed preoccupied.

“Bingle won’t stay with me without a leash?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh — no, sorry. He understands that when I give his lead to someone else, he has to stay with that person. Otherwise, I couldn’t depend on him not to take a notion to come and see what I was up to. He might run off and leave you in the middle of the woods.” He smiled. “I could probably make him find you, of course, but it’s easier on everybody if we just give him the message ahead of time.”

“I see — so the leash is to make sure I don’t get lost.”

He laughed. “Exactly.”

I thought he would stop at the edge of the forest, but he continued a little way into it. “About Ben,” he said suddenly. “He has this problem with reporters. I know he can be abrupt—”

“Abrupt?”

“Rude.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, rude,” he admitted. “But you shouldn’t take it personally. I know that outside of your profession, he thinks you’re okay.”

“I’ll have to remember to congratulate myself!”

“I’m not doing a very good job with this, am I?”

“You’re doing fine. Sorry. I shouldn’t take my anger at him out on you. If you’re going to tell me that he’s good-hearted, I already know that.”

“You do?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yes, and not just because Parrish is here to hold up for comparison. I think I first really noticed it when Ben asked you to have Bingle sleep with me — on a night when I think he had come to borrow the dog to ease his own nightmares.”

David nodded.

“Besides, Judge Bingle likes Ben,” I said.

David went down to eye level with Bingle, and caressed the dog’s ruff and ears. Bingle lowered his head, butted it against David’s chest, and held it there, making soft, low sounds of pleasure. “Bingle’s a good judge,” David said. “He likes you, too.”

“The feeling is mutual. But I suspect you were going to try to make a few excuses for your other friend?”

“Not excuses, really. I just thought if you knew — he has his reasons for mistrusting the press.”

“Such as?”

“Just this year, he—” He halted, shook his head, then thought for a moment before saying, “A couple of years ago, when he was working on a plane crash, a TV reporter overheard Ben talking to someone — using one of those spy-type microphones.”

“A parabolic mike.”

“Yes. She went on the air, and misquoted him. That happens to all of us, but this was misinformation that led the victims’ families to hope that they’d be — that the remains would be relatively intact. Do you know what really happens — in a high-impact crash, I mean?”

“Yes,” I said. “The physics aren’t in anybody’s favor.”

“Right. Most of the time, we make identifications on fragments.”

“So the families were upset with him.”

“Yes. I don’t think the thing that bothered him most was that the families were angry with him. He just hated seeing them tormented. People who were grieving, already unable to really accept what had happened, and then this expectation — Ben said it amounted to a form of public torture. I think he was right.”

“So this one incident has tarred all reporters with the same brush?”

“I wish I could tell you it was one incident. There have been photos taken in temporary morgues by hidden cameras. Misinformation about missing persons — you can’t imagine how painful that is for the victims’ families!”

“If you want me to say that I’m proud of everyone in my profession—”

“No, no, of course not. I can tell you about colleagues of ours who make us shake our heads. I’m just trying to help you understand Ben, I guess. Like I said, I don’t want you to take it personally.”

“I don’t,” I said. “But over the long run, Ben won’t be doing you any favors if he’s so openly hostile to the press.”

“There’s more to it than — well, I don’t have any business talking about him in this way, I suppose. I should get back to help him out.”

“Wait a minute, David — please.”

He gave me a questioning look.

“I could take or leave most of the rest of these guys,” I said, “but you and Andy have gone out of your way to be kind to me. I’m grateful for all the time you’ve spent talking to me about your work. So if you tell me that I need to give Ben Sheridan another chance — another dozen chances — I will.”

He smiled at me. “Thanks. Ben has seen me through more than one rough patch. It’s not hard for me to have a little patience with one of his.” He gave Bingle’s fur one last ruffle and said, “Take good care of her, Bingle.”

“I’ll take good care of him, too,” I said.

“Oh, I know that!” he said, laughing as he walked away.

I took my time on the walk. Clouds continued to darken the sky and it rained a little, but not enough to discourage either of us. Bingle enjoyed flopping into a mud puddle before I could stop him, but otherwise, he was content to go wherever I wanted to wander. He was curious about any number of sights and scents and sounds along the way, and some of these, I allowed him to investigate. But if I wanted to keep moving, he never resisted or yanked on the leash or failed to display anything but the best manners.

At some point, I had to own up to the fact that I was escaping. I didn’t really want to see another green plastic bag opened up, another set of decomposing remains. I most especially didn’t want to see what might be at the bottom of that grave.

But as I had told Ben, I had a job to do, and all the arguments I presented to myself about why it was unnecessary for me to be at the site failed to ring true. I made my way back through the woods.

When we were within sight of the meadow, I halted, still not quite ready to leave the quiet of woods behind, to rejoin the men. Bingle lifted his nose, sniffing the air, but otherwise sat quietly beside me.

Flash was standing near the grave, running the video camera. Merrick and Manton were still guarding Parrish, but apparently Duke and Earl had been awakened by Thompson. Like David, the two guards and the detective wore masks and gloves, and knelt at the grave’s edge. David talked to them, giving them instructions. Ben Sheridan was missing from the group.

I knew that I should move closer, should try to think like a reporter, should just get the story and worry about my reactions later. If Parrish stayed true to form, I’d soon be able to see photographs of the victim. That was the important thing here, I told myself — finding out who was in the grave. I should be like Manton, who was moving closer, trying to get a better look. “On the count of three,” I heard David say.

I was distracted from the proceedings by a distinctive splashing sound. I turned toward it just as Ben realized I was nearby.

“Oh, Christ!” he said, hurriedly tucking himself in and zipping his fly.

“One . . .” I heard David call.

“I — I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t know you were here!”

Ben was beet red with embarrassment. “I suppose that will be in the paper?”

“. . . Two. . .”

“Yes, of course it will,” I said, my own embarrassment turning to anger. “The headline will read, ‘Who Shrank the Forensic Anthropologist?’ ”

To my utter surprise, he started laughing.

“Three!” I heard David call.

The sound came at us like a prizefighter’s punch — a thundering, out-of-nowhere explosion that shook the earth and nearly deafened us.

I stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had happened. A cloud of dust and debris suddenly billowed over the meadow as the echoes of the explosion continued to rattle and roar through the mountains, until soon the sound seemed to come from every side. There were other sounds, too — screams and the quick crack of shots fired. Bingle gave a yelping cry of distress and charged toward the dust cloud, pulling me off balance; I fell face first onto the ground; he dragged me forward a few feet, but still I held on tightly to the leash. If he had not further tangled it up in the brush between us, I doubt my weight alone would have been enough to stop his progress.

Ben ran ahead. I called to him, but he was already gone, soon halfway across the meadow, answering their screams with his own, even as one by one they grew silent. He was shouting David’s name, shouting, “No!”, shouting words I could not understand as he ran and then — and then Nicholas Parrish emerged from the dust, struggling to keep his balance as he used Merrick’s corpse as an obscene shield. Parrish’s still-chained hand raised a gun — the dead man’s gun — and the dead man’s arm rose with his, Ben too far into the meadow to take cover, suddenly not shouting, not making any sound, just falling.

He did not get up.

17

THURSDAY, EARLY AFTERNOON, MAY 18

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

I stayed where I was. Bingle kept barking, revealing our location to Parrish. For one terrifying moment, fear paralyzed me — it was as if any Spanish words I knew had been taken from me, and I could not think of the command to quiet the dog.

“¡Cállate!” I finally remembered, and had no sooner said it than Bingle fell silent. Hoping to God Parrish didn’t hear me, I whispered, “Ven acá, Bingle. Ven acá.”

Bingle obeyed, crouching low as he came back to me, panting fast and hard, his ears pressed flat, his tail curled between his legs. Afraid.

“Muy bien,” I whispered to him, my voice unsteady.

I moved closer to him, until I was lying next to him. He was trembling. So was I. I ran an unsteady hand over Bingle’s coat.

“Cálmate, tranquilo,” I said into his ear.

I tried to watch Parrish, to stay aware of where he was. I saw him sink down into the grass, still holding the dead guard.

Long moments passed. We did not move from our hiding place. Soon I saw him stand again, free of his gruesome burden, calmly using a key to unlock the one handcuff still attached to his wrist. It dropped away from him and hit the ground.

The air was still thick with smoke and the smell of scattered flesh and blood. Now there was a silence, as unsettling as the screams had been. Impossible, I thought wildly, to conceal my trembling from him in that silence — my fear would be felt across the meadow, telegraphed to him through the ground itself.

The smoke began to clear. The wind picked up, and he laughed into it, raising his arms to the darkening sky, shaking his fists triumphantly, as if calling on the gods to behold his victory.

He stopped and stared into the woods. I felt certain he could see us. Suddenly he started to run — right toward us. I felt Bingle’s hackles rise and whispered, “Quieto.” The dog remained silent.

Parrish kept coming closer, heading for the trees, and my mouth went dry. I reached into my daypack and pulled out my knife and opened it. Not much of a weapon against a loaded gun, but even being shot to death would be better than meeting Julia Sayre’s fate. But then I saw that Parrish was moving at an angle — veering away from us.

He was going to the camp.

I strained to hear his movements, fearing that at any moment he could double back behind me, attack from some unexpected direction. I would have to trust the dog to react to any approach by Parrish.

Before long Parrish was making plenty of noise in the camp, not bothering with any attempt at stealth.

It began to rain again.

I fought off a temptation to despair over this. Yes, the helicopter might have to wait for the weather to clear, but J.C. and Andy had probably made it out. You can make it out, too, I told myself. One way or another, someone will be coming back to this meadow. You just have to avoid him for a few hours. It’s not even raining hard — the helicopter might be able to fly in this weather. I had no sooner thought this than I heard the distant rumble of thunder.

I was still shaking. I told myself it was the damp.

I had my poncho with me, and I decided to risk making noise to pull it on. The poncho’s dark camouflage colors would blend better with the surrounding forest than the rest of my clothing.

The rain made it harder to hear Parrish, but from the sounds of pans clattering, I guessed that he was emptying the backpacks.

He could take what he wants, I thought. He could destroy the rest and leave me here in the woods, in the mountains to die with this dog.

Stop it.

My muscles were cramping, more from tension than the strain of staying still, and I was cold.

Too bad. It could be worse. These are signs of life, after all. You could have been lifting that body from that grave.

Knife in one hand, dog in the other.

Bingle’s head came up. He was clearly listening to something. He had stopped trembling. I heard the sound of someone moving through the woods. Toward me.

“Quieto,” I whispered again to Bingle. He looked into my face, then lowered his head. He was still listening, though, ears flicking. I was praying.

The footsteps paused somewhere in front of me. Bingle tensed.

Don’t growl, Bingle, please don’t growl.

The footsteps moved on.

Eventually I could see him; he was moving toward the ridge. He was carrying a backpack — and Duke’s rifle. He was hiking at a fast pace, not much less than a run. There was a little more distance between us now, and I was still hidden by the trees, so I moved to a more comfortable position. Bingle wanted to go out into the meadow; I did, too — harboring some slim-to-none hope that someone else might have survived, worried that someone might need my help. But we would easily be seen by Parrish if he turned back to survey his handiwork, and I was certain he would do so.

He didn’t disappoint me. I lost sight of him for a time, then caught a glimpse of him raising his fists in victory again, at the top of the ridge. Despite my heartfelt wishes, no lightning struck him.

Soon he moved over the ridge and out of sight.

Bingle and I set out together, hurrying through the rain toward the grave. Nothing but carnage awaited us there. The grave itself was now a larger, deeper, blackened hole. Bingle did no more than to peer nervously into it, then shied away. What sort of explosive device Parrish had planted there, I had no idea, except that lifting the weight of the body was apparently all that was needed to trigger it.

A quick look around the site confirmed what I had already suspected. The others were dead; there wasn’t much to find of those who had been bending over the grave. Bingle was whining now, anxiously moving from fragment to fragment. Later, perhaps, some forensic anthropologist would come to the scene, would study these fragments and be able to tell what had once been whom. I was only sure of one, a boot with the remnants of a foot in it, because Bingle began whining more loudly when he found it, then lay down next to it, head on paws, and wouldn’t leave.

I didn’t argue with him; I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to stand there. Some part of my mind had shut down — I knew what I was seeing, but at the same time refused to know it. I dropped his leash and kept walking, careful where I stepped, but still feeling the soles of my boots grow slippery. I moved mechanically, waiting to see something that could be comprehended.

A short distance away, I almost found it. I came across the bodies of Manton and Merrick, who had not been killed by the blast. Parrish had fired several bullets into each of their faces.

I must have made a sound when I saw them, because Bingle came over to me. With horror, I realized that he was carrying David’s boot.

“¡Déjala!” I said sharply. “Leave it!”

He looked up at me rebelliously and held on.

“¡Déjala!” I repeated.

Gently, he set it down, but hovered over it.

“Bien, muy bien.”

He watched me warily, as if I might want to take it from him. When he seemed ready to pick it up again, I said, “¿Dónde está Ben, Bingle?”

He looked up at me, cocking his head to one side.

“Where’s Ben? Come on, show me. ¿Dónde está Ben, Bingle?”

The question wasn’t as easy to answer as it might seem. I wasn’t sure where Ben had fallen. The grasses and flowers of the meadow were tall enough to hide his body.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but it would still make it hard for Bingle to pick up any scent in the air. It didn’t deter him; he came with me when I started to weave a path between where Merrick and Manton lay and the place where Ben had run out of the forest.

We had only covered a few yards when Bingle took off, then ran back to me, barking.

“Bien, bien — cállate, Bingle,” I said, afraid that Parrish might hear him. “¿Dónde está Ben?” I asked again, and he took off once more — stopping every few feet this time, to look back at me.

I had no doubt that I was being asked to hurry up.

I praised him, even as I dreaded taking a closer look at another body.

Ben Sheridan’s motionless form lay faceup near a large rock. His face was covered in blood. His left pant leg was also soaked in blood.

Bingle started licking him. There was no response.

Suddenly something David had said about Bingle came back to me. Bingle won’t lick a dead body.

I knelt next to Ben, placed my fingers on his neck and felt for his pulse.

“Bingle,” I said, struggling not to weep. “¡Qué inteligente eres!”

Ben Sheridan was alive.

I was determined he would stay that way, come hell or high water.

We got both.

18

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 18

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

First things first. It’s a bitch when you can’t just call 911. When simply being conscious makes you the closest thing to a doctor in the house, rule number one is the toughest rule of all: don’t panic.

Two problems made it hard not to panic. The first was that it looked as if the only thing between “Ben Sheridan” and “dead” were the words “not yet.” The second was that Parrish could come back over that ridge at any moment, and if I hadn’t managed to get Ben Sheridan out of the middle of the meadow by then, I was certain we would become two more ducks in his shooting gallery.

So I forgot about the smell of death all around me, forgot about the fact that I had just seen seven good men slaughtered mercilessly, forgot about the rain — and forced myself to concentrate on first things first.

First aid lessons came back to me.

I leaned my cheek close to his mouth. I felt his breath. One relief after another. He was breathing, he had a pulse.

I called his name several times. He didn’t respond. Bingle barked at him. He moaned — softly, weakly. I waited. Nothing. I commanded Bingle to sit and stay. The dog obeyed. Ben stirred, almost as if he thought the command was for him. This brought to mind something a first aid instructor had once said to me — that consciousness wasn’t an ON/OFF switch. An unconscious person may respond to pain, or to commands. So I gave it another try.

“Ben, open your eyes!”

Nothing.

Get on with it, I told myself. Check for bleeding.

The wound on his head had clotted; it didn’t seem to be a deep cut, but there was a good-sized knot beneath it. The other obvious wound was the one on his leg.

I suddenly remembered a time when I had watched Pete, my husband’s partner, work frantically to stop a victim’s head from bleeding — only to later realize that her lungs had been filling with blood — a bullet had made a much smaller wound through her back.

I checked Ben as best I could for less apparent injuries. I wasn’t able to discover any, but I did find a pair of unused latex gloves in one of his shirt pockets. I put them on, got my knife out again and cut the pant leg away.

Under other circumstances, the damage to his lower left leg might have horrified me. After all I had seen just a few minutes before, it had no power to shock me. It was a through-and-through bullet wound, a shot that had entered sideways, from the inside front of his leg between his knee and ankle, and exited on the other side — the messier side. It seemed to have broken at least one of his lower leg bones. The wound had bled profusely — at least, to my inexperienced eye, there seemed to be a lot of blood — but there was very little bleeding from it now.

The few first aid items I carried in my daypack were not intended for treating shooting victims, but there was enough clean gauze and tape to make a pressure bandage for the leg wound.

He moaned. I moved nearer his face and called his name again. Say the injured person’s name often — I remembered that this was one of the rules. He opened his eyes, stared up at me.

“Ben? Can you understand me?”

He closed his eyes.

“Ben!”

He looked up at me. Bingle barked. Ben slowly turned his head toward the dog, groaned, and closed his eyes again. “Raining,” he said thickly, hardly more than a whisper.

“No,” I said. “It was raining, but it has stopped now.”

He made no response.

“Ben! Ben!”

“Go away.”

“Ben. Wake up!”

He didn’t respond.

“Ben Sheridan, listen to me — I don’t want to get shot just because I’m out here with you. So wake up!”

Nothing.

“Bingle needs you, all right? What would David say if he knew you didn’t take care of his dog?”

“David,” he said miserably, but opened his eyes.

“Are you hurt anywhere besides your head and leg?”

He frowned. “Don’t know. Can’t think.” He lifted his head, tried to move. “Dizzy,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Does your neck or back hurt?”

“No — my head. My leg — broken, I think.”

I picked up his right hand. “Squeeze my hand.”

He did. Weak, but a grasp. I tried the same thing with the left.

“You passed test number one with flying colors.” I moved to his boots. “Try moving your right foot, Ben.”

He moved it.

“Your left.”

Nothing, but the attempt made him cry out.

“Can’t,” he whispered. “Can’t.”

“Don’t worry about that now. We need to get out of this field, then you can sleep if you want to — but not now. Stay awake.”

“Okay,” he said, then added, “for Bingle.”

“Suit yourself, asshole. Just stay awake.”

I saw a small, fleeting smile. I had to admire that — in the amount of pain he must have been in, I don’t know many people who could have managed it.

“I can’t leave you in this field,” I said. “Parrish may be back.”

He rolled to his right side, as if he was going to try to move to his feet, and promptly threw up.

“Christ,” he said.

“It’s probably because you hit your head,” I said, taking my neckcloth off and wiping his face. I helped him rinse his mouth. “At the very least, you’ve probably got a concussion. And if you’re going to be sick, it’s much better for you to be lying on your side. Dangerous to be lying on your back.”

I helped him lift his head a little, to offer him water. He seemed thirsty, but soon closed his eyes. “Go away.”

“Stay awake, Ben.”

“Go away.”

“Bingle, remember?”

“Damned dog,” he said, but opened his eyes again.

I tried to make him comfortable, to do what I could to keep him from going into shock. But nothing I needed was at hand, and more than anything, I wanted to get us the hell out of that meadow.

I kept looking back at the ridge. No sign of Parrish. Not yet.

“Bingle,” I said, “¡Cuídalo!”

The dog moved closer to Ben.

“What?” Ben said groggily. “What did you say?”

“I said it to Bingle. I told him to watch over you. It was an experiment, really, but he seems to know the command.”

“What?” Ben said again.

“Stay awake.”

I hurried to make another search of the area near the grave, concentrating on objects, locking my mind away from thoughts of the dead scattered all around me.

In my haste, I didn’t move as carefully as I had before, and something made a cracking sound beneath my right foot — a small piece of bone.

Steady — keep going. Just ignore it. It can’t hurt you.

I kept moving, but now my fear of Parrish’s return began to reassert itself. It found its way to my knees and ankles — my steps grew clumsy and slow.

Stop thinking about him! For God’s sake, get a move on! You’ve got to help Ben.

I found one of the duffel bags that held the anthropologists’ equipment, largely unscathed. The same was true of Bingle’s equipment. I hoisted both bags and brought them closer to Ben. I praised Bingle, and could not help thinking that he seemed happy to have something to do.

I used the support pieces from the sieves that had been used to sift dirt and a roll of duct tape I found in the bag to splint Ben’s left leg. I also took a few small items that looked as if they might be useful later on, including a small tarp, and put them in my daypack.

Ben had lost consciousness again, but when I shouted his name, he came around. He wouldn’t talk to me, but when I asked him to help me move him to a half-sitting position, he did.

“Are you thirsty?”

He swallowed, nodded slightly.

I held my water bottle up to his mouth. He managed to drink a little more this time.

“I’m going to have to do something that is going to hurt like hell, Ben. But we have to get out of the meadow, and in among the trees. From there, I’m probably going to have to move you again, but I promise I won’t do that more than I have to, okay? But I need you to help me as much as you can.”

He did. I supplied most of the lifting power, but he managed to move to a standing position. We soon found that he was unable to put any weight on his left leg. He leaned heavily on me and tried hopping. He gave a shout of pain and passed out again. I barely managed to lower him to the ground without dropping him.

Don’t panic, I told myself, but I envisioned Parrish sighting the rifle on my head as I pulled out the tarp. Could he hit me from this distance? I didn’t think so, but I crouched lower in the tall grass.

Ben came to, and though his wakefulness was helpful while I was putting him on the tarp, knowing what lay ahead, I wished he had stayed unconscious.

I lifted the corner of the tarp near his head, and began dragging him over the bumpy ground.

“Bingle,” he called, making a weak gesture with his hand.

The dog hesitated, looking back toward David’s boot, then followed us.

I stood, nervously giving up concealment for speed, but it was still slow going. Ben made no protests, but he grimaced in pain. By the time we reached the trees, tears streaked their way through the dirt and bloodstains on his face. I stopped, and he wiped the tears away, embarrassed.

But my thoughts were elsewhere. Panting with exertion, I looked up at the ridge.

Where are you, Parrish?

Had he come back? For all I knew, he could be hiding in the trees ahead, waiting to attack us. I listened, and heard a hundred sounds that might have been made by him. I looked back at the meadow. Not an option.

Something hit the ground behind me and I jumped away with a yelp. I was moving to shield Ben when he said, “Pinecone. Fell from the tree.”

“Oh. I thought it might be—”

“Watch Bingle,” he gritted out, closing his eyes against a fresh wave of pain.

I studied the dog. He was calmly studying me. I realized what Ben meant, then. Parrish wasn’t nearby. Bingle would have reacted.

I took Ben as far as I could into the forest, where eventually there were too many obstacles to allow me to continue dragging him. I brought him to his feet again. I moved in front of him, took his arms and pulled them over my shoulders, rolled him up on my back, and half-carried, half-dragged him through the woods. I’m not in bad shape, but carrying him was awkward and exhausting. The ground was too uneven to make this a smooth trip. Occasionally, despite Ben’s efforts to hide his torment, sharp cries escaped him. Bingle began whining in sympathy.

When we came to ground with fewer rocks, bushes, and branches on it, I set him down. He had passed out again. I took a few minutes to catch my breath. Then I unfolded the tarp again, placed Ben on it, and pulled him deeper into the trees.

We reached the stream. I told Bingle to stay — the water was deep enough to make me worry that he wouldn’t be able to swim it if he fell in. I scouted ahead and found a relatively narrow place to cross. There was no way to make it if I dragged Ben after me, though, so I cut the tarp and bundled it around his legs, taping it on to him like a bizarre form of waders, to help keep him dry if I fell. I managed to rouse him long enough to help me get him on my back again. Slowly and carefully, I stepped from flat rock to flat rock. I only lost my balance once, misstepping into chilly, knee-deep water midstream and nearly dumping him in.

We made it across. I had jostled Ben badly, though, and by the time I laid him down among the trees on the other side, he was unconscious again. This whole endeavor had cost us hours, and I wondered how much blood he’d lost. I moved him onto his side, into a position that would ensure that he could breathe and would not choke on his own vomit, should he get sick again. I cut the tarp-waders off, and was pleased to see that at least one of us had stayed fairly dry.

Bingle whimpered anxiously, perhaps afraid we were leaving him behind. I went back for him as soon as I could. It took much less time to cross without Ben on my back, and soon I had fitted Bingle in a harness and returned with him. He nimbly made it to the other bank without incident.

I did some quick scouting and found a place that seemed to be fairly safe, out of view of the meadow and stream. I dragged Ben there.

My next concern was keeping Ben from going into shock. In part, that would require warmth. I took off my jacket and what layers of warm clothing I thought I could safely spare. Then, remembering my first night in the mountains, said to Bingle, “Duerme con él.” Sleep with him.

He cocked his head at me, perhaps wondering what I could mean by that at this time of day — then, when I continued to look at him as if I expected to be obeyed, he slowly moved to lie down close to Ben.

I was tired, but I moved as quickly as I could back across the stream, through the woods to the camp we had set up that morning. I didn’t want to leave Ben alone any longer than necessary, or to be caught at the campsite if Parrish returned.

The camp was some distance from where Ben lay. I didn’t know how well Parrish knew this area, but his awareness of the airstrip, his coyote tree, and the two burials were all indicators that he had been here again and again. The odds of successfully hiding from him for a long period of time weren’t great, but I only needed to manage it until J.C. and Andy returned by helicopter. That could be soon, I told myself.

The camp was in shambles. Parrish had dumped the contents of the backpacks out onto the ground. Cookware, tent supports, clothing, sleeping bags, and other items were scattered over the site. Most were damp. For all the disarray, though, I felt some hope when I saw what was left.

I found my own pack, looked it over and could see no damage. I picked up most of my clothing, putting on a few items for warmth. I had a moment of almost losing whatever semblance of calm I had managed up to then when I realized that he had taken all but one pair of my underwear. Telling myself that it was a very small matter to become upset over, given his day’s work, and congratulating myself because the pair he left was clean, I went back to the task at hand.

I started to gather whatever I could remember seeing Ben wear, then thought better of it. If Parrish returned here and saw that the only clothing that was missing was mine and Ben’s, he might learn that Ben was alive.

This brought me to my next task, one of the most difficult to face. Bracing myself, telling myself this was not the same as going through a battlefield, stealing coins off the bodies of soldiers, I began to sort through the belongings of the dead.

I tried hard not to think of Earl wearing this shirt or David, this sweater. I would not think of what had happened in the meadow, or worse, who it had happened to. I came across the little wooden horse that Duke had whittled, felt tears welling up, and tucked the horse into my backpack, all the while telling myself I was a fool to add something so unnecessary to the pack.

Stay alive. Keep Ben and Bingle alive. First things first.

I took a duffel bag — the largest one I could find — instead of Ben’s backpack, and began to gather clothing belonging to each of the dead men, mixing Ben’s in with them.

I did not take much of the clothing, saving room for food. But as I looked through the pile of belongings, I only found three packages of chicken noodle soup — which had been in Manton’s daypack — and Bingle’s dog food.

You have water and a filter, I told myself. You also have lots of water purification tablets. If you’re rescued soon, you won’t even have to worry about feeding the dog.

Although only one of the tents had been set up when Parrish went on his rampage, he had pulled the others from their nylon cases, scattering their supports, rainflies, and tie-downs. But I was able to find all parts for mine, and was pleased to discover that even the rainfly had not been damaged during his rampage.

To this collection I added two well-stocked first aid kits, three sleeping bags that were unharmed — including my own — my insulation pad and one other, my stove and cookset, a flashlight, three candles, a tarp, some rope, a shaving kit that had Ben’s name on it, a plastic bucket, and a few other essentials.

I considered it a major stroke of luck when I found Earl’s medications for his ear infection. One plastic cylinder held a decongestant, but the other might help me save Ben’s life. The label said it was Keflex, an antibiotic.

Since Ben had lain in a damp meadow with open wounds for over an hour before I could reach him, infection was a major worry. But here, at least, was a weapon to fight it.

I put on my own pack and made a quick false trail to the upper portion of the stream, trying to make it look as if I were heading back to the airstrip. I returned in a less obvious manner, and did my best to obscure my tracks. I picked up the duffel bag, and loaded down, cautiously made my way back to Ben and Bingle.

A strong breeze kept my scent from Bingle, who growled as I approached. Until I called softly to him, I was half-afraid he’d start barking, or attack me outright.

Ben was awake.

“How are you doing?” I asked, setting down the duffel bag.

“The others . . . ?”

I shook my head.

He looked away.

I hurriedly unrolled one of the sleeping bags, put it over him. Carefully enunciating each word, like a man who had downed a pint of whiskey but was trying not to appear to be drunk, he said, “You should leave me here.”

“Don’t start that bullshit,” I said.

“It’s not. Makes sense.”

“You took a hard blow to the head, I’m amazed you’re not screaming in pain from that leg wound, and you’ve just suffered a terrible loss. I’m not going to listen to you tell me that you’re the one who’s making sense.”

He sighed.

“Besides,” I said, “when have I listened to you, anyway?”

“True,” he said, and fell silent.

“Are you allergic to Keflex?”

He shook his head.

I read the label, which said to take one tablet four times a day. I gave him two of the pills, and helped him to drink more water.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Whose medication?”

“They were Earl’s.” Before he could think too much about that, I added, “I’m going to set up the tent. Once we’re situated, I’ll try to do a better job of looking after your injuries. At least you’ll be warmer and drier.”

I went to work. I put the tent up, and after a look at the darkening sky, added the rainfly. Once I had managed to get Ben, Bingle, and necessary gear inside the tent, there wasn’t much room to move around. Luckily, my claustrophobia didn’t kick in — I was too distracted by something I had noticed when I moved Ben inside the tent to think of my own concerns: his leg was bleeding again.

I had more medical supplies to work with now, though, so I took off the makeshift splint and bandages and attempted to do a better job of it. Below the wound, his leg was a grayish color. At one point, he shouted in agony over some clumsiness on my part, and we both said, “Sorry!” in unison. I finished up and re-splinted it.

I checked the head wound as well, which had also reopened, but was not bleeding nearly as much as the leg had been. I now had a chance to wash the rest of his face, to remove the bloodstains and dirt that had caked onto it while he lay out in the field.

He was so pale, and his skin felt too cold. Although he was conscious, he was listless.

I loosened his clothing, elevated his feet, and in addition to the pad and sleeping bag beneath him, placed another bag on top of him.

“Talk to me, Ben.”

He looked at me as if I had awakened him from a deep sleep.

“What’s my name?” I asked.

After a long, frightening moment, I asked again.

“Irene,” he answered.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Long pause. “Four.”

The correct answer was two.

“What’s your name?”

“Ben.”

“What’s the dog’s name?”

“Bingle.”

Bingle, who had been sniffing at the contents of the duffel bag, heard his name and moved closer to Ben; the dog was carrying something in his mouth. David’s sweater. He set it down, rubbed his face on it, then lay on top of it, head on paws.

“David,” Ben whispered, shutting his eyes tightly. I took his hand and held it while he quietly wept.

I know that people with head injuries are likely to become easily upset. But even if Ben had come back from that field unscathed, given the events of that day, I wouldn’t have blamed him for crying all night.

Bingle worried over him and gently laid his head on Ben’s chest. Ben began lightly stroking his fur, but wore down quickly and fell asleep not long after Bingle nuzzled his cheek. I let go of his hand.

I tried to feed Bingle, but he didn’t even sniff at the dried dog food I put out for him. I didn’t know David’s elaborate preparation routine — but I don’t think Bingle’s refusal to eat was a matter of being finicky.

Ben awakened once, and I got him to drink more water.

I decided not to waste the rain and set up a makeshift system for trapping it, using a trash bag to catch and funnel it into the plastic bucket.

When I heard Ben stirring again, I made one of the packets of soup. He was more alert this time, and I was relieved to find that he was no longer seeing double. He was still pale, but not quite the chalk white of a few hours before, and his speech was clearer. All of these signs were so cheering that when I brought the soup to him, I didn’t mind bearing with the slow process of his feeding himself. I ate some of the soup, too, but gave him the lion’s share, convinced that if he went hungry he’d never recover, while I could forage for food if need be.

“Thank you,” he said when he finished, then added, “I know you probably can’t imagine a fate worse than being stuck here with me—”

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you. I know you don’t trust me, and being this dependent on me must really be galling.”

He shook his head. “You should leave me here tomorrow. Save yourself.”

“Hmm. Well, your martyrdom would spare me a lot of trouble, but without anything to do all day, I’d likely fall into a decline.”

He smiled a little at that.

“I don’t want to be out there alone with Parrish, Ben.”

He considered this for a moment, then said, “Shall we call a truce?”

“Yes — more than a truce. Allies.”

“Allies, then,” he said. He lay back, and fell asleep again before the rain started.

Bingle lay between us, his head on David’s sweater, which he had definitely claimed as his. I hoped that he might be content with that, and not go looking for the boot in the morning.

There was no light in the tent; I was unwilling to use up my flashlight batteries, and lighting a candle inside a tent ranks among the more foolhardy things a person can do — even if you don’t make a crematorium out of the tent, you’re filling it with carbon monoxide. Besides, I had already decided that we would have a blackout come nightfall — Parrish might be watching for some beacon to our whereabouts.

I wondered where Frank was, what he was doing. Worrying, undoubtedly. The rain would make him worry more. Under some circumstances, that would have annoyed me; tonight, I took comfort — if anyone would force the powers that be to look for us as soon as possible, Frank would. The more I considered this, the more sure I was of it. Frank would come for us. He would not let us be abandoned to whatever plans Parrish had made. I felt myself grow calmer.

I tried hard to think of Parrish not as some mysterious bogeyman — the monster who tortured women, who booby-trapped graves — but as a flesh-and-blood enemy. He wasn’t endowed with superhuman powers. It was raining on him, too.

I listened to Ben’s and Bingle’s breathing, to Ben’s occasional moans and Bingle’s occasional snores.

I’d have to make the best of my allies, I decided.

I might not capture or kill Parrish, but if the three of us could survive, I’d count it as a major victory.

The rain kept falling, drumming harder now. I was exhausted, but ghosts in the meadow and thoughts of our common enemy kept me awake long into the night.

Realizing that rest was armament, I finally fell asleep.

19

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 18

The Mojave Desert

“Let me go in first,” Jack Fremont said, as Travis brought the van to a halt at the foot of the gravel drive. Jack had warned him not to pull into the drive itself — the man they had come to see was serious about backing up his no trespassing signs.

Frank sat in the back of the van with the dogs.

“I know the delays are killing you,” Jack said to him, “but once we get past Stinger’s little welcoming rituals, he’ll be able to save us a hell of a lot of time.”

“Not if this weather holds,” Frank said, taking an anxious look at the sky.

“Maybe not if it stays this bad,” Jack agreed, “but you wouldn’t make much progress on foot in this weather, either. Mud would slow you to a crawl.”

“You sure you can trust this guy?” Frank asked, taking a wary look at the odd structure at the end of the drive. It was a homemade house if he’d ever seen one, a pile of cemented rocks and timber that looked more like a cross between a log cabin and a low-budget medieval castle than a home.

“I’d trust Stinger Dalton with my life — and have on several occasions. Just give me a minute to get him used to the idea of having company.”

They watched Jack move down the driveway, hands held up as if he were at gunpoint.

“Oh, yeah, he trusts him with his life,” Travis said. “Trusts him to try and take it, looks like.”

Frank shook his head. “Roll the windows down a little, I want to hear this.”

Frank had been willing to go it alone to find Irene if that was what it would take, but he had been relieved when Travis insisted on being included. Jack had come over not much later, and seeing them preparing their gear, offered to join them.

That had been an even greater relief, and not just because Jack was resourceful and a skilled outdoorsman. Jack said he would trust Stinger Dalton with his life, and Frank felt that same level of trust in Jack — a trust he seldom extended to others.

Jack lived next door, and his concern for Irene would be nearly as great as his own, Frank knew. Jack hadn’t tried to talk him out of going up into the mountains. Without any hesitation, he had simply asked to be allowed to help.

Watching Jack walking through the rain, hands held high, Frank wondered if Jack was risking life and limb for Irene right this moment. But as if Jack could feel their concern, he looked over his shoulder at them and smiled.

Deke and Dunk lifted their noses to the open window, watching anxiously as Jack moved farther away from the van.

It had been Jack’s idea to bring them along.

“They aren’t trained to track,” Frank had objected, “and I don’t want to be worried about them. They won’t be able to find this group any faster than we will.”

“There’s a male dog on this expedition she’s on, right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe they’ll find this other dog, then. Besides, your dogs have been camping with me more than once. They’ll behave.”

“For you, they will,” Travis said, speaking Frank’s thoughts on the subject aloud.

But in the end, the dogs were allowed to join them. Frank had arranged for care of the cat. Finally, he had called Pete Baird and told him of his plans to find Irene. After listening to his partner’s warnings about the inevitable problems at work, Frank had refused Pete’s offer to join them.

“I’d love to have you with me, but one of us getting into this much trouble will be bad enough. I need you in there to beg for my reinstatement. Besides, if Irene comes home safe and sound before I do, you can tell her where I am. And I need someone to cover what’s going on here — to try to contact me if anything comes up while I’m still within cell phone range.”

“Anything else I can do for you before you’re fired for interfering in Thompson’s investigation?” Pete asked.

“Yes. If we’re not back by Sunday at six, come looking for us.”

So now Frank sat in the van, watching a man whom many people thought of as his most unlikely friend. Jack Fremont, tattooed and scar-faced, wearing black leather and sporting a gold hoop earring, his head completely shaved, looked made to order for the job he had once held — leader of a biker gang. That Jack had been born into wealth, and — after a number of years on the road — was now one of the wealthiest men in Las Piernas, surprised almost anyone who learned of it. It wasn’t a fact he advertised. He fit better into the role he was playing now.

“Stinger Dalton, you crusty-assed old son of a bitch, put your guns away!” he called.

“Jack?” a low, gravelly voice called back. “By God, I don’t believe my fuckin’ eyes. I figured you were dead!”

“What? And you think I wouldn’t have come haunting you before now?”

The front door opened, and a thin man with a shotgun stepped onto a ramshackle front porch. He was of medium height, and was wearing jeans, heavy boots, and a sleeveless blue T-shirt. He had long, gray hair that he wore in a single braid down his back. His arms were covered with tattoos. As he came into view, the dogs began whining.

“Hush,” Frank said to them, trying to hear the conversation outside.

“What the fuck happened to your hair, dude? And who fucked up your face?”

“You ask me the same questions every time you see me. You need someone to write you some new lines. Man, put the gun away. I want you to meet some friends of mine.”

Dalton looked at the van with misgiving.

“I’d never bring trouble to your door, Stinger. You know that.”

“No feds?”

“Shit, Stinger. We both know you aren’t hiding from the feds.”

“Any of ’em feds?” he repeated obstinately.

“No. One of ’em is a cop—”

“What!” Dalton brought the gun up.

Christ, Frank thought, why did you tell him?

“Now, Stinger, in a minute here, I’m gonna take offense,” Jack said easily. “I’m trying to tell you that he’s a cop, but he’s not here on a beef or anything like that. He’s my friend. You’ve heard me talk about Frank. Works homicide in Las Piernas. But he needs to do some business with you that’s got nothing to do with him being a cop, except that maybe it will get his ass fired.”

“I don’t follow you,” Dalton said, holding his position.

“The man’s as good a friend to me now as you’ve been, Stinger. Remember me telling you about Irene’s husband?”

At that, Dalton lowered the gun.

“Let us come in out of the rain, Stinger, and I’ll explain. Unless you think I’ve turned into a liar, you’ve got no reason to keep me standing out here.”

“Haven’t seen you in a long time, Jack,” Dalton said.

“Bullshit. I was out here just a month ago. By the way, keep in mind that this is the guy that lets me borrow his dogs.”

“Your neighbor’s dogs—”

“Oh, yeah — I almost forgot! I’ve brought a couple of dogs that would like to see you again.”

Dalton’s face broke into a grin. “Bring everybody in.” He turned and went inside.

Jack motioned to Travis, who started the van.

“What do you think of him?” Travis asked, as they turned up the drive.

“I think Jack is pretty free about introducing my dogs and talking about my wife to head cases. But if Jack says Stinger’s a good friend of his, I’ll try to reserve further judgment.”

Travis said nothing, but Frank didn’t miss his look of unholy amusement.

Deke and Dunk sprang from the van and charged toward Dalton, who was back out on the porch, without the gun. To Frank’s amazement, though, they slowed as they neared him, and approached with ears back, tails wagging — suddenly well mannered. Dalton spent several minutes praising and petting them, to their obvious delight.

He stood up and extended a hand as Jack said, “Doug Dalton, this is my friend Travis Maguire, Irene’s cousin.”

“You don’t look old enough to shave,” Dalton said.

“He’s traveled all over the state,” Jack said, “working as a storyteller.”

“Storyteller!” Dalton said, but catching Jack’s eye, kept any further comment to himself. He turned to Frank. “You must be the cop.” There was no rancor in it, though, and his handshake was firm, his smile welcoming.

“Stinger taught me all I know about dog training,” Jack said. “He’s met Deke and Dunk when we stopped by here on our way to go camping and fishing. He’s also the best helicopter pilot I know of, and protected my butt on more than one occasion when we did a little riding together. Now he protects me from the fiercest opponent I’ve ever encountered.”

Dalton smiled. “I’m his tax accountant.”

“Tax accountant!” Travis said. “How many people come all the way out here for tax advice?”

“Besides the ones that live out here or who contact me by fax or modem?” Dalton asked. “Just a bunch of old bastards on Harleys.”

Travis looked stunned.

“Not everyone on a hog is a hell-raiser these days, you know. Bunch of CEOs on ’em now. And as for hell-raising, a lot of us just got tired of that shit. Plenty of cops ride,” he added, casting a glance at Frank.

“Sorry, not this one. But we’re not here about—”

“My apologies about the welcome,” Stinger said. “I just happen to appreciate privacy. Come on in.”

Just before they walked through the door, though, Frank’s cellular phone rang. He excused himself and stayed on the porch to answer it, uncertain about being able to pick up a signal inside Dalton’s fortress.

When he rejoined the others, they were seated around a plain, thick oak table at the center of a large, open room. The few other furnishings were equally spartan.

Jack took one look at his face and said, “What’s wrong?”

“That was Pete. The group up there is getting smaller — a little while ago, a botanist and a ranger hiked out with a body bag — Julia Sayre, as far as anyone can tell at this point. These two said the others in the group were going to work on finding a second grave. Seems Parrish hinted there might be as many as eleven others up there—”

“Eleven!” Jack said.

“Yes. Pete didn’t have too many details, but I guess they had just come out of one meadow and were up on a ridge when Parrish started hinting about more bodies being up there. Thompson thought Parrish was playing games, until the cadaver dog reacted to a change in the wind.

“So the others went down to check out this second meadow, while the botanist and the ranger hiked out to the plane. The ranger radioed for a helicopter to pick him up so that he could show the chopper where to find the others — including Irene. But by the time the helicopter came to the landing strip for the ranger, the weather was bad. The chopper pilot said they’d have to go after the others later — they’d have problems just making it back to the ranger station.

“Storms are supposed to get worse during the next twenty-four hours. They won’t send a chopper in today — the pilot of the plane said if these two guys had come out an hour later, they wouldn’t have been able to take off at all.”

“Fucking wussies,” Dalton grumbled.

“I’ve told him the basics,” Jack said, “as you can tell, he’s already got some opinions on the matter.”

“Fuckin’-A,” Dalton said, crossing his arms over his thin chest. “How long ago did these two leave the rest of the group?”

“This morning. The rain and hiking with the body slowed them down. My partner’s going to try to talk to them, but it doesn’t look likely. He learned as much as he could from the pilot of the plane.”

When he didn’t go on, Travis said, “You looked upset when you walked in here. I take it there was more to it than that?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing, but — more than a fourth of the people who started out on this project are no longer with the group. And Pete said the pilot told him that these two were real unhappy about taking off. The botanist had promised to stay with the body, but he still protested about leaving the others. The ranger was even more adamant. When the pilot asked the ranger what the big deal was, since the group had enough food to be out for another couple of days, the ranger said that he thought the guards were fatigued.”

“Hmm,” Jack said, frowning. He turned to Travis. “Why don’t you take out those topo maps we marked up? It won’t hurt anybody if some extra campers show up in the area, right?”

“Free country,” Dalton said with a grin.

“Hell of a thing for a tax accountant to be saying,” Jack muttered.

Travis unfolded the maps and on one of them, pointed out a location on a western ridge. “That’s where the makeshift airstrip is.” He moved his finger along a line that connected a series of dots. “That’s the trail we think they were on when the lawyer was injured.”

Dalton nodded. “How many days ago you say that was?”

“Tuesday,” Frank answered. “Two days ago.”

“Hmm.” Dalton frowned over the map. “How many folks you say were on this star voyage?”

“Originally, or after the lawyer was taken home?”

“After.”

“Twelve people and a German shepherd. The ranger was gone for a day or so, then rejoined them after getting the lawyer out.”

“And the ranger and the botanist say the others were tired but doing okay as of this morning?”

“Yes.”

“And the ranger hasn’t been with them much, right? I mean, after this lawyer got stepped on, the ranger had to hike out and back in — had to find the others — and now he’s hiked out again. Spent most of his time on the hoof.”

“I think so — at least, that’s the way it sounds to me.”

“Tell me about the people in this group — you don’t need to bother with the ranger, I don’t think he figures into this part of the equation very much. Just tell me about the others.”

“Including Parrish?”

“Especially Parrish.”

Frank told him as much as he could, although he knew little of Ben Sheridan, David Niles, or Andy Stewart. From Dalton’s questions, he soon figured out what the other man was interested in: How would this group work together? Who would make decisions? How fit were they? How experienced as hikers?

The main problem before them — where had the group gone after they left Newly? — started to feel more like the kind of problem he worked with every day. Human behavior. So if you were this person, thinking the way he does and in this situation, what would you do next? Instead of the unfocused, nagging anxiousness of the past few hours, Frank knew he had something to work with, something he could set his mind to.

“You think Parrish was bringing these women to this place alive?” Dalton was asking.

“Yes,” Frank said. “He told us he flew Julia Sayre to the airstrip, made her hike for about a day, forced her dig her own grave, then tortured and killed her. Everything about it was planned. He had chosen her long before he made the kill. He isn’t disorganized or opportunistic. You listen to him talk, it’s all under control.” He frowned. “Except . . .”

“Except this victim you caught him on.”

“I wasn’t the one who caught him. Not my case, but—”

“Was it difficult, catching him on that one?”

“No,” Frank said, already seeing where this was going. “It wasn’t as difficult as it should have been.”

“Broke a pattern?”

“Stinger, with only one body and nothing more than Parrish’s own version of the Sayre case,” Jack said scornfully, “how the hell could the cops tell which of two cases set the pattern?”

But Frank was not so quick to answer, because he knew — he knew there had been other victims. He had said as much to his bosses when news of the deal with Parrish came down. Every other detective in the department had said as much. They had all known that the D.A. had made a wrong call.

“Mr. Dalton’s right,” Frank said. “Parrish broke a pattern.” He drew a steadying breath. “He wanted us to catch him.”

“Because—?” Dalton asked.

“Because he knows that he’ll escape.”

“He might want to,” Jack said, watching Frank begin to pace, “but he couldn’t know who would be going up into the mountains, or how heavily guarded he’d be.”

Frank didn’t answer. He was thinking of Parrish’s two known victims. Dark hair, blue eyes. Near Irene’s age.

“Never mind polishing that strip of floor, Frank,” Dalton said. “Get over here and take a look at these maps. Mother Nature has given us a little time to figure out where our man made himself a couple of cemeteries. According to what this ranger and botanist said, we’re looking for two meadows divided by a ridge. That could be several places, but not as many places as you’d think.”

“No,” Frank agreed. “Those two made it in less than a day, carrying a body and hiking in the rain.”

“Julia Sayre a big woman?”

“No. And the remains might be nothing more than a skeleton or a partial skeleton after this much time.”

“Right. So let’s see what this ground looks like and start making circles. Come up with some likely places, then as soon as the weather clears, we’ll take a pass over them. Save some time if we do a little thinking before we go.”

After the first hour of looking at the maps, Frank felt less optimistic. There were so many places the group could have reached within the time allotted, and the likelihood of finding the right one seemed small. But as Dalton continued to study them, he found reasons to eliminate one or another, narrowing the field. “I’m not saying cross them off the list altogether,” he said, standing up and stretching, “but they aren’t where I’d look first.”

When he walked away from the table, Frank said, “You aren’t stopping now, are you?”

Dalton opened his mouth to make a rude reply, then closed it. He studied Frank for a moment, then said, “Do you some good to take a break from it, too. I figure I’ll enjoy a little dog time. You all do what you want. I’m going to attend to my guests.”

He moved to the floor and began to wrestle with Deke and Dunk, who entered into the spirit of the game immediately, complete with loud and dramatic barks and growls.

Jack gave an apologetic look to Frank and Travis. “Stinger has to do things in his own way,” he said, trying to keep his voice low and yet still be heard over the ruckus. “No use trying to push him. But I’ll go with you if you want to leave . . .”

Frank’s need to reassure himself that Irene was safe tempted him to leave — tempted him until it was almost irresistible. Staying still was maddening. The urge to move, to act, to get as close to the mountains as possible nearly drove him to set aside all other considerations. But as he smoothed the uppermost topo map beneath his hands, spreading his fingers in an effort to release a fraction of the tension that invaded every muscle in his body, he saw circle after circle on the map, and realized that trying to find her without the help of the helicopter pilot would be all but impossible. There was simply too much ground to cover. And the storm would only make things worse.

“The weather is what’s holding us up, not your friend,” he said. “Stinger’s not the problem.”

“I like him,” Travis said. “Did he fly helicopters in Vietnam?”

“Never heard of the place,” Dalton said from the floor.

“He might be gray haired,” Jack said, “but the crazy-assed wild man’s ears are still sharp.”

So is his mind, Frank thought, studying the map as Dalton’s laughter mixed in with the barks and growls of the dogs. So is the crazy-assed wild man’s mind.

20

THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 18

A Cave in the Southern

Sierra Nevada Mountains

His lair, as he thought of it, was warm and dry. He wouldn’t have minded being out in the rain. He had many times suffered deprivations in pursuit of his goals; more than once, the mere observation of one of the objects of his affection had required a night spent in some inconvenient place during inclement weather. But at present, it was far more entertaining to be comfortable when she was not.

She would be alone in the dark, surrounded by death. She would have made the best of what was left of the camp, but there would be no food. This wouldn’t really harm her — water was readily available — but psychologically, her hunger would be to his advantage.

She wouldn’t know if he had made good his escape, or if he would return for her. He thought she probably knew of this cave. He had seen footprints and thought they were most likely hers — she had wandered off in this direction yesterday. But she would not know if he had stayed or fled.

At this stage of the game, hope would counteract some of her fears. She would think of the promised helicopter, coming to the meadow. While it was in some ways a nuisance, he was grateful that it tethered her to one location. She would not, in hysteria, go wandering off into the forest, simply trying to run from him or the scattered remains of her former protectors — he would have found her anyway, of course, but this made it so much easier.

He pictured her, huddled in her own tent — he knew that she would choose her own tent. The rain would drum loudly against it. She would be tired, but unable to sleep. Cold, hungry, afraid, alone.

Oh, she had the dog. But the dog would not be of much help to her. This dog was a spoiled and pampered dog, a dog whose master had been a silly man who sang songs and made up tricks for the dog. He had seen the attachment dog and master had to each other, the man’s constant displays of affection — really, it was almost obscene! The man had spoken to the dog nearly incessantly. Where was the dog’s dignity in that? And as for letting the beast slather his tongue all over his owner’s face — he was disgusted by the mere thought of it. He was glad to have put an end to it.

With his master dead, the dog would become depressed. Dogs did become depressed, he knew. Even Julia Sayre’s little dog had mourned her. He sighed, remembering how much he had enjoyed watching the little Pekingese staring from the second-story window, looking as if it would jump to its death, if it could only find a way to open the latch. He might have helped it, too, had he not been so entertained by its sorrow.

This German shepherd — though not a purebred shepherd, surely — would be no better off. No, this dog — he couldn’t bring himself to say its ridiculous name! — would only make the night seem gloomier to a woman of her sympathetic nature.

He had so many plans for her. He was torn between considering these, and considering the successes of the day. He knew how to build his own anticipation, though, and so for the moment, the latter won out.

Things had indeed gone well today. Here he was, barely a scratch on him. He preferred to slowly savor murder, and was surprised that he could kill so efficiently and yet feel the sort of triumphant satisfaction that he had felt then. He had outsmarted them, of course, but it was so enjoyable to have such tangible proof of his abilities available to the world!

It was satisfying, but held none of the pleasures that previous killings had given him. It had all gone by a little too quickly. Especially Merrick and Manton — that really was a shame. Manton, standing closer to the explosion, had been stunned by it, but Merrick, although unable to comprehend what had happened at the grave, had reacted rather speedily to having his weapon taken. That was nearly admirable. He had been forced to kill him immediately.

Ah well, life would always have its minor disappointments. He would counter this with the knowledge that their bullet-riddled faces would shock and anger their comrades. And with the knowledge that Irene had been there to see it all, including his display of marksmanship in the killing of that pompous ass, Sheridan.

Sheridan, who had stared at his coyotes, who had presumed to know something about him. Sheridan, who had touched Julia!

He remembered that the man had actually had the nerve to go to Irene’s tent late one night. He had heard their voices, but could not make out their conversation. He only knew that she had refused Sheridan, for he had walked away. She must have told him that she would rather sleep with the dog, because it was the dog who kept her company that night. Just as somewhere, out in those rainy woods, the dog was with her tonight.

It was at this point that he decided he had put off his treat long enough. He carefully withdrew them from his breast pocket. They weren’t the lacy, frilly type. Nothing like that for her. Even before he had seen them, he knew that she would wear simple cotton briefs. He found them charmingly innocent, almost like a little girl’s panties. Slowly, reverently, he brought them to his face.

Had he been a weaker man, he would have wept.

21

THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 18

U.S. Forest Service Ranger Station and Helitack Unit

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

The saboteur who watched the rangers’ helicopters had never had such an important role to play. This provided a certain level of excitement, but not anxiety. Nicky’s instructions had been explicit, the hours of training had been rigorous, and every contingency except failure had been considered. There was no thought of failure.

Nicky Parrish would not, the saboteur knew, consider for a moment that his trust — never given to anyone else before — was misplaced. Nor would Nicky be thinking of his helper — Nicky must concentrate on other matters. Nicky would simply know that his orders were being carried out — he would know. The way he always knew things. He would know that his little Moth had obeyed.

The intruder loved this nickname — this Nick name. The first time they had met, Nicky had said, “You are drawn to my light, aren’t you, little moth? That’s what I shall call you. From now on, you are my Moth.”

No one who had met the Moth at work or socially would have ever said, “Here is a servant.” That was one part of the delight the Moth took in serving Nicky. Nicky had immediately discerned the Moth’s desire to serve. The Moth was, in fact, the perfect servant, and to be the perfect servant, one must serve the perfect master.

And together, they were making history. Nicky, who had always acted alone, had deemed his servant worthy of this honor.

Just thinking of this heightened the Moth’s sense of anticipation. Perhaps later, during one of their dormant times, the Moth would write a poem about it. But for now, there was work to do — and unmindful of the darkness and the danger, of the rain and the cold — the Moth waited and watched, and eventually saw that the perfect moment for action had arrived.

It was not difficult to cause problems, little hitches in other people’s plans, if you knew what you were doing.

The Moth knew.

The people in the ranger station were careful with the forest, where they expected trouble, but not with the helicopters. Not on rainy nights, when the clouds were covering the mountains — nights when there was little to do. They did not look at these machines, nor walk out into the cold rain. All but one of them watched television — an old movie, made long before there were computers, served up by the ranger station’s satellite dish.

Perhaps the world outdoors was no longer exciting to the helicopter crews and forest workers — perhaps the sky and the forest were their offices, and the television and all things interior were more interesting to them.

Or perhaps it was just the rain that lulled them.

They should be thankful for it, really. The Moth had trained for many possible scenarios, including ones in which the five people in the small building with the satellite dish on it must be killed. But the rain would allow them to live. The rain masked sounds, made visibility poor.

One man in the station looked out at the rain from time to time. Wishing it away. He was the one who had been with Nicky. It was a little puzzling that he should be here. But that was not important. Nicky, who knew everything, had said that a few of them might see God and live.

The Moth went to work. Within moments, the Alouette and the Bell 212 had small, disabling problems. They could be repaired.

Just not in time.

J.C. went back to the window and stared out into the darkness. He did not talk to the others; it only made the waiting worse. So he pretended to be watching the rain — pretended, because he didn’t see the rain at all. He saw a horrible thing rise from a crude grave and beg for an embrace; he saw coyotes dancing on marionette strings held by a puppet master in a tree. He closed his eyes against these terrors, but to his dismay, he saw them more clearly.

How did David and Ben stand it? He had helped them before, but it had never been this bad. He had seen decayed remains before this, and had thought he would be prepared — but the bodies they had found before were suicides, or people who had wandered and died lost, or who had fallen while hiking alone. Not pleasant, and he had always felt sorry for them, but — but it was not like this.

He knew a hatred for Nicholas Parrish that he could taste in his mouth like bile.

Up there, in the meadow where they had found her, he hadn’t felt this way; he had stayed cool, had kept it together. Even carrying her body through the rain with Andy, he had been all right. It didn’t start to get to him until they were at the plane, after the pilot said they’d have to leave. And it wasn’t until he was here, at his own station, safe and warm, that he started to come apart.

He would show the Helitack crew where to find the group in the second meadow, and then he would take a couple of weeks off. He had the time coming to him. Maybe he’d even see a shrink. The idea didn’t bother him. If you needed help, get help.

David had told him that often enough. He had said that it would be weirder to do that kind of work and never be affected by it.

There were specialists who dealt with counseling people who had worked these cases. He’d ask David for the name of one of them.

He gave a sudden start — involuntarily brought his hand to his throat, as if holding a sound back — as if holding himself back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something moving in the darkness — or did he? Jesus, he was jumpy! Beneath his hand, his pulse raced. He tried to stare past the rain-splattered window. No, nothing out there.

Was there?

He couldn’t keep standing here. His legs weren’t going to hold him. God damn.

No, he couldn’t live like this — cowering and jumping at shadows. He was going to face it — that was the only way for now. He was going to walk out there and look around — reassure himself. He turned away from the window. He put on his parka, and when his hands shook as he tried to fasten the snaps, he shoved them into his pockets until he opened the door. He stepped out into the rain, peered into the darkness.

Nothing.

The cool air felt good, calmed him, until—

There! In the trees!

But . . . no, nothing.

Nothing.

The door suddenly opened behind him and he heard himself make a small sound of fright.

“J.C.? What’s the matter, man?”

One of the pilots.

“Just needed some air,” he said, not too steadily.

“Come inside,” the pilot coaxed.

J.C. stared out into the rain.

“Come on inside, man.” The pilot paused, then added, “They’ll be okay. Just camping out in the rain. We’ll pick them up first thing tomorrow. Come on in — nothing you can do tonight.”

He followed the pilot in, ignoring the uneasy glances the others exchanged. He made his way to his closet and took out another set of clothes. He went into the bathroom and stripped to take a shower. His third one tonight, and the others were probably already talking about it, but he didn’t give a shit. He could still smell the stink of that body on him and he needed to get clean.

He scrubbed until his skin was raw, let the water beat down on him, rinsed his mouth, his nose. He stood there letting the sound and feel of the water drown out everything else, until it just got too cold to stand it any longer. He toweled off and changed clothes again, then stared at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know the man who stared back at him, even though he recognized the face.

He didn’t want to go to sleep. Not with this shit running around in his head. He was spooked when he was wide awake — what the fuck would happen in his dreams?

Yes, he would get help.

But until then, what the hell could he do?

22

FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2:00 A.M.

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

“David, tell those two they can’t work in here without masks,” he said.

He had said something before that. The sound of his voice had awakened me before I could make out what it was.

“Ben?” I asked in the darkness.

“Oh, good — you’re here,” he said.

“Yes, I’m here,” I said.

“Can’t something be done about the heat in this place?”

“In the tent?”

“The air-conditioning — we’ll lose the computers.”

“Ben, it’s Irene,” I said, sitting up. “Wake up, Ben.”

He didn’t answer. I had just decided that my voice had stirred him from his nightmare, allowed him to sleep more peacefully, when he said, “Need a postmortem dental.”

Bingle, I soon realized, was sitting up, too. I scooted closer to Ben, reached over to try to rouse him. He had moved around in his sleep, and had pushed the upper sleeping bag off. Patting carefully around the tent, my hand found his hand — hot and dry.

“Note the development of the muscle attachment areas on this long bone,” he said. “This fellow might have been a southpaw.”

He was burning up. I risked using the flashlight, praying that Parrish wasn’t outside watching for it, that the rain was keeping him in for the night. I took in Ben’s glazed look, the sheen of perspiration that covered him. I found water and a neckerchief and the Keflex. Berating myself for not giving him more of the drug from the start, I managed to get his attention long enough to give him four of the pills now. How much would be dangerous?

I dampened the cloth and began the work of trying to cool him down.

“Camille?” he asked, frowning as he looked at me.

“Not even Garbo,” I said. “No deathbeds in this tent, understand? You fight this, Ben. Stay with me.”

“It’s so hot,” he said, pushing the sleeping bag lower. He remained restless, and his ramblings became less coherent. He would lie quietly, then suddenly shout something, often making me jump. Before long, he began thrashing around and I soon became worried that he’d reopen the bullet wound or worse if I didn’t get the fever down.

I opened the tent and went outside long enough to gather some water from the rain catcher; it was nearly full. I managed to get him to drink some of it, and to give him some aspirin. I didn’t have much faith that the aspirin would help at this point, but I wasn’t going to pass up a chance that it might lower his fever.

Ben seemed calmer when he heard my voice, so I talked to him as I worked. I took the sleeping bag off him, and when I saw him tearing at his shirt, unbuttoned it and helped him take it off, running cool cloths over his skin. Eventually I cut his pants off, too, afraid that his occasional delirious efforts to pull them off would do more harm to his injured leg. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to mind keeping his briefs on.

I kept on talking, kept changing the cloths. It seemed to me that he was feeling cooler, but I couldn’t be certain — my hands were beginning to feel numb from the cold rainwater.

“Thirsty,” I heard him say, in not much more than a whisper. One look at his face told me that he was no longer out of his senses — but he was in pain.

I propped his head up, gave him more Keflex, and let him drink from the water bottle as long as he could.

“Thanks,” he said, and closed his eyes.

“Do you want some more aspirin? I’m sorry, it’s all I have.”

“No. I’m beyond the reach of aspirin,” he said.

I counted the Keflex tablets. There were ten left. I wondered if I had given him too many, or not enough. Or if it would do any good at all. Maybe I was trying to put out a four-alarm fire with a squirt gun.

I called Bingle to my side. He came, but he brought David’s sweater with him. I turned out the light and lay down in my sleeping bag. I felt a rush of emotion, a sense of relief that made me want to cry. I stroked the dog’s fur, tried to calm down enough to sleep.

Outside, the stream was running stronger, and its rushing sound overpowered the sounds I had listened for earlier in the night. I tried to listen for Ben’s breathing, or Bingle’s snore, but the stream and the rain were too loud. I didn’t hear Ben crying out in delirium, though, or moving restlessly, so I thought he must have fallen asleep. I don’t know how much time had passed when I heard him say, “What was that story you were telling me?”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

I felt my face grow warm. “You knew what was happening? You could understand me?”

“Not always. It’s a little jumbled.”

“Parzival,” I said.

“What?”

“The story was Parzival the Grail Knight. He’s this kind-hearted young knight who often unwittingly causes harm where he means to do good — there are several versions of the tale, but I told you stories from the German poem, by Wolfram von Eschenbach.”

“You told me a story in English,” he said testily.

“Yes, of course — based on a translation—”

“Good grief. Don’t tell me Brenda Starr is a scholar of medieval poetry?”

I didn’t reply.

“Sorry,” he said.

After a long silence he said, “Why do you prefer the German version?”

“It’s the only one I know. That’s the one Jack gave me, that’s the one I read. Some scholar, huh?”

“Look, I said I was sorry.”

“So you did.”

After another silence, he tried again. “Who’s Jack?”

“Our neighbor. He’s — well, Jack isn’t easy to explain. But he’s big on mythology and folklore.”

“Tell it to me again,” he said. “I’ll listen better this time.”

“I won’t be able to do it justice. There are lots of complicated relationships and battles and characters whose names I don’t remember. I sort of faked my way through it tonight. You’d be better off reading it when we get back.”

“I’ll let you sleep, then,” he said, and it wasn’t until that moment that I heard what had probably been in his voice all along.

“Well, if you don’t mind an inferior version of it . . .”

“I don’t mind.”

So I tried to distract him from his pain by telling him of young Parzival, raised in ignorance of knights and chivalry by an overly protective mother. Of course, the first time Parzival encountered knights, he could think of nothing he’d rather do than become one, and set off to offer his services to King Arthur. Although embarrassingly naive and untutored, he had a natural talent for the work.

Ben fell asleep just as Parzival was about to visit Wild Mountain and meet the Fisher King.

It was just after dawn by then, and although it was still fairly dark in the tent, there was enough light for me to see Ben Sheridan’s pale and haggard features.

“What’s wrong, Ben?” I whispered, my mind still half caught up in Parzival’s tale.

It seemed to be a silly question, under the circumstances. Pain, weakness, severe injuries. Bad weather, hunger, a killer on the loose nearby. Easy to name what was wrong with him.

Or was it? I thought back to my last conversation with David, as I left for my walk with Bingle. David had hinted that Ben had troubles before we began our journey to these meadows. Whatever those troubles were, I supposed it would be a long time, if ever, before Ben Sheridan would confide in me.

When I woke up, Bingle was gone. Worried, I put on my boots and jacket. I had just stepped out into a misty morning when he returned, his fur damp and muddy, his mouth looking swollen.

Oh, hell, I thought, he’s met up with a porcupine. But as he drew closer, I saw that he was gently carrying something in his mouth.

Please don’t let it be something from the meadow, I prayed. He looked at me uncertainly, as if he expected me to do something. Not knowing what my part in this script was, I stayed still. He shifted his weight, looking anxious, then lay down at my feet. Very slowly and carefully, he opened his mouth, and, between my feet, deposited what he had been carrying.

Eggs.

Three small eggs.

Quail eggs. I hoped that he hadn’t taken every egg from the nest. Perhaps I should have scolded him, but between my relief at not having someone’s remains disgorged on my boots and my inability to guess if this was something he had been praised for doing in the past, I only managed a feeble, “Gracias, Bingle.”

He wagged his tail.

“I suppose you want one of these on your dog food.”

He kept wagging his tail. On the fur on his chin, I saw something that looked suspiciously like egg yolk.

“Then again, I guess you’ve already had breakfast.”

There was no way to put them back at this point, and as my stomach growled, I decided I wasn’t going to waste the food. I carefully stowed them inside the tent. I had a wild vision of J.C. finding them there and refusing to allow me to leave on the helicopter as punishment for disturbing local fauna. Telling him the dog brought them to me probably wouldn’t get me out of trouble.

Although the rain had let up, a heavy mist seemed to be settling in. Near the tent it was not terribly thick, but I doubted that visibility near the low, flat meadow would be good enough to allow a helicopter to land. I tried not to let this distress me, but the thought of not seeing the helicopter arrive that morning was upsetting. If Parrish didn’t find me, I could manage, but what would become of Ben? The fever, the loss of blood, the possibility of infection — if Parrish never showed his face, Ben’s life would still be in danger.

The rainwater bucket was full again. It felt good to have something going right. That feeling of confidence was not destined to last long.

Bingle joined me as I left for a walk to the stream. The rain in the container would help, but wouldn’t be enough. I decided I would refill our water bottles, which shouldn’t take long; my Sweet Water unit could filter a quart of stream water in a little over a minute.

I walked quickly. I didn’t want to leave Ben alone for any extended period of time. The ground was soft and muddy, but not impossibly so. On the way, I found a long, broken branch that ended in a curving fork. I picked it up and tried leaning on it, placing the forked end under my arm. It easily withstood my weight, but was a little tall for me — which would make it about right for Ben. I took it with me, thinking I might be able to fashion it into a crutch. If we had to move again, a crutch would be useful.

I stepped through the trees toward a sound that grew louder and louder. To my shock, the stream was now a much higher, debris-filled torrent, wildly coursing through the forest, and moving far too rapidly to be entered at this point. It cut us off completely from the meadow.

The meadow where the helicopter, if it arrived, would be landing.

23

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 19

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

When I got back to the tent, Ben was still sleeping. I used a piece of string to make three measurements — from his armpit to his elbow, from his elbow to his palm, and from his armpit to the bottom of his foot. I went back outside and checked the full length against the branch. A little short, perhaps, but I thought it might do. I used rope to fasten a short, thick stick at the place where I thought his hand might rest. I was taping cloth padding there and in the fork when I heard Ben call my name.

I went into the tent. “Ben? How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Good. Let me get some more Keflex for you.”

“I’ll take some a little later. I — I need to relieve myself. Would you please help me dress?” he asked.

“Oh. If you’re in a hurry—”

“Not that much of a hurry.”

The humiliation was obviously about to do him in, but we managed to find a shirt and a pair of shorts that would fit him from among those I had gathered from the camp.

“Did David train Bingle to steal eggs from birds’ nests?” I asked, trying to distract him.

“What!?”

“Uh — that was a change of subject. This morning, Bingle brought me those quail eggs — the ones on my sleeping bag.”

He looked over at them. “No, in fact, he’s trained not to disturb wildlife. Very strange. He likes eggs, though.” He smiled a little and added, “Maybe he’s courting you.”

“I don’t think dogs carry out what most women would think of as courtships,” I said, “although the average guy probably admires their direct approach.”

I helped him to sit up.

His skin was a little too warm; the flush on his face was obviously not just from embarrassment.

“You seem to be a little feverish.”

“Help me with the shirt, please,” he said, ignoring my comment.

I got him started with it, but he batted my hands away when I tried to do the buttons.

“God damn,” he said, lying back down, his hands shaking after the third button.

“You’re not doing so bad, all things considered,” I said, finishing up without further objection from him. “Need to rest, or you want to try a trip outside?”

“Rest — just a few minutes,” he said, breathing as hard as if he had been running.

“Want an egg for breakfast? They’re little but—”

“You should eat them. Or give them to Bingle.”

“I think he’s already eaten.”

“You gave me the soup last night. You didn’t have anything to eat, did you?”

“No, I ate some soup. But of the two of us—”

“You’re doing all the physical labor. You need strength. Eat the eggs. Have some soup, too. It’s all he left us, isn’t it?”

“We’re near a meadow. There are dandelions out there, and other things to eat. Besides, J.C. isn’t going to forget about us. As soon as the weather clears, the helicopter will come.”

“Eat the eggs before J.C. gets here.”

“But—”

“While I rest. Please.”

So while Bingle looked on, I scrambled the eggs, which combined to make a little less than one chicken egg’s worth of breakfast. I put a small forkful into the furry thief’s bowl of dog food and ate the rest.

I helped Ben get out of the tent — no easy task — and showed him the crutch. He put it under his arm and leaned on it. It fit better than I thought it would.

“I need two,” he said.

I laughed.

“I mean, thanks. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. You do need two. I’ll try to find another branch. In the meantime, lean on me.”

Slowly, we made it from the tent to a tree. “Can you manage from here?” I asked. “Call me when you’re finished — I won’t watch.”

“I — not so close to the camp,” he said.

“Ben, under any other circumstances, I’d applaud your sensitivity. But you’re running a fever and you look as if you’re about to pass out. Bingle has marked all of these trees already, so show him who’s alpha. Even injured, I’ll bet you can hit higher.”

“No,” he said. “Not here.”

“Jesus. You’re not exactly in a position to argue, you know that?” But I helped him move farther into the woods.

It was while I was waiting for him to finish that I heard Bingle barking. “Shit! I’ll be right back!”

I ran back to the camp. Bingle wasn’t there, but his fierce, warning barks continued.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Don’t let him kill the dog. Don’t let him kill Ben. Don’t let him kill me.

I had no weapons other than my knife. I picked up a large stick, which even then I knew would probably be utterly useless, but it gave me some primitive sense of power — that cave dweller bashing power, I suppose.

More cautious now, I made my way toward the barking, which was coming from the woods nearer the stream. Exactly which direction, I couldn’t tell, but the dog seemed to be in front of me. I moved from tree to tree, running in a crouched position, staying as close to the ground as I could.

“Bingle!” I said in a low voice, even before I saw him. “¡Bingle, ven acá! ¡Cállate!” I didn’t dare to shout it. But the dog must have heard me, because he stopped barking and began running toward me. I heard a shot, and Bingle yelped, but he kept running.

He soon reached me, panting and agitated. I dropped my bashing stick and ran my fingers over his fur, but I couldn’t find any wounds. I whispered praise to him and tried to stop shaking. Where was Parrish?

I waited, whispering to Bingle to stay still, to stay quiet. He obeyed, anxiously watching me.

“Irene Kelly!” a voice called out.

I thought Bingle whimpered, then realized I was the one who had made the sound.

“Thanks to that ill-mannered mutt,” Parrish shouted, “I know exactly where you are, Irene! I know, do you hear me? Yes, of course you do! I know exactly where you are!”

I held on to Bingle.

“I will find a way across, Irene!” he shouted. “I will find a way across! Did you think a little water would keep you safe? Think again!”

I didn’t move. My heart was hammering in my chest.

I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. If I had been alone, I probably would have just taken off with Bingle, but I had Ben to think of. As quickly and as quietly as I could, I ran back to the camp.

I hurriedly took up all the used bandages and anything that had blood on it — including the pants I had cut off Ben, and hid them beneath a pile of leaves, away from the camp. I returned to the tent and took up Ben’s sleeping bags, his shaving kit, three water bottles, matches, a mess kit and the soup. I grabbed some bandages, the aspirin, and the Keflex. I left my sleeping bag, but took some clothing, mostly rain gear. I took Bingle’s food and harness. I folded the tarp and was ready to leave, when I saw one last item. I grabbed David’s sweater, which Bingle quickly took from me, and together we ran toward the place where I had left Ben.

He wasn’t there.

“Ben?” I called softly. Had I mistaken the place?

“Over here,” I heard him say.

“Where?” I asked, but Bingle, wagging his tail, moved to a fallen tree. If his mouth hadn’t been full of sweater, he probably would have barked.

A pile of wet leaves moved, and Ben’s head emerged. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“A little damp, but okay.”

“Thank God you hid. Listen, Bingle was barking—”

“At Parrish,” Ben said.

“Did you hear him?”

“Parrish? Not really. Just a voice. Couldn’t make out what he was saying. But Bingle’s bark — it had to be Parrish. I managed to drag myself over here.”

“He’s going to try to cross the stream — the stream has been swollen by the rain, so luckily for us, crossing it won’t be easy. Still, he might find a place where it narrows, so we may not have more than a few minutes.”

“Then listen—”

“I’m going to draw him away from you,” I said. “Even if he catches me, he’ll probably — well, you’ll still have some time.”

“For God’s sake—”

“I don’t think he knows you’re alive,” I went on. “I tried to bring or bury anything that might let him know you were at the tent. I brought the sleeping bags and a tarp, and a little food and water. If you can hold out until the helicopter comes, maybe light a signal fire when you hear it — I don’t know, that might not be safe, either — anyway, here’s the water and the Keflex, I’ll look for a place to hide you, and I’ll be right back.”

“Irene, listen to me — this is stupid. Run. Just run. I’m begging you, please. Please get the hell out of here. I can hide beneath this tree.”

“If the dampness doesn’t kill you, insects will eat you alive. I’ll bet you’ve already got ant bites.”

“Ant bites! Who gives a shit about ant bites!”

“Bingle,” I said, “cuídalo.”

“What did you just say to him?”

“He’ll guard you while I’m gone.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Be right back.”

“Don’t! Don’t come back! Just run!”

I started praying to St. Jude, which is something an old-fashioned Catholic will do in times of trouble. While I was at it, I asked St. Anthony to find a hiding place for Ben. I also used the direct line.

I’m not sure who got through to the big guy first, but I hadn’t gone far when I found a group of relatively dry boulders that were large enough to hide a man, and would not force Ben to suffer all the insect life in a fallen tree.

I dragged the gear there first, not listening to Ben’s renewed arguments, which he should have known were useless.

By the time I came back for him, he had either realized that or worn himself out, because he didn’t give me any more grief — nothing beyond muttering about hardheaded women, but the line forms to the left for people who’ve said something like that to me over the years.

I praised Bingle and told him to follow us, then helped Ben, carrying him on my back when we reached the boulders.

Once we had managed the hellish business getting him ensconced in his rocky fortress — his bad leg was jostled four or five times — I went around the outside, studying the boulders from every possible angle. I couldn’t see him unless I climbed up over several layers of rock. Satisfied that it was the best we could do on short notice, I gave Bingle the sentinel’s job again and crawled back into Ben’s cubbyhole with him, bringing his crutch with me. I quickly helped him change into a dry shirt. The shorts had fared better. I put a sleeping bag around him. I made sure the water and other supplies were within reach.

“I’m going now,” I said. “Will you be all right here?”

He nodded.

“If you see Frank Harriman before I do, tell him — say hello for me, okay?”

“Sure.”

There was a sound from the forest then. It was repeated, again and again at regular intervals. I didn’t recognize it, but Ben did.

“An ax. He’s cutting down a tree. He’s probably making a bridge across the water.”

“I’d better get ready to lure him right back over it, then. You sure you’ll be all right here?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be able to get out again if you need to?”

“Yes, I can pull myself out over the rocks if I have to. You’re taking Bingle, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Parrish will wonder why I don’t have him with me if he’s not at my side. But if — if necessary, I’ll try to send him back to you.”

“I don’t know much Spanish,” he said. “Come back for me yourself.”

I laughed and started to leave, then bent back down and hugged him. He seemed a little surprised at first, but then he hugged back. “Be safe,” he said.

“You, too.”

I stood up and had climbed about halfway out when he said, “Thank you.”

“You keep fighting, Ben Sheridan, or I’ll really be pissed off at you.”

“Take care, Lois Lane.”

“Sure thing, Quincy.”

“Oh God, don’t make me a pathologist!”

I reached the top of the rock pile, saw him below me, suddenly looking vulnerable and alone. I almost considered staying with him, but I knew that we’d be fish in a barrel for Parrish if he found us.

Maybe he saw my indecision, because he said, “Shove old Nicky off a cliff and come back and tell me the rest of Parzival.”

“Sure. I’ll try not to make you wait to hear the ending.”

I took one last look at him, hoped it wasn’t really a last look, waved, and began my journey back to the stream, listening to Parrish’s ax ringing out its challenge, its siren call, its alarm.

24

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 19

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

He was strong.

I suppose I had known that before, but watching him swing that ax at the tree on the opposite bank disheartened me, made me wonder what on earth had led me to believe I could defeat him.

He was swinging hard, angrily. The tree was not huge — a pine tree that was tall enough to span the stream and thick enough to support his weight when he walked on it.

I forced myself to think in terms of escaping him, drawing him away from Ben. My first frantic thoughts included improbable methods of killing him: throwing a large rock at him while he was chopping down the tree, beaning him while his hands were occupied; swinging across the stream from a vine, Tarzan-style, plunging my knife into him while the ax was stuck in the wood; whittling a javelin and spearing him while he was halfway across the river.

All impractical. I have a decent pitching arm, but this was no straight shot, and if I missed him, he’d shoot me; there were no convenient Tarzan-strength vines; even if I had the time to whittle a javelin, chances of learning to throw one accurately for a one-chance, winner-takes-all shot were nil.

I did find another stick that could be used as a club, and a few baseball-sized rocks. If he had somehow seen me watching him, and came after me before I crossed to the other side, I’d use whatever was at hand to stop him.

There was a slow creaking sound, then a thunderous crack. The tree began to give way, its upper branches catching and snapping like gunfire as they struck the branches of other trees on the way down. It hit the ground on my side of the stream with a loud bang that shook the earth beneath me.

Bingle flattened himself to the ground and put his ears back, but stayed next to me. I peered cautiously from my hiding place.

Nick Parrish stood surveying his handiwork. He could easily cross over now; the lowest branches of the tree would present an obstacle or two at this end, but he had chosen his crossing place and bridge material well.

Would he plan on my being this close? Would he know that I might have moved toward the sound of him felling a tree? I didn’t think so. He would expect me to run. He expected fear.

He was looking at the ax now, and as he did, I tried not to think of him using it on me. He expects fear, I told myself again. Don’t give it to him.

So I tried to think about the ax being in my own hands, which suddenly made me wonder — whose ax was it? I couldn’t remember anyone hiking with one, or using one in the past few days. Did he have other tools and weapons cached nearby?

He carried the ax with him as he began to walk along the tree trunk. He used it as a kind of balance. He moved cautiously. Closer and closer.

He had his hands full, the gun holstered. The temptation to try pitching one of the rocks at him was strong. The stream wasn’t very far below him, only about four feet. It was running swift and cold, but I wasn’t sure how deep. He wasn’t looking toward me now; he was getting closer to the branches, which would partially obscure him. I might not have a better chance. But if I missed? Perhaps I could still evade him.

I had picked up one of the rocks and was weighing it in my hand when he lost his balance. He had almost reached my side of the stream when one of the branches supporting the fallen trunk gave way beneath his added weight, The whole trunk suddenly dropped a few inches, and Parrish lunged forward. He let go of the ax and grasped wildly at the branches nearest him.

The ax fell into the rushing water below, but the branch he had grabbed held. He pulled himself upright, looking shaken. My enjoyment of that was brief.

Whispering to Bingle to remain quiet, I watched as Parrish quickly made his way to safety, and onto the bank. I moved behind a fallen tree, no longer risking watching him, listening as he moved through the woods. He came closer to where I crouched. I took my club in hand. He paused not far from me, and for a moment I was sure he had seen me, and that he was merely deciding how best to take me captive. But he moved on, heading downstream, toward the place where he had heard Bingle barking.

I made myself wait a little longer, then stood and stretched. Bingle stretched his back legs, then followed me to Parrish’s bridge. I snapped the leash onto his harness, hoping he wouldn’t balk at crossing the noisy current. If he fell in, I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to keep him from being swept downstream.

I needn’t have worried. He didn’t resist my efforts to help him scramble up onto the tree, and once we were clear of the branches, he began to move so quickly and easily that I had to concentrate on keeping up with him, rather than on thoughts of falling into the water.

“Bien,” I whispered, when we reached the muddy bank on the other side. “I think you’ve crossed streams this way before, Bingle.”

I removed his leash, then took a moment to examine the fallen tree, to look for something that I might later use as a lever to move it, but found nothing. I realized that this part of the stream was not far from the group camp. Thinking that I might scrounge some useful items from it again, I went back to it. I had to call to Bingle a couple of times to keep him from going back to the meadow.

Among the sodden ruins of the camp, I saw a length of rope that might come in handy, but not much else. I figured that it would take Parrish a little while to find where I had stayed last night, and to rummage through the tent — but I didn’t want to give him enough time to find Ben. I hurried back to the stream, and continued along the bank, until I was near where Parrish had stood when he called to me.

I moved a little way into the woods, found two small trees and stretched a length of the rope between them at about ankle height. I covered it with leaves. I hurriedly sharpened three sticks with my knife and planted them in the soft ground a few feet beyond the rope, sharp-end up, at roughly forty-five-degree angles, so that they formed a row pointing back toward the rope. These I also covered with leaves. A little farther away, within easy sight of the first trees, I tied another length of rope between two other trees, this time at a height of almost a foot off the ground.

I quickly worked out a route through the woods, occasionally piling stones up as markers.

“Okay, Bingle,” I said, snapping the leash back on. “Let’s put on a show.”

I moved back toward the stream, but stayed out of sight, in the trees. “Cántame, Bingle.” Sing to me.

He looked at me, looked back at the meadow, and whimpered.

I swallowed hard. “Cántame, Bingle.”

He lay down, and would not look at me. I tried holding his face, and still he kept his eyes averted.

“Okay, so that belongs to David,” I said. “I apologize. Will you speak for me? Háblame, Bingle. Por favor, háblame.”

He looked up at me.

“¡Háblame!”

He was watching me, looking undecided.

“¡Háblame!” I tried again.

He barked.

“¡Muy bien! ¡Háblame!”

He entered the spirit of things then. He barked and barked, and I praised him in Spanish, until finally I saw movement through the trees on the other bank. Loudly in English, I called, “Stop barking! Please, Bingle!” In Spanish, I continued to enthusiastically command just the opposite.

Not wanting to overdo it, I finally said, “¡Cálmate, cállate!”

He fell silent. I quietly petted him and praised him in Spanish. We walked back toward the starting line of the obstacle course I had set for Parrish.

Bingle had become aware of Parrish’s presence some time before, probably catching his scent on the breeze that came our way every few minutes. At the same time, if it’s true that animals can smell fear, I was overloading the poor dog’s snoot.

Parrish reached his little bridge, and couldn’t resist taunting me. “I’ll find you, you know!”

What the hell? I thought. Do not go gentle into that good night.

“Hey, Nick!” I shouted. “Who’d you pimp for after your mother died?”

There was a gratifying silence before he shouted, “You’ll pay for that!”

“Taking up Mama’s slogan, Nicky?”

That put him into a hurry.

“¡Apúrate!” I said to Bingle, and we gave ourselves a head start. We made a lot of noise as we ran; Bingle kept up with me at an easy lope, enjoying the hell out of himself. I was having a harder time of it, slogging through the mud. Over our own noise, I soon heard Parrish crashing through the woods behind me.

I came to the first set of trees, veered around them, and positioned myself not far from the trees with the more visible rope. As soon as Parrish came into sight, I made a show of hurrying over that rope, Bingle leaping behind me. I heard Parrish shout, “Nice try!” just before he tripped on the other, hidden rope.

I heard him scream.

I kept running, calling Bingle to follow me. We ran for a long way, keeping to the trees, until finally I was sure Parrish was no longer following me.

I rested, feeling sick and shaky. I held on to Bingle. He gave no sign of scenting or hearing Parrish.

I waited as long as I could stand it. If one of those stakes had killed him, I wanted to get back to Ben.

At the very least, I knew I had wounded him. If he was only wounded, I wanted to know where he was. I had a job to finish.

I almost ran into him.

Bingle realized that he was near before I did, but not quite soon enough. He had kept downwind of us, and although Bingle had growled a moment before, I still gave a cry of surprise when Parrish stepped out from behind a tree.

His shirt was covered in blood, and he had tied a makeshift bandage around his left shoulder. In his right hand, he held a gun.

Bingle barked at him.

Parrish smiled. “I think I will begin by shooting that dog.”

25

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 19

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

“How unsporting of you,” I said.

“Unsporting?” he said, looking faintly amused.

“I mean, shooting a dog that’s leashed and standing just ten or fifteen feet away from you? Wow — what a great hunter you’ve turned out to be.”

“Do you think this sort of nonsense will spare you anything at all? Am I supposed to be impressed?”

I hoped he was. I was proud of myself just because I hadn’t wet my pants yet. Bracing for the sound of gunfire, I stooped down near Bingle, sheltering his head. Not really much of a risk. Parrish might shoot me, but I knew it wouldn’t fit his fantasies. He would want my suffering to be much more prolonged. I almost wanted him to shoot me.

“Stand up!” he shouted.

I unsnapped Bingle’s leash.

“Give the dog a head start,” I said, staying low.

“You’re going to tell him to bite me,” he said, leveling the gun at me.

“No, you’d just kill him. I’ll tell him to cross the stream.”

“You expect me to believe he understands such a command?”

“You’ve seen how well trained he is. Give him the command yourself — say it in Spanish, he’ll obey you.”

“I don’t speak the languages of inferior peoples.”

“Prince of the polyglots,” I murmured.

“What?”

“I said, I doubt you’re such a great shot. I’ll give him the command. Let him cross the stream. See if you can shoot him at that distance. Even if you can’t hit him, you’ll scare him off.”

“Can’t hit him?” He laughed. “All right, Irene, you seem to need a lesson in respect. Perhaps this will provide a demonstration of sorts. But I’ll warn you that if you plan to have him attack me, I can easily squeeze off a shot before he gets near me.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Let me calm him down.”

“Bingle,” I said in a low voice. “Bingle, ¿dónde está Ben? Búscalo, Bingle.”

Bingle stopped growling, looked at me, and cocked his head. He whined.

“Eres un perro maravilloso, Bingle. ¿Dónde está Ben? Es muy importante, Bingle. ¡Búscalo!”

He looked across the stream, back at me, then at Parrish. He looked at me and whined again.

“Bien, Bingle. ¿Listo? ¡Búscalo! Cuídalo. Por favor, Bingle. Ben, Bingle. Ben. ¡Apúrate, búscalo! ¡Cuídalo! ¡Vete!”

He moved off, stopped, and looked back at me. “¡Bien! ¡Sigue, adelante!”

I tried to keep my voice full of enthusiasm, thankful that Ben’s name wasn’t something like “Charles” or “Jim,” which would have been more noticeable among the Spanish words.

Bingle started moving again. Parrish said, “Follow him to the stream.”

He was never far behind me, and I had no doubt that the gun was trained on me, not the dog. Seeing us follow, Bingle was less reluctant, and began to make quick progress toward the felled tree.

“¡Adelante!” I said, wondering if he could manage getting up onto the tree.

I needn’t have worried; he was fit and agile, and was soon making his way across. But when I didn’t follow, he stopped.

“¡Lárgate!” I said. Scram!

He didn’t budge.

“I’ve had enough of this ridiculous mutt,” Parrish said, stepping out from behind me and aiming the gun at the dog.

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” I said quickly. “I knew you’d take an easy shot!”

“Hurry up then!”

“¡Lárgate!” I said again, in the sternest voice I could manage.

Bingle quickly moved away. When he was partly hidden by the branches, I yelled, “¡Apúrate, Bingle! ¡Vete!”

He obeyed. He ran away from the stream, into the trees. But he was not out of sight yet. Parrish was taking careful aim when I slammed into him, knocking us both into the mud. Parrish fired the gun as he fell, screaming as he hit his shoulder.

“¡Vete!, Bingle! ¡Vete!” I shouted again, even as I got to my feet. He was obeying, running through the trees. I tried to do the same.

I didn’t get far. Parrish rolled and grabbed my ankle, pulling me down, hard. I kicked and clawed, but he scrambled up on top of me, shoving my face deep into the mud, holding me there until my lungs were screaming for air. I struggled, tried to buck him off, tried to push up, but he was stronger. For a moment I wondered if this was where it would end, if I would simply be suffocated on this muddy bank, if Parrish’s plans for me were not so elaborate after all.

He yanked my head up by the hair. I gasped for air. He shoved my face down again.

By the fourth time, all I wanted was air. That’s all. Air. Just air. Just to be let up again. I was half out of my mind, panicked.

By the tenth, he could have taken anything he wanted.

He knew that, of course.

He went for twelve.

I think it was twelve. I had lost track. The world, all life, everything of importance had come down to taking the next breath.

“Wipe your face off!” he said angrily, dragging me up. He pushed me forward, seated me clumsily against the stump of the felled tree. He crouched in front of me and said it again. It took me a while to understand him. I was gasping. There still wasn’t enough air. The sky didn’t hold enough of the stuff.

“Wipe your face off or I’ll shove it back down into that muck,” he said. “Only I’ll piss in it first!”

I reached up with shaking hands and wiped my face. The slime wouldn’t all come off, of course. He reached over with one finger, drew something on each of my cheeks.

“There. Now I’ve branded you. You bear my initials.”

I felt a sudden dampness on my cheeks. I was crying.

They awakened something, those tears. A little spark of anger. At myself. But it was enough.

He was pleased by the tears, I could see. I wiped them away. His initials, too.

“Oh, you are going to be such a delight to conquer, Irene.”

I didn’t answer.

He didn’t say anything, and suddenly I realized he was listening to something. There was, I thought, a faint, rhythmic rumbling in the distance. A helicopter?

We waited, each with a different sense of anticipation. I knew he had other weapons. Would he shoot whoever landed in the meadow? Would they see the destruction, be cautious about approaching? Could I warn them not to land less than a SWAT team here?

But the sound stayed distant, then stopped altogether.

He smiled.

Be angry, I told myself. But it was so hard to find anger, buried so far beneath my fear.

“You suggested a hunt for the dog. You’re something of a bitch yourself, you know. Did you have sex with the dog last night? Is that why you tried to save his life?”

He treated me to a long series of not very inventive questions about Bingle’s sexual prowess. I said nothing to him, but the fear receded a little, replaced by disgust.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. You’re going to be the hunted, and I’m going to track you. No matter how fast you run, or how far you go, I’ll find you. I have a marvelous sense of smell, you know.”

He reached into one of his pockets, smiling as he removed something white from them.

My underwear.

He took a deep breath, and his expression was that of a man intoxicated by a heady perfume.

“Look!” he said, pointing to his crotch. “You’ve given me a hard-on.”

Without dropping my eyes, I said, “Even Bingle can’t find something that small.”

He slapped me. It made my lip bleed. He laughed and pressed the crotch of my underwear to it.

“There!” he said, holding it to his nose again. “Now it will be even easier to find you. Get to your feet.”

I stood up.

“Start running, Irene. I’ll give you a head start. But just remember, no matter how far you go, no matter how safe you feel you are, no matter how well you believe you are hidden or protected — I will find you. I want you to understand what you’ve only begun to learn — I’m your master. You should be pleased — you will learn to be pleased. I will touch you as no one has ever touched you before.”

He tucked the panties back into his pocket and patted it. “I have your scent now. I’m a very quiet hunter, Irene. Do you think you can evade me? I’ll come upon you when you least expect it.”

He stood. “Come along, let’s get started.”

I didn’t move.

“Stand up!”

I stood.

“Let me make something clear,” he said in exasperated tones. “I will either begin with you now, and in a way that will make you think those pictures of Julia Sayre were taken at a picnic, or you will start running on the count of three. Oh — and one other thing — remember this name: Nina Poolman. Someone will want to know it someday. Now . . . one . . .”

If he said three, I didn’t hear it. I was already running through the woods.

26

FRIDAY, NOON, MAY 19

A Private Heliport Near Bakersfield

Frank knew that the helicopter belonged to Jack, and its care and custody were Dalton’s, but he had pictured a small commuter craft, and was shocked to discover that the “company helicopter” was a giant Sikorsky S-58T.

“What does Fremont Enterprises do with a helicopter this size?” he asked Jack.

“It’s a shit hauler,” Stinger said, then laughed at Frank’s dismay.

“We have a contract with the Forest Service to haul waste from remote locations,” Jack said, cuffing Stinger.

“Six tons a year off Mount Whitney alone,” Stinger said with pride.

“We use the helicopter for other purposes, too,” Jack went on. “We plant fish — we have a government contract to deliver live fish from hatcheries to mountain lakes. We transport fire crews. We’ve helped with flood evacuations. We’ve done lifting at construction sites, carried cargo loads. And Stinger gets involved in search and rescue from time to time.”

Travis eagerly began asking questions, and Stinger didn’t have to be coaxed into boasting about the Sikorsky. It was fifteen feet high, he told them, and — not counting its rotor blades — about forty-five feet long. It had been fitted with turbine engines and auxiliary fuel tanks. It could hold eighteen passengers, but Stinger had altered the interior so that now — in addition to a crew of two in the cockpit — the cargo area had seats for ten passengers and carried two stretchers.

Frank tried not to think about needing stretchers.

Stinger assigned seats. Travis and Jack climbed into the cargo area with the two dogs, who were safely strapped in special harnesses.

Stinger asked Frank to ride with him in the cockpit, high above the cargo area. “You’ll be able to recognize these people we’re looking for,” he explained.

Frank crawled up the outside of the tall craft using only handholds and toeholds, then struggled to fit his 6'4" frame in through the cockpit window, feet-first. He supposed this standard way of entering the cockpit might come more easily with practice, but his first try was damned awkward — and Stinger enjoyed ribbing him about it.

With effort, Frank held on to his temper. He told himself that he should have tried to get a full-night’s sleep last night, as the others had. Even as the others had headed off to bed, he’d known he’d need the rest, should have taken the room Stinger offered. But he had stayed up, staring at maps, pacing, and checking weather reports on the Internet using Stinger’s computer.

Sometime near dawn, exhaustion must have finally outrun his worries, because he awoke with a start from a vivid nightmare of hearing Irene shouting for help, while he ran, calling to her, unable to find her. But when Stinger roused him by gently shaking his shoulder, Frank realized that all the shouting had been his own — in his fitful sleep. He had dozed off facedown on the map-covered table. Chagrined, he had waited for one of Stinger’s typical smart-ass comments, but all the other man had said was, “Coffee’s ready.”

Stinger gave him a miked headset, then turned and leaned over to hand two other sets down a ladder, to Jack and Travis. The cargo area could not be seen from Frank’s seat. Stinger went through a series of take-off procedures with Pappy, the elderly man who served as his ground crew, then said, “Everybody hear me okay?”

There was a chorus of replies.

“Okay then, just one question.”

“Yes?” Jack asked.

“Everybody made out a will?”

“Yes,” Travis answered, which allowed Jack a laugh on Stinger.

“That’s the copilot’s seat,” Stinger told Frank. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to touch the sticks or the pedals — or anything else, for that matter.”

“One person can fly this thing?”

“You’d better hope so,” Stinger said.

“Stinger—” Jack’s exasperated voice came over the headphones.

“It’s okay,” Frank said. “He’s right, it was a dumb question.”

“Naw,” Stinger said. He hit some switches and there was a “whump” and then the whine of the turbines began to build. Frank saw a little puff of smoke from the exhaust. “Don’t let that worry you,” Stinger said, working the controls. The blades of the rotors swoop-swoop-swooped, faster and faster — within twenty seconds, both the main and tail rotors were spinning at a steady speed.

Everything around them was a roar.

Travis’s voice came over the headphones. “The dogs are scared.”

“They’re always like that at first,” Frank heard Jack say. “They’ll settle down in a minute.”

“You mean my dogs have ridden in this thing before?” Frank asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Stinger laughed, managing pedals and sticks all at once.

They lifted off, and Frank was caught up for a time in simply taking in the sensation of flight, in the way that only a helicopter could provide it — close enough to the earth to observe it in detail, high enough to feel free of it.

They climbed, and then moved forward, and climbed again. He had grown up in Bakersfield, and now, below him, he saw familiar landmarks passing quickly. He stayed silent as Stinger acted as tour guide for Travis and Jack.

Frank thought of what it must be costing Jack to do this. The fuel cost alone would be outrageous — Stinger had said the helicopter used one hundred gallons an hour. All the trouble and expense his friend was going to on their behalf — how could he ever repay him? He knew Jack wouldn’t expect anything in return for his help, but still . . .

Stinger piloted with the ease of long experience, and of a man who knew his territory. Frank began to realize that another pilot might not have been able to lead them so readily to the mountain airstrip; when Stinger pointed it out as they passed over it, it seemed to Frank to be little more than a roughly mown narrow swath in a meadow.

There was patchy mist and fog below them; the mountain air currents, temperatures and shapes of the valleys affected this — in some places fog lay thick and still; in others, it was no more than softly moving mist; in still others, there was none to be seen.

They were moving closer to her, Frank told himself. He could find her on foot from the airstrip if he had to.

Maybe she would be just fine. Maybe he was asking Jack to spend a ton of money for nothing.

Irene would be furious with him if she was okay. She had accused him more than once of being overprotective. And the rangers might have already gone in and picked up the whole group — she could be on her way home . . .

“Wonder what that lawyer is up to?” Stinger asked, snapping him out of his reverie.

Frank had tried to call Newly several times before they left Stinger’s home. He had wanted to verify the GPS coordinates; the ones Frank had written down showed that the group had hiked in circles and doubled back on itself more than once. But Newly hadn’t answered the phone.

“He may be knocked out on pain medication,” Frank said.

“Hmm. Could be,” Stinger answered. “Kinda odd, though, giving you access to that GPS. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Oh, well. We’ll be able to check out some of these places we marked on our maps, anyway — maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Any chance the rangers have already been in to pick them up?”

“I can radio them at their heliport. Only one problem, though.”

“What’s that?”

Stinger smiled. “Well, technically, this is wilderness area we’re flying over. And the law says we shouldn’t even be here in the first place, not in an aircraft, not in a truck — you know, emergencies and special situations only. Las Piernas cops must have had to have all kinds of special permission to be using that airstrip, which is really only there in case the Forest Service needs to land firefighters up here. Your department know somebody up here? We might need somebody on our side if we get caught.”

“One of the rangers — he’s had the help of the forensic anthropologists we work with,” Frank answered, wondering if he’d just be fired, or fired and arrested. “They aren’t department employees. The forensic anthropologists, I mean.”

“Hope that ranger got along okay with Irene. Anyways, if I call the ranger station, I’m basically asking them to bust us.”

“But you seem to know the area so well,” Travis said, reminding Frank that their conversation had been overheard in the cabin. “Isn’t there some legitimate reason we could be up here?”

“We’ll think of something,” Jack said.

“What the hell,” Frank said. “We’ll either get away with this, or it’s too late to worry about it.”

Stinger laughed. “I’m beginning to see how you and old Jack got to be friends.”

They flew to the last place Newly had recorded on the GPS, then began circling from there, flying over the meadows they had marked as the most likely candidates. Most of the meadows were shrouded in fog; low and flat, the moist, cool air collected in them.

“Too bad I don’t have infrared on this thing,” Stinger said. “This fog should burn off in a while; we may just want to set down and wait.”

They found three meadows that had fairly good ground visibility, which Stinger had explained was more important to flying the helicopter safely than most other weather factors. They had already taken a quick look over the third meadow when Jack said he thought he had seen something odd near a tree.

Stinger turned the helicopter and made a lower, slower pass.

“Good eye, Jack,” Frank said suddenly. “Look at the ground. Somebody has camped here.”

“Yep,” Stinger said, hovering over the spot. “Although it’s hard to know how long ago.”

“Let’s go back to that tree,” Frank said, pointing toward the other end of the meadow. “The place where Jack thought he saw something. Some serial killers like to pick out spots they can find again — many of them revisit burials. It does sound as if Parrish brought the group to Sayre’s grave — so he had some way of finding her.”

It took only a few seconds to travel the distance to the tree.

“Look out there!” Travis said. “Someone was digging.”

“Looks like you’re right, Frank,” Jack added.

They could all see it now, the dark oval, the markers, the loosened soil.

“I’m going to set her down,” Stinger said.

“No — not here,” Frank said. “They moved on from here, remember? We need to look for that ridge — the ridge that divides this meadow from another one.”

They moved around the edges of the meadow, and saw only one place that seemed to fit the description they had — a third-hand description that had gone from the ranger to the pilot to Pete, Frank reminded himself. They flew up over the ridge, but the meadow on the other side was a pool of fog.

“Okay,” Stinger said. “Let’s go back to the ridge. I saw a place where I can set this baby down.”

At the last minute, Frank did end up closing his eyes, and was thankful that Stinger was too caught up carrying off the tricky landing to notice his momentary loss of nerve.

“Jesus, Stinger,” Jack said.

“You think I was gonna trim the trees, Chicken Little?”

“No, I thought they were going to trim us. I’m not as tired of life as you seem to be.”

The dogs might have been veteran helicopter riders, but Frank noticed that they both seemed happy to be on the ground. They stayed close to him; every few moments they would venture a few feet away, peer out uneasily into the fog, sniff the air, and come back to him. He had been discussing a plan of action with the others, and only now did he notice that Dunk’s hackles were raised and that the dog was growling softly.

“Hey!” he called to the others, and they looked over at him from near the cargo door. He motioned them to silence.

Both dogs were standing with stiff legs and tails now, ears pitched forward, listening. Everyone was watching them except Stinger. He had hurried into the cabin of the helicopter.

When he came back out, he had a shotgun. “There’s another one in there if anyone wants one,” he whispered. “You probably have a fine enough handgun in that shoulder holster, Frank, but I’m gettin’ old, so I like something that doesn’t require such nice aim.”

Stinger looked at Travis, who shook his head, and at Jack, who smiled.

“Still a knife man?” Stinger whispered.

Jack nodded.

Stinger shook his head.

“Could just be a squirrel or something,” Frank whispered, but opened his jacket.

They heard twigs snapping, the sound of footsteps.

Dunk started barking; Deke joined him.

“Hush!” Jack said, and was obeyed instantly.

Good thing Jack gave the command, Frank thought, unsnapping his holster. The dogs were notoriously unruly around their true owners.

The footsteps came closer.

By silent consensus, the group moved to take cover, Jack putting Travis behind him. Frank called softly to the dogs, but they ignored him.

He was thinking of moving out to grab them, when he saw the vague form of a man — or a woman — he couldn’t be sure — coming closer. Stinger chambered a round. “Could be one of our own!” Frank warned.

“Who’s there?” the misty figure called out. A man. Frank didn’t know the voice. Stinger was looking at him, read that lack of recognition, and raised the shotgun.

“I don’t know all of them!” Frank said desperately. “For God’s sake, calm down.”

“Who are you?” Frank called back.

The man halted, then suddenly turned and ran away.

“Stop!” Frank called out. “Stop!”

The man kept moving — they could hear him crashing through the brush.

Frank turned to Stinger. “You and Travis, stay here!” he ordered. “Jack, come with me.”

He didn’t wait to see if he was being obeyed. He moved after the noise, once glancing back to see Jack behind him. The dogs took up the chase, and moved ahead of him, but stayed within sight.

There was a strange thudding sound, and then the man screamed — a scream of pure, unadulterated terror. Frank ran faster.

A few moments later, the man came into view. The dogs had halted, ears back, tails tucked down. The man was still screaming, and batting wildly at something, like a child whose face had been caught in a large spiderweb — batting at strange shapes dangling from a tree.

Christ! he thought, they looked like dogs — no, no, not dogs. Coyotes. They were jerking and swaying, bouncing off the man and swinging back, until the man suddenly dropped to his knees, huddling beneath them, curled up in a protective ball.

For a moment, Jack and Frank stood frozen in place, horrified by the sight of a dozen dead coyotes swaying and thudding into one another, some breaking as they collided.

It was Dunk who moved ahead, while Deke stayed back with Frank — Dunk who whined and cautiously sniffed at the huddled man.

The figure raised his head, and Frank saw the haggard face of a young man — a terror-stricken man, but one who had not just this moment become afraid. He wasn’t looking at Frank or Jack, but at the dog.

“Bingle?” he asked, as if experiencing a miracle.

Frank relaxed a little, but still approached cautiously.

“That’s Dunk,” he said easily, moving a little closer. “But I know Bingle. I’ve worked with him. I’m Frank — what’s your name?”

The man glanced up at Frank, seemed to catch sight of the coyotes, and quickly looked away, back at Dunk. He reached out and touched the dog, began to stroke his fur. Dunk leaned in for more; the young man held on to him.

“Jay. Jay Carter,” he said, his voice shaking. “J.C.”

“J.C.,” Frank said. “Is that what your friends call you?”

J.C. nodded.

Frank moved closer still and reached out a hand. “J.C., why don’t we move a little ways away from here? Give me your hand, J.C., and we’ll get away from them, okay? Come on.”

J.C. took his hand, let himself be led away from the tree, keeping his face averted as they passed it. He was watching Dunk and Deke, who were sniffing his shoes.

“They smell them,” J.C. said.

“The coyotes?” Frank asked.

J.C. shook his head, didn’t answer. His face drained of color, and he swayed on his feet. Frank put an arm around his shoulders, and with Jack’s help, led him to a fallen tree.

“Here, have some water,” Frank said, but J.C. fumbled for his own water bottle, then drank deeply.

“I’ll let Stinger and Travis know we’re okay,” Jack said. “And I’ll bring back some hot coffee and blankets.”

“Thanks,” Frank said.

Jack hesitated. “Should I take the dogs?”

“No!” J.C. said.

“Okay,” Frank said easily. “We’ll keep them here.”

It wasn’t until Jack left that Frank had the time to notice something about the man that he had missed before.

“You’re with the Forest Service . . .”

“Yes, I’m a ranger,” J.C. answered dully. He put the water bottle away, then moved from the tree to be closer to the dogs. He hugged them, buried his face in their fur. Frank wondered if the dogs would resist a stranger confining their movements, but they seemed more inclined to nuzzle and fuss over him than to try to escape him.

“And you know Bingle?” he asked.

“I knew Bingle,” J.C. said softly, and tears began rolling down his face.

Frank felt his stomach clench. “You know David Niles, then? Ben Sheridan?”

“They’re dead,” he whispered.

“What are you saying?” Frank asked, unable to keep himself from shouting it. “Who do you mean?”

“They’re all dead,” he said.

“No . . .”

“I left them here.”

“No!”

“Yes . . . I . . . left them,” he said jerkily. “I promised them . . . promised them I would be back. But I was late . . . and he . . . he killed them.”

“Irene—” Frank half-asked, half-called out.

“All of them! He killed all of them! I don’t know how — a gun — in their faces! And an explosion, I think. They’re in little pieces! They’re — they’re on my boots! I couldn’t help it, I stepped on them. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to be late!”

“You’re crazy!” Frank said, angry and wanting to slap him, wanting to make him say it was a lie, that he had made it up.

J.C. looked up at him. He said calmly, “Yes, I know.”

And then, as if earlier introductions had only now registered with him, J.C. said, “Oh, Jesus. You’re her husband. I’m so — oh, God, I’m so sorry!”

Frank took a deep breath, and somehow found his self-control. His own voice was quiet again when he asked, “J.C., when’s the last time you had any sleep?”

He was petting the dogs again. “I don’t remember.”

“It’s Friday. You hiked out with Newly on Tuesday, right?”

“Yes, I think so. I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

“You hiked back that same day?”

“No, I slept a little that night, hiked back the next day.”

“Wednesday. What happened that day?”

“They were already unburying her.” He shut his eyes.

“Julia Sayre?”

He nodded, looked back at Frank. “I haven’t slept much since then.”

“The rest of the group hiked into the meadow on the other side of this ridge?”

“Yes.”

“You came looking for them today, J.C.?”

“The helicopters won’t work.”

“What helicopters?”

“Ours, at the ranger station. I was already late. I promised I would come back.”

“And you kept your promise. You did the best you could. But Parrish — listen to me, J.C. This is really important. Could you actually identify bodies?”

“Merrick. Manton.” His face twisted up. “I — I saw parts of the others.”

“You must have been really upset, anyone would be.”

“Yes.”

“Did you run from there, then? It — it sounds horrible. I think anyone would run. Did you?”

He nodded, and, too tired not to be literal, said, “I walked, too. I got a little mixed up, I think. I was going back to the ranger station. I wanted to get help. Then — then I realized it was too late. And I heard a dog — I thought it was Bingle, because I hadn’t seen him — I wasn’t sure, but I hadn’t seen him, and he might have been a little bit away from everyone, with Irene, like before. And then — then I thought he was out there, and — the coyotes — and—”

“Shhh, shhh. It’s okay.”

A little bit away, with Irene. Frank held on to it.

They heard the sound of the others moving through the trees. J.C. looked up at Jack as if seeing him for the first time, and then at Travis, but when he saw Stinger, his eyes widened. “Stinger? They sent for you after all?”

“You know each other?” Frank asked.

But Stinger was down on his knees, eye-level with J.C. and wrapping a blanket around him, hugging him hard, then holding him by the shoulders, looking into his face. “My God, J.C.,” he said, “next time you play piñata with a bunch of dead coyotes, use something besides your face for a stick — you’re looking as fucked up as I am.”

J.C. laughed, then said miserably, “I was too late, Stinger.”

Stinger hugged him again and said, “Poor old J.C. — Fremont, get with the fucking program. Let’s have some of that coffee. Can’t you see this man is in need of it? And Harriman, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“To find my wife.”

“Shit—”

Frank cut him off, telling the others, in a few short sentences, what J.C. had found. Jack and Travis registered shock, then, sharing Frank’s anxiety, were all for going down to the meadow right away.

“Hold on, hold on!” Stinger said, but this time it was J.C. who interrupted him.

“I’ll show you, if you — if you really want to see where they are.”

“Thanks,” Frank said, “but Stinger’s right. You need to rest a little, get some warm liquids into your system.”

J.C. reached into his daypack, and pulled out a small black rectangular device. This time, Frank knew it wasn’t a phone.

“A GPS device — did you—?”

“It was foggy and I wanted to make sure I could get back,” he said, handing it to Frank. “Yes, I marked it. I knew — I know I’m kind of — well, I’m half out of my head. You’re right. I’m crazy.”

“No, I was wrong,” Frank said, feeling ashamed. “And it was wrong to say it.”

J.C. didn’t say anything.

Frank hesitated, then asked, “J.C., just one more question. You think this is something that just happened a little while ago?”

J.C. shook his head. “It had rained on them. And — Merrick and Manton were cold. I — I couldn’t touch the others. There wasn’t enough — there wasn’t any chance they were alive.”

“Drink a cup of coffee, J.C.,” Stinger said. “Then we’ll walk back to the helicopter and outfit these hotheads here. They haven’t figured out yet how they’re going to signal me if they find his wife down there.”

“You aren’t coming with us?” Frank asked.

“Think on it a minute. You got a man who knows aircraft running around out here. I don’t exactly want to walk off and leave my girl at his disposal. If it starts to clear down there, I’ll fly in a little closer to you.”

“What if he finds you first?” Travis asked.

Stinger smiled. “He won’t be needing that lawyer.”

27

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 19

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

He handed the GPS unit to Travis not long after they had hiked down into the meadow. He heard the sound of vultures fighting, began to smell the decay. He asked Jack to stay with Travis and the dogs, near the trees, while he walked into the fog to have a look.

Jack understood — he knew Frank didn’t want Travis to see what was undoubtedly waiting out there in the mist, to have to live with some of the memories J.C. was living with. He also knew that Frank depended on him to protect Travis, just in case Parrish was still around. In addition to his knives, he was carrying one of Stinger’s shotguns now. Like Frank, Jack and Travis were also supplied with flares and radios.

“Don’t panic if you hear gunfire,” Frank said. “I may have to fire a couple of shots to clear the buzzards off.”

The gunshots worked for a little while — although they didn’t seem to bother the insects much. He knew the vultures would be back — probably before he walked away. He couldn’t think about that now.

He told himself, as he looked through the field of remains, to treat this as if it were a job. He told himself that she wasn’t here in this mess, that he wasn’t looking at anything that had been part of her.

He managed fairly well by telling himself that, until he found Merrick and Manton. J.C. must have recognized their clothing — there was nothing recognizable left in their faces. Frank looked in their pockets. He had known both of them, and while neither were his close friends, he had worked with them at various times. He made himself move away from them, but he could feel himself losing a battle not to become overwhelmed by what he was seeing.

He checked in with Jack and Travis, just to hear living voices, just to reassure himself that there was more to the world than fog and stench, soft tissue and bone, buzzards and insects.

A light breeze had picked up. He could see Jack and Travis now, which was more than he had been able to do a little while ago. The fog might lift enough to bring Stinger down here after all.

He figured the dogs would give them plenty of warning if Parrish was still around. He doubted Parrish was anywhere near them now; Parrish would have made his escape as soon as possible. And Irene was probably his hostage. Or worse.

He wanted very much to be wrong about that; it was another possibility he didn’t want to think about. But that thought returned to him again and again.

Before they left the ridge, he had asked Stinger to go ahead and call the ranger station — there was too much at stake here to try to go it alone. They had to get a search started for Parrish. If Frank was going to be in trouble for coming up here, so be it. That was less than nothing, if Parrish had her. Or if she were here among these bits of flesh and bone.

Be logical, he warned himself. Think of it as if it were any other crime scene. Do your job.

And so he asked himself the standard questions.

What had happened here? A group had been gathered around the grave, working on it. There had been some sort of explosion.

How did that happen? Parrish didn’t have any weapons on him coming in — of that, he was certain. He’d have to let a bomb expert come up with the particulars, but most likely, the device was already in place, triggered by something the excavation team had done — a booby trap. Parrish must have planned that he would lead them to this particular grave all along. He had led them to Julia Sayre, though. So he gave them one, then enticed them with a second.

Treat it as you would any other crime scene, Frank told himself, wishing he had the time and resources that would have been available if that were true. Dental records and a forensic odontologist, for starters. He’d have to make do with rough guesswork for now. And so he asked himself the question he most wanted to answer:

Who are the victims?

The people closest to the impact would have been working on or near the grave. The two anthropologists, Sheridan and Niles.

From fragments of camera equipment, he had already decided that the photographer, Bill Burden, had been one of the victims. God, what a waste! Flash was a great guy, good man to have working on your team. So young . . . but he couldn’t think about that now.

Thompson? Very likely. Frank knew him, knew Thompson wouldn’t be far away from the dig.

Duke and Earl? He couldn’t be sure. Merrick and Manton were killed by gunshots and not the explosion, which suggested they had been guarding Parrish. Frank had already theorized that Parrish had taken a weapon from one of them in the moments of confusion that must have followed the explosion. Everyone was tired, they had just been through the same routine in the other meadow. Who expected a grave to be rigged with explosives?

Everyone was tired . . . Merrick and Manton were on duty, which meant Duke and Earl were off. They might have been asleep somewhere. Could they have escaped? If they did, they probably pursued Parrish. They would have seen it as their responsibility to catch him. They might be chasing him now. Maybe that was what had happened — maybe they were already on his trail.

He needed a body count of the people killed in the explosion itself. But how? He began looking at the more identifiable pieces of remains, quickly assessing them, not doing more than making a rough inventory.

Boots. The boots seemed to have survived the explosion. He started counting them, looking at them. He found nine boots — men’s boots. Maybe the vultures had carried the tenth one away. Five men, plus the two guards. He was thinking about this when he found part of a woman’s shoe, and nearly came apart, then realized that it was a dress shoe, not a hiking boot. It was stained and stank to high heaven. Irene was not carrying dress shoes. It must have been the buried victim’s shoe.

“Frank?” the radio crackled.

“Yeah, Jack.”

“You hear a dog bark?”

“No — but I’ve been kind of distracted. You hear one?”

“I thought I did. And your dogs are acting kind of interested in something on the other side of the stream. The ranger said Irene might be with the dog, right?”

He wanted to believe that, instead of what he did believe, so he said, “Yes. Let me know if you hear it again. Listen, there has to be a camp somewhere around here. Let me know if you see one. They were carrying a lot of gear; some of it is here, but they had tents and packs — there isn’t even a fragment of something like that out here. They probably set up camp in the woods within sight of the grave. Think you and Travis could look for it?”

“Sure.”

“Just look from a distance, don’t touch anything, don’t go in, try not to do much walking around — just call me.” He described Irene’s gear. “Look for that especially, okay?”

“Okay. You doing all right out there?”

After the slightest hesitation, he answered, “Yeah. Travis, you listening in here?”

“Yes.”

“I want to warn both of you, I can’t account for everybody here at this site. That’s probably good news, but you may find additional bodies in the camp. If there are any bodies, you won’t even have to see them — you’ll be able to smell them. And this guy booby-traps things, so like I said, if you find the camp, just call me.”

He switched the radio to Stinger’s channel. “Stinger, you there?”

“I’m here. Breeze is picking up. I might be able to come in if this keeps up for another hour or so.”

“J.C. doing okay?”

“He’s sleeping. I think he’s had about all he can take.”

“You reach the ranger station?”

“Yep. The Forest Service can’t help us out as soon as they’d like, though. Seems somebody messed with the nearest helicopters. They were glad to know that we’d found J.C.; they’ve been worried about him. He took one of their vehicles to get himself up as close as he could to this place, so they don’t have a hell of a lot of transportation options. Guess there’s a fire road or two that will get them kind of close, though. And they’re calling for reinforcements. We ought to have everybody but the goddamned U.S. Marines here eventually, and I wouldn’t rule them out.”

Frank didn’t like the sound of that; the problems in coordinating efforts could end up outnumbering the help. But he couldn’t search for Parrish alone. “I need you to contact the Las Piernas Police Department, too. Try to be diplomatic if you can.”

Stinger laughed.

“Hey, asshole,” Frank said, “I’m standing here with the bodies of at least seven people I’ve worked with.”

There was a silence, then Stinger said, “That’s more like it. Trouble with you, Harriman, you’re a little too polite. You know, a little wooden-assed.”

“Look—”

“Okay, okay, I’ll take care of it. You find your wife — I’ll try to negotiate things so that you don’t get fired.”

“Who gives a shit about — wait — you’ve just given me an idea. Listen — your guy on the ground can patch you through on a phone call, right?”

“Sure.”

Frank gave him a number. “That should get you through to Tom Cassidy. He’s a hostage negotiator. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him — tell him I might need his help. He’ll understand.”

Frank went back to looking at the ground. He came across the tenth boot; it seemed to have been carried to a spot some distance from the others; oddly, it was nearer Merrick and Manton. He saw a dog’s footprints, filled in with rainwater; and with them, a set of boot prints that were slightly smaller than the boots he’d been looking at.

A woman’s boot? He tried to recall if any of the men on the trip were small in stature. No, they were all average height — in fact, most of them were fairly tall.

Were these smaller boot prints Irene’s?

If she was with the dog — didn’t J.C. say that she had been with the dog? It made sense; Thompson wouldn’t want her working on the excavation, and she wouldn’t have minded keeping the dog company while waiting for the results of the dig. She liked dogs.

He figured Parrish would have killed the dog at the first opportunity, but maybe Parrish liked dogs, too. Then he remembered the coyote tree and rejected that idea.

He decided to follow the tracks, thinking that at least he might find out where Parrish had marched her and the dog before killing Bingle.

But there were no footprints for Parrish with those of Irene and the dog.

Hope began to rise up in him. Could she have escaped him somehow? “Irene!” he called out, thinking maybe she could hear him.

The radio crackled, reminding him that he was a long way from being able to feel anything like relief.

He found a place where the grass had been mashed flat, and what might have been blood, but it was hard to say; the rain had washed over the whole area. He was too interested in the next set of marks — someone dragging something — someone? He was still following this set of tracks when Travis’s voice came over the radio.

“We found the camp, Frank. It’s been tossed. Everything is soaked. But no smell of bodies, and we don’t see Irene’s gear here.”

“Okay. I — look, I think I’m seeing her tracks. Do you still have J.C.’s GPS receiver?”

“Yes, should I mark this place?”

“Yes, then come out to the edge of the woods where I can see you. I want to see if there is any relationship between these tracks and where you are.”

But when Travis and Jack appeared with the dogs, Frank noticed that the tracks he was following angled off, away from the camp. What did that mean? If the boot tracks were Irene’s — who was the other person? Parrish? Was he wounded? Was she?

No, hers — if they were hers — were the boot prints, deep, but distorted by something that had come by later, flattening a wide swath of grass. But he remembered seeing marks like these at other crime scenes, wherever a killer had dragged a body . . .

Oh God, no.

He began running alongside the path of the flattened grass. But when he had followed it through the trees, he came to a place where two people had stood — or so it seemed. There were three boots, and a mark he couldn’t make out. And the dog’s tracks. Nothing was being dragged. And then only two prints, but much deeper than before. The smaller boots, but — carrying something? Someone?

Two people had survived. Maybe Parrish had been wounded by the guards, but forced Irene to . . . what? Drag him behind her? He couldn’t picture it. More likely he had tied her up and dragged her along.

The tracks grew harder to follow, and eventually, he lost them. Looking for them, he came across a different set of prints.

Something wasn’t adding up. He counted again. J.C. and Andy had gone to the airstrip — that left Parrish, Thompson, Duke, Earl, Merrick, Manton, Flash, Sheridan, Niles, and Irene. Ten people. If the marks on the grass were made by Parrish and Irene, that left eight. Merrick and Manton shot, that left six.

Six pairs of booted feet. But there were only ten boots scattered by the explosion, not twelve. If someone else survived, who? And where was he?

Most likely, he figured, it was Duke or Earl. They were both veterans, they knew their stuff. Neither one of them would put Irene in danger, but either one would be able to keep track of Irene and Parrish, figure out where the bastard was taking her, keep the pressure on so that Parrish wouldn’t have time for . . . for other things. He began to feel a little better about Irene’s chances of surviving.

“Bring the dogs,” Frank said over the radio. “Let’s see if they can find Bingle.”

The dogs took them to the stream. They moved along one bank, where Bingle’s paw prints could still be seen now and then. But Deke and Dunk seemed distracted, often taking more interest in the local wildlife than in trailing another dog, Deke at one point nearly pulling Travis down into the mud when she decided to chase a squirrel. Jack scolded, and they settled down a little.

Frank, who was wondering if he had just spent twenty precious minutes setting up a squirrel hunt, looked upstream. He came to a halt. “Holy shit — a bridge.”

The others saw it too then — a felled tree, lying across the water. They hurried to it.

“Cut recently,” Jack said, “and I mean, very recently. Everything around here has been soaked with rain. But this pine is fairly dry — and fresh enough to smell the cut.”

Frank looked at the ground. The signs were confusing — two sets of boot prints, both people able to stand, and the dog nearby. There were other signs of disturbance — in one place handprints in the mud. Hers? He couldn’t be sure.

Maybe Duke or Earl had made a move here — and failed. Maybe the sixth man lost his life here, and his body was downstream.

But someone had found the strength and time to fell a good-sized tree.

“Let’s see what’s over on the other bank,” he said.

There were more confused prints, but the dogs seemed excited again, whining. Jack found Bingle’s prints again, and they followed them until Travis suddenly shouted, “Her tent!”

It was there, set up in the woods. She had even made something to catch rain. “Irene!” Frank called. “Irene!”

There was no answer.

They looked in the tent; there were signs she had slept here, but Frank soon noticed that there was a mixture of clothing in the tent. The dogs were very interested in one side of it, and looking closer, Frank saw a small amount of blood there.

“She got across that stream and camped here,” Jack said.

Frank picked up one of her shirts; no gash or sign of a wound or bleeding on it, or her bedroll. If she wasn’t the wounded one, maybe Parrish didn’t have her. Maybe she was with the other survivor. “Let’s see if that dog left any other tracks.”

As it happened, they didn’t need to look for tracks.

Deke, catching Bingle’s scent, began barking. Dunk took up the cry.

Near a group of boulders, Jack was the first one to see a large German shepherd emerge. The dog apparently decided that they were all close enough, because he began barking ferociously. Deke and Dunk immediately flattened themselves onto the ground, tails wagging nervously, as if bowing in supplication and begging his pardon.

“That sweater he’s got on has them in awe,” Travis said.

“No,” Jack said, “he’s born to rule. Deke and Dunk are just acknowledging that fact — although I’m sure they’ll test it later on.”

Telling Deke and Dunk — quite unnecessarily — to stay, the three men tried to approach the other dog, but Bingle bared his teeth at them, and continued to growl and bark.

Frank tried to recall the day he had spent working with David Niles and the dog, and suddenly remembered that the dog was given commands in Spanish.

“¡Bingle, cállate!” he said firmly.

The dog stopped barking and looked at him, cocking his head to one side. “¡Bien, Bingle, muy bien!”

From somewhere nearby — none of them could figure out where, at first — a faint voice said, “Bingle, it’s okay. Está bien, Bingle.”

“Who’s there?” Frank called.

“Ben Sheridan.”

“Ben! It’s Frank Harriman. Where are you?”

“Here. Down in the rocks — I’m injured or I’d crawl up to you. Bingle can show you where I am. How do I say, ‘Come here’?”

“Ven acá,” Travis answered, reminding Frank that Irene’s cousin was the most fluent speaker of Spanish among them,

The dog was looking at Travis, apparently hesitating over this new set of orders, when Ben repeated them. He hurried to obey the more familiar voice, and the men almost missed seeing the place he had scrambled down.

Peering down into the rocks, Frank said, “We’ll get you out as soon as we can—”

“Never mind that — did you find Irene?”

Frank swallowed hard. “She’s not with you?”

“Oh, God!” Ben said. “You’ve got to find her! Never mind me!”

“Tell me what happened!”

“Parrish—”

“We know he killed the others — did anyone else escape?”

“No,” Ben said weakly. “Except — Andy and J.C. weren’t with us, thank God. Parrish came after us this morning, chopping down a tree. She hid me in here and tried to lure him away from me. I — I didn’t want her to! But I can’t walk and—”

“We know how hardheaded she can be,” Jack said. “Where did she go?”

“Back across the stream, I think. I heard gunfire, and then Bingle came to me, but maybe he was just shooting at the dog — I thought I heard her yelling to him after the gunfire.”

“Go on, Frank,” Jack said. “Travis and I can take care of Dr. Sheridan here. I’ll call Stinger, see if he can get up in the air and start looking now. Fog has cleared off.”

“You speak Spanish, right?” Ben asked Frank.

“Yes.”

“Take Bingle. He’s had a rough couple of days, but he’s trained in search and rescue.”

“I once saw David work with him,” Frank said. “But I’m not sure Bingle will want to listen to me.”

“He won’t ever work as well with anyone as he did with David. David—” He seemed unable to continue for a moment. “Please take Bingle with you — it’s worth a try. I think the command is, ‘Find ’em,’ and ask him ‘Where is Irene?’ Praise him a lot, make it a game. He won’t need a leash. I think he’s attached to her; I think he’s wanted to look for her anyway — he’s been acting very worried.”

“Ask Stinger to get that helicopter up as soon as he can,” Frank said, and called to Bingle.

The dog hesitated, looking back at Ben.

“How do I say, ‘Go with him’?” Ben asked.

“Ve con él,” Travis said.

Ben repeated the phrase to Bingle as a command, indicating Frank. He repeated it three times, and finally, Bingle scrambled back up to where Frank waited.

Frank saw that the dog was now focused on him, seeming almost impatient. He tried to recall everything he had seen David do with the dog.

“Travis, you have hold of Deke and Dunk?” he asked.

“All set,” Travis said.

“Bingle,” Frank said. “¿Estás listo?”

Bingle barked, and wagged his tail.

Frank held out the shirt he had found in the tent, hoping that Irene had worn it recently.

The dog sniffed at it.

“¿Dónde está Irene? ¡Dónde está Irene? ¡Búscala!”

Bingle barked and bounded toward the stream.

28

FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 19

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

There was no thought, at first, of anything but flight.

I ran blindly, into the fog, through the trees. The fog and the forest were at once my shield and my obstacle; together they hid me from him, but because of them I could not simply run, flat out, as fast as I could go.

At home, I ran almost every day on the beach, but there were few flat and forgiving stretches here. The altitude, the mud, and the unevenness of the terrain were only part of the problem — I wasn’t exactly starting out peppy and refreshed. Despite my weariness, though, I ran hard — for a time, the threat of being at Nick Parrish’s mercy was enough to sustain me.

At first, he called my name and shouted things at me, doing his best to frighten and upset me.

“Can’t you run any faster than that?”

“You’re running slower! I’m going to catch you!”

“I’m getting closer, Irene!”

Glancing over my shoulder, I tripped on a root and stumbled; I scraped the palms of my hands and fingers as I caught at a branch to prevent a fall. I clumsily regained my balance before hitting the ground. It taught me a quick lesson; I moved a little more carefully after that.

Even in the places where the ground was drier, the pine needles were slippery beneath my feet. My daypack was bouncing against my back. My hiking boots didn’t give as my running shoes would, and made the ground feel different beneath my feet, so I ran awkwardly; before long, the boots seemed to be made of lead, my legs felt heavy and dull.

I began to feel light-headed. All the same, though at first he had been quite close to me, eventually it seemed to me that I was widening the distance between us. His voice came less often, the words were less distinct. Soon he stopped shouting altogether.

I ran — muscles unwilling, aching, breath coming in sharp-edged pulls that seemed to stab at my ribs when they reached my lungs. My calves were cramping. My mouth felt as if it were full of half-dried glue, my fingers tingled.

I slowed, but kept running — plodding, really. I could not see or hear him. It made me uneasy. Where was he? Had he pulled ahead of me? Or had I managed to evade him? Had the injury to his shoulder weakened him at last? I was sure I heard him nearby — then realized I was hearing the noises I was making as I ran.

I slipped again, recovered my balance, took my pack off and cradled it in front of me, as if it were a football. It stopped bruising my back, but the next slip jammed every object in the pack into my ribs.

I kept running. I was having trouble thinking clearly, and I had no sense at all of direction. Had I gone in a circle? I was no longer sure I was running away from Parrish — I became convinced that I was heading right at him. I heard the stream and tried to follow it, all the while becoming more and more certain that he was near, very near.

My hair was wet from the mud and fog, and kept slapping my face as I ran; I tried to keep it out of my eyes. I kept running.

I ran until I fell — hard.

I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened — my legs just seemed to give out. I scraped my knees, forearms, and face as I hit. I wanted to get up, but nothing was cooperating; there was no strength in my limbs; everything trembled or ached, and I felt sick to my stomach. It was as if I had instantly caught a bad case of the flu.

I was lying in a thicket; I could hear the stream nearby. I fumbled for my water bottle, and was surprised by the realization that I still had it — and my daypack. Hands shaking, I managed to open it and drink. I emptied the bottle, but I was still thirsty.

I had to accept that not even panic would keep me going. I crawled to the stream. I found a large, flat rock, not more than a few inches above the water. I lay down on it. The world seemed to spin drunkenly; I was drenched in sweat and my breath was coming in painful and far too loud gasps; my pulse was pounding, my head throbbing along with it. Nick Parrish could have fired a cannon at me and I wouldn’t have heard it.

The stream was moving too fast here to step into safely, but I bent my face close to it, scooped its chilled water into my mouth; I drank and drank. I was too thirsty to spend time filtering water — if I suffered for it with a case of the trots in two weeks, I’d thank God for the privilege.

The spray that came from the stream as it hit the rocks in its path felt good; I began splashing water over my face and arms, my legs. I bathed my scrapes in it, easing some of the aches. I dipped my head into it, felt the icy water rush over the top of my forehead and scalp, rinsing the mud from my hair. Cooler, I made the effort to use the filter to fill my water bottle and I drank again. I lay there. For what seemed to me to be a long time, I was unable to do anything more. I was still terrified of Parrish, but there was a barrier of exhaustion and dehydration between my fear and my willingness to do anything about it.

Eventually, I tried to get up and walk; every muscle and joint protested. I moved anyway. Not fast, not steadily, but I moved, wobbling away from the bank of the stream. I wanted to be able to hear Parrish’s approach.

But I had so little energy, I did not get very far. I came across a cluster of boulders beneath some trees near the stream, not unlike the place where Ben was hidden. I had not heard Parrish for some time now, and the thought of Ben made me wonder if Parrish had gone to hunt Bingle, and might perhaps find Ben as well. Even if Parrish wasn’t looking for him, how long could he last, hidden in the rocks? Would anyone be able to find him if something happened to me?

Something crashed through the trees to the left of me; I made a faltering attempt to spin toward it, my heart pounding.

A deer.

A little later, I thought I heard the sound of a helicopter again, but it was still foggy — if one passed overhead, I didn’t see it. I told myself to stay calm, that once the fog burned off, J.C. would be able to take the crew to our meadow.

But what would prevent Parrish from simply shooting the helicopter crew?

From the air, they might be able to see the grave, and the bodies in the field. That sight would make them cautious.

I prayed they would be cautious.

I waited.

I felt myself jerk awake, and the realization that I had fallen asleep frightened me. I needed to be on guard — but for a moment I was so disoriented I couldn’t remember why. I had awakened from a dream of gunshots, and of Frank shouting my name. I listened, and heard nothing but the stream, and birds calling to one another in the trees.

I turned my mind to my immediate problems.

If Nick Parrish came near again, and I needed to run, I couldn’t afford to be dehydrated. I stood and stretched my sore muscles, drank the water I had filtered and took what seemed to be a lifetime to make the short walk to the stream for a refill.

Food would help, too. I found a few edible shoots near the stream; I wasn’t sure of most of the other plants, and while I might take a risk with giardia, I wasn’t going to try to kill myself on the spot. It’s much easier to be poisoned by flora than fauna.

I stumbled back to my hiding place, unable to move with anything close to coordination.

I still had my knife.

I had no sooner remembered this than another thought intruded: Why did I still have my knife?

Why had Parrish left me with a weapon, however small? Why had he let me keep my water bottle and filter and the other contents of my daypack?

Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to have time left to use them; maybe he wanted more of a challenge.

Why had he let me run away? I ran way off my pace, and still I had eluded him. Or had he allowed me to elude him?

He had felled a tree, which might have drained him of energy. He had a shoulder wound — maybe it had started bleeding again when he ran after me.

On the other hand, he had eaten food; he had probably slept. He had not dragged anyone to safety, had not spent the night taking care of an injured man. He was not afraid. He had not been nearly suffocated in the mud.

I weighed these factors, unable to decide if he had allowed me to escape from him, or if I had — at least temporarily — defeated him. The more I thought it over, the more confused I felt; I seemed incapable of holding on to any train of thought for long. One idea drifted past another, and I found myself staring blankly into space, or snapping my head back up, just before nodding off again.

I tried to recall what kind of shape he had been in just before I started running away from him. He had been giving me instructions . . . something about a woman named . . . named what? Nina Poolman. I was supposed to remember her name. But why?

I was tired, and I wanted to sleep, but thinking of Nick Parrish kept me awake, if not at my sharpest.

Faintly, I heard a man’s voice calling something.

I could almost believe it was my name, but I wasn’t sure.

The fog was rapidly lifting; out in the open, I might be seen more easily now. I slowly crawled back into the narrow space within the cluster of boulders.

Minutes later, I heard someone or something crashing through the brush, downstream from where I hid. Was it Parrish? Another deer? A bear? I didn’t dare rise from where I crouched.

I waited. The sound kept moving away. Probably an animal, I told myself. I couldn’t convince myself.

I fell asleep again; I don’t know for how long. In the distance, upstream, I could just make out the sound of a dog barking. I was nearly certain it was Bingle, but the barking had a quality to it that made me fear for both Ben and the dog. It could only mean that Parrish was near them.

I did not want to hide helplessly, listening to whatever horrible things Parrish might do to them, even as faint sounds from a distance.

I slowly left my hiding place. I found a long, sturdy stick, and sharpened it. As I looked at the finished product, I had to resist an urge to leave it behind, if for no other reason than to save myself from serving up embarrassment as a side dish to my own death.

There was no possibility of taking off at a run, but I tried to stretch as I moved along the bank of the stream, using my homemade spear as a walking stick, leaning against it through dizzy spells, doing my best to rid myself of the soreness that made my movements stiff and slow.

Again and again, I heard movement in the brush near the stream; each time I hid as best I could, waited, saw nothing.

As I walked, once more I found myself growing light-headed, feeling confused. The dizzy spells came more often. I stopped to drink again. I was exhausted and scared — of what possible use could I be to Ben and Bingle?

I had no sooner asked myself this question than I heard loud movement through the woods — much louder than before — followed by urgent barking. But if Bingle was here, what had happened to Ben?

I found myself filled with despair. Ben’s survival had never been assured, but his death was a blow I wasn’t ready for. With an effort, I regained my self-control. “Pay the bastard back!” I told myself, gripping my spear.

I was wondering if the dog was going to lead Parrish right to me, when I heard the helicopter. I couldn’t see it, but it sounded as big as God.

I was going to get to it first, I decided — I might be too late to save Ben, but maybe I could warn the pilot off before Parrish started shooting at it. I began moving toward the sound — which was difficult, because it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. I could hear nothing else. I took my knife out.

I saw movement to one side of me, and then Bingle loping toward me, and someone moving in the woods behind him.

Frantic, at first I stumbled away, but there was no time to run, so I crouched behind a fallen tree, spear in one hand, knife in the other.

Hoping that someone might be near enough to hear me over the helicopter, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Bingle stopped in his tracks, looking puzzled.

Behind him, a vision appeared. Frank, coming through the woods.

For a few moments, I could only stare at him, wondering how Parrish had managed the disguise.

A great wind came up, blowing leaves and tree limbs and frightening birds and small animals. And me, a little.

The wind passed by, but the noise of the helicopter was still all-encompassing.

Frank slowed what had been a running approach, maybe because I was holding a sharp wooden stick and a knife in a threatening manner.

“Irene?”

I couldn’t hear him over the roar, but I could see him form the word. Best of all, I could see those gray-green eyes of his — his eyes, not Parrish’s. I dropped my weapons, got to my feet, and held out my arms.

He took me in his, and then I could hear him say my name. He said it over and over.

I probably should have told him not to fuss over me, and said that there were important things that needed to be done — but I was fresh out of wise and brave, and for a little while, all I could do was weep, and say his name to him, and tell Bingle that he was marvelous, too.

29

FRIDAY, LATE EVENING, MAY 19

St. Anne’s Hospital, Las Piernas

The doctors said they might not be able to save Ben’s leg, that they might have to amputate it below the knee.

This possibility was not a surprise to Ben. He had spoken of it in the helicopter.

Although he had been weak and feverish, and obviously in pain, he had been able to converse. Bingle had refused to be tethered out of reach of him, and sat quietly nearby, watching him intently.

Stinger Dalton had offered to take Ben to the closest hospital — “Or wherever you want to go,” he said, kneeling near the litter. “You’ll be out of pain sooner, but sometimes proximity ain’t the first consideration, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” Ben said. I held his hot, dry hand in one of my own. He looked at me, then back at Dalton. “Take me to St. Anne’s,” he said. “I know one of the orthopedic surgeons there. If he has to amputate, at least he’ll know what he’s doing.”

He saw my look of horror.

“If they take part of the leg,” he said, “it wasn’t because you did anything wrong. Understand?”

“But—”

“Understand?”

I stared at the amateurish bandage and makeshift splint. “I should have given you all of the Keflex,” I said weakly.

“Listen to me. The bullet did the damage, not you.”

“Maybe they won’t—”

“Don’t,” he said, closing his eyes. “Don’t.”

Not this, I begged God. Nothing more. Hadn’t he already been through enough?

“Do you want us to contact anyone?” Frank asked him. “Someone to meet you at the hospital?”

Ben didn’t answer right away.

“A family member or a friend?” Frank asked.

“No,” he said, not opening his eyes. “No one, thanks.”

This answer to Frank’s question made me worry about Ben as nothing else had. It was one thing to face the loss of a limb, another to face it without the support of family or friends.

Frank had his arm around me; I leaned my head against his shoulder. He felt solid and sturdy and safe. Ben was alive. Bingle was alive. I was alive.

I was alive, and fighting to feel something other than the numbness that kept creeping over me. Numbness and thirst. I kept drinking water, but I couldn’t seem to get enough of it.

As the helicopter had taken off, Ben squeezed my hand. I realized he was trying to say something to me over the roar of the engine and rotors. He looked awful. I loosened my seat belt and bent closer.

“The story.”

I looked at him in confusion.

“The knight.”

So I began shouting my half-assed version of a medieval German poet’s tale to him, but I didn’t get much further in the story before Ben’s grip slackened and his head lolled to one side. I froze mid-shout.

Frank hurriedly moved to Ben’s side, checking his pulse and breathing.

“He’s alive,” he reassured me. “His pulse is okay. He’s just passed out. I’m sure he’s been in a lot of pain. Dalton will get us back to Las Piernas in no time.”

J.C. stared at me as if fearing the next act in my bizarre program of in-flight entertainment. Bingle, Deke, and Dunk looked as if they were hating every moment of this ride, storytelling or no. Jack smiled and shouted, “You remember Parzival!”

Dalton managed to get us out of the meadow before law enforcement or the Forest Service came in. He radioed the ranger station to say that we had a medical emergency and could be met in Las Piernas at St. Anne’s. He supplied a succinct description of the situation in the meadow, and warned that Parrish was heavily armed.

As the helicopter landed at St. Anne’s, we were greeted by a team of doctors and nurses, and Tom Cassidy. Frank had asked him to meet us. Cassidy is a master at staying calm in the midst of high pressure, chaotic situations — he’s in charge of the Las Piernas Police Department’s Critical Incident Team. The big Texan’s work ranges from negotiating a hostage’s freedom to talking a potential jumper off a ledge, and his skills were being put to the test that day.

“Everybody’s mad as hellfire at me,” Cassidy drawled, grinning with pride, “but y’all will have a little time to yourselves and the doctors.”

Jack and Travis and Stinger took a dog each — Stinger the only one who could get Bingle to leave Ben — and met with Travis’s lawyer, who had helped us on previous occasions. Between his efforts and those of Cassidy, it looked as if no one was going to face charges, or receive department reprimands, or lose a job or a pilot’s license.

J.C. and Frank were the first to spend time answering questions from the D.A. and the police. I got my turn, as Cassidy stood unofficial guard over me. I found myself answering as if from a distance, perhaps not always coherently. I tired quickly, and Cassidy shooed the others away.

He had to leave soon after — he was busy coordinating crisis efforts that extended further than I could have imagined at that moment.

I asked the doctor who was looking at my various scrapes and bruises about Ben. He hesitated, then said, “He’s been taken into surgery. The leg is severely damaged and infected. We’re going to give him antibiotics, but—”

“What sort of antibiotics?” I asked.

“A combination of cephalosporin — you might have taken it at one time or another as Keflex—”

“Keflex,” I interrupted, turning pale. “Keflex? That might make a difference?”

“Yes, at a high dosage,” he said, studying me. “Are you feeling faint?”

“A little,” I admitted.

I wanted to go home, but the doctor asked me to stick around for a few hours because I was suffering from dehydration. I was placed in a bed, given an IV and a light meal, and fell quickly asleep.

I awakened a couple of hours later to see Mark Baker and John Walters standing near my bed. Mark is an old friend and the crime reporter for the Express. John’s the managing editor.

A nurse tried to usher them out, but I told her it was all right, that I’d talk to them for a while.

After a few expressions of concern, which for all my exhaustion, I didn’t take too seriously, John said, “You know why we’re here.”

“You want the story.”

“You see?” he said to Mark, “I told you she’s a pro.” He turned back to me. “I figured you wouldn’t mind Mark writing it up — this first one, anyway — you’ll definitely get on the by-line, but Mark’s already been doing a lot of work on it, so—”

“I don’t mind,” I said dully.

“You come in tomorrow — catch up on your sleep, but come in by, say, eleven.”

“I’m not sure—”

“I am,” John said forcefully. “You don’t need me to tell you how big this story is — and you were right in the middle of it. Your buddy Cassidy has already cordoned off your street, which hasn’t stopped five big TV crews setting up their trailers at the end of the block. Your neighbors are complaining about helicopter news crews buzzing the area. You will come in tomorrow.”

I didn’t bother arguing with him. I understood that nothing — my sanity least of all — was more important to him than that story. That’s the problem with the news. It won’t wait.

So Mark wrote notes and asked questions, but soon my mind was wandering. Mark kept glancing at John.

“You aren’t making a hell of a lot of sense,” John finally complained.

“No. Shouldn’t Morry be here?” I asked. Morry was acting news editor.

“While you were gone, he left the paper. So I’m wearing both hats for the moment.”

Under other circumstances, this announcement would have startled me, and led to dozens of questions of my own. But I just yawned and said, “Oh.”

The two men exchanged looks again.

Mark started to ask about the men who had died. But every time I said much more than their names, I seemed to forget what I was talking about. Again and again, I heard the explosion, saw bits of flesh and bone scattered everywhere, smelled blood and smoke and earth.

As vivid as these images were to me, I couldn’t speak of them to Mark and John. It was as if there were some blockade between my mind and my mouth simply could not form the words to carry such things. And soon, my mind learned to jump from the image Mark wanted to talk about to something else, such as what the sky had looked like when I sat among the boulders, how my homemade spear had felt in my hand, how cool the water in the stream was.

Mark asked, “How did Parrish get the gun away from his guards?”

“Merrick and Manton,” I said.

“Yes, did you see him shoot them?”

There was a silence.

“Do you think I’ll get giardia?” I asked.

“This isn’t like you, Kelly,” John said, disapproving.

“No,” I agreed. “I’m usually very careful about filtering the water.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re not yourself.”

I was silent for a while, then I said, “I know. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ‘myself’ again.”

“Of course not,” he said gruffly. “You’ve been through a terrible experience. But you’ve got to move on.”

Mark shook his head in disbelief.

“She does!” John protested.

“Give her twenty-four hours to wallow in self-pity,” Mark chided him. “I’m sure she’ll be recovered in time to save Sunday’s A-one. You know — up by the bootstraps and all that. She’ll be bubbling over with the need to tell somebody all her deepest darkests by dawn tomorrow.”

“I can’t — I don’t ever want talk about it,” I said. “I think he wants me to, so I won’t.”

“Well, of course Mark wants you to talk about it!” John said. “But why should you—”

“Not Mark. Parrish.”

The answer startled him.

He studied me, looked at his watch and said, “Get some sleep. That’s all you need. A little sleep. I’ve got enough from you now to take care of tomorrow’s paper. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” He studied me a little longer and said, “I’ll ask Lydia to come in, too.”

I’ve known Lydia Ames, who works on the city desk, since grade school.

“Thanks,” I said, and burst into tears.

“Oh, Christ!” John said.

Frank came into the room just then, and saw me crying. At his look of rage, both Mark and John held up their hands in surrender. It was enough to make me dry up.

“She’s all yours,” John grumbled, and they left.

Frank came close to the bed, and took my hand, the right one, which was IV-free. He gently brushed his thumb over my knuckles. But I could feel a tension in him that kept it from being a lover’s gesture. And those gray-green eyes were troubled.

“What is it?” I said, sitting up. “What’s wrong?”

He blew out a breath and said, “Ben. They had to amputate.”

“No . . . oh Jesus, no.”

“They said he came through the surgery fine.”

“I don’t want to hear about the fucking surgery!” I shouted.

He put his arms around me, which started the tears again. He let me cry hard and loud, listened to me berating God, and myself.

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do, how to help him—”

“You saved his life.”

I wondered if Ben felt very grateful to me for that right now. Aloud I said, “I have to see him.”

“He’s sleeping. He probably won’t be allowed to have visitors before tomorrow.”

I lay back against the pillows, miserable. Frank started talking to me about Cody and the dogs and everyday things, and I calmed down. Exhaustion began to conquer me again. “Don’t leave me alone in here,” I said sleepily.

He turned out the overhead light, stretched out on the other bed, and continued to talk to me for about another minute and a half before he fell asleep — too far away from me, but I didn’t begrudge him the rest.