Nest in the Ashes Read online

  Suddenly she frowned and leaned forward. Thin-boned hands clicked the stems of her glasses together. “Everything’s okay, isn’t it?”

  Damn. He’d forgotten Ben Hathaway served on the volunteer fire department.

  “Everyone’s fine,” Eric said, raising his hands to stop her from drawing conclusions. “But the fire got away from us. We need to evacuate.”

  He watched her closely, making sure his words sunk in, then he pointed toward the finished houses. “Are people living there?”

  Mandy sprang into action, riffling through the files in her desk drawer. “The owners of 303 haven’t occupied yet, but the Larsons live in 305. I can give them a call.”

  “What about the workers?”

  “Gene always goes up there in person. As far as I know, those guys don’t have a radio. Or a cell phone. Even if they did, I don’t have the number.” She yanked a manila file out of the drawer. “Give me a sec, and I’ll try and reach him on his cell phone.”

  Gravel crunched in front of the trailer, and Eric glanced out the window. “No need,” he said. “Paxton just pulled in.”

  Eric watched as Gene Paxton jammed the gearshift into park and clambered out of the pickup. Five years younger than Eric, he lumbered like an old man. Short and stout, beard tinged gray, his belly protruded out over his belt. Instinctively, Eric sucked in his gut.

  With a sideways glance at the Park Service truck, Paxton tossed something into the tool carrier mounted in the bed of his pickup, dusted his jeans with his baseball cap, and ambled toward the steps. “Hey ya, ranger. How ya doin’?” he asked, exaggerating an already thick accent and sounding like Joey from Friends. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Eric told him about the evacuation order.

  “Geez.” Gene rubbed his balding head. “I thought it looked like a lot of smoke. So, what are you saying? Are you thinkin’Shangri-La’s gonna burn to the ground?”

  “No,” Eric said, not anxious to be misquoted for a second time today. “All I can say is the fire’s headed this way and an evacuation has been ordered. The Park Service and U.S. Forest Service are working on controlling the fire. We hope to have it contained soon. We just can’t take any chances.” Eric moved toward the door. “Grab what you need, but do it quickly. You have about ten minutes, then you and Mandy need to head into town.”

  “What about the office? I can’t leave my files and all my records.”

  “Ten minutes,” repeated Eric. “Take what’s most important. Leave the rest.”

  It differed with everyone. More than once Eric had contemplated what he would save if he were about to lose everything to the fire. The animals were a given. After that, he would save the picture of his father.

  He drove up the hill, stopping at the first house. Two stories up, roofers drove nails into asphalt shingles, the sun transforming their bodies to silhouettes against the deep blue sky.

  A compressor hissed, then recharged. A radio blared. Eric shouted, waving his arms.

  Nothing.

  Unable to draw a response, he climbed the ladder, scrambling to the peak of the roof. “Hello?”

  The nearest worker jerked his head up. An asphalt shingle tore free of his grip. Both men watched as the wind carried the shingle high in the air, twisting it and turning it before slamming it to the ground.

  “Whew,” the roofer said.

  Eric nodded, then pointed toward the smoke billowing up from the park. “You guys need to pack it up.”

  The roofer frowned. “Lo siento, pero no le he entendido.”

  What had he said? Lo siento meant sorry in Spanish. But what did the rest mean?

  The roofer tried again. “No comprendo.”

  “Ja.” He didn’t understand. “You wouldn’t by any chance speak Norwegian?”

  The roofer cocked his head.

  “I didn’t think so.” Eric tried taking a different tact and pantomimed putting away tools. “You need to stop working and leave.”

  The man shrugged and looked back at his co-workers.

  “You need to go,” Eric said. He pointed toward the road. Pretending to pick up the tools, he strutted along the roof.

  The roofers chuckled.

  “Great,” Eric said. “Does anyone speak English?”

  One kid stepped forward. “Yes, I speak a little.”

  “Good.” Eric signaled him to come closer. “Can you explain to your foreman that you have to leave? You are in danger here.” He pointed toward the smoke. A helicopter dragging a bucket dumped water on the fire. Eric watched it swing back toward the lake, then his gaze shifted left. His heart banged in his chest.

  Damn.

  Uphill of the main fire and closer to them, a separate column of smoke twisted into the air.

  CHAPTER 5

  A spot fire! How the hell had he missed it?

  Eric raised his binoculars and grabbed for the radio. “Butch. Trent. Do you copy?”

  “Yeah.” Butch Hanley’s voice scratched across the band.

  “We have a spot fire to the south on Eagle Cliff Mountain, over.”

  The radio hissed. Finally, Butch said, “I don’t see it.”

  “It could be hidden behind the spur from you.” Eric made a sweep with his binoculars. The fire was tucked into a draw. From most angles its plume would be masked by the smoke from the burn. “It’s fair-sized. I’d say it’s been burning awhile.”

  “Is it threatening property?” Trent asked, joining the conversation.

  Eric knew he meant buildings. “No, but—”

  “Then continue with the evac,” ordered Trent. “After that’s complete, you can check out the spot and report back.”

  Eric’s hands tightened around his binoculars. Trent was right. Standard policy required that public safety, and the safety of the firefighters, come before the preservation of property or, in this case, forest. Eric’s assignment was to ensure no one was trapped by fire south of the junction of Highway 66 and U.S. 36.

  Shooing the workers off the roof, he scrambled down the ladder and moved on to the next house. Precious minutes ticked by. The ten he’d given Paxton stretched to twenty. Finally, after nearly half an hour, the last person was herded out of the subdivision and Gene Paxton locked the gate to Shangri-La.

  When Paxton’s truck disappeared to the north, Eric turned south onto Highway 66 toward the Youth Mountain Camp. The road wound through a canyon, alongside the Wind River. Eagle Cliff mountain rose to the west, Giant Track mountain to the east.

  Eric tapped his brakes and slowed the truck to a crawl. Keeping one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road, he peered through the truck’s passenger window at the craggy backside of Eagle Cliff Mountain. He didn’t like what he saw.

  In the first place, the configuration of mountains, road, and river created a natural wind tunnel. Air currents drifted lazily into the canyon, only to pick up speed and funnel out the gulches, etched like fingers into the mountainside.

  In the second place, the terrain was steep and clogged with vegetation. Down nearer the road, the grade rose gradually, covered in clusters of yellow monkey-flower, quivering aspen, and the occasional pine. But several hundred yards uphill, the gentle slopes pitched, weaving together a tangled mass of understory. The terrain rose sharply in elevation, plateaued, then climbed again.

  The worst part was, somewhere up there a fire burned out of control.

  Jackie Devlin had told him Wayne left early to check out the humidity on Eagle Cliff Mountain. Was he up there somewhere? Maybe trapped by the fire?

  Movement in the trees caught Eric’s attention. A red-naped sapsucker drilled orderly holes in the bark of a pine, while swallows flitted in and out of the aspens. Nesting pairs.

  He watched the birds for a moment, then focused on finding the spot fire. If his perspective from the roof at Shangri-La had been correct, it was over one spur from Hanley’s crew. Which meant, after he finished helping Vic evacuate the Youth Mountain Camp, his best bet in locating the fire was to
hike in up the first gully, past the woodpecker.

  The Youth Mountain Camp was situated at the end of Highway 66. An old YMCA camp, it was composed of a main lodge surrounded in semicircle formation by six large dormitory cabins. Four of the cabins housed boys, and two of the cabins housed girls. Each cabin held twenty-five kids and two counselors.

  Vic Garcia, the Elk Park County sheriff, lived in the main lodge. After his girlfriend and Lark’s partner, Esther Mills, was murdered, Vic had petitioned the board of directors of the Youth Mountain Camp to let him renovate the third floor offices into a caretaker’s apartment. The directors quickly agreed. Given the criminal history of the campers, having the sheriff on site was a definite plus.

  Eric figured it meant the evacuation of the campers would be well under way.

  To his surprise, when he pulled up in front of the lodge, he found two empty Elk Park County School District buses parked at the curb. Kids swarmed the grassy area around the flagpole and clustered around Bernie’s squad car, parked diagonally at the curb with its lights still flashing.

  “Over here, Linenger,” Bernie shouted, waving a clipboard high in the air. Big, blond, and beefy, he was hard to miss. Next to him, Vic Garcia—short, dark-skinned, and fifty-something—blended in with the crowd.

  Eric sprinted toward them.

  “We were just about to start loading the buses,” Bernie said. “We’re short drivers, so I could only snag two from the high school. We’re going to have to cart some of the kids down in YMC vans.”

  Vic nodded. “Hello, Eric.”

  “Vic.”

  “The Red Cross is setting up cots at the school,” he said. “Once we load the kids up, we’ll head down there and feed them some lunch.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Eric said. “But we need to get moving.”

  Loading up this many kids was going to take a while.

  “We’re just waiting on my men to finish sweeping the dorm areas,” explained Bernie. “We want to make damn sure no one is left behind when we roll.”

  “Another good idea,” Eric said. “But we can’t wait any longer. We need to start loading the buses now.”

  For someone raised in fire country, Bernie didn’t seem to be grasping the urgency of the situation.

  Vic hitched up his pants at the waistband. “That’s what I said. I suggested we put them on the buses and check off their names against the camp roster. That way we’d know for sure we have everyone, and we’d be ready to go when the sweep was done.”

  Bernie tensed. This was his jurisdiction. The Youth Mountain Camp was on city-owned property, so Bernie called the shots.

  Too bad. “Vic’s right,” Eric said.

  “You guys want to do it that way? Be my guest.” Bernie slapped the clipboard against the flat of Vic’s stomach. “Go for it.”

  Vic grabbed the clipboard. He stiffened, absorbing the blow.

  Eric sucked in air and waited for the sparks to fly. It was no secret the two men disliked each other. Vic had never forgiven Bernie for treating him like a suspect in Esther’s murder, and Bernie begrudged the sheriff his power.

  Vic stroked his mustache, then signaled to one of the staff members. The counsellor blew a whistle and teenagers froze in place. A Frisbee clattered to the sidewalk. Britney Spears’s voice blared from a boom box, and one of the hip-hop dancers scrambled to turn it off.

  “Okay, listen up!” Vic hollered. “When you hear your name, I want you to step forward. We’re going to check your name off the list, and you’re going to get on a bus. Grab your gear.”

  Some of the kids complied, snatching up duffel bags and moving toward the sidewalk. Others remained where they were. One girl wept on the steps of the lodge while a boy tried comforting her.

  “Acevedo, Joseph!” a counsellor yelled.

  A scrawny young man with limp black hair stepped forward. His name was checked off, and he boarded the first bus.

  “Anderson, George.”

  “Atencio, Leon.”

  Names were called off, and one by one the kids boarded the buses in orderly fashion.

  “Kennedy, Lewis, the third.”

  No one stepped forward.

  Eric looked at Vic.

  “He’s a new kid,” explained the sheriff. “A problem. Comes from a wealthy family. His nickname is Tres, as in the French word for third.”

  “Does anyone know where Kennedy is?” bellowed Bernie from the other side of the flagpole. A few of the kids started fidgeting.

  A reflex reaction to trouble, or did one of them know something?

  Bernie must have noticed too, because he pointed a finger at one of the boys. “You, step forward.”

  The kid raised a defiant chin. “I don’t know nothing.”

  “Anything,” Vic corrected, hightailing it across the grass. He stepped in between the boy and Bernie. “Are you sure?”

  The boy looked down. “Last I seen him, he was with Justin.”

  “Justin Suett?”

  The boy nodded.

  Eric moved in closer.

  “Suett, Justin!” Bernie hollered in a Marine sergeant voice.

  No response.

  “Another problem,” Vic muttered under his breath.

  Did he mean Suett, or Bernie?

  “Where did you last see them?” Bernie demanded.

  Again the kid raised his chin.

  “It’s important,” Vic said.

  The boy narrowed his eyes. Ignoring Bernie, he met Vic’s gaze. “They was headed out the back of the dorm.”

  “What time?” Bernie asked.

  The kid puffed out a breath and kicked at the grass edging the sidewalk. “Geez, man. How am I supposed to know? It was early, okay?”

  “How early?”

  “It was still dark.”

  Vic put the boy on the bus while Bernie and his deputies conducted a search of the boys’rooms in the Kokopeli Dorm. By the time Eric and Vic got to the room, they had turned up nothing. No Tres. No Justin. No belongings. And no indication of where the boys might have gone.

  “Damn, just what we need,” Bernie said, flopping down on one of the bunks in Tres’ room. “Two missing persons.”

  “Three,” Eric corrected. He told them about Wayne Devlin not showing up for work this morning. Then Nora Frank’s disappearance flashed through his mind. Maybe they should up the count to four.

  “Yeah, well, we all know Devlin’s been acting a little strange lately. Hell, for all you know, he might have forgotten about the burn and gone fishing.” Bernie beat a rhythm on the bed railing. “But these two boys disappearing… this is a serious matter.”

  Eric bristled. Didn’t anyone else care that Wayne Devlin hadn’t been seen since five-thirty this morning? That was over six hours ago.

  “Where would the boys have headed?” Bernie asked.

  Vic crossed his arms, puffing air from between his lips. “Let’s see. They most likely lit out for Denver. Tres’ folks live in the Cherry Creek area. Justin’s live out in Castle Pines. They’re both pretty spoiled kids, so I doubt either one of them would try and go very far without some money in their pockets. My guess is they headed home.”

  “Is that where most of your escapees head?” goaded Bernie.

  Vic’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

  Eric’s gaze traveled between the two men. “Would they have taken the road?”

  “Possibly,” Vic said.

  Eric hadn’t seen anyone hitchhiking. He walked over to the window and glanced up at the mountain. Smoke boiled over the ridge.

  He tapped on the pane. “We need to keep moving.”

  A moment passed, then Bernie turned to one of his deputies. “Have them finish loading the buses.”

  “Thanks,” Eric said after the deputy hustled away. Once the kids were loaded up and headed toward town, his responsibilities to the evac operation ended. The missing kids were Bernie and Vic’s problem.

  “What are we going to do about them?” Vic
asked, nodding to a picture of Tres and Justin thumbtacked to the bulletin board near the window. “The one on the left is Tres.”

  Eric studied the photograph. It was taken in front of the lodge. Lewis Kennedy the third—Tres—had his arm draped around Justin Suett’s shoulder.

  Tres was a scrawny, scruffy-looking teenager with a bad case of acne. Taller than Justin Suett by a head, his lip bore the trace of a blond mustache. He stared out of the picture with blue eyes the color of faded denim.

  Justin looked clean cut by comparison. Stocky, with close-cropped brown hair, an easy smile, and dark eyes, he looked like the kid next door. The type of boy mothers loved their girls to bring home. Eric wondered what they’d done to end up here.

  “I’ll put out an APB,” Bernie said. “And then we hope—”

  “Sir!” A young officer dashed into the room, cradling his hat like a football. “We have a problem, sir.”

  Bernie raked a hand through his hair. “What is it now? Not another missing kid?”

  “No, sir. We found some tracks, sir.”

  “Tracks?”

  Vic and Bernie headed for the door. Eric followed. Outside, smoke poured over the top of the ridge, and a dusting of ash sprinkled from the sky. Eric felt a sudden panic. They’d waited too long to evacuate.

  “We need to get the rest of these kids out of here now,” he said.

  Bernie held up a beefy finger. “Where do the tracks lead?”

  “Into the woods, sir. The boys headed into the woods.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The shriek of the fire siren unnerved Lark, sending a series of shivers along her arms and curling the hairs along her neck. The wail could only mean one thing. The burn was out of control.

  Lark looked toward the window. The sky had darkened appreciably, smoke blotting out the sunshine, and large flakes of ash lashed the windows, reminiscent of a late-spring snow.

  Slamming the cash register drawer shut, she shoved a handful of coins into Jackie’s cupped hand. “Here’s your change.”

  “Oh my.” Cecilia emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “How bad do you suppose—”

  Lark cut her off by snatching up the phone and dialing the firehouse.