Cold Fire Read online

  She seemed to be no more than four or five inches shorter than me, which made her at least five-ten. Long hair hung past her shoulders, and her hands were shoved into the pockets of jeans that hugged shapely legs. A black leather jacket and matching knee-high boots completed the look.

  On first impression, she could have been anything from a biker chick to a supermodel.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, shrugging the coat off my shoulders. I caught it alongside my waist and tossed it on the freestanding rack in the corner, the brown fabric of my coat blending in with the wood of the coatrack.

  At the sound of my voice, she turned away from the bookshelf she’d been studying intently. She gave me a quick once-over, her gaze traveling to the floor and back in a fraction of a second before an oversized smile stretched across her face.

  Perfect teeth, framed by full lips and a pert nose. The only thing at all that seemed out of place on her was a thin scar above her left eye.

  “Hello,” she said, circling out away from my desk and extending a hand in front of her. From just a single word I could detect a hint of an accent, and despite her appearance it was definitely nothing from the Western Hemisphere, more along the lines of the old Eastern Bloc.

  Bulgaria. Albania, maybe.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, reciprocating the handshake, her grip firm within mine. “Hawk.”

  Her brow furrowed in confusion a moment as I released the handshake. “My name. Please, call me Hawk.”

  “And I am Lita,” she replied. The English was smooth coming out, though again I could tell by her word choice and sentence formation it was not her first language.

  She pointed to a certificate hanging on the wall and said, “I thought your name was Jeremiah? Jeremiah Tate?”

  I smiled and walked around my desk, pulling out the faded brown leather chair from behind it. “Please, sit,” I said, extending a hand to a matching seat across from me.

  She did so, the chair wheezing as she settled down into it.

  “My full name is Jeremiah Hawkens Tate,” I said. “My father was a big Jeremiah Johnson fan. But everybody has always just called me Hawk.”

  The top of Lita’s head rocked back slightly in understanding. “And here I thought this was a nickname you’d received based on your expertise as a guide.”

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt, that’s for sure,” I said, offering her a small smirk. “Anything to get folks in the door, right?”

  Once more Lita flashed the oversized smile at me, a jack-o’-lantern grin that seemed to stretch from one ear to the other. “It got me, so there you go.”

  “So what can I do for you, Lita?” I asked, leaning back and lacing my fingers across my stomach. The springs on my chair moaned just slightly as I reclined, my weight shifting into a comfortable position.

  The smile vanished with the question. Lita cast a quick glance back to the bookshelf she’d been studying when I walked in, her top teeth sliding out over her bottom lip. “I would like to hire you for two, maybe three days.”

  “I’m very sorry—” I began, already poised to launch into my standard denial speech.

  “It’s my brother,” she pushed out, a look of concern crossing her features. “He came up here to go camping a week ago, and we haven’t heard a word from him in four days.”

  I paused a moment, my mind switching gears from the prefabricated talk I had on tap. Every year there were a few stragglers that came and tried to make one last run, seasonal hazards be damned.

  The first season I had caved and made the trip.

  Never again.

  “When were you expecting him back?” I asked.

  “Not for a few more days,” Lita said, glancing down at her hands folded in her lap. “But he knew he was supposed to call every day and let us know he was okay.”

  I held a hand up to stop her. For the briefest of moments I had thought maybe she had a legit concern, but it had passed just as fast.

  “You have to realize, Yellowstone Park is over 3,500 square miles, almost all of it considered backcountry. No phone reception, no Internet access, nothing. Just because he hasn’t checked in for a few days doesn’t mean anything.”

  A lot of the people I worked with didn’t realize just how remote the park was. They were used to living in big cities, where pitching a tent in the backyard or having less than three bars of cell service was considered roughing it.

  “But he made sure to call frequently the first part of his trip,” Lita pressed, shaking her head from side to side, her hair brushing the tops of her shoulders. “And then, nothing. He’s a careful man, would never worry our mother like that. Something must be wrong.”

  I remained motionless and drew in a deep breath through my nose. This wasn’t the first worried relative to ever cross my doorstep, and the odds were it wouldn’t be the last. Most of the time they weren’t actually looking for my services, but for someone to tell them everything was OK.

  “Like I said, there aren’t that many places in the park with reception. My guess is he’s just camping somewhere off the grid and didn’t want to hike out every day to make a call.”

  Again Lita shook her head. “But he had a satellite phone. He could have made the call from anywhere.”

  I stared back at her a long moment before raising my chair to vertical and twisting it to the side. Unlacing my fingers, I dug through the desk drawer on my left and extracted a map of Yellowstone, spreading it atop the desk.

  “Do you know where he was going?”

  Lita dug into her coat pocket and removed a single piece of folded white paper from it. A series of numbers were scribbled out on it in black ink, four different sets written one below the other.

  “The last coordinates he gave me were 44.2678°N, 110.4889°W,” she said, reading from the sheet. “Do you know where this is?”

  After five years of making a living scouring the park, I knew the coordinates for every major landmark from memory. Still, these were foreign even to me.

  Running a hand down along the side of the map I found the latitude she’d given me, then passed a finger along it until I’d found the corresponding longitude.

  “Huh,” I said, leaning back and studying the outcome.

  “What?” Lita asked, looking from me to the map and back again.

  “Heart Lake,” I said. “If he’s down there, it’s no wonder you’re not hearing much out of him.”

  “Why? Is this a bad area?” Lita asked, concern rising in her voice.

  The corners of my mouth curled up at the question, a small snort sliding from my nose. “Well, there is no such thing as a bad area here, at least not as you might be used to it. This isn’t Southeast D.C. or East LA or anything.

  “I’m just surprised is all. Heart Lake is pretty well off the beaten path, a good thirty-five miles from Old Faithful, the closest tourist attraction by far.”

  Across from me Lita lowered her gaze back to the map. I could see her tracing out the route as she stared at it, starting at Old Faithful and working her way down from there.

  “So why do people go there?” she asked.

  “For the most part? Because they don’t want to be found,” I replied. “See that road there? That’s US 287, the only road through that entire part of the park. There are a couple of smaller dirt roads that are open in the summertime, but this time of year? The only way to get to Heart Lake is park along the highway and hoof it in.”

  Lita’s eyes grew a touch bigger as she glanced from me to the map again. “You mean walk? How far is it?”

  “More like hike,” I corrected. “And given that the coordinates he gave you are on the back side of the lake, probably ten miles or more. All backcountry.”

  Things weren’t really as bad as I was making them out to be; it was just that the thought of leading an obvious city girl on a twenty-mile round-trip throug
h dense forest was less than appealing. I still hadn’t unpacked the truck from the Olson trip. There was no way I was about to hold her hand on an unnecessary rescue mission.

  “So when can we go?” she asked, snapping her head back up from the map and leaning back in her chair.

  “Excuse me?” I said, my eyes widening in surprise.

  “To Heart Lake,” Lita pressed. “When can we go?”

  I reached out and pulled the map toward me, folding it slowly to buy myself a second. I waited until it was all put away before looking at her and saying, “Look, I can respect the concern you have for your brother. I really can. But if he is down at Heart Lake, it’s because he wanted to be left alone. I’m sure everything is fine.”

  Lita stared at me a long moment, the concern in her face receding to a hard visage. “I’m glad you can feel that way, but I simply can’t. If something has happened to him and I don’t go help, I will never be able to look at myself in the mirror again.”

  A feeling of dread started to roil within me. Most of the time, simple logic was enough to assuage these people. Every once in a while, though, somebody took things personally, got a little ugly.

  This had all the earmarks of turning into the latter.

  “Look, Lita—”

  “I can pay you,” she spat, cutting me off before I had a chance to protest any further. “Twenty thousand, cash.”

  The feeling of dread evaporated, replaced by shock. Twenty grand was almost ten times my going rate for a trip of this length. I kept my face completely impassive as I stared back at her, forcing air in and out through my nose.

  “Really, this isn’t about money,” I said. “This late in the season, at that elevation—”

  “Fifty,” Lita said, inserting herself again before I could finish.

  Fifty thousand dollars was in the neighborhood of what I had made in June and July combined. That kind of money would keep me in the black for years to come. Put a new roof on my winter cabin. Maybe even ensure that I wasn’t still doing this at the age of seventy.

  A dozen questions entered my mind at once, ranging from how she had that kind of cash on hand to did she realize she could get the guys down the road to do it for a quarter of that?

  Still, I let every one of them pass.

  “Meet me here tomorrow morning at seven.”

  Lita nodded in understanding and left without another word, leaving me seated behind my desk, trying to process what had just taken place. A moment later Kaylan popped her head into the room, a smug smile on her face.

  “So, what happened?” she asked.

  “Ridiculous showed up,” I replied, drawing a knowing grin from her as she disappeared back the way she’d come.

  Chapter Three

  The engine of my pickup ticked in the silence of the morning as I spread a map across the front hood. A slight tendril of steam could be seen rising from the grille into the cold air, the mist disintegrating within a few inches as it rose.

  “Okay,” I said, pointing a finger at the western edge of the image. “As you can see, the roads of the park are laid out in a basic figure eight. We started over here in West Yellowstone at the midpoint and came down around the bottom half. When we got past Old Faithful we headed due south about twenty miles to here.”

  I marked the position on the map for her with one hand and pointed to a wooden sign with yellow letters affixed to a fence in front of us. “And now we are here, at the Red Mountain trailhead.”

  “Mhmm,” Lita said, giving me a nod. So far on the morning she had said about fifteen words total, most of them two syllables or less. She wasn’t quite surly, but the strain of the situation was clearly wearing on her.

  She seemed worried, on the verge of desperation.

  I’d been there myself, so I let it slide. It’s amazing what the thought of losing a loved one can do to somebody’s psyche.

  “We have two choices,” I said, swapping out the larger road map for a small topographical. Folded back to display the area we were in, it was gridded with various lines marking out river flows and changes in elevations. Striped across it in bright red were the various trails that covered the region, traversing it in a misshapen pattern like veins on a forearm.

  “We can follow the northern route, which is about twelve miles in total. It’s pretty flat, follows that dirt road over there most of the way.”

  I gestured with my chin toward a two-track path that extended away from the parking lot, a metal gate across it announcing the road was closed for the season.

  “The southern route is a bit more tricky,” I said, outlining the other option. “It goes up and over Mount Sheridan, but is only about eight, eight and a half, miles total.”

  “Let’s take the southern route,” Lita said, her voice firm.

  I glanced up from the map and gave her a quick once-over. She had traded out the leather jacket and boots for a black down parka and hiking treads, both of which looked like she’d removed the tags from them that morning. A knit cap covered most of her hair, and insulated mittens swung from straps at the cuffs of her coat.

  Her attire didn’t worry me.

  What did was the single duffel bag she had tossed over a shoulder. No larger than something I would have taken to the gym in a different life, it couldn’t have held more than a change of clothes and some dried food. Maybe a bottle of water.

  Nothing near what would be needed to ascend a mountain in late October.

  I glanced over at Lita before turning my back to the truck and staring off into the distance. “Maybe you’re not properly appreciating what we’re looking at, given how close we are to it, but Mount Sheridan is a ten-thousand-foot peak. Even from where we’re now standing, that’s an elevation change of six grand and a temperature drop of probably twenty degrees.”

  Lita stared up at the mountain a moment before shifting her attention back to me. Her face was void of emotion as she looked over, her eyes revealing nothing. “So?”

  “Don’t let the eight-mile part fool you—it will take most of the day,” I said, incredulity sifting into my voice. “And the gear I brought is best suited for a night at six thousand feet, not at elevation.”

  My argument seemed to have little effect on her. “I’ve walked farther than sixteen miles in a day before. Two years ago I ran a marathon in under four hours.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” I said, raising my eyebrows, fighting to keep my voice under control, “but I bet you did it at sea level in seventy-five-degree weather, didn’t you?”

  She looked at me a long moment before turning away, confirming I was right. She stood stock still before sniffing the air and taking two steps away from the truck.

  “My brother will have supplies where he is. I will stay in his tent tonight. And we’re surrounded by water. It will be fine.”

  Lightbulbs flashed bright warning signs inside my head as I stood and looked at her standing away from the truck, refusing to glance my direction. I had no reason to believe she was anything other than a concerned sister determined to reach her brother, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  The woman I had met yesterday had faded, taking with her a great deal of the warmth and compassion that had persuaded me to take the job. In their place was a steely resolve, the kind of resolute determination that could get us both killed.

  As if reading my mind, she turned her head to face me. “Please, Hawk, I’ve come a long way to find my brother. I have to make it the last eight miles.”

  For whatever reason, I couldn’t tell her no.

  I remember what I had once been like when I was on a mission, determined to find someone I’d long thought missing. No amount of hiking, no mountain, no lack of drinking water would stand in my way.

  If this woman needed to find her brother, I would help her.

  “Okay,” I said, foldi
ng up the map and stowing it in my pocket. I hefted the pack to one shoulder and slid my other arm through the strap, cinching it into place across my chest. In total I had enough gear for three days, the sum weight of it just over twenty-five pounds.

  Seeing her so ill equipped already had me wishing I’d brought more.

  “But no drinking the water along the way. Every drop in this park is sulfuric. The last thing I want is to have to carry you out of here.”

  Chapter Four

  Two hours passed in almost total silence, no words shared between us save the occasional direction from me, the grunt of response from Lita.

  For her part, she did an excellent job of keeping up. At thirty-four years old and a full-time guide, I was used to the elevation and strenuous nature of hiking. There was probably no way I could run a marathon or hop on a treadmill and pound out miles at an 8.0 clip, but I knew I could walk up and down hills in the park all day long.

  Because of that, I was always careful with the pace I kept. Most folks, even the ones who worked out on a regular basis, were in no way prepared for the task of trekking in the backcountry. The inclines were too steep, the air too thin, the loads too heavy to ever re-create and prepare for.

  Despite that, Lita stayed three steps behind me the entire way. Each time I suggested a shortcut through rough terrain she jumped at the opportunity, always intent on getting there as fast as we could. Behind me I could hear her breath coming in even draws, never rising to the point of panting.

  “Where did you say you were from?” I asked, picking my way over a felled log slashing across the trail before us. Little more than a footpath used by game, it was just wide enough for my boots. The ground was packed hard beneath them.

  A long moment passed as Lita scrambled over the tree behind me, her mittens still swinging free by her sides. “Mexico,” she replied.

  “Mexico? Really?” I asked, keeping my tone light and even. Nothing about her accent said Mexican to me. Even the way she spoke English, formed her sentences, didn’t remind me of someone with a Spanish-speaking background.