Endangered (A Sam Westin Mystery Book 1) Read online

  3

  The wine helped her get to sleep, but it didn’t keep her there. A little before 4 a.m., a scratching sound outside her tent woke her. She sat up, peered through the mosquito netting. At first she saw nothing, then noticed a blur of furry movement near the pack she’d left propped against a rock. She cursed herself for not stringing up her food or hauling it into the tent.

  The creature was bigger than a chipmunk. She squinted. The moon was low in the west now, its light not much help in the canyon shadows. She could barely make out a pointed nose, a bushy tail. If it was a raccoon, it was a small, pathetically skinny one. The marauder stood up, placed its tiny paws on the pack. Striped tail, large rounded ears. A ringtail! She’d never seen one before. Prints, droppings, even captive ringtails in zoos, but never the actual creature in the wild.

  Where was the camera? She ran her hands over her vest beside the sleeping bag, identified her phone, two memory cards, a roll of antacid tablets, a wadded-up kerchief. Well, shit. She pressed her face close to the netting. The camera was out there, along with the computer and satellite hub, strewn across the canyon floor.

  Some professional she was.

  The ringtail stuck a paw into the space at the end of a zipper, widened the gap, pushed its nose into the pocket. As Sam leaned forward, her sleeping bag hissed against the foam pad beneath. The shy mammal jerked its head toward her. Its huge slanted eyes, outlined in white, gleamed in the moonlight for a fraction of a second. Then, with a flick of its tail, the ringtail was gone.

  Like the cougars. Here one minute, gone the next. Vanished.

  A toddler’s face suddenly flashed into her thoughts. Was Zack still missing? Unzipping the mesh flap, she crawled out of the tent, taking the phone with her.

  “You have two new messages,” the mechanical voice told her. One, left that afternoon, was from Key Corporation, wanting to know if she would write a piece about bird-watching in the Columbia Gorge for their e-zine. The other was from Lauren, exclaiming over her story on the website, how fantastic it looked, how the director, Steve Harding, was so glad she and Adam Steele had talked them into doing the field reports. “Dynamite!” Lauren concluded.

  Sam exited voicemail and tapped in Kent’s cell number. A message told her his phone was currently out of service. It probably had a dead battery by now.

  “Shoot,” she said softly. Then she remembered. Top left outside pocket of the backpack. She padded over, pulled out the two-way radio she’d bought just for this purpose, and tuned it to the park communications channel.

  A blast of static ripped the quiet darkness. The signal was probably blocked by the rocks around her tent. She switched it off, tucked it into the back of her panties for lack of a better place, and scrambled to the top of the highest boulder, keeping a hopeful eye out for the ringtail. She settled her backside on the cool sandstone and tried the radio again.

  “Sector nine-three. No sign here.” A weary female voice. “Starting sector nine-four.”

  Damn. The rangers were still searching. No happy ending yet. She chewed a knuckle.

  “Sector eight-two clear. Moving on to eight-three.” Sounded like Kent.

  She rubbed her bare feet with her hands. October nights were too cold to go without shoes. Zack had been wearing sneakers, a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and a baseball cap when she’d seen him. He was dressed warmly enough to survive the night, assuming he still wore the same clothing.

  Where could he be? Was it too cold now in the valley for rattlesnakes to prowl after dark? She tried to remember if there were any old mineshafts near the campground; she knew there were abandoned claims in the park. The river was low, but the current was still too strong for a two-year-old. God, there were so many horrible possibilities. Why hadn’t Zack’s parents kept better track of him?

  Why hadn’t she taken him back to his parents? The scene replayed itself in her imagination. The man waving. Zack couldn’t have been more than a couple of yards from him at the time. Surely it had been Zack’s father. Her memory looped back, started again. Zack scampering away down the path. Black shadows over the trail where it dipped between the brambles. The background gush of the river.

  The eastern horizon revealed only a faint edge of gray under the stars. Still too dark to hike down. She pulled her clothes from the tent and dressed, then sat down before the laptop. SWF would fire her for sure if they knew she hadn’t even zipped their equipment back into the protective cases. Thank God it hadn’t rained, that it was too dry for dew, that rodents hadn’t chewed anything.

  She powered up the system and clicked the shortcut icon to SWF’s website. There was her photo, in all its glory—Leto and Artemis, looking as if they were about to leap onto the viewer’s head. A headline, “Cougar Celebration,” appeared in large red type above her article.

  Instead of Summer Westin or even Sam Westin, the byline said “Wilderness Westin.” What the heck? She clicked the name.

  A popup appeared with a bio of Summer “Wilderness” Westin and a photo. She blinked in surprise. Instead of using the photo she’d supplied, which featured her in outdoor gear with camera and notepad in hand, they’d used an old one from the SWF fund-raiser where she’d met Adam. The event had been held after hours at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, and the keepers had trotted out a few of the tamer animals for show.

  The boa constrictor draped around her shoulders was a better accessory than any fashion designer could have conjured. The red bark of the madrona behind her and the burgundy mottle of the snake’s skin framed her pale skin and platinum blond hair. Bright trumpets of tropical blossoms dangled from a vine near her right temple. She raised an eyebrow. She didn’t remember those flowers: they seemed unlikely in Seattle, even in summer.

  “Darn you, Max,” she muttered. Maximilian Garay, a young digital artist at SWF, was an expert at manipulating photos on the computer.

  She’d worn a tank top on the day the picture was taken. Now the spaghetti straps were gone, and he’d cropped the photo to emphasize the snake and her bare shoulders. The perpetual frown lines on her forehead had been erased. Her gray eyes were now decidedly green.

  It was a slick job, she had to admit. She looked downright sexy and about twenty-six years old. A flaxen-haired Eve eager to commit the first sin offered. Fine, to use Max’s term of ultimate praise. A little too fine. At thirty-seven, her real self could only be a disappointment.

  The bio information they’d included for Wilderness Westin was basically Sam Westin’s history but worded in such a way to make it sound as if this Wilderness character routinely forded raging rivers and scaled vertical cliffs in pursuit of wildlife. She returned to the home page.

  “Eee-ha!” the computer speaker yelped, startling her. Accompanied by a thunder of clopping hooves, a miniature deer darted from the left side of the page, with a cougar in hot pursuit, followed by a tiny human figure with a camera, who stopped to take a photo, then ran to catch the animals. The trio galloped off the right side of the window.

  Sam couldn’t help grinning. They didn’t call him Mad Max for nothing. The guy spent hours of his own time creating video sprites like these.

  At last, a sliver of pink lightened the sky behind the mountains to the east. She packed only the electronic gear, food, and a few clothes, leaving her camping supplies zipped inside the tent. The tiny box canyon was a secret place. The only intruders she expected in the next twenty-four hours were of the furry variety. She’d help find Zack, get a good meal and a hot shower, do her chat session and recharge batteries at the hotel tonight, and then hike back up tomorrow.

  * * * * *

  At 8 a.m., she crossed over the bridge at Goodman Trailhead and dumped her backpack into the trunk of her car. Feeling as light as helium, she strolled into Red Rock Campground and spotted Rangers Bergstrom and Castillo slumped on a picnic bench. More gray-green uniforms were grouped nearby.

  “Hey, Kent.” She slid onto the bench beside her friend. His expression remained unfocused for a few seconds,
as if he couldn’t remember who she was. But then, he’d been on duty for at least twenty-four hours.

  “Sam!” He brushed a strand of sandy hair from his forehead. His gaze flicked up to the ridge before traveling back to her face. “When did you start down?”

  “First light.” Up and down the same trail in little more than twelve hours, with a heavy pack. Almost thirteen miles round trip. When she leaned over to tug her sagging wool socks up out of her boots, she felt a little stab between her shoulder blades.

  “You remember Rafael, don’t you?” Kent pointed to his colleague, Rafael Castillo. As one of the park’s two law enforcement rangers, the chunky black-haired man wore a holstered .38 on his right hip.

  She sat up and nodded in his general direction. “Hola, Rafael. ¿Qué pasa?”

  His dark eyes lit up. “You speak Spanish now?” He rattled off a few unintelligible words.

  “Hola, Rafael, ¿qué pasa?” she responded.

  He laughed and slapped his knee, his gold wedding ring flashing in the sun. “I forgot you’re a joker.”

  “Most people say smart-ass,” Kent said.

  Rafael smoothed his grimy uniform pants across his thighs. “We could use a little humor right now.”

  How she missed this, the camaraderie of working with others, being part of a team. Living with Blake and dating Adam kept her from being a total recluse, but she spent the better part of her time in solitary confinement these days.

  “No trace of Zack?” she asked.

  “No.” Kent raised a hand to scratch his stubbly jaw.

  Rafael lowered his chin into dirt-stained hands. “The boy . . . it’s terrible.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a three-year-old and a two-year-old at home. They’re babies.”

  “I saw him yesterday,” Sam said.

  Rafael’s eyebrows shot up. “You saw Zachary Fischer?”

  “Kent didn’t tell you? I saw him in the Goodman Trail lot.” She turned to Kent. “Right after we spoke on the phone.”

  Kent said, “We hung up at five forty. I checked my watch right before I left the station.”

  Rafael straightened. “The parents called headquarters at six thirty. You were probably the last person—”

  She hurriedly cut him off. “No, he ran back to his father. It was dark, and I got caught in the brambles, but then I saw his father at the end of the path. I yelled and asked if he got Zack, and he waved back.”

  Rafael glanced across the campsite, where a wretched couple sat on a weathered outcropping of stone, the woman cradled in the man’s lap. The law enforcement ranger indicated the man with a jerk of his chin. “Him?”

  “Those are the parents?” Sam asked.

  Kent nodded. “The Fischers. Fred and—”

  “Jenny,” Rafael supplied.

  Fred Fischer stroked his wife’s arm slowly, a stony expression on his face. Jenny laid her head wearily against her husband’s shoulder. The couple wore matching bulky navy blue sweatshirts and jeans, matching loops in their earlobes.

  Had the man at the end of the path worn an earring? All she could remember was a silhouette. It had been too dark to see details.

  Fred Fischer’s shoulder-length brown hair hung in strings. Flowing tresses on fair-haired males always conjured up Jesus in Sam’s imagination, which made her feel simultaneously ridiculous and sacrilegious. She’d spent too much time studying stained-glass windows in her youth as she waited for the minister to hang up his robes and emerge as her father.

  “You saw Zack run to Fischer?” Rafael asked again.

  “I only saw the man’s profile—the light was behind him. Did Fischer have his hair in a ponytail last night?” She raised her hand to the back of her neck. “I remember a bulge here, maybe a flash of blue material as he waved.” She shook her head in frustration. “He was at least ten yards away, and it was pretty dark by then.”

  Rafael stood up, adjusted the holster on his belt. “Come get a close look.”

  As they approached, the Fischers glanced up. When the woman raised her head from her husband’s chest, Sam saw that a large red birthmark covered the jaw line on the right side of her face and descended down her neck. Jenny twitched her long hair forward to cover it.

  Rafael nodded at Sam. She squatted to be on eye level with the couple. “Mr. Fischer?”

  Weary hazel eyes swiveled to meet hers.

  “Remember me?”

  Nothing.

  “From the path, last night, over by the trailhead. Five fifty or so? Zack ran from me to you?”

  Fred Fischer’s eyebrows came together in a V. “What?”

  Jenny’s hand shot out, and her broken nails clutched at Sam’s jeans. “You saw my baby? You saw Zack?”

  Sam focused on Fred’s face. “Mr. Fischer, remember how you waved to me? I waved back?”

  Jenny examined her husband’s perplexed expression.

  Fred shook his head. “I don’t remember that.”

  Sam swallowed around a sudden constriction in her throat.

  Jenny’s hand still hung on to the baggy denim at Sam’s knee. “I don’t understand. You saw Zack last night?”

  “I think so. He never told me his name. Was he wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt?”

  Jenny let go of Sam’s jeans and pressed her hand over her own cracked lips. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “There were scratches on his face.” Sam indicated cross-hatching with a finger raised to her own cheek.

  “He didn’t have those before,” Jenny sobbed. She clutched at the collar of her sweatshirt, wadding the material in her fists.

  “Mr. Fischer,” Rafael asked, “did you have your hair in a ponytail yesterday evening?”

  “What?” The father raised a dirty hand to the oily strings that hung loose around his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  Jenny said, “Yes, you did. I remember it was all coming out when you got here, when I called—” Her voice skipped like a needle on an old scratched record. “I called and called. Oh, my baby!” Twisting her neck, she buried her face in her husband’s shirt front.

  Fred Fischer wrapped his arms around his wife, but his eyes were fixed on Sam. Tired, cold eyes. “Zack wandered off just as it got dark.” His tone was mechanical, as if he were repeating the information for the hundredth time. “And we never saw him again.”

  It sounded so final. Feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach, Sam returned to the picnic bench.

  Rafael followed. “You said it was dark,” he theorized. “Maybe Fischer didn’t see you. Maybe you just thought he was waving. But you definitely saw Zack with this man?”

  The boy disappearing down the narrow path, the brambles snagging her vest, holding her back. “Zack ran away from me, toward him. There was shrubbery between us. I just assumed . . .” Letting her words trail off, Sam lowered her head into her hands.

  If Fischer hadn’t waved at her, then whom had he been signaling? Could Zack have darted down the left fork, to the river? If the silhouetted man wasn’t Fischer, then who—?

  “You’re back?” a gravelly voice barked in Sam’s ear.

  Kent and Rafael Castillo stiffened. Sam felt her own muscles clench, too. The speaker was an older woman with a severe iron gray bob and a rumpled National Park Service uniform. Meg Tanner, assistant superintendent.

  Sam held out her hand. “Hi, Meg. I’m here writing some articles about how the cougars are doing. How are you?”

  Tanner ignored Sam’s outstretched hand. “Been better.” She leveled a gnarled index finger at Rafael. “Castillo, I need you to take a report from Site 21.”

  His square face brightened. “They see something?”

  Tanner shook her head. “Another theft.”

  “Why can’t these people lock up their stuff at night?” With a groan, Rafael pushed himself up from the picnic bench. He stalked away, muttering to himself.

  “At least it’s not a gun this time,” Tanner said to his retreating back. She returned her gaze to Sam. “I though
t you were up on the plateau. Didn’t we give you a special permit?”

  “I was. And yes, you did.” Sam wondered for the fiftieth time if she’d done something during her summer employment here to piss Tanner off. “When I heard about the missing boy, I came down to see if I could help.”

  “Good. We can use another experienced tracker.”

  That was the closest thing to praise she’d ever received from the assistant superintendent.

  “Just don’t try to be a hero,” Tanner added. “I know how you tend to go off on tangents.”

  Tangents? Sam’s temper flared. Then she remembered that she was on a tangent of sorts right now. Save the Wilderness Fund was paying her to produce wildlife stories, and here she was, volunteering to search for a missing kid. “Yes, ma’am,” she replied.

  “Stick around. Rescue 504—the Explorer Scouts—will be here any second; we’ll organize the second wave then.” Tanner walked a few steps, then turned back. “Coffee’s over there on the stove.” Her thumb jerked toward a picnic table close to the Fischers. “Help yourself.”

  Tanner joined an overweight man in park service uniform. Sam recognized the bulky profile of Superintendent Jerry Thompson.

  “I’m taking her up on that coffee.” Sam strode toward the table.

  Kent followed. “You’ve obviously forgotten the Tanner touch.”

  He was right. She had blanked out Tanner’s talent for producing sludge. The stuff tasted like asphalt.

  Kent rubbed the back of his neck, pills of sweat-dampened dirt rolling up like mealy bugs under his fingertips. “Once I thought for sure I had Zack. I saw something moving on the river path. But it was only a raccoon.”

  That reminded her. “I saw a ringtail last night.” A fellow wildlife biologist like Kent would appreciate the wonder of it.

  “Cool. Wish it had been me.”

  They walked back to the bench and sat down again. A muscle in Sam’s thigh started twitching. Aggravating. A reminder that she was out of shape. She’d spent way too much time behind a desk recently. She dug her knuckles into the offending area. “Did you find any evidence that Zack’s still in the park?” she asked in a low voice.