“All right. I’ll get there as soon as I can—”
“No, A.J., you need to stay there. You know you do. Call the police. I’ll radio you the second I know more.” Even as she spoke, the smell of smoke mixed with the gas in the still, cold air. “A.J.—” She caught her breath. “A.J., there’s a fire.”
Nick pointed through the trees, past the stream. “There.”
“It’s at the lake,” Rose told her brother, then gave him what information she could and switched off the radio. Thick, gray smoke was drifting up above the trees now. Nick clearly was anxious to get moving. “How far to the lake?”
“Five minutes if we move fast.”
“Let’s go.” He shifted his gaze to her as a slight breeze stirred in the evergreens. “Stay close to me.”
“I’ve been on this trail a million times, and someone could need our help.”
“Rose—”
“It’s okay, Nick. This is what I do.”
He nodded. “All right. Lead the way.”
Rose returned to the trail, heading down a sharp curve in the deep snow. Ranger bounded just ahead of her. She was less aware of Nick behind her but wasn’t concerned he couldn’t manage the conditions.
Smoke became more noticeable, thicker in the air as it rose in the trees on the hill above the lake. Rose reminded herself that the cabins were unoccupied and Jo and Elijah were out of town.
Bowie.
She almost stumbled. Was he working at the lake?
Someone else could have seen the smoke by now and called 911. Fire trucks could already be en route.
Nick moved next to her as they reached one of the most run-down of Jo Harper’s dozen cabins on the edge of the lake.
Ranger barked, on full alert. Rose saw what had him upset. The small cabin that Grit Taylor had occupied before his return to Washington was on fire, fully engulfed in flames.
No one inside could have survived.
Rose told Ranger to sit. She couldn’t let him plunge into a dangerous situation. “We need to make sure no one’s in any of the cabins,” she said to Nick, forcing herself to remain calm, professional.
“I’ll do that,” Nick said.
She knew she didn’t need to tell Nick Martini what to do in a fire. He kicked off his snowshoes and was on his way. She removed her own snowshoes and peered down the hill, trying to see if Bowie’s van was on the access road.
A scream—a woman, terrified—rose up from a cabin closer to the frozen lake.
Jo? Was she here after all?
“Ranger, stay,” Rose said, then ran through the snow behind Nick.
He charged to the cabin’s only door, but it was padlocked from the outside. He grabbed a splitter from a woodpile and smashed through the door. He raced inside. In two beats, he came out again, with Dominique Belair over one shoulder.
He shoved her into Rose’s arms. “This place could be rigged,” he said. “It could go up in flames. Move back. Now.”
Rose didn’t hesitate and half carried Dominique, sobbing, gulping in air, down to the road. Dominique sank onto a snow-covered rock between the road and the lake. She was shaking with fear, shivering with the cold. She had on a winter jacket over leggings and running shoes, but she wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves.
Rose didn’t see Bowie’s van anywhere on the road.
She squatted down in front of her friend. “Are you hurt?”
Dominique shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Thank you.”
“Dom, what happened? What are you doing here?”
“I came for a run. I arrived about twenty minutes ago. I saw a man.” She was panting, as if she couldn’t get a decent breath. “I just got a glimpse of him. I thought it was Bowie, because he’s been working out here.”
“His van isn’t here.” Unless it was up at Elijah’s, Rose thought with a jolt of panic. “Did you see him, Dom? Is he in one of the cabins?”
She looked up at Rose in terror. “I don’t know.”
Rose saw Nick charging for a second cabin that had started on fire. He crashed his splitter into the door.
“The man had on a black ski mask and parka.” Dominique’s lower lip trembled, but she was regaining her natural composure. “I didn’t notice until I got closer that he was too thin to be Bowie. He grabbed me. He threw me into the cabin. I fell. I hit the wall.”
“Were you knocked unconscious?” Rose asked.
Dominique shook her head. “I just had the wind knocked out of me. I was so stunned. Oh, Rose. I couldn’t get out. He locked me in. I smelled smoke.” She shivered, her teeth chattering. “I thought I was going to die.”
Nick burst into the cabin and immediately backed out again, dragging a man into the snow. Even from where she stood with Dominique, Rose could see the man was badly burned and not readily identifiable.
He was clearly dead. There was nothing anyone could do.
Her heart almost stopped. It couldn’t be Bowie, she told herself. She saw bits of a black ski mask, a black parka, just as Dom had described. And the victim was lean. Too lean to be an O’Rourke.
Rose remembered that Robert Feehan had been wearing a black parka when he’d grabbed her out by the sugar shack.
Was Bowie in the cabin that was fully engulfed, orange flames shooting through the roof now?
“Dom,” Rose said, “did you see Bowie at all?”
“No. I left Myrtle in charge at the café and came out here for a run. Just a short one along the lake. Bowie said he’d be here. I thought I’d be safe. I saw someone up by the cabins. I called….” Dominique started shivering uncontrollably again. “I had no idea.”
“Was he alone?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. He didn’t say anything. He just threw me into the cabin and locked me in. He seemed to be in a hurry.” Her voice faltered. “I was terrified. Then I smelled smoke.”
“You need to stay warm.” Rose rummaged in her pack for a bottle of water. “Here, try to drink some.”
Dominique took the bottle. “I’m okay. I just can’t stop shaking.”
Rose pulled an extra pair of gloves from her pack and handed them to Dominique as she strained to see if Bowie’s van was up at Elijah’s house. He could be working at a different site, or he could have already come and gone and Dominique had missed him.
Nick covered the body with a tarp from the woodpile and started checking the rest of the cabins before flying embers or a bomb could ignite more of them. He’d gone in and out of two, finding no other victims, when the first fire trucks, ambulance and police cruiser arrived.
Zack Harper was in the lead truck. He glanced at Rose and Dominique but said nothing as he and the other firefighters quickly got to work.
The ambulance crew ran toward Dominique. Rose left her friend in their care and got Ranger’s attention, signaled for him to come to her. When he was at her side, she went with him up the slippery road to Elijah’s house.
“Don’t go in,” Nick said, materializing next to her. He must have come through the trees that divided Jo’s property from Elijah’s. “This place could be rigged with some kind of explosive device.”
She looked up at her brother’s deck. The steps hadn’t been shoveled. There were no prints in the snow. “The man is Robert Feehan, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure it is,” Nick replied. “It looks as if he couldn’t get out of the cabin fast enough and got caught in his own scheme.”
“Or that’s what we’re supposed to believe.”
“Exactly.”
“I should call Elijah and let him know what’s going on. He can tell Jo.”
Nick didn’t argue. She walked down to the lake for better cell reception but it took several tries to get through to Elijah in Washington. When she did, she tried to be as clear and succinct as possible in informing him about the fires.