Out of breath, Jessica nonetheless found voice to say, ''Sam, we need to throw up a barricade around this debris and call in a bomb expert."
"What in God's name've you got yourself into now, Dr. Coran?" asked Charlie Venable with a little shake of the head.
''Moments ago, I was almost killed by a dead man, Mr. Venable, Sam. That's what's up. Buy me a cup of coffee at the lodge and I'll tell you all about it."
Fronval smiled and said, "Sounds like a plan. Take care of things here, Charlie, will you? Jessica and me, we have some catching up to do."
"Please wait for a bomb squad to get here," Jessica cautioned Venable. "I'd like to recover as much of the incendiary device as possible to reconstruct the attempt on my life from a dead man."
"Yes, ma'am, of course," replied Venable, a hearty-looking, weatherblown man whose wild shock of hair waved in the wind here. Jessica and Fronval, each with wounds given them by Feydor Dorphmann, walked into the mist and away to the lodge, Jessica's crutches tapping out an anthem.
Venable turned and stared at the debris, seeing parts of it off in the distance, far from the safety of the boardwalk. They also had the old man's body to recover. It seemed to Venable, as it did to the other rangers, that the solemnity and peace of the park had been destroyed since the moment of Coran's arrival here, and it appeared that loss would continue until she left for good. No one would be more pleased to see her leave than Venable, just as he'd be pleased to see the last of old Sam.
The park was entering a new era, and new leadership was required, so far as Venable was concerned. Sam knew his feelings on the matter. There was no hiding anything from a man like Fronval. For now Charlie would take Sam's orders to oversee the men and the mess left by Coran here, but soon Charlie would be overseeing his men and calling the shots.
Jessica wanted to cast aside her crutches, wanted to make her way back to the lodge on her own two feet, but she still couldn't bring her full weight down on the burned feet and ankles, still in cumbersome bandages. It wasn't the first time she'd been left scarred by a killer; she prayed it would be the last.
"You'll have to pardon my savages, Jessica," he told her, apologizing for the stares and the underlying fear his rangers displayed of her. "They don't know how to behave before a living legend."
Jessica laughed at this. ''Then Sam, how can they possibly ever behave properly around you?''
He laughed in return. "They don't! Let's go find that coffee, Jess. Then maybe you'll be up for a hunt?"
"On these crutches, sure!" she complained.
Sam laughed even harder and said, "You on crutches will do better than most men I know on two good legs."