Murder on the Horizon Read online

  Gracie said a silent prayer for all those affected, but especially for those fighting the fire, both in the Command Post and in the field—brutal, scorching-hot, muscle-straining, backbreaking work.

  A Skycrane helicopter roared overhead, dropping its enormous payload of red retardant slurry on the steep mountainside ahead, then soared away again.

  As the Ranger traveled east, the plume of smoke grew larger, rising higher and higher into the air. “Holy shit,” Gracie said again as it hit her for the first time that if either fire reached the Santa Anita Canyon—steep, heavily timbered, and running up the backside of the mountain range forming the southern boundary of the lovely valley in which she lived, the fire would roar, virtually unstoppable, all the way up to Timber Creek. If the winds shifted west, the southwestern end of the valley, including Camp Ponderosa, would be directly in its path; if winds shifted east, the fire would head for several small residential communities, including Gracie’s.

  Fear and dread kicked Gracie’s anxiety level up several notches. The possibility of a fire coming into camp when it was chock-full of guests galvanized her into action. Abandoning her plan to drive up the longer, more scenic “back way” up to the valley, she took the first Timber Creek exit from the 10 Freeway and headed up the mountain “the front way,” leading more directly and quickly up to camp.

  Gracie spent more than two hours in the Gatehouse searching every file cabinet and bookshelf for a formal emergency evacuation plan or emergency procedures of any kind for the camp, turning up only a cursory, poorly written single photocopied sheet of generic bullet points. Appalled that she hadn’t noticed the absence of any formal evacuation plan before, she spent the evening writing comprehensive risk management and emergency procedures plans, including a formal camp evacuation plan with maps of evacuation routes leading away from the property and out of the valley itself. She printed out multiple copies of the maps and posted them in every entrance of every building around camp.

  With a quick phone call to Vivian Robinson to confirm they would be able to keep Minnie another night (“Oh, my, yes. Of course! Delighted!”), Gracie slept a fitful five hours in a sleeping bag thrown down on the carpeted floor of her office. At breakfast the next morning, she sat down with the leader of the church retreat group in camp for the next two days, talking at length with him about emergency policies and procedures, reassuring him that she would immediately notify the understandably skittish group at the first inkling of any real danger.

  The remainder of the morning she spent doing paperwork and returning phone calls after which she helped Allen prepare and serve a lunch of chicken tacos to the church group. With the knowledge that the camp was in the head cook’s capable hands, she headed back across the valley for a much-needed shower and to change out of what she called “city clothes.”

  Gracie zoomed the Ranger up the sweeping curves of Arcturus and turned into the driveway of her cabin. She gunned the engine to climb the steep hill and braked to a stop at the top.

  She looked through the passenger’s window and smiled. Acacia and Baxter sat together on a railroad tie lining the driveway, wide grins on their faces, like conspirators waiting for their prey. At their feet, Minnie sat at the very end of her leash, ears perked, entire rear end moving with her wagging tail.

  As soon as the Ranger stopped, boy, girl, and dog jumped up and ran over. “Hi, guys!” Gracie said, climbing out of the truck.

  “Hi, Gracie!” Acacia said.

  “Yo ho ho, Gracie!” Baxter called.

  Gracie grinned down at the boy. “I take it you’re reading Treasure Island.”

  “Finished it,” Baxter said, looking immensely pleased with himself.

  “Already? Wow!” She leaned down to scratch Minnie’s head. “Did you like it?”

  “It was great!” His eyes were shining. “I had to look up a lot of words in my little dictionary, but that’s okay.”

  Gracie straightened. Before she could ask, Baxter said, “Gran knows I’m around here somewhere. I have to be back to her house by four.”

  Acacia bounced up and down on her toes, pink-ribboned pigtails bobbing like corks. “We were waiting for you,” she said. “Bax and I have already taken Minnie for two walks today. But can we take her for another one?”

  Bax and I.

  “Puleeeeeze,” Baxter joined in.

  For the first time since she had met Baxter, he looked relaxed, practically bursting at the seams with happiness. “Of course.”

  He handed Acacia Minnie’s leash, explaining, “’Cacia takes her when we walk down the hill. I take her when we come up.”

  “Okay then . . .”

  “Come on, Minnie,” Acacia said.

  “Be . . .”

  “We’ll be careful,” Baxter said.

  “And watch . . .

  “We’ll watch out for cars,” Acacia said.

  They both giggled, skipping down the driveway and out of sight down the road.

  * * *

  IF THE SHADY Oak Fire entered the valley, Timber Creek Search and Rescue would be called in to assist with a swift, orderly evacuation of the more than twenty-five thousand permanent and part-time residents and however many tourists happened to be up in the valley at the time. Because Gracie needed to be packed and ready to go in advance of an evacuation notice, she spent the next two hours packing the Ranger. Acacia and Baxter returned with Minnie and spent the time lying on their stomachs on the living room floor, chins on hands, feet in the air, immersed in Monopoly.

  Occasional peeks over the children’s shoulders revealed to Gracie that Acacia played patiently, quietly, steadily building her stash of properties and pile of gold one-hundred-dollar bills. Baxter, on the other hand, was brash, reckless, all-in, all-out, whooping loudly enough to startle Minnie when his opponent landed on his property with a hotel.

  Gracie hefted an extra-large duffel bag of clothes and toiletries in behind the passenger’s seat of the Ranger. Her backpack carrying her laptop, power cords, and other electronic accoutrements she stowed on the passenger’s side floor atop a small Sentry safe containing her passport, important papers, and several thousand dollars in cash saved against a rainy day. Her SAR equipment, extra food and water, survival equipment, and earthquake kit were already stored in the bed truck. She plunked down the tailgate and heaved all the way to the front a Rubbermaid storage bin filled with photo albums, knickknacks, and other keepsakes without which she simply couldn’t live. On top of that she hefted a second bin holding an extra twenty-pound bag of dog food, treats, bowls, toys, and extra gallons of water for Minnie. Several boxes of her most precious books were shoved in beside the bins.

  Only the few things she used every day—things she could scoop up in a flash or leave behind altogether—toothbrush, paste, and hairbrush, did she not pack.

  At four o’clock on the nose, Gracie dropped Baxter at his gran’s in Pine Knot, then circled all the way around again, driving west the entire length of the valley and back up to camp to help Allen prepare, serve, and clean up after the church group’s evening meal. Foregoing the group’s talent show, something she always enjoyed, she drove home instead. Much more enticing was a quiet evening on the living room couch watching back-to-back coma-inducing TV programs with Minnie.

  * * *

  WITH MINNIE ON heel, Gracie stepped past the line of giant white boulders marking the end of the pavement at the top of Arcturus and jogged up the steep road leading up to the plateau. She ran, watching her feet to avoid slipping off the smooth-packed dirt and onto the ragged gutter of talus running down the middle. Midway up the hill, she left the road, veering off to the right onto a narrow trail running through the woods.

  As the passage of time diminished the feeling of vulnerability stemming from the crank phone call, Gracie relaxed, realizing her fear of being attacked while running up on the plateau stemmed mostly from the call itself.
She made the conscious decision to keeping running there, mostly because it was conveniently close to home—any other jogging paths a twenty minute or more drive away. Still, before she left the cabin, she unearthed from a store of backpacking gear in the attic a canister of pepper spray designed for repelling bears in the wild, and clipped it to the strap of her water bottle sling.

  It was quiet in the woods, the only sound that of Gracie’s own measured breathing and her and Minnie’s footsteps. Beneath the canopy of trees, the morning air was cold, a herald of the approaching winter. But dressed as Gracie was in Camp Ponderosa sweatshirt and pants, she welcomed it as invigorating, and good for the firefighting crews of the Shady Oak Fire. Shuffling through shed needles and last year’s fallen leaves sent up the sharp, fresh scent of partially decomposed earthy matter.

  Woman and dog climbed a final incline on the trail and emerged out into sunlight on an old road that, in turn, led to a maze of other old roads running through several square miles of national forest—hilly, heavily wooded, and crisscrossed with rivulets and creeks.

  Where the trail intersected the road, Gracie stopped and took a swig from her water bottle, pouring a handful for Minnie. Jogging again, she followed the road east up a short hill, down the other side, veering right where the road turned and ran along the bottom of the plateau.

  Running up and down the gentle hills, into the shade, then back out into the sun, Gracie’s thoughts focused back to Detroit, to her mother, to Morris and her inability—or unwillingness—to forgive him. She thought about Ralph and his apparent unwillingness to forgive her and the devastating emptiness that came with the loss of their friendship. She thought about Rob Christian and his engagement and the dawning realization that losing Rob brought an even deeper pain than losing Ralph, more pronounced, more devastating.

  Gracie stumbled to an abrupt stop.

  Twenty feet ahead of her in the middle of the road stood a boy, tall and beefy, his age, Gracie guessed, somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen. Next to him stood a girl, much smaller and younger.

  Both children were dressed in woodland camouflage pants. The girl wore a hot pink top, the boy a black T-shirt with strange, indecipherable lettering on the front. There was something at the outer corner of the boy’s right eye, possibly a tattoo of some kind.

  Gracie might have thought they were ordinary children out for an ordinary morning stroll, except the boy held a black, semiautomatic assault rifle that was almost as big as he was and the girl had a pistol strapped to her waist.

  Gracie didn’t like guns. Had never owned one. Had never fired one, except for a shotgun one time, more than ten years before. She knew next to nothing about them except that they were really loud and could ruin lives.

  She didn’t like being in the vicinity of guns. Especially those carried by children.

  Behind Gracie, Minnie growled.

  “Shhh, Minnie,” Gracie whispered. She unclipped the leash from around her waist and fastened it to the dog’s collar, wrapping the other end several times around her hand to shorten its length and keep the dog close by her side. Then, surreptitiously, she unclipped the pepper spray from the sling and pushed it into the pocket of her sweatpants for easy access.

  She looked back up to the two children who stood unmoving on the road ahead. “Hi,” she said, lifting a hand.

  Without warning, the boy commanded, “Whistle, Heather.”

  The girl grabbed up a pink whistle hanging from a lanyard around her neck and blew it.

  Then with well-practiced ease, the boy dropped one knee to the ground. In one fluid move, he lifted the assault rifle, aimed it at Gracie, peered through the scope, and yelled, “Freeze or I’ll shoot!”

  CHAPTER

  14

  GRACIE froze, hand half-lifted, mouth agape. A warm breeze fluttered the ends of her hair. From somewhere above her head, a raven croaked.

  Her heart boomed in her chest and her brain paddled furiously, like a duck’s webbed feet below the surface of the water, trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this whole stupid mess without getting herself shot by a maniacal kid with a semiautomatic weapon.

  The girl—Heather—was still blowing the whistle, shattering the silence with one long blast. Then a short blast. Then another long. Repeating the cycle. Over and over.

  Minnie growled again. “Shhh, little girl,” Gracie whispered without moving, suddenly terrified not only for herself, but for her dog.

  As if by predetermined signal, Heather stopped blowing the whistle. She unclipped the keep on the holster attached to her belt, drew out the pistol, and aimed it at Gracie.

  The girl looked all of seven.

  What the hell ever happened to My Little Pony?

  A rustling drew her eyes to the hill above the road where a cluster of children were emerging from the trees and into the open. One by one, they jumped down out onto the road and walked over to stand behind the lead boy. An even mixture of boys and girls, the group ranged in age from what couldn’t have been more than five years old to as old as sixteen, maybe seventeen. Down to the smallest child, all were holding some type of weapon, all but one pointed straight at Gracie.

  The one child who wasn’t aiming his gun at Gracie was standing off to one side—a skinny boy with white-blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses.

  Baxter.

  He and Gracie stared wide-eyed at each other, neither giving any indication they recognized the other.

  The barrel of Baxter’s weapon was aimed at the ground. “I don’t think we should be—” he began.

  “Shut up, you goddamned mama’s girl!” the lead boy yelled. “She’s an enemy combatant. She’s now our prisoner.”

  Baxter clapped his mouth shut, face blanching.

  Gracie could see the lead boy’s chest heaving, his breath coming in fast, short puffs. His being nervous wasn’t doing a single thing to slow her own heart rate.

  Seconds ticked by into years. Gracie’s nerves stretched to piano-string taut, eyes flicking from one child to the next to the next. The hand clutching the pepper spray in her pocket was sweaty. Her arm, still raised, was growing tired. She could feel Minnie shivering against her leg.

  She stared at the children and they stared back, as if waiting for something.

  Finally Gracie inhaled and opened her mouth to say, “Enough is enough. I’m leaving,” when a group of adults, men and women, crashed out of the trees on the hillside above the road and dropped down onto the dirt next to the children.

  Neck, arm, and thigh muscles bulged. Some of the men were heavily tattooed. Every male head was bared and shaved.

  Skinheads, Gracie’s brain registered, eyes darting from face to face.

  All were dressed head to foot in woodland camouflage. All wore face paint, some elaborate. All carried firearms—semiautomatic rifles and pistols, and shotguns.

  In spite of the face paint, Gracie recognized one of the men as Lee, Baxter’s father, the man who had tried to belt his son, instead striking his own mother so hard he had knocked her to the ground, the man onto whose back Gracie had jumped and who had elbowed her away with no more effort than swatting a horsefly.

  Not looking good for the home team, Gracie thought and took a slow, careful step backward.

  “Freeze!” the large boy yelled again.

  Gracie froze again.

  A lone man emerged from the trees and jumped down onto the road between Gracie and the rest of the group. At six foot five or six, he looked like a life-sized G.I. Joe action figure on steroids. Gracie recognized him as Baxter’s uncle who had dragged Lee away from his son and mother, practically carrying him across the yard to their truck. The man appeared the size of a yeti, with arms and legs and trunk and everything four times larger than Gracie’s.

  Taking in the scene in a glance, the huge man barked in an incongruously high voice, “Lower your weapons!”
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  Everyone obeyed the order except the lead boy, who hadn’t moved a muscle since training his sights on Gracie.

  The huge man walked over to the boy and pressed the end of his semiautomatic weapon toward the ground with his hand. “Never point your weapon at anyone, Jordan,” he said in a voice loud enough for Gracie to hear. “Until you’re ready to fire. Until you’re ready to kill.”

  Then he turned to face Gracie and said in a mild voice, “There’s no reason to be afraid. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  Gracie’s fear drained away, laying bare the fury beneath. “What the hell!” she yelled, shaking a clenched fist at the man. “They were pointing guns at me! What the hell?”

  “We’re conducting an enemy contact drill,” the man answered as if that explained everything. “But if it makes you feel better . . .” He lifted the weapon from Jordan’s hands, ejecting the large-capacity ammunition magazine, holding it out so Gracie could see it was empty, then snapping it back in place. “Their weapons aren’t even loaded.”

  He said to the girl in the pink shirt, “Heather, may I have that, please?”

  Beaming up at him, the girl strained to hold her heavy revolver up, holding it with both hands flat, as if it were an offering to the gods.

  The man took the weapon as before, ejecting the clip and showing Gracie that it was empty. Slapping the clip back in place, he stuck the revolver in the waistband of his pants.

  “We’re in the national forest,” Gracie said, her entire body shivering as if with cold. “I’m pretty damned sure kids aren’t supposed to be out here carrying weapons, loaded or not, much less point them at people.”