Mountain Fire Read online

  She answered without hesitation. “Yes, I do. I believe there’s nothing better than spending your life with someone you love. But I’m not stupid. I know it’s not all rainbows and roses. It’s hard work. And sometimes, even hard work isn’t enough.”

  He wondered if she was thinking of his parents. She might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but he’d been there, he’d seen it. He wasn’t willing to give them even that much.

  “I want kids, too.” She studied the river rushing past. “And I don’t want to put them through the pain of divorce. So I’m going to be very, very careful about who I let into my life. And while I know sex with you would probably be mind-blowing...” she teased a reluctant smile out of him “...having sex will change our relationship. And I want to make sure it changes for the better, not the worse.”

  He remembered his panic when she’d called for help. Was it really less than two days ago? He could give her that much, at least. “I care about you. It’s not only desire, not only sex. It’s...” he rolled his shoulders, frustrated at his inability to find the right words. “I don’t know what it is. I need to know you’re safe, you’re happy.”

  The tension in her arms, her neck, abated. He sighed. “Come on, let’s have lunch.”

  Awkwardness still stuttered as they walked back to where they had dropped their packs. June pulled out a towel and shared it with him.

  “Ready to eat?” he asked.

  “What did you bring?”

  “Let’s see.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a squashy thermal cooler from which he removed two take out containers, a couple sets of chopsticks, a small bottle of soy sauce, and a bottle of white wine.

  June’s eyebrows rose. “Sushi? You brought sushi?”

  “California rolls, ebi ten, veggie rolls. You like it, right? I’m sure you mentioned it before, when we had dinner together.”

  “I love it. I can’t believe you thought to bring it on a hike.”

  He handed over a container. “I got it fresh this morning, and it’s been in the cooler ever since. Dig in.”

  Her uneasiness faded, helped along by the hot sun, crisp wine and excellent sushi.

  She delicately plucked a slice of pickled ginger with her chopsticks. “Um, I’ve got a question for you,” she said.

  “Fire away.”

  “Maybe this isn’t the best time to ask.” He gave her a level look. She huffed out a breath and went on. “Fine. When I was at Mom and Dad’s, before all the excitement, they invited you to a family dinner on Friday. Feel free to say no if it’s too weird, too...whatever.” What had recently passed between them fizzed in the air.

  He gestured with the wine bottle and she nodded. He topped up her glass. “Who all will be there?”

  “Mom and Dad, my younger brother, Zachary. My other brother Sean and his wife and my nephew. I don’t think there will be aunts, uncles or cousins, but you never know. There shouldn’t be too many of us, though.”

  Alex snorted at what June considered a small family gathering. “Would this be a kind of test?”

  She laughed, a trifle uncertainly. “Probably more for me than you. Remember, you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Once you meet them you might run screaming in the opposite direction, never to think of me again.”

  He chuckled, pleased at this small show of nerves. Sun glinted off the wine in his glass, turning the pale liquid amber. “Why not? All right, I’ll come.”

  They packed up their debris, then stretched out on the rocks to let the sun finish its job of drying their clothes.

  “I think we should stay here forever.” He relaxed on his back with his head cushioned on his crossed arms.

  “What time is it?” she murmured sleepily, face turned to the sun, leaning on her elbows.

  “We don’t have to hurry. Come here.” He patted his chest. She slid next to him, her head on his shoulder, and rested her arm on his stomach. This, too, was a kind of test. He lay for a long while with June nestled next to him, listening to the peace of the rushing water, the occasional call of a raven, the buzz of a clumsy bumblebee, the rise and fall of her breathing. The sun burned patterns on the inside of his eyelids. His fingers played with the strands of her hair. She was so still, so quiet, she might have fallen asleep.

  With great reluctance he nudged her. “I suppose we should get going.”

  She groaned, then raised her head. They lazily set about collecting their gear for the return trip.

  Chapter Ten

  “I know it’s your day off,” June said as they reached the top of the stairs and headed back along the trail, “so maybe you don’t want to talk about work. But I was wondering how the meeting went, the one Iain organized.”

  Alex paused to let her catch up, then took her hand.

  “We spent a fair bit of time mapping out the kill sites, and discovered there certainly seems to have been an increase in the McGregor area. Odds are the more there are, the more we’ll find, even if we aren’t aware of them all. For right now, we’re kind of on hold until new evidence shows up...which, unfortunately, means we have to wait for a new kill.”

  As usual, the return trip seemed a lot shorter than heading out, and in no time at all, they were back at the car park. Just as Alex was making a right hand turn onto the road, his cell phone rang.

  “Crap.” He dug the phone out of his pocket as he manoeuvred to the narrow shoulder. “It’s the office. I’d better take it.”

  “No problem,” June said.

  He set the parking brake. “Alex here.” His body tightened with stressful awareness, eyes focused inward, all attention on what he was hearing. His side of the conversation was brief and abrupt, flat toned questions.

  “Where?”

  “Who found him?”

  “How long?”

  “When will the flight get in?”

  “I’ll meet them at the hangar.”

  He lowered the phone, rested his hands on his thighs and continued to stare straight ahead unseeingly.

  “Alex?” She reached out her hand, but drew it back before she touched him. “What’s happened?”

  “Iain Provost found another kill site this morning.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it, in a bad way?”

  “When the radio room didn’t hear from him after his initial report, they tried to contact him, but couldn’t. About three hours ago they sent out the ’copter. They found the kill site, and Iain.”

  “Alex.” Alarm crept through her veins. “Tell me. What happened?”

  “They found Iain, next to the grizzly. He’d been shot.” Alex turned blind eyes toward her. “He’s dead.”

  ****

  June stayed with Alex for the rest of that dreadful day. By the end of it she was emotionally exhausted and feeling physically frail.

  After his shocking announcement, they sat in silence, too stunned to know what to do next. Alex’s hand trembled in her grasp.

  “I need to be there when they bring him in.” His eyes, fogged with grief and tinged with horror, fluttered from June’s face to the dashboard, to the phone he still clutched in his hand, unable to settle. “I need to go to the airport. They’re bringing Iain in by helicopter. His,” he swallowed, then went on, “body will be taken to the morgue. There’ll have to be an autopsy.”

  She was not letting him drive in his state. No freaking way. “Let’s switch places. I’ll drive you there.”

  “I’m okay.” He gave a horrible facsimile of a smile which in no way touched his eyes.

  “No, you’re not,” she said bluntly. “Get out. I’m driving, or you’re not going anywhere.”

  He fumbled with the clip of his seat belt and walked around the front of the Jeep as if he wasn’t quite sure where to place his feet. She gripped his arm momentarily as they passed, desperate to offer what small comfort she was able. He brushed by her blindly.

  Alex spent the entire drive gazing blank-faced out the windshield. Forty minutes later, she
pulled up to the hangar the Ministry rented at the Prince George Airport. Alex unlocked the chain-link gate and they stepped onto the tarmac. The enormous white painted circle with a letter H in its centre waited, deserted. A small group of people stood to the left, close to the gigantic double doors leading into the hangar itself.

  An older man, dressed in a conservation officer’s uniform, detached himself from the group and came forward to greet Alex. He was strongly built, with a barrel shaped chest and wide shoulders. His hair was silvery grey, and he wore a luxuriant moustache.

  “I’m glad you’re here.” His voice was gruff bass that matched his weathered face. “It’s good that you’re here.”

  “What do you know, Nelson?” Alex asked sharply. “Linda told me a bit when she called, but you must know more.” Nelson’s voice shook as he gave them the meagre details. Iain had been on call, so when someone had phoned early that morning to say there was a dead grizzly on Red Mountain—not far from the very first kill site Alex and June had gone to—the dispatcher sent Iain out. The caller had given very detailed directions, and Iain appeared to find the site easily enough. He had radioed in to confirm his location. And that was the last anyone had spoken to him.

  When the silence went on long enough to be worrisome, Linda in the radio room called Nelson and asked to send a helicopter out. Using the GPS coordinates Iain had given, the pilot and another conservation officer, Samantha Cross, had flown to the site and discovered Iain’s body along with the bear’s ransacked hulk. The RCMP were immediately alerted. Investigators flew out in yet another helicopter. Once the RCMP finished their initial procedures, Iain’s body would be brought back.

  Nelson, Alex and June drifted over to join the others. These included two uniformed RCMP officers and two more conservation officers who had learned of the tragedy. Alex acknowledged his co-workers with a nod. The female police officer introduced herself and her partner as Constables Weston and Lacavalier, asked for June and Alex’s names and contact information and jotted it down in a small notebook.

  “I will be alerted when the body has departed from the scene,” she announced, indicating a cell phone on her belt. The shiny brown leather bulged with a variety of objects, including a snapped down holster. “It could be some time yet.”

  “There’s a room inside we can use,” Nelson said.

  Everyone trudged in through a metal door, down a battered, blue corridor into a small room smelling of burnt coffee and airplane fuel. They perched on a variety of metal chairs and torn, stained upholstered furniture squeezed haphazardly into the space.

  Then they waited.

  Conversation was sporadic throughout the next long, tense hours. June learned the older man was Nelson Manning, the regional manager for the Northern Centre of the Conservation Service, based in Prince George. He made pots of coffee and offered it to others, drinking cup after cup himself.

  June flipped through a magazine, published two years earlier, filled with technical aviation articles that might as well have been written in Swahili for all she understood them.

  She was wondering if the flight would be delayed because of darkness when Constable Weston’s phone rang. Weston answered briskly, her conversation studded mostly with grunts. She disconnected and turned to the watchful group. “They should be arriving in about twenty minutes.”

  What a relief to stand on the tarmac, out of the stifling mechanical atmosphere. An ambulance was parked outside the fence, and the RCMP officers went over to speak with the paramedics standing next to it. Everyone waited quietly.

  Twenty minutes stretched to thirty, to forty. Tension itched along June’s nerves. At last, Alex lifted his head from his distracted contemplation of the ground at his feet and turned to the northeast.

  Moments later June also heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter in flight. The small aircraft approached, a red stretcher strapped to one of the support struts, and made its landing.

  Bending below the still whirling blades, Alex approached the craft. The pilot descended and started working on the straps holding the stretcher in place. Alex assisted him, and then the two of them, escorted by Conservation Officer Samantha Cross, carried their burden across the tarmac. Inside the thick wire mesh of the stretcher rested a still bundle, zipped into a stout black plastic shroud.

  Constables Weston and Lacavalier and the paramedics immediately assumed responsibility for the body. They rolled over a wheeled cot and competently transferred the body from its temporary transport. Alex and Nelson followed them to the ambulance. Before the paramedics collapsed the legs of the stretcher and lifted it out of sight, Alex spoke to Constable Weston. She hesitated, then shrugged. Alex reached forward and pulled down the zipper of the body bag. He stood, head bent, hand resting gently on the covered body. Then he closed the zipper, and stepped away.

  The ambulance and police cruiser headed back into town. Alex watched them go. June walked to him and stood at his left shoulder. He looked down at her, the corner of his mouth lifting in a small gesture of acknowledgement. The sun, setting on the far side of the airfield, cast a golden glow.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “There’s nothing more to do here.”

  ****

  It was dark by the time June pulled into the parking lot of Alex’s condominium. When she turned off the ignition, the ticking of the engine seemed unnaturally loud.

  “Do you want me to come in?” she asked hesitantly. She hadn’t even known where he lived until now, and felt intrusive even making the suggestion. But she couldn’t bear to think of him going into his empty house on his own.

  “I won’t be very good company.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Imagining him dealing with his grief without anyone there made her gut constrict and her arms long to hold him. “I don’t think you should be alone.”

  Inside, Alex folded onto the couch as if his legs no longer had the strength to support him.

  “We need a drink,” she said. “Where do you keep it?”

  “In the kitchen.” He leaned back, eyes closed.

  She found a bottle of Canadian Club stashed in the awkward-to-reach cupboard above the refrigerator. Cracking a few ice cubes from their plastic tray, she dropped them into two squat glasses and topped them with a good measure, then carried them to the living room. Tucking one leg underneath her, she sank onto the cushion next to Alex. He lay slouched down, long legs stretched out in front of him.

  “Here.” She nudged his arm with the glass. “My dad swears by this after a long day.”

  He opened his eyes and reached to take the drink. She let the alcohol linger on her tongue. Its heat seeped through her system, dulling the chill she hadn’t been able to shake since hearing of Iain’s death. Alex swirled the liquid around, ice clinking, then tossed it back in one gulp and placed the glass on the low table in front of him. He took her free hand in his and gripped it tightly.

  “He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  “How long had you known him?” She swept a lock of hair off his forehead, let her fingers linger behind his ear.

  “Ever since I came to Prince George. He was my mentor, the one who showed me the ropes, taught me things you can’t learn in school. For God’s sake, June, what’s going on?” he said softly but fiercely. “How could this happen?”

  “Do you think it’s possible the poachers came back? That Iain saw them?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why kill him? That simply doesn’t happen.”

  “If this poaching ring is organized enough, bringing in tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars, then it might be worth killing to protect it.” She sipped her drink. “No one said anything today about Iain’s family. Do they know what’s happened?”

  “Iain and his wife have been divorced for years. They never had any children. I think she went back East after they split up. They were from the Maritimes. Other than her, I imagine Nelson has next of kin listed on paperwork at the office.” His hand tightened on hers.
“Thank God that’s not my job.” He closed his eyes. “I’m exhausted.”

  Deep lines she had never noticed before creased down the side of his nose, and bruises darkened the skin beneath his eyes. It wasn’t only physical exertion that took a toll on a person’s body. “This morning seems eons ago,” she agreed.

  His eyes popped open and he sat up straight. “All our gear. It’s still in the Jeep. It needs to be cleaned out.”

  “I’ll get it.” She stood and motioned him back. “You stay.”

  He gave in. “Thanks.”

  She headed into the night and rooted around in the cab. Hefting one pack over her shoulder, she dragged the other out, slammed the door shut and locked it. She glanced up and down the silent residential street. Alex’s condo was a narrow three-story structure in a block of six similar homes. Surrounding the parking lot were three more complexes of the same design. Porch lights were on, but most of the windows were dark. Entering the house, she slipped past Alex, still sprawled on the couch, and took the gear into the kitchen. She discarded the takeout food containers and rinsed out the empty water bottles and left them to dry on the drain board. The damp towel in her pack stank of must and mildew, but there wasn’t much she could do about that until she got home.

  She returned to the living room. Sometime in the last few minutes Alex had fallen asleep. His breathing was deep and even, the new lines carved into his face less noticeable. His hands lay palm up on his thighs.

  Her breath caught in her throat, her heart grew tight. At least in sleep he had an escape from grief and anxiety. She stood behind him, smoothing her hands over his shoulders and laying her cheek on top of his head.

  He stirred sleepily and his hands came up to hers as they rested on his chest. “Dozed off there,” he mumbled.

  “I guess I should go.”

  He tightened his hold. “Not yet,” he said. “Come sit with me for a bit.”

  She settled next to him on the long couch. “Here.” She patted her thigh. “Lay your head.” She pressed firmly on his shoulders until he gave in, swinging his legs up and curling onto his side.