Endangered (9781101559017)

by Beason, Pamela

  At the top of the rise where line-of-sight communications would be most clear, she turned on the radio and caught Kent reporting an encounter with hunters near the Hawk. The thought of her friend, armed only with pepper spray, facing down three rifles made her nauseous. But he’d sounded upbeat when he said he was on his way to Mesa Camp for the night. The guy had balls.

  As she rounded a pile of boulders, she nearly collided with a tall figure walking in her direction. She stopped in her tracks, startled, then catching her breath, murmured, “Hello.”

  The jerkiness of the man’s movements told her that he’d been startled, too. His hair, a dull reddish brown, was cut in ragged chunks, as if he’d trimmed it himself without benefit of a mirror. Compared to the tanned skin around his eyes, his cheeks were pale, as if he’d shaved off a heavy beard recently. His jean shorts drooped on his thin frame and his dirty tennis shoes had holes in the toes. Around his waist was tied a brown shirt. In his hand he held a cluster of half-eaten red grapes.

  As if deciding she was not an enemy, he beamed a smile at her. “Hi.” He thrust the fruit toward her. “Grapes?”

  The small red globes smelled heavenly. Did he mean her to take one or two, or the whole bunch?

  “Don’t worry, I have more.” He thrust them closer.

  “Thanks,” Sam said, taking the cluster from him. “You know you’re off the trail.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “As are you.”

  Touché. Since he didn’t have a pack, she asked, “Just out for the day?”

  He winked. “For the rest of my life. How about you?”

  Pulling off a grape, she popped it into her mouth, unsure how to continue this strange conversation. She didn’t want to go on her way and run the risk of revealing her camp, which was only a short distance away. Feeling a prickle of unease, she wondered if he’d already discovered her tent and her cache of equipment. She checked his eyes for evidence of drugs, but his blue-eyed gaze was serene, even friendly. And if he had stumbled upon her camp, he’d clearly taken nothing. He was not even carrying a knapsack or a bottle of water.

  She slowly chewed another grape. Finally, to cover her awkwardness, she mumbled, “It’s a beautiful day for a hike.”

  “Indeed. A gift from the Creator.”

  Ah. She understood now. He was one of those religious types who chose to believe that nothing bad ever happened in the world without a good reason; that everything in life proceeded according to some mysterious plan. He wasn’t smoking pot or dropping acid; his drug of choice was God.

  But all was not right with the world. “Have you heard about the little boy lost down in the valley?” she asked.

  “He’s not lost.” The man took a step downhill.

  “Wait!” Sam put out her hand. “Why do you say he’s not lost?”

  He tilted his head a little, studying her as if she were an unusual bug. “None of us is lost. He’ll be taken care of. The Creator will provide for him.” Taking a step closer, he raised his hand and briefly stroked a knuckle down the length of the silver-blond braid that hung over Sam’s shoulder. “Your hair is the color of moonlight.”

  It was a little creepy, but Sam made herself stand still and wait to see what he’d do next.

  He turned and walked away.

  She called after his retreating form, “If you see Zack, could you tell a ranger?”

  He gave no sign that he heard. “Thanks for the grapes,” she yelled.

  She watched until he had disappeared from sight. Strange fellow, a little otherworldly. And his platitudes were annoying. Have faith. God will provide.

  Sam had never seen evidence that passive faith did anyone much good. There was only one religious saying that she liked: “God helps those who help themselves.” And it didn’t even come from the Bible. Not to mention, it was an easy way out for God. Was she the only person who noticed that the Supreme Being seemed to have no responsibilities?

  But platitudes aside, it was kind of nice to meet someone so mellow in the midst of all this furor. She liked the idea of having hair the color of moonlight. And his grapes were crisp and delicious.

  Back in her private canyon, which thankfully showed no sign of intrusion, she fixed a quick dinner, mixing soup from an envelope into steaming water, then set up the computer and uplinked to the satellite. Under the headline “No Proof of Cougar Attack,” SWF had run the article she had written yesterday with few changes, accompanied by the photos of the MISSING poster and the bullet-ridden signboard.

  Sam ground her teeth. Not exactly the beautiful story of nature’s magic that she had envisioned. There was a second page, however, in which the SWF crew had inserted standard text about geologic features and climbing opportunities at Heritage National Monument, along with a grainy photo of teenagers rappelling down a cliff that came from the video clip she’d sent. She leaned closer. Why hadn’t they used a film sequence instead of making a frame into a still image?

  Suddenly a tiny figure slid down over the entire page like a spider on a silk thread. “Cowabunga!” Cameron’s voice yelped from the speakers, startling Sam. Cameron stopped at the bottom of the page to high-five with another sprite, which ran over from the left margin. Then they both dissolved into the text behind them.

  Sam sat back, laughing. Mad Max strikes again. At least someone was getting some enjoyment from this expedition. Cowabunga, indeed. Sam wished she were a wild teenager named Cameron right now instead of a worn-out writer named Wilderness Westin.

  Steeling herself for the inevitable, she pulled up several news sites. Sane World’s page ran largely unchanged. The organization had added only an ad that offered T-shirts for the “unbelievable price of $7.99!” Gleaming cougar eyes stared out from the black fabric. THEY’RE OUT THERE was scrawled in burning red letters beneath the eyes.

  On KSEA’s website, there was no mention of the FBI or any ransom attempt. But there was a sidebar in which the secretary of agriculture was quoted as saying, “I have authorized the dispatch of game control officers to Heritage National Monument. The government will do everything necessary to protect visitors.”

  “Oh no, no, no.” She groaned and buried her face in her hands, wanting to cry. Or scream. Please God, let Zack have been taken by a human and not a cougar. She brought the thought up short: what was wrong with her? Please, she amended, let Zack have just wandered off, let him be safe and sound.

  Maybe, just maybe, Zack had been found while she was hiking? She disconnected laptop from phone and then called park headquarters. The news was not promising. The Explorer Scouts had gone home. Rangers would check the backcountry. The unfamiliar voice sounded surprised when she asked if the ruins and the Curtain had been searched.

  “I’d have to check that,” he said. “I’m sure every place that should be searched has been.”

  This guy had a lot more faith in the park administration than she did. Right now, Thompson and Tanner seemed more interested in controlling political damage than in searching the backcountry.

  She’d just set her phone down when it buzzed.

  Adam. “Why didn’t you use the ransom tip I gave you this morning?” she asked on answering.

  “It didn’t go with the other elements,” he explained. “You have to focus to create a good story.”

  She felt like banging the phone against a rock. “You’re focusing in the wrong direction.” She told him about the shoe.

  “You made my day! What a team! So we can say a cougar carried—”

  “No!” she yelped. “We don’t know how the shoe got up there.”

  “Okay, I got it, no need to get agitated; we’re all a little stressed out right now. I’ll find some way to run with it. Thanks, Sam.” And then he was gone.

  We’re all a little stressed out right now? His tone of voice told her that Adam felt like a hero. She felt like a salmon swimming upstream, hoping against all odds that the result would be worth the journey.

  The blades of a helicopter sounded a distant drumbeat
somewhere to the south. The annoying vibration drifted away, back toward the valley. She was glad to be out of the madness down there, glad that Kent was, too. Mesa Camp was a beautiful spot on a high open plateau; he’d have a spectacular view of the sunset. She wished she were there with him instead of stuck in front of a computer.

  In growing darkness, she wrote the latest about the search for Zack. She created a paragraph about the ransom delivery and car chase, then another about the shoe on Powell Trail. Sam frowned, tried to come up with a connection or at least a decent transition. After a couple of false starts, she gave up the idea of linkage and decided to emphasize the confusion of events. She stressed that no sign of cougar attack had been found—all the clues pointed to as yet unidentified humans. Zack was still out there, and he could yet be alive.

  She uploaded the photo of Perez inspecting the site where the shoe had been found. His knees were bent, one hand stretched out toward the ground, his eyes fixed on something there. He’d be glad that the photo was only a three-quarter view and his face was tilted downward; he was unrecognizable.

  She sat with her chin on her knees, staring at the screen. SWF had hired her to write about the cougars, and here she was sending them reports about ransom notes and recovered shoes and photos of FBI agents. How could everything go so wrong in two days?

  “Oh, Zack!” She knotted her fingers into her braid and pulled until her scalp hurt. “Where are you? Please be somewhere warm and safe. And please, please, please, give me a clue where that is.”

  A faint scratching noise drew her attention. Pebbles against rock, something big moving in the area just beyond the canyon mouth. The oddball with the chopped-off hair, coming back? A chill prickled down her spine.

  The last glow of sunset was gone. The sky was black and empty now: the moon had not yet risen. Leaping to her feet, she blinked several times, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness after staring at the computer screen.

  She ran her hands over the dozen pockets of her vest. Where was her pepper spray? She scrambled quickly to the top of the van-sized boulders that surrounded her tent.

  She scrutinized the charcoal-colored shapes of the surrounding rock, surprised at how fast her heart was beating. Solitude and wilderness had always represented security, even serenity to her. But that was before she’d learned that a kidnapper, maybe even a murderer, was skulking around the plateau.

  11

  SAM didn’t need moonlight to pinpoint Agent Perez’s location; his flashlight did that for her. He trudged up the hillside, moving the light around him onto the surrounding rock formations as he walked. At one point he did a little sideways leap, tripped over the bristly skeleton of a desiccated cactus. The hiss of a Spanish curse drifted up to her.

  She grinned. The beam of his flashlight had probably picked up some small movement, a night-hunting lizard or mouse or snake.

  At the narrow entrance to her campsite, he turned off the flashlight and stood for a few seconds, listening for movement inside the pocket of boulders.

  Her interactions with Perez were starting to feel like some sort of weird tag-team game. She held her breath, waited on top of her boulder until he reappeared next to her tent, the glow from the computer screen highlighting the toes of his boots.

  Damn! The laptop was running down the battery. Worse yet, she’d left the photo of Perez on the screen. She slid down the boulder on her backside and landed with a thump beside him.

  Perez tripped backward over a tent pole, barely recovered his footing, struggled to slide his right hand around the strap of the large backpack he now carried. Going for his gun.

  “You don’t intend to shoot me, do you, Agent Perez?” She stepped closer. “How’d you know I was here?”

  He straightened, took a deep breath. “OT near Sunset Canyon.”

  Her permit notation wasn’t nearly enough information to find the hidden canyon. She’d bet that the FBI agent had a marked map and a GPS device in his pocket. And that the helicopter she’d heard a half hour earlier had dropped him off. Perez wasn’t even sweating, and he’d somehow traded a small knapsack for a fully loaded backpack since this afternoon.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Visiting.” He eyed the satellite phone, camera, and laptop scattered across the canyon floor.

  Stepping in front of him, she flipped the laptop screen down. “I’m working,” she said.

  “Obviously.” He unbuckled his waist strap and shrugged out of the shoulder straps, letting his backpack slide to the ground. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  He sat down cross-legged, facing her. His steady gaze was disconcerting.

  “I’m almost done.” She turned the laptop around so he couldn’t see the screen before flipping it open again. She sat down, closed the photo file, spell-checked the text file, sent it to Seattle, and then waited for the response. The modem’s beep at the end of transmission seemed loud in the quiet evening. She punched the End button on the phone and shut down the laptop.

  “Very high tech.” Perez indicated the equipment with a wave of his hand.

  “Have batteries, will travel,” she quipped. “Is this an official interrogation, or were you just hoping for a cup of tea?”

  He sucked in a breath, then said, “I thought you should know that the superintendent has scheduled the Wildlife Services hunters.”

  “What? He said he’d wait for evidence! Damn it!” She glared at him. “It was because of those prints, wasn’t it? Just because they were within a hundred yards of the damn shoe, you—”

  He held up his hands. “It wasn’t me. The volunteers reported their find, and Superintendent Thompson made his decision.”

  “They really called off the search for Zack?”

  “The search on foot has halted. They’ll continue helicopter flyovers tomorrow.”

  “Kid killed by cougar, case solved. So why aren’t you on your way back to Salt Lake?”

  “I’m not that easy to get rid of, Miss Westin.” His brown eyes bored into hers. “Agent Boudreaux and I made the decision to keep going until we find more evidence, or at least until the day after tomorrow.”

  She swallowed around the constriction in her throat. “Is that when the hunters arrive?”

  He nodded. “They’ll want everyone out of the park then.”

  She wrapped her arms around her knees, her mind racing with images of hunters marching shoulder to shoulder. They’d have dogs, of course, to flush out the cougars, and they’d use the damn helicopters to spot them from the air. Maybe they’d even shoot the lions from the helicopters. They’d slaughter every mountain lion they came across. Leto, Artemis, Apollo. Others she had never seen, that no one had ever seen before.

  What could she possibly do to stop the massacre? Maybe if she wrote about how many taxpayer dollars were spent every year to slaughter wildlife? Most Americans were unaware that their government paid to have thousands of animals killed every year.

  Would they care?

  A howl drifted out over the mesa, a mournful sound. It was answered by a series of excited yips that built up to a long drawn-out wail.

  Perez lifted his chin and gazed the direction of the sound. “Wolves?”

  She shook her head. “No wolves in this part of the country. Those are coyotes. You hear them almost every night up here.”

  The yipping increased in volume and speed until it resembled hyenas surrounding their prey. Then, the evening air was shattered by a shrieking lament that no canine was likely to produce.

  Perez tensed. “What the hell?”

  “It’s Coyote Charlie.” She stood up, retrieved her binoculars from her pack. “Didn’t Ranger Bergstrom mention him to you?” She walked to the narrow mouth of the small canyon.

  He was right behind her. “Coyote Charlie?”

  “A local nutcase,” she said. “He’s been here for years. I caught a glimpse of him summer before last, near the ruins. And Kent swears he appears every full moon to howl with the coyotes
. He even saw Charlie buck naked once.”

  “What did the rangers do with him?”

  The question surprised her. “Nothing. He’s not doing anything illegal, except maybe camping without a permit.” She paused. Where would a naked Coyote Charlie attach a permit tag?

  Perez pulled his notepad out of his shirt pocket. “What does he look like?”

  She rubbed her forehead, trying to remember. “He was a long way off, and I was using binoculars. And it was more than a year ago. When I saw him, he was wearing clothes—pants and a long-sleeved shirt. He had a long scruffy beard, long hair. Medium colored, light brown or maybe dark gray—it’s hard to tell at night. Tall, skinny. Scruffy.”

  “Got it—heavy on the scruffy.” His pen scratched across the page. “What else do you know about him?”

  “Virtually nothing. Backcountry campers catch sight of him now and then, or hear him howling.”

  He shook his head. “That’s disturbing.”

  “Why do you say that? I think Charlie’s great.”

  His head jerked back and his expression was contemptuous. “You’re kidding. What’s to admire?”

  “The freedom. He’s completely uninhibited. He wants to run naked under the full moon, he does it.” She could almost feel it herself; soft, fresh air on exposed skin, gliding barefoot over smooth sandstone through a landscape lit with lunar magic. Like a wild animal, surrounded only by nature. But this was probably not an image an uptight FBI agent could appreciate. She glanced sideways at Perez to check.

  The guy was clearly distressed. As he stared at her with frank concern, he ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. “Do you have any idea how many schizophrenics are out there, listening to the voice of the devil, receiving orders from angels or dogs? This guy may think he’s getting mental transmissions from those coyotes or even from the moon.”