October's Fire (Fairy Glen Suspense Book 1)

by Valerie Power

  Tom said, “He was a foster kid. Didn’t have any. Aged out of the system at 18, probably selling drugs ever since. No record of employment.”

  “Did Harvey tell you about the two men I saw on the quarry cliff last Tuesday?”

  “No,” he said, and she told him what she’d seen. “Well,” he said, “The time of death was 24 hours or so before Sally found the car…probably Thursday, early morning, so most likely that’s unrelated.”

  “So, do you have any clues?” she asked. He raised an eyebrow in question. “About who did it?”

  “Oh,” he said, all relaxed, as though finding the killer was an afterthought. “Not yet.”

  “Where are you riding tonight Deirdre?” Sally asked, looking at her watch.

  “I was going to check out that new road I told you about.”

  “Oh, we checked it out already. It’s a dead-end. But you’re right, the morteros are gone. That’s sooo illegal. Monday morning first thing I’m going to look into that, I can tell you that much. But we better be going, we’ve got dinner reservations. Hopefully we won’t get interrupted by another suspicious death.”

  She moved her horse past, brushing Deirdre off, with Tom following behind. “Oh, have a good ride!” Sally called out, as though she’d belatedly remembered her manners. Deirdre collected her thoughts along with the reins, and squeezed Scarlet forward down the trail, across the meadow, and into the creekside forest.

  If the new road was a dead-end, there was no point in going that way. But…there was a water district access road cut into the canyon wall above Hidden Creek that she could follow southwest, to a place where she might be able to see the construction at Paraiso. The same trail she’d thought of that first day she’d seen the buildings. The first day she’d seen that man.

  After coaxing Scarlet across the creek, they cantered up a trail on the hillside beyond, and turned right on the dirt road.

  A wall of fractured red granite was on her left, and a drop-off to the creek on the right. The road stayed level, but the creek flowed downhill, so the height of the drop-off was increasing, and her fear of heights kicked in.

  The road was wide enough for trucks to drive on, but Deirdre wasn’t sure if Scarlet had enough sense not to spook at something and jump off the edge. Horsetails, yuccas, and an occasional century plant growing out of the cliff wall rustled on her left. Every 100 feet or so on her right was a manhole cover with the sound of rushing water beneath it—access holes for the water workers. Scarlet looked askance at these, but luckily if she were to spook at them it would be toward the wall side, not the drop-off.

  Nestled in the creek canyon, the red glow of sunset brought out the color of iron in the granite cliffside, so she was bathed in vermillion light. Scarlet’s neck had a good sweat on it now, and the weird light set her glossy chestnut mane and coat aflame. They were running low on daylight.

  Scarlet didn’t do anything other than crane her neck to look at the manhole covers, so Deirdre let her be. She’d heard somewhere that the Arabs trained their war mares to scan the horizon and allowed them total freedom of the neck and head, trusting them to alert them to danger. Deirdre asked her to pick up a trot, hoping momentum would win out, and they moved along at a springy pace.

  At the end of the access road, a yellow gate blocked the way. It was locked to prevent cars driving through, but had a side opening just wide enough for horses, hikers and bikers, with a crossbar that was low enough to step over.

  She dismounted and led Scarlet over. The mare followed willingly, but one of her back hooves hit the pipe, setting it ringing like a church bell. Scarlet leapt forward, stepping on Deirdre’s toe.

  “OW!” She let out a howl. She’d been stepped on before, but it never got less painful. Besides, there was nobody around to hear, and yelling let out some frustration too. “OWWWWW!” she howled again, till her toe felt a little better.

  Back up into the saddle and down the steep path. Scarlet hadn’t learned to use her body properly on downhills yet. Deirdre gathered the mare’s haunches under her and kept her headed straight, using her rear end muscles, instead of allowing her to fall on her forehand or weave back and forth.

  At the bottom, the trail leveled out into an asphalt road so worn it had almost reverted back to dirt. It followed Hidden Creek, which widened here too, pooling around thick stands of reeds and pussy willows, undisciplined and wild. Big chunks of the old asphalt caved into the creek. The elemental forces would always win in the long run.

  This road was only intended for utility access, but it made a great connecting trail, nestled deep in this cluster of hills, a literal no man’s land between Fairy Glen and Rancho Alto.

  She pulled out her phone to check the time. 6:23. Time went too fast on horseback. During summer, she got used to the extra time in the evening. Now, the familiar winter feeling of chasing daylight had returned. What had been orange light was turning violet.

  Hills surrounded them. No hint of civilization—but for one glaring exception. The half-built houses of Paraiso hulked on the ridge high above her.

  She looked down just in time to see a tarantula crossing her path and swerve Scarlet around it. It had to be bad luck to step on one. She admired its big hairy body and steady pace. It was their mating season, and she wished them well. As long as they didn’t pick her front yard for tarantula orgy central, like they had a few years ago.

  The crumbling asphalt lasted a half-mile or so. She veered left and uphill again, onto a thin trail with fairy oaks on either side.

  If she kept going, she would pass the gates of the Ramparts golf course and make a big loop, down through the canyon separating Fairy Glen and Rancho Alto, back up the rutted dirt road, and onto Suerte del Gitano.

  But she had to face facts. They didn’t have time to do the whole loop. Even with glo-sticks and a flashlight in her saddle bag, she wanted to get home before dark. She halted Scarlet, drank a gulp of water from her sportsbottle, and turned to trot home.

  On the trail, something yanked her eyes to the ground. Deep in the base of Deirdre’s skull, her reptilian brain had recognized its brethren. She pulled Scarlet up short.

  A rattlesnake lay stretched across the trail, absorbing the last heat of the day.

  It was almost inevitable to see one, they were all over. You just never knew where or when, so you had to let go of fear and give in to fate. But it was blocking her way home.

  She’d either have to get off and throw a few rocks to get it to move, or…take the deer trail to her right. In an instant she decided, and they took off at a fast trot over the rough terrain. Ducking tree branches and squeezing past boulders, they made good time, even uphill. Scarlet’s energy bubbled over, and Deirdre enjoyed the feeling of powerful horseflesh beneath her.

  The path got thinner. Branches cut across her face and arms. Scarlet busted through the brush, clearly enjoying herself.

  Worst case scenario, if this trail dead-ended, she could call Walt and ask him to hook up the trailer and meet her at the Ramparts.

  Suddenly they burst through the dense chaparral into a clearing about half the size of a football field. Heavy equipment sat lazily in the gloom. A bulldozer, a concrete mixer, and a few other machines, plus a mobile home construction office, dark and empty. Damn, were they gonna carve into this hillside too? Would this be Phase 2, 3, or 4?

  She skirted the edge of the clearing, looking for the way out. There must be a road in, otherwise how did the machines get here? She checked her cell phone. No reception. The surrounding hills blocked everything, and it was a little after 7 now. She’d have to get higher up.

  If she could get to Paraiso from here, she was sure she could find a way out of the gates. Walt could drive over, and pick her up. It would take some time, but it was Saturday night, what else did he have going on? A hot date? She chuckled. Yeah, a hot date with his crazy wife and her even crazier horse.

  As they rounded the concrete mixer, she saw the opening, a graded dirt road that went up the h
ill. Switchbacks snaked from side to side, but the ridgeline of Paraiso with its skeletal home was above her, plain to see, and not that far. She was more than halfway up the hill already, and if she got to the top she’d probably get reception.

  Scarlet was about to resume her powerful trot up the road, when the sight of a white owl flying parallel with them over the darkening canyon made Deirdre pull her to a halt.

  The owl circled higher. She craned her neck to watch its white wings stretched in the electric blue sky, trying to work out a sense of scale. It seemed huge. Then it took a tangent off its circling, and went out of sight over the ridge to the east. Musing for a moment, she absorbed the wonder. Maybe Vivian really did watch hawks. That was beautiful.

  Then, her eyes dropped from the eastern sky to a point just below it, to a cloud of dust moving slowly down the hill. On a switchback, she saw it. An old American sedan, light green, with peeling paint. An icy serpent coiled around the base of her spine.

  As if reading her mind, Scarlet sat back on her haunches and spun. She scurried back down into the clearing, low to the ground like a cottontail running for cover. They stuck to the edge of the clearing, trying to find the way out. Scarlet took an opening in the brush, and Deirdre didn’t question her. Sense of direction was lost. Escape was foremost.

  The sedan entered the clearing behind her, the tires muffled by the soft dirt. This wasn’t the trail they’d come in on, but she needed to put distance between the car and them. Once the engine shut off, the noise they made clambering through the brush would be a dead giveaway. There was no question of whether or not the man had seen them. He saw everything.

  She hugged Scarlet’s neck to avoid clawing branches, dug her heels in, and gave her horse navigational control. Scarlet pushed through, but the brush was closing in on them. It tore her pants, caught her sleeves and the vents in her helmet. Behind her in the clearing—how far? 50 yards?—the engine cut off.

  The car door closed. Not slammed, but closed gently, the click of metal on metal quiet and purposeful.

  She froze, not daring to look back for fear of exposing her white face and wide eyes.

  Another sound of metal on metal. The slide of a pistol, tucking a bullet neatly into its chamber. The icy serpent climbed from the base of her spine up to her chest, wound around her heart, and squeezed.

  She dug her heels in again, no longer caring if they made noise. Scarlet sensed the urgency and busted through. This wasn’t a deer trail, this was pure underbrush. Ahead, nothing but interwoven, impenetrable darkness.

  Blind and helpless, she felt Scarlet stumble over boulders buried in the bush, and tried to stay light on her back and not interfere. Next to impossible with no visual cues.

  Unwanted trivia burbled up through her consciousness. A man could chase down a horse, given enough time and distance. With this terrain, who had the advantage? Man or horse? She didn’t want to find out.

  She needed to think. What did she have on her that she could use? Flashlight, glow sticks, hoof pick, water bottle. There was the knife on her multi-tool, but—she didn’t even want to think of the old saying—never bring a knife to a gunfight.

  Just when it felt like they couldn’t go further, they burst out of the trees. What little light the night sky provided was a welcome revelation. Scarlet kept up her pace, dodging the small boulders in the hillside, occasionally stumbling, but recovering.

  Pushing down panic, Deirdre tried to hold onto her thread of thought, tenuous as the spider webs plastered on her face from their rush through the underbrush. She pulled Scarlet up, just for a second, to look around.

  A slope of dry grass on her left dropped down to a rock-strewn stream. Ahead was a line in the grass, a pathway made by the habits of small animal feet—rabbits, possums, raccoons, foxes, coyotes.

  The giant owl shot silently overhead, flying like an arrow to the northeast.

  She took it as a sign and decided to follow its direction. Chancing a look behind her where she saw no sign of the man, she guided Scarlet downhill, to meet up with the stream. She made Scarlet walk, made herself take a few deep breaths. No reason to hazard a fall, especially with no cell service. She took her phone out of its belt holster and checked. Still no bars.

  In and out, in and out. Was she being a fool? What made her so sure this man would hurt her?

  A few more deep breaths as they descended closer to the stream.

  The air was cool down here. A vision flashed in her mind—her hiding here all night, dying of hypothermia, curled up in a ball, with Scarlet nosing for grass, stepping on her body to reach a particularly tender shoot. Her children would be orphans, Walt a widower. Maybe he’d like that.

  No, that’s ridiculous, she told herself. This is San Diego County. Nobody dies of hypothermia.

  * * *

  HECTOR HAD NOTICED THIS woman and her horse long before she saw him and scurried away. Heard her yowling down in the canyon earlier, like a cat in heat—women who run with the puma?—and had been watching her since. Down the canyon and back up on her fleet red horse, then for some reason she veered off and made straight for the clearing. How had she known it was there?

  She was too nosy for her own good. She’d have to be scared off. She had recognized him at Bartley’s house.

  He followed her a little way into the underbrush, but he wasn’t a fan of slogging through bushes, not anymore, not since the jungles. He decided to drive around to the other road and make sure she was gone, make absolutely sure she didn’t come back and nose around the trailer.

  He’d only just discovered it himself.

  * * *

  THE STREAM WAS CLOSE now. Deirdre could hear the rush of water on the rocks. And something else—was that…sleighbells? She froze, peering through the darkness, pulse thumping in her ears. There, in a clump of oaks where the stream turned, a shadowy, four-legged form slid between the trunks.

  She exhaled. A mule deer, from the size of it.

  No, wait. It was a horse and rider. She opened her mouth to call to them, to warn them, but then she saw movement uphill from her. Scarlet whirled around.

  The man. In the darkness he looked like a film noir villain, his black pants and white dress shirt exquisitely tailored. His eyes like spoon shaped holes in a meaty face as blunt as a shovel. He smiled at her.

  Scarlet stood, feet planted wide, head up, and she blew two snorts, like a stallion claiming his ground. Deirdre watched, unable to move as he drew the gun from its holster, arced it up and over, aiming at her. The barrel was enormous, a gaping hole into the afterlife. A whimper formed in her throat, then the high-pitched sound of a woman keening filled the ravine.

  Momentarily disembodied by fear, her consciousness boomeranged out of her body. She saw herself and Scarlet from high overhead, tiny figures of woman and horse, paralyzed, dumbly staring down their own death.

  Just as quickly, her desire to live slammed back into her, and she dug her heels hard into Scarlet’s sides, grabbed a rein and wrenched with all her might. But Scarlet didn’t budge.

  She heard crashing through the brush and caught movement to her left. A black horse, big and muscular, was now about four strides from the man, moving at a full gallop, feathered hooves consuming yards of mountainside with each footfall. It let out a high whinny, so loud she wanted to cover her ears, its rider’s hair and clothes streaming behind her. What on earth was that woman wearing, a dress?

  About a stride from the man, the horse put its head down like a charging bull.

  A tumble of shadows, then an ear-splitting crack. Now the man was face down, the horse already past him and charging straight uphill.

  Scarlet took off full blast after it.

  If she’d been shot, Deirdre had so much adrenaline coursing through her that she couldn’t feel it. Without vision and deafened by the gun blast, she hung on.

  The hill had become nearly vertical, but thanks to Scarlet’s youth and stupidity, she plowed straight up, digging her little hooves into the soil, lumpi
ng her way to the top. Deirdre managed to stay onboard by grasping fistfuls of silky mane, cursing the slippery detangler she’d used before the show last week.

  Finally she felt Scarlet burst over the top onto intoxicatingly flat ground, and grunted with relief.

  Scarlet took a moment to regain one breath, then was off again at a speedy trot, too fast to sit or post. Deirdre stood like a jockey and held on. The black shape was galloping far enough ahead that she couldn’t hear its hoofbeats. They sped across a bulldozered building site. Dim orange lights lit the flattened terrain.

  She recognized the house from the billboard. Finally, she was here in Paraiso, but now all she wanted was out.

  Scarlet broke into a run, her hooves beating solidly against the scraped earth, up the dirt mound to the tall framed house, and across its front yard. As she rode past, she saw through the framing and out onto the balcony, cantilevered over the hillside. This was the house she’d seen from the depths of the canyon.

  Weaving through stacks of lumber, they left the construction area behind. The closed gate and guardhouse were coming up fast. The black horse switched direction and Scarlet followed, her hooves slipping on the fresh asphalt. Blind in the darkness, Deirdre felt her ascending a small grade.

  Then, to her right, a constellation of lights twinkled out of the blackness.

  Her stomach did a sickening lurch as she recognized the city lights of La Jolla, 30 miles to the south, glittering on the dark ocean. They were racing along the edge of the ridge, the whole coastline laid out below. She wrestled Scarlet away from the edge and brought her to a halt after several strides.

  Wheezing, clutching her stomach, checking for bullet holes, Deirdre groped for her phone while Scarlet twirled in place on quivering legs. The mare’s pulse was bounding, her breath loud as a blowtorch through nostrils as big as tailpipes, broken only by a gulping swallow. Heat radiated through the saddle.

  When she finally got her phone out, she had three bars. She called Walt, looking around for the black horse and rider, but they were gone.