Bear Bait (9781101611548) (2 page)

“What? Is there a big zit on my nose or something?” Lili scrubbed her hands across her face.

“I was just zoning out,” Sam admitted. “It’s been a long day. Let’s brush our teeth and hit the sack.”

She showed Lili how to pump water from the collapsible plastic container. They went outside onto the balcony with cups and toothbrushes in hand. The night air was cool and soft with humidity. A chorus of Pacific tree frogs hummed in the thick Douglas firs beneath them.

Lili spat a mouthful of toothpaste over the wooden railing. She watched the frothy white droplets fall to the ground a hundred feet below. “Sweet,” she said. Then she glanced at Sam from beneath her long lashes. “Can I call you Aunt Summer? Aunt Sam sounds like a transvestite.”

Sam laughed. Thirteen-year-olds knew about transvestites? “How about just calling me Sam? Or Summer? We’re both independent women.”

Lili grinned. “But only in private. Dad would have a cow.”

“Then Aunt Summer’s fine with me.”

People rarely used her given name. As a teenager, she’d started calling herself Sam to stop the high school boys from crooning “Cruel Summer” and “Summer breeze, makes me feel fine.” The oldie-moldy “Hot time, Summer in the city” kept cropping up, along with a lot of imaginative tales about “hot Summer nights.” Lili was no doubt due for a lot of innuendoes involving sniffing and plucking and pollinating.

“So, Summer,” Lili said, trying the name out with a shy smile, “for this school project, I have to write a report on two careers.” She took a deep breath and plunged on. “And I figured, since you’re a wildlife biologist
and
a writer, you could help me with two at once.” She hesitated uncertainly. “I mean, if you want to.”

Sam blinked at her, not knowing whether to be flattered or appalled. “Is it okay to interview the same person for two different careers?”

Lili shrugged. “Ms. Patterson didn’t say we couldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t it be good to get more than one person’s point of view?”

The girl’s face clouded. She looked down at her toes and mumbled, “You don’t have to help. It’s all right. I’ll try to find someone else.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Okay. I’ll help you, Lili.”

“Yes!” Lili pumped her fisted toothbrush toward the star-spangled sky.

It was nice to be the source of someone’s excitement, even a thirteen-year-old’s. “When is this paper due?”

“August seventh?” Lili shot a quick glance at Sam as if expecting an objection. “Dad told me I had to get started in plenty of time for once.”

“It’s due in two weeks?” Sam only had three weeks to finish her environmental survey and write up her recommended management plan. Now she’d agreed to help Lili, too? Deep breath, she told herself. It was a junior high project—how hard could it be? “What’s the first step?”

“I’m s’posed to come up with questions about each career,” Lili said. “I’ll do those tomorrow.” She sighed. “I thought I’d hate summer school. But it’s sort of okay.”

There was a possible segue back to Lili’s social life. Sam jumped at it. “Are there any cool boys?”

A loud boom rocked the fire tower. Sam grabbed the railing, knocking the tube of toothpaste from the rough two-by-four.

“Aunt Summer?” Even in the dim light, Sam could see that Lili’s eyes were wide.

“It’s okay.” At least she hoped it was. She dashed inside, grabbed the binoculars, and focused them on Marmot Lake.

Like an anxious cocker spaniel, Lili followed close on her heels. “What
was
that?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Sam lowered the binoculars to look at Lili. Then lights flashed through the forest near the lake, and she raised the binoculars again. A set of headlights. No, two. Two vehicles. The road to the lake was now closed to the public, barricaded with a steel gate and lock. Nobody should be in there.

Should she call in the violation? The trespassers were leaving; the odds against catching them were high. The explosion was most likely local teens setting off fireworks. M-80s could sound like cannons, especially on a quiet night like this. The Quileute and Quinault reservations were still hawking firecrackers, although the Fourth of July had passed weeks ago.

A yellow light bloomed from the darkness near the lake. Then another. The brightness splashed and spread. She grabbed the radio on the desk and raised it to her lips.
“Three-one-one, this is three-two-five. Come in, three-one-one.” She raised her finger from the Talk button. Nothing. She looked longingly at her cell phone on the shelf, but knew that it didn’t work in some areas of the park. She tried the radio again. “Three-one-one, this is three-two-five.”

“Three-one-one.” The voice of the night dispatcher was hoarse. “Did you say three-two-five? Cat Mountain Fire Lookout? Where’s Jeff?”

“Jeff went home. His mother’s sick. This is Sam Westin.”

“Oh, yeah. What’s up, Sam?”

“I’ve got fire at Marmot Lake.” In the distance, a dead tree caught with a sudden rush, a knife blade of orange light in the darkness. The headlights strobed through thick evergreens as they raced west toward the highway.

The dispatcher’s reply was clipped, all business now. “Copy that, three-two-five. Fire at Marmot Lake.”

“I see at least three sources. Roll everyone you can get. Send them in on”—she checked the map beneath her fingertips—“Road 5214. Over.”

“Roger that—5214. I’ll wake everyone up. Over.”

“I’m heading for the blaze now. Over.”

“You’re a temp. Stay at the lookout. Over.”

“I’m fifteen minutes away. I’m a trained firefighter; I have equipment.”

“You are? You do? But—”

Sam cut her off with a press of the Talk button. “It’ll be at least an hour before you can get anyone to the lake. Over.”

The dispatcher chose not to debate that point. “It’s against the regs. Don’t do anything stupid. Three-one-one, out.”

Sam dumped the radio on the countertop and pulled on her boots. She heard the radio call to Paul Schuler, the law enforcement ranger who patrolled the west side campgrounds at night. The rest of the calls would be made via telephone; other staff members would be asleep at home. If all went smoothly, the west side crew might reach the lake in forty-five minutes. Most of them lived in the small town of Forks, less than fifteen miles away. But in that time, a
fire could consume acres of forest. With luck, she might be able to extinguish a couple of small blazes before wildfire dug its ugly claws too deeply into the forest.

Lili jammed her feet into her own hiking boots.

“No,” Sam said. “You’re staying here.”

The fountain of dark hair bounced as Lili’s chin jerked up. “You can’t leave me here! What if the fire comes this way?”

Good point. If the fire turned in this direction, she might not make it back to get Lili. Damn! “Then I’ll have to drop you—”

“Where?” Lili’s voice was shrill. “There isn’t anywhere.”

Sam stared at her, trying to think of a safe place to deposit the child. Her mind was filled with visions of flames licking through the forest, a small fire growing larger by the second. Panic growing as birds and deer and bear circled within the smoke, tree frogs frantically searching for twigs that wouldn’t scorch their skin.

“The trees are burning right now,” Lili said, as if reading her thoughts.

Sam didn’t need to be reminded: her imagination was loud with screams of terrified animals.

“I’ll do
exactly
what you say.” Lili made the sign of the cross over her chest.

“You bet you will.” Sam blew out the Coleman, stuffed her flashlight and first-aid kit into her daypack. Her fire-retardant suit, along with shovels and Pulaskis, were locked into a metal toolbox in the park’s oldest pickup at the bottom of the tower.

Lili worked in silence, throwing gear and water bottles into her own pack as Sam picked up the radio again. When the dispatcher finally answered, Sam informed her that Lili Choi would be riding with her to Marmot Lake. She heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end.

“No choice,” Sam said into the radio void. “Three-two-five, out.”

THE
old pickup fishtailed in soft dirt at the turnoff to the logging road, jerking Sam’s hands on the wheel. Lili braced herself against the dash, but said nothing. Sam drove with her window rolled down, analyzing the night air for smoke. So far, she detected only a faint acrid scent that might well be her imagination. The heavy steel gate arms that should have barricaded Road 5214 sagged on their posts, wide open, the padlock dangling from a length of chain. There was no need for the key in her pocket. Had the chain had been cut? She couldn’t spare the time to check.

Armies of hemlocks, red cedars, and Douglas firs flashed by in the headlights, occasionally reaching out to rake the speeding vehicle with spiky branches. A bottlebrush of needles whipped through the open window, stinging Sam’s neck and shoulder.

The air along the road was still clear, the forest quiet with dappled moonlight. The summer had been typically rainy on the Olympic Peninsula: the vegetation was lush and green. Maybe the fire would fizzle out before they even got there.

The acrid odor grew stronger near the water. Sam skidded to a stop in the tiny gravel parking lot on the east bank of Marmot Lake. Ghostly fingers of smoke glided over the silvery water. A tongue of flame burned orange along the west shore, its reflection bright in the lake surface. The blaze looked reasonably small. Potentially manageable.

Jumping out, Sam ripped open the tailgate of the pickup,
yanked out the fire gear. She extracted one shovel and one Pulaski. She stepped into the heavy firefighting pants, hauled up on the suspenders. Lili frowned at the strange axe-hoe head of the Pulaski, then clasped her fingers around the shovel. Sam squelched her protest—if she couldn’t leave Lili in the fire tower, she certainly couldn’t leave her in the truck. At least the girl was willing to carry her share of the load. Sam shoved her fireproof jacket into Lili’s hands. “Put this on.”

The jacket hung down almost to the girl’s knees and covered her hands. Sam shrugged on her spare, a medium size that swallowed up her slender frame in a similar fashion. She had no fireproof pants that would even remotely fit the child; her own were so huge the rolled-up cuffs collected more debris than they shed. Thank heavens Lili wore heavy jeans and leather hiking boots, not the popular rubber and foam sneakers that so easily melted.

She knelt in front of Lili, snugged her only helmet onto the child’s head. “You’ve got to do exactly what I tell you.”

“Duh,” Lili muttered impatiently. “I already promised.” Her face gleamed with excitement, but her brown eyes were calm.

Sam hoped her own gaze was as steady. “The radio will be right here in my pocket. If anything happens to me, you grab the radio and run back here, okay?”

The girl dipped her chin in response.

“Do you know how to work the radio?”

Lili rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

Sam tucked the radio into her jacket pocket, shouldered the Pulaski, pulled out her flashlight, and started down the trail. Lili’s footsteps stayed close behind as they jogged along the root-gnarled path that bordered the small lake. As they neared the west shore, the smoke thickened.

Then the enemy was in sight, and providing enough light that Sam flicked off the flashlight. The fire was larger than she’d hoped. Waves of flames lapped at the thick cushion of duff under the evergreens. Dead twigs on lower limbs burst into sparklers. One isolated cedar was fully
engulfed, a fountain of fire that lit up the surrounding forest. The Biblical burning bush rose in her imagination. She snorted at the absurdity.

“Over here, Lili.” Sam paralleled the blaze, weaving her way to the far side of the fire between spindly evergreens and ferns nearly as tall as she was. Smoke hung dense and foglike; so far the air remained still. If they could contain the flames to the lakeshore, the conflagration should burn itself out.

She attacked the line of flame at her feet, using the hoe side of the Pulaski to claw loose dirt over burning fir cones and needles. Beside her, Lili coughed as she beat the backside of the shovel against flames at the base of a tree.

“Use the dirt,” Sam shouted above the crackle of flames. “Make a bare strip that the fire can’t cross. Throw dirt on the flames.” She choked on the last word. Puffing, she dragged mounds of duff away from the hungry flames. Beneath the usual forest detritus, the ground was rock-strewn glacial till, requiring teeth-jarring jabs to loosen even a tablespoon of soil.

Lili gamely scooped a shovelful of pebbles and managed to smother the glowing embers at her feet. She stepped forward to tackle a larger bloom of flames.

Sam lunged after her, pulled her back. “Don’t worry about anything between here and the lake. Stay beside me. We’ve got to hold this line, keep the fire from spreading.”

Hold the line—the mantra of the firefighting course. Surround the enemy. Confine the conflagration, make it eat everything it has now so it will starve to death later.

Beating back a fire had been much easier during training, back when, right out of college, she’d rehearsed for the ranger job she’d never landed. But that was—jeez, fifteen years ago? Sweat coursed down her neck to join the swamp of perspiration coating her entire body under the heavy fire suit. In what she knew were minutes but seemed like hours, she and Lili managed to beat back only a few yards of flames.

She hated fire. When there was fire, there was nothing
else. The scent of cedar and wildflowers, the melody of bird calls and tree frogs vanished, leaving only smothering smoke and blistering heat and the popping and crackling and hissing of death. And just when you thought you had finally beaten it into a flat still blackness, fire could spring to life again like a relentless villain in a horror movie.

The forest behind them was still cool, green, quiet. The landscape in front cackled and spat like a battalion of demons. Every smack of the Pulaski radiated pain up Sam’s arms and neck into her skull. Her sinuses burned. A section of downed limb flared up in front of her, yellow flames bright against blackened ground. She stabbed her axe blade into the rotten wood, flung the burning chunk into the flames a couple of yards away, clearing the zone at her feet.