Endangered (9781101559017)

Table of Contents

 

 

FBI Agent Perez lifted his gaze toward Sam. “What do you know about Zachary?”

“Blond, two and a half years old. Disappeared last night from this campsite. Cute little guy, with scratches on his face.”

The FBI agent was attentive now. “Where did you get this description?”

“I saw him. Around five forty, five forty-five yesterday evening.” She described the encounter.

“And you didn't take him back to his parents?”

She winced. “He took off on his own, down the path that led back to the campground. His father waved at me.”

“So you know Mr. Fischer?”

The agent's direct gaze made her squirm. “No. I mean, I didn't then. I met him this morning.”

“You're certain that Mr. Fischer was the man who waved at you?”

In her mind's eye, she saw again the man's silhouette. The sharp profile, the bulge at the back of the neck. Fred Fischer? “It was very dark,” she finally murmured.

Perez stepped closer. “Are you certain that Zack reached this man?”

She relived the brambles snagging her, the flash of Zack's sweatshirt as he disappeared into the shadows on the path near the river. How could she have let a two-year-old run off like that?

“Did you see Zachary with the man?” Perez pressed.

“No!” The word came out too loud. She swallowed, lowered her voice. “The last I saw of Zack, he was running away from me, down the path, toward the man who waved.” The fingers of her left hand clenched into a fist as she remembered the boy's tiny fingers slipping from her grasp.
I am guilty of letting him go
.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

ENDANGERED

 

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / December 2011

Copyright © 2011 by Pamela Beason.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

ISBN : 978-1-101-55901-7

 

BERKLEY
^®
PRIME CRIME

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY
^®
PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank my agent, Curtis Russell, who has been a tireless advocate for my writing. I'm grateful to my editorial team at Berkley Prime Crime, Tom Colgan and Amanda Ng, for shepherding this book through the publication process and answering my sometimes-naïve questions. Special thanks go to my critique buddies who read this manuscript and helped me improve it: Pat Gragg, Jo Adamson, Norma Roth, Royce Roberts, Susan Chory, Karen Brown, Pat Read, and Brian Roesch.

IT was almost time.

This was the man's favorite hour. Dark enough that shadows obscured details, light enough that the campers had not yet gathered all their possessions. Food and utensils and toys and clothes and children were scattered everywhere. People were so careless. He wrapped his arms around his knees and drew himself into a tight ball. In a few moments, the sun would be completely obscured by the western escarpment. Down here in the valley, there was no gentle dimming into peaceful dusk. Instead, a wave of darkness slithered across the canyon, changing light to dark as if someone had closed a door. Campers would crowd into tight knots around their campfires or withdraw into their tents and RVs, fleeing the night as if it were dangerous. Then he'd be free to do what he'd come here for.

He perched in a U-shaped seat formed by two cottonwoods that had grown together. Nobody would notice him under the overhang of golden-leaved branches. Not here in the shadow of the cliffs. He listened to the noise from the campers in the valley, all too audible over the gurgle of the river.

Even from this distance he could hear the drone of RV generators, the crackle of campfires, and even the occasional blare of a television or radio. To his right, he recognized the crunch of gravel as a car pulled into a parking lot. Behind and to his distant left, footsteps rasped rhythmically in the dirt as a jogger slowly approached on the road shoulder. Just across the road, on the signboard at the campground pay station, a warning poster about cougars flapped with each gust of the rising breeze.

At the first campsite beyond the pay station, a small boy, little older than a baby, crawled across an expanse of wind-smoothed rock, his lips pursed as he pushed a toy truck along the miniature sandstone hills and troughs.

Exhaling softly, the man splayed his fingers across his thighs. Under the baseball cap, the toddler's hair was the color of the buttercups that bloomed after the spring rains. He knew that kind of little-boy hair; he knew how silky it would feel under his fingertips. The memory made his throat constrict.

A few yards beyond the boy, the child's dark-haired mother tinkered with a sputtering camp stove. From the thick woods encircling the campsite came the rustle of downed leaves, the firecracker pops of dry twigs shattering underfoot.

The rustling concluded with a sharp crack followed by a dull thump, as if a heavy object had fallen to the ground. A flock of crows rocketed up from a ponderosa's twisted branches, cawing their displeasure at being displaced from their nightly roost. The boy stood up and watched the dark cloud of birds pass overhead toward the river.

His mother took a few steps in the direction the noise had come from. She faced the trees, peering into the growing darkness. “Fred? You sound like a moose out there. That is you, isn't it, Fred?”

The blond boy, one hand outstretched as if to catch the last straggling crows flapping over his head, toddled through the grass toward the road and the river beyond. As the boy came closer, his head tilted skyward, and the sight of that rapt little face under the bill of the cap made the man's heart race. He loved that expression, that mixture of wonder and curiosity that small children reserved for other creatures. But small children should never be left to wander alone. Terrible things could happen to little boys.

The boy's mother left the woods and returned to the picnic table, turning toward the rock ledge where the boy had been playing.

“Zack, it's getting too dark to play on the rock now.” Her voice rose. “Zack?”

 

“WHERE are the cougars?” Sam Westin held her cell phone to her ear as she lifted one foot to a picnic bench and stretched her cramped leg muscles.

“Hello to you, too, Sam,” Ranger Kent Bergstrom chided her. “Weren't you supposed to be here yesterday?”

“Don't remind me,” she said. “Did you know there's a bullet hole in the signboard at Goodman Trailhead? A heart shot to the cougar.” She lifted her chin to gaze again at the startling beam of sunlight skewering the plywood and Plexiglas. It pissed her off just to look at it.

“Yeah, they nailed that one two days ago. Let's go grab a beer; I'll fill you in.”

A frosty mug of anything sounded like heaven right now. Sam squelched a moan of self-pity. “I wish. But SWF is only funding me for four days to do this story, and as you've so tactfully noted, I'm running late. Can you give me a hint where I might find Leto and the cubs?”

“Check Sunset Canyon. I found prints around the river, not more than fifty yards from where you are, just this morning. They were big prints; I'm pretty sure it was Apollo. I followed them up the creek. He was headed for Sunset.”

“Is our favorite camp unoccupied?” She referred to a secret box canyon she and Kent had discovered while conducting a wildlife survey two years ago.

“Far as I know. You're going up there now?”

“Yep.” She couldn't wait to get into the backcountry.

“It's five forty. The sun's setting.”

“Really?” she responded sarcastically. In the time she'd stood there, the sun had sunk halfway behind the escarpment, casting a third of the valley into darkness. In another fifteen minutes, the shadow would cover the parking lot and the skewer of sunlight would disappear from the signboard.

“I just meant that you'd better get a move on.”

“I'll jog all the way.” While it was still daylight on the plateau above, she had nearly six and a half miles to hike up a steep trail through a sandstone canyon that would already be in purple shadows.

She pressed the End button, then punched in a Seattle number. As she listened to the repeated rings at the other end, she pulled a digital camera from her backpack with her free hand.