Mountain Rampage (29 page)

“That's right.”

“I don't see why we should wait,” Jeremy insisted. “I say we take the van and head for town.”

“You heard the lieutenant,” Chuck said. “We won't be going anywhere for a while. Besides, all roads through and around Estes Park will need to remain clear for emergency vehicles.” The students stood so close together their shoulders touched, their eyes on Chuck. “I suggest you make some calls, let your folks know you're safe.”

Samuel held up his phone. “I've been trying. I can't even get a text to go through. The system's crashed or something.”

The students groused to one another until Chuck waved his hands for quiet. “I'm sure it's programmed to let emergency traffic through first.” He pointed at the leaping flames. “Big as this is, I wouldn't be surprised if we won't be able to text or make calls for quite a while, maybe all night.” He took a breath. “The thing for you to understand is that you're safe, all of you. We're in for a long night, but we'll be okay. Even if the fire circles around, it won't get to us out here.”

“It might circle around?” Samuel asked, fear in his voice.

Chuck toed one of the students' duffle bags resting on the grass in front of him. “That's why you brought your stuff from your rooms, right? Just in case.”

Kirina exited Raven House, leaving the front door open behind her, the lights of the common room shining onto the front steps. “Sheila's not in there,” she hollered.

At Chuck's side, Clarence drew a sharp breath.

F
ORTY
-E
IGHT

Clarence put his mouth close to Chuck's ear. “I was with her,” he said, his voice low.

Chuck blanched. Before he could respond, he spotted Parker's bright blue pickup speeding around the fields, headed their way.

Jeremy scoffed, “Look there. It's Peeping Tom, come to make our day.”

Clarence's words echoed in Chuck's head as he turned to Jeremy. “Peeping who?”

“The jerk with the binoculars glued to his face.” Jeremy directed an accusatory finger across the fields at Parker's office window, a black rectangle beneath the eaves of the conference center. “
Pervert
,” he concluded forcefully.

Chuck drew his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard. Nicoleta, dead. Sheila, missing. And Parker's admission of his long history of failure with the opposite sex.

Chuck gripped Clarence's arm. “Don't go anywhere. We've got to find Sheila.”

He left the students to meet the oncoming truck. He halted abruptly when he saw a second figure in the passenger seat.

Parker slid the truck to a stop in the middle of the road and climbed out, slamming the driver's door behind him. A wiry-framed man exited the passenger side of the truck—Jake.

They met Chuck at the edge of the grass, halfway between the employees and students, Parker's eyes blazing.

“Jake found me,” Parker snapped. He jerked his head at the fire. “What the hell did you do?”

“
Me?
” Chuck said. “It was Jake.
He
started it.”

Jake crossed his arms, his face set.

“Don't try that with me,” Parker said to Chuck. “He told me how you tricked him into coming out here, and how you threatened him with some crazy idea about his being a poacher. He
said you made him wreck; that the fire started from leaking gas.”

“Jake threw his cigarette at the wreck to start the fire and cover his tracks.”

“What tracks?”

“He
is
a poacher. He's been killing sheep, rams, for their horns, up on Mount Landen.”

Parker wind-milled his arms at the raging fire, the firefighters building their defensive line around the lodge and conference center, the dozens of guests staring at the flames from the fields. He stuck his finger in Chuck's face, inches from his nose. “You've destroyed
everything
,” the resort manager cried. “Don't you understand that? Everything I've worked for.”

“I'm telling you, Parker,” Chuck said. “Jake started it. Deliberately. There were horns in a lock box, and the rifle he used.”

Jake smirked.

Parker took half a step away from Chuck. “Horns? A rifle?” He snorted. “Do you even know what you're talking about?”

“Parker, please,” Chuck begged.

Jake's smirk twisted into an oily grin.

Chuck started over. “There's…there's…” He almost said the word aloud: gold. But what good would that do at this point? Parker already considered him crazy.

The resort manager drilled into him: “It hasn't been lost on anyone in Estes Park that the murdered girl died in your arms, Chuck.
In your arms.
Plus, there's your brother-in-law's knife.” Parker waved at the flames. “And now this. I thought I knew you. I
trusted
you.”

“I didn't start—”

“Shut up. Just
shut up
. At this point, I don't care who started what.” Parker held his palm out to Chuck. “Stay away from me. You've done enough.” He surveyed the guests gathered around the edge of the fields. “I've got to make sure everyone's accounted for.”

Chuck bit his tongue.
Sheila
. He couldn't say anything to Parker about her, not now.

As Parker's gaze roamed from the students to his Falcon House employees, Anca detached herself from the group of workers and approached, her satchel over her shoulder, heading straight for Jake.

“You,” she said, fire in her eyes, stopping in front of him. “Why is it you that is here?”

Jake pointed at Chuck. “Him. I'm here because of him.”

Parker looked from Jake to Anca. “What?” he asked. “Who?”

The young woman reached into her handbag. Chuck caught her eye, silently willing her to restrain herself. He was a step ahead of Jake at this point—at least, he believed he was—and he wanted to keep it that way.

Anca hesitated. She jutted her elbow at Jake, her hand still in her bag, and told Parker, “He know her. He know Nicoleta.”

Jake deflected Anca's allegation with a flip of his fingers. “Of course, I knew her. That piece-of-crap car of hers. Twice she had to call me.”

“You towed her?” Chuck asked.

Jake turned to him. “Didn't have to. Idle adjustment the first time. She was conked out way up on Trail Ridge. The second time was a flat. I shot some No Leak into her tire and pumped it back up. Didn't have to tow her in either time. I'm telling you, I saved her a ton of money.”

“You told Hemphill?”

“It didn't have anything to do with the murder,” Jake said.

Anca said to Chuck, “I was on the Trail Ridge Road with Nicoleta when the car, it would not run. The car-worker man is right, he made it go again.”

“The second time?” Chuck asked her.

“I was not there.” Anca's eyes narrowed with distrust as she looked at Jake, her hand still in her shoulder bag.

Jake turned to Parker. “Let's get this over with.”

Anca rooted around inside her cavernous bag.

Chuck stepped between her and Jake. Janelle listened from a few steps away, the girls pressed to her sides. He faced Parker and spoke. “Get what over with?”

“Citizen's arrest,” Parker said.

“
What?
”

“You lied to Jake to get him to come out here, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you attacked him.”

“I tried to keep him from—”

“The result of which is your burning down the resort.”

“I didn't—”

“You're under arrest, Chuck,” Parker said.

“It's
him
,” Chuck insisted. “It's Jake. Don't you see? I didn't do anything!”

Parker looked from Chuck to Jake. “It's just…I think…”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Parker.” He shoved his hand into the front pocket of his coveralls. The pocket was easily large enough to hold a pistol.

Chuck balled his hands into fists. He'd had enough. He lowered his shoulder and charged. Jake's eyes widened, the whites around his irises bright beneath the streetlights. Chuck struck Jake in his midsection and drove him hard into the ground before he could withdraw his hand from his pocket.

Chuck grabbed Jake's wrist and pulled the wrecker owner's hand into the open to find that Jake gripped not a gun but a closed switchblade. Chuck clung to Jake's arm, but Jake flicked his wrist in a well-honed movement, making a five-inch blade appear at the end of the knife handle.

Jake twisted his hand upward. His wrist turned in Chuck's grip. The blade, razor-sharp, nicked Chuck's forearm, drawing blood. Chuck drove his fist into Jake's nose, slamming Jake's
head backward into the turf. Blood spurted from beneath Chuck's fist and Jake lay still, on his back in the grass, the knife falling free from his hand.

Ignoring the blood oozing from the cut on his arm, Chuck slid Jake's knife out of the way with the side of his shoe as he fished his phone from his pocket. He punched
play
on the phone's recording app and held the phone close to Parker's ear.

Chuck's voice issued from the phone's tinny speaker: “You deserve what happened just now, with your truck. You killed those sheep.”

“Damn right I did,” Jake responded.

Parker listened to the recorded conversation, then Chuck's cry of alarm when Jake flicked his cigarette at his truck, starting the fire, and Jake's calm voice: “Glad my insurance is all paid up.”

“Satisfied?” Chuck asked Parker, shoving his phone back in his pocket.

“My God,” the resort manager said.

“I'm all for your citizen's arrest. You just had the wrong guy.” Chuck kicked Jake's foot. “Tie him up. And do a good job of it. It'll be a while before the cops will be able to deal with him. I'm sure you've got something in your pickup.”

Jake moaned and rocked back and forth in the grass, beginning to come around. Blood leaked from his pancaked nose.

“You got it,” Parker said. He headed for his truck.

Chuck drew Anca aside. “What else do you know about this man—” he pointed at Jake “—and Nicoleta?”

“At the Trail Ridge Road, he look at Nicoleta and me a lot,” she said. “His eyes, they have hunger.” She shivered with obvious distaste. “That is how we say it in Bulgaria.”

“And Nicoleta?”

Anca hesitated. “She make joke about it. She call him cowboy. Big, tough, American western man.”

Chuck considered the number of people he'd heard Nicoleta
had slept with over the summer, and the gold-infused calaverite now smoldering behind the conference center, before his thoughts returned to what Clarence had just said to him about Sheila. The clock was ticking.

Parker made his way back across the grass from his truck, a coil of rope in hand.

Chuck turned to the students and Janelle and Carmelita and Rosie. He indicated Jake on the ground behind him with a tilt of his head. “I'm sorry you had to see that. But, trust me, our sheep poacher had it coming.” He extended his fingers, loosening his bruised knuckles. “You all know Sheila's missing.”

“The Navajo girl?” Janelle asked.

Chuck nodded. “Clarence and I are going to look for her.”

“Find her,” Janelle said, gathering Carmelita and Rosie to her. “Hurry.”

He addressed the students. “You're safe here, all of you, outside, like the lieutenant said.”

Chuck waved Clarence to him and they set off for Raven House. “What do you mean, you were ‘with her'?” he asked out the side of his mouth.

“It was after you left. I was…she was…”

“
Clarence
,” Chuck prompted him.

Clarence's words came in a rush. “She came to my room. She said she'd been waiting all summer, that this was the last night and she couldn't wait any longer. She closed the door behind her.”

Chuck stepped through the front door into the empty common room at the front of Raven House.

Clarence stopped in the open doorway behind him. “I told her to leave, but…but…she started to unbutton her shirt.”

Chuck turned to him, incredulous. “What'd you do?”

“I sat there, on my bed. I'd been drinking. You know that.”

“We had an agreement. Nothing with the students.
Nothing
.”

“Which is exactly what I did. I took her by the shoulders and
I moved her to one side and I got the hell out of there.”

Chuck breathed. In, out, in, out. “And now, she's gone.”

“I don't know where she went.”

Chuck tugged Clarence past him into Raven House and spoke to his back as they made their way across the common room. “You left her in your room? That's the last you saw of her?”