Unfit to Practice (41 page)

Don't miss the
new Nina Reilly novel

Perri O'Shaughnessy's

PRESUMPTION
OF DEATH

Coming in hardcover
August 2003

PROLOGUE

“A little noiseless noise among the leaves”

—
KEATS

P
ICTURE THIS: A
moonless summer night filling a hollow sky, glossy unblinking stars; under this, the rolling brown summits of the Robles Ridge; under this, the dry rattling of the leaf-tops of clustering oaks; and beneath all this, in the deep forest that slopes even farther down toward Steinbeck's pastures of heaven, two young men, hunting.

In soft clothes that did not rustle, one behind the other, they moved in a line between gnarled tree trunks.

To the west, distantly, out of sight, the Pacific Ocean lay black under the sky and poured itself out onto the shore, then drained back into itself with a soft rush. Up the mountain above them somewhere, their prey must be crunching like a big buck over the dense dry carpet of dead brush.

They hunted along a steep wooded trail below where it widens to an open saddle before continuing up rocky slopes to the summit, hunting as their ancestors of the Washoe tribe had hunted for tens of thousands of years, following with ancient purpose a spirit moving through the darkness.

But this spirit was no animal.

“Shut up, Willis,” Danny whispered, then darted to a new tree, his bulky shape merging into utter blackness.

“Don't call me that. Only my mother calls me that.” Wish followed Danny, puffing, admiring his friend's headlong confidence and quiet feet. “What am I doing wrong anyway?” he asked once he had picked his way across the brief clearing and stood pressed against the boulder with Danny.

“Something plops every time you step.”

“Oh. The camera. It's slung over my . . .”

“And you sound like an ox. What have you got on your feet?”

“Hey, these are my new Doc Martens. I showed them to you. Remember? I paid a hundred twenty bucks for these . . .”

“They sound like weedwhackers. Pick up your feet. Shh. I hear something.”

An owl made a low percussive sound. Above them, bats rattled through the air like dry leaves. No sound, no echo of the sound they sought. A light rippling liquid fell onto Wish's 49ers hat. Wish tore it off and hit it softly against a tree. “Bat guano falling through the branches, that's all I hear,” he whispered.

He looked up at a rift between the treetops where the Milky Way spread like gold buckshot across the sky.

“Is he gone?”

Danny didn't answer. He dropped silently into a crouch. Unlike Wish, whose father hadn't been around when he was growing up and whose mother worked in town, Danny had been brought up to know the wilderness. Danny was the leader here, but then, Danny had always been the leader. So Wish crouched too.

Danny's hand clenched his shoulder. For a moment they listened to the woods, heads thrust forward, nostrils spread. A hot little breeze lifted and dropped Wish's lank hair. Danny gave him a push. “Feel that?” he said in a low voice. “That wind?”

“Kinda warm for June.”

“Listen!”

“No, I . . .” Wish stopped talking. He cupped a hand around his ear. He heard a new sound. Singing, like cicadas.

No.

Crackling.

“Fire!” Wish breathed. “He set one up there!”

“Huh,” Danny said in a quiet, tight voice. He stood up, favoring his left knee like always, licked the tips of his fingers, and held them up. “The wind is going to take it down this side of the slope. Now look Wish. He's got to come down this side. There isn't any other way down. Can't bushwhack in the dark, it's way too steep. He's gonna come down right past us.”

“There are houses down here!”

“We'll get him. Then we'll call for help.”

“I don't like this.”

“We're not giving up. I know what I'm doing. Don't I always?”

Not at all, Wish thought. Just about never. His mom said Danny didn't have as much sense as a pinochle card. What his mom couldn't appreciate was that Danny was a force of nature. His energy pulled you along like a big wind. Wish felt excited, just being around him, blowing this way and that, never knowing what lay ahead. And here they were again, in trouble, like always when he let Danny have his way.

They would get out of it somehow, he thought, come fire, earthquake, or landslide. You could depend on Danny for one thing: a screwed up, hairy outcome, but somehow, you survived.

Around them, other creatures stirred in their holes, disturbed, sniffing in the bush. Wish caught a whiff of smoke, pleasant and woody like the fires in the cabin in winter back at Markleeville. “Fire, Danny. This is serious. We need to call the fire department. You got a mobile phone?”

“Not hardly.”

Though Danny didn't ask, Wish offered, “Mine's in the van, still hooked to the car charger.” He waited hopelessly for Danny to give him the okay to get going back down the hill to the street.

“We're close,” Danny said. “He's up there, I can feel it. Give him a minute. He'll come tearing down.”

Too afraid to pretend patience, Wish flapped his long arms. “Haven't you ever seen those shows? Where fire like, blows up in people's faces? Where even firefighters get trapped? We gotta make like Bambi and Thumper out of here!”

Ignoring him, Danny peered into the darkness above them, up the trail that rose another few hundred feet of scrambly sandy dirt to the saddle they couldn't see. The trail climbed steeply up the east flank of the ridge. The breeze had turned gusty and blew across Wish's cheek. Coming this way, his mind recorded automatically. Up higher, jittery reds, oranges, and yellows jerked down the hill in fits and starts like rush hour traffic, accelerating in bursts. “Could he stay up on the saddle?” said Wish. “It's more open up there.”

“Yeah, sit there and get burned up,” Danny said, disgusted. “He's not that stupid. Unless maybe he doesn't care and wants to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“He might try to go uphill instead of down. There's a trail that runs just below the summit.”

“He might. But he's probably got a car down there on Southbank.”

“He won't leave his car,” Wish said to reassure himself.

“We stay put,” Danny decided. “Listen. He comes down this way, and we're ready. He'll have a flashlight, and we'll spot him first. Then before he sees us, we shoot him. We slide behind those rocks and trap him trying to get to his car. We shoot, then we let him go.”

“But—”

Danny got up, and Wish followed him behind the biggest of the rocks off the trail. Another time, Wish wouldn't have gone near those tumbled rocks with their dark caverns where mountain lions might hide. Flashing his light all around behind the rock and seeing no yellow eyes reflecting back, he picked up a cudgel-like branch, then lowered himself beside Danny, who continued to watch the trail. They could see where it curved around toward them.

What if this guy didn't try to run after they shot him?

Birds fluttered invisibly into darkness. Gusts of heat blew down the mountain. A hell was starting up there.

Wish looked up. Harsh white haze blotted out the stars. A brushing sound, then thuds—somewhere up there branches dropped in erratic drumbeats. The primitive sounds moved through him, pinging like poison darts, making his body shake and his mind fall to pieces.

“He's coming,” Danny whispered. “I can smell him.”

“Danny, we got to go.”

“You want to bail on me? Now, when I need you? I should have expected it. C'mon, don't panic on me, man.”

“I'm going, Danny.”

“Do what you want,” Danny said. “Go. But,” a note of desperation entered his voice, “please don't go yet. A coupla minutes, okay? That's all we need. Okay?”

Wish said nothing.

“The guy is going to come down. It's a matter of seconds! I need this!” Danny said. “We both do!”

A wavering glow advanced down the mountain toward them.

“Three minutes,” Wish said.

Two deer burst out of the bush, making Wish's heart stop, and pounded past them along the trail. “It's moving fast,” Wish said. There were people down below. “Danny.”

“What?”

“We could climb down to the street and catch him at his car, if it's really down there. Shoot him there.”

“One hundred thousand dollars,” Danny said. “One hundred thousand buckaroos. Remember why we're here. Worth some risk, right? This way, we can't miss.” He reached into his shirt pocket and popped a handful of barbecued sunflower seeds into his mouth. Danny ate when he was nervous, jelly beans, candy, seeds. “No more hitting up the family for five bucks to go to town. No more sleeping on the couch.”

“Danny—feel that heat! Take a look up there. It's like—a wave of fire coming down. It's almost on top of us.” Wish tried to compress his dread into reasonable sounding words.

“Now, you listen, Wishywashy. You stay here until I say go. You owe me this—”

Old business at a time like this. Just like Danny to resort to emotional blackmail or anything else that might work to get what he wanted. “We have to warn those people below.”

“Keep down,” Danny ordered, voice urgent. Lifting his head slowly above the slab of rock, he froze, nose pointing, eyes big.

His own eyes burning and straining, Wish straightened and peered up the trail. How could Danny see anything through that dust and smoke?

By now the fire had moved close enough for them to feel the whomps as it jumped from tree to tree, setting each one off. Leaves flared red like blue match tops side by side in a box. Branches cracked. Trees tottered and collapsed. Hot wind roared.

Wish had never been so frightened. Shaking behind Danny, he wished to God he had stayed home when Danny came by with this crazy idea, he wished he had listened to his mother, he wished he had stayed back in Tahoe, where it was safe.

A line of trees exploded. Against the light of their dying, Wish thought he saw a figure standing on the curve of the trail. Was that someone watching the fire?

“Hey!” Danny pointed. “See that over there?”

“You see somebody?” Wish asked.

“There he is! That's him!”

“Where?” Wish asked, untangling his camera. “Point. I can't see anything.”

“There!”

Wish flipped a button, turning his camera on. He raised it. Dust and flying cinders blew into his eyes. He wasted a second wiping the lens. Putting an eye to the lens he saw nothing but liquid fire coming his way. Blinded by the intensity of the blaze, he pressed the telephoto button, aimed, and shot toward the burning trees. He shot as many times in as many directions as he could.

Camera out of memory, he popped out the memory card and pushed it into his pocket and reloaded, circling the site. “He's gone, Danny. Oh, man. I'm sorry. I can't see. I don't . . .”

But Danny was up, stomping around in the rocks, black eyes burning as orange as the flames. Smoke billowed white clouds across the clearing. He coughed. “Big surprise! You missed him!”

Wish swung into a wide arc, snapping pictures, flashing ugly hard white futilely into the hellish glow of the woods on fire.

“See him? See him now? No, of course not! Because you missed him! All right, we'll catch up with him.”

Wish grabbed for Danny's arm. “This is the end, Danny,” he said. “It's over!”

“The end?” Danny stood still as a totem, wrathful, sweating, his eyes narrow against the smoke.

“We'll catch him some other time. We'll die if we don't get out of here!” Wish pulled at him. Danny didn't budge. “Let's go, let's go, let's go!”

“But it's not done yet. It's not over yet. We'll catch up with him. He's stupid, he saw us and he's hiding somewhere. Your camera!” Danny grabbed it.

“I'm going, and you're going with me!”

Orange flames flowed like lava above them, toward them, inexorable. They would both burn if they didn't leave instantly, and finally even Danny seemed to realize that. They took off through the woods, away from treetops that blazed and blew like palms in a tropical sunset.

Wish, running behind Danny, peeled off his shirt and undershirt.

When he straightened up, Danny was gone, and what was worse, what was so much worse, was that he was surrounded by a ring of flame higher than the highest tree. “Danny!” he yelled, choking on smoke. Had he run off to catch the guy on his own? The woods, the wind, the inferno, swallowed his words. The hillside roared its death cries. How had the fire moved so fast?

Now, the trail forgotten, he ran blindly downward. He scraped past branches, stumbling over fallen trees, screaming and chittering like the jackrabbits and deer and chipmunks, running with them, unable to see through the smoke and past the dense band of heat, a million candles blazing all around him. The sky was on fire. He ran toward . . . what? The road? Death?

He fell. Down in the dirt, still ahead of the roaring wind and fire, he tried to think. He called again, gasping for air. He stood up on the strong legs that had hiked so many Sierra trails with Danny, and found them wobbly. Should he crawl, stay low? He didn't know. He felt too clumsy to run and too panicky to think.

When his head came up, he heard a shout. And there he was, Danny, climbing up through the trees, wheezing, calling to him, reaching out his big knobby hand.

“You—where did you—!”

“Take it easy,” said Danny. “Follow me.” He pulled Wish forward.

Wish held back.

“Calm down. Follow me.”

“There's fire over there, actual flames, see that? And this smoke. I can barely see you. I can't breathe!”

“Trust me, Willis. I've got a plan.” For a moment the smoke cleared and Wish saw Danny at his most crazed. Holding arms with singed hair over their foreheads against the burning tree limbs, they moved back out onto the trail, small blazes on either side. No need for the flashlight anymore—Wish had dropped it in the rocks anyway. They rushed downward, sliding, sweating, panting, reckless, hell-bent toward the road.

“Don't stop,” Danny commanded when Wish slowed.

“Just one second—can't breathe—”

“Run or it'll catch us. We're almost back to the road—”

“I don't see—any—freaking—road—” each word a seared, heaving breath—