Page 18 of Fire Peak

Lila climbed off the bed and disappeared into the living room, which had been the storefront area of the hardware store. It had a lovely bay window that looked out on Pioneer Boulevard, which unfortunately meant that Charlie felt too exposed out there.

When Lila came back, she held a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Fire Peak Lodge is hiring for the summer. It’s halfway up Fire Peak, really hard to get to and very exclusive. Most of the guests come by helicopter, if you can believe it. The same guests have been coming for years, so it’s just about impossible to get a room there. All the staff live on site because the drive takes so long. Most of them only come into town on their days off, if that. It’s gorgeous up there. You know that perfect triangular mountain with the sunset colors? The lodge is halfway up, on a lower slope, so you can see the peak.”

Charlie took the slip of paper. “What sort of positions are they hiring for? I could use a job. My cash is going to run out soon.” She couldn’t touch her bank accounts until she was sure she was off everyone’s radar.

“Hostess, server, dishwasher, chambermaid, driver, office manager, you name it. They have a chef who comes back every year, but they do need sous-chefs.”

“Will they pay cash?”

“Probably. It’s the Wild West out here, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Better and better. It didn’t matter to Charlie what job she filled. It was a safe place that wasn’t Lila’s bedroom. Sold.

“Maybe I’ll let them decide where they want me. Anything except hostess. If Nick decided to get his ass up there, he might spot me.”

“You do know that he’ll probably spot you eventually, right?”

“He can’t hang around forever.” She looked at the phone number again, a sense of hope rising. “Fire Peak Lodge, huh?”

“Yes. April’s the owner. She’s a bit of a hermit. They say she lost the love of her life in a tragic accident and never recovered. Anyway, she comes to The Fang now and then. She’s friends with Bear. I can tell her you want a job, if you like.”

Charlie sighed. “Yes, please and thank you. I’m afraid to leave even to make a phone call.”

As Lila left, Charlie waved at her wistfully, feeling like a restless house cat. She couldn’t even cruise the internet. Damn that Nick Perini and his persistence.

“It’s you and me again, Goldilocks.” She sprinkled some food into the tank, which sat atop an old washtub. “Just when you thought you were rid of me. Ready for some more stories?”

The only form of entertainment she’d found so far was an old safe with a rusty lock that had come apart in her hands. The safe was empty except for some stray coins, but in the process of messing with the lock, she’d dislodged the safe just enough to spot an old accordion folder that had fallen behind it.

Intriguing! At least for someone with no Internet.

She went back to the folder now. It was chock full of old paperwork and snapshots of the good old pioneer days of Firelight Ridge. A miner panning for gold in a creek. The mail plane being unloaded on a frozen airstrip, with a crowd of bundled-up residents forming a kind of bucket brigade of packages. A group of Native Alaskans—Ahtna, she figured—walking up a trail along Fire Peak.

She found several photos of two men who looked like best buddies, always with big grins on their bearded faces, sometimes with a salmon they’d caught, or a deer they’d shot. In one of the shots, a woman, so young she was probably still a teenager, sat in the back of a truck with them, waving at the camera. She was tiny but she must have been formidable, Charlie thought. Firelight Ridge in those days was even more rough and tumble than it was today.

Most interestingly, she’d found an old composition notebook filled with someone’s jagged handwriting. She couldn’t find any name to identify the writer. Some pages were devoted to long shopping lists—dried pinto beans, block of cheese, canned tomatoes, that kind of thing. Games of hangman occupied a good chunk of the notebook. Then there were the political rants, or maybe questions would be more accurate.

She read aloud to Goldilocks, who swayed gently in her tank.

“‘Can wealth ever be considered moral? Can the concept of private property be rewound? If not, how to reconcile?’ Okay, let’s skip the political stuff. Moving on.”

She flipped through the pages.

“‘Why was I born into this misery that I can neither leave nor tolerate? Why am I not a bear? Bears are born free and wild. That’s my heaven. But I’m in hell. Neither free nor wild, no matter what I do. Great Spirit, take me away.’ Damn, this poor guy. Or gal. It’s hard to tell which. What do you think, Goldie?”

Scattered through the notebook were various symbols and letter combinations that she couldn’t interpret. If she had internet, she could look them up.

Except that she needed to stay off the internet for now. And there was no internet at Lila’s house. And this notebook didn’t even belong to her. Hadn’t she decided to stop skirting the law?

With a sigh, she dropped the notebook back into the folder and stashed it behind the safe, exactly where she’d found it.

“I hope you kept it together, dude,” she murmured to the mystery writer. “I bet the winters here could send anyone over the edge.”

9

After a week, Nick had to inform Mark Jones that Charlie’s trail had gone cold.

No trace of her.

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