Page 25 of Fire Peak

“Are you sure? I checked the spot where you found it and there was an abandoned bird’s nest right next to it.”

“I know. They built their nest practically on top of the camera mount. So?”

“So the birds were building their nests weeks ago. I think it was a robin because I remember seeing them swooping around with little bits of straw.”

Charlie considered that. “I don’t know, he could have just wedged the camera under the nest.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Besides, wouldn’t you have noticed if a camera had been trained on you since the robins arrived?”

“I don’t know.” Lila’s shrugged one shoulder. “Usually I would know the second someone started watching me, but things are different here. All the things I usually hear and pick up on…it’s just less. I love it because I can think better. But I suppose I might miss something important, like a camera spying on me.”

“Well, let’s hope it was Nick, which it probably was. I’m assuming that until proven otherwise. Have any other strange things happened at the hardware store?”

“Oh, just a little light burglary, no biggie.”

“What?”

Lila laughed lightly. “A raccoon must have gotten in. He made a bit of a mess, but nothing was missing.”

“Jesus, Lila.”

Molly came back to the table, phone in hand. “You’ll never guess who Sam just ran into at the Costco in Anchorage. By the way, Lila, they’re out of jasmine rice.”

“Did they have my backup rice?”

“They did. You will not starve, my friend.”

Standard practice when anyone went to Anchorage was to collect shopping lists from their friends. Most people liked to include backup brands or sizes or varieties in case their first choice didn’t happen to be in stock. Charlie counted herself lucky that she didn’t have to feed herself here in Firelight Ridge, but she had asked for dental floss, which was absurdly expensive in town.

“Who did he run into?” Charlie asked, getting back to the point.

“Believe it or not, the man we were just talking about. Nick Perini.”

Charlie, who had been tilting her chair backwards, crashed it back to its proper position. “Seriously? What was he doing there?”

“Shopping?” Molly shrugged as she sat back down. “Sam didn’t talk to him. He had a teenage girl with him.”

A teenage girl…

“That must be his daughter Hailey,” she said faintly.

Charlie bit her lip as she thought of all the accusations she’d thrown at Nick the last time they’d talked. I don’t believe you have a daughter you only met recently. I’m not even sure if you rescued that bird.

Jesus. Now she felt like a complete asshole. Of course Nick wouldn’t lie about his daughter. The snapshots he’d shown her looked nothing like stock photos. And there were a lot better ways to get a woman’s attention than wounding a bird. He’d had her attention pre-Hector anyway, just from the way he looked in his jogging shorts.

“At least we know he didn’t plant that device,” said Lila with an incandescent smile.

Irritated, Charlie wondered why Lila liked Nick so much. He was nothing but trouble.

“Is he, uh, coming here?” she asked Molly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Sam couldn’t say. But based on the way we all treated him last time, I’m going to guess no. It’s a big state, lots of places to go. They’re probably going to Denali or the Kenai Peninsula or McCarthy or Nome or someplace like that. What are the chances he’d want to come back here, to the scene of his greatest defeat at the hands of Charlie Santa Lucia?”

The chances weren’t zero, thought Charlie. Nick Perini didn’t seem like a man who liked to lose.

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