Page 83 of Fire Peak

“Talked to him?”

“No.”

“Is he pressuring you in any way?”

“No.”

Nick thought she was probably telling the truth, but he also thought she was perfectly capable of lying if that suited her.

Visibly frustrated, Charlie switched gears. “Why did you get rid of the smoke bomb? Why won’t you let us help you?”

“Stop. Just stop,” April ordered her. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Just walk away from all this. It’s not your business.”

They were close. Nick could feel it. Come on, Charlie.

Charlie hauled in another breath; he knew this wasn’t easy for her, with her affection for April. “Was Vasily there when it happened? Is that it? Does Vasily know what you did?”

April didn’t answer. She watched Charlie like a mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.

“Vasily knows you killed Bulldog and now he’s blackmailing you so he can get access to the perilium, isn’t he?”

After a moment of stunned astonishment, April burst out laughing. Then she spun on her heel and walked a few steps down the dirt path between garden beds.

Nick felt Charlie’s hand twine into his. He squeezed it. Whether in approval or comfort, he didn’t know which.

Finally April turned around to face them. She gazed at them without any visible emotion, although she still held on to that trowel for dear life.

“I didn’t kill Bulldog. If I was being blackmailed, it’s not your concern, because it won’t work. There will be no mine here. I’ll die first.”

The four-wheeler had a freaking flat tire. Hailey and the kid—Eric, his name was—only got about ten yards before the machine clunked to a stop. They both climbed off and stared at the thick treads of an entirely flat passenger side tire.

“How does that even happen?” wondered Hailey. “Did you run over, like, a butcher knife?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Eric cried. “It happened when I was talking to you.”

That seemed odd, but the amount that she knew about tires could fit into a microdot. “Well, whatever. Let’s just walk. We can stop at Gunnar’s on the way and maybe he can fix it, or tow it or something.”

Secretly, she didn’t mind a stop at the hot Viking mechanic’s place. On sunny days, he liked to work outside with his shirt off and she found that pretty mesmerizing.

They set off down the road, walking single file so they could stay out of the dust clouds of passing vehicles, with Eric right ahead of her. Hailey was very curious about the Chilkoot clan, having heard so many stories about them since she’d gotten here. Before the big bust, some of the kids hadn’t even gone to school, like Elias, who was just now learning how to read.

“What were you and Elias doing when the bad man grabbed him?” she asked him.

“Nothing. I mean, nothing bad. We were looking for rocks,” he added, hanging his head. “We’re not supposed to do that.”

“What’s wrong with looking for rocks?”

“I don’t know. We’re just not supposed to.”

She knew that the Chilkoots used to have a lot of rules, some of them based on survival, since they lived completely off-grid, but some based on the quirky beliefs of the clan’s patriarch and matriarch.

“So why were you? Just trying to make a little mischief?”

“Last night I woke up because there were people yelling. A man was shouting at Ruth, and she was crying. She kept saying ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, leave us alone.’ He said we had to help him or he’d call the FBI on us again. We hate the FBI.”

Hailey knew about the FBI raid on the Chilkoots, but she didn’t know much about it. “What else did you hear?”

“Something about Fire Peak. The last thing he said was, don’t touch that rock or I’ll have your head. He sounded really mean.”

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