Page 42 of Fire Peak

She wore a pair of low-slung dark indigo jeans and a crisp white striped shirt; it was a chic and elegant ensemble. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail at the base of her neck and she wore big dark sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames. How she always managed to look so put together even out here in the wilderness amazed him. A lot of things about Charlie amazed him, and he knew there was plenty that he didn’t even know.

She flung herself onto one of his deck chairs and stretched out her long legs. That was her habit, he realized. She never just sat down. It was almost more dramatic than that. “What have you learned about the smoke bomb?” she asked as he set the bottle of wine on the glass table between them.

He got the sense she was putting off the real thing she wanted to talk about.

“Not a lot, thanks to April’s speedy cleanup. I did some forensics work outside the restaurant and figured out where the perpetrators must have been standing.”

“Ooh, perpetrators,” she teased. “Are you sure you’re not a cop? Isn’t that official cop lingo?”

“That would be ‘perp.’ And you watch too many crime shows.”

“Guilty,” she admitted. “True crime is my jam. Not actual crime,” she added quickly. “Things about crime.”

He smiled sardonically. “Someday I will find out what you did to make Hobbs Financial want to hire me. Of course you could always just tell me yourself.”

She lifted her sunglasses to give him a taunting glance, then dropped them again. “I don’t think we’re quite at that level of trust yet.”

Fair enough. “I also checked around with the other lodges, and there have been no smoke-bomb throwing incidents anywhere else.”

“We’re just lucky, I guess. I found out a few things, too.” She summarized the results of her research—April’s family background and the mystery of Bulldog. “I wrote some notes in case you need them,” she added. “I’ve been asking around about who Bulldog was, but got nothing yet.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, there’ve been plenty other murders here since then. It was over forty years ago.”

“That’s what they call a cold case.”

She made a face at him. “Is that supposed to be a double entendre because he was found frozen?”

“Frozen? You said he was attacked by wolves.”

“And frozen. It was the middle of winter. There were also wolves. ID-ing him was a challenge.”

Good lord. He shuddered and took a sip of wine. “Sounds like the plot of one of Hailey’s horror movies.”

“Where is Hailey, anyway?”

“Hiking with Elias. Hopefully somewhere without wolves.”

“Elias was born in these woods, you don’t have to worry about him.”

He smiled at her, grateful for the reassurance. “Thanks. Good work on digging up that info about April.”

“Anything for the crime-solving superhero of Firelight Ridge,” she teased. “That’s your new rep around here. Hope you can live up to it.”

Lifting his glass to her, he said, “If it’s anything other than catching a runaway Charlie, I’m pretty confident. So what crime might I have the honor of solving for you?”

She ran her finger along the rim of her glass. He noticed that she’d barely had a sip from it. Nervous? “How much do you know about my father?”

He hesitated, since he knew a lot about her father—not from the file he’d been given, but from his own additional research. “Why?”

“Look, I saw you outside the prison. Just be honest.”

“Okay. I know about your father.”

“Well, he was innocent.” She flung up a hand. “Don’t argue with me. He was set up. And that’s not the point.” Before he could answer either way, she told him about her father’s release from prison, and the visit he’d gotten from an unnamed person from Hobbs.

“You said you were working for Hobbs before.”

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