Page 65 of Fire Peak

Neither were any of those arrows.

His next stop was Solomon’s camper. There was no sign anyone was present, but nonetheless he tapped softly on the door before he pushed it open.

The arrow that had been in Charlie’s thigh was gone too.

The cleanup crew had been thorough. Damn.

As he was leaving the camper, a photo caught his eye. He plucked it from the wall and squinted at it. It showed two men and a woman sitting around a campfire in the snow. In jerky handwriting, it read,

February 1979. Always happiest in the wilderness.

The date rang a bell. Wasn’t that the date of the article Charlie had found about Bulldog’s death?

He studied the photo. The woman was clearly April. She hadn’t even changed much, except in the photo she was young and kind of a knockout. One of the men was definitely Solomon. Even in the snowy forest he still wore that damn straw hat. But it was the other man who really got Nick’s attention.

He was a big man with shoulder-length blond hair, very handsome, very Nordic, with a bushy beard. And he was wearing a fur coat.

Back at the lodge, Nick showed Charlie the photo over a cup of coffee in the restaurant. “I think this must be Vasily, and I think he’s back in the area.”

He told her about what Hailey had seen—a man in a fur coat watching her and Elias.

Charlie shook her head. “I said the same thing to April, that Vasily is back, but she didn’t seem worried about it. She said, ‘so what if he is?’”

“Can we trust her?”

“The hell if I know. She’s acting weird, for sure.” She touched the man’s face in the photo. “Do you think he’s the one who shot me?”

“It’s possible. I can’t really say yet. I went to check out that encampment by the creek, but it was all cleared out.”

She looked up sharply. “The skiff too?”

“Skiff too. Everything. I tried to take the four-wheeler along the creek but it was impassable. They must have used the skiff to move everything somewhere else.”

Charlie stared at the photo. “Where have I seen this handwriting before?”

“Is it April’s?”

“Yeah, it could be, but people’s handwriting changes over the years.” She squinted at it closely. “It does look a little like hers, but I’ll have to compare it to one of her shopping lists.”

“We could show her this photo and confirm that it’s Vasily.”

“Good idea. Maybe she’ll answer, maybe she’ll tell us to fuck off. You never know with her.”

“Can you take care of that end of things? I need to do some things in town today. I want to take that baggie to Solomon and see if he can identify the metal. He’s a miner, so he knows his shit.”

“I want to go with you for that,” Charlie said quickly. “That’s my little piece of metal from my wound in my thigh.”

He threw up his hands in surrender. “I’ll wait for you on that one.”

“Thank you.” She smiled and leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms overhead in the morning sunshine.

Nick got lost for a moment, admiring her length, her sleekness, her strength. Being with her was just as explosive as he’d imagined, but also…deeper. He’d never been so wrapped up with a woman before.

But Charlie was focused on something else. He followed her gaze to the highest tip of Fire Peak.

“You know how Fire Peak is named after the beautiful colors it takes on at sunset? The clouds go all purple and orange and gold, so it looks as if the mountain is on fire.”

“Yeah. It’s spectacular. So?”

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