Page 74 of Fire Peak

Charlie compared the two documents. “So in August, April and Chadwick decided to buy the property together. And in January, a month before Chadwick died, he and Vasily agreed to share the mining rights. But the property records list April as the owner. Did something change?”

“There could be other documents that are missing.” Nick scratched at the back of his neck. “Probably are, after all this time.”

“Well, according to the Borough of Fangtooth Gulch, April is the owner. That means she has to give the go-ahead for any mining. Good luck with that, Vasily.” Charlie skimmed her hand across the old document. “April keeps a lot to herself, but I know she cares about Fire Peak. She’d never want it to be mined.”

“That could explain the smoke bomb and so forth. Maybe Vasily’s trying to scare her, or threaten her.” Nick rubbed at his shoulder, which must still be sore. “I’d say these guys are very determined.”

“April doesn’t scare easy,” said Charlie. “But if that’s what’s going on, I wish she’d let us help her.”

Lila reached for her glass of water, then froze. “I just thought of something. Do you think these are the only copies of these documents? Maybe that’s why they’ve been trying to get in here. The raccoon! Maybe it was them searching for these papers. Vasily must have known they were there.”

“But why didn’t April take them with her when she moved out? Along with the rest of this shit? It was all packed into a folder, ready to go.” Charlie swept her hand at the scattered pile of papers.

“Maybe it was Bulldog’s folder, not April’s,” Nick suggested. “It either fell behind the safe or he hid it there.”

“Yes!” Charlie clapped her hands together, then grabbed the composition notebook she’d read during her hideout days. “I bet this was Bulldog’s journal. Nick, where’s that photo from Solomon’s camper?”

He found it on his phone and showed her. She compared the handwriting on the photo with that in the notebook.

“It’s the same person,” she said triumphantly, waving his phone in the air. “I knew it! Chadwick, aka Bulldog, wrote all these crazy journals, and he wrote on this photo. That must mean he took the photo, and that man must be Vasily. Now we know who to look for. I can put this photo into an aging program and know exactly what Vasily looks like today.”

“Nice.” Their gazes held, and for a moment she forgot that she was furious with Nick.

They rifled through the rest of the papers, but found nothing else helpful, other than a scrap of paper torn from a legal pad. Symbols were scribbled on it, along with some percentages. Fe was one, Mg, another. Weren’t those from the periodic table of elements? Fe meant iron, Mg magnesium.

She showed it to Nick. “I don’t recognize these other symbols, do you?”

“No, but Solomon might. Let’s talk to him next.”

“Agreed. I think we have enough for now.” Nick got to his feet, still holding the notepaper covered with symbols and the two documents.

Nick turned to Lila. “Is it okay if we take all this?”

“Of course, but be careful.”

His eyebrows lifted at her intense tone. “Sure. You be careful, too. You might want to stay somewhere else for a while.”

She shook her head. “Ani’s here with me, and I have Bear, too. I’ll be fine. It’s you guys I’m worried about. Both of you. All of you.”

They walked back to the rental cabin to pick up Nick’s car for their trip out to Solomon’s place. The atmosphere between them wasn’t nearly as icy as it had been before. Nothing like working on a mystery together, Charlie thought. But that didn’t mean she’d forgiven Nick. She didn’t know what it meant.

“What did Lila mean by ‘all of you,’” he asked her when they were out of earshot of the hardware store.

She bit her lip. Lila had left it up to her whether she told Nick or not. So what was it going to be?

When it came to Hailey, of course she trusted him. “Lila…senses things sometimes. It’s very real, but she doesn’t like people knowing about it.”

“Senses things…” The idea didn’t seem to shock him. “Danger, that kind of thing?”

“Yes. Since she came here, it hasn’t been happening as much. But now it has.”

“The other day in the breakfast bus,” he said sharply. “She saw Hailey and nearly fainted.”

“Yes. She can’t say what it was about, but she picked up on something.”

He launched into a flat-out run toward the cabin.

“It’s not necessarily immediate danger,” she called after him. “It’s broad daylight.”

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