Page 8 of Fire Dancer

“We wanted to go down and check in case there was any hope,” the other tourist said. “But Jim here said it was too late.”

I glanced over the cliff, grimacing. Definitely too late for the woman sprawled over the rocks below, her limbs askew, eyes wide in unblinking shock and fear.

I jutted my jaw, reminded of another place, another young woman, another senseless death. Another case where I’d arrived too late.

I sucked in a lungful of clean mountain air, then exhaled slowly.

My mind jumped to Stacy. Worse, it jumped to Pippa next, and my breath broke sharply. Beautiful, bubbly Pippa with her bright-blue eyes, smattering of freckles, and long, wavy hair the color of sunshine. It was impossible to think of all that life, all that beauty, getting cut off far too soon. But not impossible enough.

One of the officers patted me on the back. “You never get used to it, do you?”

I shook my head. His thoughts weren’t where mine were, but the sentiment still rang true.

“Never seen nothing like it,” Jim, the tour driver, lamented. “Never wanted to.”

“How long do you think she’s been down there?” one of the tourists asked.

“Too early to tell,” one of the officers said, ushering them away.

I stepped back, leaving the investigative perimeter the police started to mark. Any tracks on the ground had been obliterated by the tour vehicles and dozens of footprints, so I didn’t hold much hope of visual clues. Instead, I closed my eyes and sniffed.

Pine…oak…a few drops of oil…My wolf side dissected and identified latent odors one by one.Sweat…

Then my nose wrinkled, and I froze.Shifter. Bear shifter.At least two, in animal form, not human, judging by the intensity of the scent.

I moved around, sniffing here and there and studying the ground. No clear bear marks, and only a few other Jeep tracks,but nothing recent. The dead woman seemed to have arrived here on foot.

“A hiker, I suppose,” I heard the tourists speculate. “Or one of those trail runners?”

I shook my head quietly. Not in that frilly shirt and sandals of hers.

I pictured Pippa getting dressed in the morning, checking in the mirror that everything matched and looked good. The dead woman had probably taken the same care, this morning or last night, never suspecting it would be her last.

“Maybe she went too close to the edge to take a picture?” another tried.

Officer Jimenez and I exchanged doubtful looks. It happened, but you’d have to have your eyes closed to miss a drop-off that obvious.

“Suicide?” someone else tried.

“Why come all the way out here to do that?” another asked.

I pursued my lips. Why, indeed?

“Maybe she was afraid of something — or someone,” another person suggested.

That was my bet, though any telltale paw prints would have been erased by the tour group. Still, it wasn’t hard to picture a couple of bears charging after that poor young woman, who would have been running for her life.

I frowned at the cliff. Life just sucked sometimes. Death, even more so, especially when it hit far too soon.

I stepped left, then right, painting a grim picture in my mind. A couple of bear shifters had chased the woman over the edge, then prowled back and forth several times, making sure she was dead before they lumbered away.

The scenario was all too easy to picture but harder to explain. Who were those bears? Why did they want the woman dead?

Again, my mind went to Stacy — and the bear shifter who drove that SUV.

“God, I hate these cases,” one of the officers muttered. A guy old enough to have a daughter about the victim’s age.

“Even figuring out what happened doesn’t help the family,” Jimenez lamented.

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