Page 48 of Mile High Mystery

He checked his mirrors, then pulled into the street and drove down the block to the motel. “I’m not going to talk about this anymore tonight,” he said.

He could feel her staring and sensed her wanting to say more, but he kept his gaze forward and his mouth shut until he heard the door of the truck open and the slide of fabric against the upholstery as she got out. “We’re not done,” she said, just before she slammed the door.

“Yeah, we are,” he said softly. She could grill him about what he had seen that night, and he could give all the details to an FBI artist to reconstruct the image of the fleeing man. But none of that would bring back Camille or find the man who had killed her.

None of that would put Shelby back in his arms or have her kissing him again. Kissing him as if she never wanted to stop.

Chapter Fourteen

Zach was at his desk at the mine when he received a text from Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue.Injured hiker Cascade Trail near falls.The choice between continuing to transcribe the most recent assay figures or hiking a beautiful mountain trail to help someone wasn’t a difficult one to make. Zach shut down his computer and walked down the hall to his supervisor’s office. “I got a page about an injured hiker,” he said. “I don’t have anything pressing going on right now.”

“Go.” Devlin Shaw, chief metallurgical engineer, waved toward the door. “And be careful.”

Zach wasn’t surprised to see Eldon jogging across the parking lot ahead of him. Zach waved and followed Eldon’s Jeep out of the lot to Search and Rescue headquarters.

“Danny’s stuck at work,” Ryan informed them when they, along with Caleb, Anna and Christine, assembled at headquarters. “I talked to Hannah. EMS has been in phone contact with the hiker, a sixty-year-old woman, Lynette Marx. She slipped on loose rock, and it sounds like she broke her ankle. We need to take a wheeled litter up the trail and get her down to the ambulance.”

This kind of rescue wasn’t as exciting or potentially dangerous as evacuating someone off the side of the mountain, but it still required the team to work together to make sure they had all the equipment they needed to get the patient to medical help safely. “There are some steep, rocky sections on that trail,” Eldon said as he and Zach loaded the collapsible litter onto the team’s rescue vehicle, dubbed the Beast. “It will take some muscle to get the loaded litter over those.”

“Everybody watch your step,” Ryan advised as he added a pack with medical supplies to the load. “The last thing we want is to have to evacuate one of you because you broke a bone, too.”

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the Cascade trailhead to find a waiting ambulance and a handful of onlookers. Most appeared to be fellow hikers, identifiable by their daypacks and hiking boots. But a flash of blond hair made Zach do a double take. The woman had her back to him, but she was tall, and he was almost sure it was Janie. But that couldn’t be right. Shelby had said the local deputies hadn’t been able to locate her to question her after Zach’s apartment was broken into.

“What’s she doing here?” Eldon spoke over Zach’s shoulder. He was also staring at the woman, who was walking away now. Almost as if she hadn’t seen them.

“I don’t know.” Zach wanted to go after her, but he couldn’t leave the team. Instead, he crouched to slide the straps of a pack onto his shoulders, then carefully straightened. One-half of the litter was strapped to Zach’s pack. Caleb already had the pack with the other half of the litter, while Eldon would carry the mounting bracket and single wheel that would help them get the loaded litter down the trail. The rest of the team carried braces, splints, helmets and other medical and safety gear.

Hannah Richards, a Rayford County paramedic, waited for them at the trailhead. She would be in charge of the medical assessment and delivering any pain medication the patient might need. Ryan looked back over the assembled group. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

As Zach headed out, he took a last look at the hikers milling about the parking area. No sign of the blonde. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Janie wouldn’t have ignored him—although maybe she was upset that he had turned down her advances the other night. And Eldon had thought it was her, too.

He stumbled and Anna put out a hand to steady him. “Thanks,” he muttered, and focused on the trail. The hike was a steep one, switchbacking up the side of the mountain on a path that was supposedly once used by mule teams to transport ore from the now defunct Simpson mine. The mine ruins were a popular draw for hikers, as was the view from the top of the trail into a wildflower-filled basin. Zach was soon breathing hard, but keeping up with the others. No one spoke much, focused on moving as quickly as possible toward a woman who was probably in pain.

Lynette Marx was pale but cheerful when they reached her. “I am so glad to see you all,” she said as the volunteers surrounded her. She lay on the ground in a stand of aspen trees beside the trail, one foot, stripped of its hiking boot, propped on a fallen tree, her pack beneath her head. A young couple who had been hiking behind her had seen her slip and stopped to help, and the man had run down the trail until he had enough phone signal to call for help. Then he had returned to stay with Lynette and his wife until rescuers arrived.

While Eldon, Caleb and Zach assembled the litter, Hannah assessed Lynette’s injuries, administered a painkiller and fitted her with a splint. “That feels better already,” Lynette said as they prepared to load her onto the litter. Once she was tucked in securely, the team members arranged themselves around the litter and prepared for the trip down the mountain.

A little over an hour later, they were back at the trailhead, and Lynette was being loaded into the waiting ambulance. A few curious onlookers had gathered, but no tall blonde woman was among them. Zach helped pack up their gear and rode back to headquarters. “Good job, everybody,” Ryan said. “It couldn’t have gone any smoother.”

At headquarters, they unloaded the Beast. Zach checked his watch, then decided to head back to the mine to finish his report. But first, he pulled out his phone.

“Hello?” Shelby answered right away.

“I was just on a Search and Rescue call near Cascade Falls,” Zach said. “There was a woman in the crowd who might have been Janie. Her back was to me, so maybe I’m wrong, but Eldon was there, and he thought it was her, too. She moved away before I had a chance to speak to her.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“No. I was busy with the rescue and couldn’t keep an eye on her.”

“Where is Cascade Falls?” she asked.

He gave her directions. “There were a lot of people there,” he said. “It’s a popular hiking area. It might not even have been her.”

“If you and Eldon both recognized her, it was probably Janie,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

Zach wondered if he should be more worried. But he couldn’t see the overly flirtatious blonde as a real threat, no matter what Shelby said. Janie was just a woman who had a crush on him. Harmless.

Back at work, he realized the break had done him good—the figures weren’t quite so boring, and by six he was happy with the job he had done.

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