Chapter 8
“He’s still here.”
Every day since Charlie had arrived in Firelight Ridge four days ago, Lila delivered a report on Nick Perini, either from her own eyes at The Fang, or from town sources.
“Damn it. What’s he doing, just hanging out until he finds me?” Charlie flopped onto Lila’s bed, an antique four-poster left over from the copper mine days. Lila lived in what had been the original settlement’s hardware store. Genuine artifacts like iron anvils and whiskey barrels and crates of nails were still stashed here and there.
It was pretty cool, Charlie had to admit, but she hadn’t left the place since she’d used the hours between two and three in the morning to sneak away from Gunnar’s auto shop. That was the only time “cover of darkness” was available this time of year.
“I’m sorry.” Lila sat next to her, sympathy darkening her eyes to the color of pansies. “I tried to ask him what his plans were, but he kept flipping it around so I was answering questions.”
“It’s diabolical!” Charlie was so sick of being trapped inside this place, she could scream. But that would give her away. “Fucking Nick Perini.”
“He seems really nice,” Lila said tentatively. “Are you sure you shouldn’t just talk to him?”
“He’s a liar. He tricked me, he followed me, he outwitted me. You can’t trust him, Lila. Swear to me you won’t tell him anything important.”
“Of course I wouldn’t.” Lila crossed her heart in a gesture left over from their school days. “I mean, I wouldn’t plan to. But he’s really good at getting people to talk. I listened to him talk to Martha about her missing sheep, and now I know that she named each one of them after a different Barbara Cartland heroine. You know that romance writer who wrote like a thousand books? She’s read them all, multiple times. Good old Martha, I never would have?—”
“Lila, can we just focus for a minute?”
Charlie didn’t have time for one of Lila’s tangents. Scratch that, she had plenty of time. She just didn’t have the patience. “I’m going to lose my mind if I stay in here much longer. Nothing against your place,” she added quickly. “It’s the most interesting hardware store I’ve ever lived in.”
Lila sighed and looked around her place happily. “Isn’t it, though? I love being surrounded by so much history. I don’t even mind the ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“Metaphorically,” Lila said quickly. “Nothing to do with that dress.” She gestured at a faded house dress displayed on a mannequin just visible through the door to the living room. “Oops.”
“Lila,” said Charlie sternly. “You can’t tease me like that. I need to know everything now.”
Lila’s eyes lit up. “Are you sure? Because it’s a wild story. There was a mass murder here in Firelight Ridge back in the eighties. The dress belonged to one of the victims. She was just meeting the mail plane, minding her own business. Her husband was so grief-stricken that even after he sold the place to the town, he insisted that her dress be displayed so no one forgot about the murder spree.”
“Sure. Makes sense.” Charlie shook her head because it made no sense to her.
Lila fixed her with a wistful look. “Charlie, a lot of strange things have happened around here, that’s one of the reasons I like it. No one pretends to be normal here, so I don’t have to, either.”
Charlie felt like throwing her arms around her friend, so she did. “Normal is overrated. What does it even mean?”
Whatever it meant, Lila definitely didn’t qualify. Her intuitive abilities were off the charts, and had literally saved their lives back in high school, when she’d insisted they all skip a track meet that had ended in bloodshed.
Charlie shook off that memory. There was enough peril in the present moment, no need to dredge up more.
Lila pulled away from the hug. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to hide out in Firelight Ridge, you have to know what kind of place it is. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no law enforcement to speak of.”
“Sounds like a selling point right about now.”
“Okay, I get that.”
Charlie had explained to her friends that she’d made a big mistake, but had reversed her error, and would provide details as soon as she felt safe. Thank God she’d put that two million back so it didn’t haunt her conscience.
Lila moved on. “In a crisis, we generally only have each other to help out, since there’s no police or firefighters or sheriffs. It’s especially tough in the winter. The number of people who’ve gotten lost in the wilderness and frozen to death…”
Charlie shuddered. “I intend to be long gone by winter, so no chance of freezing to death.”
“Never say never. I mean, about the staying, not the freezing to death,” Lila added quickly.
“As soon as I get home, I’m going to send you a shipment of sub-zero snow gear. I’m not going to let you freeze to death either.”
“You’re such a darling.”
“You know you’re the only one who thinks so, right?” Most people thought she was intimidating, or a smartass, or an elusive jet-setter.
“That’s because they don’t know you the way I do. And that’s because you don’t let them.”
Trust Lila to see right through to her core. “Let’s get back to my problem, shall we? I can’t stay in here forever.”
“Right. I had an idea about that.”
“I’m open to anything. Anything except talking to Nick.”
Lila climbed off the bed and disappeared into the living room, which had been the storefront area of the hardware store. It had a lovely bay window that looked out on Pioneer Boulevard, which unfortunately meant that Charlie felt too exposed out there.
When Lila came back, she held a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Fire Peak Lodge is hiring for the summer. It’s halfway up Fire Peak, really hard to get to and very exclusive. Most of the guests come by helicopter, if you can believe it. The same guests have been coming for years, so it’s just about impossible to get a room there. All the staff live on site because the drive takes so long. Most of them only come into town on their days off, if that. It’s gorgeous up there. You know that perfect triangular mountain with the sunset colors? The lodge is halfway up, on a lower slope, so you can see the peak.”
Charlie took the slip of paper. “What sort of positions are they hiring for? I could use a job. My cash is going to run out soon.” She couldn’t touch her bank accounts until she was sure she was off everyone’s radar.
“Hostess, server, dishwasher, chambermaid, driver, office manager, you name it. They have a chef who comes back every year, but they do need sous-chefs.”
“Will they pay cash?”
“Probably. It’s the Wild West out here, haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Better and better. It didn’t matter to Charlie what job she filled. It was a safe place that wasn’t Lila’s bedroom. Sold.
“Maybe I’ll let them decide where they want me. Anything except hostess. If Nick decided to get his ass up there, he might spot me.”
“You do know that he’ll probably spot you eventually, right?”
“He can’t hang around forever.” She looked at the phone number again, a sense of hope rising. “Fire Peak Lodge, huh?”
“Yes. April’s the owner. She’s a bit of a hermit. They say she lost the love of her life in a tragic accident and never recovered. Anyway, she comes to The Fang now and then. She’s friends with Bear. I can tell her you want a job, if you like.”
Charlie sighed. “Yes, please and thank you. I’m afraid to leave even to make a phone call.”
As Lila left, Charlie waved at her wistfully, feeling like a restless house cat. She couldn’t even cruise the internet. Damn that Nick Perini and his persistence.
“It’s you and me again, Goldilocks.” She sprinkled some food into the tank, which sat atop an old washtub. “Just when you thought you were rid of me. Ready for some more stories?”
The only form of entertainment she’d found so far was an old safe with a rusty lock that had come apart in her hands. The safe was empty except for some stray coins, but in the process of messing with the lock, she’d dislodged the safe just enough to spot an old accordion folder that had fallen behind it.
Intriguing! At least for someone with no Internet.
She went back to the folder now. It was chock full of old paperwork and snapshots of the good old pioneer days of Firelight Ridge. A miner panning for gold in a creek. The mail plane being unloaded on a frozen airstrip, with a crowd of bundled-up residents forming a kind of bucket brigade of packages. A group of Native Alaskans—Ahtna, she figured—walking up a trail along Fire Peak.
She found several photos of two men who looked like best buddies, always with big grins on their bearded faces, sometimes with a salmon they’d caught, or a deer they’d shot. In one of the shots, a woman, so young she was probably still a teenager, sat in the back of a truck with them, waving at the camera. She was tiny but she must have been formidable, Charlie thought. Firelight Ridge in those days was even more rough and tumble than it was today.
Most interestingly, she’d found an old composition notebook filled with someone’s jagged handwriting. She couldn’t find any name to identify the writer. Some pages were devoted to long shopping lists—dried pinto beans, block of cheese, canned tomatoes, that kind of thing. Games of hangman occupied a good chunk of the notebook. Then there were the political rants, or maybe questions would be more accurate.
She read aloud to Goldilocks, who swayed gently in her tank.
“‘Can wealth ever be considered moral? Can the concept of private property be rewound? If not, how to reconcile?’ Okay, let’s skip the political stuff. Moving on.”
She flipped through the pages.
“‘Why was I born into this misery that I can neither leave nor tolerate? Why am I not a bear? Bears are born free and wild. That’s my heaven. But I’m in hell. Neither free nor wild, no matter what I do. Great Spirit, take me away.’ Damn, this poor guy. Or gal. It’s hard to tell which. What do you think, Goldie?”
Scattered through the notebook were various symbols and letter combinations that she couldn’t interpret. If she had internet, she could look them up.
Except that she needed to stay off the internet for now. And there was no internet at Lila’s house. And this notebook didn’t even belong to her. Hadn’t she decided to stop skirting the law?
With a sigh, she dropped the notebook back into the folder and stashed it behind the safe, exactly where she’d found it.
“I hope you kept it together, dude,” she murmured to the mystery writer. “I bet the winters here could send anyone over the edge.”