Set the Dark on Fire (3 page)

Mike sighed.

“I’ll take care of it,” she said, sniffling. “I want it done right.”

“At least let Meza go with you.”

“He volunteered?”

“Well, yeah. He doesn’t want another incident any more than you do. And you know you can’t go alone.”

“Fine,” she said, trying to get used to the idea. It was hardly the first unpalatable task she’d had to perform. “Fine,” she repeated, feeling the hot sting of tears anyway.

Luke finished processing the scene for traces. In Vegas, he’d have had a team of investigators to collect evidence, but Tenaja Falls didn’t have the resources, or the corresponding crime rate, to justify such expenditures.

When he checked in on Shay, she was wiping tears from her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. He rested his forearms on the open window jamb, trying to avoid the forced intimacy wrought by the close confines of the vehicle. He didn’t want to get caught up in her drama, or to repeat the mistake of looking too deeply into her sultry blue eyes.

“So what’s it going to be?” he asked.

Her lips twisted a little at his brusque treatment. “I need to get some stuff at headquarters before we go. My GPS tracker. The long-range rifle.”

He felt his jaw tighten with annoyance. Deputy Snell wasn’t his favorite person, but Luke would rather go shoot a lion with him than an emotionally unstable female. Not that he knew anything about hunting. “What about Garrett?”

She looked over his shoulder, assessing Deputy Snell’s less-than-svelte physique. “He’d slow us down.”

“How far is it?”

“Five miles, uphill.”

She was right. Garrett got short-winded traversing the parking lot. Mike Shepherd better not have been lying when he claimed Shay Phillips could “track like an Indian and shoot like a white man
.”
“Give me a minute,” he said. Walking away from her, he instructed Garrett to take the trace evidence down to the sheriff’s office and catalog it.

Not that Luke really expected him to comply.

In the three days Luke had been acting as interim sheriff, Garrett Snell had called in sick, dozed at his desk, driven around aimlessly in his cruiser, and camped out in a booth at the local café. Luke suspected he took kickbacks from the casino for looking the other way when its patrons violated the speed limit. He may have been involved in some even darker dealings.

Luke didn’t really care one way or another. Garrett was a problem for his successor; Luke had more than enough on his plate right now.

Removing all thoughts of the troublesome deputy from his mind, he went back to the truck and got behind the wheel. Shay Phillips didn’t smell like cigarettes, he couldn’t help but notice. More like sun-warmed skin and sleepy woman and something faintly herbal, like wildflowers or handmade soap. In the short time she’d occupied the cab of his pickup she seemed to have transformed it into her own cozy personal space.

Determined to steel himself against her allure, and ignore her tantalizing scent, he drove on in silence, doing a good job of blocking her out. Until her stomach growled.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Shrugging, she hugged her sweatshirt to her chest in a forlorn, childlike gesture.

Luke didn’t have much of an appetite, but if they were going to hike, they needed to eat. She’d probably been too sick to hold anything down earlier, and he’d been working almost eight hours without a meal himself.

“I’ll stop by the café on the way out of town,” he decided. He didn’t need her getting weak or dehydrated on top of everything else.

Bighorn Café was one of two restaurants along Tenaja’s main drag. The other was Esparza’s Mexican Food. Luke had patronized both and suffered no ill effects.

In addition to these establishments and a couple of fast food joints, the sleepy little burg boasted an auto repair shop, a hardware store, and a grocer’s market. On the way out to the interstate, there was also a Super 8 motel, dueling gas stations, and a funeral parlor.

From what he could gather, Tenaja Falls was a convenient place to stop if your car broke down or ran out of gas. While visiting here, you could eat, sleep, or die.

After the frenetic pace of Las Vegas, Luke should have found Tenaja Falls restful and quaint. He didn’t.

He parked outside the café and held the door for Shay on the way in. She arched a brow at him when he chose a booth, but he figured only truckers sat at the counter. When Betty Louis, the proprietor, came to take their order, he realized the error of his ways.

The town was even smaller than he thought.

“Howdy, Sheriff,” she said. Betty was a tall woman, broad-shouldered and sturdy, with fading blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Yesterday she’d asked him if he was married, where he was from, and if he had a girl waiting for him back there, so he already knew she was an insatiable gossip. Or worse, a matchmaker.

“Looks like you had a nice time at the party last night,” Betty said, giving Shay a sly wink. She had a full carafe of coffee in one hand and a bandage on the other, as if she’d burned herself in the kitchen.

Cooking accidents and nosiness. Hazards of the trade.

“No,” Shay said, darting a glance at him. Although he was in uniform and on officiâl business, Betty was implying that he and Shay had spent the night together. “I mean yes, the party was …”

Betty smiled, delighted to watch her stammer.

“Just bring me the special,” Shay said with a glare, handing back her menu.

“Same for you, Sheriff?” When he nodded, Betty filled both their mugs from her carafe. “And all the coffee you can drink, on the house.”

Luke took a sip of coffee, which was nothing fancy but tasted a lot better than the swill at the station. Out of habit, he’d chosen a booth in the corner, and from that vantage point, he could see both exits while keeping an eye on his pickup through the fine coat of dust on the windows.

Bighorn Café was like a hundred other roadside diners in a hundred other podunk towns. From its worn vinyl booths and chipped Formica tabletops to its old-fashioned cash register and laminated menus, everything was outdated.

On the wall behind the counter, a single dollar bill had been framed.

“Sorry,” Shay said when Betty was out of earshot. “I would have told her we were working together, but I thought you might want to keep things quiet.”

“I do,” he admitted. “At least until the coroner releases a report.”

She hunched her shoulders a little, as if trying to make herself smaller, and wrapped her hands around the steaming mug. “I’ve been thinking it could have been kids. Maybe they found her on the dunes and took her to the Graveyard. They didn’t report the body because they’d been out after curfew, drinking and driving or whatever, so they brought her to a place where she was sure to be discovered.”

He’d thought of that, too. It was far-fetched, but possible.

“Or migrant workers,” she ventured. “We’ve got plenty of those around here. In the country illegally, afraid to call the police, that sort of thing.”

She seemed to be awaiting his response, so he said, “You may be right.”

“I mean, this is Tenaja Falls, not Las Vegas. The circumstances are strange, but people just don’t … off one another around here.”

He made a noncommittal murmur, sipping coffee. Unless he could prove the scene had been staged, there wouldn’t be much to investigate. “When a body has been moved or tampered with, procedure dictates we assume a homicide has occurred. Burial in an unmarked grave, for instance. That usually doesn’t happen when a person dies of natural causes.”

“Were you a homicide investigator in Vegas?”

“No. I was on a task force for organized crime.”

Luke was saved from her next question—what brought him to Tenaja—when Betty laid down hot, heaping plates. Eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast. It was typical small town fare, and even he could take comfort in that simplicity.

Shay picked up her fork and dug in, so she must have been feeling better. She ate with economical efficiency, apparently not interested in starving herself skinny or affecting dainty mannerisms. Her unself-consciousness amused him until she noticed him watching her.

She looked from her plate, which was almost empty, to his. Something like hurt darkened her eyes, and he understood the reason for it. She thought he found her provincial. And of course, he did.

Setting her fork aside, she picked up her coffee mug and drank from it, daring him to comment on her appetite. He wisely refrained. Nor could he think of any way to smooth things over, or understand why he wanted to.

His attention was drawn away from her a moment later when a cocky-looking young man came through the front door. Luke evaluated him the way he did everyone, with an instinctive assessment of height, weight, age, and attitude. His dark hair was slicked back, his Levi’s were rolled up at the cuffs, and his plain white T-shirt fit him more snugly than current fashion dictated. He moved like a man who could handle himself in a fight but wasn’t expecting one, and as he looked in their direction, his surly mouth went slack.

One glance at Shay, who had grown tense in the seat across from Luke, revealed the young man’s identity. Well, well. It was the infamous Jesse Ryan.

Jesse must have come to the same conclusion as Betty, which Luke found even more ridiculous the second time around. On-duty police officers weren’t supposed to parade around with female conquests. But maybe any man with Shay Phillips was considered guilty by association.

“Excuse me,” she said, sliding out of the booth and retreating to the ladies’ room.

Jesse’s eyes followed Shay until she disappeared. When they returned to him, narrowing with animosity, Luke amended his impression of the local Lothario. Maybe Jesse
was
spoiling for a fight.

Shay had told him that Jesse lived above the auto shop down the street. What she’d left unsaid was the relationship between them. Jesse stared after her like she was his unclaimed possession.

“You want a booth, Jesse?” Betty asked, because he was just standing there.

Jesse mumbled something about not being hungry anymore and went outside. Leaning his back against the building, he took a pack of smokes out of his pocket, struck a match on the heel of his black motorcycle boot, and lit one up.

He looked just like James Dean.

Luke threw a couple of bills on the table and rose to his feet, walking outside to grant the younger man’s unspoken invitation.

Against the brick wall, Jesse continued to smoke, feigning indifference.

“Jesse Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Sheriff Meza.”

His expressive eyebrows rose. “So?”

“Can you answer a few questions about Yesenia Montes?”

Those words seemed to penetrate his cool façade. “What about her?” he asked, meeting Luke’s gaze for the first time.

“Did you leave the Round-Up with her last night?”

Jesse opened his mouth to say no, but at that moment, Shay came through the double glass doors. Luke couldn’t have timed it better. Standing in front of them, she moistened her lips in a nervous, provocative gesture both of them were intensely aware of.

“Go wait in the truck,” he said. Although she didn’t appear pleased by his tone, she complied, so the gamble had paid off.

Jesse threw his cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel. He didn’t like the way Luke talked to Shay either, and Luke enjoyed needling him a bit more than he should have. He’d been a young, jealous fool himself, once upon a time, and knew from experience that it was always better to be the cause of envy than the source.

“I left with her,” Jesse muttered.

“Where did you go?”

“We walked to my place.” He indicated Tenaja Auto, a few doors down.

“What time?”

He shrugged, leaning his back against the brick siding. “A little after midnight, I guess. She bummed a cigarette. I went on up.” He paused for emphasis. “Alone.”

“Why didn’t she stay?”

“I didn’t invite her to.”

“Why not?”

He looked past Luke’s shoulder, to where Shay was sitting in the truck. “She wasn’t the one I wanted.”

3

Dark Canyon State Preserve, where Shay did her field research, was a mixed chaparral and live oak woodland a few miles west of Tenaja. Its northern border skirted the edge of the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation, the Anza-Borrego Desert stretched far and wide to the east, and to the south, there was only Mexico.

Mountain lions inhabited all of those areas. According to Mike Shepherd, the one they were after was on the preserve.

Dark Canyon was in the rain shadow of Palomar Mountain, so what few storm fronts rolled in from the coast rarely climbed past the summit. Tenaja Falls and its environs received more uninterrupted sunshine than the beach. The canyon was situated between the mountains and another low-lying ridge, so it also got plenty of shade, and Deep Creek ran through the center, so it had water, too. A break from the relentless heat and a little extra moisture gave the land a fresh, verdant look the rest of the area lacked.

It was a pleasant place to hike, picturesque and invigorating. Shay would have enjoyed herself if she were alone, unfettered by a job she didn’t want to do and a man she didn’t want to be with.

She set a grueling pace, wanting to test Luke’s city-boy limits and punish him for the way he’d looked at her in the diner.

Shay had grown up dirt poor, right here in Tenaja Falls. She may have a college degree and a career that supported her family, but she was only one step away from white trash, and she resented Luke Meza for making her feel like it.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have any difficulty keeping up with her. She was sweating like mad and dizzy from exertion, while he’d yet to utter a single complaint. Exercise and a good meal were the best cures for a hangover, in her opinion, and she felt better for having both, but she needed a break.

Conceding her defeat, she slowed to a stop, resting her back against a smooth sycamore. Taking small sips of water from her pack, she closed her eyes and concentrated on regulating her breathing.

When she was cooled down enough to speak, she focused her attention on him.

He was leaning against a tree, sweating as much as she was, if not more. The sight would have pleased her except that he also looked fit and virile and alarmingly sexy.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he panted.

She chuckled weakly. “You should have said something.”

He only shook his head, telling her he’d been too proud to do so. “Didn’t you hear me whimpering a mile back?”

Laughing, she let her eyes fall closed again, blocking out his appealing smile and dark visage. She found him very attractive, and that was a damned shame. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he considered Tenaja Falls a roadblock on his path to bigger and better things.

Shay, on the other hand, was here for the long haul. She was fond of the familial atmosphere and she loved this land like a mother. If Luke Meza thought she was small town, well, maybe he was right. However common, she was proud of her heritage, and however sordid, she wasn’t ashamed of her past.

Sighing, she adjusted her gun strap, which felt like it was burning a diagonal mark across her chest. His smile faded as his eyes followed her movements, reminding her that it wasn’t necessary for them to have similar interests.

They didn’t even have to like each other.

Shay wished she’d dressed with a little more care this morning, because it was hot. In mid-April, the weather was usually cool, especially in the higher elevations, but today a Santa Ana wind was blowing, bringing an increased fire hazard and warm, dry conditions.

Her sweatshirt had been abandoned in the truck, leaving her clad in a thin cotton tank top. The black lace push-up bra she was wearing underneath had gone great with the satin camisole from last night, but it was hardly appropriate for hiking.

The sheriff must have thought so, too, because he tore his gaze away from her chest. “How much farther?”

With trembling hands, she took the GPS tracker out of her pack to double-check Hamlet’s location. He was still near the top of the ridge, probably sleeping in a shady nook, awaiting sunset. “Only another half mile.”

She’d explained how the tracking system worked when they’d dropped by base headquarters, a small stucco building where she compiled research and studied wildlife data. It was there that she’d nursed an eight-week-old lion cub back to health after his mother had been killed by local ranchers. The cub had been reintroduced to the wild when they’d found a surrogate mother lion and added him to her litter.

To Shay’s amazement, Hamlet had not only lived, he’d thrived.

It had been a risky experiment, but a young lion couldn’t survive on his own until he was several years old, and prolonged contact with humans would only reduce his chances.

Shay had been careful not to treat him like a pet during the time they’d spent together. To do so would have been dangerous for both of them. But he’d been irresistibly cute! Maybe she’d spoken too softly, touched him too lovingly.

Had she done something to assuage his fear of humans? Did he remember her still?

Over the past five years, she’d seen Hamlet on a regular basis. After he’d survived into adulthood, Shay and her fellow research biologists had collared him with the GPS device. He’d been tracked and tranquilized for routine checkups. Just last year, she’d cleaned his teeth.

And now she would kill him.

“We’ll have to go slower as we get closer, and move as quietly as possible,” she said. “If he spooks, we’ll never catch up to him.”

“Why don’t you use dogs?”

Mountain lions could be treed fairly easily. In California, it was illegal to hunt lions for sport, but in other parts of the country the practice was widespread. And unfair to both animals, in her opinion. “Hunting dogs are a risk to the lions, and vice versa. Besides, this is a wildlife preserve. Wild animals avoid places domestic animals have been.”

He studied her face, then her rifle, and she knew he was wondering if she had the heart to shoot it. “How big is this lion?” he asked warily.

“Almost two hundred pounds at his last weigh-in.”

Before they’d set out, Luke had put on his gun belt. Now he placed his hand on the holster, eyeing the trail ahead of them with some trepidation.

Shay wanted to smile, because his Ruger 9mm was no match for Hamlet. Luke was probably good with his weapon, but it was designed for close range. If Hamlet got within fifty yards of them, he could move faster than any man’s hand.

She approved of his caution, however. A person would have to be stupid not to be afraid of a lion Hamlet’s size. That was why she was glad Garrett hadn’t come along. “I know the area pretty well,” she said, to calm herself as well as him. Emotional baggage or not, this was nerve-wracking business. “His mother used to live here. There’s a low hill directly across from the den we can use for cover. From there it’s an easy shot.”

He grunted at her oversimplification. “How many times have you done this?”

“Killed a lion? Never. But I’ve tracked and tranq’d plenty.” Taking another gulp of water, she bolstered her courage. “Ready?” She wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I want to get this over with.”

Queen’s Den wasn’t so much a cave as a sheltered rock outcropping with enough brush to hide the comings and goings of its inhabitants. Hamlet had been born and first captured at this place; now his life had truly come full circle.

Shay would much rather have tranquilized him and let the veterinary scientists at UC Davis handle a more humane euthanasia, but that was against policy. Several years ago, two victims were attacked by the same lion on the same day. The incident was unprecedented, but it created a scandal within the Department of Fish and Game. The warden was accused of dragging his feet, and the “shoot to kill” solution implemented afterward was very much a political maneuver.

It was up to her to make Hamlet’s passing as peaceful as possible.

Peering across a grassy, sun-drenched clearing, Shay attached the scope and lined up her shot. She was lying on her belly along the slope of the hill, ants crawling up her arms, pebbles digging into her elbows. A strand of hair fell into her eyes. She blew it out of her face.

“Okay,” she whispered, signaling Luke.

He had the stronger arm, so he threw the lure. The fist-sized balloon of deer blood exploded on impact, splattering a cluster of rocks below the den. Flattening himself next to her on the slope, he cupped his hands over his ears and waited.

Her heart roared with trepidation. Sweat stung her eyes.

For a long moment, she thought Hamlet wasn’t going to come out. A sated lion didn’t always answer the call of the lure, and it would be too risky to go in after him.

Then she saw him, moving stealthily, so low to the ground he was almost crawling. She couldn’t pull the trigger too early or he would bolt, but her body was taut as a wire, her finger screaming to flex.

Wait for it
, she told herself.
Just wait for it
.

Hamlet had excellent eyesight, but he didn’t see them. Lifting his nose in the air, he didn’t smell them either, for they were downwind. He only caught the scent of the lure, and walked right into its heady trap.

He came out into the clearing, muscles rippling beneath his tawny coat. Her heart jumped into her throat. He was immense. A healthy male in his prime, two hundred pounds of pure, unadulterated power.

He could close the gap between them in about fifteen seconds.

Beside her, Luke’s attention was rapt. Intuition told her he was sharing this experience with her, feeling the same conflict she was. They were in awe of the lion’s presence, exhilarated to be in such an intense, dangerous situation, and disturbed that a magnificent animal had to die this way.

Blood thundering in her ears, she lined him up in the crosshairs, stroking her finger over the trigger, waiting for the perfect opportunity …

And when she had it, she took the shot. Straight through the heart.

Hamlet fell like a titan.

Stumbling forward, he lost his footing and collapsed in a boneless heap. He didn’t get up. It had been quick and easy and virtually painless, just how Shay wanted it, but she wasn’t proud or satisfied or even numb.

She was devastated.

Rolling away from the rifle, she clenched her hands into fists and pressed them to her stomach, trying not to sob.

Luke tore his gaze from Hamlet’s lifeless form. “What happened?” he asked, instantly alert. Taking her by the wrists, he pulled her hands away from her body, searching for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, unable to speak. Unable to breathe.

His hold on her wrists loosened. Her lungs expanded and contracted, releasing her from panic’s grip.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, gentling his voice.

She closed her eyes, seeing the cub Hamlet had once been. Batting at dragonflies, leaping through foxtails. Falling asleep in the cradle of her arms, just like her brother, Dylan, had done so many times, so many years ago. “I bottle-fed him,” she whispered, feeling like a fool.

“Who?”

“Hamlet.”

He looked around in confusion. “The lion?” he said, his tone incredulous. “You bottle-fed that beast?”

She laughed so she wouldn’t cry. “He was just a baby then.”

His expression softened as he checked on Hamlet, making sure he was still down. Rather than reproaching her for the misplaced compassion, he rubbed his thumb over the bones in her wrist and let her hands go.

“You’re some crack shot,” he said admiringly, and she burst into tears.

They waited at a safe distance for the helicopter to land.

Luke felt the strange urge to comfort her while two men from UC Davis rolled Hamlet into a body bag and hefted him aboard the craft. Although Shay had remained stone-faced, for the most part, at the sight of a dead woman, she’d fallen apart after the lion went down.

He’d also been shaken by the incident. Judging by what he’d seen this morning, getting mauled by a lion was a horrible way to die, and when he’d caught his first glimpse of Hamlet creeping across the meadow, he’d been damned scared. He wasn’t comfortable putting his life in a stranger’s hands, let alone a tree-hugging Barbie who’d been partying all night, but her trigger finger hadn’t wavered and her aim was true.

Gazing upon the lion’s prone form, with Shay weeping silently beside him, he’d felt his own measure of sadness. Unlike humans, animals killed without malice. Luke’s ancestors would have mourned the loss of this rogue lion’s spirit.

The helicopter would take Hamlet all the way to UC Davis for analysis. His coat bore no trace of blood, but Shay said all cats were fastidious. Either way, forensics would tell the tale. His teeth, claws, fur, and stomach contents would be tested for human tissue.

She waved at the pilots as they lifted off, her expression sober. When the noise faded and the wind from the rotor died down, she surprised him by taking his hand.

And just like that, the mood changed. One moment he was lost in contemplation, a thousand miles away, the next he was right there beside her, having a very physical, very inappropriate response to the feel of her palm sliding against his.