inches of snow had fallen late last night and into the morning. The sky was beginning to clear, a few streaks of blue breaking through the white, the late-morning sun beaming through in a thin ray of light. There’d been a brief alert overnight for a pair of hikers lost on state land, but they’d turned up unharmed.
Ranger paused just past the boulder, his golden coat standing out against the white landscape. Rose caught up with him, then looped behind a hemlock, its branches laden with snow, onto a shortcut to the sugar shack.
Nick eased in next to her. She smiled at him. “It’s a beautiful day. I’d love to head down to the lake after we’re done at the sugar shack. The trail’s steep. It’s a little tricky even on snowshoes.”
“You can manage?” he asked her.
“Of course, but I’ve done the trail practically since I could walk.”
“No worries, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
She grinned. “All right, we’ll do it.”
Rose took the lead again in the soft, undisturbed snow. She had strapped her ready pack to her back, standard whenever she was out in the woods. If either of them fell, she had basic supplies for repairs and first aid, as well as food and water.
Last night after dinner, Nick had gone straight up to his room at the lodge. Rose had stopped in the bar for a drink with a few friends. She hadn’t wanted to go to her room too early. She’d needed time to put their kiss out of her mind, to cool her reaction to him and to convince herself they’d had to get that out of their system and it wouldn’t happen again.
Nick hadn’t surfaced again until after she’d had breakfast and met with Lauren to work on winter fest. Rose had struggled to focus. She’d slept badly, preoccupied with Nick and whether Derek’s death and Robert’s whereabouts could be connected to the murder of the woman in Beverly Hills.
She glanced back at him gliding through the snow and felt the sparks between them all over again. Nothing had cooled. He was strong, athletic and very sexy. She could still feel his kiss and her response to him.
Utter madness, and she wasn’t the mad type.
The path curved along the edge of a finger ridge. Rose noticed prints in the snow a few yards down through the trees. Boots, she decided. Not skis or snowshoes. Given the fresh snow, the prints had to be relatively recent.
Ranger paused, his head in the air. He’d obviously picked up a scent and looked back at her, expectantly. She motioned for him to stay.
Nick came up beside her. She pointed out the tracks. “For all we know,” she said, “they’re from a guest on the trail of an owl.”
“Stay close to me.”
He adjusted his ski poles and pushed through the snow. Ranger stayed at Rose’s side on her command. This wasn’t a search, at least not yet. Nick moved deliberately, his strides controlled, neither aggressive nor tentative as the prints led into the woods toward the lake. The ground was uneven under the deep snow, the going difficult, requiring concentration and skill.
Finally they picked up a trail with enough switchbacks to keep the trek from getting too steep. Ranger grew excited, agitated and barked, looking up at Rose, eager for the command to track. “Ranger, heel,” she reminded him.
Rose spotted an orange dome tent, designed for winter conditions, pitched on a level spot amid white pines, just above a stream encased in snow and thick, opaque white ice.
A black scarf lay in the trampled snow in front of the tent.
Nick put a hand on her hip. “Hold on,” he said.
She noticed now. The air smelled of gasoline.
A small canister of what appeared to be Coleman fuel was turned over, its contents spilled out into the snow.
Nick dropped his hand from Rose’s side and checked the tent, its flaps up, its opening unzipped. He peered inside, then looked at Rose as she eased her pack off her shoulders. “Is anyone in there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s empty.”
“It’s Robert Feehan’s tent, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a radio? I imagine there’s no cell service out here.”
She nodded and dug her handheld radio out of her pack. She contacted the lodge and alerted A.J. to the presence of the campsite and described its location.
“You’re with Nick?” her brother asked.
“Yes. It’s just the two of us. No one else is here.”
“All right. I’ll get there as soon as I can—”
“No, A.J., you need to stay there. You know you do. Call the police. I’ll radio you the second I know more.” Even as she spoke, the smell of smoke mixed with the gas in the still, cold air. “A.J.—” She caught her breath. “A.J., there’s a fire.”
Nick pointed through the trees, past the stream. “There.”
“It’s at the lake,” Rose told her brother, then gave him what information she could and switched off the radio. Thick, gray smoke was drifting up above the trees now. Nick clearly was anxious to get moving. “How far to the lake?”
“Five minutes if we move fast.”
“Let’s go.” He shifted his gaze to her as a slight breeze stirred in the evergreens. “Stay close to me.”
“I’ve been on this trail a million times, and someone could need our help.”
“Rose—”
“It’s okay, Nick. This is what I do.”
He nodded. “All right. Lead the way.”
Rose returned to the trail, heading down a sharp curve in the deep snow. Ranger bounded just ahead of her. She was less aware of Nick behind her but wasn’t concerned he couldn’t manage the conditions.
Smoke became more noticeable, thicker in the air as it rose in the trees on the hill above the lake. Rose reminded herself that the cabins were unoccupied and Jo and Elijah were out of town.
She almost stumbled. Was he working at the lake?
Someone else could have seen the smoke by now and called 911. Fire trucks could already be en route.
Nick moved next to her as they reached one of the most run-down of Jo Harper’s dozen cabins on the edge of the lake.
Ranger barked, on full alert. Rose saw what had him upset. The small cabin that Grit Taylor had occupied before his return to Washington was on fire, fully engulfed in flames.
No one inside could have survived.
Rose told Ranger to sit. She couldn’t let him plunge into a dangerous situation. “We need to make sure no one’s in any of the cabins,” she said to Nick, forcing herself to remain calm, professional.
“I’ll do that,” Nick said.
She knew she didn’t need to tell Nick Martini what to do in a fire. He kicked off his snowshoes and was on his way. She removed her own snowshoes and peered down the hill, trying to see if Bowie’s van was on the access road.
A scream—a woman, terrified—rose up from a cabin closer to the frozen lake.
Jo? Was she here after all?
“Ranger, stay,” Rose said, then ran through the snow behind Nick.
He charged to the cabin’s only door, but it was padlocked from the outside. He grabbed a splitter from a woodpile and smashed through the door. He raced inside. In two beats, he came out again, with Dominique Belair over one shoulder.
He shoved her into Rose’s arms. “This place could be rigged,” he said. “It could go up in flames. Move back.
Rose didn’t hesitate and half carried Dominique, sobbing, gulping in air, down to the road. Dominique sank onto a snow-covered rock between the road and the lake. She was shaking with fear, shivering with the cold. She had on a winter jacket over leggings and running shoes, but she wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves.
