wacky, creating a mythical bogeyman instead of following the evidence. There’s a reason half of all arson cases are never solved. It’s tricky. He didn’t have what he needed to make his case that there even was a firebug at work, never mind who it might be.”
“He’d been a firefighter,” Nick said calmly. “He’d caught arsonists before. He said this one was different. He was working on a profile.”
“Did he share any details with you?” Jo asked.
“Someone very skilled, not impulsive or purely opportunistic—not just about wildland fires and massive conflagrations, or structural fires, or murder. Someone who did it all.”
“A hybrid,” Elijah said.
“Man, woman?” Jo asked.
“He didn’t know. He was convinced he was after a cold-blooded killer who wouldn’t stop until he was captured or dead. Jasper wasn’t given to hyperbole. That doesn’t mean he was right.”
Rose realized she had gone still. Elijah had, too, and she was aware of him watching her, gauging her reaction to Nick, to what he was saying.
Jo closed her fingers around the metal tap. “Do you think Vanderhorn was targeted by this guy? Was he the victim of premeditated murder?”
Nick gave her an unflinching look. “Yes.”
“This all has to be hard for you.” Jo’s tone softened slightly. “You were friends, and you knew he believed he was after what amounted to a serial killer. But you couldn’t protect him. You couldn’t save him.”
“We tried. Sean and I both did. We weren’t the only ones, either.” Nick glanced at Rose, his expression giving nothing away, then added, “It was a bad day.”
Jo turned to Rose. “You were in L.A. then. What all were you up to?”
She’d been anticipating the question. “I was training firefighters in advanced dog handling techniques. I’d been there several days.”
“Were you staying with Sean?” Jo asked.
“Yes.” She carefully avoided meeting Nick’s eye, knowing Jo as well as Elijah would notice. “I had Ranger with me. I volunteered to help search for a boy who’d gone missing during a mandatory evacuation because of the wildfire.”
Jo leveled her gaze back on Nick. “You and Sean were in big trouble out there, weren’t you?”
“It was a close call, but we were prepared to handle the conditions.” Nick shrugged. “We had backup.”
“Vanderhorn wasn’t prepared?”
“He shouldn’t have been there.”
“Why was he?”
Nick paused before he answered. “I think he was lured.”
“It had to be tough,” Jo said. “Knowing a friend was trapped. Finding him.”
Rose thought of Nick that night as he’d pushed back his emotions and focused just on her, or at least on making love to her. He hadn’t wanted to talk, or to think. Looking at him now, she could see he wasn’t the same man he’d been then. He was under tight control, and he was thinking, putting the pieces of the past months together. He didn’t respond to Jo’s comment and moved around to the other side of the old maple.
Elijah positioned his drill at a spot for a tap. “Vanderhorn was off duty?”
“Yes,” Nick said, stepping into snow that had drifted against the base of the maple. “He went out to the canyon on his own. He shouldn’t have, but he wasn’t reckless. The fire should have been out.”
Jo tossed Elijah another metal tap before turning back to Nick. “Is it possible Vanderhorn wasn’t lured out to that canyon but instead let his obsession get away from him and put you, Sean and others in danger as well as himself?”
Nick met her gaze straight on. “Yes, that’s possible.”
“What about Sean?” Elijah asked.
“Sean didn’t know Jasper that well.”
Jo leaned against the tree, watching Elijah drill the tap hole. “Do any of you have a candidate for this killer?” she asked Nick. “Could it be one of your own?”
“Another smoke jumper? No.”
“What about Feehan?”
“Jasper didn’t go over names with me.”
“Feehan look familiar to you? Could you two have run into each other in California?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t recall ever having met him, but I meet a lot of people.”
“Trent Stevens?” Jo asked.
“Sean and I have actors and screenwriters come to us for help with research on a fairly regular basis. Stevens could have been one. I don’t remember him specifically. He might not have used his real name.”
“Grit Taylor and my sister discovered a dead woman in his apartment,” Jo said. “Did Vanderhorn say anything that in retrospect might tie his investigation to Portia Martinez?”
“Not to me, no,” Nick said without hesitation.
“We want to find him,” Jo said, stating the obvious.
“Is there any chance that Derek Cutshaw or Robert Feehan knew him?”
She didn’t answer.
Rose helped Elijah finish placing taps in their tree and moved to the next one. Jo showed Nick where to drill on their maple, the placement and number of taps determined by the size of the tree. When they finished, they headed up the hill to the sugar shack. Rose and Nick, who were in boots and not on snowshoes, fell in behind Jo and Elijah.
The air was warm, more like late March than late February, but Rose doubted Nick even noticed. He moved silently next to her, preoccupied, she thought, with his conversation with Jo. When they came to the sugar shack, Jo and Elijah took off their snowshoes and went inside to check out the new evaporating pan.
Brett Griffin walked up from the stream below the small clearing. “I was taking pictures of this place. Classic. I want one of a galvanized bucket hanging from a maple tree.” He was on snowshoes, without poles, his camera around his neck. “The light’s perfect right now—moody but serene.”
Rose stood next to Nick by the fireplace. “Are you spending all your time taking pictures these days?” she asked.
“As much as I can, but I still teach skiing.” Brett seemed slightly out of breath as he raised his camera. “I’ve had the police all over me now that Robert’s dead, too. I don’t blame them, but it’s good to be out in the woods, away from all that.”
“It’s hard to think of Robert as an accomplished arsonist,” Rose said.
Brett snapped a picture of the sugar shack. “How accomplished was he considering the way he died? Maybe there is no arsonist and Robert made all this happen to cover up his involvement in drugs, or for his own amusement. Maybe he mixed truth and fiction to suit his purposes and instigated fights, took advantage of the situation.”
Rose hadn’t heard Brett speak so articulately about what had happened, but he seemed almost embarrassed and quickly focused his camera on the fireplace and took another picture.
Nick scooped up a handful of wet snow and patted it into a small snowball. “Do you think you’ll stay in Black Falls?” he asked.
“Not past spring,” Brett said, calmer. “Once the snow melts and the daffodils pop up, I’m on to Colorado to teach wilderness skills and work on another photography project there.”
“A fresh start,” Rose said.
He gave her a feeble smile. “Yeah, I guess. I wish I’d done more to figure out what was going on with Derek and Robert. That’s going to be hard to put behind me. I can’t tell if the police think Robert was actually one of Lowell Whittaker’s paid killers.”
She couldn’t, either. “If he was, did Lowell choose Black Falls because of Robert—or vice versa?”
“The police aren’t going into that kind of detail with me. It’s unnerving to think Robert was a paid killer.” He averted his eyes. “At least he and Derek can’t hurt anyone else. Then again, they can’t provide answers, either.”
“It’s been a difficult few days,” Rose said quietly.
