Chasing Fire

back to you.”
    “L.B.” She rubbed her fingers between her eyebrows. “I can’t tell for sure, but the ground under and around the remains, the pattern of the burn . . . Hell, I think maybe somebody lit him—her—up. And there’s . . . I don’t know, but the angle of the head. It looks like the neck’s broken.”
    “Sweet Jesus. Don’t touch anything. Do you copy, Rowan? Don’t touch anything.”
    “Believe me, I won’t. I’ll radio Gibbons, give him a SITREP. Jesus, L.B., I think it’s a woman or a kid. The size . . .”
    “Hang in, Rowan. I’ll come back.”
    “Copy that. Out.”
    She steeled herself. She’d seen burned bodies before. She’d seen Jim, she thought, when they’d finally recovered his remains. But she’d never stumbled over one, alone, in the middle of an operation.
    So she took a breath, then radioed Gibbons.
    It took her more than an hour and a half to get back to her crew, after holding her position, and guiding two rangers in. She welcomed the heat, the smoke, the battle after her vigil with the dead.
    As she’d expected, Gibbons had the crew up the ridge, and the line held.
    “Holy shit, Ro.” Gibbons swiped a forearm over his blackened face. “You okay?”
    The time, the vigil, the hard reality of giving a statement hadn’t completely settled the raw sickness in her belly. “I’m a lot better than whoever’s back there. The rangers are down there now, and a Special Agent Somebody’s coming in. And an arson guy.”
    “Arson.”
    “It might be this fire was deliberately set, to cover up murder.” Because it felt as if it squeezed her skull, she shifted her helmet—but it did nothing to relieve the steady throbbing.
    “They don’t know yet,” she told him as he cursed. “Maybe it was some dumb kid messing around, but it looked to me like that could’ve been the point of origin. Putting the fire down’s first priority. The feds’ll handle the other. Where do you want me?”
    “You know you can pack out, Ro. Nobody’ll blame you.”
    “Let’s finish this.”
    She worked the saw line, while another part of the crew reinforced the scratch lines riding up toward the head. A fresher crew of jumpers attacked the other flank, down toward the tail.
    Countless times during the hours on the line, she pulled off to radio the other crew for progress, updated base, consulted with Gibbons.
    A few more hours to finish her off and mop up, she thought, and the crew would sleep in beds tonight.
    “What’s up?” Gull stopped by her side. “There are rumors up and down the line something is, and you’re the source.”
    She started to brush him off, but he looked her dead in the eye.
    “You can tell me now or tell me later. You might as well get it done.”
    She’d shared her body with him, she reminded herself, and her bed. “We’ve got her caged. If Gibbons can spare you, you can come with me to scout out smokes.”
    Cleared, they moved away from the line. Rowan beat out a spot the size of a basketball, moved on.
    And told him.
    “You think the person was murdered, and whoever did it started the fire to try to cover it up?”
    “I can’t know.” But her gut, roiling still, told her differently.
    “Smarter to bury it.” His matter-of-fact tone slowed the churning. “A fire like this brings attention. Obviously.”
    “I’ve never done it, but it seems to me killing somebody might impair logic. Or maybe the fire added to it. Plenty of people get off starting fires.”
    “They spotted this one at first light. From the progress it made by the time we jumped, it must’ve started late last night, early this morning. It was burning damn hot, had at least a hundred acres involved when we jumped at, what, about eight?”
    Odd, she realized, that talking it through, picking out the practical, calmed the jitters. “Yeah.”
    “The campground’s not that far west, but with that burned-out area between where you found the body and the campground, the fire sniffed east. Lucky for the campers.”
    The drumming inside her skull backed off, a little. Thinking was doing, she decided. Up until now she’d done too much reacting, not enough doing.
    “Maybe they were from the camp,” she speculated. “And came out on the trail, got into a fight. By accident or design, he kills her.”
    “Her?”
    “The size of the body. I think it was a woman or a kid, and since I don’t want to think it was a kid, I’m going with woman. He’d drag or carry her off the trail.