1
I WAS PEERING DOWN at two broken ski poles on Yosemite’s Line of Fire when the call came in to my satellite phone. With the gusting winds at my back, I debated even trying to wrestle the thing out of my pocket, but the park rangers flanking me on either side were getting antsy. One grunted, “Do you need to take that, ma’am?”
I nodded. “Should just take a second.”
Bracing myself against a tree, I got ahold of my sat phone and immediately recognized the number as the Investigative Services Branch field office. I took a breath, the kind that rattled a bit on the way in. I hoped the caller figured it was altitude, not nerves.
“Felicity Harland,” I said.
“Special Agent Harland with the Investigative Services Branch?”
“That’s—yes.” I was still getting used to my new title. The caller didn’t stumble over it, which made me think he was probably a chief ranger. He had a gravelly voice that could only have come from decades spent in the cold, dry air. I’d been warned by seasoned ISB agents that a lot of these older rangers lost their social skills over the years—not that they’d had them in abundance to begin with. Rangering didn’t tend to attract social butterflies.
“Hello, ma’am. This is Rick Corrigan with the Park Service,” he said. “I’m the chief ranger out of Mineral King Ranger Station in Sequoia. You familiar with it?”
I was, thanks to an extensive orientation to the National Park System in the months prior. There were sixty-two national parks in the United States, and in terms of annual visitors, Sequoia was somewhere in the middle. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“I called the ISB switchboard, and they told me you were the one covering my territory this time of year. That right?”
I had my schedule memorized—that is to say, the one that came down from headquarters in Washington D.C. My first official assignment had me working the nine California national parks, but it wasn’t a permanent post. In ISB, temporary duty assignments were typical; you could be sent to Alaska one week and Florida the next. For the next six months, though, I was more or less based in California, which was not an easy assignment. Yosemite was essentially Disneyland at this point, with millions of visitors every year.
“Yes, sir,” I said again.
“Well, I’ve got a situation out here.”
A situation—probably the most dreaded word in my vocabulary. It itched the corner of my brain that liked facts and logic and hard evidence. I could handle a dead body or an accident or even murder, but I didn’t like the sound of “a situation.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I’ve got an abandoned campsite way up at Precipice Lake,” he said. “I called you ’cause the ranger who found it doesn’t feel right about it.”
I’d been warned about such calls. An abandoned campsite wasn’t a crime in and of itself, and to be honest, it wasn’t all that unusual for people to ditch their stuff in the woods. The most common explanation was that a group of delinquents with no concern for “leave no trace” had simply moved on out of boredom. Usually the rangers waited a while to see if the campers returned, and if they didn’t, then they called ISB.
“What did the ranger say?” I asked.
He took a moment to consider his reply. “Well, he said the tent hasn’t been wastin’ out there all winter—it looked like somebody’d been there just a day or two ago. Left in a hurry, though. Gear all over the place. Oh, and about the gear—it’s nice. Real fancy stuff. Glampist is the outfit. You ever heard of ’em?”
“I think so,” I said.
There was a pause.
“Actually, no,” I admitted.
“It’s a private company that specializes in luxury camping,” he said. “In other words, the devil incarnate.”
I pictured a demon pitching a diamond-encrusted tent. “I see,” I said.
“There’s a bunch of ’em in the business,” he said. “Somebody takes you out to the trailhead or wherever it is you wanna go, and they set up the camp for you, cook your food, wipe your butt. It’s a thing now.”
I could picture this grizzled ranger shaking his head the way older folks did when lamenting the habits of the younger generation. My parents did it, too.
“These damn Millennials,” he went on. “I don’t know why they can’t just stay in their fancy apartments and watch a nature show.”
As a rule, I rather enjoyed listening to the older generation complain about clueless youth, but I didn’t want to be standing on the Line of Fire any longer than I had to. “Mr. Corrigan, I only get involved if you suspect a crime has been committed.” I tucked my head against the wind. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
He let the silence play out for a bit before asking, “How old are you, ma’am?”
“Pardon?”
“’Cause I’m sixty-eight. I’ve been a ranger in Sequoia for comin’ on forty-five years. I’ve dealt with hundreds of lost hikers, and lemme tell you, the world’s changed. The young folk, now, they come up here with all kind of gadgets. It’s real hard to get lost these days.”
“I don’t know, sir,” I said, with gentle skepticism, fully aware that my ranger guides were listening in. “I hear it still happens from time to time.”
“Not if you’re campin’ with the likes of Glampist.”
“Is it possible they went off on their own?”
He sucked in a breath. “It’s possible, but like I said, these types don’t like to do any actual work out here—they don’t explore, hike, whatever. Some of ’em hire mules or a private chopper to drop them off at the campsite. God forbid they lift a finger.”
“Was there any blood at the campsite? Signs of a struggle?”
“My ranger didn’t report that, no.”
I wondered how reliable this ranger was. In Yosemite, a lot of the rangers were lifers, in larger part because YOSAR—Yosemite’s search-and-rescue team—was world-renowned. But Sequoia was a much smaller and lesser known national park than its neighbor to the north. Corrigan’s ranger could very well be a kid fresh out of high school with no investigative experience whatsoever.
“Tell me again when he found the campsite,” I said.
“About an hour ago. He was up there conducting a wildlife survey.”
Today was Monday, April 8th. I made a note of the date and time of the discovery on my hand because my iPad had died—which was unfortunate for all kinds of reasons. I used the same model that was issued to the military for their missions, but mine, somehow, had decided to crap out on me an hour into the hike up Line of Fire. The only good news was that I had a pen from a LaQuinta Inn in my jeans pocket.
“Any clues to where they might have gone?” I asked him. “Footprints?”
“No. Not up there. It’s all rock.”
“How about search and rescue? Have you mobilized your local resources?”
He pushed out a breath. “Not yet. I called the glamping company again, and they told me there’s no problem on their end.”
“Did they give you the names of who was camping there?”
“No, ma’am.”
Of course not. My mentors at ISB had told me about these luxury camping services and their obsession with protecting their clientele’s privacy, but I had yet to interface with any of them. It made sense that Sequoia or Yosemite—the parks with relatively easy access to Silicon Valley and Hollywood—would be the first to go that way.
Corrigan asked, “You nearby?”
“I’m in Yosemite,” I said. “On a mountain, actually.”
“Might not be worth your time, then. Got a storm movin’ in.”
“The weather’s irrelevant, Mr. Corrigan. You called me, so I’ll be there.”
I was already picturing the drive down the 41 to the 99, which I’d done once as part of a training assignment. Aside from the first and last thirty minutes, which took place on mountain roads, the route down to Sequoia was the kind that could crush your soul or lull you to sleep, depending on your mood. The highlight was Fresno at the halfway point, with its abundance of chain restaurants and fast-food joints. I always relished a late-night stop at In-N-Out Burger, even though I’d never admit that to a guy like Corrigan.
I checked my watch. “By the time I get off this mountain, it could be five o’clock. How far is the campsite from your ranger station?”
“Twenty-two miles.”
My mouth went dry. “Oh.”
I was hoping Rick Corrigan couldn’t hear the deep-seated fear in my voice. Seasoned rangers could cover that kind of mileage in a couple days if they had to, but I wasn’t seasoned. Worse, I wasn’t sure I was physically capable of a twenty-two-mile hike through Sequoia at a ranger’s pace. If we had to go out there on foot, I could very well embarrass myself in front of Corrigan and his team long before I had the chance to prove my competence as an investigator.
“Can you get a helicopter to take us up there?” I asked.
“What? Couldn’t hear you.”
“Are there any choppers available?” I practically shouted in humiliation.
“I could try, but no guarantees. We’re low on personnel this time of year.”
“I understand.” Deep down, though, I was already fixated on those twenty-two miles. I might be able to manage that distance if it was flat, but with thousands of feet of intervening elevation change, no way. Corrigan didn’t know about the rods and screws in my back, and I didn’t want to have to tell him. All in all, this was not a good start to my second official case.
“So what’s the terrain like up there?” I asked.
He barked a laugh. “It’s not a stroll down the beach, if that’s what you mean. There’s about ten thousand feet of elevation change ’tween here and there, and a lot of it’s unmarked trails. My best guy can probably get up there in a day, but for the average backpacker, it’s a three-day hike. This time of year, maybe even four.”
Turning my back on the two rangers listening in, I tilted my head toward the sky in a feeble nod to the weather gods. The skies were clear, at least—that brilliant alpine blue that just didn’t exist in the city. I tried to draw some strength from it. It had been three years since my accident—three years, three surgeries, and some three-hundred visits to various physical therapists. Despite all that, I felt like if I couldn’t get to Precipice Lake on my own two feet, then I didn’t belong out there at all.
Corrigan asked, “What time are you comin’ in?”
I did the calculations in my head—an hour to get off this rock, another thirty minutes at my rental cabin to pack up and leave, and a good five hours on the road to Sequoia, assuming Mineral King was centrally located in the park. Seven hours, then—including a stop at In-N-Out. That was a must. I would need that milkshake to help me power through.
I wanted to tell him I’d be there tomorrow, but national parks weren’t like the urban grid; evidence tended to disappear within days, even hours. If there was one lesson my instructors at ISB had managed to drill into my head, it was to get to the scene of any potential crime as quickly as possible, even if that meant pulling an all-nighter on the road.
“I can be there by midnight,” I said. “If your missing party returns to the campsite before then, call my cell phone. Here’s the number.” I gave it to him.
“There’s no sense in drivin’ like a maniac—”
“I’ll be there tonight.”
“Alrighty,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you at the station.”
After he hung up, I called my assistant agent in charge, or ASAC, at ISB headquarters—Ray Eskill. A twenty-five-year veteran of ISB, Ray believed in expediency, efficiency, and common sense. He wouldn’t be thrilled about my decision to leave Yosemite so soon. For one thing, he wasn’t convinced I had the chops to juggle multiple cases. I knew this because he’d told me so on my way out the door last week. The dead skier at the Line of Fire was my first solo investigation, and to be fair, it was a softball; the victim had clearly collided with a tree. An abandoned luxury campsite was a little less clear-cut.
“Ray Eskill,” came the greeting. “Who’s this?”
“It’s Felicity Harland.”
“Who?”
“Felicity—”
“I’m just messing with you, Harland. Jesus. What’s the problem?”
I tried to smile, but those muscles often failed me during my conversations with Ray. “No problem, it’s just—I got a call from the chief ranger out of Mineral King in Sequoia.” I told him the rest of it—or at least as much as I thought he’d want to hear. Ray had a habit of cutting me off when he was bored or impatient. I tried to stick to the facts.
“Well,” he said, once he’d digested my thirty-second rapid-fire report. “I guess you oughta go down there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” I said, projecting my voice with such force that both of the rangers standing nearby turned their heads. “I’ll circle back with the chief in Yosemite by the end of this week. I don’t think it’ll take long—the glampers probably just wandered off for a day hike.”
“Could be,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet on it.”
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