“If,” she said, backing away a step.

  “I’ll make it happen.”

  He probably would. She folded the check and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. Abruptly, Adam stepped into the hotel hallway and shut his room door behind him. Then he swooped in, wrapped his arms tightly around her and planted a hungry kiss on her lips.

  She pushed him away. “Adam!”

  He shrugged. “You’re single, I’m single. Oh babe, we used to be such a hot item.”

  “Ancient history. Now I have Chase,” she reminded him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

  That was just plain cruel. “Good night, Adam.”

  “See you later, Sammie.”

  * * * * *

  She was still smoldering when she arrived home. There had been no updates from the hospital, which she chose to interpret as good news, or at least neutral news. Fortunately, Blake had chilled a bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge. She poured herself a tall glassful.

  “So the interview went well,” Blake snidely observed from his television observation post on the couch.

  “We have a television again?”

  “We do. On sale at Best Buy. Courtesy of my renter’s insurance.”

  “Why can’t you sing?” Zeke screeched from his cage. “Alexa, play NPR!”

  “Who uncovered him?” Sam asked.

  “Hannah claimed parrot abuse.”

  Sam surveyed the room.

  “She’s in my bedroom Instagram-ing or TikTok-ing or something,” he responded. “Her train leaves tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll miss her. She’s been a big help pulling this house back together.”

  “Okay! Okay! Alexa, what time is it?” Zeke squawked.

  “It’s bedtime in the Pacific Northwest Amazon.” Sam pulled the canvas cover over the bars of the macaw’s cage.

  “Bye for now!” Zeke added a shriek for the final exclamation point.

  “Simon’s curled up on your bed, I think.” Blake’s gaze moved back to the television screen.

  Picking up her wine glass, Sam said, “I’m headed that way myself.”

  “By the way, I like your new look.” Blake patted the top of his head and then pursed his lips at her.

  “I’ll get you back tomorrow,” Sam promised.

  Chapter 39

  There were few chairs in the dinner tent in the tiny-home village. Maya guessed that the lucky occupants of the tiny-homes had dragged off the majority of them, if they’d ever existed, and now most of those occupants took their dinners off to their private spaces. The others stood, eating from plates on the serving table. Maya and Nancy shared a bench, balancing their plates awkwardly on their laps. Piquant danced at their feet, his eyes bright, hopeful of a handout. Nancy gave him a crust of bread, and so Maya did, too. And they both let the small dog lick their soup bowls clean.

  Nancy introduced her to two middle-aged women in the village, Petra and Leanne. Both appeared to be in their fifties or possibly even older, with reddened faces and ragged hair, and although her hands and face were clean, Leanne smelled as if she’d been sorting through garbage all day. Which, Maya knew, was a real possibility. Or perhaps she had retrieved the fleece jacket and ripped jeans she was wearing out of a dumpster.

  The women introduced her to the men who remained in the dining tent. Most were so uninteresting that Maya immediately forgot their names. Two men were to be avoided, Petra explained, pointing them out, adding, “Not really dangerous, but creepy.”

  One, a greasy knit hat pulled down over his hair, was muttering to the air in front of him. Maya wondered if he actually envisioned someone standing across from him. The other sprawled open-legged in one of the chairs, his right hand moving in his pants pocket as he leered, his gaze so fixed on her that she felt naked. She welcomed the weight of the gun in her own pocket.

  After the serving containers were empty of food and the villagers had tossed their plates in the trash, Nancy announced she was taking Piquant for a walk.

  “Back in an hour or so,” she told Maya.

  Lights blinked on around the camp. So, the tiny homes did have electricity. Those lucky people. She noticed now that there were also a few poles with plugs on them. She’d use one of those to charge her cell phone.

  Petra and Leanne melted away to wherever they’d come from. Careful to avoid Troy, Maya helped the church people clean up and carry coolers and utensils back to their van. After Irma handed her a printed invitation to save herself, they drove away, and she dropped the flyer in the paper recycling bin. There was nothing left to do, so she walked back to her tent in the corner of the fence, and then stood, gazing out through the chain-link fence.

  A train thundered past on the tracks less than twenty yards away, shaking the ground. Its warning whistle drowned out even the thought of any other sound, and its line of open coal cars seemed to go on forever. Clank-clank, clank-clank, clank-clank. Headed for an export terminal across the border in British Columbia, she guessed. Years ago, the locals and the Lummi tribe had shut down a planned coal port north of Bellingham, but that didn’t stop the trains passing through to Canada. How many more trains would thunder by tonight? Would she get any sleep?

  After the train had passed, she heard faint music, accented by an occasional yip or bark, playing from a small brewpub just beyond the Amtrak station. The brewpub welcomed dogs inside as well as in their fenced outside yard. Nancy had probably gone there. It was only a few minutes after eight o’clock, but with the overcast sky, the darkness was deepening. Nearby manufacturing and ship-repair businesses were shut down, and the gate had been lowered to close off traffic from Marine Park.

  Life was so different on that side of the chain-link fence. Out there, people had money. They had friends. They had family. But she’d only had all of that for the summer she worked for Wilderness Challenge, and for a short time afterward when she went to community college. Other than those few months, her life had always been shit. And now she was back on this side of the fence. And on the wrong side of the tracks.

  An older couple strolled down the sidewalk near the Bellingham Cruise Terminal, hand in hand, in and out of the shadows. In their fifties or sixties, maybe; they both had white hair. They seemed comfortable, happy. How long had they been together? Would she ever have anyone who loved her like that?

  As the couple strolled out of sight toward the Fairhaven tourist area, a figure detached itself from the shadow of the ancient tree in front of the Amtrak station. Her breath caught in her throat at the familiar silhouette. No.

  Eaze.

  How could he be on the street, walking around like he hadn’t done anything? Had the police let him go? Or had they never found him? Or maybe, and this seemed more likely, never even looked for him because they didn’t believe her description of the break-in.

  She couldn’t see Eaze’s face clearly, but she could tell from his posture that he’d spotted her. After stepping out of the pool of light under a streetlamp, he began to walk toward the tiny-house compound. No.

  Her heart beating hard, she folded the fingers of her right hand, extending her middle finger, and then shook that gesture against the fence, clanking it. He stopped, frozen. She couldn’t make out his face in the darkness, but she could see that he’d clenched his fists.

  She quickly unzipped her tent and crawled in, stretching out on top of her sleeping bag. A minute later, her cell phone buzzed. I miss you.

  The message tugged at her heart. To think that anyone missed her. But why did it have to be a sleazeball?

  I forgive you.

  Fury surged through her. She texted back, WTF? Ur the 1 that needs forgiveness!

  You stabbed me!!

  She considered several responses, but finally sent, I don’t ever want to see you again.

  After a brief pause, his next message was, I need you, Maya.

  She deleted the conversation and lay in the darkness, listening to sounds from down the street. What was she supposed to do now, all by herself? She toyed with the idea of texting Sam or Blake. Maybe Katerina in New Mexico. No, none of them wanted to hear from her. Ever again. She wished she had some beer or wine or pills or something to quiet down her brain. Finally, she settled for searching through YouTube for videos of rescued animals.

  Then a message bleeped in. Her cell phone bill was overdue. Her service would be cut off in two weeks if she didn’t pay up.

  Could life get any worse?

  Chapter 40

  In the morning, Sam checked with Deputy Ortiz on whether any tips had come in to help identify the dead kids.

  “One helpful citizen thought they might be the pair that’s been breaking into cars at trailheads,” he told her. “But we have no photos of that couple, and no way to check it out.”

  “So, our wolverine snatchers are still a mystery.”

  “Yep. All the cars uncovered have been matched to their owners, who are all accounted for, either dead or alive.”

  “All the cars have been dug out?” she asked.

  “The parking lot has been uncovered. Six more dead. We think we’ve got them all now. But some cars may have been shoved over into a ravine, and the snowplows scraping the parking lot dumped tons of snow and ice in there. We might not find anything more until the snow melts.”

  “Shoot.” She wanted to see for herself. “Is the road cleared now?”

  “Mostly. But don’t even think of going up there. They’re only allowing authorized personnel in.”

  A thought occurred to her. “Can’t you fingerprint those two?”

  Bodies was the unspoken word that should have ended that sentence. She couldn’t bring herself to utter it.

  “We did. Thanks to the freeze and thaw cycles, the prints are next to useless, but we got a few points and ran them through the system. No matches.”

  “Darn.”

  “Most teenagers are not yet hardened criminals, so they probably don’t even have prints in the database,” he reminded her. “And most haven’t ever needed to pass a background check for a job, either.”

  As disappointing as that was, it made sense.

  The volunteers Sam spoke to on Gina’s team didn’t have any insights into who the dead poachers might be, and they swore that they’d never give out the coordinates of the wildlife cameras that had captured footage of the wolverines. But after Becca Diehl told her that photos of all the team members were on the website, Sam perused the pictures there. The staff had been generous, listing even those who worked on the website and on data entry and such, as well as the “technical assistants,” some of whom were probably Gina’s “geek squad.”

  According to the Wolverine Project website, one Colin Neufeld connected solar panels to power the cameras so they could transmit data to cell phones when cloud and snow cover and satellite access allowed. She searched for that name on social media sites, got a hit on Instagram. According to his account, he worked at Best Buy for the actual Geek Squad company. Thankfully, the young man was big on selfies, and there were many photos of him with his mountain bike, his fiancée Sonya Latham, and his buddies on a soccer team. But no photos of Dead Poacher Kid.

  Sam felt stymied. Another dead end.

  The orchid was still on Chase’s table when she walked into his room that afternoon. But now it had company, a totem pole about a foot tall, and a stone figure of a whale. She stroked a finger down the miniature totem. It was beautifully carved and painted in traditional northwest red, black, and white colors. She recognized the stylized forms of an orca and a crow, wasn’t quite sure what the other two were. The whale sculpture was of a greenish smooth rock that felt good in her hand.

  An aide peeked in. Sam quickly checked her mask to be sure it covered her nose and put the whale back in place on the table.

  The aide checked the water pitcher and the box of tissues on the bedside table, then nodded toward the totem pole and whale. “Those are from the healing ceremony.”

  “Healing ceremony?”

  “Three elders were here this morning, chanting and praying over your fiancé. Lummi, Nooksack, Tulalip, coming together.”

  Chase had spent many months on Native American reservations over the last two years. Pandemic restrictions didn’t stop crime from happening, and Chase was the FBI liaison for the tribes.

  Three different tribes coming together had to be an honor. But what did it actually mean? His Native American heritage was another aspect of Chase’s life that she couldn’t share, along with his Hispanic heritage and all his FBI secrets. At times she felt like she lived a white-bread life, while everyone else was on the more interesting multigrain shelf.

  She set the whale sculpture down on the table. “A healing ceremony like that sounds . . . powerful,” she said. “I thought only relatives were allowed to visit patients now.”

  “We make exceptions for clergy.” His brow wrinkled. “Religious officials, I mean.”

  Sam studied the nurse’s aide again. His build was stocky, and he had dark hair, olive skin. The name on his badge was Warbass.

  “I’m Lummi,” he answered to her unspoken question. “One elder was my uncle. That ceremony was a great honor. It shows that many tribes respect your man. He must be doing good work.”

  Her eyes swept over Chase. He didn’t seem any different. “I hope the ceremony helps.”

  “His fever’s going down, if that’s an indication. But the docs say it’s going to be a long haul. He’s lucky to have you.”

  After Warbass left, Sam ran her fingers over Chase’s cheek, along his arm. “I hear you had visitors this morning. A healing ceremony. Everyone wants you to heal.” When there was no response, she left, trying to sort through her feelings. Envy or frustration about the Native American elders and their healing ceremony? How could the religion of Native Americans be any different from her father’s beliefs, which hadn’t saved her mother?

  In the hall, an older woman pushed a wheelchair, keeping up a running patter with the bald man slumped in the seat. “It’s a nice day, Frank. You’re going to enjoy the sunshine on the deck. And I brought some of your favorite music for you to enjoy.”

  A string of drool dripped from one side of the man’s mouth. His eyes were vacant. Stroke victim, probably. A vision of her mother gasping for breath rose up in Sam’s imagination. Oh God, would Chase be like that? She couldn’t handle it. No, Chase was not “lucky to have her.”

  When the woman smiled at her, Sam did her best to reflect the expression, but her face was stiff. She picked up her phone, pretending to study it.

  The woman passed, and Sam watched her push her husband down the long hospital hallway, remembering similar scenes of her father caring for her mother. Those were not happy memories for her, and she suspected they weren’t for her father, either.

  She and Chase weren’t married. They weren’t even really engaged. She could just walk away.

  A week had passed since the avalanche. Sam could no longer sit still and wait for something, anything, to happen. Sitting in the hospital wasn’t helping Chase right now. The cops didn’t seem to be searching for Eaze or James, which made her worry each time she left the house. She didn’t see how she could help Maya; the girl had to help herself. But maybe she could help find out who the two dead wolverine trappers were.

  Identifying the poachers was not a priority for law enforcement. The kids had been killed by the avalanche, not through some sort of foul play. As for trapping the wolverine, the Fish and Wildlife Service had nobody to prosecute. The suspects were dead, as well as the victim. And nobody seemed to be missing any of them.

  She went home to get her backpack and hiking boots, thinking about different ways she might be able to observe the cleanup efforts, see if the crew had overlooked any cars that might belong to the poachers.

  Could she hike up to the wolverine site again, see if there were signs of other wolverines in the area? Ortiz had told her that only authorized personnel were allowed up at the end of the road. Did that mean there would be a barrier across the Mount Baker Highway? Many of the lower areas in the mountains were snow-free. The outdoorsy population of Whatcom County would expect to access those. So any barrier would probably be near the ski areas. She might be able to park below that barrier and then hike in. Doing anything would be better than doing nothing.

  As she shoved a sandwich into her pack, she discovered she’d left Gina’s damaged wildlife camera inside a side pocket. She needed to see what, if anything, might have registered on the memory card after the avalanche. She set the camera aside, determined to do that later.

  She’d also neglected to give back another object: the deputy’s cap with the Sheriff’s Department emblem on it. That could be useful. She laid it on the passenger seat and started the ninety-minute drive to the mountain.

  It was a typical April day, the sky spitting raindrops on the windshield off and on, with brief periods of sunshine between clouds. As the road increased in elevation, the clouds thickened, and a cold drizzle enclosed the mountaintops. The snow alongside the asphalt grew in height until she worried about an avalanche falling across the pavement, her anxiety increased by many small snow slides that had closed the inside lane. Just below the lower White Salmon Ski Area, a barrier blocked the road. A miserable-looking Forest Service ranger was hunched inside his SUV, next to an Authorized Personnel Only sign mounted on a sawhorse. Thank God it was a ranger and not a deputy on duty. The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office was probably small enough that everyone knew one another.

  Sam pulled on the Sheriff’s Office hat. When the USFS ranger slid out of his vehicle, she was relieved to see that he was young and wearing jeans under his USFS jacket. Maybe not an official ranger, then, or maybe a temp worker who’d been called up here on his day off. Sam gave him a two-fingered salute and a nod from behind her window glass.

  The ranger nodded back and skidded the sawhorse out of the way. She drove through, feeling clever and only slightly guilty. She drove up the driveway to the White Salmon lot and parked near a line of portable toilets.