Riverbend Road. RaeAnne Thayne
stomach rumbled, reminding her quite forcefully that she hadn’t eaten anything since her shift started that morning.
Her great-aunt’s Sunday dinners were pure decadence. Wyn could almost feel her arteries clog in anticipation.
“I’ll check my schedule.”
“Thanks again.”
Jenny drove her flashy little convertible into the garage and quickly closed the door behind her.
Of all things, the sudden action of the door seemed to startle the big cow moose where all other efforts—including a honking horn and Wyn’s yelling and arm-peddling—had failed. The moose shied away from the activity, heading in Wyn’s direction.
Crap.
Heart pounding, she managed to jump into her vehicle and yank the door closed behind her seconds before the moose charged past her toward the calf.
The two big animals picked their way across the lawn and settled in to nibble Jenny’s pretty red-twig dogwoods.
Crisis managed—or at least her part in it—she turned around and drove back to the street just as a pickup pulling a trailer with the Idaho Fish and Game logo came into view over the hill.
She pushed the button to roll down her window and Moose did the same. Beside him sat a game warden she didn’t know. Moose beamed at her and she squirmed, wishing she had shut him down again instead of giving him unrealistic expectations.
“It’s a cow and her calf,” she said, forcing her tone into a brisk, businesslike one and addressing both men in the vehicle. “They’re now on the south side of the house.”
“Thanks for running recon for us,” Moose said.
“Yeah. Pretty sure we managed to save the Ben & Jerry’s, so I guess my work here is done.”
The warden grinned at her and she waved and pulled onto the road, leaving her window down for the sweet-smelling June breezes to float in.
She couldn’t really blame a couple of moose for wandering into town for a bit of lunch. This was a beautiful time around Lake Haven, when the wildflowers were starting to bloom and the grasses were long and lush.
She loved Haven Point with all her heart but she found it pretty sad that the near-moose encounter was the most exciting thing that had happened to her on the job in days.
Her cell phone rang just as she turned from Clover Hill Road to Lakeside Drive. She knew by the ringtone just who was on the other end and her breathing hitched a little, like always. Those stone-cold embers she had been wondering about when it came to Moose Porter suddenly flared to thick, crackling life.
Yeah. She knew at least one reason why she didn’t go out much.
She pushed the phone button on her vehicle’s hands-free unit. “Hey, Chief.”
“Hear you had a little excitement this afternoon and almost tangled with a couple of moose.”
She heard the amusement in the voice of her boss—and friend—and tried not to picture Cade Emmett stretched out behind his desk, big and rangy and gorgeous, with that surprisingly sweet smile that broke hearts all over Lake Haven County.
“News travels.”
“Your great-aunt Jenny just called to inform me you risked your life to save her Cherry Garcia and to tell me all about how you deserve a special commendation.”
“If she really thought that, why didn’t she at least give me a pint for my trouble?” she grumbled.
The police chief laughed, that rich, full laugh that made her fingers and toes tingle like she’d just run full tilt down Clover Hill Road with her arms outspread.
Curse the man.
“You’ll have to take that up with her next time you see her. Meantime, we just got a call about possible trespassers at that old wreck of a barn on Darwin Twitchell’s horse property on Conifer Drive, just before the turnoff for Riverbend. Would you mind checking it out before you head back for the shift change?”
“Who called it in?”
“Darwin. Apparently somebody tripped an alarm he set up after he got hit by our friendly local graffiti artist a few weeks back.”
Leave it to the ornery old buzzard to set a trap for unsuspecting trespassers. Knowing Darwin and his contrariness, he probably installed infrared sweepers and body heat sensors, even though the ramshackle barn held absolutely nothing of value.
“The way my luck is going today, it’s probably a relative to the two moose I just made friends with.”
“It could be a skunk, for all I know. But Darwin made me swear I’d send an officer to check it out. Since the graffiti case is yours, I figured you’d want first dibs, just in case you have the chance to catch them red-handed. Literally.”
“Gosh, thanks.”
He chuckled again and the warmth of it seemed to ease through the car even through the hollow, tinny Bluetooth speakers.
“Keep me posted.”
“Ten-four.”
She turned her vehicle around and headed in the general direction of her own little stone house on Riverbend Road that used to belong to her grandparents.
The Redemption mountain range towered across the lake, huge and imposing. The snow that would linger in the moraines and ridges above the timberline for at least another month gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and the lake was that pure, vivid turquoise usually seen only in shallow Caribbean waters.
Her job as one of six full-time officers in the Haven Point Police Department might not always be overflowing with excitement, but she couldn’t deny that her workplace surroundings were pretty gorgeous.
She spotted the first tendrils of black smoke above the treetops as she turned onto the rutted lane that wound its way through pale aspen trunks and thick pines and spruce.
Probably just a nearby farmer burning some weeds along a ditch line, she told herself, or trying to get rid of the bushy-topped invasive phragmites reeds that could encroach into any marshy areas and choke out all the native species. But something about the black curl of smoke hinted at a situation beyond a controlled burn.
Her stomach fluttered with nerves. She hated fire calls even more than the dreaded DD—domestic disturbance. At least in a domestic situation, there was some chance she could defuse the conflict. Fire was avaricious and relentless, smoke and flame and terror. She had learned that lesson on one of her first calls as a green-as-grass rookie police officer in Boise, when she was the first one on scene to a deadly house fire on a cold January morning that had killed three children in their sleep.
Wyn rounded the last bend in the road and saw, just as feared, the smoke wasn’t coming from a ditch line or a controlled burn of a patch of invading plants. Instead, it twisted sinuously into the sky from the ramshackle barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property.
She scanned the area for kids and couldn’t see any. What she did see made her blood run cold—two small boys’ bikes resting on their sides outside the barn.
Where there were bikes, there were usually boys to ride them.
She parked her vehicle and shoved open her door. “Hello? Anybody here?” she called.
She strained her ears but could hear nothing above the crackle of flames. Heat and flames poured off the building.
She pressed the button on the radio at her shoulder to call dispatch. “I’ve got a structure fire, an old barn on Darwin Twitchell’s property on Conifer Drive, just before Riverbend Road. The upper part seems to be fully engulfed and there’s a possibility of civilians inside, juveniles. I’ve got bikes here but no kids in sight. I’m still looking.”
While she raced around the building, she heard the call go out to the volunteer fire department and Chief